As the Wehrmacht approached step by step, the atmosphere in Cangzhou became more and more tense, but the Wehrmacht did not immediately attack, and the days when this kind of sword hung over his head and did not fall made Tan Tai feel out of breath all day long.

The Seventh Division had advanced to Zhangguantun, more than 20 miles from Cangzhou City, opposite the Qing army's defensive line, and the battle did not take place except for the occasional artillery on both sides firing a few shots at each other.

The weather is slowly getting warmer, and although I can't take off my thick padded jacket yet, the sun is already starting to warm up.

Outside the command tent of the Seventh Division, a large group of people sat on the pony, the spring sun shining on their bodies made people feel very comfortable, and a group of people were talking about something.

On one of the ponies sat a young man in an overcoat, with medicine on his face and a bandage on his arm, and if you looked closer, you could recognize that this young man who had just shaved his head was Qin Huzi who was whipped by the generals for reading leaflets in the defensive position of the Qing army.

Qin Huzi was very nervous, and he trembled when he spoke, because he knew that the people sitting with him were all senior officials of the National Defense Army, and even the "angel" Metropolitan Governor who was afraid of the Manchu court was also there, and several veterans sitting next to him were also shaved and their bodies were tense, obviously extremely nervous.

On that day, he was severely whipped by thousands of households for reading leaflets from the Wehrmacht, and the Qing army did not let go of Qin Huzi, who had been beaten to pieces, and the next day a row of stakes was erected behind the position, and dozens of soldiers, including Qin Huzi, who were caught peeking at the leaflets, were hung on the stakes.

Seven or eight of the hanging soldiers died one after another, Qin Huzi was able to survive thanks to the cold weather, and at night the temperature dropped badly, and the generals all shrank into the tent to roast the fire, and a few veterans in the same village secretly fed Huzi some hot water and food, which made him persevere.

However, the extreme dissatisfaction caused by Qin Huzi's hanging and beating quietly spread among Huzi's fellow villagers. This sentiment reached its peak when the generals announced that they would be executed the next day, and it was on this day that the Seventh Division advanced to the defensive position.

At night, when they couldn't see their fingers, Huzi's fellow villagers united with hundreds of soldiers and rescued all the soldiers hanging on the stakes. Sneaking over the line and running into the offensive positions of the 7th Division.

Huzi was seriously injured and was hanged for so many days, and when the Seventh Division Health Team carried Huzi to the tent, he was already dying, but Huzi, who was fated, finally survived, and lived in the health team for more than ten days, and the young man was able to sit and talk.

The same story as Huzi and his fellow countrymen is going on these days, but the story has different origins.

Yi Bang has already asked the General Staff to do statistics, and it has been more than half a month. More than 5,000 soldiers have escaped from the Qing soldiers.

Although Luo Jian was already very satisfied with the results of the psychological battle, Wang Qiang was a little impatient, and his seven divisions were also very eager to fight, Xie Kui had already run to Luo Jian several times to ask for an attack, but Luo Jian did not agree.

Luo Jian thought about it more long-term, now the three main battlefields of the country are a game of chess, and Liu Zhaoji's army did not achieve the expected results in the Henan battlefield, which determined that the Manchu court still had the strength to hold on to the war.

Luo Jian is still waiting for news from Huang Degong. If the Huang Dequan Marine Corps and the 2nd and 5th Divisions went well, the Hong Chengchou group would no longer be able to provide tax and grain support to the Manchu court. At that time, no matter how hard it is, the Qing army will not be able to maintain its huge number of troops, and it will collapse sooner or later.

The weather was very good today, and Luo Jian met Qin Huzi who was helped outside to bask in the sun outside the tent, so he let Huzi be helped to the tent. He also asked people to call a few fellow Huzi who had thrown over before to chat, and he wanted to learn more information about the Qing soldiers from the chat.

Although Huzi and his fellow villagers were nervous and answered questions a lot of the time, Luo Jian still got a lot of useful information from his conversation with them.

In fact, the vast majority of the Han soldiers in the Qing army were soldiers like Huzi who wanted to make a living and eat for themselves, and the requirements for these soldiers to have a sense of the state and the nation seemed to be a bit high. What the sages said is not unreasonable, "food and clothing are enough and then know etiquette", it is obviously impossible for a large number of people on the verge of starvation to love the country.

The "heart-to-heart warfare" adopted by the Wehrmacht this time obviously hit the "dead end" of the Qing army, because the Han army in the Qing army has reached the brink of starvation.

What Huzi and his fellow villagers are most grateful to the Wehrmacht is that they can have enough to eat, because they have basically not had enough food since they were transferred to the Hebei front.

Luo Jian knew about the food shortage in the Manchu Dynasty, and if this information could not be obtained, then there would be no need for the Ministry of Security to exist.

Food was particularly scarce in the Gyeonggi region for a number of reasons, the first of which was the "land enclosure" policy of the Manchu aristocracy.

The Gyeonggi region was the hardest hit area by the war, and the population decline was particularly prominent, and there was no shortage of land resources, but after the Manchu nobles entered the customs, Dolgon issued a land enclosure decree in the first year of Shunzhi.

This so-called "land enclosure order" nominally distributed the "ownerless wasteland" in the prefectures and counties near Beijing to "the kings, lords, and soldiers from the east," but in fact it was a massive encroachment on the property of the Han residents in the Kifu area, regardless of whether they had owners or no owners. "When the field is encircled, the owner of the field is evicted when he arrives, and everything in the room is also there. Those who have wives and ugly wives are taken away, but those who want to stay dare not take them. Its tenants have no survivors, but they rely on them to cultivate. ”

The Manchu aristocracy did not engage in production themselves, and the land enclosed by them could only be cultivated by their domestic slaves or tenants, and the nobles themselves did not have to pay taxes, so that although there was a lot of land in the Gyeonggi area, the Manchu court did not get anything from it.

Dolgon had tried to solve this problem the previous year, but when he was just about to enforce the Manchu policy of paying grain with an iron fist, the great resistance from the Manchu nobility made Dolgon frightened, and he knew that if he insisted on doing it, his position would be immediately ruined.

Originally, the first thing a new dynasty had to do was to let the people recuperate and let the whole country slowly recover, but due to the appearance of Luo Jian and others in Yangzhou, the Manchu court did not have the opportunity to do so, but began to frantically oppress the people at the beginning of the founding of the country.

The Manchu court pressed on the heads of the people in the ruling areas to pay more taxes than in the late Ming Dynasty during the Chongzhen period, and in the face of such heavy taxes, the people's enthusiasm for production was seriously weakened, and according to the report of the Ministry of Security, grain production in Henan, Shaanxi and other places fell instead of increasing last year.

During these two years, the Manchu court mainly relied on grain from the two lakes, but with the blockade of the canal by the Wehrmacht, the cost of transporting grain from the two lakes increased significantly, and more than half of the grain was consumed in transit. In addition, Hong Chengchou is also constantly expanding his army, the number of troops has increased from tens of thousands to more than 300,000, which also made Hong Chengchou's food supply to the Manchu court began to be greatly reduced last year.

The Nanjing government did not impose a blockade on some new food crops, such as sweet potatoes and corn and potatoes, and Luo Jian considered that instead of promoting these crops in the future, it would be better to let them spread throughout the country now. But what Luo Jian didn't expect was that even though these crops had begun to spread in the Manchu-ruled areas, the food crisis in the Manchus was still getting worse.

The massive expansion of the army is the fundamental reason why grain output has never been able to rise, and it is no wonder that grain output can be increased by draining away all the young and strong people of the main labor force.

In feudal society, money and grain were often connected, and the shortage of food basically meant financial embarrassment, and it became a habit for the Han army in the Manchu army to fail to pay salaries on time for a long time.

According to Huzi and his fellow villagers, even if the Wehrmacht did not call, many people in the Han army fled every day, and the Manchu army took extremely harsh measures against these fleeing soldiers.

When they heard this, Wang Qiang and several officers of the Seventh Division began to think thoughtfully, and seemed to understand a lot that Luo Jian was not in a hurry to attack.

On the second day after Luo Jian talked to Huzi, something new began to appear on the offensive position of the Seventh Division, dozens of iron horns appeared on the position, and hundreds of specially selected soldiers with loud voices began to shout at the Qing soldiers in turn.

Shouting was only one of the measures, a row of cauldrons erected behind the position was steaming, and the smell of rice wafted to the defensive positions of the Qing soldiers from time to time.

At the beginning, some Qing soldiers who did not want to die braved the fire of firearms and bows and arrows to run to the position of the Seventh Division, and when they arrived at the rear of the position, they picked up a bowl and put a big bowl of rice on it.

After Wang Qiang discovered this situation, he began to order the troops to provide fire cover for these Qing soldiers who ran over, and under the cover of the sharpshooters specially selected by the Seventh Division, more and more Qing soldiers ran to the positions of the Seventh Division.

Soon the same scene began to occur on the offensive position of Ma Yingkui's division, which was adjacent to the Seventh Division, and in order to better allow the Qing soldiers to escape, Luo Jian even ordered the Seventh Division to send more than 1,000 soldiers to help Ma Yingkui.

Of course, Tan Tai knew everything that happened on the various defensive fronts outside Cangzhou City, he didn't understand it a little, he knew that with the attack ability of the Wehrmacht, these defense lines couldn't stop them, but why did they have to do it?

But when Tan Tai received reports that thousands of soldiers had begun to flee to the Wehrmacht, he seemed to understand the Wehrmacht's intentions.

Tan Tai knew that the Wehrmacht didn't care how many Qing soldiers surrendered to the past, they wanted to completely destroy the morale of the Han army, and if it continued like this, the battle of Cangzhou would not have to be fought at all, and Cangzhou alone was not terrible, the most terrible thing was that this kind of sentiment that spread among the Han soldiers would spread to the entire Qing army like a plague.

Although Tan Tai knew that this was a battle that he would lose, he was still unwilling.

The day after the mass exodus of thousands of soldiers, Tan Tai ordered Shi Tingzhu to organize an offensive against the Wehrmacht.

Tan Tai's offensive was aimed at Ma Yingkui's division, and in his opinion, this division of the Wehrmacht was not as terrible as the Seventh Division.

There were more than 30,000 Qing soldiers involved in the attack, Tan Tai didn't want to destroy the horse division, he knew that it was impossible to do it, he just wanted to disturb the Wehrmacht's offensive with this offensive operation.

Shi Tingzhu's attack method was a night attack, and more than 5,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry troops would launch an all-out attack on Ma Yingkui's division tonight. (To be continued.) )