It is a bit difficult to intercept and capture more than 10,000 refugees with four companies. Fortunately, the refugees move slowly at night, and there is nowhere to run in the dark. Often a dozen soldiers with torches will stop and wait to be taken in as soon as they shout.
Each company had many veterans who had participated in Operation Engine. They had special skills in commanding and sheltering the refugees. They only used bayonets to force them to surround the refugees. For a while, there were wailings one after another, and words such as "Australian Army Lord, spare your life" were constantly heard.
It took four hours to escort more than 10,000 refugees to the foot of the mountain east of Beishan, where they were temporarily guarded by three companies. It was already broad daylight.
Zhu Quanxing was extremely anxious. While he was planning an attack, he also had to deal with the refugee problem. The follow-up reserve team and civil cadres were on the move, preparing to take over this mess.
I was very busy, and the orderly came to report: There was an old man among the refugees who came out of the city and he wanted to hand a letter to him.
"He insisted on submitting it in person."
"Search for the letter and bring it here." Zhu Quanxing was not interested in listening to the old man's mumblings. If he was talking about "pacifying the people", he didn't have the time to waste.
"He said he was sent by Lone Wolf!"
Zhu Quanxing was startled. He knew about Lone Wolf. The Foreign Intelligence Bureau had arranged a sitting room in Wuzhou and had sent information on the city wall not long ago.
Then he started to pay more attention to it.
"Okay, just bring him here." Zhu Quanxing said, "Also, report to Chief Xu and ask him to come over quickly!"
Sun Sancai was from Shandong. He was a refugee taken in by Operation Engine. He was recruited into the army because he was tall and strong. Now Sun Sancai is a corporal and a squad leader. However, he has very few achievements, except for participating in a few times.
In suppressing bandits, Sun Sancai had never really fought in a battle. It was not until he started to conquer the mainland that Sun Sancai actually entered the battlefield. He originally wanted to go into battle and kill the enemy and make great achievements, so that he could be promoted and make a fortune in the future, and have a wife and son.
Unexpectedly, from the time he landed in Wuzhou, Sun Sancai had not fired a single shot, and he carried his gun all the way by boat. Half of his desire to make great achievements was extinguished.
When he arrived in Zhaoqing, he heard that tens of thousands of Ming troops had been assembled in Wuzhou, and there was bound to be a big battle. Sun Sancai was very excited, thinking that his opportunity to make a contribution had arrived. Unexpectedly, when he arrived at the battlefield, Sun Sancai's company was the first to fight.
The mission turned out to be to intercept refugees leaving the city.
Now the refugees are surrounded by a cordon of iron wire and wooden sticks at the eastern foot of Beishan Mountain. The refugees are sitting on the ground. The health team patrols among them and performs simple bandaging for some injured refugees. Sun Sancai's company has received the task again.
Perform security duties outside this temporarily constructed refugee camp.
Sun Sancai was in a very bad mood. If he kept looking at these refugees, he would have nothing to fight in Wuzhou. At this rate, it would only take him a few years to get promoted.
Complaints are complaints, and the task must be carried out. This is "iron discipline". Sun Sancai did not dare to neglect, and patrolled along the cordon with his soldiers. In particular, he had to pay attention to whether anyone in the refugee group was "doing evil" - in the past
This kind of thing has happened many times. Although we are "common descendants" and even live in precarious situations, things like the jungle and the strong often happen in refugee camps. Robberies, fights, rapes... all kinds of cases have happened.
Suddenly, across the cordon, an old man suddenly squeezed in front of him, waving his arms and chattering, and talking in a bird song that he couldn't understand, which made him feel even more depressed. He scolded: "Be honest!"
The old man was none other than Luo Yangming's old shopkeeper Li Wensheng. Although Li Wensheng was a shopkeeper, he could only speak Guangzhou Mandarin. As a Shandong native, Sun Sancai certainly couldn't understand it - apart from the Newspeak commonly used in the military, he could only speak Guangzhou Mandarin.
If you understand the dialect of your hometown, let alone Wuzhou, even if you go to Xisanfu, people will not understand it.
Because Newspeak is the common language in the army, and as a soldier he has little contact with the outside world, he naturally knows very little about Guangzhou Mandarin.
At this time, Li Wensheng became more and more excited as he spoke, and even made moves to cross the cordon. Sun Sancai raised the rifle in his hand in desperation and forced Li Wensheng back with his bayonet.
Li Wensheng remembered his boss's instructions and became worried. He ignored the persuasion of the people around him and pushed forward again. He waved his arms and shouted at Sun Sancai's dancing gestures, demanding that the leader be called.
However, Sun Sancai still didn't understand a word he said. When he saw that the old man was ignorant and disobedient to management, he followed the rules and resorted to "coercive measures" - stabbing him directly with a bayonet would not work, but the butt was ready, so he turned the gun around.
He gave the old man a gun butt.
Li Wensheng was hit hard and fell to the ground with a thud. The surrounding refugees made a commotion and immediately ran away from him.
Unexpectedly, Li Wensheng had the spirit of "being entrusted by others and being loyal to others". After receiving the butt of the gun, he immediately got up and started yelling again.
Sun Sancai became angry and immediately ordered: "Come, tie him up! Pull out a handful of grass and gag his mouth!"
"What's up?"
Sun Sancai turned around and saw that it was the platoon leader Lin Gongyong. He quickly stood at attention and saluted: "Report to the platoon leader that there is an old man who disobeys orders and is causing trouble!"
According to the genealogy, Lin Gongyong was a descendant of the Lin family in Baitu Village. According to the genealogy, he was Lin Xianming's nephew and Lin Gonglao's younger brother. After the Baitu Village was evicted, the entire Lin family was separated. Some moved to Sanya and some stayed in Lingao.
.As the Senate's ruling area became larger and larger, the Lin family branches in the two places were further divided. Because Lin Gongyong's father was a shipbuilder, he was moved to Kaohsiung, and the whole family worked in the local naval dockyard.
Because Baitu Village used to repair boats for people from all over the world, every villager in Baitu Village knew several dialects. After arriving in Kaohsiung, Lin Gongyong came into contact with people from all over the world, so he could not only speak his native Hokkien, but also
Lingao dialect, Qiongshan dialect and Cantonese vernacular are all spoken authentically, and it is difficult for others to recognize the accent. It is for this reason that he was recruited into the non-commissioned officer training corps during the comprehensive conscription before the mainland invasion.
He understood Li Wensheng's words, and listened to him repeatedly asking to see the chief, and felt strange in his heart - the honorific title of chief to the Senate should be rarely known in the cities on the border between Guangdong and Guangxi. How could this old man know about it?
?I then comforted him with a few words in Guangzhou vernacular and asked him what happened.
Li Wensheng was extremely excited when he saw that someone who could understand and speak Cantonese finally came. He didn't care about the shining bayonets. He moved forward, grabbed Lin Gongyong's hands firmly, and kept mumbling:
"I have important information for the Australian Prime Minister."
"What?"
"Please tell the chief that I have information that Lone Wolf gave me!"
Hearing the word "intelligence", Lin Gongyong did not dare to neglect, and immediately took him aside and interrogated him. Unexpectedly, the old man said only "I have important information for the Australian chief minister" and "I was sent by the lone wolf".
Besides, he refused to say anything more.
Lin Gongyong was afraid that this was a Ming Dynasty spy who wanted to see the leader in order to assassinate him. He also asked the soldiers to search his whole body carefully, even opening his bun. No murder weapon was found, except for some sundries.
Besides, there is only an ordinary letter from home.
He looked over these things for a long time, but couldn't find anything strange at all. In the end, he had no choice but to order the people to be locked up alone and send someone to report to the battalion headquarters.
Li Wensheng was placed in a tent and sat anxiously on the camp chair. There were large beads of sweat on his forehead. He felt that he was old and had never been so nervous.
There is a soldier standing outside the tent carrying an Australian gun and a sword on his back. There is no doubt that if he tries to escape, he will be shot to death. The owner has always been in contact with Dachang Rice Store, and behind Dachang Rice Store is an Australian.
It is an open secret that Wuzhou commerce is based on the rice trade, so it is impossible not to deal with Dachang. Naturally, some rumors about Dachang are also known.
Since the boss has dealings with Dachang, he may have some unclear relationship with the Australians. But if the boss doesn’t tell, Li Wensheng won’t ask – that’s the boss’s private matter. However, Li Wensheng doesn’t know much about the Australians.
, for the sake of his boss, it is better to be cautious and not reveal too much information about his boss. So Li Wensheng simply did not do anything, except for what his boss told him: "I have important information to send to the Australian Prime Minister" and "I am a lone wolf faction"
"Come here" and say nothing else.
After waiting for a long time, a sedan arrived - Xu Xu heard that someone had brought a lone wolf, and immediately asked Zhu Quanxing to send him to the headquarters in the south of the city.
"Use a sedan chair and bring him up immediately!"
In order to facilitate command, Zhu Mingxia set up a former enemy command post in the south of Wuzhou City, and Changzhou Island was used as a logistics warehouse and a training ground for troops. Now Yang Zeng's 8th Battalion is being repaired on Changzhou Island. The refugees who have been accommodated are being carried out everywhere.
After a preliminary count, there were more than 18,000 people in total, most of them were the elderly, children and women. There were also some young adults who ran out during the chaos. These young adults were centralized and guarded to prevent Ming army spies from getting in.
.
Zhu Mingxia is worried now: Xiong Wencan’s skill of throwing away the blame is really amazing!
Wuzhou City has developed commerce and trade, and most of the people in the city are engaged in business and industry. They rely on the business opportunities brought by Wuzhou as the rice distribution center in northern and western Guangxi. Those big rice merchants are not big, and most ordinary people outside Wuzhou City have no business.
Their own fields and farms now have nowhere to go. Most of their goods have been looted by the Ming army that expelled them. In addition, Xiong Wencan consciously sold half of his land in the four villages and eight fields outside Wuzhou City before the war.
Half-grabbing land to collect grain, the villages and villages near Wuzhou mostly had enough grain to protect themselves, and it was even more difficult for old, weak, women and children like them to get grain.
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Next update: Volume 7 - Guangzhou Governance Chapter 325