Chapter 212 Fengqiu
Huang Wan was a little depressed. He knew that the country would not leave any good jobs to him. Sure enough, as soon as he entered Yanzhou, Puyang, the governor of Dongjun, fell.
Yanzhou originally had eight counties, namely Chenliu, Dongjun, Jiyin, Shanyang, Rencheng, Dongping, Jibei and Taishan. But what now? Taishan, Jibei, and Dongping have been owned by the enemy, Dongjun has been destroyed, and only Chenliu, Jiyin, Shanyang, and Rencheng are intact.
Therefore, as a Yanzhou shepherd, he lost half of the state before he took office, and lost a leg directly under his butt. How could he not be swayed.
However, what Huang Wan can comfort himself with is that the elite of Yanzhou is still there, and the four counties of Hanting still have a total population of 2.3 million. Among them, Chenliu households have 180,000 households with a population of 900,000; Jiyin households have 140,000 households with a population of 650,000; Shanyang households have 110,000 households with a population of 600,000; Rencheng households have 30,000 households with a population of 150,000.
It can be seen from this that apart from Dongjun, the three most elite counties of Yanzhou are Chenliu, Jiyin and Shanyang. These are all large counties with a household registration of 100,000. With these three counties, Yanzhou's strength is still there.
Of course, Taiping Road's occupation of Dongjun still makes the situation not optimistic. The thieves' occupation of the Heji area has given the Taiping Road on both sides of the river a basis for merging. When the Taishan bandits move north again, not only will Lu Zhi in the north be in danger, but the entire Heshuo will no longer be owned by the Han.
It is precisely for this reason that Huang Wan, known as the loyal and upright Han Dynasty, felt that it was necessary to contain or even eliminate the Taishan Army on the south bank of the river.
This is Huang Wan's character. The more others underestimate him or even ridicule him, the more he has to do it well. This aspect of his character can be seen from an incident in his childhood. His ancestor Huang Qiong was serving as Situ. At that time, Sikong was ill. Huang Qiong sent Huang Wan to express condolences. It happened that there was a rebellion in Jiangxia. Because Huang Qiong was from Jiangxia, Sheng Yun said sarcastically: "Jiangxia is a big country, but the barbarians have few scholars." ", but Huang Wan did not swallow this because he was an elder or ranked among the three nobles, and directly sneered back: "The barbarians are cunning Xia, the blame lies with Sikong", and then walked away.
From this we can indeed see that Jiangxia people like Huang Wan are indeed fierce and cannot tolerate any grievance. The same is true for the Taishan Army now. The more impossible it is, the more he has to make it happen. Only in this way can he show his ability.
Now that it has become a fact that the Heji area was lost, he could not change it no matter how angry he was, but he was thinking about what to do next.
The first is to gather military strength. Now Huang Wan only has the 800 Liangzhou soldiers in the hands of the bandit general Zhou Shen as his Fang Bo's guards. What can this small amount of troops do?
So these days, he has been sending messages to the governors of the four counties who are still there, asking them to send troops to the Fengqiu regiment. He also knows that there is also a Yellow Turban riot in these places, and he knows that he may not be able to mobilize many troops, so he follows the deployment of troops. Also issued with the order was a "Letter to the Powerful Powers of the Counties", the most important of which was that the Yellow Turban Army was the enemy of our famous religion, and all Confucian scholars had the responsibility to protect the religion, and they were ordered to bring their own songs to seal Qiu Xingyuan.
When the call came, the one closest to Yanzhou Mu Xingyuan was Guo Zong, the prefect of Chenliu, who governed Chenliu County in the county. He is a member of the Guo clan in Jiexiu, Taiyuan, and is also the nephew of the famous scholar Guo Tai. His family has good relations with Huang Wan, so he received the order and hurriedly pulled out a thousand troops from the tight army and led the county thief Cao Changyu The leader of the world went to Fengqiu camp to listen to the instructions.
Yu Shi is a descendant of Chen Liudong's Yu family, and his ancestor is Yu Yan, who served as a Taiwei during the Guangwu period. Unfortunately, his family fell into decline because of his involvement in the rebellion of the King of Chu, a major case during the Ming Emperor's period. It was not until the Qiang rebellion that his family became involved in side affairs. He resurrected because the children of his family were born to be brave generals. His ancestor Yu Yan was a warrior with a height of eight feet and a belt of ten girths, capable of carrying a cauldron. His descendants inherited the appearance of their ancestors and were able to fight each other. However, his father, Yu Fang, was later cut off in half during the second party rebellion launched by Liu Hong, causing the Yu family to be in trouble again.
But this time when the Taiping Road broke out, Yu Shi, who shouldered the responsibility of reviving the family, never left his armor, his saddle and his horse, to defend his relatives, suppress the Yellow Turbans, and made great contributions to the Chenliu thief Cao Chang. At this moment, with this brave general leading the troops to camp at Fengqiu, Huang Wan will surely gain another tiger general.
In addition, there is also a heavyweight who appears in various families for Huang Wan, and that person is Shen Tupan. What did this man say? He should be a moral master in this world.
He had a reputation as a filial piety when he was young. In mourning after his father died, he did not eat meat or wine for more than ten years. Zhang Chong's Cai Yong, Cai Cai, respected him and made him famous. Later, the imperial court failed to conquer him several times. Later, when he was studying at Imperial College, his friend who was born at the same time died of illness. He sent his friend's body back to his hometown thousands of miles away, which was a sense of justice.
The latter two, Huang Qiong, Huang Wan's grandfather, specially recruited the government, but he still refused to go. On the contrary, when Huang Qiong returned to Jiangxia for burial, he traveled thousands of miles to mourn, which can be said to be loyal.
This loyal, filial, and righteous person later disappeared between Liang and Dang due to the disaster of the Party. Because the tree was a house, he was like a servant and looked like a savage.
But this time because of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, the grandson of the original master was in a hurry, so he came out again.
Relying on his prestige in Chenliu, he successively contacted the Gao family, Cai family, Wu family, and Xia family, and agreed to send five hundred troops and two thousand troops to rush to Fengqiu together.
The same scene happened in Jiyin County. The prefect was still the fat and white Zhang Chong. After all, because of his swing between the party and the eunuch, no one was willing to promote him, and he was still in this position.
But this time Huang Wan was summoned, and he saw it as a way to change his fate, so he ordered Li Qian of the Cheng family to send a thousand soldiers, and Bing Cao Bian Chong to send a thousand soldiers to the county. A total of two thousand soldiers and horses were sent to Fengqiu. Huang Wan made a good impression.
Needless to say, the prefect of Rencheng was Qiao Yu. He was the son of the former Taiwei Qiao Xuan and a descendant of the public family. He and Huang Wan had known each other since they were young in Kyoto. This time my friend summoned me, and although I was very weak, I still selected 500 troops. They were led by He Xutong, the commander of the army. They also joined the powerful Lu Qian and Jingzhou of the country, and together with their troops, they had a thousand troops and entered Fengqiu. The account is used.
Finally, there is Shanyang Prefecture. As the home base of the party members, this time it can be said that it is the performance of the party camp. Gaoping Zhang family, Wang family, Liu family, Tan family, Xue family, as well as local local tycoons Xi family and Changyi Li family , a total of seven troops and 4,000 people drove to Fengqiu in a mighty manner.
They are confident that this time is the beginning of their party's return to power.
As for their prefect Liu Hong, who was part of the eunuch party, he reluctantly sent out 200 soldiers. Under the leadership of his soldier Cao Changhou Feng, he drove to Fengqiu in a humble manner.
But even so, Fengqiu also gathered nearly ten thousand soldiers and horses, from which we can see the network of sons of the public family like Huang Wan.
You should know that the Huang Wan family belongs to Jiangxia, but the prefects of various counties in Yanzhou are generally familiar with them because these people have a background in Kyoto life. It can be said that Kyoto is a place that unites elites from all over the place, abandons their geographical color and gives them central attributes.
The vision of these sons of the noble family is no longer limited to their hometown. Instead, they spend most of their lives studying and living in Kyoto, where they interact with nobles from all over the world and form a social network. This is a true noble family, and their disciples have old friends. The world. And those who have influence in only one place are all local tycoons.
It can also be understood from this why so many children of wealthy locals have to send an imperial scholar to Beijing, because that is the center of the world and there are opportunities to increase the influence of the family.
All in all, even the farthest Rencheng Kingdom arrived at Fengqiu on June 25th. At this moment, Fengqiu has become a large military camp. In fact, this is indeed the case. You must know that in later generations, this place was also called Chenqiaoyi, and the story of a man who changed the sky and changed the sun was staged here.
And now Huang Wan has set up his camp here, naturally there is a reason.
Fengqiu is located at the intersection of Jishui and Pushui, and supplies along the coast are continuously sent to Fengqiu for camp from these two rivers. But Huang Wan also had his troubles. The first one was that Liu Hong, the prefect of Shanyang, was trying to dismantle him. He already knows Liu Hong’s official title:
"There are less than 20,000 moth thieves, men, women, and children. Although they have some tricks, they are just a mob. Now there are more than 10,000 soldiers in Fengqiu, and the strength of the army is not that of a single man. They still have the advantage of the location, and if they gather more soldiers, they will be afraid of the death of these soldiers. Be lazy, let alone die hard.”
When Huang Wan heard this, he was so angry that he complained to his friend Zhou Shen:
"Although there are dangers from two rivers in Fengqiu, the land is vast and flat. If you want to defend it, you have to guard the river and the land, covering an area of more than 300 miles in all directions. How can these ten thousand people save it? In short, if there are too many, There are few words to analyze.”
And he also knew that the Taishan army on the opposite side was not ordinary thieves:
"The moth thieves in the East County are fierce and powerful, not just a mob. The other side has strict discipline, but our army has no discipline. It is easy to retreat but difficult to advance. Although we have been warned repeatedly, we are still weak and insignificant."
It is true that Huang Wan has a clear understanding of the soldiers gathered in Fengqiu now. These people belong to the four counties, and most of them are powerful tribes. Rather than saying that the opposite party is a mob, it is better to say that these people are the mob.
Moreover, he currently only has ten thousand soldiers, which is only roughly the same as that of thieves and bandits. As far as general military common sense is concerned, in encirclement, the attacker must have a clear strength advantage and be able to form a deep encirclement, and then launch an offensive to encircle and annihilate the defender.
Now that the two sides have equal strength, if the Han soldiers attack rashly, they may make the same mistake as Chen Zan of Dongping Kingdom. Huang Wan had studied Chen Zan's battle cases, and naturally he had to learn a lesson and decided to switch to the defensive.
On the one hand, it is to reorganize the economy and prepare for the military, and on the other hand, it is to raise military pay.
Yes, Huang Wan, the Yanzhou Mu, had neither soldiers nor money. Now he has soldiers, but he is also even more short of money. More than 10,000 people eat horse chews at a daily cost of tens of thousands.
It turned out that Huang Wan left Beijing on a festival day and brought one million dollars allocated by the state, but what was this little money enough for?
Fortunately, all the cities in Jishui had always had grain, especially Fengqiu, which had a large amount of corn warehouses. He immediately counted the grain after entering the city and found that there were 300,000 shi of millet. In addition, he had already asked Liu Hong to issue an edict to send grain from Aocang to Fengqiu along the Jishui River. With this water supply, Huang Wan is never in danger of running out of food.
It was precisely with the help of these 300,000 stones of grain and the constant supply of millet from Aocang behind it that Huang Wan used it to pay his troops' salaries, buy salt vegetables, purchase armor, hire brave men and porters, and ship ships. When traveling between teams, millet was exchanged. It can be said that corn is really used as money.
In this way, half of the 300,000 stone grains were used in a blink of an eye, while the grain from Aocang that was originally said to be transported has disappeared for a long time. This is not possible. The army is unstable without food. Once the Fengqiu camp runs out of food, the 10,000-strong army will disperse immediately. Therefore, in his anxiety, Huang Wan sent out twelve letters and urged them one after another, but Aocang kept delaying. It was not until June 28 that Aocang delayed and sent 100,000 stone grains, which was just enough for 10,000 yuan. The army eats October. This is just rations. As for salary, foot money, and armor expenses, forget about it. Let’s wait until the next batch of millet arrives before talking about anything else.
Huang Wan was a little frustrated when he said this. He wrote in his personal notebook:
"There are so many thieves in Yanzhou that they rush here and there like cattle. But they have neither soldiers nor money. They work hard but have no real money. Who knows, if you have more thieves, you need more soldiers, and if you have more soldiers, you need more pay. The current food reserve is only 200,000 shi. , The daily expenses are countless, and the troops and horses of each department are limited. They only eat official rice and are not willing to spend a grain of grain on their own. If this continues, I am afraid that Chen Jun's lesson is not far away. You won’t continue!”
The third headache that Huang Wan complained about in Bozi was the conflict between various troops.
As soldiers and horses from various counties arrived one after another, conflicts often broke out in the Fengqiu camp. The soldiers of various tribes were not satisfied with the big tent. They often went into the city to drink and cause trouble, and they often fought in groups of three or five.
Especially because when the party was in power, the grievances between the various parties were actually very deep. There are often questions like why you didn't save me, why you sold me, and things like settling old scores.
In the past few days, several armed fights have broken out among the party members in Shanyang. Especially the Zhang family of Dongping, because the previous family advocated frugality and refused to die, causing countless deaths to the Shanyang Party members. These families, such as the Xue family, had a blood feud with the Zhang family.
They have found the tribesmen who fled back then, but there are no bones left. On the contrary, there is still farming in the Xue family's wall. They only killed a group and continued to capture the rest as slaves.
And who caused all this? It’s you, Dongping Zhang.
Therefore, these two families are the worst offenders.
The Shanyang soldiers were in internal strife, but the other families were fine. They are generally composed of county soldiers as the main force, supplemented by powerful tribesmen. No matter how effective a county soldier is in combat, he still obeys orders as he should.
In this way, the entire Fengqiu camp was in chaos.
Also because of the above-mentioned difficulties, Huang Wan has lowered his goal this time from annihilating the Taishan Army to containing it. For this reason, he took out the "Sitting and Fighting" written by Ping Tie Ce before his death that day.
He decided to set up strongholds along the Pu River and defend them.
The specific deployment is as follows:
Chen left two thousand soldiers to line up in the north of Pu River to resist the thieves from Yan County. Two thousand soldiers from Jiyin County lined up in Pushuinan to succeed Chen Liubing. The soldiers of Shanyang State protruded to Lihu and formed an array on the north bank of Pushui River. The soldiers of Rencheng State were lined up on the south bank to respond.
The overall strategy is to use the Pu River as the Great Wall to block the westward and southbound Taiping Road.
This strategy was polished very maturely by him and the party bosses in the shogunate:
First, we took the defensive line of Pu River as a stand-in battle, dug ditches to challenge the Hao River, and built a stronghold five feet high and one foot thick. This village is located on the north bank of Pu River. It is both a teaching ground and a military camp. Training troops during the day and keeping watch at night to guard against thieves and bandits crossing at night. Once there is a police officer in a village, nearby villages can either capture or ambush them. It can be said that the iron wall surrounds them, trapping the Taishan Army in the Heji area.
Just when he was feeling complacent and felt that he was sure of victory, the war north of the river broke out again, once again affecting the current situation of the world.
My grandpa passed away today and I rushed home to do some errands. Today and tomorrow, there will be an update of four thousand words.
(End of chapter)