Late Qing Dynasty Executioner

Chapter 189 Renting Mercenaries

“Are there many mountain folks around Jiange?

What are their attitudes towards our army and the imperial army respectively? "

After listening to Lao Nian's report, Chen Gu felt relieved and asked with an interested expression.

“Not too many, but there seem to be a few thousand people, otherwise there wouldn’t be a market town.

Except for a very small number of these people who originally lived in the mountains, most of them fled into the mountains to avoid the court's heavy taxes.

They naturally don't have any good feelings towards the imperial army, but their attitude towards our army is okay, after all, we are willing to exchange supplies with them fairly. "Lao Nian thought for a while and said.

"Try to spread our ideas and aspirations among the mountain people. At the same time, we will form a mercenary army, provide them with bombs and detonators, and then send out recorders. A reward of five taels of silver will be offered for the head of a Qing soldier, and two taels of silver will be offered for the injured."

After Chen Gu finished speaking, he smacked his lips and asked Lao Nian and Zheng Ming, "Do you think this reward can get the mountain people to help fight against the imperial army?"

"Of course it is possible, but there should be some restrictions. Bombs and detonators cannot be provided to them for free, otherwise the mountain people will definitely use them on a large scale, causing unnecessary waste." Zheng Ming said with a smile.

Chen Gu smiled and said, "It can't be too expensive. Just sell it to them at 30 cents for a bomb and 2 cents for a detonator. This price is almost the cost of the bombs and detonators!"

In fact, this cost price also includes the transportation cost. After all, a bomb only has two taels of explosives, and the detonator only has one tael of explosives.

Lao Nian thought for a moment and said, "They will definitely accept this price. One hundred detonators can injure a soldier even if they are smashed. If they kill him, we will make a lot of money. If they injure him, we can get our money back."

Fu Cha Mingliang has only more than 20,000 troops. Even if each soldier costs five taels of silver, the total cost is only more than 100,000 taels. If Chen Gu can deal with the army led by Fu Cha Mingliang without any action, let alone more than 100,000 taels, he would be willing to spend even one million taels of silver.

Unfortunately, Fucha Mingliang was stationed in Guangyuan, and there were only Fucha Oron's 3,000 vanguard troops in Jiange.

However, Chen Gu still made a huge profit by spending more than 10,000 taels of silver to kill this vanguard army.

Chen Gu sneered and said, "Send a message back to Zizhou to deliver silver and ammunition. First deliver some salt, iron, cloth and other supplies and sell them to the mountain people at a fair price to win their favor.

Let Scar send out recorders to form a mercenary army and tell the mountain people that there are only 3,000 vanguard troops. If they want to earn money to buy supplies, they cannot let Fucha Oron run away. The price of the heads of court officers will double for each promotion starting from the rank of sergeant.

A reward of 10,000 taels of silver is offered for Fucha Oron’s head.”

"This reward is really high!" Zheng Ming thought for a moment and said, "Do you think that with such a high reward, will the Qing army rebel and kill Fucha Orun?"

This is possible, but the possibility is probably small. After all, the soldiers also have families. If they really rebel and kill Fucha Oron, I am afraid Fucha Mingliang will not let it go.

But what Chen Gu didn't expect was that Zheng Ming's words really came true.

Because of what happened in Chengdu, Chen Gu had not yet attacked Mianzhou, but he did make some clearing operations outside the city, firstly to obtain supplies, and secondly to prepare for the siege. So the materials collected were not much, but it was no problem to support Daoba with some cloth, salt, iron, and ammunition. As for the bulk, he had to wait for Zizhou to transport it.

Although Zizhou and Mianzhou were both directly governed prefectures, Zizhou was much richer because it relied on the Tuojiang River as a shipping channel and some plains along the river. However, Mianzhou was surrounded by mountains and did not produce much.

The first batch of supplies transported to Yanwuchang Town was not much. There were only more than 1,000 kilograms of various ironware, more than 2,000 taels of silver, more than 400 strings of copper coins, more than 300 kilograms of salt, and only a pitiful 100 pieces of cloth.

But just this little thing made the mountain people crazy, which shows how scarce the supplies in the mountains are.

Unfortunately, the mountain people had no silver. Although they had prey to exchange for supplies, there were not many prey. As for the precious furs, there were not many of them either.

So, when Scar proposed to form a mercenary army and Bing announced the reward for the Qing soldiers, all the mountain people went crazy.

The first thing these guys thought about was not how many Qing soldiers they could kill or how much money they could make, but rather how they shouted and yelled not to let the Qing soldiers run away.

So as soon as they got the explosives, they took a detour of more than 100 miles through the mountains and blew up the Qing army's retreat that same day.

Fuca Oron's 3,000 vanguard troops were unable to advance or retreat, and were trapped in Wulianchang Town, a small place of less than ten square kilometers. They were surrounded by mountains and had to travel at least a hundred miles of mountain roads to escape. They could not get lost, otherwise they would have to wander around a mountain for the rest of their lives.

What's more, there are not only poisonous snakes and ferocious beasts in the mountains, but also mountain people waiting to hunt them.

Of course, survival is a human instinct, and the three thousand Qing troops naturally could not wait for the mountain people to hunt them, but the regular army did not have an advantage in the war with the mountain people in the mountains.

In order to make money, these mountain people did everything they could. After besieging the 3,000 vanguard troops, the first thing they did was to poison all the water sources. They even went to the mountains to dig up the only small river that flowed through Wulian Town and forcibly changed its course.

The Qing army wanted to go into the mountains to change the river course, but they found all kinds of traps along the way, and the mountain people were waiting for opportunities to launch a sneak attack, so the Qing army suffered heavy losses when they entered the mountains.

After finally going into the mountains and changing the river course despite casualties, they were caught in a dilemma again, because if there were too few people guarding the river, they would not be able to defend it, and if there were too many people, supply became a problem.

Later, Fuca Oroqen simply organized people to dig wells in low-lying areas, but the water demand of thousands of people required too many wells. Although it was easy to dig wells in Sichuan, people still needed to be sent to guard each wellhead to prevent the mountain people from poisoning.

If the defense is dispersed, we will be ambushed.

The two sides fought back and forth over the water source for half a month. The Qing army lost four to five hundred people, and lost another one or two hundred people while sending people to explore and repair the road, but there was no progress.

Fu Cha Mingliang in Guangyuan also sent people to open up a road to rescue his son, but the Jiange Pass, which is hundreds of miles long, is dangerous everywhere. If they just find a place to place gunpowder and explode it, they can destroy a large section of the road. In the end, it would just be a waste of manpower.

As food and grass were quickly consumed, Fucha Oron fell into despair. What made Fucha Oron even more worried was that the morale of his soldiers had become unstable, because for some reason the news that a reward of 10,000 taels was offered on his head had spread among the army.

(End of this chapter)