Huang Wan was a little depressed. He knew that the country would not leave him any good jobs. 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 about now? Taishan, Jibei, and Dongping have been owned by the enemy, and Dongjun has Although it was dilapidated, only Chenliu, Jiyin, Shanyang and Rencheng were 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 swaying?
However, what Huang Wan can comfort himself with is that the elite of Yanzhou is still there, and the four counties still in Hanting have a total population of 2.3 million. Among them, Chenliu has 180,000 households and a population of 900,000; Jiyinzhi There are 140,000 households and a population of 650,000; Shanyang has 110,000 households and a population of 600,000; Rencheng has 30,000 households and a population of 150,000.
It can be seen from this that, in addition to Dongjun, Yanzhou is also home to the three most elite counties of Chenliu, Jiyin, and Shanyang. These are all large counties with a household registration of 100,000. With these three counties here, 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 thieves move north again, not only Lu Zhi in the north will be in danger, but also the entire Heshuo can no longer be owned by the Han Dynasty.
It is precisely for this reason that Huang Wan, who is 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.
Huang Wan's character is like this. The more others underestimate him or even ridicule him, the more he has to do well. This character can be seen from an incident in his childhood. His ancestor Huang Qiong was serving as Situ. At that time, Sikong Youji, Huang Qiong Huang Wan was sent to express condolences, and it happened that there were rebels in Jiangxia. Because Huang Qiong was from Jiangxia, Sheng Yun sarcastically said: "Jiangxia is a big country, but there are many barbarians and few scholars." Lie Sangong swallowed his breath and sneered back: "The barbarians are cunning Xia, the blame lies with Sikong", and then he brushed off his clothes and left.
From this we can indeed see that Jiangxia people like Huang Wan are indeed fierce and cannot tolerate the slightest grievance. The same is true for the Taishan Army now. The more impossible it is, the more he must 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 thing is to gather military strength. Now Huang Wan only has 800 Liangzhou soldiers from the bandit general Zhou Shen as his Fang Bo guard. 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. The order also issued 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, so they were ordered to bring their own songs to seal Qiu Xingyuan.
When the call came, the person closest to the Yanzhou Mu Xingyuan was Guo Zong, the governor of Chenliu, who governed Chenliu County. He was a member of the Guo clan in Jiexiu, Taiyuan, and the nephew of the famous scholar Guo Tai. His family was related to Huang Wan. After making good friends, he received the order and hurriedly drew out a thousand troops from the tight force, and led the county thief Cao Chang Yushi to Fengqiu camp to listen to the instructions.
Yu Shi is a descendant of the Yu family of Chen Liudong, and his ancestor is Yu Yan, who served as a Taiwei during the Guangwu period. Unfortunately, his family fell into decline due to 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 came back again because the children of his family were born into a family of 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 ancestor's appearance and were able to fight each other. But later, his father
Yu Fang was cut in half during the second party rebellion launched by Liu Hong, causing the Yu family to once again be in trouble.
But this time when the Taiping Dao uprising occurred, Yu Shi, who shouldered the responsibility for the prosperity of his family, kept his armor and pommel on his hips, defended his relatives, suppressed the Yellow Turbans, and made great contributions to the Chenliu thief Cao Chang. At this moment, such a brave general led the troops to seal the war.
Qiu's camp will surely give Huang Wan another tiger general.
In addition, there is also a heavyweight who appears in various families to help Huang Wan, and that person is Shen Tupan. How should I say this person? He should be a moral master in this world.
He had a reputation of filial piety when he was young. He lived in mourning after his father died and did not eat meat or wine for more than ten years. Cai Yong, Zhang Chong's old man, respected him and made him famous. Later, the imperial court failed to recruit him several times. Later, he studied at Imperial College.
When a friend who was born with him died of illness, he sent his friend's body back to his hometown all the way, which was a sense of justice.
The latter two, Huang Qiong, Huang Wan's grandfather, was dedicated to conquering the government, but he still did not go. On the contrary, when Huang Qiong was buried in Jiangxia, 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, the Cai family, the Wu family, and the Xia family, and agreed to send out 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, so 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 clan to have 1,000 soldiers from the Shuai tribe, and Bing Cao Bian Chong to lead 1,000 county soldiers, for a total of 2,000 soldiers and horses to go to Fengqiu.
Huang Wan made a good impression.
Needless to say, the prefect of Rencheng is Qiao Yu. He is the son of the former Taiwei Qiao Xuan and a descendant of the public family. He and Huang Wan have known each other since they were young in Kyoto. This time, my friend was summoned. Although the number was small, he still selected five hundred troops.
They were led by He Xutong, the commander of the army, together with Lu Qian and Jing Zhou, the powerful men and women in the country, and together with a thousand of his troops, they entered Fengqiu and left tents to listen to them.
Finally, there is Shanyang Prefecture, as the home base of the party members, this time it can be said to be the performance of the party camp, Gaoping Zhang family, Wang family, Liu family, Tan family, Xue family, as well as local tycoons Xi family and Changyi Li family
, a total of seven troops and 4,000 people marched towards 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 a member of the eunuch party, he reluctantly sent out 200 soldiers. Under the leadership of his soldier Cao Changhou Feng, they marched to Fengqiu in a miserable 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 know, 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 integrates elites from all over the country and abandons them.
They are places whose geographical coloring gives them central attributes.
The vision of these sons of the noble family is no longer limited to their hometowns. 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 all over the world.
The world. But those who have influence in only one place are all local tycoons.
It can also be seen 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 had 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
, the story of a man who changes the sky and changes the sun is played out here.
And now Huang Wan has set up his camp here, naturally there is a reason for this.
Fengqiu is located at the intersection of Jishui River and Pu River, 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 knew that Liu Hong had the title of "Shang Shu":
"There are less than 20,000 moth thieves, men, women, ages and children. Although they have some tricks, they are just a mob. Now there are more than 10,000 soldiers in Fengqiu, and their strength is not that of a single man. They still have the advantage of the geographical advantage for their troops. If they gather more soldiers, they will be afraid of the death of these soldiers.
If you are lazy, let alone fight to the death."
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, and they are not just a mob. The discipline there is strict, but our army has no discipline. It is easy to retreat but difficult to advance. Although we have been warned repeatedly, they are still weak and insignificant."
It is true that Huang Wan has a clear understanding of the soldiers gathered in Fengqiu. 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 10,000 soldiers, which is roughly the same as the bandits. As far as general military knowledge is concerned, in encirclement, the attacker must have obvious strength advantages and be able to form a deep encirclement, and then launch an offensive to encircle and annihilate the defenders.
.
Now that the two sides' forces were equal, if the Han soldiers attacked rashly, they would 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 his lesson and decided to switch to the defensive.
On the one hand, we are reorganizing our economy and preparing our military, and on the other hand, we are raising military pay.
Yes, Huang Wan, the Yanzhou shepherd, had neither soldiers nor money. Now that he has soldiers, he is even more short of money. More than 10,000 people eat horse chews, and the daily cost is huge.
It turns out that Huang Wan left Beijing for the festival and brought one million dollars allocated by the state, but what was this money enough for?
Fortunately, all the cities in Jishui have always had grain, especially Fengqiu, which has a large amount of corn warehouses. He immediately counted it 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 Aocang.
Millet is sent to Fengqiu along the Jishui River. With this Jishui River, Huangwan is in no danger of running out of food.
It was precisely because of the 300,000 stone grain and the constant supply of millet from Aocang that Huang Wan used it to pay his troops' salaries, buy salt and vegetables, buy armor and weapons, hire brave men, and porters for the camp, and ship.
When the team came and went, they used millet to exchange. It can be said that millet was really used as money.
In this way, half of the 300,000 stones of millet were used in the blink of an eye, while the millet from Aocang that was originally said to be transported has disappeared for a long time. This is not good, the army is unstable without food. Once the camp in Fengqiu is without food, the army of 10,000 will immediately
The stars dispersed. Therefore, in his anxiety, Huang Wan sent out twelve appeals 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.
An army of ten thousand will last for ten months. This is just rations. As for salary, foot money, and armor expenses, forget about it. Let’s wait for the next batch of millet to arrive and talk about other things.
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. But they have no soldiers and no 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 expenditure is countless, and the use is less than two months. And the troops and horses of the various ministries are limited, and they only eat official rice, unwilling to waste a grain of grain from their own. In the long run, I am afraid that Chen Jun's lesson is not far away. It is not because I am incompetent, but there is nothing I can do.
You won’t continue!”
The third headache that Huang Wan complained about in Bozi's mind 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 prison, the grievances between the various parties were actually very deep. They often asked why they didn't save me, why they sold me, and other 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 in Dongping. Because the previous family advocated frugality and refused to die, countless members of the Shanyang party were harmed. These families, such as the Xue family and others, are simply incompatible with each other.
Zhang's blood feud.
They have found the tribesmen who fled back then, but there are no bones left. On the contrary, there are still people farming in the Xue family. They only killed a group of people and continued to capture the rest as slaves.
And who is responsible for all this? It’s you, Mr. Zhang from Dongping.
So these two families are the worst offenders.
The Shanyang soldiers are in internal strife, but the other families are fine. They are generally composed of county soldiers as the main force, supplemented by powerful tribesmen. No matter how powerful the county soldiers are in combat, they still obey orders as they should.
In this way, the entire Fengqiu camp was in chaos.
Also because of the above-mentioned difficulties, Huang Wan had lowered the goal this time from destroying the Taishan Army to containing it. To this end, he took out the "Sitting and Fighting" written by Chen Zan before his death.
He decided to set up strongholds along the Pu River and guard them.
The specific deployment is as follows:
Two thousand soldiers from Chen Liu lined up in the north of Pu River to defend against the thieves from Yan County. Two thousand soldiers from Jiyin County lined up in the south of Pu River to succeed Chen Liu. The soldiers from Shanyang protruded to Lihu and lined up on the north bank of Pu River. They were appointed as the city state. Soldiers lined up on the south bank to respond.
The overall strategy is to use the Pu River as the Great Wall to block Taiping Road going west and south.
This strategy was refined by him and the party bosses in the shogunate to a very mature level:
First, we took the defensive line of Pu River to fight, dug trenches, and built small villages with a height of five feet and a thickness of one foot. These villages were located on the north bank of Pu River. They were both training ground and military stronghold. Soldiers could be trained during the day and soldiers at night. Keep on duty to prevent thieves and bandits from crossing at night. Once there is a police officer in one village, nearby villages can either raid or ambush them. It can be said that the iron wall encircles them, trapping the Taishan army in the Heji area.
Just when he was feeling complacent and thought he was sure of victory, war broke out again north of the river, once again affecting the world's current situation.