He originally led troops in Chengdu and stayed in Hunan after killing Zhong Xiang. In the past few years, he was transferred to eastern and southern Sichuan. In the past two years, he returned to Chengdu to take charge of all Sichuan.
Lin Chong and the officials of the Third Division of Sichuan were both happy and worried after receiving the imperial order.
The good news is that you can perform meritorious service in battles, and even civil servants can achieve political achievements by helping with logistics.
The worry is that not only do we have to fight, but we also have to relocate the people and return to their hometowns!
Some places it's possible, some places it's difficult.
Take Zhizhou as an example. It is said to be a Jisi Prefecture, but in fact it only has a palm-sized territory in the western mountainous area of Shimao County. The mountains are high and the valleys are deep, the land is barren, and there are even mountains with snow all year round. It is difficult for the Han people to cultivate there.
Sichuan Zuobuzheng envoy Lu Benzhong said: "There are three chiefs in Zhizhou, Zhi Yongshou, Tang Junyan, and Dong Cheng. The imperial court said that they wanted to kill the Dong family, so we killed Dong Chengyou, but Zhi Yongshou and Tang Junyan were still
It should be combined with suppression and pacification. This method will also be used in other Jisu areas where it is difficult for immigrants to cultivate and cultivate. Kill one group and conquer another group."
"But the imperial court must completely change its status quo and return to its original position." Lin Chong said.
Lu Benzhong shook his head: "Luoyang is thousands of miles away. The princes in the court only know the general information and do not know the specific facts of the place. Even a few of us only recently found out more and more detailed information from merchants and prisoners.
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"It is still necessary to explain it to the court." Zhan Shangzhidao, the envoy to the right.
Lu Benzhong said: "There is not much time left for us this year. We will send troops while reporting. We will attack the places where we can convert the soil back to the flow. It happens that those places have more convenient transportation. The places where we cannot convert the soil back to the flow are all in places with high mountains and dangerous valleys."
, you can leave it alone for the time being and wait until the court approves before taking action."
Lin Chong thought this statement was very reasonable, and immediately called Maozhou merchants and Tibetan prisoners to inquire about the situation carefully before formulating a plan to send troops.
Since the duties of civil servants and generals are clearly divided, it is no longer a matter of civil and military checks and balances holding back each other, but of civil and military officials each performing their respective duties and working together to gain merit and political achievements.
As soon as the sweltering summer days passed, Lin Chong personally led the army on the expedition.
He only took away 6,000 field troops and 10,000 garrison troops, and then he went to Maozhou with great fury.
These 16,000 troops can defeat the barbarians belonging to Maozhou several times, which is a bit like killing a chicken with a sledgehammer. However, the number of troops cannot be reduced. To establish a stronghold, people must be left to defend it, and then protect the immigrants and build villages, and prepare protective armor to let the Han people
Only when you have the ability to protect yourself can you withdraw your troops.
The arsenals of various prefectures in Sichuan took out old equipment one after another.
While Lin Chong was leading his army on the expedition, Luo Bingzhong, the Sichuan capital commander, was also busy.
He couldn't wait for landless peasants to apply for the draft, so he ordered the military recruitment agencies in Mianzhu, Deyang, Long'an and other counties to forcibly draft draftees based on previous years' draft files. Farmers with more than five males who were still separated from each other must draft a strong boy under 25 years old.
Be an immigrant.
Emperor Zhu found it difficult to recruit immigrants, but for the local civil and military forces it was not a problem at all!
On the pretext of training militiamen, they were forcibly selected and reorganized, and then sent to fight in places where immigrants were needed. After the war, they stayed there directly, settled in the land and registered them. Those who had wives and children took their wives and children, and those who did not have wives married local people.
Women - Killing the male members of the barbarian chieftain's family can leave many women for marriage.
This approach can be easily accomplished as long as the local civil and military authorities cooperate tacitly.
Especially since Sichuan has been in peace for twenty years, it has produced a large population of young adults. Families with too many boys are everywhere, and having one in a family is nothing at all.
Except for the person who was selected, who may have objections, even their brothers are probably willing. Because they can get a settlement fund, and there is one less brother to fight for the family property!
This is what Lin Chong did in eastern and southern Sichuan.
Southern Luzhou, Nanguangbu (Junlian), Zizhou (Xishui), Yelang, northern Luoshiman (Xuyong, Gulin), northern Mahu (Mabian, Suijiang)... a total of more than 60,000
Men were deceived and thrown into those places on the pretext of training militiamen for combat.
In addition to their wives and children, as well as the exiled criminals, more than 100,000 Han people have been expelled from the entire southern Sichuan region in the past ten years!
In the weaker Nanguang tribe, that is, in the Junlian area, the barbarians were directly driven back into the mountains. They wanted to take back the land at the foot of the mountains, but every time they went down the mountains to plunder, they were defeated by Han immigrants.
Because before the Han people immigrated, they were all well-trained militiamen and were issued leather armor, swords, guns, and bows and arrows!
The emerging villages in southern Sichuan all have their own villages.
Even when farming is busy, manpower will be deployed to stand sentry in nearby mountains.
Even though it is a remote and poor place, the education is very developed. Almost every new village has prison officials. They teach children to read, and the villagers help them farm. These prison officials are also responsible for making decisions when encountering major events.
In another ten or twenty years, when these immigrants and the children of prisoners have grown up, at least ten more counties can be established in southern Sichuan - some counties will even be in Yunnan and Guizhou in later generations.
Since killing Zhong Xiang, Lin Chong has not had any spectacular achievements.
But he teamed up with Sichuan civil servants to operate illegally, and they were actually expanding their territory.
The violation was a real violation and was always hidden from the court.
They firmly refused to admit that they had forcibly recruited men, saying that they all signed up to migrate voluntarily. As long as the counterattacks of the barbarian tribes can be suppressed, and as long as large-scale deaths of immigrants can be avoided, Sichuan's civil and military forces can continue to achieve political and military achievements!
These guys even developed a process and are constantly improving it.
Some civil and military officials from Sichuan were also transferred to other provinces and brought this process with them.
For example, Hunan and Guangxi have begun to follow suit in recent years. However, their capital is not as strong as Sichuan. To put it bluntly, they do not have enough population to support them, so they can only implement it in a small way.
Do the censors who patrol various places know about this illegal phenomenon?
Know!
But they all chose to hide it and not report it.
Of course, we followed the procedures this time. Emperor Zhu said that at least 5,000 people should be immigrated. Those guys directly recruited 6,000 militiamen. Many of them were already married. They would also bring their wives and children with them. Counting the children, it is estimated that tens of thousands of people could immigrate.
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…
Xiong Yangzu is 18 years old and his native place is Xiaoquan Town, Mianzhu County.
His ancestors were also from a wealthy family, and their families had not been separated for a long time. Therefore, his status was very strange. The family seemed to be powerful, but the ordinary members of the clan were just like tenants.
Seeing the pity, the imperial court ordered the big family to split up.
The Xiong clan of Mianzhu had been in disobedience for several years, until the clan dismantling incident in Jiangxi became a big issue, and the Sichuan government quickly took action. They directly sent troops to various prefectures and counties to forcibly separate clans. Xiong Yangzu's father was even assigned clan fields.
Unfortunately, there is not much farmland, only a few dozen acres.
There are parents, grandfather, three brothers, one younger brother, and one younger sister in the family. Each of the brothers married a wife and had children.
The dozens of acres of land we were allocated were simply not enough for food.
One brother went to work in the county town.
An elder brother occasionally goes to the town's oil refinery to help when he is not farming.
My father and grandfather were both bamboo craftsmen, and my mother and sister-in-law raised silkworms and weaved cloth. They could survive by farming a few acres of land.
Xiong Yangzu even attended a village school for three years. Unfortunately, his qualifications were mediocre and he was definitely hopeless in the imperial examination. He dropped out of school after he learned some daily vocabulary.
Just after harvesting the rice this year, officials suddenly came to the village.
The official left some settlement money and took away several men from the village, and Xiong Yangzu was one of them.
Xiong Yangzu was led northward in confusion, and other men continued to join him along the way, and finally settled in an unknown mountain village.
Many officers came, gave them soldiers and armor, and started training immediately.
Flags, orders, and formations are all simplified and quick versions.
Since Xiong Yangzu had studied for three years and was in good health, he directly became the squad leader of the Yuanyang Formation. Not only was he equipped with a spear, but he was also given a crossbow.
After the two-month militia crash training ended, Xiong Yangzu was taken to Maozhou.
He soon saw a captured village with hundreds of dried human heads hanging on it.
An officer rode up on horseback and said to the general leading the militia: "Why are you here? Leave five hundred people to settle here and choose the land yourself. The rest will be divided into three groups and dispersed to immigrate and cultivate in various places!"
Five hundred militiamen stayed behind, and dozens of regular troops temporarily guarded the stockade with the militiamen.
I heard that the bandit chiefs here have not been wiped out, and they have fled into the mountains with a small number of remaining soldiers. They may come back at any time to sneak attack on the village.
Before it snows in winter, you need to be well prepared.
After snowfall, you need to be even more careful. Those bandits are freezing in the mountains and are very likely to risk coming out to plunder.
Only after this winter is over and many of the remaining bandits are frozen to death and starved to death will the potential threat next year be even smaller.
Xiong Yangzu continued to march with his troops.
On the way, we encountered several more breached villages with dried human heads hanging on them, and some militiamen were left one after another.
In late autumn, Xiong Yangzu came to a place called Hengzhou, which was more than a hundred miles north of Wenchuan County - only twenty miles away in a straight line. It was later called Bazhou Town, where Dong Yanbo's hometown was.
The Dong family has been running this place for hundreds of years, accumulated countless treasures, and built stone castles.
He was unwilling to give up his family fortune and flee into the mountains, but actually chose to defend the city!
Lin Chong divided his troops to fight all the way, with only 6,000 main troops at his side.
There were seven to eight thousand barbarians scattered around Dong's castle and nearby mountains, many of whom were barbarians who had fled from other places and were chased by Lin Chong's army to defect to Dong Yanbo.
The day after Lin Chong arrived with his army, Dong Yanbo sent his son Dong Cunzhi out of the city to seek peace.
When Dong Cunzhi saw Lin Chong, he knelt down and said, "General Lin, Dong is willing to surrender. He will not give up his official position and rewards. From now on, he will submit to the imperial court and never betray again."
Lin Chong, with a beard on his face, stared at Dong Cunzhi and sneered, and then uttered two words: "Kill."
Several soldiers raised their guns and stabbed Dong Cunzhi. Before Dong Cunzhi could react, there were already several bloody holes in his body.
The mountain road was difficult to navigate, so Lin Chong only brought a few artillery pieces.
Moreover, his troops are divided in various places, and he only has two weapons left in his hand.
"Boom boom boom boom!"
Two artillery pieces bombarded the stone castle, and the barbarians inside shouted in panic.
A barbarian chief named Luo Quanli said in horror: "It was this kind of thunderous cannon that destroyed my village wall in half a day. I was so frightened that I ran away from the back mountain and finally managed to save my life!"
Dong Yanbo stood there stunned, speechless.
He has been living in the mountains, and the news is too limited.
After surrendering to the Ming Dynasty, the Sichuan Chief Minister asked them to send their son to Chengdu to study. However, he found various reasons to refuse, unwilling to contact the outside world at all, and did not even know that the Ming army had artillery.
The development of things was completely beyond Dong Yanbo's expectation.
The Ming court not only refused to discuss peace and rewards, but instead sent a large army to kill him.
These Ming troops were so powerful that the Tibetan chiefs did not even have time to gather their troops and were defeated one after another by more than ten strongholds.
Five days ago, he set up an ambush halfway.
Unexpectedly, due to the dangerous terrain, the Ming army sent a mountain search team to explore the road, forcing Dong Yanbo to launch an attack in advance.
The soldiers of the Ming Army, who were marching in a long snake in the valley, formed small teams as quickly as possible. The troops marching in leather armor were responsible for covering, and the other soldiers wore iron armor as quickly as possible, not only quickly repelling Dong Yanbo's surprise attack , and also formed a formation to counterattack and chased them to the mountains.
Dong Yanbo was stunned on the spot. The Ming army had a strange squad formation that could be formed even when attacking mountains.
His troops were defeated. Fortunately, the mountains were high and the forests were dense, so he was able to escape quickly by relying on his familiarity with the terrain.
"We can't let the enemy keep thundering (shelling). The warriors are almost scared out of their wits and must go out to fight immediately!" suggested a chief who escaped from elsewhere.
Dong Yanbo hesitated for a moment and finally decided to give it a go.
If the Ming army keeps shelling, although his castle is strong, it can only last for two or three days at most.
In the castle, with mountains on both sides, thousands of barbarians were attacking from three sides.
They were in a mess and were not in formation. Even if they said they were an army, they would be praised. These guys had not fought a decent battle in hundreds of years.
During the Xining period, the barbarians from various Jizhou prefectures jointly sent troops, but were defeated by a group of militia led by the prefect Fan Baichang. Then the barbarians gathered more barbarians to besiege the city. Fan Baichang defended the low and dilapidated Maozhou City until the Shaanxi border troops were transferred to Sichuan for rescue.
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A group of guys with extremely low combat effectiveness!
Xiong Yangzu and some militiamen happened to watch the entire battle.
They hid behind the regular troops and took up arms and waited for orders, but their help was not needed at all.
In the Yuanyang formation of the regular army, the musketeers continued to fire freely, and sporadic barbarians were shot and fell down along the way. The barbarians finally rushed close, but they were unable to break the firearm version of the Yuanyang formation.
Within a few minutes of the confrontation, seven or eight groups of barbarians fled one after another.
"kill!"
The regular army of the Ming Dynasty suddenly counterattacked, and the barbarians were immediately defeated.
Xiong Yangzu also wanted to chase them with a spear, but the officer leading them shouted: "Don't move. These are the elite direct descendants of General Lin, and we must not take away their military exploits!"
Xiong Yangzu looked at the spear in his hand and then at the fleeing barbarians.
It seems that fighting is easy, and I am not here to die.
The bandit chief Dong Yanbo finally escaped. When the army was defeated, he fled and took his family and a group of soldiers into the mountains.
It is surrounded by mountains and mountains on all sides, so there is no way to catch it!
Dong Yanbo's idea was very simple, he would come back after the Ming army left.
Although this place has never been breached, the Song army had breached other fortresses in the past, and they always looted and then withdrew before winter.
As expected, the Ming army left quickly.
But the main force of the Ming army left. Since this place was Dong Yanbo's hometown, Lin Chong left behind 300 garrison troops and 800 militiamen.
Dong Yanbo could only continue to hide in the mountains.
However, Xiong Yangzu was left here, and the officers took them to select land, and from time to time they went into groups to nearby mountains to familiarize themselves with the terrain.
The officer in charge of them said:
"Those who have wives and children, the government will bring your wives and children next year. Those who have not yet married, you can choose among the captured barbarian girls. As long as you think you can afford it, each of you can choose up to two."
"Next spring, the government will also send farm tools, cattle and seeds."
"You eight hundred militiamen, disperse to the nearby valleys. Every hundred people form a village, and each village is given four cattle. The villagers' houses should not be too far apart, so that they can be easily dealt with when encountering an enemy situation. I will teach you
You build simple piers and platforms, which can be constructed quickly with bamboo. Build a few more in each village, and if you encounter an enemy, run to the nearest pier and platform immediately."
"For the barbarians who have not been executed, the government will take away some to mine and free up more land for you. The remaining barbarians will be relocated with other tribes so that the barbarian chiefs who fled into the mountains can no longer gather their old tribes."
"Remember, there are bandits who have escaped into the mountains and may come out at any time. You must be careful at all times!"
"I will stay here with you for half a year. After half a year, everything will depend on you."
"Your land will be tax-free for five years and half-tax for three years. In the future, the imperial court will also exile criminal officials and set up village schools to teach your children. Maybe a champion will be born here."
"When the post station is built, you can also write letters home and send the letters to the postmen. Within five years, the postmen will not charge you money to deliver letters to you..."
At dusk, the autumn wind is bleak.
Xiong Yangzu was sitting in a strange valley, looking at the strange mountains opposite, as if he was having a big dream.
He has only been to Mianzhu County twice since he was a child. He was usually in the village or town.
Muli was forcibly recruited as a militia, and Muli settled here again.
Yesterday I chose a barbarian girl as my wife, and I estimate that I will spend the rest of my life here.