Seventy-two long crossbow arrows and grenades were like seventy-two meteors, shooting straight at the crumbling Galen ship. Six long arrows and grenades were fired into Galen's ship, and the terrifying explosion sounded again in Galen's ship. The cabin was blown to pieces, and two large holes were blown out on the second deck. Two heavy guns weighing several tons fell from the second deck and hit the third deck.
Three large holes were blown out of the ship's side below the waterline by cannonballs. Under the pressure of the water, seawater surged into the hull and began to engulf the stricken wooden sailboat. This time, the surviving sailors on the ship were desperate. They jumped off the galenic ship and swam toward the other Dutch ships behind it. The Galen ship, which was hit by cannonballs, sank little by little.
The Dutch woke up from a dream and knew that they could not catch up with Yang Peng's boat jumping gang, so they had to turn the ship around and start an artillery battle with Li Zhi. Sixteen ships from the two camps formed two straight lines and aimed their broadsides at the enemy ships, competing with crossbows at a distance of one mile. The flames and smoke emitted by the crossbow and grenade are like flowers, constantly igniting in the vast sea. The rumble of shelling dominated the sea, making no other sounds heard. The long arrows were like meteors, flying back and forth between the gunboats on both sides. Most of the long arrows hit the water, causing huge splashes. But sometimes, individual long arrows and grenades were fired into the ship.
Yang Peng stood on the deck and looked at the Dutch gunboat opposite with his binoculars. More than a dozen long crossbow arrows suddenly shot from the Dutch flagship, and all fired at Yang Peng's Tianjing. Most of the machine crossbow bolts missed. But a long arrow hit the second deck of the Tianjing. The long arrow broke through the hull and hit the barrel of a powerful crossbow, making a huge metal impact. The shell crooked the cannon, then changed course and hit the ceiling. It hit the first deck with a bang and lost speed. The long arrow hit the ground.
One of the crossbows was damaged by a Dutch arrow, but no casualties were caused. The Tianjing retaliated by targeting the Dutch flagship, firing eight crossbows and grenades. A long arrow hit the enemy ship and landed on the bow deck of the Dutch ship, setting off a bloody storm. The Long Arrow carrying the grenade killed three sailors before it exploded. When the grenade exploded, the iron projectiles that burst out swept across the deck like a storm, claiming the lives of more than a dozen Dutch sailors.
The Dutch sailors who were still alive fled with their heads in their hands, hiding only behind the masts and buckets, and they were in chaos. Blood and minced meat were sprinkled on the deck of the Dutch ship, mixed with the screams of those who were shot. The scene seemed like Shura Hell. Every powerful crossbow arrow and grenade fired by Yang Peng's fleet that hit an enemy ship would cause a huge explosion inside the Dutch ship, blowing the fragile internal tissue inside the ship's hull into a mess. If the long arrows with grenades landed on the densely populated first deck and second gun deck, it would be a massacre.
If it lands on the edge of a ship's hull and explodes, the shell can blow a big hole in the hull. After firing the crossbows, Yang Peng's eight ships only suffered a few holes and suffered very little damage, but the Dutch ship suffered heavy damage. Not to mention the sailors who were killed, even the crossbowmen on the second deck suffered heavy losses. Many ships have been broken into and exploded inside the ships, killing and injuring a large number of crossbowmen, and there are no longer enough personnel to fire cannons. The Dutch fired fewer and fewer long arrows.
Several ships were blown into large holes below the waterline, and it was only the sailors who blocked the breaches with planks of wood that barely managed to avoid sinking. The temporarily nailed ship planks were not perfect and would leak constantly, requiring sailors to constantly pump water from the bilge to keep the ship afloat.
Looking at the increasingly unfavorable situation on the battlefield, Forreston's face turned pale. Yang Peng's ship was faster than the Dutch ship, and the Dutch could not rush up to engage in a battle. And Yang Peng's grenades will explode, and the Dutch United Fleet is no match for Yang Peng in a crossbow battle.
If this continues, the warships of the combined fleet will be sunk one by one by Yang Peng. Forreston was an old captain. He quickly understood the dilemma he was in and made the final decision. He shouted: "All ships turn rudder, let us escape!"
First mate Caron said: "But Yang Peng's ship is faster than ours, and our fleet cannot escape." Forreston said: "The fleet separated and ran away in eight directions. After getting rid of Yang Peng, we went to Relanja. Convergence.”
Forreston wanted the entire fleet to stage a great escape, and he couldn't even hope to retreat as a unit. The fleet fled separately, hoping that Yang Peng would not pursue him in eight directions, so that the Dutch could escape a few ships. First mate Caron turned pale, nodded, and ran to the flag soldiers to deliver the order. The eight scarred Dutch gunboats saw the flag order displayed by the flagship, gave up the increasingly unfavorable artillery battle, turned around and fled in eight directions.
Seeing Hong Mao turning around and escaping, Yang Peng's fleet burst into deafening cheers. The victorious sailors raised their hands in celebration. Even the more than 3,000 farmers on board breathed a sigh of relief and cheered loudly!
"Okay! The city lord is so powerful!" "The general defeated Hongmao!" "You are right to follow the governor!"
Hongmao was the dominant force near Taiwan. Seeing that Yang Peng defeated Hongmao so easily, Lu Hu looked at Yang Peng with admiration and said, "The city lord is so powerful!" Yang Peng looked at the Dutch ships with his binoculars. , sneered, and said to Lu Hu: "The Dutch want to escape, our eight gunboats are divided into four groups, chase the four largest Dutch ships, sink the enemy ships and then rendezvous in Hsinchu."
The artillerymen on Yang Peng's ships are all veterans selected from the vanguard group, but many of the boatmen on the new ships are novices and are not very skilled in operating ships. Yang Peng was worried that if his troops were divided into eight groups to pursue, the sailors on one of the ships would go awry, so he retreated and divided his troops into four groups, each with two ships to pursue one Dutch ship.
The ten ships divided into four groups and chased the four large Dutch ships. Yang Peng led two crossbow ships and two ships without guns to pursue the Dutch flagship. The Dutch flagship was now fleeing to the southwest in the southeasterly wind, and its speed was not very fast. Yang Peng's steamer was powered by steam and sailed at a high speed of nine knots in the south wind. It could easily bite the Dutch flagship, and from time to time it would catch up to the Dutch and catch a round of shells more than a mile away.
Continuously shot into the stern of the Braidan and exploded in the belly of the Dutch flagship, blowing the huge warship into a mess. Tianjing and Dagou took turns firing on the left and right sides, firing more than a hundred rounds of powerful crossbows, and finally beat the Dutch warships into surrender. The Dutch hoisted the white flag, lowered the sails, and begged the Song people to let them live. Yang Peng asked twenty artillerymen to go up and tie up all the Dutch, and then boarded the ship himself to inspect the Dutch flagship.
Yang Peng boarded the Dutch ship as a conqueror and inspected the Dutch flagship. Yang Peng hopes to find some useful technologies on Western ships and add them to his own fleet. But the results of the inspection disappointed Yang Peng.
"Garbage!" "Garbage, why is the technology of the Dutch in this era so garbage?"
The Dutch did not have much technology ahead of the Song people in this era. Both their bows and arrows and their powerful crossbows were very crude and inferior to Yang Peng's skills. The only thing that interested Yang Peng was the Dutch's ballistae. The ballistae used pulleys and hemp ropes to cushion the recoil of the artillery, allowing the Dutch's thirty-six-pound crossbow to be mounted on a wooden sailing ship.
The sailors turned the ship upside down and found more than ten thousand taels of silver. Yang Peng looked at the strong crossbows and said: "The materials of these strong crossbows are worth some money. Drag this ship to Hsinchu and melt the strong crossbows for copper!"
On May 13, Yang Peng, Zheng Hui and his bodyguard rode on horseback to the edge of the new fields in Hsinchu. They were in a happy mood as they looked at the farmers who were sowing seeds and raising seedlings in the fields. After Gao Ligong contacted two thousand households of old rice farmers in Taiping County, Zhejiang, Li Zhi sent a boat to pick them up. Nowadays, these 7,000 Taiping County old farmers and 8,000 Tianjin farmers are planting more than 70,000 acres of paddy fields where irrigation canals have just been built, according to the quota of 20 acres for every adult or strong woman. They are the first farmers in Hsinchu.
Gao Ligong also contacted a group of farm cattle in Fujian, and Yang Peng transported them to Hsinchu by ship and lent them to farmers. At this time, farmers are planting late rice, sowing it in May and expecting to harvest it at the end of October. The new fields in Hsinchu that have been burned with a thick layer of plant ash are extremely fertile. If managed properly, it is estimated that this season's rice harvest will be one stone and five buckets per mu. Although these paddy fields can only be planted for one season this year, the harvest far exceeds that of dry fields in Tianjin.
Yang Peng looked at the lush seedlings in the paddy fields and asked Guan Shan: "How many people are there in Hsinchu now?" Guan Shan replied: "City Lord, there are now more than 15,000 people in Hsinchu of all kinds. Among them, there are 12,000 farmers. , 3,700 people divided their fields and started farming. There were more than 8,000 farmers who still had no fields. These farmers were building irrigation canals with two taels of silver a month. There were also a thousand soldiers from the Trap Regiment. Helping farmers build irrigation canals. There are two thousand masons building houses for farmers. Finally, there are some craftsmen who burn lime and bricks.”
Yang Peng nodded and asked: "How many houses have been built so far?" "More than 6,000 brick and tile houses have been built so far. Except for the two thousand newly arrived farmers who still live in tents, the other people have all lived in brick houses." In the tiled house." Yang Peng nodded and continued to ride forward.
Zhao Laosan was one of the first people to sign up to reclaim wasteland in Xiaoliuqiu. When he signed up, he didn't know where Xiaoliuqiu was. He only heard people say it was a big island in the south with savages on it. Officials from Tianjing New City who signed up said that those who opened up wasteland were tenant farmers of the governor, and each person was assigned twenty acres of land.
Zhao Laosan knew how rich the governor's tenant farmers were. One of his cousins cultivates the governor's private land in Jinghai County and is now extremely rich. My cousin is in his thirties and already has a son and a daughter, but he is still planning to have another son because he can afford it.
Zhao Laosan wanted to be a tenant farmer of the city lord before, but that required the old tenant farmer to act as a guarantor. Zhao Laosan's cousin has many relatives to guaranty, and he doesn't know that it will be the year of the monkey, and it will be his turn to be the guarantor for Zhao Laosan. Zhao Laosan lived a miserable life. He rented 13 acres of dry land from the landlord Guo's family and lived with his wife in two mud houses. They lived a tight life and could not earn a new piece of clothing all year round. I have to eat glutinous rice bran for a month or two. After three years of marriage, Zhao Laosan did not dare to share a room with his wife for fear of starving to death after giving birth.
He looked longingly at the wealth of his cousin's family and was very envious. But the opportunity came this year. Zhao Laosan heard someone in the village who had read that day say that the city lord was recruiting people to open up Xiaoliuqiu, and no one was needed to act as a guarantee. Without thinking, he was the first to rush to the registration point and press his fingerprints. Zhao Laosan argued with the Tianjing New City official in charge of registration that he would be the first one to take the train if it started.
I don’t know whether it was Zhao Laosan’s enthusiasm that moved the official who signed up, or whether Zhao Laosan and his wife were young and strong enough to meet the standards of a governor. The city lord was really the first to bring Zhao Laosan to Xiaoliuqiu. Now they are The city lord called the island of Taiwan. The boat to Taiwan was very bumpy. Zhao Laosan vomited three or four times, and Zhao Laosan's wife also vomited several times. However, neither of them complained. They finally got the opportunity to work with the Governor, and Zhao Laosan would not give up because of this little bump in the road.
After arriving in Taiwan and getting off the boat, Zhao Laosan found that Taiwan Island is a very rich place. There are tracts of woods, herds of wild deer, and a small river running through them. Standing on the hill where the camp was set up and looking over, there were endless plains on both sides of the river. This is obviously a good place for farming. Once those woods are burned, it will become the best farmland. The crops grown here will definitely have a good harvest. On the night of arriving in Taiwan, Zhao Laosan and his wife jumped up and down in the tent.
The farmers who came together to open up wasteland were infected by Zhao Laosan, and they all jumped and made noise that night. Everyone gathered around the fire, looking forward to a good life in the future, and everyone was in high spirits. Things went smoothly afterwards. The commander-in-chief, Master Guanshan, directed everyone to burn wasteland, reclaim new fields, and build irrigation canals. During this period, he also repelled one Shengfan and one Hongmao. After all, the island of Taiwan is so rich, and there are still many people coveting it.
When the commander was fighting Shengfan and Hongmao, Zhao Laosan told the commander several times that he would give himself a knife and fight with those soldiers. The commander ignored Zhao Laosan at that time and asked Zhao Laosan to go aside, but then he gave Zhao Laosan a high look. When the house was divided, the commander gave it to Zhao Laosan first.
Two months after Zhao Laosan arrived in Taiwan, he was assigned two brick houses. This is a house that does not leak whether it is windy or rainy. Zhao Laosan has only entered a house like this at Mr. Guo's house every year when paying rent, and slept one night in a house made of bricks and tiles like this at his uncle's house in Jinghai County. Zhao Laosan didn't expect that he would live in such a good house so quickly.
There is also a toilet outside the house, which is very convenient. On the night when the houses were divided, Zhao Laosan and his wife hugged each other and burst into tears. My daughter-in-law has lived with him for more than three years and has been living a hard life, and now I am finally looking forward to a good life.
Zhao Laosan's daughter-in-law wiped her tears at that time and said that the good life was given by the city lord, and she wanted to provide the city lord with an immortal tablet. Zhao Laosan went to find those masons who were good at carpentry and helped him make the immortal tablet for the city lord. The masons heard that Zhao Laosan was going to provide a longevity tablet to the city lord, so they confiscated Zhao Laosan's money and helped Zhao Laosan do it. Not long after, in May, Guanshan listed Zhao Laosan as the first batch of farmers to allocate fields. Zhao Laosan now has paddy fields that can be cultivated.
A full forty acres of fertile farmland with irrigation canals is not far from Zhao Laosan's village. When Zhao Laosan saw the forty acres of paddy fields, he was speechless for a long time. He fingerprinted the clerk, ran back to his home crying, and kowtowed thirty times to the Governor's longevity tablet.
Zhao Laosan knew that his family would become rich soon. Richer than my cousin's family. On May 13th, something even more surprising happened. Zhao Laosan was weeding in his field and saw the city lord. The city lord is very young and looks about the same age as himself. But the city lord is the city lord, and he has his own majesty and honor, which is completely different from ordinary people like himself. Zhao Laosan was kneeling on the ground at that time, not daring to make a sound.
At that time, the city lord actually walked up to him and asked him a question. "What's your name?" Zhao Laosan stammered at that time and replied: Zhao Laosan. "Zhao Laosan, have you learned how to grow rice?" "Zhao Laosan raised his head proudly and said: "Go back to the city lord, the little one has learned it. The rice farmers in Taiping County taught me step by step. I knew how to sow seeds, how to transplant rice seedlings, and when to irrigate. When I plant rice this year, I will give one stone of grain to the master in Taiping County for tuition as instructed by Commander Guan. "
The city lord nodded, seeming to think that Zhao Laosan spoke quite clearly, so he asked Zhao Laosan a few more questions: "How much millet can you produce in late rice this season?" Zhao Laosan replied: "I heard from the master in Taiping County, One acre of land can produce one stone and five buckets of rice." After listening to Zhao Laosan's words, the city lord pondered for a while, seeming to be calculating something.
After a long while, the city lord said: "Okay, you will only charge 50% of the land rent for this season's late rice. Next year, you will plant two crops of rice and collect another 60% of the land rent." Zhao Laosan was stunned. Unexpectedly, after a few words, the city lord gave I reduced the land rent by 10%.
Commander Zheng, who was next to the city lord, made calculations and said loudly to the peasants kneeling on the ground: "The governor collects 50% of the land rent. In the first year, each male of the peasants can receive fifteen shi of grain into his home, which is equivalent to thirty Two taels of silver." "This is just the income from more than half a year's hard work, which is equivalent to three taels, seven and five cents of silver per month for each man or strong woman! The couple earns seven taels and five cents of silver a month."
When Zhao Laosan heard Commander Guan's calculations, he was so excited that blood rushed to his face. By working as sharecroppers for the governor, the couple can earn seven taels and five cents a month? I used to work as a tenant farmer in Guo's family. I could not earn more than seven taels of silver even though I had to eat and drink all year round.
Zhao Laosan knelt on the ground, raised his head and looked at the Governor with a silly smile. The good days have finally come. Guan Shan looked at Zhao Laosan's excited face and said, "Sir, you have excited these farmers so much."
Yang Peng smiled and said to Guan Shan: "The farmers have crossed the ocean to come to Taiwan with us to open up new fields. Naturally, we have to give them some benefits. When the first batch of farmers benefit, the following farmers will follow in an endless stream. This will be the case from now on. It’s settled. If we can catch up with early rice planting, we will receive 60% of the land rent. If we can’t catch up with early rice and can only grow one season of late rice, we will only receive 50% of the land rent.”
Guan Shan cupped his hands and said, "The city lord's kindness is admired by his subordinates." Yang Peng nodded, stopped inspecting the field, mounted his horse and walked back.
Guan Shan did some calculations along the way and said to Li Zhi: "Sir, more than 60,000 acres of paddy fields have been cultivated now. It is expected that the rice harvest will be 90,000 dan by the end of this year. The city lord will charge 50% of the land rent, which is 45,000 dan. Taiwan’s paddy fields do not require payment of grains, so the half-year rent of these 60,000 acres of paddy fields is more than the annual rent of 200,000 acres of dry fields in Tianjing New City.”
Yang Peng nodded when he heard this. I heard Gao Ligong say before that the income from Taiwan's paddy fields is several times that of Tianjin's dry fields. It's just a concept. Only when the fields were actually opened did I feel for myself that we can get twice the result with half the effort here. For most of the year, the land rent was 45,000 shi, which was equivalent to 90,000 taels of silver. Calculated over eight months, it was equivalent to a monthly income of more than 10,000 taels of silver.
And this is just the beginning. As the fleet expands, Taiwan's subsequent expansion will become faster and faster. The development of Taiwan is extremely profitable. There is much potential for subsequent development.
In mid-May, Yang Peng returned to Tianjing New City with the fleet. Now that the city walls of Tianjing New City have been repaired, the city area of Tianjing New City has doubled. The city wall between the two cities, the original south wall of Tianjing New City, was demolished. The new city and the old city are connected together.
However, as soon as the new city was built, a lot of space was occupied by the new army barracks and expanded textile factories. Especially the textile factory, which is expanding every month. Now that Yang Peng has the Japanese market, he can dump his cheap fine cloth. Yang Peng is ready to expand the textile factory to a scale of 15,000 people.
The factory with 15,000 people will bring huge profits to Yang Peng. It is estimated that there will be tens of thousands of taels of silver every month to support Yang Peng's other businesses. However, the expansion of textile factories cannot be achieved overnight. Expansion of production requires not only the construction of machinery and factory buildings, but also the construction of villas for workers to live in. Almost all the masons near Tianjing New City were hired by Yang Peng. They kept moving building materials, driving piles, laying bricks, and plastering mud every day, turning the south side of Tianjing New City into a large construction site.
The textile factories that have been expanding their production have produced a lot of fine cloth in the past few months, all of which are piled up in the warehouse, almost filling the warehouse. Fortunately, Yang Peng's fleet has started running the Hirado route since the end of May. Yang Peng didn't buy the six ships from Zha Yunke and Cangzhou Zhang Family. Those small ships also need a set of boatmen, so the efficiency is really low. But Yang Peng hired all the skilled boatmen of these six boats and let them go to sea on his newly built ships.
What happened after all, let’s see what happens next.
