Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 24 15 Army

Zhu Youjian used the fraudulent surrender to trick Liu Fangliang into surrendering himself, the Ming emperor.

This move made hundreds of officials not expect it.

Even Zhu Youjian himself didn't think of it before.

Originally, Zhu Youjian just wanted to give it a try, because he himself was not sure whether his emperor still had a deterrent effect on the intruders formed by these refugees.

He is not sure whether the thousands of years of imperial thought has been deeply ingrained among the common people.

However, the facts tell him that even though he, the emperor, has never been out of the Forbidden City, his influence can completely make tens of thousands of people kneel down.

Of course, this also depends on having a strong enough army on your side.

Otherwise, he simply waited for Li Zicheng's army to attack in Beijing, and then recruited Li Zicheng to surrender.

This is obviously impossible.

Liu Fangliang was forced to do so, and he didn't mind whether his king was Li Zicheng or Zhu Youjian, so he easily chose to surrender in the face of danger. In his eyes, he was the emperor anyway, and being an official under whose hands was not an official .

According to Zhu Youjian's instructions, Liu Fangliang went to the city gate, and passed on Zhu Youjian's decree to order the [-] invaders outside the city to throw away their weapons and surrender.

Most of the [-] invading troops outside the city were auxiliary soldiers or surrendered soldiers from the Ming Dynasty and refugees who were coerced, so their combat effectiveness was already weak. Now that the commander had surrendered, they naturally surrendered.

In this way, Zhu Youjian easily recruited an army of 18, and with the addition of [-] guards in the city, the number of Zhu Youjian's troops surged to [-]!
Since he was trapped in Beijing without a soldier or a tael of silver, he now controls 18 troops.

This has to be said to be a qualitative leap.

However, Zhu Youjian didn't intend to really keep all the [-] Chuangjun, after all, the [-] Chuangjun is not a real army.

Most of them are refugees and defeated guard soldiers from various parts of Ming Dynasty.

These people are not good enough to fight, but they are more serious than one when they harm the people.

But Zhu Youjian also knows that he urgently needs to have a strong enough new force to add weight to his next war competition.

And the [-] troops in front of him is undoubtedly an excellent opportunity for him to increase the size of his new force.

After all, although most of the [-] invading troops are bandits with lax military discipline and no different from bandits, there are also many old thieves who followed Liu Fangliang and others from Chongzhen ten years ago to the present. They can be said to have rich practical experience. Even having fought against Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong Army and Cao Wenzhao's army, they can be regarded as rare elite soldiers in this era. At least they know how to charge and how to survive on the battlefield.

Of course, most of the [-] invaders who surrendered must have committed crimes, and the officers and soldiers of the Ming army who surrendered to the invaders before committed crimes of treason.

But for their crimes, Zhu Youjian did not pursue them, and said that they will never be prosecuted for their previous crimes, but if they commit crimes again in the future, they will be severely punished!

It's not that Zhu Youjian, the emperor, is really kind, but that to fight for the world, sometimes it needs to be ruthless. For example, Li Jiantai, who surrendered knowingly that he is the emperor, will be severely punished, and those officers and soldiers who have betrayed Ming Dynasty or committed crimes before You have to be tolerant, and consider that in the future, you will definitely recruit more officers and soldiers who invaded the army, and you can't just kill them blindly.

After all, after more than ten years of war, the population has dropped sharply. Although these people were once enemies of Ming Dynasty, they were all Han people. Profit from slavery.

Now, after he, the emperor of Ming Dynasty, set a precedent of not pursuing previous crimes when he recruited the Chuangjun, it would encourage more Chuangjun to choose to surrender in the future, and reduce the consumption of each other due to the civil war.

Considering the need to express the benevolence of the emperor and to use this opportunity to expand the size of the army under his control.

Zhu Youjian decided to immediately start a screening of the [-] troops who surrendered.

It is not meaningless for Zhu Youjian to withdraw the entire central organization of Ming Dynasty to the south with a piece of it.

Although these civil servants are usually useless on the road except for running and consuming food, they have played an important role until now.

After all, politics is inseparable from words.

Immediately, Zhu Youjian asked Li Banghua, Shangshu of the Ministry of War, to take charge of the screening of [-] surrendered soldiers, and Sun Shilun, the right servant of the Ministry of War, assisted.

And all the civil servants who went south, no matter whether they used to be from the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the Imperial Academy, or the other six ministries, or from the Guanglu Temple Taipu Temple Honglu Temple Dali Temple of the Guozijian, all have to accept Li Banghua's temporary assignment. Complete the screening of [-] troops within a few days.

According to Zhu Youjian's request, those over the age of 45 and those under the age of 16 must be eliminated.In addition, those who voluntarily go home and do not want to continue serving as soldiers are also eliminated.

Within three days, the hundreds of civil servants who accompanied him insisted on screening 10 people, and finally left 3 new troops, and [-] people chose to leave.

For those who left, Zhu Youjian ordered that each person be given two taels of silver as travel expenses, and at the same time let them gather together to listen to the lectures of the great Ming emperor Zhu Youjian.

Zhu Youjian's lectures are naturally not high-level content, they are nothing more than to win the hearts of the people.

Since Li Zicheng made the slogan that he would not pay the food when the King Chuang came, as the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, if he wanted to win the support of the people all over the world, he naturally had to have his own political ideas. His political ideas were very simple, that is, to let people all over the world There is land to grow, so that the people all over the world can have enough food.

Even Zhu Youjian knelt down in front of these people and swore to the sky.

The [-] former Chuangjun soldiers who were about to return to the farms did not expect that the Emperor of Ming Dynasty would give him two taels of silver, so they were very moved.

After returning to his hometown, he would naturally take the words of Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty back to the lower villages, and then served as a propaganda team for Zhu Youjian for free.

Zhu Youjian is not sure whether these people will continue to become bandits after they leave, but he believes that there will always be a few who will go home with peace of mind to marry a wife and hold children.

In this way, at least the damaged grassroots of society can restore a little productivity.

After all, this country is still a society dominated by a small-scale peasant economy, and one more farmer who goes back to farm will have more stability.

Of course, the task of the emperor himself is to let them have land to grow, and to be able to farm the land safely, and the ultimate task is to make them have enough food.

Of the 7 surrendered Chuangjun troops, [-] remained.

In other words, the number of troops actually controlled by Zhu Youjian, the emperor of Ming Dynasty, has still surged to as many as 15!
(End of this chapter)