The entire army of Jinzhou was stationed in Dengzhou to rest and recuperate, and it was not at all as reported to the imperial court that it was going all out to wipe out the remnants of the rebels.

Since the Wuqiao Incident of Kong Youde last year to the defeat and killing of the troops now, this rebellion dominated by the Liao soldiers of Dongjiang has lasted for nearly a year. Man-made disasters are more terrible than natural disasters, and within a year, the rebels have been devastated and the people have been killed and wounded. Beizhili and Shandong are still better, but the territory of Denglai is already uninhabited, especially in Dengzhou, which can basically be said to be ten rooms and nine empty.

Before the rebellion, there were more than 210,000 households in Dengzhou Prefecture, and as of the latest data obtained by Dayong from Song Guanglan of the former Dengzhou Province yesterday, there were less than 3,000 households in the prefecture, none of whom were strong, and all of them were old, weak, women and children.

In addition to the families of more than 12,000 rebels, there are also 7,000 refugees led by Dayong along the way, and the two add up to less than 20,000, and most of them are old and weak, women and children. Relying on these old and weak women and children to cultivate the fields in Dengzhou is really worrying.

However, appeasing the people and resuming production has become a matter of great courage, the reason for this is that the imperial court has not yet appointed new officials in Dengzhou Prefecture and County, and the local gentry have also been slaughtered under the butcher's knife of the rebels, and no one has come forward to organize the people to produce to save themselves; On the other hand, the reason lies with Dayong himself, because he wants to keep Dengzhou in his own hands, so that he can obtain a less stressful base to raise troops.

Jinzhou is the military town of the Ming Dynasty outside the Guan, after the apocalypse, almost every year to bear the danger of the attack of the Eastern Captives, so everything in Jinzhou is based on military defense. Although there are some forts around Jinzhou, it is impossible to large-scale tuntian, and no one dares to guarantee that the cavalry of the Jin army will not come to loot and set fire to the crops when they are harvested. Moreover, in the past few years, the weather outside the gate has been worse every year, and there have been droughts for several years, and the winter is surprisingly cold, and the harvest of crops in the field can be one-tenth of it. In addition, Jinzhou has a severe shortage of manpower, and it is impossible to have enough manpower to support itself. The so-called strategy of "defending the Liao land with the Liao people and raising the Liao people with the Liao soil" has long been bankrupt, and the Han people in the territory of the original Ming army outside the Guanwai have long been killed by Nurhachi when Xiong Tingbi gave up Guangning and Ningjin.

The experience of going south to fight also made Dayong no longer believe in the so-called supply of grain and grass in the imperial court, and asked Jiang Wanli to know that when Yuan Chonghuan was guarding Ningyuan, the Jin army led by Nurhachi crossed Jinzhou and attacked Ningyuan directly. If Hong Tai led the army to attack again and adopted the strategy of encircling the point to send reinforcements, Dayong could not help but worry about the consequences of Jinzhou's food shortage. He didn't want to pin his life on the Ming army in Ningyuan and Shanhaiguan, and he didn't want to be trapped in the Daling River like Zu Dashou and wait for death by eating people.

No matter how you look at it, Jinzhou is a Jedi, and everything depends on the soldiers and Jedi transported from the rear. Dayong is not all up to him in Jinzhou, in addition to the prefect of Jinzhou, there is also the governor of Liaodong. Without Qiu Hejia's support, Dayong didn't believe that the officials outside the gate would be desperate to support him as a martial artist.

The idea of not being trapped in Jinzhou could not be erased once Dayong's head was formed, and now Dengzhou, which is ten rooms and nine empty, seems to have become a good choice for Dayong. The biggest problem now is that he Shi Dayong is only a general in Jinzhou, and he has nothing to do with this Dengzhou at all, so what can he do to let the generals of Jinzhou occupy Dengzhou, which belongs to the Yamen of the governor of Denglai.

Cao Bianjiao combined what he saw and heard in the northwest to offer a method to Dayong, and this method is just four words - raising Kou self-respect.

Kou, ready-made, Li Zhongfu and Geng Zhongming can still operate under the supervision of the Jinzhou Army under the banner of the rebels, and as long as this rebel army does not disappear for a day, the imperial court will not let the Jinzhou Army return to Guanwai.

Dayong thought so, so within a few days of the whole army returning to Dengzhou, a letter of urgency was sent to the Beijing Division. Although the rebel generals Li Zhongfu and Geng Zhongming in the emergency report were honestly staying in Dengzhou, this did not affect Dayong's deep concern for the rest of the rebels in the report.

Under the "facts" of tackling key problems and the "facts" of a large amount of bribes, Gao Qiqian, who returned to Beijing, proved Dayong's report, and Yang Yufan, who was busy selling grain and silver in Laizhou City, also patted his chest and reported to the imperial court that the remaining activities of the rebels were true, and the Jinzhou army was making every effort to eliminate them. Supervisor Zhu Dadian also emphasized again in the report that the rebellion of the remaining thieves still needs to be pacified by the Jinzhou army, and other soldiers and horses are afraid that the thieves will recover.

With the cooperation of many parties, the imperial court really did not let the Jinzhou army return to Jinzhou quickly, and the military department came with an official letter, asking Shi Dayong to lead the troops to continue to stay in Dengzhou to quell the rebellion. As for what to do with the people of Dengzhou, the official document from Jingshi did not mention a word, and only asked the Jinzhou army to receive help on the spot when there was surplus food, so as to wait for further disposal by the imperial court.

This arrangement is naturally very good for Dayong, so after a week's rest, he immediately started to rebuild after the disaster, and began to send people with a lot of money to the capital to inquire about who the new governor of Denglai was to be appointed by the Ministry of Officials, and who were the officials of the prefecture and county, and he was ready to make friends with these officials in advance, so as to save them from making irresponsible remarks after they arrived, and ruining his own efforts. Don't expect them to fully support themselves, at least shut them up.

In fact, if Dayong had discussed it with the ministers of the Cabinet of the Daoist Minister, in view of the fact that Denglai's losses were too great and there was no longer the significance of setting up a separate governor, he would have to vomit a mouthful of blood after he wanted to reassign the second government of Denglai to Shandong.

The first thing to do in the post-disaster reconstruction is to count the existing population in the territory, select officials, gather the people scattered in one place, allocate food from the military rations so that they can survive, and at the same time plant wheat before the weather turns cold. Although this will not restore production to the pre-war period, it will at least allow these hungry people to barely survive until the beginning of next spring.

If you want to grab autumn seeds, you can't rely on these old and weak women and children, so Dayong set his sights on the tens of thousands of rebels who surrendered to him

When Pingdu was reorganized for the fifth time, the Jinzhou Army absorbed 2,000 Sichuan troops, and was organized into two battalions of the infantry army, the pro-soldier battalion, the wolf cavalry army and a small number of light cavalry sentry scouts and baggage battalions, with a total of more than 4,600 people. However, there are only 2,000 actual armored soldiers, and the remaining 2,600 can only be regarded as semi-auxiliaries and semi-combat soldiers.

Along the way, the Jinzhou army sacrificed more than 1,000 soldiers, so the core soldiers were only about 3,000 people, but the rebels who surrendered to the Jinzhou army reached 50,000. How to reorganize, absorb and digest these rebels has become Dayong's top priority.

The establishment of the Dirty Alliance made it possible for the military rations in Laizhou City to be continuously delivered to Dengzhou, of course, these grains were not obtained in vain, and Dayong took out a lot of real money for this.

The subordinates complained that Dayong gave away hundreds of thousands of taels of hard-earned real money and silver, and took out hundreds of thousands of taels to buy food that should not have to be paid, but Dayong insisted on doing so. He said a few words to Jiang Wanli, who was in charge of purchasing grain in Laizhou, "What is lacking in the world today is not gold, let alone silver, but grain. With food, there is the will of the people, there is the heart of the army, without food, no matter how many soldiers and horses there are, they will be scattered. ”

"The gold and silver are gone, we can snatch it from the enemy again, but this grain is going to be gone, and we don't even have the strength to rob it, which is more important, I don't need to say more, right?"

After Dayong's words reached the ears of the generals through Jiang Wanli's mouth, most of them expressed their support and no longer complained about Dayong's waste of gold and silver that the brothers had stolen with their heads, but there were still a few people who still couldn't see it. The representative figure is Li Dashan, a bandit guerrilla who has always liked to sing a few words against Dayong.

To him, Dayong only used one sentence to make him dare not complain again, "Do you still want to eat human flesh?" ”