Xuzhou, in the fortress stronghold on the shore of Zhaoyang Lake. △↗，

Deng Fang, the head of the garrison camp that was snorting the smoke, was also roasting two steamed cakes (steamed buns) on the swaying brazier and piercing them with guns.

It wasn't until the gray and white inside on both sides that there was a burnt and yellowish color, and then a piece of salted lard that had just been cut off and frozen was sandwiched, and a few pieces of green onions were filled into the mouth, and the crunchy beauty was used.

Then he put down most of the steamed cakes in his hand, took the kettle, soaked a bowl of hot fried noodle soup, and poured it into his stomach with a gurgling face, not to mention how unbearable it was.

That's the life of a human being. Three meals a day are full, and in the leisure time of duty, I can also eat on the hour. In contrast, I used to live like an animal.

It's just that he occasionally remembers the young man he recruited from the homeless people by chance under the hands of the generals. But there are some things in the world that are very embarrassed and sighing, and now they are very different from the world.

Suddenly, a voice shouted

"Dutou, I found that there are homeless people coming over......"

Then, Deng Fang stood on the sentry post with some doubts, looking at the crowd of refugees who appeared in the distance, and couldn't help muttering in his heart.

"Are there still people fleeing now......

Then he felt that something was wrong, the last batch of people who came over was seven or eight days ago, and most of them were hungry, as if they could die when the wind blew.

How can these people be so steady and hardworking?

"Someone Coming"

Deng Fang categorically decided,

"I'll shoot them ......"

Of course, in terms of selfishness in looking for him, their fortress is equipped with five small cannons, but they have not officially issued a profit to the city once.

As the deafening roar sounded, the crowd that was ignoring the shouts from the city and were still hurrying forward suddenly exploded like frightened forests.

Some people suddenly desperately scattered to the left and right, and some people continued to run forward with their heads covered in a panic, while some people stopped and looked at the spot at a loss;

Suddenly, those suspicious figures who were mixed in with some anger were exposed on the spot, their clothes were ragged and gray-faced, but their hands were shining with the reflection of blades, or holding things that seemed to be bows and arrows.

But Deng Fang, who saw this scene, was slightly relieved, it was good to be an enemy.

Although this fortress built by the lake is not large, and there are only two regiments of auxiliary soldiers stationed on a daily basis, a lot of grain and equipment, as well as gunpowder and lead, have been stored in advance.

Even if they are collected one after another, the scouts and sentries who have retreated nearby are enough to support most of the winter.

As the sky darkened, I looked at the remnants of the sparkling fires and the corpses piled up under the ramparts.

"Are these Humal crazy......

Deng Fang, who was covered in blood, exhaled in some surprise

"Are you in such a hurry to send you to death......

"They're not crazy, they're just desperate and they're going to start playing with their lives......"

A voice said, but it was the one who led the team to support, and the third battalion of the hunting cavalry was attacking the enemy.

"And that's just the beginning......"

"Next, I'm afraid there will be a hard fight......."

As winter approaches, the Huai River floods with a protracted tidal wave, and finally the turbid water of the ebbing tide ends, gradually revealing the soaked and washed land and all kinds of unsightly ruins.

It is said that the shallows near the mouth of the Huai River were impacted, and the corpses and garbage of various people and animals were densely entangled like whitened dead fish, and gathered into a number of large temporary floating islands.

All of the above was terrible, and the stench of decay was terrible, and it could be heard for miles in cold weather, and the people and ships passing by in the vicinity had to be avoided from afar.

But after the water receded, the problems and sequelae left in the muddy flood were far more than that.

Completely collapsed roads, water conservancy facilities, fertile fields and almost ghost ruins of those cities and towns are still secondary, and more importantly, it is difficult to avoid ** after natural disasters.

It is entirely to be expected that, after the incubation period of the cold winter, the next year's large-scale plague and famine in the flooded area may even go back and forth for several years if there is no strong enough external force to intervene.

According to the data provided by the staff committee's deduction operation, it is unlikely that Jiangning, which is currently fighting fires in the Jiangnan Provinces, will have the spare strength to take action to additionally solve the problems in the Huai Pan area.

This also means that the officers and troops gathered in Huainan will not have much will and motivation to take the initiative to enter and try to cross these epidemic areas where disease and famine are rampant.

Small-scale personnel exchanges and contacts can only be maintained by sea.

The only good news that can be counted as a blessing in misfortune is that the dozens of large and small feudal armies that still remain in Huainan Province have also been severely weakened by the multiple torments of floods, hunger and epidemics.

It is said that in many places, the tragedy of cannibalism in the whole village and town, even if anything survives, I am afraid that there will be no way to return to heaven.

In the lower reaches of the Huai River, in the irregular strip like sandwich biscuits, there is no decent force that can organize and hinder the confluence and traffic between Huainan and Huaibei.

In this way, the military pressure on the Huainan side is also equivalent to a lot of reduction in disguise, and it can be withdrawn to rest and rotate, or to support the front in other directions.

At present, the main combat power directly controlled by Jiangning is divided into three major geographical clusters:

Under the leadership of Ning Chongxuan, the head of the Southeast Recruitment Division, the Huainan cluster was composed of the second-line army in the Jiangnan area and the front-line army that was collected and rectified, and there were roughly six or seven incomplete military orders.

The size of the specific soldiers is estimated to be between 50,000 and 60,000. After the Huai River recedes this time, it is estimated that more than half of the troops will be left.

Then there is the imperial camp army and the Gong Guard Army, the Palace Front Army, and the Shenji Army who are responsible for taking turns to defend Jiangning, and there are about 30,000 or 40,000 soldiers.

However, it is the most elite in equipment training, and there are many surviving veterans of the Northern Expedition, and it is also the basic and mobile force of the prison commission.

At present, most of it is used as a reserve to support local battles; Or it acts as some kind of insurance measure and disguised supervision of the nature of war, and guards the key and key areas of Jiangdong, Jiangxi, and Liangzhejiang Road.

Finally, those overseas guest troops who were stationed in Tuntun from various places in the two seas and the four western provinces were mobilized to wait outside the Shuling Mountains. About 60 or 70 battalions and nearly 100,000 horses arrived one after another.

In addition to the several troops that had arrived in advance and had gone to support Jinghu Road, it was also the main force that was now suppressing the rebellion and popular uprisings in the Jiangnan Provinces.

The rest of the armed forces, as well as the Jiangxi Recruitment Division, Jinghu Recruitment Division, which were almost evacuated in the Northern Expedition, the remaining few local troops, plus a small number of formed surviving soldiers and horses in the middle lane.

It is estimated that there are tens of thousands of horses, but in the face of the fanhu frenzy that is moving south, it is inevitably a little difficult and difficult to continue. It has always relied on the blood transfusion and other support that Jiangning spared no effort to stabilize the front of the Xiangfan generation.

Finally, the Western Route Army and the Xishu Recruiting Division, which are relatively well preserved. However, because of the distance, there is very little news that can be obtained along the way, and the small number of people I have planted in the southern generation cannot go deep into the upper reaches of Jianghan to investigate and collect information for the time being.

Other temporary conscription groups and village warriors are not worth mentioning. Therefore, whether it is the front line or the rear, there is a situation of confrontation of varying degrees for the most part, and there is a situation of fierce local tug-of-war.

At this time, Xue Renfu, the head of Marquis Yu, hurriedly sent in a message.

Then, with a sigh of no surprise, I announced the activation of the fourth set of response plans.

Because, many reports on the front line, around the stronghold of the salient of the defensive line, fierce battles broke out.

This also means that the autumn defense that I have been waiting for, but long overdue, has finally begun. The fort group on the front line will usher in a round of stormy fierce battles and defenses, as the baptism of late autumn and the prelude to winter.

This is also the most common practice and means of those foreign princes on the grassland, according to the amount of winter materials, and drive the people to the south to launch plundering activities of different scales.

If you can succeed in this way, it will be a surprise, but if you fail, you can also use it to consume the excess population and useless old and weak women and children, this is the law of the grassland.

And this is the second and third year after they came to the Central Plains, and in the past year, they have not lived very well under the double blow and harassment of the Northern Dynasty and Huaidong, and they are also continuing to weaken.

Therefore, in order to survive and survive the winter, it is not surprising that in the face of pressure, it is not surprising to give up the suspicion and merge and desperately plunder.

And for me, it has another meaning.

A careful study of the steppe feudal division and the feudal policy of the princes that have been handed down for hundreds of years in this era can reveal a very interesting thing.

In the embryonic and growing stages, the native forces of the steppe have been trained and domesticated into lackeys for generations by various means, such as forced cultural indoctrination, control of economic lifelines, political differentiation and military harvesting.

In a sense, the culture and way of life nurtured by thousands of years of agricultural civilization in the Central Plains is a sweet and delicious poison for those border areas that are still in the wilderness and backwardness.

Because of the limitations of climate and environment since ancient times, the local social structure and economic foundation are often not enough to support this state of life in a stable and lasting way.

However, the so-called thrift into luxury, from luxury to thrift, those foreign leaders are also difficult to avoid vulgarity, once they get used to the luxury of the way of life, as well as the Central Plains culture brought by the high and convenient.

It is difficult to get rid of the inheritance from generation to generation.

In order to maintain this kind of enjoyment and pursuit, it is necessary to step up the internal scraping for needs, or unconsciously find ways to transform its own economic and social structure to create more value.

No matter what they do, it is mostly the result of a serious uneven distribution of resources and a great intensification of internal contradictions.

As a result, countless steppe overlords and regimes that were once tyrannical have either died out in the accumulation of erupted civil strife; or this turmoil and division and a limp; or just in desperation, go away to find another way out as a failure; or simply put down his body and become a lackey raised by the Central Plains Dynasty with glory and wealth;

Since then, it has become one of the short-lived legends in the history of the grassland.

Only a very small number of fortunate people with unique vision, with the help of people of insight around them, took advantage of the cyclical law of rise and fall of the Central Plains Dynasty, seized the time and opportunity, and completed the transformation of the political power to establish grammar under the fierce social contradictions and conflicts and the endless traditional forces, and became one of the few major disasters in the Central Plains frontier in history.

And two or three lucky people, taking advantage of the extremely weak civil strife in the Central Plains Dynasty, took the opportunity to occupy a large area of population and land, and finally completed the complete transformation from a large number of remnants of the slave clan to a new feudal state.

As the so-called history is always repeated, in modern society, it is like those third world countries, drinking coke, listening to hip-hop music, watching European and American programs to grow up in the upper echelons of local society.

Either find a way to expropriate and extort enough, marry a wife with Western-style education, and immigrate to paradise to enjoy the life of a first-class person with money first;

Either they are desperately trying to squeeze and enslave their own people in the local poverty and luxury, and be a qualified comprador and agent of imperialism, and then wait for the European and American masters to lose a bone from time to time (give conditional aid).

Then counting on the next generation of children born and raised in foreign countries, directly mixed to first-class people, is the goal and pursuit of life.

This is also an important reason why a very small number of foreign races in history quickly decayed and degenerated very quickly after they entered the Central Plains by chance.

This historical inertia is always repeated.

Of course, as for those who like to use their butts to push their heads backwards, and deliberately reverse the consequences of the enemy in terms of using the currency of the year to cause the economic prosperity of the enemy country, and incidentally affecting economic and cultural exchanges.

It is another thing to humiliate the disgrace of being forced to pay taxes and coins every year for land reparations, and to boast of the far-sighted long-term layout and economic strategy of the iron-blooded Great Song Dynasty, and the so-called strange brain-replenishment banner party.

After all, no matter how much they boast, they can't change the fact that the so-called two Song Dynasty regimes always want to pick up cheap, but they are understood again and again and that their strength is far inferior to their own.