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

It was not because of the arrival of the Haihan people. In the mountainous areas south and west of Fushan County, there were still several groups of bandits operating frequently, and their targets of robbery were naturally ordinary people who lacked the ability to resist.

In this kind of struggle between the weak and the strong, in order to survive, the weak party must either stick together for warmth or rely on the strong. The government or the gangsters, the people can only choose one of them as their protection umbrella in troubled times.

A considerable number of the people living in shacks outside Fushan County gave up their plans to return home in order to get the protection of the government. However, the protection the government can provide them is limited to the area surrounding the county.

It's only three-thirds of the land. Those who are a little far away from the county seat 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 town was struggling to even defend the city and was unable to mobilize troops to attack the bandits hiding in the mountains. The garrison, on the other hand, was dissatisfied with its establishment and insufficient military expenditures.

The bandits tried to shirk the situation with reasons such as not being in the defense zone, but they were also unwilling to contribute. To put it bluntly, no one is willing to take risks to do this kind of thankless and dirty work. If you do it, you may not be successful, but if there is relatively large battle damage,

Consumption, but whoever takes the lead will take the blame.

Zhang Pucheng, the county magistrate, is very aware of this situation, and there is nothing he can do to change it with his ability. But whether it is public or selfish, he still wants to try his best to maintain the safety of the people under his rule. He has no idea about the origins and intentions of this group of people outside the city.

The guy who didn't know anything about it actually had the same view as the head catcher Han Qin, believing that the Haihan people had other agendas under the guise of relieving refugees.

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 seaside, and there are only two or three villages inhabited on the way. If there are bandits on the way to rob them, no one can save them. Wait until these people fight and lose both sides, and then choose the opportunity to send troops.

It will be much easier to clean up the mess."

Zhang Pucheng sighed: "It's just that this will hurt the local people!"

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."

Zhang Pucheng also knew that Huang Qu had said so much, but he actually did not want to take the risk of leading troops out of the city to drive away these people. Although he did not agree with Huang Qu's idea, he could not 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 immigrating. Seeing dusk approaching, the cavalry gathered their formation and left Fushan County.

. However, the cavalry 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 gave up their shacks outside the county and moved to Jiahe.

Near the Haihan camp by the river, it looked like he was about to follow.

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. If it weren't for the help of the telescope,

It is indeed difficult to detect this situation with the naked eye alone.

"How long have those two been here?" Sun Zhen asked, putting down the telescope.

"The sentry only discovered it at dawn. 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 cavalry had already disappeared from the place where they had stopped. Wang Jinmin thought that the other party had retreated further 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

The navy sent a ship to meet the enemy at the mouth of Jiahe River, but the cavalry team went upstream along Jiahe River yesterday and discovered along the way that the navigability of this river should be pretty good. There is still a river width of two to three hundred meters near Fushan County.

The water is deep 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 for sending sailing ships directly to the vicinity of Fushan County in the upper reaches of Jiahe River to allow people to move from

Board the boat nearby to avoid possible variables on the way to the Jiahe estuary on your own.

Although this arrangement requires a little more effort than the original plan, the benefits are obvious. It avoids accidents for people on the way to the coast, and 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 was not the case.

It is a one-time relief that gives one person a bowl of porridge, but it is said that it can distribute land and provide a good way out for 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? Or slowly starve in the slums outside Fushan County

Death, illness, decay, and stinking, or else just risk your wealth and life to see if the paradise claimed by the Haihan people really exists. Most people think that they have been deceived, except for this miserable life

There is nothing to lose. As long as the Haihan people can provide better living conditions than the current ones, what does it matter if they are slaves? After all, in Dengzhou Prefecture, the road of selling oneself into slavery has already been taken.

No way, there is 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 immigration team due to the group effect. Of course, the premise is that Haihan can ensure the smoothness and safety of the immigration transportation route.

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 the situation. The leader of this group was named

Wanmeng 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. Wanmeng went to borrow grain from nearby large households that still had grain in stock, but because he could not get the property title deeds

Wan Meng was rejected as collateral. In anger, Wan Meng killed seven members of the wealthy family with a butcher knife. Knowing that his crime was unforgivable, he simply got together with a group of desperadoes and set up a banner in a nearby mountain, calling himself Wan Meng.

Family Army.

Wanmeng's group initially consisted of only twenty or thirty people. However, as the war in Dengzhou intensified, 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 later, Kong Youde's rebels had fled to Liaodong, but the bandit armed force Wanjiajun had established a foothold in Dengzhou Prefecture and was already in Fushan

In the mountainous area to the west of the county, multiple armed strongholds known as the Seven Villages and Twelve Fortresses were built based on the former villages, with more than 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 did not have enough financial resources and troops to wipe out the many civilian armed forces in the inland mountainous areas. The garrison in Fushan County

There is not enough money either. The Fukuyama Nakamae Sento who was originally stationed in Fushan County was wiped out in the landing chaos, and even the establishment has been cancelled. Now we can only let the already incomplete lineup of Kiyama Sento take care of the county seat.

The garrison here 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 an attack on the county seat, and Fushan County could not interfere with the Wanjia Army's activities in nearby areas. To put it simply, the Wanjia Army

In an attempt to control the areas and population outside the county seat in this area, what the county government has to do is to sit back and observe this without overreacting. It is precisely because of such a secret deal that Fushan County became

As a refuge for displaced people, large-scale slums spontaneously formed outside the city.

Zhang Puchen originally hoped to use this to strive for a stable recovery period. When the local area is safe and production resumes, he will reorganize the garrison and civilian joint defense, and then clean up these bandit armed forces. However, the trend of the situation is not consistent with his hopes.

Because the government was unable to provide shelter, the villages in Fushan County could only hand over a certain amount of money and grain to the Wanjia Army on a regular basis in exchange for peace. Over time, most of the resources produced locally were sucked away by the Wanjia Army, and the local government and Wanjia Army

However, the garrison has been unable to rebuild, and the gap in strength between the two sides has 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 have a vicious attack one day and send troops to attack Fushan County.

, the possibility that this place can be defended is not high. At that time, Zhang Zhixian will have no other way out except to die for the 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, Wan Jiajun also received the news. In fact, yesterday when he was promoting the immigration policy outside the city

, there were people from Wanjiajun among the crowd present, and the relevant news was reported to Wanjiajun's stronghold overnight.

However, it was not Wanmeng himself who received the news, but Pu Xueguang, the military advisor of the Wanjia Army. This man was originally a private school teacher in Dengzhou City.

At that time, in order to save his life, Pu Xueguang surrendered to the rebels and worked as a military clerk for a period of time. However, when Kong Youde defected to Liaodong later, due to limited ship capacity, all peripheral personnel were abandoned, and Pu Xueguang was one of them. He

Worried about being liquidated by the government after the war, 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 through teaching and lecturing, he can still frighten Wan Meng, a mere man.

He was a rough guy who knew how to fight 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 the local area, building multiple armed strongholds, and collecting protection fees from the local area on a regular basis were basically the same.

It was he who gave Wanmeng the idea. All these methods were aimed at long-term development, and he was considered a senior player among civilian armed organizations. As expected, it only took more than a year for Wanmeng's army to conquer the mountains between Fushan County and Qixia County.

The district has gained a firm foothold and annexed four or five smaller armed forces. Its influence in this area has even exceeded that of the government.

Pu Xueguang listened to his subordinates' report about the Haihan horse team, and then read the flyers sent back announcing Haihan's recruitment 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.
Chapter completed!