Jia Yucun hesitated for a moment and glanced at Xue Jun beside him.
He is from Huzhou. He studied and worked as an official and a teacher in Jiangnan. Well, Yangzhou is not considered Jiangnan, but it is right next to Jiangnan. He really doesn’t know much about the situation in Shandong.
This sudden bandit chaos made him very confused. He didn't know what to do for a while, and he couldn't come up with many strategies to deal with it.
But when Feng Ziying asked him, if he didn't even get a reply, he might be looked down upon, and he might be used as a scapegoat when he was really desperate.
"Brother Feng, we are new here and are not familiar with the territory of Shandong. However, I also know that this canal line is the hinterland of Shandong and has troops stationed there. Even if the guards are mobilized, I don't know if there are any camps along this canal line. Soldiers?"
The Great Zhou Dynasty followed the Ming system, with the exception of the two capitals in the north and south, with the Weisuo Army as the main military force. However, during the eighty years of the Great Zhou Dynasty, except for the nine borders in the north and the Fujian and Zhejiang sea areas in the south, it had to face the Mongols, Jurchen Rangers and Japanese pirates at sea. Outside, the inland areas are generally calm.
Even if there are occasional bandit rebellions, they are wiped out immediately. Therefore, in the past ten or twenty years, the Guards have been gradually reduced and weakened due to insufficient military resources.
For example, the Linqing Guard should have had 5,600 guards according to the Zhou Dynasty. However, the Zhou Dynasty followed the Ming system. In fact, more than two-thirds of them were reduced to garrison troops, which are the so-called military households. They mainly farmed. Not trained in military affairs, just used as an additional source of soldiers.
There are only a thousand or so people who are actually retained in the establishment, and among these more than a thousand people, there are both old and weak. Half of the soldiers who can be drawn out to fight are already Amitabhas.
However, in the inland provinces, in addition to the guards at various garrison posts, there are also camps stationed at strategic locations.
This battalion is basically drawn from the elite of each guard post, and is led by battalion officers such as the general, deputy generals and generals, guerrillas, and garrison officers.
In other words, these forces are equivalent to the emergency forces garrisoned in various provinces. They are the armies that can really be used to fight hard battles. They must accept orders from the Ministry of War and be deployed to guard the border at any time, and they must also be responsible for the stability of a place. And like the current Guards Army, it has If it is reduced to a general security force, it will be difficult to sustain the overall situation.
Feng You glanced at Jia Yucun. This Jia Yucun was quite powerful. He asked the key question in just one sentence.
With the current bandit power in Linqing City, I am afraid that even the return of hundreds of guards will not be able to help. If there is no guard camp to exterminate, I am afraid that the bandit chaos will get bigger and bigger.
Of course Feng Ziying didn't know how many camps were stationed in this province in Shandong, but Feng You did.
"Along the canal, only Jining and Dezhou have troops stationed, and there are also troops stationed in Jinan to the east."
Feng You did not mention coastal areas such as Denglai. Firstly, the journey was far away. Secondly, the troops defending the coastal areas were not within the reach of ordinary people.
"I'm afraid it's not easy to mobilize the soldiers in this battalion, right?"
Xue Jun also came from an official background. His ancestor was a member of Ziweishe, but his generation declined and he became a merchant family.
Of course, he could be considered a member of the royal merchant family, and he knew something about the affairs of the government.
According to the rules of the Great Zhou Dynasty, the three major battalions in central Beijing and the movement of battalion soldiers are under the direct control of the Ministry of War. If it is an ordinary local matter, the battalion soldiers will not get involved.
Even ordinary horse thieves and bandits cannot mobilize battalions. That is a matter for the local government and inspection department. Even if the situation is bad, there is still a military preparedness road to summon soldiers from various local guards to help deal with it.
For the camp soldiers, there are only two things that can be done. One is that the Ministry of War orders the deployment of border guards for fighting, and the other is that Dusi and Xingdusi request transfers. There is only one reason for Dusi to request transfers, and that is that there is a rebellion by bandits or Japanese pirates invading the interior.
There have been no Japanese pirates in Shandong for decades. They only existed in the pre-Ming Dynasty, so they can be ignored. As for rebellion, the hinterland of Shandong is right under the eyes of the capital. If there is an occasional civil unrest, it will be wiped out in an instant. It is basically useless. No soldiers stationed in the town.
Without Dusi's writing, most people would just want to go to the garrison camp and imitate the Yamen style of beating drums and knocking on doors to persuade the camp soldiers to dispatch, which is simply nonsense.
Feng You obviously knew this. The soldiers stationed in the town, like the troops stationed on the nine sides, generally did not listen to the local authorities at all. Even the writings of the Dusi and Xingdusi had to be considered, depending on the situation.
Not to mention that people asking for help can be pushed to the local health office.
It's not impossible to mobilize the camp troops, but you have to mobilize the Shandong Dusi.
The problem is that you have to report to Jinan. The Shandong Dusi will definitely send someone to investigate after hearing the news. Banditry does not start just because you talk about banditry.
Even if it is confirmed that there is indeed a bandit, if you meet someone who doesn't take it seriously, you may have to ask the Ministry of War for instructions, and you don't know how long it will be.
If you are a little worried, you also need to write a letter to ask the soldiers from Dezhou or Jining or Jinan to send troops to Linqing. I am afraid that this trip will take more than ten days.
If this gang of thieves is really entrenched in the Feng family mansion and refuses to leave, the dry food and water stored in this secret room will not be able to cope with it. Even if everything goes well and the officers and soldiers are driven away, the people in this secret room may not be able to survive. .
"Mr. Jia, I know what you mean. It's difficult to mobilize the battalion, and there will definitely be too little time." Feng You shook his head decisively, "I'm afraid it will be too late until the battalion arrives."
"But the Linqing Guards have been transferred away. I don't know who ordered it, and I don't know when they will return. How can we just sit there and wait for death?" Jia Yucun was also a little anxious. He still had a bright future, so he climbed up to Jia Yucun. The Wang family can achieve great things by this line, how can they die in Linqing City?
"Uncle You, besides the camp soldiers and guards, are there any soldiers around here who can ask for help?" Feng Ziying was also at a loss.
He didn't know much about matters involving military mobilization within the Great Zhou Dynasty. This was because he was born into a family of generals. Ordinary people didn't know much about these matters.
"Then there are the cavalry soldiers." Feng You sighed.
The Cao soldiers are stationed nearby, but everyone knows what the Cao soldiers are. In name, they are guards protecting water transportation, but in fact they have long been reduced to a bunch of garbage who make a living on waterways, even worse than The guardsmen were inferior and not worth mentioning at all.
Although Feng Ziying didn't know the situation of the cavalry, she could feel from the expressions of Feng You, Jia Yucun, Xue Jun and others that the cavalry could not be relied upon at all.
The task of the Cao soldiers was to guard the Shuici warehouse and then escort the grain to the capital. In December of the first year, the grain was put into the warehouse. The Governor of Water Transport was responsible for supervising the entry of the grain into the warehouse and starting the transportation of the grain to the capital. When the water transportation was completed in September of the following year, it was considered complete.
The five national water storage warehouses located in Huai'an, Xuzhou, Linqing, and Dezhou, plus Tianjin, a shipping hub, have become the biggest reliance on ensuring the food supply for Beijing's millions of people.
Therefore, for Cao soldiers, the sky and the earth are not as big as Cao Liang. As long as the safety of Cao Liang is not endangered, they will not participate in any other affairs.
Since grain was the lifeline for millions of people in the capital city of the Great Zhou Dynasty, no one dared to think about the safety of water transportation in the past few decades. This also made the grain soldiers along the canal increasingly become no different from ordinary households.
Not to mention being dragged out to fight, even if they are really attacked by bandits, as long as the matter is not too big, they are more willing to suppress it.
At worst, they could use the pretext of "floating away" to excuse the matter. This has become a common practice.
