"Don't let Qianlong escape!!"
"Forward! Forward!"
"Capture Qianlong and destroy the Tatars!"
On the road heading north from Zhaozhou Mansion.
The Guards Regiment of the Ming Dynasty, flying the dragon flag of the Ming Dynasty's Imperial Regiment, is rolling forward.
Platoon leader Chen Huacheng of the 7th Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 7th Dragoon Brigade of the Ming Army was shouting slogans and riding his horse back and forth in his platoon, encouraging everyone to follow the march.
Chen Huacheng's heart was burning.
After this battle, the Ming Dynasty will dominate the world!
And he will become the hero who unifies the world!
With his current military exploits, he can be rewarded with one hundred and twenty acres of paddy field, and he can also be granted a title!
A title that can be passed down to descendants.
When he thought of this, Chen Huacheng became even more motivated.
Because the only enemy left on the battlefield in the Central Plains was the Qing Dynasty, which consisted of hundreds of thousands of people and the Eight Banners.
There are not many opportunities to make meritorious deeds.
Every Ming soldier was full of energy and confidence, as if the hundreds of thousands of Qing cavalry were wiped out in a snap, leaving them vulnerable to a single blow.
Every soldier held his head high, with a proud look on his face.
Because they know.
He is the most capable army in the world.
They defeated the Taiping Kingdom not long ago, and the Ming Dynasty completely owned the territory south of Zhili. At the same time, the gate of Guanzhong was opened, and Shanxi could almost be conquered. Now the only remaining enemy in the Central Plains is the Qing Emperor Qianlong. Hundreds of thousands of Eight Banners troops!
Although the number of people on the explanation army side is relatively small.
But from the Emperor of Heaven to every private leader of the Ming Army, they were full of confidence in this battle.
Because they are so well-deserved heavenly soldiers!
With only 17,000 people, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's hundreds of thousands of elite troops were defeated.
Emperor Zhu now has 27,000 troops under his command.
Marshal Zhao, the Minister of the Army, has eight army brigades with 40,000 people, and the Liaodong Corps also has eight army brigades with 40,000 people. Of course, there are still sporadic wars north of Liaodong, so only 20,000 people can be dispatched this time. .
But even so.
The total strength of the Ming Dynasty against the Qing court this time also reached 87,000.
This is an unprecedentedly powerful army in the Ming Dynasty.
The Ming army is less than ten thousand, and it is invincible if it is full of ten thousand.
Now the Ming Dynasty has sent almost 90,000 troops.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of civilians recruited in the north, there are more than 200,000 people in total.
However, now the Ming Emperor Zhu Daohua leads a cuirassier brigade, three dragoon brigades, and although there is no dragoon number, in fact everyone has a horse in the first brigade of the Ming Army, as well as all mules and horses in sight. Each of the artillery battalions was organized into a separate baggage battalion, equipped with a large number of carriages, mules and horses.
At this time, such an army turned into mules and horses was rolling forward, advancing northward at a speed of fifty miles per day, gradually advancing the battle line in the direction of Shuntian Mansion.
It was already mid-February.
The frozen land of the North also began to thaw, and the snow melted. After the soldiers stepped on it, the land turned into mud.
At this time, Zhu Daohua was also in the army, riding a maroon horse, wearing a set of gray uniforms and a square hat on his head. His eyes swept across the plains of Yanyun, and his face became serious.
Honestly.
Zhu Daohua was relieved about Qianlong's retreat - because the General Staff of the Ming Dynasty Marshal's Mansion had been worried about one thing, that is, if the Qing army continued to Henan, if they broke open the Yellow River embankment, although it was In winter, the water flow is not large, but the main channel of the Yellow River has long been a suspended river. If the Yellow River carrying so much sediment was washed down, the Ming Dynasty would not have been injured, but the entire Henan, southwestern Shandong, and Huaibei would have changed. It has become a yellow flood zone.
By then, there will definitely be countless casualties among the people. There will be homeless people everywhere, and no one knows how many people will freeze to death or starve to death.
However, even if the Yellow River embankment was safe and sound, the scene he saw along the way north still made Zhu Daohua feel a little heavy.
In fact, it is nothing more than one word: poor.
Or to use a more revolutionary word to describe it, it is: abject poverty.
The North China Plain is undoubtedly one of the great plains with the highest population carrying capacity in the world.
Although the Yellow River, the mother river, has its bad temper sometimes.
But overall, it is really because of the existence of this river that the settled agricultural civilization here was able to emerge, develop, survive, and multiply.
But at this moment.
After thousands of years of development.
The problem of land salinization in the North China Plain is becoming more and more serious, but the terrible thing is that the population density here has not decreased at all!
Since ancient times, this has been one of the most densely populated areas in the world.
The average cultivated land area per capita does not exceed two acres - and two acres of land in the North China Plain, which is already full of holes, is not enough to support several people.
It’s been a long journey.
The villages and people I saw were all moving to tears.
Every commoner is so skinny that the skeletons on their faces can be clearly seen. There is nothing to eat at all. When you enter some villages during the meal, you can find that every villager has sweet potato leaves cooked on the stove mixed with something unknown. mixture.
Everywhere you go, you see the numb faces of severely malnourished people.
These people were already so poor that they had nothing left.
Now the rations have also been taken away by the Qing army, and there are still several months before the autumn harvest.
It is conceivable that if the Ming Dynasty did not allocate food for disaster relief, hundreds of thousands of people in Henan and Yanyun would starve to death in the fourth year of liberation.
Compared to here.
The poor people in Jiangnan and Guangdong seem to have come out of heaven.
If it is so nakedly poor and the population is so large, there will definitely be problems in the future.
Military advisor Tao Biquan was also beside Zhu Daohua. When he saw Emperor Zhu's face, he said: "Your Majesty, Qianlong has the intention of fleeing north. After this battle, the war in the Central Plains has subsided. As long as he lives with the people, he can regain his strength. Now the top priority is We just need to transport rice from Annan and Lanfang to help the victims. As long as the people have something to eat, they will definitely get better in the future."
"Military advisor, do you really think that just passing this level is enough?"
Tao Biquan was stunned when he heard this.
He knew that Emperor Zhu was not actually a "benevolent king" who loved his people like his own son.
He will not be disturbed by the impending famine.
On the one hand, of course, it is because the Ming Dynasty now has enough ability to transport food to the Central Plains.
Nowadays, the land in Jiangnan and Guangdong has been replanted with various cash crops, and even the landowners in Jiangxi and Hunan have begun to stop growing rice.
But the Ming Dynasty now had sea transportation and could transport rice from Annan, Borneo, and Java.
The Ming Dynasty's population reduction plan in Borneo and Java Island was very successful. The originally dense indigenous population now rarely appears in the Ming Dynasty's settlement areas on Borneo and Java Island.
Now it is an important rice production base in the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty could temporarily feed the people in the war-torn areas of the Central Plains.
But what happens after that?
"Your Majesty, hasn't it been like this since ancient times? After the war, if the people's livelihood is improved, the country will become prosperous again."
Tao Biquan found it difficult to understand Emperor Zhu's thoughts.
This has been like this since ancient times, conquer the world and dominate the world.
Make a living with the people and waste less time.
Can't this throne be held securely for two to three hundred years?
Zhu Daohua looked at Tao Biquan.
As a military advisor, he is a representative of the Sanxiang School. The Sanxiang School pays attention to economical economics and does not have so much ideological baggage. However, even so, it is still difficult for him to understand that when Zhu Daohua insists on not solving the problem at home, It will distract India, Southeast Asia, and even America as far away as the other side of the ocean.
This is too much trouble.
Since ancient times, there has never been such a tormenting emperor as Emperor Zhu.
It's just a big fight here in the Central Plains. India also supports tens of thousands of troops to fight the British. The navy has also surrounded Manila and is intimidating the Spanish.
Make wars everywhere and make enemies everywhere.
Before it was released, it was definitely a militancy.
But now in the Ming Dynasty.
In particular, those Guangdong businessmen were absolute loyalists to Emperor Zhu, and provided money, effort, and people to support Emperor Zhu's foreign wars.
This burden does not fall on the farmers.
But for Tao Biquan, a traditional scholar-official.
Haiyanheqing and peace in the world are ultimately Confucian ideals.
Emperor Zhu's style of stirring up trouble was still criticized by Confucian scholars.
"Yes, it will eventually prosper. However, the small people will still be able to survive without food, clothing, and high-yielding crops such as sweet potatoes. Even if there is a mere civil commotion, they will backhand I can suppress it. I have strong soldiers and control the ocean, so I am not afraid of not having money to raise soldiers." Zhu Daohua said with a sigh.
"However, what I am worried about is not the present, but the future. Now I have 400 million people, and these 400 million people are crowded in this small Han land. There are many people and little land, and there is extreme poverty and insufficient food. , the clothes are not covering the body, if these 40 million people multiply into 80 million or 100 million in the future, what will happen to such a crowded population? "
"How can this be so much."
Tao Biquan looked ugly.
"Now the land in the pass can accommodate 40 million, which is already the limit. If there is more,"
"Any more will starve to death, right." Emperor Zhu sneered and said, "So my Ming Dynasty will be a poor empire, and it will continue to be poor from generation to generation."
Emperor Zhu lowered his voice: "Now that the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty is here, I am naturally not afraid. But if I am a hundred years from now, I am afraid that the second and third Taiping Heavenly Kingdom will soon appear."
"What does the emperor mean?" Tao Biquan asked with a frown.
"So we Han people can't all shrink into this small eighteen provinces in the Han Dynasty. The territory of these eighteen provinces in the pass has been almost two thousand years since the enfeoffment and development of the Zhou Dynasty to the unification of the Qin and Han Dynasties. It has not been much expanded in these two thousand years. The basic base, future generations will really lose the face of our ancestors."
"Your Majesty, pioneering is not easy."
"It was not easy before, but it is different now!" Zhu Daohua said, "Now we have big ships, guns and artillery, and we even have steamships!"
"So large-scale immigration is feasible. The land of America can easily support another hundred million people. How can such a good land be monopolized by Europeans!"
"Our generation cannot lie in our comfort zone and ignore the world's affairs! Every strong man of the Han family in this generation must take up arms to fight, develop, colonize, and create a bright world for future generations. !”
Tao Biquan sighed in his heart when he heard this.
Come on.
When encountering such an emperor, the people will consider themselves unlucky.
This emperor will definitely have to struggle for decades, and the people under him will definitely not be able to live in peace.
Go to Northern Liaoning, go to the Western Regions, go to Nanyang, and go to America.
This is really an unprecedented era
(End of chapter)
