When Shen Chiyun rode a brown-red high-headed horse and slowly entered the city accompanied by a group of officers, he saw Ying Yangxian and the others!

At this time, Ying Yangxian could clearly see the traces of his freshly cut hair, and the clothes on his body were not Manchu officials, but a very standard set of Chinese clothes, and several officials and gentry who followed Ying Yangxian were also shaved heads, and those officials were wearing Chinese clothes, while ordinary gentry were wearing regular clothes with horse coats and robes.

These people did not have the shame and fear of surrendering or the defeated, but they were all full of red light, especially Ying Yangxian, who was the leader, with a happy face!

At noon, after Ying Yang seemed to know that Zhang Guoliang's troops had fled out of the city, he quickly made the decision to surrender to the Chinese Empire anyway, and then contacted the gentry and wealthy merchants in the city, lured and coerced all kinds of means, and also exterminated several gentry families who refused to submit to the Chinese Empire with him.

After integrating the gentry in the city, he quickly asked his cronies to bring his letters out of the city to ask for a meeting with the generals of the Chinese army, announcing that the officials and gentry in the city had decided to submit to the Great Chinese Empire, and asked Wang Shi to treat the people in the city well!

Shen Chiyun has also encountered too many things about this kind of thing, except for a very small number of city officials and gentry who will stubbornly resist to the end wherever the Chinese army goes, most of these local officials and gentry will act in accordance with the situation when the general trend is gone, that is, surrender!

Therefore, Shen Chiyun was very happy to camp the surrender behavior of the officials and people of Muyang City, and greatly appreciated Ying Yangxian's loyal behavior, and promised that all the officials in the city would be reused.

After getting Shen Chiyun's promise. After Ying Yangxian returned to the city, he organized the people to prepare to welcome the Chinese army into the city, and he personally brought those officials and gentry who took the initiative to submit to the city to greet them.

And he and the other officials and gentry were very fast. shaved off his hair and became the first batch of people in Muyang City to shave his head.

and the Chinese clothes worn by Ying Yangxian and several other officials. It was made in just a few hours.

After all, the Chinese costume is the most obvious symbol of the current officials of the Chinese Empire, since Lin Zhe promoted the Chinese costume, all the civil servants in the Chinese Empire except for the patrol police and other law enforcement personnel, the rest of the civilian officials all wore the Chinese costume, in order to show his heart anyway, Ying Yangxian asked the tailors in the county to make a few Chinese clothes in the shortest possible time, so that he and several other officials of the county government wore them.

As for the common gentry or the ordinary hair and clothing, apart from the punitive shaving of the hair in a few cities where resistance was fierce, there was little enforcing it for the Chinese Empire elsewhere. Basically, you can do whatever you like, without too much interference.

Nowadays, in the Shanghai Business Zone, there are still many people with braided hair, and the people's clothing is actually still dominated by Manchu Dynasty horse coats and robes.

However, the empire implements a strict shaving order for national civil servants and soldiers, and only if you shave your hair can you become an official of the empire and become a soldier of the empire.

At the end of the Tang Dynasty, if the Southern Han Dynasty wanted to be an official, it was necessary to click off the roots of the descendants, and there were not countless scholars who studied hard for decades to take the exam, and after the exam, they happily cut off the following and became eunuchs to become officials......

and castrated. What is a mere shave!

Ancient scholars, especially those who wanted to become officials, were not as high-minded as the legend suggests, except for a very few who were able to adhere to the six virtues and six elements advocated by Confucianism. Almost the vast majority of Confucian scholars only pay lip service to Confucian benevolence and morality, and when it comes time to become traitors, they are faster than anyone else. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the officials and scholars were like this, and they first opposed Zhu Ming and voted for Li Shun. Later, Li Shun defected to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and now the officials and scholars in the late Qing Dynasty are no exception. The front foot was still shouting for the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and the back foot surrendered to the Chinese Empire.

Moreover, this kind of traitorous behavior is not a single behavior, but a universal group behavior, and when the dynasties change, it is always these people who are the first to become traitors.

Thousands of years of history at home and abroad, there is no student of that school in the world who is more shameless than the Confucian student.

The Ying Yangxian in front of him is just one of this kind of people, I can't say how bad he is, he is just a typical representative of contemporary officials and even scholars.

But then again, if it weren't for these people, there wouldn't have been so many people who had defected to the Chinese Empire in the past two years, and the Chinese Empire would not have been able to establish effective administrative rule in a short period of time.

Therefore, it is really not so important whether people are bad or good, what matters is whether they are good for themselves or not.

Shen Chiyun rode into the city, and on both sides of the streets in the city, there were already many people kneeling on both sides to welcome the army into the city, and Shen Chiyun turned a blind eye to them.

As a high-ranking general who has conquered many cities, it is not the first time that he has set foot on the land of a certain city as a conqueror, and he will feel excited when he first and second time, but it will feel like that when he has done so many times.

Shen Chiyun didn't even have much to do with Ying Yangxian and the gentry in the city, he went directly into the city to live in the county government to rest, and as for the follow-up affairs in the city, he naturally had the following people to deal with.

Today's Muyang has just arrived, according to the practice of the Chinese Empire, Muyang will be under military control for a short period of time, and the formal military management will end after the follow-up organization department makes proper arrangements for Muyang.

However, the military management of the Chinese Empire is actually very limited, Lin Zhe has attached great importance to the separation of military and political affairs in recent years, and the military has no right to meddle in local government affairs at all, and even if the military has just conquered a certain city, when the city is under military control, the military's power is generally only to maintain local stability, so as not to cause large-scale turmoil, but there is actually no power to govern specific government affairs.

Shen Chiyun did not have the authority to appoint Ying Yangxian as the magistrate of Muyang, and Shen Chiyun's promise was actually just a suggestion or two to the officials of the Organization Department who arrived in Muyang in the future.

And it is not surprising that within three or four days, the officials of the Organization Department located in Huai'an will go north to Muyang, and then coordinate the formation of the administrative body of Muyang County, and according to the handling of the officials who take the initiative to surrender to Cheng, Ying Yangxian will generally be appointed as the magistrate of the county, that is, he will remain in his original position, but he will definitely transfer a county from other places, and at the same time, the section chiefs of each section will also install a few people transferred from the Organization Department, and there will never be a situation where all the official institutions in Muyang County are the city's officials who surrender to Cheng.

For these local government affairs, Shen Chiyun has always been not very in charge, and in fact, he does not have the power to manage!

After entering Muyang, Shen Chiyun first ordered the troops to rest for a night, anyway, it is already afternoon now, and it can't be a few hours if he rushes, and since Huai'an went north, the Fifth Division and the Fifth Cavalry Regiment led by him have not been able to rest well, and rushing every day is a great drain on the physical strength of the soldiers.

In fact, it is not only the physical exertion of the soldiers, but also the physical strength of many horses and mules and other livestock, in fact, the endurance of these horses and other livestock is not as good as the soldiers of the Royal Army.

Along the way, more than 30 horses pulling twelve-pound guns have been exhausted alive, and even the war horses ridden by the officers and cavalry are seriously lost, and it is estimated that there will be many more wounded and sick horses if they don't have a good rest.

This is a major constraint of mule-horse troops, if it is only light infantry, the soldiers only have one rifle and do not carry much weight, and there is no drag of the logistics troops, it is easy to march thirty kilometers a day, and it is not impossible to even walk forty or fifty kilometers.

However, for a well-equipped mule-horse army with a large number of baggage, the actual marching speed is far inferior to the ordinary walking speed of a person.

The walking speed of ordinary people is about five kilometers per hour, and walking ten hours a day is 50 kilometers, but in fact, large-scale infantry troops cannot reach this speed at all, and it is even more difficult if there are baggage, artillery and other troops to drag it down, and it is normal to march more than 20 kilometers a day, and more than 30 kilometers is very reluctant, and more than 50 kilometers is basically an extravagant hope.

After walking for so many days, it is very important to let the soldiers and horses rest!

That night, Ying Yangxian and other officials and gentry in Muyang City took the initiative to donate a large amount of rice, fruits, vegetables and meat, so that the soldiers of the Fifth Army could have a good meal.

Rice grain is good to say that the Royal Army in the Chinese Army basically does not lack basic staple food, but meat, fruits and vegetables are relatively rare in combat times.

It's not because the military budget is not enough, but it's difficult to collect these things when marching and fighting, and it can't be said that while marching, troops are sent everywhere to buy pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, and the like, and generally only have the opportunity to eat these things when they are resting.

There was nothing to say all night, and early the next morning, Shen Chiyun led the Fifth Army to leave Muyang and continue north, leaving behind a group of Toucheng officials who had shaved their hair and changed into Chinese clothes, but Ying Yangxian and others naturally did not think that Shen Chiyun would be able to return to the original state after leaving, because in a few days, the Fifth Army's auxiliary defense army troops would catch up, and the officials of the Organization Department would also arrive in Muyang.

Therefore, one by one did not dare to have different intentions, but honestly waited for the arrival of the Fifth Army Auxiliary Defense Army and the officials of the Organization Department!

As for Shen Chiyun, naturally he has already left Muyang behind, he has been fighting for several years, he has conquered many cities, and a small city like Muyang is just a small black spot on the way north for Shen Chiyun, and it can't make him pay attention to anything at all.

Now he wants to continue to lead the army north to cover the strategic security of the flank and rear position of the First Army!

In front of the Fifth Army, Shi Qingxuan of the First Army also led the main force of the First Army to continue the pursuit north, and a few kilometers ahead, Li Hongzhang's Jianghuai New Army!

As a result, the three waves of armies before and after are marching northward, and if they continue to go north, then they will enter the territory of Shandong! (To be continued......)