Hengyuan Town is thirty miles away from Yongkang Village. After leaving Yongkang Village and heading south along the official road, it takes half a day to reach it. In order to prevent attacks, the food requisition team was divided into three marching formations, each more than a hundred meters apart. The front team, Cao Ergou, walked in front with his own fire to act as a scout, and the rear team was filled with Huang Dagen and his own fire personnel. The rest walk in the middle.
During the march, Ouyang Xuan followed Li Shuang and Yu Zhu closely, talking about the food requisition as they walked. In the early Southern Song Dynasty, collecting grain and tax from Sichuan was not the responsibility of the army, but was handled by specialized agencies dispatched by the imperial court. It was a lucrative job. However, since the Mongols invaded Shu, the official governance order had collapsed, the people were impoverished, and thieves and powerful men were running rampant, making this job a thankless one. Especially recently, Wang Liangchen's troops stationed in Lizhou, north of Sichuan, where the Mongolian army has been intensifying their raids in western Sichuan, are often raided by Mongolian reconnaissance cavalry in the countryside of Chongqing Prefecture. Going out to collect grain has become a high-risk job. They used to compete to go out to fish for oil and water. The generals of the Chongqing Mansion complained of illness or made excuses to avoid their tasks. This unfortunate task fell to Li Shuang, who was in charge of public security. Not only was this a dangerous task, but Pan Tongzhi also made things difficult for him when preparing to go out to collect grain. For example, he did not provide food rations for the trip because the Chongqing government did not have much food in stock to eat the food collected; for example, he did not send a ship to go. The reason was that he was afraid of being captured by the Tatar cavalry; for another example, Li Shuang planned to borrow a few more bows to increase his strength, but was rejected by the officer in charge of military supplies. The reason was that the city defense of Chongqing Mansion was more important... ..
"They just want to drive us out of Chongqing Mansion. It's best if they can collect food. If they can't collect food, it won't be a pity to be killed by the Tatar soldiers..." Li Shuang said angrily. These words shocked Yu Zhu next to him. He pulled Li Shuang and whispered, "Sir, be careful that walls have ears."
Li Shuangyu was still angry, stopped talking, and turned his scolding to Yongkang County. On the road from Chongqing Mansion to Yongkang County, the villages along the road were already empty. Some villagers hid early when they saw the grain collection team coming. There were two small villages along the way, but the villagers did not escape. Judging from the size, there should be more than a hundred people in them, so they probably had some food. However, when the guards on the wall saw the food collection team approaching from a distance, they closed the door. Li Shuang went to call and did not answer or open the door. He only threw out some dry biscuits, which was not enough for the food collection team to eat for one day. Even if Li Shuang had a heart to care for the people, other food collection teams from Chongqing Prefecture would have broken through the fort and robbed it by force.
The encounter just now at the Yongkang County Government Office made Li Shuang even more angry. Yongkang County Magistrate Cheng Jinyong sat high on the Grand Master's chair in the main hall, and did not invite Li Shuang and Yu Zhu to sit down. He waited for them to finish explaining their intention, then rolled his eyes and said, "When you go back and report to Pan Tongzong, Yongkang County maintains 2,000 people in the city." It is still difficult to survive. Where can we send surplus grain to Chongqing Mansion? The people in the city are looking forward to Chongqing Mansion to transport food day and night to relieve their hunger." Without waiting for Li Shuang and Yu Zhu to answer, Cao Zhengyong, the captain of Yongkang County, said, "Next month is the birthday of Mr. Yao Shian of Yunding City. Mr. Xie and I are worried about the gifts. There is still money and food to send to Chongqing. Qing Mansion?" Ouyang Xuan is familiar with the history of the Southern Song Dynasty. As a senior travel companion, he has also visited Yunding City. After the famous minister Yu Jie took charge of Sichuan in the late Southern Song Dynasty, he presided over the construction of a mountain defense system with the help of the Ran brothers in Bozhou to restrain the Mongolian cavalry. The most famous eight fortresses were known as the "Eight Pillars in Central Sichuan". Yunding City on the Tuojiang River is one of them. This Yunding City overlooks the vast Western Sichuan Plain and is the most important fortress guarding Chengdu. Due to the Mongolian raids on Sichuan several times, the prefectures and counties in western Sichuan were ruined. The court of the Southern Song Dynasty also moved the government offices on Chengdufu Road and Tongchuanfu Road to Yunding City. As the most important fulcrum in western Sichuan to resist the Mongolian army, Yunding City has 8,000 elite soldiers and is the mountain city with the largest number of troops stationed among the "Eight Pillars in Central Sichuan". The general guard is Yao Shian, who is corrupt, perverts the law, favors nepotism, and monopolizes power. Yunding City is managed by him like a private domain. He fawned over the imperial ministers headed by Prime Minister Xie Fangshu, and even Yu Jie, then the highest official of Sichuan, could not enter Yunding City because of his obstruction. Yu Jie was framed and died unjustly by Xie Fangshu and other traitorous officials in the court. He was one of the important accomplices. Cao Zhengyong hinted that Li Shuang, Yu Zhu, and Yao Shi'an were Xie Jinyong and his backers. Even though Pan Tongzhi of Chongqing Mansion was his immediate boss, he could do nothing to them.
"The army cannot control the people, so how can Pan Tongzhi manage the matter of grain collection?" Ouyang Xuan knew very well that Song Taizu founded the country because of the "Huangqiao Mutiny". In order to prevent military generals from taking over their power, the consistent national policy of the two Song Dynasties was to use culture to control military force. The system design restricts the power of generals everywhere, which is also the most fundamental reason for the rigid tactics and low combat effectiveness of the Song Dynasty.
"Brother Xuan doesn't know. Since Chongqing Prefecture was massacred by Tatar soldiers a few years ago, the officials and people either died or fled. The imperial court originally planned to abandon the city, but due to its important military position, it was restored. For a long time, it only had troops stationed and no control over the people. The imperial court also planned to send officials to manage the people. However, since this place was the site of the Four War, there were still Tatar invasions from time to time, so all the people sent could not come due to illness, so the food collection and other matters were left to Pan Tongzhiquan." Li Shuang explained. Since Ouyang Xuan joined the team, everyone no longer calls him elder, but calls him brother Youxuan to show his closeness.
"After Chengdu was massacred by the Tatars, the old city was not restored and is still in ruins," Yu Zhu added.
The weather was hot in the summer afternoon, and everyone was walking very fast. Although Ouyang Xuan exercised all year round, he could only keep up. He secretly admired the hard work of his comrades. They were all sallow and skinny, but they walked quickly. They stayed up all night last night and only ate a horse's offal. Today they were marching in a hurry, but no one complained. It is said that although the trip to Yongkang City did not collect food, it was not nothing. I just learned from Yu Zhu that Huang Dagen used 200 kilograms of pickled horse meat to secretly exchange it with the city's treasury officials for 50 kilograms of salt, which was hard currency like gold during the war. Huang Dagen carried the salt on his back alone, but he could keep up with the others.
As the sun set in the west, we saw Hengyuan Town from a distance. Li Shuang ordered Cao Ergou to take people to explore the road, and the others hid in the woods beside the road to rest. Not long after, Cao Ergou and the three people who went to explore the road returned to the hiding place: "Master Li, we took a closer look and found that there is nothing abnormal in Hengyuan Town, and there are no Tatar soldiers or bandits nearby." Everyone was about to set off, but Li Shuang stopped everyone to declare military discipline before giving the order to enter Hengyuan Town. Compared with the Mongolian soldiers whose military discipline was corrupt and brutal, although the Song soldiers were not bloodthirsty, they often disturbed the villagers and the people were afraid to avoid them.
Ouyang Xuan followed everyone into Hengyuan Town silently. What Cao Ergou said just now made him very puzzled. There was a thought that kept swirling in his mind: Song soldiers were just afraid of Tatar soldiers, were they still afraid of bandits? "
