Chapter 1315: Transfer
Chapter 1315: Transfer (Part 3) (Monthly Ticket Plus )
It was the beginning of February, and there were constant cries of wailing in Shangbai Town.
On the fifth day, the garrison commander Bo Guanzhi received an order from the Ministry of War to select 3,000 elite infantrymen and 500 cavalrymen, and to arrive in Youzhou within 20 days.
He immediately called a meeting of the town's main officials.
The deputy general of the garrison, Liu Ji, the chief secretary, Tian Cai, the military commander, Huang Huai, the assistant general of the household department, Li Chu, the assistant general of the military department, Tian Jian, the assistant general of the field department, Qi Shun, the assistant general of the law department, Tian Yi, the assistant general of the armor department, Guo He, and a group of garrison commanders, a total of more than ten people, sat together noisily.
Shangbai Town has been passed down to the second generation now. For example, the town commander Bo Guanzhi is the son of Bo Sheng.
The same is true for the Tian family.
The oldest one is Liu Ji, who is already in his early sixties. He is called the deputy general, but in reality he is just a mascot and has no responsibility.
The small town of Shangbai is also divided into several factions.
The Bo family was a hereditary garrison commander recognized by the imperial court and formed their own faction.
The Tian family has become more and more powerful in recent years, and is slightly ahead of the Bo family. They are the undisputed powerful family in Shangbai Town.
Apart from these two families, Liu Ji and Guo He's ancestors were scholars from Bingzhou and Jizhou. They were forced to join the gang in their early years, but now they are developing in the town with peace of mind. The two families are close to each other and have a good relationship, and they are vaguely a faction.
As for Huang Huai, he was a direct descendant of Sima Li Nong who had already left office, and he helped and supported Li Chu (a descendant of Li Nong).
Qi Shun was a Wuhuan. In his early years, his father led a part of the Bingzhou Wuhuan to the east and joined the Qihuo Army. Later, he absorbed the Jizhou Wuhuan. His strength should not be underestimated.
As the saying goes, the smaller the temple, the more evil spirits there are; the shallower the pond, the more turtles there are. This is the case with Shangbai Town, which is divided into five major factions and eight major families, which check and balance each other and are not united internally.
So when Bo Guanzhi read out the imperial edict in public, requiring each garrison to withdraw troops, a quarrel immediately broke out.
Tian Cai, the chief secretary, was the first to raise an objection: "The imperial court has issued an edict, and we should obey it. But why did Guangzong Garrison send out 2,000 soldiers? The other garrisons only sent out 1,500 soldiers in total. Isn't this unfair?"
"Guangzong has a large number of garrison troops. Why not send out 2,000 soldiers?" Bo Guanzhi asked.
“It’s a lot, but not as much as half of the registered households in the town,” Tian Cai said bluntly.
"You!" Bo Guanzhi stood up angrily, drew out his sword, and shouted, "You want to disobey my order?"
Military officer Tian Jian also drew his sword and shouted, "General, the court only ordered me to send out 3,500 infantry and cavalry, but did not specify which garrison would send the troops. You made an unfair arrangement, so others cannot say anything, right?"
"Tian Changshi, Tian Canjun, it's over, put away your swords." The white-haired deputy general Liu Ji acted as a peacemaker. He just laughed and said, "It's already late, and you're still arguing. The people from the Ministry of War are still staying in the inn. If he finds out and reports it to the court, won't we all be punished?"
Since Liu brought up the name of the "imperial court", Bo Guanzhi and the Tian brothers calmed down.
Tian Jian snorted coldly, put away the knife and sat down.
Bo Guanzhi gave him a deadly look and put away his sword.
"Mr. Liu is right." Huang Huai waved his hand and said, "State affairs are urgent. If we delay, we will suffer the consequences. How about this? Guangzong garrison will send 1,500 soldiers, and we can make up for the shortfall of 500 people and deal with the court first. How do you think?"
Qi Shun stole a glance at Huang Huai.
It is obvious that this guy is already a member of the imperial court.
Li Nong became the Shaoqing of Dali Temple, but he did not completely give up his influence on Shangbai Town. Huang Huai and Li Chu still obeyed his orders.
Why are you pretending? Do you really think everyone is blind?
But then again, if the court could give him a fifth-rank official position, he could give up the more than 4,000 men, women, and children under his command.
Things are different now. The officials in Shangbai Town are really meaningless. Even if they have been hereditary for several generations, they will probably not be regarded as gentry. There will always be people looking at them with strange eyes, as if all the officials in Shangbai Town from top to bottom are fake.
He sighed silently, listening to the arguments and bargaining among the generals in the town, his mind was already elsewhere.
The argument lasted until the afternoon, and with the intervention of the envoy from the Ministry of War, the people in Shangbai Town finally decided on the scale of their respective troop dispatches.
Similar to Shangbai Town are Wuqiang, Yijing, Feilongshan, Puyangshan and other towns.
Each town sent out between 2,000 and 4,000 soldiers, totaling 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers, who were sent to Youzhou one after another. Their main task was to transfer and escort food, fodder and equipment to Peking. Their other task was to help take care of horses and draft animals, and even temporarily level the roads.
To put it bluntly, they play the role of auxiliary troops, at least for the time being.
******
In Qinghe County, Jizhou, Cui Zhan, the son of Cui Yu, the Minister of Rites, returned from Bianliang. After a long discussion with his uncles and brothers, he decided to mobilize a thousand of Cui's men and march north to Youzhou.
"The imperial court is in a hurry to measure the land, and they show no mercy at all. In the end, they even want us to send troops. Alas." An elder said dissatisfiedly.
"Uncle Six, you can't say that." Cui Zhan said with a smile, "These 1,000 troops are just transporting food supplies. They won't fight with the bandits."
"Wouldn't it be better to send some farmhands?"
"The Murong clan has a lot of cavalry, so the farmhands may not be able to take it. They can't stand being scared, and they will scatter after the enemy shoots them with arrows. We still have to march forward, and that's what the emperor requires." Cui Zhan explained patiently.
The sixth uncle snorted coldly, but didn't say anything else. At this time, someone else asked, "There are barbarians in the southwest of Wuxing County, competing with my Cui family for land. Can we fight them?"
Cui Zhan thought for a moment and said, "Don't worry, Uncle Wu. The emperor is paying attention to the scholars in the north. If the descendants of the Shanyue chieftains really do anything illegal, we can attack them."
"In that case, I have nothing more to say." Uncle Wu nodded and said.
"Have the other families sent out troops?" Uncle Cui Zhan asked again.
"The Liu and Hua families in Pingyuan each sent out more than a thousand soldiers, and the Shi and Gao families were about the same." Cui Yu said, "The big families in Henan should also have been assigned a quota of soldiers to serve as auxiliary soldiers or even escort grain and fodder."
"We can only mobilize so many people." The uncle sighed: "In the past, if we didn't mobilize 3,000 to 5,000 people, even the commander of the fortress couldn't suppress it."
Everyone felt the same way.
The decline in the power of the northern nobles is obvious to all, and the core reason is the land measurement and the migration to the south of the Yangtze River due to the land measurement.
The imperial court granted land to the people and clearly defined the taxes and labor service. If given a choice, ordinary farmers would certainly not want to be farmhands. After all, times have changed and it is no longer a time of chaos. There is no need to pay the price of personal freedom and most of a year's hard work in exchange for security and protection. As a result, there were frequent cases of farmhands escaping.
After the land was measured in Qinghe County, a considerable amount of land and farmhands were cleared out.
The Imperial Censor Shan Xia inspected Hebei several times to supervise the local counties and prefectures in regulating household registration - he had done this in the south of the Yangtze River.
Because of this incident, each family accelerated their pace to the south of the Yangtze River, and it was reasonable that the strength of the main families in the north declined sharply.
"It's really hard to live with such a king above your head," the uncle said finally.
"Uncle, what you said is wrong." Cui Zhan said, "If there is no current emperor, Hebei will either be in the hands of Liu Yao or Shi Le. They may not give face to the Cui family."
"They are almost the same." The uncle said: "The current emperor gives face, but when it comes to asking for money and food and conscripting men, he is not soft-hearted at all, just like Shi Le and Liu Yao. He just looks good on the surface, but there is really not much difference behind the scenes."
"Uncle, be careful with your words." Cui Zhan said hurriedly, "The emperor will arrive in Hebei soon. There are some things that cannot be said."
The uncle sighed again and kept silent.
Cui Zhan secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Hebei is close to Youzhou, so a large number of troops will definitely be dispatched. Not only the private soldiers of the wealthy families, but also several military towns will have to send capable people. The total number of town soldiers and private soldiers is probably more than 50,000.
With these fifty or sixty thousand people transporting supplies in the rear, the food supply route is secure.
Of course, they did not rule out the possibility of having to fight on the front lines, and they might even encounter Xianbei cavalry who harassed their food supply routes from behind. Everything depended on luck.
Cui Zhan stayed in Qinghe until February 15th. He returned to Bianliang to report only when he saw with his own eyes the private soldiers of the wealthy families in various counties carrying the last batch of food northward.
******
It was still freezing cold in Pingcheng in mid-February.
The order to mobilize troops has been issued, but they have not made any movement here. Compared with Youzhou, there are no large groups of people and horses transporting food and supplies on the grassland, but instead there are countless cattle and sheep.
On February 18th, Wang Chang, the governor of Yunzhong (formerly the prefect of Yunzhong), ordered the construction of a hayfield and livestock pen in the northeast of Qifu Yuanchi.
This is not a big project. After conscripting people, it will be completed around early April.
By that time, a large number of livestock would be driven here from Bingzhou area.
The grass north of the Yin Mountains turns green later, so it is necessary to feed the livestock for a period of time with pre-stored grass or even grains shipped from Bingzhou to make them fat as much as possible.
When the grass had grown almost completely in May, they drove hundreds of thousands of cattle and sheep eastward in a mighty procession. The "troops" were divided into two groups, with the elderly, the weak, women and children grazing at the rear while advancing, while a part of the Pingcheng guards and the best soldiers recruited from various tribes led the way in front. They first went eastward into the pastures of the twelve Yuwen tribes, joined forces with them, crossed the Great Xianbei Mountains from west to east, and attacked all the way along the old route that the Yuwen cavalry used to attack the Murong Xianbei.
There were as many as 100,000 of them, including men, women, old and young, and they were like an "armed migration", carrying carriages, tents, cattle, sheep, war horses, bows and swords, and pressing forward with an overwhelming force.
According to the information currently circulating, Shanyu Grand Protector Shao Shen is the commander of this route, and the cavalry of the Daliang court will most likely be reinforced by a large number of troops, together with the soldiers under the Shanyu Mansion, a total of 20,000 elite cavalry, with tens of thousands of grassland herdsmen and light cavalry, will attack from the northwest of Murong Xianbei and join forces with the army coming from Youzhou at Liucheng and Jicheng.
In Wang Chang's opinion, although the Murong Xianbei were good at fighting, they probably could not withstand being besieged from all sides.
If Goguryeo sent out troops from the rear again, and Murong Ren in Liaodong County held out and tied down a part of the troops, it would be really difficult for Murong Huang. How brave would he have to be to repel the siege from the northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast directions?
Defeat them one by one? There are a lot of cavalry and infantry attacking from all four directions. It's difficult.
The situation has developed to this point, and the Murong family should not have insisted on resisting.
If Emperor Shao Xun of Liang used a tactic to divide and disintegrate the people and recruit surrenders and rebellions, the people's hearts would be in chaos.
This is his favorite trick.
In late February, news from all directions gradually gathered in Bianliang.
Shao Xun, who had just held a wedding for the eighth prince, Duke of Shu Shao Hou, was also preparing to officially tour the east, with his first stop being Jiyin.
(End of this chapter)