Chapter 90, The Great Immigration (Part 1)
Due to Nurhachi's brutal massacre policy of the Han people in Liaodong, since the fall of Liaodong, the remaining Liao people have been fleeing to the Liaoxi Corridor and the islands in Dongjiang Town in order to get rid of the bloody rule of the Jurchens. As a result, these barren islands in Dongjiang Town are most often It is actually crowded with hundreds of thousands of people. Obviously, Dongjiang Town, with limited resources, could not support such a large population, so the Liao people had no choice but to continue crossing the sea and flee southward to Dengzhou on the Shandong Peninsula.
The problem is that in the late Ming Dynasty, all parts of the Central Plains were "overpopulated" and people were in dire straits, and Dengzhou was not much better. After the sudden influx of so many people, not only were the locals unable to utilize these labor forces, but serious conflicts broke out between Liao people and Shandong people due to competition for living space. Although after Chen Xin started his business in Wendeng, he relied on setting up cigarette factories and other industries to absorb part of the remaining population. But compared to the large number of tenant farmers in Dengzhou and the hundreds of thousands of refugees from Liaodong who are constantly coming in, it still seems to be a drop in the bucket.
Moreover, most of the Liao people who crossed the sea and fled south preferred to stay in Dengzhou Fucheng and take care of each other - because Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, a famous Westernizationist in the late Ming Dynasty, wanted to form a fighting force as soon as possible. The Western-style new army in Dengzhou mainly relied on recruiting deserters from Liaodong to supplement its strength. This resulted in the formation of many battalions in Dengzhou composed of soldiers from Liaodong. Many deserters from Liaodong also habitually relied on them to live.
However, this situation has aroused great dissatisfaction among the locals in Dengzhou - Dongjiang Town has been short of food and wages for a long time. In order to fill their stomachs, the Liao army has always resorted to deception, abduction, and robbery and theft. After arriving in Shandong, those deserters who joined the army and received official salaries were nothing more than that. Many deserters who were not selected actually disguised themselves and went to loot various villages, killing many of them and leaving no chickens or dogs alive. The Liao soldiers in Dengzhou supported them and played the game of a family of officials and bandits. As a result, the conflict between Shandong and Liaodong people became more and more intense, and it became common for the people in the countryside to attack each other.
Even after the rebellion in Dengzhou Town and the capture of Fucheng, the conflict between Shandong locals and Liaodong refugees has not been resolved. On the contrary, because Dengzhou Town made various plans to seize land, set up military camps to house military dependents and vassal populations, and became enemies of the large gentry households, the "local-guest contradiction" in Dengzhou and Laizhou suddenly turned into A more complicated three-party brawl requires dozens of heads to be chopped off every day to suppress it. As for how to deal with at least more than 100,000 Liaodong refugees and defeated troops who had no food and clothing, Dengzhou Town has not yet come up with a proper countermeasure.
In addition to the refugees from Dongjiang Town who fled across the sea from Liaodong, the local refugees in Shandong are also a big headache. This year, the Central Plains is experiencing severe drought, with thousands of miles of bare fields and no harvests. Although Henan is the hardest-hit area, several prefectures in western Shandong are not much better, with hungry people fleeing famine everywhere. Obviously, the decadent and brutal Ming Dynasty officials had no way to deal with such a famine. They could only hold on to the city and wait for time to solve the problem: in most of the feudal dynasty, except for a few prosperous times with abundant finances, according to traditional Confucianism official's rationale The idea is that when there is not enough relief food to raise, the quickest strategy to solve the famine is to violently wipe out the population in a short period of time - as long as these humble people are allowed to attack each other, coupled with more deaths from hunger, "surplus" "The population will naturally decrease significantly. When spring comes next year, the farmers who have not starved to death will naturally go back to cultivate their fields, the civil unrest will disappear, and the big men in the yamen can continue to be their peace officers. As for how many wealthy gentry families may be harmed during this period...then it can only be blamed on their bad luck. How can there not be a few unsatisfactory things in life?
——In terms of disaster relief, the government in the late Ming Dynasty was not only incompetent, but also completely ignorant.
However, the refugees will not starve to death in peace. Instead, they will try their best to find food or escape to a place where they can eat. Although the Shandong Peninsula, surrounded by the sea on three sides, has always had barren land and insufficient products, it is not the best choice for hungry people to escape. But now there is a severe drought in Henan and Beizhili, and there is no food to be found there. Although Southern Zhili is rich, the Wenxiang Sect's rebellious army blocked the way south. All the refugees who ran there were used as cannon fodder and filled in trenches during the siege... In contrast, it is said that they were Jiaodong, where military households in Dengzhou are prospering, is actually a good place to go.
Since the beginning of summer, wars have continued in Shandong, creating more war refugees. In the modern world where humanitarian thinking has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, people in war-torn areas have been forced to leave their homes, not to mention the army openly burning It was the late Ming Dynasty when killing people became commonplace.
Therefore, since the beginning of autumn, the refugees who have come from all directions have made the civil servants in charge of the civil affairs of Dengzhou Town almost turn gray with worry. This flag-raising rebellion was originally done in a hurry, and the arms and food of Dengzhou Town were The reserves are not sufficient. Now there are suddenly so many more mouths to eat. Because of the rebellion, it is difficult to import a large amount of food from the south, and there is a feeling of being overwhelmed.
However, just when Marshal Chen Xin was about to be ruthless and deport these refugees who could no longer feed themselves to other lands to fend for themselves, the steel battleships of the Global Chinese Travelers Alliance fell from the sky... As a result, Dengzhou Town's treatment of the refugees His attitude immediately changed - all the troops under Dengzhou Town stationed on the edge of the occupied area received military orders to provide local relief and shelter for the refugees, and to transport them to rear ports...
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Laizhou, Shahe (There seem to be a lot of places in China called Shahe. I know of five Shahes alone.)
Next to a recently completed military camp, Dengzhou Town soldier Guan Dadi, who was wearing a red shirt, was holding a long gun in his hand like his colleagues, looking at a large group of ragged, gray-headed and dirty-looking people in the distance. The refugees were driven over with whips by more than a dozen Dengzhou town cavalry. In an open space surrounded by barbed wire next to the military camp, there were more unkempt refugees sitting on the ground crowded together.
After seeing these refugees obediently entering the temporary refugee camp surrounded by barbed wire fences, Guan Dadi and others breathed a sigh of relief - even though these half-dead refugees were so pitiful, they thought that as long as they were willing to give them food, they would be able to behave themselves. obedient. In fact, hungry people are often the scariest people. When we were relieving refugees before, some people tried to attack the army and snatch food: There was no way. For the poor people who had tasted the taste of hunger, food was definitely something they could do. Madness, something to die for.
Fortunately, the dazzling swords and guns and the whistling whips of the Dengzhou Army officers were able to restore the sanity of many people, and also deterred the ambitions of those bad ruffians - in front of the heavily armed and murderous soldiers, the vast majority of refugees He still chose to obey, and those who disobeyed were killed.
To make matters worse, since this place is not far from the front line, there are often bandits or spies sent by the Shandong army to disguise themselves as refugees, trying to sneak into the refugee camps and cause disturbances, so as to rob the Dengzhou Army's disaster relief grain rice... Fortunately, Dengzhou A considerable number of people in the town have also been refugees. Do you know how to dig out these spies? Among a group of skinny, half-starved refugees, anyone who is still strong, glowing, and energetic must be either a spy or a bad person. When encountering such suspicious Just hit those guys to death with a spear!
"...Two hundred and eighty...Two hundred and ninety...Three hundred...Three hundred and ten...Three hundred and twenty...Oh, there are so many people here today. Dengzhou can really support them." Do you have so many mouths to open?" Looking at the mass of heads in the barbed wire fence, Brother Guan muttered worriedly.
As a military household in Dengzhou Town, Guan Dadi's family was also allocated fields, so he knew that although compared with other parts of the Central Plains in Qianli Chidi, Dengzhou benefited from the water conservancy channels built by Marshal Chen, and the crop harvest was barely enough. It's okay, but it's still a bit lower than the previous two years. Now Marshal Chen is at war with the imperial court and sheltering refugees. People eat what horses chew. I really don’t know how long the food reserves can last.
Although the food standards in the army have not dropped at all, Guan Dadi is still afraid of experiencing hunger again soon.
Compared with the fear of food shortage and starvation, the reality that Dengzhou Town is currently at war with the imperial court does not make Emperor Guan feel much worried:
First of all, since raising the flag and raising troops, the Dengzhou army has been invincible all the way, even in Kefu County, and has repeatedly defeated the official army. The whole army is full of contempt for the combat effectiveness of the imperial official army. Since there is no fear of the officers and soldiers, then naturally there will be no worries about the future.
Secondly, the reason for raising the army this time was that the dirty civil servants in the city had set up a scheme to assassinate Marshal Chen. In view of the hostility of the local gentry households in Dengzhou towards the military households in this town, if they and the sergeants did not rise up to fight back, would they still be there? Do you want to sit back and wait for death and let others slaughter you?
Third, in the late Ming Dynasty, rebellions and mutinies in the army had become commonplace. There was a precedent of the governor of Liaodong being beaten to death, and the public was still not punished afterwards... In the eyes of the soldiers, now that this matter has come to an end, At most, it's just murder and arson, so why should you worry too much?
On the contrary, if you swallow your anger and accept the situation, you don't know how you will be bullied by those civil servants and gentry in the future!
More importantly, according to the general social concepts of the late Ming Dynasty, these soldiers felt that they had eaten Marshal Chen's food, received Marshal Chen's salary, wore Marshal Chen's clothes, and lived in Marshal Chen's room. Marshal Chen also allocated fields to them so that their whole family could have food and clothing, so his life now belonged to Marshal Chen. If Marshal Chen says he wants to fight the Tatars, they will fight the Tatars. If Marshal Chen says he wants to rebel, they will rebel. Anyway, Marshal Chen is the only one in the world who treats them so well, so he must unswervingly work for Marshal Chen. If anyone wants to kill Marshal Chen, take away the house and fields assigned to them by Marshal Chen, and destroy the good life in which their family now has food and clothing, they will fight these bad guys to the death!
In the same way, although everyone felt a little strange about Marshal Chen joining the "Chinese Alliance", the salary of the entire army did not decline because of it. Marshal Huang Shi, who became the new boss, gave everyone some food. Wearing supplies were given as rewards, and no outsiders were randomly inserted to give orders or extort money. Therefore, the entire Dengzhou Army accepted the reality, at least without the intention of being very resistant.
——After all, as the legendary general who swept across Liaodong during the Tianqi period, Huangshi's reputation in northern China is quite loud. Even the lower-class people like Guan Dadi have heard that Huangshi is invincible in battles and that the leaping horse of Liaoyang is brave. The story of killing the enemy chief...
Next, news came from the family in the rear that Marshal Huangshi had given them some magical crop seeds, and the wheat they planted would grow like crazy! It only takes seven days to mature and harvest! After learning about this, the soldiers in the Dengzhou Army on the front line were in an uproar. At first, most people didn't believe it and thought it was some kind of cover-up. But when someone actually brought some seeds from the rear and sowed them near the military camp, the soldiers looked at the magical wheat that was harvested every seven days with their own eyes, and their eyes widened for a while!
Such incredible agricultural miracles may not have deeply touched people in the modern world of the 21st century - who cares how many days it takes for your crops to be harvested? Anyway, I haven’t seen anyone starving to death in how many years! Why not go online and check out the games that will be launched recently!
But for these ordinary lower-class farmers in the late Ming Dynasty, such fast-growing crops were simply their hope for survival and reproduction! It means that their children and grandchildren can have enough to eat! Such a favor is simply greater than the sky! It is more valuable than sending a mountain of gold - after all, gold cannot be eaten. According to Emperor Guan's opinion, even if it's just for these seeds, it's worth it for Marshal Chen to lead everyone to defect to Marshal Huang!
——The thinking of ordinary people is quite simple. If you give me enough food and warm clothes, there are additional benefits, and I will fully support you and be loyal to you.
It's a pity that there are still a few such magical seeds. I wonder if they can fill so many mouths that have come in recently... He squinted at the hundreds of refugees from other places who flocked here to beg for food every day. Guan Dadi scratched his head. He ruffled his hair and thought worriedly.
Then, he was hit on the helmet by the captain, and two other Dengzhou Army colleagues were also hit - "...you, you, and you! Come with me quickly and cut the chopped Send the firewood to the camp over there, and now we have to feed the hungry ghosts from the west!" So Guan Dadi and his two colleagues temporarily put down their weapons, each carrying two bundles of firewood, and walked slowly towards the camp. Walked towards the refugee camp.