During the five years from the summer of 1675 to the summer of 1680, after occupying Moscow, the Ming army on the Western Expedition only captured Smolensk to the west, and obtained a Baltic Sea outlet to the north with the consent of Sweden. Haikou location.
There was no big move anymore. Smolensk still used Zhang Huangyan's method of using force to intimidate, which was to issue an ultimatum and give the other party three days to let Tsar Alexei and the defenders get out.
You can go anywhere, but you can't invade Ming's territory again.
Any place that has been occupied by the Ming Dynasty King's Division falls within this scope.
If the opponent dares to try again, the Ming army will accompany him to the end and play until the opponent can no longer afford it!
After repeated defeats, Alexey, who had almost lost all his wealth, had no courage to challenge the Ming army again, so he could only pack up his bags and run away.
Emperor Haojing was satisfied with eating most of the Rakshasa's territory and had no great interest in continuing to advance westward.
We also need to consider the feelings of Sweden, the northern hegemon. When Ming Dynasty couldn't eat meat, they didn't even leave soup for others.
If Sweden can capture Bolli's territory, it can naturally take all the orders, and Ming Dynasty will not have any objections.
It would be too difficult to continue to conquer westward. Logistics and supplies would be very inconvenient and the cost would be too high.
Even with Swedish support, the reward of attacking Boli is far less than eating Rakshasa.
Besides, the soldiers of the Western Expedition have been away from home for more than ten years, and the kind-hearted Emperor Haojing will not let these men die alive.
Moreover, the soldiers would not walk back to their homeland like they did during the Western Expedition.
By the 40th year of Haojing (1683) at the latest, the northern line, starting from Beidu and ending in Moscow, will be fully connected.
By then, the soldiers can just take the train back, saving time, effort, and shoes...
The whole journey is about 15,000 miles, calculated at 50 miles per hour, excluding resupply and maintenance every day, the train can travel 1,200 miles.
It takes less than half a month to return to Beidu from Moscow.
Therefore, on the issue of whether to walk home by yourself or take the train, the soldiers of the Western Expedition had surprisingly unanimous views.
In the future, Ming Dynasty will also build a railway to control the western part of Northland with Moscow as the center.
In particular, several major strongholds, such as Polo Castle (a stronghold established at the Baltic Sea outlet), Novgorod, Smolensk, Bryansk, Voronezh and other cities, will be connected to Moscow by railways.
The rotating troops for the Western Expeditionary Army will also arrive at the stations along the line after the entire northern railway line is completed, replacing all the Western Expeditionary soldiers.
The entire Northern Territory, except for many vassal states, was directly integrated into the Ming Dynasty and came under the jurisdiction of the imperial court. Naturally, the number of garrison troops was not small.
Emperor Haojing also welcomed people and merchants to settle and do business in the western part of the Northland. Anyone who settled there would not have to pay any taxes for twenty years.
Adults can get two hundred acres of land, and the elderly and children can get half of it. If resources are found, they can get 20% of it. Cutting down trees, hunting, and fishing can be done with settlement documents.
However, Emperor Haojing believed based on the reports submitted by his three disciples that the first batch of settlers were likely to be soldiers returning from the Western Expedition.
The reason is simple. I am addicted to riding foreign horses, and I have already won the highest reward - a mixed-race baby!
In order to avoid confusion, Zhang Huangyan formulated horse riding rules for his troops.
Ordinary soldiers can each ride two horses, sergeants can add one, second lieutenants can add one, and so on.
When the moving average reaches the general level, it will reach ten digits.
But once the relationship is confirmed between the two parties, they cannot easily change people.
Even a foreign horse married to a soldier of the King's Division can get one hundred acres of land.
If you have children, you will be rewarded with one hundred acres of land if you give birth to a child. Both men and women can enjoy this treatment.
It doesn't matter if the land cannot be plowed. If there is no war, the steam tank can still be used as a tractor.
It would not work otherwise. The small amount of supplies expected to be shipped from the mainland every year is simply not enough to feed more than 200,000 military dependents.
The only way is to cultivate the land on the spot, make a living by one's own efforts, and eventually achieve adequate food and clothing.
Fortunately, the Master issued an order. In view of the large number of Rakshasa stragglers scattered in various places, he declared that the western part of the Northland, west of the Ural Mountains, was temporarily under military jurisdiction.
This means that all local resources can be deployed by the garrison. For example, coal mines, which can generate electricity, heat, cook, and be used as tank fuel, can be used at extremely low costs.
Some people are dissatisfied with military control because huge interests are involved and they cannot bear to see the military being left alone.
Emperor Haojing's explanation for this is very convincing. If it is left to the imperial court to manage, and businessmen are allowed to invest, the imperial court will have to wait to collect taxes, and the amount collected will not be satisfactory in the early stage.
This little money is not enough to buy supplies for the garrison in the North, and the court in turn has to subsidize more than half of it. Spending money is asking for trouble. Isn't this putting the cart before the horse?
Who thinks that the western part of Northland is a cornucopia and can be contracted?
If you can't eat it yourself, you can find a bunch of partners to pack it.
The annual rent is 50 million silver coins, not ten years at a time, just 200 million silver coins in four years.
Except for military important locations, contractors can do whatever they want there.
As a result, no one dared to mention this anymore. This is a risky investment.
It’s a gamble once every four years, and it costs a lot of money. If you lose, you can’t make a comeback.
To conquer the entire Northland, the imperial court spent nearly 250 million silver coins.
The total cost of building the railway is about 150 million silver coins, and the total cost is about 400 million.
Emperor Haojing was worried about not being able to get back his money quickly, when someone bumped into his gun.
After being repeatedly teased by Emperor Haojing, the merchants of the Ming Dynasty had long since learned the lesson, and now they have become masters who don't let go of eagles when they see rabbits.
The two largest gold mines in Northland, one located in Tangnu Ulianghai, have been put into production.
The other one is in the Zhou Kingdom in the Arctic. It has been in production for more than 30 years so far.
As for coal mines, Shanxi and Shaanxi have them in abundance, and there is no shortage of them in China.
Unless they are mine owners, second-rate dealers cannot make much money as middlemen.
There is also the Kailuan Coal Mine near Beidu, and the Lianghuai Coal Mine in Nandu. There is no inside information on other mines, and ordinary people have no way of knowing about them.
The gold mines were mined by Emperor Haojing and a group of idiots. It would be a big joke for others to make money from the North by cutting down trees, planting land, and fishing.
In the thirty-seventh year of Haojing (1680), the imperial court's annual revenue reached 250 million silver coins, and Taicang had a surplus, that is, its book inventory reached approximately 80 million silver coins.
It slightly exceeded the original small target of annual income of 150 million taels (225 million taels of silver coins).
Therefore, the financial pressure on the Western Expedition is completely affordable, and now it is nothing more than a state of making more and spending more.
However, in line with the principle of cheating, Emperor Haojing will never let go of the prey of Qian Duoduo, who is stupid...
The Ming Empire has achieved a financial "two-turn yuan" because the latter is easier to weigh, manufacture, identify, and carry.
Gold coins and banknotes are not considered to be manufactured for the time being. The former is a bank reserve and the latter is not fireproof and waterproof.
Another advantage of using silver coins as the main currency is that it has become a hard currency recognized by all countries in the world.
Merchants from various countries doing business with the Ming Empire were willing to accept silver coins, and the countries behind them had no choice but to accept it.
First it was the Japanese, then the Dutch, the French and the Ottomans.
With these four leaders, Venice, Sweden, Portugal, Persia, Siam, Kimchi and other countries followed suit.
The Ming Dynasty lacked silver mines, but with the local gold mines and the control of the copper mines of the New Inca Empire, there would be no need to worry about not being able to exchange silver for making silver coins.
The new Inca Emperor Polo regards the Ming Dynasty's army as a divine army. Without the protection of the divine army, he would have to be sacrificed by the resurgent Spaniards in less than half a month...
Based on the principles of friendly cooperation and mutual benefit, both parties share the profits equally from the copper mines in the empire, and the Ming fleet directly takes away 40% of the refined copper smelted.
The amount of refined copper that arrives in the Ming Dynasty every year can reach 20,000 tons, which is equivalent to 50 million taels of silver, and can produce 75 million silver coins. After accounting for the fire consumption, there are about 70 million silver coins.
This amount of money may be an astronomical figure in a certain Western country and can quickly create inflation, but it will not happen in the Ming Dynasty.
The imperial court used silver coins to purchase grain from farmers, farmers used silver coins to buy daily necessities, and daily necessities were manufactured by merchants.
Merchants then used the money they earned to expand reproduction and investment projects, and the latter's funds would flow into the pockets of the imperial court and Emperor Haojing.
Emperor Haojing then lent money to the court to purchase various military supplies, which were produced by merchants and Emperor Haojing's factories, thus forming a virtuous cycle.
If it were a Western country, even if a certain king knew this process, it would be difficult to get it right due to the limited size of the country.
The Ming Dynasty is a big horse-drawn cart that carries large goods, and each link is large enough. It is naturally not a problem to digest the refined copper from South America.
Despite years of industrialization, the Ming Dynasty still has a registered agricultural population of over 180 million.
In years of natural disasters, lack of food is a problem.
In good times, food surplus is still a problem.
If the imperial court wanted to buy it on a large scale, it would need enough money.
If there was no mining, fifty years ago, the court would have had to use other things collected, such as cloth, to make up for it.
Emperor Haojing had previously ordered the construction of water conservancy projects to take advantage of the summer when the Yellow River had little water or even stopped flowing.
In particular, we need to strengthen the dams along the river and dig deep into the river channel. When areas encounter danger during the flood season, local officials will be held accountable.
After the two-pronged approach, the number of floods in the Yellow River has been greatly reduced.
The main reason is that officials are afraid of being punished, so they attach as much importance to building embankments as they do to building ancestral halls for their ancestors.
Basins along the river, especially Henan and Shandong, are not affected by floods, and Shaanxi has food supplies from the Hetao and southern Shaanxi areas.
There is no longer a shortage of food in the north. Instead, there are bumper harvests year after year. Not only are food prices unable to soar, but there is too much food to sell.
Farmers and landowners everywhere are petitioning, hoping that the government will harvest as much grain as possible.
The landowners are really exhausted and can no longer continue to acquire property. If they have spare money, they will buy houses in the city to enjoy a quality life.
Farmers depend on this amount of food throughout the year. No matter how much land they have, they will not get money if they cannot sell the food.
After reading the reports from various governors, in order to avoid rebellions due to excess food in various places, Emperor Haojing could only order the Ministry of Household Affairs to eat in large quantities and eat as much as they could.
Part of the food eaten in the grain depot is transported to the North and the Western Regions as military rations, and the other part is transported to the mining areas to feed tens of millions of miners and their families. The rest is used as war preparation stocks.
Many military rations are made into compressed biscuits and instant noodles that are easy to store. Eating too much of the former can cause constipation.
Taking this opportunity, Emperor Haojing happened to promote his own Kaiselu!
It is temporarily unable to reach the place where the selu is to be transported. If the soldiers can't wait, they can use sticks to dig it out...
Mining is a physically demanding job, and Emperor Haojing will take care of the slave miners and will not let them go hungry to mine.
Everyone has a fixed amount of food every day. If you want to eat more, or even eat well, you have to mine more.
Slave miners who perform well may also have the opportunity to be freed before the deadline, or even become overseers who make money but do not work.
In order not to spend money to exchange for ironclad ships, France and the Netherlands both captured a large number of slaves from Africa and transported them to Daming Port. They still operate this year-round.
The total number of slaves transported from the two countries alone was nearly 10 million. The Ottoman Empire did not care much and was only willing to engage in the trade of high value-added white slaves, especially female slaves.
The value of a beautiful white female slave is equal to thirty to fifty strong black slaves. However, the wealthy gentry of the Ming Dynasty were eager to buy the former and did not hesitate to spend huge sums of money.
When did this hobby start?
Then you have to ask a certain fat house prince!
The soldiers who conquered America in the east and Rakshasa in the west were also happy to do this, which shows that the Ocean Horse is indeed a good thing!
If you are angry, you can ask Dayangma to do what women should do.
If you are happy, you can also let Yangma do what women should do...
Looking at it this way, Dayangma is extremely cost-effective!
Since most of the foreign horses fell into the hands of the rich and soldiers, the life of these foreign horses in the Ming Dynasty was only higher than before.
The level of medical care, food, and entertainment in the Ming Dynasty was unparalleled in the world. It reminded many literate people of the Roman Empire of the past.
The empire ultimately collapsed because the emperor led the nobles in pursuit of pleasure. The Ming Empire seems to have followed the same path.
But this is an outsider looking at the Ming Dynasty, unable to see the essence of the empire.
After shaving off a bunch of feudal lords, moths, and profiteers, most of the agricultural population can create value for the court.
The number of ordinary people under the jurisdiction of the emperors and nobles of the Ming Dynasty was much lower than that of the Roman Empire. In particular, the total population of the Ming Dynasty far exceeded the latter.
In addition, the agricultural population is over 180 million, which determines that Emperor Haojing will be able to enjoy the demographic dividend for a long time to come.
After all, Ming Dynasty was still in the stage of economic underdevelopment, and 95% of the people were poor.
As a poor person, there are basically two ways out if you want to turn around.
One is to study and become an official, and the other is to join the army.
Ninety percent of the main force of the king's army was composed of Han people, led by generals and disciples of Emperor Haojing's direct line, which ensured the loyalty of the troops.
This is fundamentally different from the end of the Roman Empire, when most army generals and soldiers were barbarians.
If the Ming Empire was like this, it would definitely be doomed.
