The small setback suffered by the Hoi An camp reconnaissance team was just a splash in the process of He Xiwen's expedition to Guangxi, and had no impact on the overall situation.
Worried that the Qing army would come back again, Chen Wenxiu hastily buried his fallen men and returned to the landing position with the wounded and equipment. He asked his deputy to lead a boat to send the wounded to the main force, while he and a few of his subordinates stayed behind in order to continue to monitor the movements of the Qing army.
It is said that the wolf soldiers thought that the poison they put on their weapons could not save anyone, but what they didn't know was that Hui Anying had been training in tropical and subtropical areas for many years, and was bitten by snakes and insects. The snake poison had become A must-have for every soldier.
This matter was first proposed by Wang Yuanfang. After all, he had served as a soldier on the southeast coast for a long time. He had encountered venomous snakes many times in combat and training, and he had a deep understanding of this. After the capture of Ba Cheng, he suggested to Zhao Xin that he purchase a large amount of "snake pills" from another time and space and distribute them to the combat troops at the squad level. Later, he also opened a popular course on snake bite treatment.
Speaking of which, traditional Chinese medicine has been around for thousands of years. Before there was serum treatment, people had always had good snake medicine. But because they are all secret recipes passed down from family, they are not widely circulated. In addition, bites from poisonous snakes mainly occur in rural mountains and forests. By the time a doctor is found, the day lily is already cold.
At noon the next day after the battle on the hill, the bamboo raft fleet at Hui'an camp arrived five miles south of Ma'an Pass. When the troops began to land ashore and the regiment's artillery troops set up positions, the Qing army at Ma'an Pass also entered a countdown to destruction.
After two hours of preparation, all shooting elements were calibrated. Following the order from regiment leader Wei Chao, twelve 82mm mortars opened fire one after another. The city walls on both sides of Ma'an Pass immediately turned into a sea of fire, and the defenders were killed and wounded. It was so disastrous that even the Palm Print guerrillas were blown to pieces. The few survivors, led by Qian Zongmeng Denggao, fled in a panic towards Teng County.
Afterwards, Chen Wenxiu led his men to search the ruins of the city wall and found the drone fragments buried in the rubble. The big stone in his heart finally fell to the ground.
As for the "iron rope crossing the river" that caused headaches to the ancient armies, is that still a big deal? A few small explosive packs will do the trick. What was more troublesome were the sunken ships blocking the river, and people had to be sent to dive to pull out the thick wooden nails.
Before the sun set, the two companies from Hui'an Camp occupied Ma'an Pass. At dusk, several mortar shells with a shrill roar landed in the yard of the defense office of the Yingenmen sub-city in the south of the county. Not only did the house collapse, they also killed and injured more than a hundred people who were eating dinner. of officers and soldiers.
The huge explosion frightened the officers, soldiers and people inside and outside Teng County. Many people hid in their homes and shivered, feeling that the end of the world was just around the corner. Especially the group of wolf soldiers who had just escaped from Ma'an Pass. They had just experienced an overwhelming bombardment in the afternoon. They finally escaped and took a breather. The shells were chasing them again.
In the eyes of these Guangxi Qing troops who were fighting against the Northern Navy for the first time, the "cannons" of the Northern Navy were really evil, as if they had eyes, and they hit wherever there were more soldiers.
However, even at this point, neither the county magistrate nor the deputy general Pingle Xie considered surrender.
Again, the Manchu Qing Dynasty strongly advocated "ruling the country with filial piety" for more than a hundred years, and also formulated laws to protect it. As a result, the people took filial piety very seriously. Surrendering seems to be a matter of loyalty, but behind the scenes, parents in the hometown will be implicated and punished, which is actually unfilial.
A fool doesn’t want to live a good life! The key is that if you are charged with "unfilial piety", you will be put to death immediately, and you will never be able to hold your head up again. Even if you become an official in Beihai Town, you will still be stabbed in the back.
However, the officials did not dare to surrender, but the local people were different. Not many people were willing to be buried with them. Some even thought this was an opportunity to change their destiny.
Located at the mouth of Xiujiang River, ten miles away from the east gate of Teng County, there is a place called Sanhezui, and its location is very important. The Ming Dynasty's "Tengcheng Ji" says: The Xiujiang River flows north and crosses the east of the city, and the two rivers circulate and connect to Dongguang. It is called the meeting point of the three rivers, where boats and cars gather, and there are many people. In the past, flood soldiers and government officials were stationed here to check passing ships and collect taxes and fees. News of the fall of Beiliu County reached Teng County, and the gentry in the city forcibly recruited more than a thousand fishermen and farmers to form a water camp to guard the place.
Among the more than 1,000 people, there was a fishmonger named Huang Zhengwu. He was very loyal and quite prestigious among the fishermen. After the establishment of Shuiying, he became the leader and was in charge of more than 200 brothers. When the two assault boats of the Hoi An camp reconnaissance team roared and quickly approached the river east of Sanhezui, the water camp immediately exploded, and everyone thought that the North Navy was about to land. Huang Zhengwu led more than two hundred of his men to mutiny, and Shuiying collapsed in an instant.
As a result, the string of civil and military officials in Teng County that was about to be broken could no longer be stretched. Pingle Xie's deputy general, Teng County magistrate Zhang Lin, Dianshi Zhou Jilong, as well as the teachings and teachings fled in panic after hearing the news. They were escorted by more than 300 soldiers from Pingle Xie's Central Military Command Division out of the city from the Gongchen Gate in the north and headed northwest He left for the Inspection Department of Baishi Village fifty miles away. There is a Wutun City built during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty. It has been renovated and rebuilt many times and is an important part of the riverside defense system in the north of Teng County.
It didn't matter that they ran away. The remaining wolf soldiers and heroes were leaderless, and some people began to take advantage of the situation in the city to rob them. Huang Zhengwu took the opportunity and rushed into the city from the north gate with his men, shouting "The Northern Navy has entered the city" and went straight to the county government office. In the end, he actually copied it, and he didn't have time to take away the nearly ten thousand taels of silver stored in the warehouse. It was donated by the gentry and merchants in the city for military pay.
That night, fires broke out all over the city of Teng County, and the fire continued until daylight broke out. Many houses of gentry and merchants were robbed. Zhuangyong is a local, but he doesn't dare to be too presumptuous, taking advantage of the chaos; the most ruthless ones are the wolf soldiers. It doesn't matter what kind of scholar you are, you just broke down the door, rushed in, robbed, and then fled out of the city through the north gate with large and small bags.
When the team that would set up camp after dawn arrived at the city gate, they saw the four gates wide open. Not only Huang Zhengwu, who claimed to be the leader of the "righteous people", but also the people of Teng County who were surviving the disaster were waiting to greet them.
Not to mention how to open warehouses and store grain, appease the people, and collect ships after setting up camp in the city. In the afternoon of that day, a telegram reporting victory signed by He Xiwen arrived from Lianzhou to the Northern Navy Staff Headquarters thousands of miles away. By the time Zhao Xin, who was in Fuldan City, saw the telegram, it was already evening.
Today, Fuldan City has become a large city with more than 70,000 permanent residents. The earlier earthen city walls have long disappeared. The entire city is like a huge chessboard, laid out in an orderly manner along the Lefu River and Suifen River. between the impact plains. If patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder see it, they will definitely feel very cured.
Because there is an agricultural area fifteen miles to the north, extending to Xingkai Lake, Fuldan City has now become the most important agricultural product processing base in Beihai Town. In addition to the sugar factory, meat factory, cannery, textile factory, garment factory and winery, the cigarette factory, match factory and leather factory previously established in Beihai Town have also been relocated here.
Speaking of this winery in Beihai Town, it uses solid-state fermentation to produce alcohol, with an annual output of 15,000 tons. In recent years, Beihai Town has planted sugar beets on a large scale in the Heilongjiang area, with an annual output of more than one million tons. If all of it was made into white sugar, it would not be sold at all. Of course, low-price dumping is not impossible, but the people in Guangdong and Guangxi who make a living by growing sugar cane will be miserable.
In ten years, the traversers headed by Zhao Xin worked hard to build four industrial towns, from south to north, Beihai Town, Fuldan City, Khabarovsk, and Oha in the northern part of Bitter Leaf Island. Beihai Town is now mainly engaged in shipbuilding, of which Dolphin Bay is a military port and Whale Bay is a civilian port; Fuldan City is engaged in agriculture and light industry; Khabarovsk is a heavy industrial base such as steel manufacturing, machinery manufacturing and military industry; Needless to say, Oha, oil and gas timber processing.
Last spring, the first north-south railway in Beihai Town finally broke ground, starting from Khabarovsk in the north and ending in Whale Harbor in the south. Once the railway is completed and opened to traffic, a large number of industrial products will be able to arrive directly at the port and then be transported to various places by sea.
In addition, one-third of the main construction of the railway line from Yaksa to Chita, which started the year before last, has been completed. Since the entire line is located in the tundra, construction is extremely difficult. The most difficult one is to build a railway bridge across the Ergun River.
The engineering drawings of the bridge were obtained by Zhao Xin from Damao in another time and space, and the designer was Proskulyakov, a famous bridge design expert when Tsarist Russia built the Siberian Railway.
Zhao Xin came to Fuldan City this time to preside over a special meeting of the "29-member Committee" across the country. The content decided at this meeting will set the tone for another meeting involving the indigenous people of this time and space, so as to make political, ideological and economic preparations before the North Korean Navy enters the country.
At dusk, when the lights are turned on, smoke is curling up over Fuldan City. Every family is preparing dinner, and the men in the family are about to go home from work. For ordinary people living in the Northeast, it is very pleasant to gather around the warm fire bed every night, chatting about family affairs, eating meals, and then listening to the news and excerpts from the chatterbox.
These people who left their homes and came to the outer Northeast never dreamed that they would have the life they have today. Although the winter here is bitingly cold, I have fifty acres of land, work in the factory, school for my children, a hospital for illness, white flour for every meal, and meat every now and then, and I live a life like a fairy.
At this time, in the flower hall of Chen Qingsong's house, a huge purple sand hot pot was placed in the middle of the large round table made of red rosewood. The silver charcoal inside was crackling, but there was no smoke at all. Zhou Za's soup stock, carefully prepared from a whole chicken, is boiling. Snow-white ginseng slices and red dates are tumbling up and down in the pot, and the heat is reaching the roof.
The hot pot is surrounded by an enamel-glazed eight-inch plum blossom platter, with piled venison slices, lamb slices, lamb tenderloin, salmon, prawns, abalone slices, sea cucumber slices, scallops, mushrooms, green vegetables, and radish. , there are a lot of dazzling things, and there are various condiments such as sesame paste, rice wine, soybean curd, chive flowers, soy sauce and so on on a small table next to it.
Compared with the silver charcoal that costs two taels per kilogram in Guanhai, birch trees over fifty years old are everywhere in the outer northeast and are worthless at all. Some immigrants who had made charcoal in the past discovered it and opened charcoal kilns. However, most of the immigrants in Beihai Town came from poor backgrounds and were not particular about using silver charcoal, so the sales volume was only about that. If the hot kang doesn’t burn, do you have to imitate the rich man’s example of burning a charcoal pot? Enough support!
When the hostess Qing He saw her husband Chen Qingsong leading Zhao Xin, Wu Siyu, Cao Peng, and Liu Zheng out of the study to sit down, she picked up a wine pot from the small table and poured a circle of rice wine along the edge of the pot. In an instant, The aroma filled the room, and even Liu Zheng, who was tired of eating beef and mutton after staying in Kulun for two years, was moved with his index finger.
Speaking of the dozens of women that Zhao Xin and the others "stolen" from Yangzhou back then, except for the youngest ones who are still waiting in the harem, all the others have their homes now. During the nine years they have been teachers, they have never suffered any hardship. Now they are all in their twenties, in their prime. Qing He, who was good at cooking, was originally the least beautiful among the group of women, but she fell in the eyes of Chen Qingsong. She became his wife and gave birth to a son and a daughter. From then on, she became the "Prime Minister's Wife" and made countless People are envious and jealous.
Qing He finished his work and said a few words to everyone before returning to the back house. There, a group of female relatives also opened a large table, including Shen Xuan, A Miao, Lin Sanyue, Liu Zheng's two wives, and a large group of others. She had to go and take care of the child.
The matter between Zhao Xin and A Miao was handled after he returned from Shengjing before the Mid-Autumn Festival. He did not publicize it to the outside world. He only invited Chen Qingsong and his wife, Hong Tao and his wife, Li Ji and his wife, Wan Zao and his family and some other elderly people in Beihai Town to bear witness. A few more banquet tables were set up. Shen Xuan had agreed to let A Miao in very early. This girl knew too many secrets about Zhao Xin, and there were some things that even Shen Xuan didn't know very well. In this sense, there is no second possibility except marrying Zhao Xin.
Zhao Xin felt very guilty about A Miao, as he could not give the latter a formal identity. Beihai Town has been holding high the banner of "abolition of servitude" in recent years. Taking concubines is tantamount to reviving servitude. Although Liu Zheng has two wives, only one can be made public. But A Miao didn't care about this. She was full of love and was content as long as she could always be by Zhao Xin's side.
The men, including Zhao Xin, were not literati and could not do anything like poetry, drinking, etc. After a few glasses of rice wine, they became drunk and soon turned the topic to He Shen's escape.
Several months have passed, and the Intelligence Bureau has thoroughly investigated what happened in the capital that night and the next day. When everyone was chatting in the study room, Zhao Xin gave a general introduction, and now he gave some details. Everyone present was moved after hearing this.
Cao Peng sighed: "It's really cool for me to play tricks with you. Qianlong is so good to him, and he can do it."
"What a fart!" Liu Zheng picked up the wine glass and clinked it with Cao Peng. After drinking half of the glass, he said, "Do you think Qianlong didn't know about all the bad things he did? Impossible! Let me tell you, Qianlong has been playing hawk all his life. In the end, he was pecked out of his eyes."
Cao Peng has been in the island country for the past two years. Although intrigues are inevitable, after all, behind him is the powerful Beihai Town. Both the Sendai clan and the shogunate treat him as an ancestor, just like the emperor. Liu Zheng is different. In the past two years in Kulun, he has struggled with the Lama Taiji countless times and suffered several losses, so his political sensitivity has been tempered quite well.
Wu Siyu agreed: "Xiao Liu's words are on point."
Chen Qingsong suddenly interjected: "Actually, the key here is the emperor's skill in employing people."
As soon as these words came out, Cao Peng, Wu Siyu and Liu Zheng looked at Zhao Xin involuntarily. Zhao Xin is fishing for abalone with chopsticks. The waves are too strong these days, so he needs to catch up. He looked up inadvertently and saw the three of them looking at him. He smiled and said, "Why are you looking at me? I have neither wine nor food on my face. Lao Chen, please continue."
Chen Qingsong also drank a lot today, and his face was as red as a monkey's butt. Seeing that the "future emperor" didn't care, he thought about it for a moment and then said in a deep voice: "We can only say this behind closed doors, and no one can tell it to the outside world. The ancient emperors' skill in employing people is to put it bluntly, they use villains instead of gentlemen. , A gentleman cannot get things done if his merits are not as good as his faults. An official who can balance the interests of all parties and satisfy the vast majority of people is a capable minister, and such people in history are often not gentlemen."
Cao Peng thought for a while, nodded and shook his head: "Well, that's the truth. That's not right! Hong Liangji and Liu Taigong are upright, don't we also entrust them with important responsibilities and let them guard the shepherd side?"
Chen Qingsong smiled and said nothing, then looked at Zhao Xin.
Although Zhao Xin never puts on airs when talking privately with other time travelers, and always says that his status as emperor is just a transition, he is the foundation of Beihai Town after all. Without him, nothing can happen, so even if they are laughing and joking, everyone and Zhao Xin Be careful when speaking. Anyone who can't see this clearly is no different from the two people in Whale Town who were under house arrest and left to eat and die. Therefore, Chen Qingsong could no longer say anything more than this, and Zhao Xin could only add the rest.
Zhao Xin looked at Chen Qingsong who seemed drunk but not drunk, put down his chopsticks and laughed. Both of them are at the level of thousand-year-old foxes, so there is no point in pretending to be mysterious. At this time, he had finished two plates of abalone and one plate of venison. He felt that he was almost done, so he picked up a towel and wiped his mouth, took another sip of tea, and said slowly: "What Lao Chen said is correct or not. .”
Chen Qingsong smiled and said: "Then I will listen attentively."
Cao Peng knew that due to his relationship with Zhao Xin, he would not stay in Sendai Domain forever and would definitely be able to manage one side. It was very important to master the knowledge of how to employ people. So he picked up the teapot and served it to Zhao Xinxu, making a gesture of asking for advice: "Boss Zhao, please stop teasing me. How about I give you a piece of pork as a apprenticeship ceremony tomorrow?"
Chen Qingsong laughed and said: "Hahaha, Xiao Cao, you still claim to be a descendant of the Cao family in She County. The gift of Xiu must require at least ten strips of bacon!"
"If we want to understand this question clearly, we must first understand what a gentleman and a villain are." Zhao Xin pondered for a moment and continued to explain: "When Confucius said this, it was still in the pre-Qin Dynasty. "Zuo Zhuan" said that before the work is done, a gentleman Laboring one's mind, small people working hard, is the system of the ancient kings. It is also said that "the rule of the world is that the gentleman is able to let the subordinates do it, and the small people use their agricultural power to serve the superiors. This is the courtesy of superiors and inferiors. So the villain mentioned by Confucius is actually The common people at the bottom. In order to live a good life, of course the common people cannot talk about benevolence, justice and morality like a gentleman all day long, but they must talk about interests. So Confucius also said, the virtue of a gentleman is the virtue of a villain. The wind on the grass will destroy it."
"Close your eyes?" Cao Peng blinked. He just roughly flipped through "The Analects of Confucius" without reading it in detail.
Liu Zheng interjected: "The rulers are the wind, and the people are the grass. Wherever the wind blows, the grass falls."
"Pah!" Zhao Xin's old problem came back again. He slapped Liu Zheng on the thigh and said in surprise: "Okay! Veterinarian Liu, it seems that he has been reading a lot in the past two years in Culun!"
Liu Zheng gritted his teeth and opened Zhao Xin's hand, rubbed it vigorously and said: "What's the point of looking at the blue sky and white clouds on the prairie every day! Didn't you tell me that if you read more books when you have nothing to do, you can't be worse than a scholar? .”
Zhao Xin patted the other party's shoulder in agreement, turned to Cao Peng and said: "A gentleman is magnanimous, but a villain is always concerned. Have you always heard this?"
"I heard it. It's not a good thing."
Zhao Xin shook his head and said: "In ancient times, including now, the rulers did not worry about their livelihood, but the common people had to turn their heads to the loess and their backs to the sky. A bead of sweat broke into eight petals. After paying the royal grain, they also had to pay rent. What do you think of them? Don't worry about gains and losses, but care about every detail? Are they wrong?"
"When those in power choose people to carry out the specific tasks, they must choose those who understand the sufferings of the people at the bottom and know how to distribute benefits, because only these people are not ashamed to talk about benefits. To only talk about benevolence, justice and morality without talking about benefits is to be a hooligan. And Although Shen followed Qianlong to become rich and powerful, his family fell into decline in his early years, he suffered a lot at the bottom, and he saw a lot of human kindness. He understood the interests very well. The problem of the Qianlong Dynasty was not actually Heshen, but the emperor. I and the feudal centralized system. Although Yushitai has a complete supervision system, the so-called supervision is nothing more than the emperor's method of regulating civil and military officials. It is entirely based on personal likes and dislikes and is nothing but a piece of paper."
The supervisory law of the Qing Dynasty was called the "Qin Ding Tai Regulations", which was first compiled in the eighth year of Qianlong's reign and was divided into eight volumes and 22 items. In the following decades, a large number of provisions were added, which can be said to be the most complete collection of supervisory laws in the feudal dynasty. However, in the face of the officialdom that had existed since the Ming Dynasty, many clauses were simply unenforceable.
For example, local officials make extravagant arrangements and give monetary gifts when welcoming superior officials across the border. However, in reality, such extravagant entertainment and generous gifts have almost become a routine; the law prohibits any form of buying and selling of the position of a subordinate official in the government, but the successor clerk to the official It has become an almost unbreakable custom for clerks who leave to pay a price to buy their position - also known as "missing the bottom".
Like the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty's "Imperial Regulations" also gave the six subjects the privilege of sealing and refuting matters; however, due to the emperor's dictatorship in the Qing Dynasty, the authority of sealing and refuting matters in the six subjects was almost never exercised. Who dares?
Although the emperor blurred the boundaries between Manchu and Han on the surface, in fact, they believed from the bottom of their hearts that this country could only belong to the Manchus. What the emperor decides only needs to be implemented, and there is no room for comment! Therefore, the country is not our own, so why should we be so serious about it?
Zhao Xin directly took Cao Peng's descendant Cao Zhenyong as an example. This man was a great scholar in the Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang dynasties in history, but he was mediocre all his life. Not only did he personally practice the official tactic of "kowtow more and talk less", he also taught it to his disciples and descendants. He even warned his disciples and descendants that the censor, who was responsible for corrections, should not be meddlesome and told them to "talk too much and not be arrogant." !" The censors who originally tried to give advice because of the decline of the country had no choice but to muddle along after hearing their mentor's "experience".
While Zhao Xin was drinking water to moisten his throat, Chen Qingsong also mentioned a Qing Dynasty official couplet he had seen in a book: "The first couplet is, Your Excellency, Your Excellency, Your Excellency, Your Excellency will be promoted to the third rank. The Sixteenth Heavenly Palace is built with the Jade Emperor God.”
"Haha, where's the second line?"
"A humble position, a humble position, a humble position, a humble position, you deserve to die, and you will die in the eighteenth level of hell, digging coal for me, the King of Hell."
"Hahahaha~~! Absolutely awesome!"
In fact, when talking about this, it has extended from the issue of employment to the major issue of officialdom. The essence is the historical proposition of whether the North Navy can stabilize the world after entering the customs.
To put it bluntly, behind all systems are ideas and culture, which also determine the way of thinking and value orientation. The political form of ancient China was ethical. Starting from the "matching heaven with virtue" in the Western Zhou Dynasty, virtue was the mainstay and punishment was supplementary. This was the governing strategy of most dynasties.
Although morality is the basic means of controlling politics and has universal binding force on the whole society, morality is only authoritative in concept, and its control over political power cannot be guaranteed. Its realization can only rely on the ruler himself. There is a lot of arbitrariness in the moral sense and ideological consciousness.
Since the monarch is appointed by heaven and holds all judicial, administrative, and legislative powers, all his attitudes become an unwritten law under invisible deterrence and coercion. In fact, it was this kind of ethical politics that gave the supervisory system an excuse in the feudal era. Since the monarch's power is bound by morality, and the king's transgressions are punished by heaven, then the bottom-up supervision mechanism is not so important. .
At the end of the conversation, everyone understood the meaning of Zhao Xin's words, that is, the time-travelers cannot become a new privileged class, and the bureaucrats and scholars under the Beihai Town system can no longer enjoy the privileges of the past. This move will also further strengthen Zhao's confidence. The name and identity of the new emperor. It's called a monarchy, but it's actually a republic.
When several people left Chen Qingsong's house, it was already past 12 o'clock in the evening, and the female relatives had already gone back with their children. Before Zhao Xinlin got on the carriage, Liu Zheng came over to stop him and whispered: "Boss Zhao, those Mongolian princes have been here for more than a year. It's not a problem to be under house arrest all the time. There must be an explanation, right?"
"What's wrong?"
"You don't know that Tushetu Khan's wife comes to the military control meeting every now and then to ask questions. I hid whenever I could." Liu Zheng did not dare to say more. In fact, in the past six months, several princes and family members from various Khalkha Mongolian tribes have been looking for her. There were people under him and the Alliance Flag below who took advantage of this to cause trouble, but they were quickly suppressed.
"Take time to check on those people for me these days and tell them that we will let them go back when we take the capital."
"By the way, what are you going to do about King Hami?"
"He? You can't go back." In the night, there was a hint of determination and coldness in Zhao Xin's tone, which made Liu Zheng's heart skip a beat.
