I want to be emperor

Chapter 171 Collecting taxes, the Rural Protection Army is serious! (Leader 'Qi Chang Qing Chang Jing' plus two more)

As for whether Luo Zhixue led the army to defeat the Ming army, An Yongduo did not have any doubts about it. As the former chief of staff (now chief of the staff), Ernst knew very well the strength of the main forces such as the First Infantry Brigade. combat power.

That is an absolute main force that even the [-] troops led by Lu Xiangsheng himself can defeat in one battle!
What's more, this main force is led by General Luo Zhixue himself!

With General Luo Zhixue's superb military talent, if he uses it to deal with people like Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong, there will never be any possibility of failure!
Ernst and Young has confidence in the core main forces such as the [-]st Infantry Brigade, [-]st Cavalry Brigade, and [-]st Artillery Brigade, and has absolute confidence in General Luo Zhixue.

In his opinion, the Rural Protectorate's existence today is all due to the planning and extraordinary talent of General Luo Zhixue.

The reason why the rural protection army is so powerful is not because of the new tactics proposed by the general.

Why can the rural protection army have so many weapons such as armor and muskets.

It is not because the general built an arsenal and improved the ordnance production process and technology, which greatly increased the output of the arsenal of the Rural Protection Army.

The reason why the Baoxiang Army can have a light and powerful [-]-jin long gun is not because the general Luo Zhixue presided over the research and development of the gun last year, personally put forward a series of parameter requirements, and even made it himself A new gun mount was installed.

It has been proved many times in actual combat that this six hundred catty cannon is powerful and has amazing maneuverability. It has played a huge tactical role in battles, especially in field battles.

All of this, in Ernst and Young's view, was brought about by Luo Zhixue.

Because as one of Luo Zhixue's first four personal soldiers, he had witnessed Luo Zhixue's single-handedly bringing the Township Protection Army to the present level along the way, and Er Yongduo was also one of the most important participants.

Ernst and Young, who had seen and participated in it many times, knew very well that General Luo Zhixue was definitely not an ordinary person.

Zuo Liangyu and other mediocre generals will definitely not be able to please their own generals. If they are not careful, they will be defeated and die like Lu Xiangsheng.

An Yongduo's blind confidence in Luo Zhixue is also the reason why he still dared to defend Yuzhou City with 1 remnants of the Fourth Mixed Brigade under the threat of more than [-] enemy troops.

Because he firmly believes that the victory will belong to the generals, to their rural protection army.

And he, An Yongduo, will also become a pivotal person in this victory.

And defending Yuzhou City, holding back the pace of Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong's army is what he has to do, and it is also a meritorious service.

----

When An Yong was looking forward to the two messengers passing through the blockade smoothly, the two messengers under his command did not disappoint him.

Although one of them lost his way in the dark and failed to deliver the secret letter in the end, the other successfully crossed the Ming army's blockade.

At dawn, the messenger, who had carefully crossed the blockade of the Ming army, walked for more than 20 miles before sending the secret letter to Shanghe Town, [-] miles west of Junzhou City.

And handed it over to the joint base set up here by the Communications Office and the Intelligence Department of the General's Mansion, and then the staff of the Communications Office will quickly deliver this letter to Luo Zhixue.

However, after the secret letter arrived at the secret stronghold of the Rural Protection Army, the people in the communication office first verified the identity of the messenger, and at the same time conducted a detailed inspection of the packaging of the secret letter.

There are several layers of packaging for this letter, the outermost layer is ordinary packaging, with the exclusive wax seal of the brigade headquarters of the Fourth Mixed Brigade on it.

And inside, there is actually a second layer of packaging, and there is also an independent wax seal on it. This is the personal wax seal belonging to the communication staff of the [-]th Mixed Brigade.

On the innermost envelope, there is Ernst Young's personal wax seal.

On Ernst Young's personal wax seal, there is a private seal with only half of the pattern on it.

The pattern of this private seal is very unique, with very dense lines, different shades, and only half of the lines...

Because the other half of this seal is in the communication office of the General's Mansion.

After this kind of private seal dedicated to communication is produced, it will be violently smashed into two halves on the spot. The cracked lines are also irregular lines.

It is specially used for encrypted communication between Luo Zhixue and a certain general who is leading the army abroad, and is used to verify the authenticity of each other.

Only when the private seal can match and the wax seal is intact, can the communications office of the General's Mansion ensure that this letter is authentic and valid.

This is also one of the measures taken by the Township Protection Army to prevent military intelligence leaks, letters being dropped or faked.

In order to ensure the safety of military intelligence transmission, the Township Protection Army has come up with a very careful and complicated secrecy plan.

In addition to the most basic things like wax seals, there are even several sets of code books.

At present, each brigade in the Rural Protection Army has two sets of different cipher books, one is a general cipher book, which is specially used for secret communication between brigades, and the other is a unique cipher book for each brigade, which is dedicated to Yu He secretly communicated with the Communication Office of the General's Mansion.

At the same time, the secret order issued by the communications office of the General's Military Mansion has a higher priority than the friendly army's communication secret order. This is to prevent the enemy from seizing the code book of the friendly army and falsely sending the code letter to cause the friendly army to be recruited!
At the same time, even if there is no leakage of the password book of the Township Protection Army, the original code book will be replaced and destroyed regularly.

Moreover, Luo Zhixue directly issued strict orders to the brigades. If the battle is unfavorable, the first priority is to destroy the code book to prevent the code book from being leaked.

Even if the messengers sent out of the city by Ernst and Yongduo encountered an accident and the secret letter they were carrying was seized by the Ming army, Zuo Liangyu would be blinded by looking at a bunch of meaningless numbers!

For the effective transmission of military communications, to avoid information leaks or even counterfeiting, the Baoxiang Army came up with so many seemingly complicated procedures. Using the letter encryption method, the Xiangxiang Army also tried to capture the messengers of the Ming army before and found the letter.

But they are all encrypted letters, and they cannot be read at all...

Not to mention the current Ming army, even the Song army hundreds of years ago also used the word list secret letter system on a large scale.

As for all kinds of mud seals and wax seals, they have existed thousands of years ago, and they are nothing new.

The communication security of military intelligence has been highly valued in ancient and modern China and abroad. The Rural Protection Army is just one of them, and it has played a little deeper.

After confirming that the outer package was indeed a secret letter sent by the Fourth Mixed Brigade, the personnel of the Communication Office and the Information Section of the Township Protection Army in Shanghe Town directly arranged for the personnel to deliver the secret letter on flying horses, trying to deliver the secret letter to Luo Zhixue in the shortest possible time. hands.

But after the riders ran away, the small Shanghe Town returned to calm. If you look at it from the outside, you won't find any difference between this place and an ordinary market town.

However, this small market town is where the yamen of Shanghe Township of the Rural Protection Army is located. It is so peaceful now that even the special flag of the Rural Protection Army has not been hung up. There are also Ming army cavalry and small-scale grain requisitioning Ming army in the vicinity.

In order to avoid attracting a large-scale attack from the Ming army, the Shanghe Town Yamen not only put away the iconic Baozi flag, but also put away the town signboard, and basically turned to semi-underground activities.

Shanghe Town belongs to Fangcheng County, Yuzhou, and governs a total of thirteen nearby villages.

Although the Rural Protection Army took Yuzhou City only a few days ago and failed to control the other two counties under Yuzhou, namely Wuyang and Ye County, in fact, the Rural Protection Army was formally established half a month ago. Junzhou Yamen, and established three county agencies in Fangcheng County, Wuyang County and Ye County.

At the same time, it also began to set up lower-level township and village-level institutions in the already controlled Fangcheng County area.

Shanghe Township is one of them.

However, after the Ming army killed Yuzhou city a few days ago, they began to send sporadic soldiers to loot everywhere and collect food and grass. Had to turn to underground activities.

This is not an isolated case. There are many towns and even county-level yamen in an underground state in the fringes of the current control area of ​​the Rural Protection Army, or in the Ming Army control area close to the Rural Protection Army control area.

For example, the Wuyang and Yexian county yamen under Junzhou are currently in a state of underground activities, let alone rule.

Today's Wuyang County Yamen is secretly set up in a private house in Wuyang City, and there are only seven or eight people in it, and two of them are tax officials from the former grain collection office and now sent by the tax department.

Now the job of the Wuyang County Yamen is not to govern the place, but to collect all kinds of intelligence.

Not only military intelligence, but also other internal affairs information was collected to provide a basic intelligence foundation for the follow-up army to capture Wuyang and the Wuyang County Yamen to formally govern.

The most important thing is to find out the situation of the big gentry in advance, so as to provide basic information support for subsequent tax collection.

This is why the tax department will send tax officials over in advance. If they want to search the family and seize all kinds of assets immediately after the army takes Wuyang, and start tax work quickly, they must collect Wuyang's situation in advance. Those people If you have more money, you can raid your home, and if you have more world, you can collect more taxes. You must know it well in advance.

Otherwise, it would be impossible for the tax department to collect so much tax and seize so much assets.

If the tax department has no ability and doesn't do anything to make some achievements, why should Luo Zhixue be asked to increase the tax funds of the tax department many times!

Among the many systems under the Rural Protection Army, the tax department's expenditure is second only to military expenditure.

All other agencies are suffering. When it was difficult to even have enough food and clothing, the tax department has already recruited a large number of people to improve the taxation agencies at all levels, and even started to set up its own tax investigation department and even tax law enforcement department.

Thanks to the huge financial support, the officials and employees of the tax department are second only to military personnel.

At present, there are more than 2000 officials and employees of the tax department in Nanyang Prefecture alone, which is more than the total number of administrative offices at all levels in Nanyang Prefecture...

There is no doubt that this is very abnormal, but the current situation in both Nanyang Prefecture and Xiangyang Prefecture is in an unstable state. It has not been long since the Township Protection Army captured these places, and they have not yet been able to form an effective rule, let alone Taxes are stable.

If you want to collect taxes, you must spend more manpower, material resources and even violence!

After the situation in Nanyang Prefecture stabilizes, the tax officials will also drop to a reasonable level.

And this proves it:
Collecting taxes, the Rural Protection Army is serious!

(End of this chapter)