"He withdrew?" Zhu Cixiang asked quickly, "Where to withdraw?"
Yan Yingyuan was confused when asked by Zhu Cixiang, where else could he retreat? Qufu's north, south, southeast, and south sides were all under the control of the Ming army. Of course, if Dorgon wanted to retreat, he could only go west.
"Withdrawing to the west!" Yan Yingyuan said, "Taking the goods looted from Qufu, and arresting many children of the Kong family and the family members of the Qufu army, they withdrew to the west... Your Majesty, do we want to Chasing?"
Chase? What to chase?
Zhu Cihong said in his heart: The reorganization of Shandong armies has not been completed yet! Moreover, in order to reorganize the Shandong armies, Zhu Cixi also dismantled the eight model infantry regiments at hand - the eight regiments were split into 32 parts, each of which was the basis of a newly formed infantry regiment to absorb A general of the Shandong Army.
After the reorganization is completed, Zhu Cihong will have 32 infantry regiments under the jurisdiction of the Generalissimo's Mansion available in Shandong. These regiments alone have 80,000 soldiers! Coupled with the troops of Huang Degong and Li Chengdong (the reorganization of Huang Degong, Gao Jie and Li Chengdong's troops will have to be slowed down) and the cavalry regiment and artillery regiment brought by Zhu Cixiang from Shandong, there are more than 90,000 people...
But isn’t the reorganization not completed yet?
Reorganization does not mean breaking up and reorganizing. We also need to organize training and re-equip. No matter what, we have to wait until summer... If Dorgon hasn't left by then, Zhu Cihong can launch the Zhili Battle or the Liaoxi Battle.
But now, he is not so bold!
"Let him go!" Zhu Cixiang breathed out, "Go and give orders to Huang Degong and let his people occupy the territory first."
"Here."
Zhu Cixiang's purpose of leaving Huang Degong, Gao Jie, and Li Chengdong's troops unorganized was to use them for emergencies - the troops being reorganized were weak in combat effectiveness. If Dorgon went crazy and attacked, someone would have to guard the critical places!
Now that Dorgon has escaped, Zhu Cihong can use them to regain the lost territory.
Seeing Yan Yingyuan leaving, Chen Rui also said to Zhu Cixiang with a relaxed expression: "Your Majesty, you don't have to worry about the price of Southeast rice this time."
Zhu Cixiang smiled bitterly: "This time it was Dorgon who miscalculated... Who knows next time? This is not a solution!"
"Your Majesty," Chen Rui said, "I think that in order to stabilize rice prices in the southeast, we have to find new sources of rice... If we can have an extra 10 million shi per year, then we can gradually save some rice. .”
There are currently about 125 million people in Zhu Cixi's territory. Based on the calculation of three and a half shi per person, 437.5 million shi of rice and noodles are needed. If one is rich, it will be 450 million shi. But these are not the only people who need to be fed in the southeast. There are also a large number of livestock and poultry that need to be fed. The gap between the rich and the poor in the southeast is huge. There are frozen bones on the roads. Zhumen’s wine and meat are smelly. The consumption of meat, poultry and eggs Quite a few, and a lot of wine to make.
In addition, there are many buffaloes, donkeys, mules and horses (there are not many good horses) and other things to feed.
Therefore, the consumption of food will never be less than 700 million shi!
At the same time, many cash crops were planted in Southeast, Fujian, and Guangdong, which also occupied a lot of fertile land, thus reducing the food supply.
Although sweet potatoes have begun to be planted, the sown area is not very large. They are more common in mountainous areas in the southeast. It will take time to promote them. Moreover, it is not just Zhu Cihong who issued a few imperial edicts, and farmers just cried and shouted to plant sweet potatoes. Well...Historically, until 1957, the planting area of sweet potatoes and corn accounted for less than 20% of the total grain planting area in the country.
Moreover, during the Qianlong and Jiaqing years of the Qing Dynasty, the output of these two crops only accounted for a few percentage points of the country's total grain output...
"Mr. Chen, do you mean to use troops against Annan?" Zhu Cihong didn't know why, but after hearing Chen Rui's words, he thought of launching an aggressive war!
"Annan?" Chen Rui was stunned, "Your Majesty... Even if we get 10 million stones in Annan, we don't have that many ships to transport it!"
In fact, Annam rice, Siam rice, Champa rice and even Javanese rice have begun to be shipped to Shanghai!
Due to the collection of customs grain taxes, Chinese and foreign merchants in the import trade would bring half a shipload of rice. If they add up, they can make two to three million shi a year.
But if we want to increase it significantly, such as reaching 10 million shi, that is not something that the current shipping capacity can achieve.
10 million stones is equivalent to approximately 600,000 tons. A large sailing ship with a load of 1,000 tons would require 600 ships to transport it all at once!
Zhu Cixiang looked at Chen Rui: "Then what Mr. Chen means..."
"Of course we are running Shandong!" Chen Rui said, "During the Wanli period, Shandong had about 61.75 million acres of farmland. In a normal year, we could harvest 60 million tons of wheat. Although the weather has been dry these years, the sweet potatoes introduced by Gaofutai have It is very drought-tolerant, and the yield is not low after planting in Shandong. Even on sloping land, the yield per mu can reach several stones!"
In later generations, the output of sweet potatoes was often several tons, which was indeed eye-catching. However, it was difficult to achieve such a yield in the Ming Dynasty. Firstly, the varieties of sweet potatoes had not been improved; secondly, the temperature was too cold.
Sweet potatoes are warm-loving, cold-tolerant, and cold-intolerant crops. The optimal growth temperature is 22-30°C. This temperature will be nothing in later generations, but in northern China during the Little Ice Age, how many days in a year could it be?
Therefore, the sweet potato yield in Shandong is only five to seven stones, and can only be grown one season a year, but it is still considerable.
If planted in the south of the Yangtze River, it can reach more than ten dan... But the rice yield in Jiangnan is only three or four dan per mu, and the price of rice is much more expensive than sweet potatoes. Of course, farmers are not willing to switch to planting.
Chen Rui then said to Zhu Cixiang: "To the east of the canal and to the west of Taiyi Mountain, a large area of land is abandoned and uncultivated. The imperial court might as well use the method of farming. The army recruits people and gives them cattle to grow sweet potatoes. If it can There are 3 million acres of sweet potatoes planted, and the yield per mu is 6 shi, which is 18 million shi of sweet potatoes a year. It should not be difficult for the imperial court to purchase 10 million shi a year! I heard that some farmers in the southeast will plant a small amount of sweet potatoes. Then store them in cellars to prepare for famine years. We can also do this, plant sweet potatoes in the fields of Shandong, and then store them in cellars. We store 10 million dan in a year, which will be tens of millions of dan in a few years, which is enough to cope with the consumption of the Northern Expedition. In case of the southeast If there is a food shortage, we can also use sweet potatoes from Shandong to help."
"Okay!" Zhu Cihong clapped his hands, "Mr. Chen's idea is good! Let's discuss it later with Gao Hongtu and Zuo Maodi to see if it can be implemented?"
...
Shandong, Liaocheng.
Emperor Amadorgun of the Qing Dynasty did not know how much harm his retreat would cause - if he did not retreat, he would still occupy so much land east of the canal, leaving Zhu Cixiang no place to farm and grow sweet potatoes.
In this way, the food supply in the southeast is always tight, and it cannot be released even if there is a war!
Of course, Dorgon also had his own plans for retreat. He returns the victory to the court and accepts it as soon as it is good.
After conquering Qufu and going up and down, it was considered a fruitful journey. Although the books were all reporting losses, Dorgon could see from the faces of the people in Laoba Banner that they all made money...the money they lost was the flag's money, and the money they made was their own money. . The only one who really suffered a big loss was Zhenglvqi.
So it’s better to retreat as soon as possible, and don’t end up with a few more unwinnable battles.
In addition, his retreat to the west was also to create a buffer and buy time for the construction of the canal defense line.
He is now standing at the head of the damaged Liaocheng city, looking at the Zhenglu Banner people below who are busy "building fences."
The so-called "fence" is a fence that stretches along the Daqing River-Grand Canal and is built all the way to Shangqiu City. It can also be regarded as a thousand-mile Great Wall (about 1,300 miles long). However, the city wall cannot be repaired for a while.
The Qing Dynasty was poor, and it even suffered losses...
So we first built a fence with wood, and then built a Jiala castle every thirty miles (you can also use existing castles to renovate them), for a total of 40 Jiala castles. That is to say, 40 Jia La of Zhenglu Banner were deployed to station along this thousand-mile fence - there were originally 40 Jia La of Zhenglu Banner, which governed 200 Niu Lu, but now no Jia La has taken out one Niu Lu. After going outside the customs, there were still 160 Niulu left, and they were all arranged to serve as cannon fodder along this long fence!
