Soon after Sun Chuanting entered Lanxian, he learned the news that the thieves occupied Jingle, and then quickly reported the situation of the thieves on the northern line to Taiyuan, and transferred it from Taiyuan to Li Banghua, the minister of military aircraft who sat in Lu'an Mansion and served as the supervisor of Shanxi's thief suppression. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

After Li Banghua received the thief information from Sun Chuanting's people on the northern line, he knew that the thieves were afraid of the imperial court and had already divided their troops and transferred in, so on the one hand, he ordered Hong Chengchou, the governor of Shaanxi on the southern line, Zhang Zongheng, the envoy of Shanxi, and others to lead the army from Pingyang to the north to recover the city that had been broken by the thieves before.

There is a Qinzhou between Lu'an and Fenzhou, and there are many mountains and hills during the period, and the roads are rugged and difficult to travel.

The mining battalion under Li Banghua belonged to the pure firearms unit, while the Tianxiong battalion under Lu Xiangsheng was mostly foot soldiers except for a small number of cavalry, and the brigade carried all kinds of grain and grass and military materials, and it was quite difficult to travel all the way.

Until the news of Sun Chuanting's victory on the northern front under Jingle City reached Li Banghua's army, he and Lu Xiangsheng led the team, but they had just passed Qinzhou.

In Qinyangyi, west of Qinzhou City and on the north bank of Qinshui, Li Banghua saw a messenger who was chasing after him all the way.

"Sun Boya is really good! In the two battles before and after, a total of more than 6,000 beheadings were beheaded, and tens of thousands of prisoners were captured! Sure enough, it is the governor appointed by His Majesty! ”

Li Banghua carefully read the document of Sun Chuanting's report from Taiyuan forwarded by Zhang Xiao, the governor of Shanxi, and said to Lu Xiangsheng happily while handing it to Lu Xiangsheng.

Lu Xiangsheng was envious after reading the documents of the northern route.

Lu Xiangsheng led the Tianxiong battalion to follow Li Banghua into the Jin Dynasty to suppress the thieves, and he had not fought a battle, and he was also anxious.

Since the Tianxiong Battalion was built, although he has not had the opportunity to go to the battle array, Lu Xiangsheng has quite confidence in the Tianxiong Battalion, so what he is worried about is not that he can't defeat the thieves, but that he can't beat the thieves.

This is also the general concern of the officers and generals of the mine camp and the Tianxiong camp today, if the thieves bring the looted grain and grass population into the deep mountains and old forests and can't hold out, what should they do with the officers and soldiers? Luliang Mountain is hundreds of miles away, where to find the traces of thieves?

Of course, Li Banghua and Lu Xiangsheng didn't have time to seriously think about these problems at this time, and after receiving the report document on the northern front, Li Banghua immediately wrote a report to the Military Aircraft Department, and then attached Sun Chuanting's report document, and sent people to Beijing to submit it to Emperor Chongzhen.

Then, Li Banghua and Lu Xiangsheng suddenly quickened the pace of their march westward, and Xiaoxing stayed overnight, and finally ten days later, that is, on April 21, they led a large group of men and horses through the Taiyue Mountains between Qinzhou and Fenzhou, and entered the southern edge of the Taiyuan Basin, near Jiexiu.

In late April, although the land of Shanxi is still extremely dry, there are still farmers busy everywhere in the farmland that can be cultivated along the valleys and plains distributed by Fenshui.

In fact, as long as the flow of Fenshui has not been cut off, these small basins and plains located in the Fenshui Valley can be diverted for irrigation and harvest.

The whole of Shanxi is composed of several rows of mountains running north-south and several intermountain basins distributed in the middle of the mountains from south to north.

The Taiyuan Basin is located in the center of the whole Shanxi land, and the Taiyuan City is located at the northern end of the Taiyuan Basin, and the most developed and wealthy counties in Shanxi in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, such as Taigu, Qixian, Pingyao, and Jiexiu, are distributed in the Taiyuan Basin from north to south.

Among them, Jiexiu is located in the southernmost part of the Taiyuan Basin.

Further south of Jiexiu is the strategic gopher valley sandwiched between the eastern foot of Luliang Mountain and Taiyue Mountain, and the south of the mouse-bird valley is Lingshi, Fenxi and Huozhou.

Now the Lingshi to the north is in the hands of Wang Guoliang's Shanxi Town, while the Lingshi to the south of Fenxi and Huozhou have been in the hands of Shaanxi Fubiao led by Hong Chengchou.

Because the general had been discussed in Lu'an before, the tasks had been divided, so by the end of April, the southern and central divisions had also arrived at the designated positions, occupying several dangerous passes.

These situations had also been reported to the Lu'an Governor's Mansion long before the news of Sun Chuanting's victory on the northern route came.

It was also for this reason that Li Banghua thought that the time was ripe, so he took Lu Xiangsheng's department to Fenzhou in the middle line.

Let's say that Li Banghua and Lu Xiangsheng and their entourage led the team to carry grain and grass baggage, crossed the valley mountain road in Taiyue Mountain, and finally arrived outside Jiexiu City.

Li Xianzhong, the commander of the Chinese army who had been sent to fight the front station earlier, had already taken the Jiexiu County Order and many gentry and businessmen representatives from Jiexiu to greet him outside Jiexiu City.

Li Banghua and his entourage did not enter Jiexiu City, but stayed in the Baobei Temple in the southeast outside the city, and then met with the representatives of the Jiexiu gentry, businessmen and people who came to reward the imperial army.

The accompanying army also camped at the foot of the belly mountain in the southeast of Jiexiu City to rest and recuperate.

There were two elders among the Jiexiu merchants who came to the Jiexiu County Order, and Lu Xiangsheng was particularly impressed, one was the patriarch of the Jiexiu Fan clan, and the other was the patriarch of the Jiexiu Hou clan.

The Fan family ran the grain, tea and salt business, and the Hou family ran the cloth silk and pawn business, both of which were the wealthy families of Jiexiu.

This time I came to the priest, and as soon as the two families made a move, they each donated 50,000 taels of silver, and Lu Xiangsheng couldn't help but marvel at the wealth of Shanxi merchants.

Of course, compared with the surprise and admiration of Lu Xiangsheng and others when they heard that the Fan family and the Hou family donated money and materials to help suppress the thieves, Li Banghua's performance was much colder.

As the Minister of Military Aircraft, Li Banghua has access to more confidential information, which is certainly not comparable to ordinary people.

In addition to the military intelligence reports reported to the imperial court by the military department, the governor's office of the five armies, and the towns on the nine sides, the emperor often passed on some confidential information of Jinyiwei and Dongchang to several important ministers of the military aircraft department after reading it himself.

Among them, there is a lot of information about Shanxi merchants bribing the border army to guard the border and smuggling trade with Monan, Moxi and even Mobei Mongolia.

Several of them, formerly through the Karaqin tribes and now through the Horqin tribes, traded with the Jianguo in the far northeast, sending salt, iron, grain, and cloth to the Jianguo Houjin Kingdom, and then exchanging them for luxury goods such as ginseng, mink, and dongzhu.

Before Li Banghua became the Minister of Military Aircraft, he had also heard that Shanxi merchants were engaged in smuggling trade with the northern Mongolian tribes, selling ironware, bronze and other prohibited goods, but it was not until he became the Minister of Military Aircraft that he knew that these bold Shanxi merchants dared to trade with the most vicious enemies of the Ming Dynasty.

Among these merchants, Jiexiu Fan is one of the Jin merchant families that the current emperor circled with a red pen in the Jinyi Guard's military briefings that were forwarded to the Military Aircraft Department several times.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the merchants of Fujian and Zhejiang were famous for a time in the South Seas, while the merchants of Shanxi and Shanxi were famous for going to the west.

The so-called Xikou, in a narrow sense, mainly refers to several passes in the western section of the Great Wall, such as the Hukou in the north of the Jin Dynasty, the Fugukou in the north of Shaanxi, etc., from which Shanxi merchants went out of the customs and traded with the Mongolian tribes outside the Saiwai. The trade at the west entrance led as far as the Rakshasa country at that time.

Broadly speaking, the west exit included various passes along the Great Wall west of Beijing at that time, such as Zhangjiakou, Dushikou and other places.

Of course, because the Ming Dynasty adopted the national policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce, it did not attach much importance to commercial trade, and the mutual market trade between the Ming Dynasty and Outer Mongolia was also intermittent.

Therefore, the so-called Xikou, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, was actually more of a private smuggling trade.

It was not until the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains that the so-called western exit of Shanxi merchants became a legal trade route.

Therefore, many Shanxi merchants in the late Ming Dynasty traded with the Mongolian tribes in the west, which was an illegal smuggling trade, and the Fan family in Jiexiu, Shanxi was one of the "leaders".

Since he had already known about these situations before, when he arrived in Jiexiu at this time, and happened to meet the patriarch of the Jiexiu Fan clan when he met with the local elders and representatives of the merchants, Li Banghua certainly would not have a very good face.

However, since the current emperor has not yet made up his mind to eradicate these traitorous business scum and national moths in one fell swoop, Li Banghua is naturally not too cold, not to mention that this time Jiexiu Fan also made a bold move, contributing 50,000 taels of silver to the imperial court to exterminate the thieves.

After all, reaching out and not hitting a smiling person is also a virtue that a civil official like him who was born as a jinshi should have.

Li Banghua sent off the Jiexiu county magistrate who came to pay tribute to the priest, as well as the representatives of Jiexiu's father, the elderly, and the merchants, and then sent three messengers to Taiyuan, Fenzhou and Fenxi in the evening of the same day.

On the one hand, he informed his subordinate departments of his departure from Lu'an and his westward march to Jiexiu, and on the other hand, he learned about the specific situation of mastering these directions, especially the progress of the Shanxi town army under the Liang department of the Fenzhou Kingdom and the Shaanxi army under the first line of Hong Chengchou in Fenxi and Suizhou.