The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

According to the Red Lady's letter, since October 21, when Liu Sheng led the main force of the rebel army to leave Queshan, there have been no fewer refugees coming to Queshan County every day to seek relief.

The number of new refugees every day may be less than a thousand, or more than a thousand.

The Red Lady sent people to conduct a secret investigation and learned that although there were fewer refugees coming from Fucheng, there were more refugees coming from other counties in Runing.

Not only did refugees come from Suiping, Xiping, Shangcai, and Xincai in the Ru River Basin, but also from Zhenyang in the south and even Xixian, Luoshan, and Xinyang Prefecture, after hearing the news!

By the time the Red Lady wrote this letter on the fourth day of November, there were nearly 20,000 newly added refugees with families outside Queshan County!

The number of single young men who were left outside the county to train as civilian husbands and warriors also reached more than 8,000!

Previously, when Liu Sheng left Queshan County on September 24, he left behind more than 60,000 shi of grain.

But later the Red Lady was responsible for transporting refugees and food, and each time she transported more than 10,000 stones of food to Tianmu Mountain.

Coupled with the consumption of the rebels themselves and the consumption of refugee relief, the food collected by the rebels has rapidly decreased.

By late October, Liu Sheng sent troops from Queshan to attack Suiping. The rebels in Queshan County had less than 20,000 shi of food.

Fortunately, Hong Niangzi and others had sent people to Zhuangbao villages in the countryside to "borrow food", otherwise the rebels would have even less food left in Queshan County.

In the short half a month after Liu Sheng left, the number of rebels and refugees in Queshan County reached a peak of more than 30,000.

Four to five hundred stones of food are consumed every day.

In order to reduce the food pressure on Queshan and facilitate Liu Sheng's return to immigrate to North America, the Red Lady moved about 10,000 refugees to Tianmu Mountain.

Even so, after less than half a month, the rebel army only had more than 10,000 shi of food left in Queshan.

(Food will also be consumed during transporting food and migrating immigrants, and there are quite a few.)

Even if there are no more refugees coming outside Queshan County, the remaining food will be used sparingly. If the food used for refugee relief is halved, it will only be enough for two months at most.

The problem is that as winter approaches, the number of refugees will only increase, not decrease.

Besides, the rebels have to hold on until next summer's harvest.

Although Liu Sheng plans to attack Ruyang to obtain food, it is still unclear how much food he can obtain from Ruyang.

The red lady wrote a letter to tell her about the food shortage.

She hoped that Liu Sheng would act earlier to avoid failure in attacking Ruyang, or not getting enough food from Ruyang after breaking the city, which would put the rebels in a real food crisis...

It was indeed beyond Liu Sheng's expectation that so many refugees would come to Queshan.

After thinking about it for a moment, he guessed that it was probably the Runing government office that asked the county offices below to lure the refugees to Queshan, so that the rebels would have a greater burden on rescuing the refugees.

Although in Liu Sheng's plan, it would be most appropriate to attack Ruyang in late November.

But Lady Red’s concerns in her letter are not without reason.

He cannot pin all his hopes of obtaining food on conquering Ruyang.

Although even if the attack on Ruyang fails, or he fails to obtain enough food from Ruyang, he will not starve to death by sending all the refugees to North America.

However, when food and other supplies are insufficient, the efficiency of immigrants' reclamation in North America will inevitably be greatly reduced, and many people will even die in the winter.

Therefore, it is better to attack Ruyang earlier and leave some room for time.

As for the defeat of Ruyang, it may attract the attention of the Ming Dynasty court and send heavy troops to suppress it, but it will be next year.

At worst, the rebels will withdraw from Ruyang and even Queshan and retreat to Tianmu Mountain.

It is estimated that at that time, he would have a few hundred thousand people under his command, and with North America as his base, he would no longer be afraid of the Ming army's siege and blockade.

Moreover, when Li Zicheng breaks Luoyang first and then opens the seal, the Ming army will probably not care about Runing.

Therefore, on the day he received the letter from the Red Lady, Liu Sheng sent a fast horse to Wuyang County to notify Yang Heqing, Peng Youyi and others to evacuate.

In the past three days, they have sent the Arms Bureau and hundreds of craftsmen and their families who were forcibly recruited from the county to Tieshanji.

A batch of food and supplies collected in the county town were also sent over.

All you need to do is send the remaining supplies over later.

He organized the transportation of money, grain, iron materials and other materials in Tieshanji.

There were 19 Mingyong Battalions organized by more than miners as civilian laborers. In addition, on the way to Wuyang, he led the rebels to borrow food, mules, horses and vehicles from Zhuangzhai along the way. There was no need to worry about Tieshan Market. The supplies cannot be transported.

Moreover, in such a large team, all the civilians were young men who had worked as miners, so there was no need to worry about bandits and bandits on the road.

As long as the bandits and bandits are not blind, they will not have the idea of ​​escorting the rebel team.

The destination of the escort is not far away, which is Suiping County, eighty or ninety miles away...

In just three days, the money, grain and materials seized by the rebels in Tieshanji, Wuyang County and other places, as well as the collected craftsmen, were all escorted outside Suiping County.

The tenth day of November.

Liu Sheng held a military meeting in his tent.

The battalion commanders, battalion deputies, and military and political officers from the three battalions of the Guards and the five battalions of the standing army were all present at the meeting.

Among them, Shen Zhaoxian arrived with three sentries from the Sixth Battalion just today - at Tieshanji, Liu Sheng wrote a reply to the red lady and asked him to be sent to Queshan quickly.

In the letter, he mentioned the military expansion again.

Shen Zhaoxian brought three sentries of the Sixth Battalion to cooperate with the army expansion.

After the meeting starts.

Liu Sheng stood like all the generals.

He got straight to the point: “This meeting mainly announced two things. The first thing is emergency military expansion.

I plan to expand the standing army to twelve battalions and form a regiment-level military establishment based on the battalion-level establishment. "

Although the military establishment of armies, divisions, brigades, regiments, and battalions appeared in the 20th century in imitation of advanced foreign armies, their names are actually ancient names selected from traditional culture.

It is not unexpected for Liu Sheng to use it now.

It should be noted that the Ying Dynasty existed here in the Ming Dynasty, and the Tuan Dynasty existed in the Song Dynasty.

The generals of the rebel army were not highly educated, or had little education. Even Wen You, who was born as a child, had only read the Four Books and Five Classics before.

As for those who say they have read military books, there is no one.

Therefore, they had no objections to the new military unit proposed by Liu Sheng, and were only excited.

Because expanding the army and establishing higher military units will undoubtedly mean that another group of people will be promoted!

Then, Liu Sheng directly announced the expansion plan he had studied and the list of senior generals for the five additional battalions.

The eighth battalion of the standing army is commanded by Liu Erhe, battalion deputy Zhang Xin, and military and political officer Xu Yu.

The ninth battalion commander Zheng Erli, battalion deputy Lin Zhanfei, and military and political officer Feng Yun.

The tenth battalion commander Zhang Ao, battalion deputy Zhang Shijie, and military and political officer Tan Yajun.

The commander of the 11th Battalion is Huang Gan, the battalion deputy Ma Mingfeng, and the military and political officer Bai Fengyuan.

The 12th Battalion was commanded by Shi Jinhui (formerly the battalion deputy of the 3rd Battalion), battalion deputy Li Zhaoxiang, and military and political officer Song Yi.

The commanders of the five new battalions were originally battalion deputy commanders.

The battalion lieutenants are all promoted from the former standing army sentry commanders with outstanding merits.