The ability to rise to the position of prefect of Taian, even with substantial financial backing, was enough to prove that Zeng Cheng himself was not unintelligent.
For example, Zeng Cheng had made preparations for both outcomes regarding the invitation of the Yellow Grass Pass rebels to garrison Taian.
If Agui became Zhu Ni's transport captain, then Prefect Zeng would happily cut off his queue and welcome the imperial army with fanfare.
If Agui delivered Zhu Ni's head, then Prefect Zeng would annihilate all the rebels who had entered the city.
Regardless of whether Zhang Jia Agui could win, Prefect Zeng felt that he would certainly not lose.
Similar thoughts were held by the prefects of Dongchang, Qingzhou, Laizhou, and Dengzhou in Shandong, as well as those of Weihui and Guide in Henan, and the esteemed officials of Xuzhou in Jiangsu.
After all, the formidable Fu Kangan himself was unable to suppress the mere Bagua Sect, Shandong Governor Ming Xing and River Governor Chen Tailai led troops but could not defeat Zhu Xiaosong, Chen Tailai subsequently rebelled, and Duke E'fu Nawangduoerji and Chief Censor Asihai lost two thousand men from the firearms corps. Furthermore, the White Lotus Rebellion in Hubei had also gained considerable momentum...
Was the formidable might of my Great Qing, and Emperor Qianlong's so-called ten great campaigns, merely for show?
As Uncle Li once said, if the hearts of the people are scattered, it is difficult to lead the troops.
The successive failures in suppressing bandits had made the prefects of my Great Qing restless, and the commanding generals from humble origins each harbored their own secret agendas.
As a result, even before the imperial commissioner Zhang Jia Agui, who personally led the troops to quell the rebellion, reached Anjiazhuang, hundreds of his Green Standard soldiers had mysteriously disappeared.
This was a great headache for Agui, the imperial commissioner.
Quelling a rebellion naturally meant leading a large army to destroy the rebels. If his Green Standard soldiers continued to desert at the current rate, it was estimated that by the time he reached Anjiazhuang, if he had even thirty thousand soldiers left, it would be a miracle. Then, what rebellion would there be to quell?
If it truly came to that, no matter how unwilling he was, he would have to become Zhu Ni's transport captain.
Otherwise, Agui would not have become the chief grand scholar of the Wuying Hall in my Great Qing. After careful consideration, Agui did indeed come up with an idea.
Ten men formed a unit, headed by a squad leader; ten units formed a patrol, headed by a patrol leader; ten patrols formed a battalion, headed by a chiliarch. If one man deserted, the squad leader would be executed; if one unit deserted, the patrol leader would be executed. In short, a system of collective punishment was implemented.
Regarding the Green Standard soldiers who had already deserted, Agui's approach was to issue official documents to their hometown authorities, ordering them to apprehend the deserters and implicate three generations of their families for punishment.
With the implementation of this collective punishment, from guards to brigadiers and chiliarchs, the intensity of patrols and vigilance was increased, and the situation of Green Standard soldiers deserting immediately improved.
Agui was only then able to put his mind at ease and continue leading the Green Standard soldiers towards Anjiazhuang.
However, as they marched, and were nearing Anjiazhuang, Agui felt something was amiss.
On both sides of the road, there were many large and small stacks of wheat straw and corn stalks!
As a grand scholar who had risen from the lower five banners to the upper three banners, Agui had not been without hardship before. He had some understanding of the lives of ordinary people, and it was precisely this understanding that made Agui feel that something was wrong from the bottom of his heart.
Wheat straw and corn stalks were not valuable commodities, but they were good for starting fires for warmth. Not many had been seen along the way, so why were the people of Anjiazhuang so willing to throw these things around in the fields, pile after pile?
Did it mean that the people of Anjiazhuang were so wealthy that they could afford to use charcoal for heating?
Such a preposterous idea, let alone Agui, even He Shen, the Minister of the Interior, would not believe it!
This sudden abnormal situation made Agui vigilant. Even though the scouts he had sent out earlier had not reported anything unusual, Agui still ordered the army to halt.
...
Zhu Xiaosong lay hidden in a pile of wheat straw, holding a muzzle-loading rifled percussion cap gun in his right hand and a telescope captured from the Manchu Duke E'fu Nawangduoerji's army in his left, occasionally observing Zhang Jia Agui's army in the distance.
The distance was too great, and Agui was hiding in the middle of the army. With only the percussion cap gun in Zhu Xiaosong's hand, it was impossible to snipe Zhang Jia Agui.
However, just because he couldn't snipe Agui with a percussion cap gun didn't mean Zhu Xiaosong had no way to eliminate Zhang Jia Agui.
Although the cannons captured from the Manchu Duke E'fu Nawangduoerji lacked telescopic sights and their accuracy was not very good, they were single-shot weapons. As long as they hit, they were fatal, and their range was relatively long, making them a makeshift sniping option.
As for the accuracy of the large cannons, it was truly disappointing.
As Mr. Lu Xun said, when accuracy is insufficient, firepower will compensate.
Although these large cannons used solid shot and their accuracy was comparable to the R-2 of the Russian bears, relying on faith to improve hit probability, the simultaneous targeting of Zhang Jia Agui by over a dozen or twenty cannons was akin to a dozen or twenty blind cats hunting a dead mouse; at least one was bound to hit.
This was Zhu Xiaosong's thinking, and thus his action.
Seeing that Zhang Jia Agui on the opposite side had ordered the Manchu soldiers to stop and seemed to be sending men to search the wheat straw and corn stalks on the sides of the road, Zhu Xiaosong put down his telescope, picked up his percussion cap gun, first instructed Ke Zhiming beside him to light the fuse, and then pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
Following the sound of the gunshot, the "rebels" of Menglianggu lifted the straw and corn stalk piles, revealing the slightly menacing barrels of the pre-ambushed large cannons. Solid shot after solid shot scrambled out of the thick and long barrels, flying towards the Green Standard army led by Zhang Jia Agui.
Zhang Jia Agui was greatly alarmed, frantically waving his treasured sword and shouting, "Face the enemy! Face the enemy!"
But before Agui's Green Standard soldiers could figure out what was happening, the pre-buried landmines also detonated successively.
To ensure that the blast radius would hit Agui, Zhu Xiaosong specifically ordered the landmines to be buried over a wider area.
From Agui's perspective, explosions occurred several miles in front of him, tens of steps in front and behind, and even miles behind.
The successive explosions directly stunned the Eight Banners soldiers and Green Standard soldiers under Agui. The concept of forming ranks to face the enemy and achieving merit by suppressing rebels vanished in the fierce explosions. Even with Agui's shouts and threats, he could not stop the collapse of the Green Standard army.
Therefore, witnessing this absurd farce, even Zhu Xiaosong, who had been mentally prepared, was shocked.
Although he knew that my Great Qing was incompetent and that the Eight Banners and Green Standard were not much better than useless, Zhu Xiaosong never imagined that my Great Qing was so incompetent, and that the Eight Banners and Green Standard were so... useless?
Over forty thousand Green Standard soldiers, plus over ten thousand Eight Banners soldiers, a total of over fifty thousand officers and men, were routed by a dozen cannons and a hundred landmines!
To describe the Manchu officers and soldiers as useless, wouldn't that be an insult to the word "useless"?
However, Zhu Xiaosong could somewhat understand. After all, if my Great Qing were not so incompetent, foreign powers would not miss it so much. If the army of my Great Qing were not so incompetent, there would not have been the Treaty of Nerchinsk, followed by the Treaty of Kyakhta, and then the Treaty of Shimonoseki and the Boxer Protocol.
Zhu Xiaosong sighed, pushed aside the corn stalks covering him, and walked towards Agui, carrying a broadsword in his reversed grip.
Agui's luck was truly heaven-defying. Even with the firepower of a dozen large cannons and hundreds of landmines, Agui only suffered minor injuries.
Looking at Zhu Xiaosong and the rebel troops approaching step by step, Agui had the heart to kill the enemy, but his left leg was injured by shrapnel from a landmine. Any movement caused him unbearable pain, let alone wielding a saber to fight.
Agui endured the piercing pain, supported himself to slowly stand up, and intended to draw his saber to fight Zhu Xiaosong to the death. However, Ke Zhiming stepped forward, knocked the saber from Agui's hand, and then retreated to Zhu Xiaosong's side, guarding Agui carefully.
Agui became furious, pointed at Zhu Xiaosong, and cursed, "You despicable scoundrel! I am in your hands today, so do as you please, whether it be killing or dismembering me!"
Zhu Xiaosong chuckled and walked up to Agui, patting Agui's face with his own saber. "Look at you, why do you always talk about killing or dismembering? I am a good person, I will neither kill you nor dismember you."
After speaking, Zhu Xiaosong listlessly ordered Zhu Erdan and Ke Zhiming and others, "Clean up the battlefield, send off our seriously wounded Eight Banners noblemen, and keep the surrendered and lightly wounded under guard. Take them back to our base."
After Zhu Erdan and Ke Zhiming acknowledged the order, Zhu Xiaosong continued, "Oh, and remember to leave one survivor to go back and report, to see who will be the next transport captain!"
Agui became even more enraged and was about to rush forward to fight Zhu Xiaosong to the death, but Ke Zhiming kicked him to the ground.
Ke Zhiming stepped on Agui's back and said to Zhu Xiaosong, "Young Master, why don't we just slaughter all these Jurchens?"
Zhu Xiaosong chuckled and asked, "If I slaughter them, who will dig mines for us?"
"Carefully screen them, divide the Eight Banners noblemen according to their banner structure. Later, let the noblemen from the upper three banners go to dig mines, and let the noblemen from the lower five banners be foremen."
"Based on the sins committed by their ancestors, let them labor in the mines for ten years. After the term is up, they will be released without punishment. Whether they wish to stay or return to the Jurchen side will be up to them."
Ke Zhiming couldn't help but glance at Agui, whose face showed hope, and the other Eight Banners noblemen beside Agui.
These fools wouldn't actually think that laboring in the mines for ten years would result in their release without punishment, would they? That was a mine! It would be better to be killed by my saber than to dig in the mines.
Zhu Xiaosong glanced at Agui again and said, "Let our Imperial Commissioner go as well. I said I wanted him to be our transport captain, and I will keep my word."
"As for these Green Standard soldiers..."
After a moment of thought, Zhu Xiaosong said, "Follow the old rules."
Ke Zhiming immediately cupped his hands and replied, "Yes!"
The so-called old rules were to send the leaders from top to bottom to the mines. As for the ordinary soldiers, if they were willing to join the rebellion, they would first be arranged for a session of recounting grievances, then someone would talk to them, followed by learning the discipline of Menglianggu, and finally military training.
After this entire process, these soldiers would basically complete their transformation.
Take Li Bantou, for example. Ever since he chose to join Jade Emperor Mountain and completed the entire process, he now holds the position of squad leader. In several encounters with the imperial army's encirclement, he led the charge, and in his daily life, he fully abides by the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Ten Points for Attention when dealing with the common people. He is no longer the yamen runner who was a soldier by day and a bandit by night.
As for those who were unwilling to rebel against the Qing, Zhu Xiaosong did not trouble them. He did not hit, scold, kill, or make things difficult for them. It was fine even if they ran back to the Manchu side to continue serving as soldiers.
They were welcome to return fully armed next time to suppress the rebellion, and they were also welcome to surrender next time with their equipment.
Just like this time, among the Green Standard soldiers, there was a group of veterans who had participated in the encirclement of Menglianggu. They were very proficient at surrendering. They first knelt down to surrender, then took off their equipment, and then waited to be released.