Chapter 20 Survival

The wind picked up gradually and the rain fell heavier and heavier.

There were lightning and thunder in the sky, deafening movements one after another, and raindrops gathered into streams on the top of the tent, flowing down like silver threads.

The tree branches were blown by the wind and made a rattling sound. Li Zijing tightened the Yan Fei Dao around his waist and looked around at everyone again.

There are more than a hundred old soldiers in the audience who have been fighting with the battalion for many years. They have fought with officers and soldiers and the Qing army. Each of them has many lives on his hands.

After waiting for a while, Li Zijing found that the impatient expressions on these people's faces became more and more obvious.

Li Zijing understood that if it weren't for Liu Fangliang standing behind him, this group of people would have yelled at him and attacked him.

Thinking of this, Li Zijing felt a little happy.

A mere hundred or so bosses are so difficult to manage. If he directly became the former camp general, he would not be overwhelmed by more than two thousand bosses.

You can't always rely on Liu Fangliang and the people from Zuoying to support him. Without direct connections, it is difficult to control his subordinates.

There are some reasons why the Dashun army failed to get rid of the bandit style and the Qing army followed closely behind them.

Whether it was the attack on the capital or the defeat of Shanhaiguan, these all came too suddenly. The Dashun army was pushed back to the northwest before it had time to change.

Li Zijing's original troops had a full strength of 256, but only a little over 100 were present. However, they had all moved with the battalion to fight for many years, and they were the most ferocious old bandits among the rogue bandits.

Throwing one of them outside can easily deter dozens of refugees.

The quality of these veteran soldiers is not low, they are stronger than the Green Battalion of the Qing Army, and they can be trained to compete with the regular Eight Banners of Manchuria.

What is lacking is iron discipline.

These people have been used to being left unchecked for a long time. Even the bad habit of coercing women to accompany them to the camp has been passed down to this day and needs to be changed as soon as possible.

Recalling the look in the woman's eyes when she died just now, Li Zijing's expression froze slightly.

Time is running out. If you want to use these former bandits to your advantage, you need to completely change their identities.

The bandit habits of the past must be completely eradicated!

In troubled times, Li Zijing now deeply understands these five words.

"Bring someone to commit the crime."

The two soldiers of Shun Army who were intimidated by Li Zijing in the camp, one on the left and the other on the right, escorted out an old soldier of Shun Army.

Seeing this, there were even more discussions around him.

Everyone didn't understand what Li Zijing was doing at night. Even if Liu Fangliang was here, he couldn't stop him.

"Xiao Chuang Wang, what are you causing trouble here?"

"Brothers are very tired from fighting the Qing captives during the day. If nothing happens, the younger one will go back first!"

Looking at the complaining old soldiers, Liu Fangliang's eyes narrowed, and he was about to shout for help when he heard Li Zijing's voice.

"From now on, in the army, officials will be commensurate with their official positions. If you call King Xiaochuang again, behead him!"

The old soldier who shouted those words was immediately shocked, his face turned red, and after holding it in for a long time, he still retreated.

"As commanded."

"Xiaobu, head of the department!"

When the words came to his lips, Liu Fangliang did not continue to speak.

Li Zijing looked around at everyone, wanting to treat others in his own way.

"I brought him here to enforce strict military discipline."

"After that, if anyone in our headquarters robs people and takes their wives and daughters to accompany the army, they will be killed."

As he spoke, Li Zijing put his hand on the Yanling knife at his waist and asked softly.

"Do you have any objections?"

It is certain that there are objections. The reason why Li Zijing asked this question was to wait for them to jump out with his own question.

Throughout the ages, it is always most effective to catch typical cases and kill chickens to scare monkeys.

The old soldiers of the fifth field battalion of the Dashun Army were basically from the northwest. Historically, there was a lot of looting in the Jifu area, but military discipline improved when they returned to the northwest. This is precisely why.

When you rob in the capital, no one knows them, so you can rob with confidence, and you don't have to worry about being seen by acquaintances when you kill someone.

But it's different when you return to the northwest. What matters is that you can honor your ancestors and return to your hometown with honor.

Even the deep-rooted idea of ​​many Dashun soldiers was to grab some supplies near the capital, then return to their hometowns to buy houses and fields, marry wives and have children.

Eradicating their bandit habits requires step by step, but Li Zijing does not have the time, so he must directly administer strong medicine.

The rules that had been established for many years were not even abolished by Li Zicheng in the capital. Now that they were suddenly abolished, the bosses naturally couldn't accept it.

The old soldiers, who numbered over a hundred, were full of resentment and injustice as far as they could see.

A veteran soldier wearing cotton armor first pretended to hold his fists, and then looked directly at him with fierce eyes.

"Brothers have followed His Majesty to fight for many years, and they have worked hard without any merit."

"We in Dashun do not have a fixed monthly salary. We have always resorted to robbery to support our salary. The boss does not allow robbery. How do we ask the brothers to live?"

After he said this, Yu's old soldiers all echoed his words.

"We will follow His Majesty through life and death for the sake of fame and wealth."

"Your Majesty won't give it, but allows us to loot. Now that the general doesn't allow looting, he won't give our brothers a way to live!"

Li Zijing's expression gradually became serious. When he was studying his graduation thesis in later generations, he had already realized that one of the main problems of Dashun was that there was no perfect taxation and payment system.

In most areas within Dashun, taxes based on stolen land are replaced by levies based on land acreage.

When preparing for his graduation thesis, Li Zijing could not find any historical records that Dashun had officially collected taxes.

In other words, in all likelihood, Li Zicheng did not receive any taxes at all.

There are only a limited number of powerful and wealthy households. When the powerful and wealthy households in local state capitals heard that the Dashun Army was coming, they either moved their families in advance or transferred their property to the south.

As a result, the farther the Dashun army went, the harder it became to obtain food and salary supplements. Without these two things as the basis, it would be difficult to maintain the order of the army.

Looking at plum blossoms to quench thirst and painting cakes to satisfy hunger can relieve temporary hardship, but you cannot always let your soldiers fight for you, you can only allow them to replenish supplies on the spot.

To replenish supplies on the spot, officers at all levels must be delegated power and soldiers must be allowed to loot the place.

Once you get used to the rush, what can't you do?

In this way, the policy of not collecting taxes because of caring for the people ended up causing all the negative consequences back to the people.

Compared with the normal collection of taxes, the impact of this kind of military excess is even greater.

To solve this problem, we can only establish a complete tax and salary system to change the current bizarre situation of supplementing food on the spot.

With fixed monthly rations and strict military discipline and control, it is not difficult to transform these Dashun veterans into regular armies.

The key to the problem is that when Li Zicheng established the government in Xiangyang last year, in order to cater to the people's sentiments, he announced that the Dashun occupied area would be exempted from taxation for three years.

This policy seemed good at the time, but once it was issued, it further contributed to the current situation where the Dashun Army has no fixed monthly rations.

Collecting food and salary from the occupied areas breaks the promise of three-year tax exemption. If food and salary are not collected, there will be no fixed source of food and salary.

After entering Beijing, Li Zicheng actually discovered the seriousness of this problem, showed some signs of change, and began to win over Jin gentry and former Ming officials.

And on the eighth day of April this year, an order was issued to stop the looting and compensation operations in Dashun, and all detained bureaucrats and gentry would be released regardless of whether the stolen goods were recovered or not.

However, this trend had just begun in Beijing, and the process was interrupted by the entry of Qing troops into Guan Shengsheng.

Then they were chased all the way back to the northwest. There were turmoils and rebellions in the occupied area, and there was no time to think about the tax and payment system.

Tacitly agreeing to coerce women into joining the army was also a helpless move by Li Zicheng who could not meet the food and salary requirements for his soldiers and turned a blind eye.

If you want to strictly enforce military discipline, this hurdle is impossible to overcome.

Li Zicheng's measures were one thing. In Li Zijing's view, his team should look like a regular army.

Now that Dashun has been established, we should no longer regard ourselves as rogue bandits.

The second most important thing is to find a stable base to establish a tax and salary system. The most important thing is to train the team first.

With a good and obedient army, nothing will be difficult.
Chapter completed!