Chapter 1089 Immigration Measures
The post-war Denglai area is not as peaceful as it seems on the surface. There are so many refugees outside Fushan County who would rather live in shacks than return home. The rural villages are wary of outsiders. The reasons for these phenomena can be Not because of the arrival of the Haihan people. In the mountainous areas south and west of Fushan County, there are still several groups of bandits operating frequently, and their targets of robbery are naturally ordinary people who lack the ability to resist.
In this kind of struggle between the weak and the strong, in order to survive, the weaker party must either hug together for warmth or rely on the strong. The people can only choose one of them, the government or the gangsters, as their protection in troubled times. A considerable number of the people living in shacks outside Fushan County gave up their plans to return home just to get the blessing of the government. However, the protection that the government can provide them is limited to the three-thirds of an acre of land surrounding the county seat. For places a little further away from the county seat, they can only form associations to protect themselves and seek happiness for themselves.
As for sending troops to suppress bandits, the county government believed that this was the responsibility of the garrison. The garrison in the county was struggling to defend the city and could not mobilize its troops to attack the bandits hiding in the mountains. The Guards Army, on the other hand, refused to contribute due to reasons such as dissatisfaction with the establishment, insufficient military expenditures, and the fact that the gang's stronghold was not in the defense area. To put it bluntly, no one is willing to take risks to do this kind of thankless and dirty work, and it may not be a meritorious service, but if there are relatively large battle losses, whoever takes the lead will bear the blame.
Zhang Pucheng, the county magistrate, is very aware of this situation, but there is nothing he can do to change it with his ability. But whether out of public or selfish motives, he still wanted to try his best to maintain the safety of the people under his rule. Regarding the group of guys outside the city whose origins and intentions were unknown, his view was actually the same as that of the head catcher Han Qin, who believed that the Haihan people were doing relief work. The refugee guise has another agenda.
Huang Qu said: "If this group of people really came from the sea, they should be different from the bandits and bandits nearby. Even if we don't take action, there should be others who can't stand it."
"You mean someone will jump out to take advantage of others?" Zhang Pucheng responded with enlightenment.
"The bandits dare not come to Fushan County to attack, because they are afraid of the government. If these Haihan people encourage people to leave the county, it will be a rare opportunity for the bandits nearby." Huang Qu pointed to the north of the city and said: " There are still more than ten or twenty miles from here to the sea, and there are only two or three villages inhabited on the way. If there are bandits on the way, no one can save them, and then they can choose the opportunity to send troops. It will be much easier to clean up the mess.”
Zhang Pucheng sighed: "Just like this, the local people will suffer!"
Huang Qu said: "If the nest is overturned, there will be no eggs left. We must protect Fushan County first, and then we can save more people. Mr. Zhang, even if you can't bear it, you can only continue to wait and see, and wait for the situation to change before making any response."< br>
Zhang Pucheng also knew that after Huang Qu said so much, he actually didn't want to take the risk of leading troops out of the city to drive away these people. Although he didn't agree with Huang Qu's idea, he couldn't think of any better way for a while.
However, their knowledge was still too limited, and they could not imagine the methods of the Haihan people, let alone how determined Haihan was in the matter of immigration. Seeing dusk approaching, the cavalry gathered their formation and left Fushan County. However, the horse team did not go too far. They stopped and camped by the Jiahe River. It seemed that they did not intend to leave here immediately. And that night, some scattered people had already abandoned their shacks outside the county town and moved to the Haihan Camp near the Jiahe River. It seemed that they were going to follow them.
The next morning, when it was just getting dark, Sun Zhen was woken up from his sleep by Wang Jinmin.
"Come and take a look, someone seems to be watching us." Wang Jinmin dragged the sleepy Sun Zhen out of bed.
Sun Zhen got up and went outside the tent. Taking advantage of the newly lit sky, he used a telescope to check the direction Wang Jinmin was pointing. About a mile west of the camp, two people were riding horses and stopped to watch. Without the help of telescopes, it would be difficult to detect this situation with the naked eye.
"How long have those two been here?" Sun Zhen asked, putting down the telescope.
"The sentry only discovered it at dawn, and I don't know when it came last night." Wang Jinmin responded: "What do you think this is? Is it the Ming army or someone else?"
Sun Zhen said: "It's hard to say. It's not very clear through the telescope. Just in case, I'd better go and tell Company Commander Liu."
When Liu Xian received the news and came out to check, the two riders had disappeared from where they had stopped. Wang Jinmin believed that the other party had retreated further away to avoid being discovered by his side after dawn.
"We can't control that much anymore. The navy will send a ship here today. We need to arrange for the immigrants to leave here as soon as possible. Let's get this matter settled first." Liu Xian had no intention of tracing the identity of the monitor at the moment. The first priority is to mobilize the local people to take the initiative to go to Zhifu Bay, and other things can be put aside first. After seeing the specific situation in Fushan County, Liu Xian and others believed that Haihan could at least harvest thousands of immigrants here, but how to get these people to Zhifu Island still required more work. The original plan was for the navy to send a ship to meet the enemy at the mouth of the Jiahe River, but the cavalry team went upstream along the Jiahe River yesterday and discovered along the way that the navigability of the river should be pretty good. There are still two to three hundred meters to the vicinity of Fushan County. The width of the river and the water depth are enough for Haihan's passenger and cargo sailing ships to navigate. Therefore, the cavalry team sent people back to the seaside last night, reported the progress of the operation to the navy, and applied to send sailboats directly to the vicinity of Fushan County in the upper reaches of the Jiahe River, so that people can board the boats from the local area and avoid going to the estuary of the Jiahe River on their own. Variables may arise along the way.
Although this arrangement requires a little more work than the original plan, the benefits are obvious. It avoids accidents for people on the way to the coast. Moreover, these people will be transported directly to Zhifu Island after boarding the ship, so there will be no regrets at that time. opportunity. If someone wants to hinder Haihan's immigration arrangements during this period, then the Haihan Horse Team may have to use some unconventional means.
After dawn, some refugees outside the city went sporadically to the camp of the Haihan Cavalry. According to the information they received, as long as they stayed with the cavalry, they would soon receive help from the good people of Haihan. This is not a one-time relief like giving a bowl of porridge to one person, but it is said to be a good way to distribute land and provide a long-term livelihood.
For some people who are already on the verge of despair, this life-saving straw may not look so strong, but in the current environment, what other options are there? Either they slowly die of starvation, disease, and rot in the slums outside Fushan County, or they risk their lives and fortunes to see if the paradise claimed by the Haihan people really exists. What most people think is that even if they are deceived, they have nothing to lose except this miserable life. As long as the Haihan people can provide better living conditions than they currently have, what does it matter if they become slaves? After all, in Dengzhou Prefecture, the road to selling oneself as a slave has long been blocked, and there is simply no buyer willing to pay for it on the market.
As long as the first group of people take action, some onlookers will also join in. When a certain proportion of people choose this way out, there is no need for Haihan to do in-depth publicity, and the remaining people will naturally follow suit. to join the immigrant ranks due to the group effect. Of course, the premise is that Haihan can ensure the smoothness and safety of the immigration transportation line.
Similar to the magistrate and general manager of Fushan County, who could not understand Haihan's actions, there was also a group of bandits who had just arrived from the mountainous area ten miles west of the county to check out the situation. The leader of this group was named Wan Meng, who was originally a butcher in Fushan County. After the Dengzhou Mutiny in the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign, Fushan County was also directly affected. Wan Meng went to borrow grain from nearby large households that still had grain in stock. But he was rejected because he couldn't produce any collateral such as real estate title deeds. Wanmeng was so angry that he killed seven members of the wealthy family with a butcher's knife. Knowing that the crime was unforgivable, he simply got together with a group of desperadoes and set up a banner in the nearby mountains, calling themselves Wanjiajun.
Wanmeng's group initially only consisted of twenty or thirty people. However, as the war in Dengzhou intensified and more and more people fled from various towns, Wanmeng gathered the young men who had fled into the area under his control. They were forced to become bandits and plunder people's wealth everywhere. More than three years have passed. Kong Youde's rebels have fled to Liaodong, but the bandit armed force Wanjiajun has established a foothold in Dengzhou Prefecture. It has built a so-called "village" in the mountainous area to the west of Fushan County relying on the past villages. There are multiple armed strongholds in the Seven Villages and Twelve Fortresses, and they have over a thousand armed personnel under their command.
Although Dengzhou Prefecture also tried to wipe out the local bandit armed forces after the war, it was still unable to do so. It simply did not have enough financial resources and military power to wipe out the many civilian armed forces in the inland mountainous areas. The garrison in Fushan County is not sufficient. The entire army originally stationed in Fushan Nakazenhu Station in Fushan County was wiped out during the landing chaos, and even the establishment has been cancelled. Now only Qishan Senhu Station, which has an incomplete lineup, can be used. Take it along and take care of it. The garrison in the county couldn't even drive the Haihan cavalry out of the city, so there was no need to mention going into the mountains to suppress the bandits.
However, Wanmeng also had an unwritten agreement with Zhang Pucheng, the magistrate of Fushan County, that the Wanjia Army would not launch attacks on the county seat, and Fushan County could not interfere with the Wanjia Army's activities in nearby areas. To put it simply, the Wanjiajun is trying to control the areas and population outside the county seat in this area, and what the county government has to do is to sit back and watch, without overreacting. It is precisely because of such a secret deal that Fushan County became a refuge for displaced people, and a large-scale slum area spontaneously formed outside the city.
Zhang Puchen originally hoped to use this to strive for a stable recovery period. After the local area was safe and production resumed, he would reorganize the garrison and civilian joint defense, and then clean up these bandit armed forces. However, the trend of the situation was not consistent with his hopes. Because the government was unable to provide shelter, the villages in Fushan County could only regularly turn over a certain amount of money and grain to the Wanjia Army in exchange for peace. Over time, most of the resources produced by the local government were sucked away by the Wanjia Army. However, the local government and the garrison were unable to rebuild, and the gap in strength between the two sides widened further.
Now let alone reorganizing the army, even maintaining law and order in this three-acre area of the county is a bit difficult. Zhang Pucheng can only hope that Wanmeng can keep his promise for a longer time, otherwise Wanmeng will become vicious one day and send troops to attack Fushan County. , the possibility of holding this place is not high. At that time, Zhang Zhixian had no other way out but to die for his country.
At this stage, when it comes to the degree of control over Fushan County, the county government is probably not as good as Wanmeng, the local emperor. Therefore, when the Haihan horse team appeared outside the county, Wanjiajun also received the news. In fact, when the immigration policy was promoted outside the city yesterday, there were people from Wanjiajun among the crowd present, and relevant news was reported to Wanjiajun's village overnight.
However, it was not Wan Meng himself who received the news, but Pu Xueguang, the military advisor of Wanjia Army. This man was originally a private school teacher in Dengzhou City, and he had been a scholar. When Kong Youde's rebels occupied Dengzhou, Pu Xueguang had surrendered to the rebels in order to save his life and worked as a military scribe for a period of time. However, when Kong Youde defected to Liaodong later, all peripheral personnel were abandoned due to limited ship capacity, and Pu Xueguang was one of them. He was worried that he would be liquidated by the government after the war, so he escaped from Dengzhou City and later fled to Fushan County. By chance, he joined the Wanjia Army.
This Pu Xueguang has a bit of ink in his belly, and he has learned some military knowledge while working for the rebels. Although he is only a theoretical person, with his oral skills accumulated from teaching and lecturing, he can still frighten Wan Meng who is just a man. A rough guy who knows how to beat and kill. So Pu Xueguang relied on his theoretical knowledge to quickly get the position of military advisor in the Wanjia Army.
At first, the Wanjia Army only used simple looting as its main means of activity. It was not until Pu Xueguang came that it began to change. Practices such as coercing the government to control local areas, building multiple armed strongholds, and collecting protection fees from local areas on a regular basis were basically the same. It was him who gave Wan Meng the idea. These methods are all focused on long-term development, and they are considered advanced players among civilian armed organizations. Sure enough, it only took more than a year for the Wanjia Army to gain a firm foothold in the mountainous area between Fushan County and Qixia County, and annexed four or five smaller armed groups. Its influence in this area has even exceeded that of the Government.
Pu Xueguang heard his subordinates report the news about Haihan's horse team, and then read the flyers sent back announcing Haihan's solicitation of immigrants. He couldn't sit still, and asked someone to go to another village overnight to notify Wanmeng, while he was still waiting until dawn. So he took his people and rushed to Fushan County.
(End of chapter)