Chapter 75 Can You Learn to Roar Like a Fox?
"That's easy to do. I'll go to Guangning first to negotiate. You can raise the money in the Ministry of Revenue. It won't be too late to send it over in May or June."

The reward money for the first month of the year will be received soon. Li Hao no longer has high expectations for the reward money for the heads obtained in the Northern Expedition. The six ministries are slow in their work, and it is common for the reward money to be paid after a month or two. He cannot ask them to make an exception for just one person.

Cheng Rihua forced a smile and took out an official document from his pocket.

"This is the reward bill for Li Shuai. I have ordered people to move it and send it to Li Shuai's residence later. Daishan's head is worth 800 taels, and the other Zhen Tatar heads are worth 35 taels each, totaling 6,000 and 50 taels. I brought this silver all the way from Taicang, and did not let other officials handle a single cent."

It has long been rumored that General Li had connections with Eunuch Wei, and Eunuch Wei had also sent orders not to tamper with the reward money this time, so the Ministry of Revenue sent Cheng Rihua, an honest official, to escort him.

"Good."

Fifty taels of silver for a head is the reward the court has if it has money in hand. Now that the other eight border military garrisons owe hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in wages, they can still spare some money to reward the Liao army. This attitude is actually quite considerate.

After dealing with the reward issue, Li Hao spoke out about Jinzhou's plight of not having capable officials and his own demands.

Several civil servants discussed among themselves and elected an old man named Dong Yingju.

"Dong Yingju? Is this man reliable? What official position did he hold? What were the main good things he did?" Li Hao asked repeatedly.

Wang Zhichen replied with a smile on his face: "Dong Yingju was the censor who advocated the resettlement of Liao refugees in the interior. He used government silver to buy 120,000 mu of private land in the area from Shanhaiguan to Tianjin, and sent people to reclaim 70,000 to 80,000 mu of idle land, and resettled 13,000 Liao people. His reputation as an official was quite good. It was enough for him to manage the military farms in Jinzhou."

Li Hao felt something was wrong when he heard this. "Each household gets ten acres of land. Is the food they grow enough for the whole family?"

Li Chunye, the Junior Secretary of the Imperial Household Department, smoothed things over for his former colleague Dong Yingju, saying, "It's good for these refugees to have land to farm. With more than a dozen acres of land and careful tending, it won't be difficult to provide food for the whole family."

"That's right. Dong Yingju is an honest official." Liu Yingkun also added: "I have been supervising the army in Shanhaiguan for so many years, and I have never seen him give a single cent as a gift."

This made everyone laugh.

"That's him. Invite him to come over and take charge of the government office. As for the official positions, I saw that Guangning originally had a military governor. You know more about how to fill the positions than I do."

Li Hao agreed to let the old man manage the military farm in Jinzhou.

"Okay, it just so happens that this man has just been dismissed, otherwise it would be difficult to give him a third-rank official position."

After discussing the issue of military farming, the Jinzhou general mentioned recruiting servants near the city wall and assigning himself several civil servants who were proficient in artillery.

"There are many soldiers in Guancheng, and Yongping City is also under my jurisdiction. If there are soldiers from the camps there who are selected by General Li, they will be transferred directly to Jinzhou."

In order to gain great merit as a commander, Wang Zhichen responded to all Li Hao's requests.

If he succeeds in recovering Liao, it seems that there is hope for him to obtain a first-rank official title such as Shifu Bao.

"I remember that there was an official named Sun Yuanhua in Ningyuan City before. He believed in some Western religion and was good at firearms. So I sent him to Jinzhou to deploy artillery, chariot camps and other military affairs."

Sun Yuanhua is a talented person and a relatively honest official. Li Hao must keep him in his hands.

Otherwise, if he were to train reliable artillery troops for the Ming Dynasty, it would create more obstacles to his own cause of collecting military pay.

Wang Zhichen pondered for a moment and said, "It just so happens that this man has also been dismissed from office, and he has some disagreements with Eunuch Wei. I will write a letter to Eunuch Wei and ask him to reinstate Sun Yuanhua."

After roughly agreeing on the important matters, Li Hao first ordered his servants to count the silver rewards for the heads given by the court, and then sent people to Wangyang Gate, the south gate of Guancheng, to post a notice to recruit servants.

He first took his men to the garrison of the battalion assigned to the Jinzhou general.

The original Shanhaiguan general had two standard camps under his jurisdiction. After the former general Yang Lin was transferred away, the newly arrived Ji Liao Jinglüe Wang Zhichen simply supplemented one of the chariot camps with 3,000 people and allocated it to Jinzhou as the standard camp of the Jinzhou general.

After learning that the commander-in-chief had arrived, the soldiers of the standard camp were quickly called out by officers at all levels and lined up in a loose formation on the training ground in the camp for the commander-in-chief to inspect.

The officers such as the captain, battalion commander, and centurion commander in this standard camp accompanied the young general Li Hao, and they all kept a very humble attitude.

“Why isn’t it full yet?”

Marshal Li was very satisfied with the soldiers in this battalion. Although they were not very strong, they were not too thin either and were quite tall. After a few months of care, they would look like soldiers.

The only thing that made him dissatisfied was that the number of soldiers in this battalion was still only more than 2,730.

"Wang Jinglüe said he would send more people in, but the other battalions didn't want to let them go, so they allowed us to recruit on our own. Anyway, the food and salary were based on 3,000."

The former head of the Qianzong, Yuan Bogong, replied with a smile. "Then I will confess all of it in the next two days."

Li Hao thought about it, and ordered Wu Sangui to take out more than 4,000 taels of newly-earned reward silver.

"Each person will be given one tael and five cents as silver for the journey. If you have family members nearby, call them to Jinzhou. I will give you land, 50 mu per soldier."

These are the basic foundation for entering the pass to collect salaries in the future. Dividing the land can greatly increase their combat effectiveness.

They could get silver before they even set out north, and they could also get land when they arrived. When the soldiers in the camp heard about this treatment, they cheered loudly.

Looking at this group of soldiers, Li Hao suddenly remembered that Wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang seemed to be an expert in training soldiers.

"My son Sangui, where is your father Wu Xiang? Why don't we transfer him to Jinzhou to help us train the troops so that you and your son can be reunited."

Wu Sangui touched his face, as if recalling the place where his father worked.

"My father used to be the garrison commander of a battalion in Qiantun. He was transferred to Guancheng before the New Year. He should be in the horse department now. He will help with horse selection after the spring."

Ma Ke is the common name for Liaodong Yuanma Temple. This government office had a high status before. The Yuanma Temple Minister even served as the military governor of Haizhou, Gaizhou and other places, which was more powerful than the fourth-rank prefect in the mainland.

But after the fall of Liaodong, the status of Yuanma Temple plummeted and it became a transit office for buying horses, transferring silver for horse prices, and delivering bean feed needed for horse breeding.

"This is a small matter. Just go to the Governor's Mansion and say hello."

Li Hao also had to recruit servants himself, which was an important matter that he had to do personally, so he found a random restaurant in Guancheng to have a meal, and then took the servants to Wangyang Gate.

Of course, the restaurant owner also recognized Li Shuai and directly waived the meal fees for this group of heroes.

At the Wangyang Gate, the common people who came to watch the fun and the soldiers who sneaked out surrounded the notice of recruiting servants in three circles inside and three circles outside.

The owner, along with a dozen strong servants, couldn't squeeze in, so he had to run to the city wall and shout from ten meters away to ask the crazy people to make way.

But as soon as Li Shuai showed up, more and more people came, and there was no way to clear any space.

The captain guarding the city gate ordered the soldiers to fire more than ten guns in a row, which scared away some of the people who came to watch and cleared a space of ten feet in radius in front of the city gate.

While Gou Quanzhong and other servants went down to recruit soldiers, Li Hao sat firmly on the top of the city wall to prevent the fanatical people from rushing towards him.

On the first day of recruitment, not many strong men came, but quite a few soldiers who sneaked out without telling the commander were selected.

After two hours of selection, the servants finally picked out more than thirty people, which was far from the three to five hundred people that Li Hao had imagined.

Just as he stood up and prepared to leave, a dark figure suddenly jumped out from the crowd, threw out a rope, and climbed up to the top of the city wall using the rope in a few steps.

The people below the city immediately started to make a fuss.

"Why are you joining in the fun?"

"Li Shuai is a great hero, how could he look down on a scoundrel like you?"

"Come down quickly, don't embarrass us Guancheng people."

Li Hao listened and found out that this man was actually a famous thief.

He was immediately amused, "You want to join the army too? What are the advantages?"

The thief was not tall, but he was quite strong, with rather ordinary features, and he was wearing a brown linen shirt.

He clasped his fists, knelt on one knee and replied: "As General Li has seen, I can climb up to the top of the city walls by leaping, and I have all the skills of chicken-stealing and dog-stealing."

Li Hao thought for a moment, then walked up to the thief and whispered in his ear, "Can you imitate the howl of a fox?"

PS: This is the second update. The remaining two updates will be posted in the evening. Please vote for me and give me monthly votes.

(End of this chapter)