At first, there were only more than ninety strong men who followed Zhao Yucheng in the battle.
Now the number of villagers who can participate in the battle exceeds 10,000.
This is of course a good thing, but including the accompanying family members, the total number of people who followed Zhao Yucheng into Luoxiao Mountain exceeded 40,000. This number actually exceeded the earlier calculations by Zhao Yucheng and others.
But since people have taken the initiative to keep up, they can only accept it and cannot give up. They are all the hope for the success of the future revolution.
Of course, it doesn't matter. The amount of food they currently store is still enough for these people to eat for a while. The remaining gap will be filled after the bandit-occupied areas are captured.
Several of the members who followed Zhao Yucheng south were children from the mountains and were very clear about the rules of fighting in the mountains. After initially settling the people who followed him into the mountains, they integrated a team of 800 people and started fighting.
It didn't take them a few days to capture and occupy these bandit villages one by one. They found a large amount of food, weapons, livestock and money, and also integrated the normal agricultural population in these bandit villages. .
After capturing these villages, Zhao Yucheng and others made new discoveries.
They found that the ordinary little bandits were of course poor, but those mountain kings were extremely rich, and they could squeeze out a lot of money with just a little squeeze.
They can cooperate with the government, do what the government needs them to do, and become an important tool for the government to ask for money and food from the central court to appease the local areas. Of course, the government will also give them some oil and water so that they can continue to be obedient, continue to work, and make money for the government. .
At that time, everyone in the imperial court will divide the money into 30-70 accounts, or 20-80 percent accounts, and of course there will also be 100-90 percent accounts.
All in all, both the government and the bandits gained money, so for these mountain kings who colluded with the government, going to the mountains to become bandits was equivalent to another way of getting rich.
The mountain kings have meat to eat, and the little bandits can follow the smell, and they will never die of hunger. Then they listen to the mountain kings, and they are like chicken blood, contributing to the accumulation of wealth of the officials and the mountain kings. They are very happy. .
Then all this will come at an advantage to the Renaissance Society and the Peasant Army.
During the whole April when the Ming army marched in and the Song army was defeated like a mountain, Zhao Yuchengdu led the peasant army to "seek a life" in the Luoxiao Mountain area. They wielded steel knives and under excellent command, they wiped out the scattered bandits. Beat the shit out of me.
The peasant army occupied a total of five relatively large mountain basins, killed many bandits, incorporated a lot of agricultural population, and took over all the foundations they left behind.
The larger of these mountain basins can accommodate slightly more people, while the smaller ones can accommodate fewer people. Surrounding several high mountains, the five mountain basins are more than enough to accommodate more than 40,000 people.
So they started living here.
When life had just begun, Zhao Yucheng held a branch meeting and asked Fuxing members to pay close attention to the ideological education of these farmers and carry out very direct propaganda to the farmers.
Let them know the current situation and let them realize that they can only be safe if they stay in the mountains, otherwise they will die.
Xu Tong understood this task very well and carried it out resolutely.
Xu Tong announced Zhao Yucheng's decision to the more than 800 villagers in the village he was responsible for, hoping that the villagers would understand.
There is real danger out there, and it is not a fake danger.
After the large army arrived in the mountains, Zhao Yucheng quickly identified the five mountain basins as five townships. Each township arranged a general person in charge and a responsible team to build a township farmers' association structure.
He must first build up the resistance organization structure in the entire Luoxiao Mountain area. After the leadership organization structure is established, things will be done in an orderly manner.
The five townships are named Dongxiang, Nanxiang, Beixiang, Xixiang and Daxiang according to their respective directions.
Zhao Yucheng himself is in charge of Daxiang as the president of the Daxiang Farmers Association.
Du Qi, the deputy director, serves as the president of the Dongxiang Farmers' Association, Wei Qiang, the director of the General Affairs Department, serves as the president of the Nanxiang Farmers' Association, Lu Chengren, the deputy director of the General Affairs Department, serves as the president of the Beixiang Farmers' Association, and Duan Yang, the director of the Organization Department, serves as the president of the Xixiang Farmers' Association. .
After the large organizational structure was established, it was divided into several villages. People were generally distributed according to their original villages. There were also cases where two or three villages were merged together.
Members of the Organization Department, the General Affairs Department, the Military Affairs Department, the Supervision Department and other ministries and departments went to various start-up villages according to the orders of the Renaissance Society branch, and served as the leaders of the village peasant associations, leading the villagers in production.
Time is tight, the tasks are heavy, and there are so many things to do. There is not much time left for each revival member. There are only more than a hundred of them in total, and almost everyone holds two or three positions to get things done. That's really not easy.
Fortunately, every member is also an educated, cultured, and thoughtful person. They are not afraid of hardship or tiredness, and are full of energy. They will soon lead everyone to start building their own new home.
During this period, ideological education work is of course also a top priority.
Especially at that time, some villagers wanted to return home. They felt the difficulty and uncertainty of life in the mountains, missed their home, their small dilapidated house and the few acres of thin farmland, and they were particularly hopeful.
Although Xu Tong is young, he also knows the importance of ideological education work.
Doing ideological work well is better and more effective than using physical means to restrict farmers' freedom.
Xu Tong has personal experience of this.
When he just came out of the training class, he was assigned to a new village near Zhongdu, where he practiced with his original instructor.
He witnessed with his own eyes that the instructor worked tirelessly from door to door and finally managed to convince the villagers that they should obey the court's decision to stop growing wheat and plant soybeans instead.
As far as he knew, the Ming Dynasty paid unprecedented attention to agricultural production. It not only provided many welfare policies to encourage the development of production, but also adjusted agricultural production activities based on actual conditions. The scope and projects of the adjustments far exceeded those of previous dynasties.
The imperial court would hold an agricultural work meeting for that quarter every quarter. At the meeting, the agricultural production level and conditions of each region would be comprehensively judged and adjustments would be made.
A meeting held in November of the first year of Hongwu decided that some wheat-growing areas in the Yanyun area should be replaced by soybeans to increase soybean production.
The imperial court needs more soybeans to make tofu, press soybean oil and brew soy sauce. They can also be used for raising war horses. People can eat the remaining bean dregs and can also be used as feed for raising livestock. There are many benefits.
For ordinary people who generally lack protein intake, soybeans are really the best thing.
However, because people in grain-producing areas are generally more willing to grow food to gain a sense of security, and regard food as something bigger than the sky, it is not easy to get grain farmers to switch to planting soybeans, and they have encountered opposition from many villagers. Even though I know how to do the work, I can’t do it.
So the instructor went to each villager's home to talk to them about the differences and similarities between grain and soybeans, as well as the court's plans, and the court's guarantee on soybean purchase and food prices in the region, etc.
When it came to the intense part, the instructor took the white slip and placed it in front of the villagers.
"This is where the credibility of the imperial court lies. Since you believe in I-Tiaos and are willing to use I-Tiaos, you must believe in the credibility of the Imperial Court. Otherwise, wouldn't the I-Tiaos in your hands be just a piece of waste paper?"
The credibility accumulated by the Ming court through issuing IOUs over a long period of time finally convinced the farmers.
It took more than ten days, and the words were worn out, and he visited more than 30 households and worked almost non-stop. The instructor finally convinced the whole village to plant soybeans, thus completing the task of superiors. tasks assigned.
By the time Xu Tong was transferred to the 108-person team of Nanxia, the instructor had been promoted to the Township Farmers Association and served as the president of the Township Farmers Association, and his work was going very well.
That work experience was very unforgettable for Xu Tong. Now facing the dilemma that the revolution has just begun, ideological work is even more important.
So Xu Tong first started to explain from the perspective of the officers and soldiers of the Southern Song Dynasty.
"We all killed the officials and robbed the government's money. The government will definitely not let us go and will definitely send troops. Now we are thinking about our land and houses. Once the officials and soldiers come, we will die. How cruel are the officials and soldiers? Do you need proof?”
