When Jinxi City was defeated by the 19th and 23rd Regiments, Shengjing City had been besieged for almost a month.
Although it took such a long time, the city was not worried about food at all, but there was a slight shortage of coal and firewood.
Fortunately, it is summer and there is no need to light a fire to keep warm, so the consumption of firewood is relatively small. As the companion capital of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Shengjing was the foundation of the Qing court outside the customs.
Not only is there something like
General Shengjing, who was generally a "Tu emperor", also had five ministries of household affairs, rituals, work, punishment, and military affairs, as well as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversaw the entire Northeast. He had plenty of food, money, and soldiers.
In these years, the Qing army gathered large forces in Jilin to deal with Beihai Town. Almost half of the money, food and soldiers were supplemented from the Shengjing area.
Before Beihai Town built the Xingkaihu and Shuangchengzi areas into farming areas, the Shengjing area was still the largest and most important grain-producing area outside the customs.
When natural disasters occur in the capital, Guannei Zhili, Shandong and other provinces, food is often transported by sea from the Shengjing area to provide relief; Chahar Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin and other places also rely on it for relief due to poor harvests.
The Qing Dynasty's grain storage system in Shengjing was divided into flag warehouses and civilian warehouses. The flag warehouse was dedicated to the Eight Banners garrison and bannermen, and the civilian warehouse was the Changping warehouse.
For example, the civilian warehouse in Chengde County under Fengtian Prefecture has 40,000 shi, and the flag warehouse has 160,000 shi. The combined grain storage in the two granaries can save hundreds of thousands of people on food, and coupled with the private grain storage, there will be no problem in holding on for three or four months.
After talking about food, let’s talk about money. Whenever there is a war, the expenditure on wages and rewards is like running water. But Shengjing is the least short of money. There are still more than three million taels of silver stored in the bank of the city's Household Department.
In the forty-second year of Qianlong's reign, because the Household Department in Shengjing was unable to make ends meet, Qianlong specially sent an order to allocate 10 million taels from the Household Department in the capital for permanent storage to improve its finances.
Later, the Qing government also allocated military salaries for its troops in Jilin. After a few years, there was still so much left. Finally, there are soldiers, not to mention this.
There were originally fifteen thousand Eight Banners soldiers in the city, and including their families, the total number was no less than one hundred thousand.
In the past, the number of soldiers was limited due to the lack of soldiers, which was a waste of money and food. Now, no matter how many soldiers there were, it was felt that there were not enough soldiers. All the banner men in the city between the ages of fifteen and fifty were conscripted.
Ancient China was an agricultural society. Under this economic system, as long as the army could pay and the officers and soldiers could have enough to eat, their morale would not completely collapse and they would still maintain combat effectiveness.
Therefore, although the Qing army in the city could not defeat the Northern Navy in a field battle, they still had the courage to hold on to the city. At the beginning of the eighth lunar month - that is, the end of August in the Western calendar - the sorghum outside the city was ripe, so the Beihai Navy began to harvest sorghum under the eyes of the Qing army.
When Zhao Xin came with supplies before, he had already calculated the time for harvesting the crops.
The idea of "fighting the enemy with food". Although the taste of sorghum is worse than that of white flour, its caloric value is higher than that of rice and white flour. It has 350 calories per 100 grams and is rich in crude fiber.
For those Northern Navy soldiers with northern origins, sorghum has been their staple food since childhood, and wheat has only been eaten for a few years.
"Dajunmen, the pirates from the North Sea are collecting the sorghum outside the city!" The visitor was Bolin, the Minister of Household Affairs in Shengjing, who also served as the Yin of Fengtian Prefecture.
I saw that in addition to anxiety, he also looked a little confused.
"Yuting, I had known this would happen, so just let them go. How many people can we take from the Beihai Pirates?" Shu Liang showed a look of disdain when he heard this.
He had made a plan a few days ago. The Beihai Navy would definitely grab the hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum outside the city. The other party collected them during the day, and he organized his men to go out from the small south gate to collect them at night.
In addition to sorghum, straw is also a good thing. There is not much firewood and coal in the city right now, and we just need it.
After being besieged for so many days, he could estimate how many men and horses the Beihai Navy had. Twenty or thirty thousand people were killed. They couldn't all come out to harvest sorghum, right?
I can't defeat you in a war, and I can't harvest you in food? There are tens of thousands of people in Shengjing City, but they can only get back less than half.
"No, Dajunmen, go and have a look! They don't use people to cut sorghum, they use, they use... I can't explain that thing clearly. They don't use oxen and horses and they don't have people to drive them. It's so weird! "
"Oh?" Shu Liang's expression became solemn. Half an hour later, Shu Liang, escorted by a group of cavalry, rode his horse to the outer gate of the outer city. Before he entered the city, he saw people standing on the city wall from a distance. The scene was very noisy, which made Shu Liang very upset. It's annoying.
Those who knew it was a war, but those who didn’t know it thought it was a gathering! Seeing that the general's expression was not right, the soldier Geshiha hurriedly went to find the city gate guard.
Not long after, a burst of drums sounded under the city tower, and then a soldier shouted at the top of his voice: "The army gate has arrived!" Those on the city wall who were stretching their necks to look out looked back in shock, only to see the stairs leading to the city from the edge of the wall. Two carved quills rose up, and then a black mink tail was revealed, followed by a helmet with an engraved gold leaf cover and a base, decorated with gold flowers and clouds and dragons, and ear and neck protection wrapped in python-patterned sapphire satin. It also appeared.
The face under the helmet looked to be in his early fifties, with a dark and red complexion, a hanging nose, eyebrows that seemed to be open and closed, and a long beard connected to his chin. He was none other than Shu Liang, the local emperor of Shengjing City and a first-class general.
Shu Liang walked slowly up the city wall. He was wearing a cotton armor with an azure satin bottom, an iron leaf in the middle, and silver nails on the outside. He wanted to hang a sword, and wore a pair of foundation soap boots on his feet.
The armor's left and right shoulder pads, front chest and left and right crotches are each embroidered with a python dress. The shoulder pads are connected to the clothes with iron leaves and decorated with golden dragons.
The silk ribbons at the joints of the shoulder pads, the left and right armpits, and the body armor are also all azurite. I really want to be so majestic and majestic, but I'm just a little overwhelmed...
"See the Grand Army Gate! Say hello to the Grand Army Gate!" A large number of people on the city wall shouted and knelt down. Among them were armored soldiers and gunners holding shotguns, as well as flag men holding bows, arrows, spears, and swords.
Shu Liang had a livid face, stroking his beard with one hand, and spoke from his nose.
He said "Humph" and said in his heart that I will deal with you later. I have to find a few unlucky guys to beat me with military sticks. He walked to the city wall and took the telescope, which was more than two feet long and as thick as his forearm, from the soldiers. After pulling it open, he looked in the direction of Bolin's finger and he was immediately shocked!
On the endless fields to the west of Shengjing City, several large harvesters were roaring, which could be heard clearly from several miles away.
Under the front of these harvesters, there is a six-tooth drum header with a width of five meters; as the harvester continues to move forward at a speed of five kilometers per hour, in the blink of an eye, only half a foot high is left. Straw.
Suddenly, Shu Liang noticed that a harvester stopped motionless after harvesting a ridge of sorghum, and then the header in front slowly rose. Only then did he see it through the telescope.
The "Giant Shovel" is painted red and white. When the header was raised to about one meter, the harvester drove straight onto the dirt road next to the field and stopped next to several four-wheeled carriages.
Those carriages were pulled by four horses, and the carriages were surrounded by a four- to five-foot-high wall panel, just like a square barrel.
At this time, the harvester threw out a thick and long white pipe from the top, with the opening facing downwards, facing the first carriage carriage.
Just when Shu Liang was wondering why, he saw reddish-brown unhulled sorghum gushing down like a waterfall.
After a while, the carriage seemed to be full, and the white pipe stopped spraying, and then turned to a carriage behind it.
After all three carriages were loaded with sorghum, the harvester turned around and returned to the field head, put down the header, and continued the previous operation.
"This!" Shu Liang's eyes widened, his mouth opened wide, and his whole body felt bad. Bolin behind him said: "Dajunmen, that thing can harvest ten acres of sorghum with just one cup of tea." The guard of the city gate on the other side was also worried that the world would not be in chaos and said: "People are staring at the mark. After watching for a while, the monsters had only been out for more than an hour, and hundreds of acres of sorghum had been taken away. "Ten acres!"
! Hundreds of acres! ! ! Shu Liang had long heard that Beihai Town was good at using mechanical equipment. Apart from anything else, the Thunder God number alone is well-known to everyone and astonishes countless people.
However, Beihai Town's extensive use of machinery in farming is only rumored, and few people have actually seen it. When I saw it today, it was simply appalling!
Bolin behind him said softly: "Dajun Gate, not only here, but also outside the North Gate and East Gate!"
"Let's go! Go take a look!" Shu Liang turned around and left with his men. At this moment, he no longer cared about punishing those who were watching the fun.
When we went to the north and east of the city, it was exactly as Bolin said, and the efficiency was exactly the same as what we had seen before.
During this period, he received a report from the South Gate guard, saying that there were several huge harvesting machines on the south bank of the Hun River.
Shu Liang suddenly felt dizzy after hearing this, and was immediately helped by his own soldiers to mount his horse. His face was extremely ugly.
Not to mention sorghum, now we don’t even have to snatch the straw, leaving only half a foot high! The North Sea Pirates are really cruel!
Since there are only six regiments of the troops of the Northern Navy participating in the siege of Shengjing, there are only 15,000 people in total. Even if you include the former migrant workers, it is less than 30,000. Even if all these people are put into battle, if you want to use the sickle in a short time It is simply impossible to harvest all the hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum and put it into storage. Besides, there are not that many sickles in the logistics area.
In order to shock the hundreds of thousands of Manchu and Han people in Shengjing, and to vigorously develop agriculture after taking over Liaodong, Zhao Xin transferred more than 200 drivers and maintenance workers from Fuldan City to Weiyuan before opening the plains. fort.
After the troops captured Tieling, he made a special trip back to Fuldan City and brought over thirty new harvesters he bought at the beginning of the year.
At the same time, the Logistics Department recruited a large number of carpenters and blacksmiths in Kaiyuan and Tieling, and asked them to build hundreds of four-wheeled carriages in an assembly line manner according to the drawings.
Although the process took a lot of trouble, he was still very satisfied with the final scene and result. In the future, the main crops in Liaodong will still be sorghum and soybeans. Zhao Xin will not be so hot-headed as to plow up all the sorghum fields and plant wheat instead. That would be just a waste of money.
Even if he unified the world, what he had to do was to ensure that the people had enough to eat. China, an agricultural society, has always been a country prone to natural disasters and needs to allocate food relief every year.
In addition, Beihai Town will need to recruit at least hundreds of thousands of people to manage the Yellow River and Huaihe River in the future. The rations for so many people cannot be supplied within the customs, so they can only be transported from outside the customs.
The Beihai Navy used the harvester to cause thunder and lightning in Shengjing City. At night, the harvesters outside the city were still busy, and countless bonfires were lit on the field ridges for illumination. The Beihai navy on duty even fired a few rounds of flares from time to time, causing hundreds of thousands of people to feel restless and terrified all night long.
As panic intensified, the next morning, food prices in Shengjing suddenly rose. Seeing that there is no hope for autumn grain, various grain stores began to hesitate to sell and sell out little by little.
Several grain shops, such as Taihe and Tianhe, the largest in the city, were either backed by the Manchu clan or had shares held by officials from the Fifth Ministry of Shengjing or the Eight Banners garrison.
This group of people invited to form a gang and would meet every night to decide on the price of food for the next day. In this way, the rich and powerful and the Eight Banners soldiers are not worried, but those who fled from outside the city
The families of "Flag Followers" can no longer bear it. It is well known that there are a large number of Han people in the Eight Banners. These people will be collectively referred to as
"Han Army". The Han army of the Eight Banners is generally divided into two groups, the Han army's armored soldiers and the flag and drum assistants of the three banners covered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
However, in the Liaodong region and the Gyeonggi region, in addition to the above two types of Han people living in the banner, there is another unknown group; they are the banner society composed of Han immigrants who have joined the banner. They are large in number, complex in composition, and most of them are missing. recorded in official documents.
These people claim to be
"The Sanzuo of Shengjing's Ministry of Internal Affairs leads the subordinates", but they do not belong to the bannermen in any manor in Shengjing.
The Qing government managed the genealogy and Ding register of this group separately and was not included in the Eight Banners and Han Army.
To put it bluntly, "bannermen" are tenants of Huangzhuang and Qizhuang. Some of them took their land and became the head of the village, just like Wu Jinxiao of Heishan Village in "A Dream of Red Mansions"; most of them lacked clothes. Most of these people, who had little food, were hungry and cold, had no other choice but to live in their own farms.
learn a lot
The "banner followers" could not afford to eat, so the General Office of Shengjing, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Household Affairs, and the Fengtian Mansion issued notices requiring all grain stores in the city not to increase their prices and to sell them at the usual prices. Violators would be severely punished.
However, this move was not only unbearable, but food prices rose even more sharply.
The "banner people" were poor and could not afford food, so they went to the Chengde County government office to beat drums and complain, demanding that profiteers be punished.
Shu Liang was worried about the unstable public sentiment, so he handed over the major matter of handling food prices to Chuansen, the Minister of Punishment. Chuansen went back and discussed it with his men, and finally decided to take action on a grain merchant with a single surname from Huang County, Shandong Province.
This person deserves to be unlucky. Who allowed Huang County to be occupied by Beihai Town now? The grain market in Shengjing City is located in the Dizai Gate in the northwest, where grain merchants gather every day to set market prices.
Legend has it that Shu Liang, the general of Shengjing in the Ming Dynasty, and Bolin, the minister of household affairs, personally led fifty armored soldiers and officials from the Ministry of Punishment, and suddenly arrived.
"Hengsheng", when he came up, he locked up the single grain merchant without any explanation, then circled an open space at the intersection south of the Dizai Gate, laid out a public case in front of the crowd of onlookers, and interrogated him personally.
In fact, Shan Liang, a merchant, had known Chuansen for a long time. When he arrived, he had given gifts to him along with other merchants, and he showed his filial piety during every year and festival.
He knew that it would be even more troublesome if he dared to establish friendship with Chuansen in this situation, so he had no choice but to kowtow and beg, expressing his willingness to sacrifice five hundred stones of sorghum in order to spare his life.
Chuansen's purpose today is to kill him as a warning to others, and he cannot be spared. He picked up the gavel and slapped it hard on the public case, and said with a sneer: "Haha, I'm thinking of donating food now, it's too late! You profiteers secretly hoarded food during the war, falsified the value, and turned to attract others. , hoping to make huge profits. As a result, the price of food has risen, and it has become more and more difficult for the people to feed themselves! I was ordered by the army today, and the people were angry, so they suppressed the price of food. Come on! Convict this person of canonical punishment!" The more the Shan grain merchant heard, the more shocked he became. Knowing that something was wrong, he kept twisting and struggling, shouting that he was wronged.
Why! It’s not my idea to raise food prices in the city. The best we can do is follow the crowd! At this time, a criminal officer standing behind him was well prepared. As soon as he shouted injustice, the man reached out and pinched the Shangrain merchant's chin, lifted and pulled it, and then dislocated his jaw joint, and he immediately became mute. .
Then an executioner with a sharp blade came forward, waited for the officer to pull the opponent's whip, and pointed at the neck joint, then raised the knife and dropped it.
Amidst the exclamations of the onlookers, the grain merchant Shan's head rolled on the ground, he closed his eyes unwillingly, and a blood arrow shot out from his neck.
Because the incident happened suddenly, some people in the crowd sighed, saying that if they had known better, they would have brought a steamed bun over, and everything was in vain.
On the second day after the death, no food companies dared to increase prices. But not much grain was sold, and it closed after selling for a hundred shi.
On the third day, people buying grains lined up at the ground floor before dawn. There were long queues outside every grain store.
As soon as the shop was put down, it immediately became crowded, with people pushing and shoving. Arguing and fighting over buying food is nothing. There are times when someone gets mad and kills someone.
In the blink of an eye, it was the fifth day of the eighth lunar month, and two thousand political workers and security police teams transferred from Beihai Town were in place one after another. The mobilization meeting before entering the city was also held, and the general attack on Shengjing City was about to begin.
