In the summer of the 16th year of Chongzhen's reign, Lang Son Palace was extremely busy, and there was a lively scene everywhere.
Under Jackie Chan's operation, 200,000 refugees were spent and good results were achieved. The local enthusiasm for transferring refugees in Guangxi was unprecedentedly high. It was originally expected that the previously promised 100,000 refugees would not be transferred until the end of the year. As a result, only 100,000 refugees were transferred. After half a year, by July, all 100,000 refugees had been transferred.
Not only that, even some local residents in Guangxi were ready to take action after learning through various channels that Lang Son Prefecture had such a good policy. After all, who doesn’t want more land? Although the refugees are impoverished, there are also many people living in poverty in Guangxi, especially many strong people, who are still in the primitive tribal era and are oppressed by the leader. Don't they want to get more land?
Against this background, some people secretly crossed the border from other places and came to Lang Son Province. Gao Heng and the others would not refuse anyone who came. No matter what nationality you are, Han Chinese or strong people, as long as you are willing to defect, you can Absorbed them and distributed land according to the original policy. For a time, the population of Lang Son Province increased on a large scale.
Not only that, the Nguyen family kept their promise. After Gao Heng obtained Lang Son Province and Xin'an Port, the Ruan family's support arrived smoothly. A few months ago, the grain harvest in Lang Son Province ushered in the first bumper harvest. Gao Heng really lamented the fertility. The ability of the land to produce food. The land occupied by the Annan people is really chased by God to feed them. The rice that is produced three times a year is still of high quality, and it is difficult for them to starve to death.
No wonder the population of Annan has exploded in later generations. Such a small piece of land can support a population of over 100 million. Not to mention, it is also an important food exporter in Nanyang. The food of other countries is not enough for itself. Annan Not only can it accommodate 100 million people, but it can also export in large quantities. It cannot but be said that it is a geomantic treasure.
With food, Gao Heng will be more confident. At least the people here will not starve to death. Gao Heng has calculated that if all the original 500,000 acres of cultivated land in Lang Son Prefecture are utilized, and based on the yield of five dan per mu, three crops a year will be at least 7.5 million dan of grain. Even if the entire population is based on the adult Calculated, if one person consumes one stone of grain per month, the annual grain production is enough to feed a population of more than 600,000. If the old, weak, women and children are included, the number will be even more.
Of course, this is an ideal situation. After all, there are other expenses or natural disasters or man-made disasters. From this point of view, a population of at least 300,000 is no problem. With a population of 300,000, these 500,000 acres of cultivated land are Can be fully operational. This is a virtuous cycle. The more arable land, the greater the population, and the greater the population, the more arable land can be reclaimed.
With food, Gao Heng did not need the Ruan family to support him with food, he just asked them for money. For the Ruan family, this is also a win-win situation. After all, the costs of transporting food and transporting silver are completely different. Transporting food requires a large number of ships, but transporting silver only requires a few large ships.
According to the deal reached between the Ruan family and Gao Heng, Gao Heng was responsible for holding back the Zheng family's domestic army in the north. For this reason, the Ruan family needed to pay Gao Heng 200,000 taels of silver every year. The first batch of 200,000 taels of silver arrived in June, and Gao Heng happily accepted it. However, what Ruan's envoy said was very clear. If you want money next year, you must find a way to make some moves, so that Zheng has to send a large number of troops to defend and reduce the pressure on the Quang Binh front line.
Gao Heng accepted the order. As for whether to carry out some actions, it was not something that the Ruan family could control. The Ruan family's regime paid for them, which was equivalent to a head fee of 200,000 yuan for two people.
Now, Gao Heng has more than 500,000 taels of silver and a million shi of grain in his hands. He can be said to be wealthy. He has never been so wealthy.
The population of Lang Son Province has expanded to 160,000, and about half of the people are engaged in agricultural production. According to the principle of three acres of land per person, fully half of the cultivated land is used. The potential of the people needs to be stimulated. For example, if there are three people in a family, two adults and one child, according to the principle, the children should also be divided into three acres of land, so that the family of three can own nine acres of land.
The people will not give up the land. If they want to keep the nine acres of land, the two adults will have to work hard. In this way, there is no need for Gao Heng and others to supervise, and the people's enthusiasm for farming will be very high. The two of them are not afraid of hardship or fatigue. This is their own land. How can they do it if they don't take care of it?
The older children boil water for cooking in the fields, and even children as young as three or four know how to deliver water and meals to adults. If a thousand people unite as one, the mountains can be shaken. This is the current situation in Lang Son Province.
On the other hand, people who are not engaged in agricultural production also work under the arrangements of the military government according to the division of labor. For example, the establishment of Xinghua Manufacturing Bureau led to the development of industry. Gao Heng screened out all the craftsmen among hundreds of thousands of people. The families of the craftsmen also moved to the city with the craftsmen. The manufacturing bureau was placed in Tuo County, with a total of thousands of craftsmen. There are thousands of craftsmen and their families engaged in industrial production activities in Tuo County.
The Manufacturing Bureau was established in Tuo County with Sun Heding as the chairman, Bu Mige as the deputy, and Song Yingxing as the general consultant, combining Chinese and Western styles. It has subordinate organizations such as carpentry workshop, steel workshop, weaving workshop, gun workshop, artillery workshop and technical research institute. For example, Song Yingxing is the leader of the Technology Research Institute, specializing in leading hundreds of craftsmen to invest in the research of steam engines. Gao Heng's requirement is to produce a prototype within one year.
The Fire Gun Workshop, under the leadership of Bu Mige and Nan Huairen, worked day and night to study the production of flint hair guns. The artillery workshop, under the leadership of the Sun brothers, studied the iron mold method for casting cannons. Don't worry about raw materials. The iron ore in Wenzhou was continuously mined by prisoners of war. A large amount of raw materials entered the workshop and was transformed into physical objects.
In addition, Gao Heng also expanded the army. Now that he has a basic population, the military strength must also be expanded. In the first stage, a brigade will be expanded to expand the army from the original 6,000 to 9,000. The Ruan family supported hundreds of matchlock blunderbuss, and their own matchlock blunderbuss workshop also began to imitate matchlock blunderbuss. Under the supervision of Bu Mige and others, the quality can be guaranteed. Basically, the quality of their handmade imitation matchlock blunderbuss is no less than The matchlock gun used by the Folangji people is only produced very slowly. One blacksmith furnace can only produce one matchlock gun per month.
There are hundreds of craftsmen in the Fire Gun Workshop, working hard for a month, and they can produce only fifty guns. The annual food production is only 600 guns, which is simply not enough to meet the needs of 3,000 people. Gao Heng could only equip one battalion of fire guns first, and the remaining two could still be trained with spears.
At this point, Gao Heng's army had three brigades and nine battalions. Gao Heng reorganized the army into a gun brigade, a spear brigade plus a mixed brigade of cavalry, artillery, and archers. This is Gao Heng's basic market.
On this basis, Gao Heng also gave Pudman a special task, asking Pudman to take advantage of the opportunity to go to sea to promote the Nanyang area, bring the policies here to Nanyang, and attract people from Nanyang to join him.
At the same time, Gao Heng also exported the grain in his hands. He could keep half of the million-stone grain as rations, and the rest could be exported. In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, there was already a price but no market in the north. You can buy whatever you have money. Without food, prices skyrocketed. One stone of food even cost more than ten taels of silver. Even the price of food in Nanjing exceeded four taels.
Although the Guangdong and Guangxi regions are still relatively stable, they still cost three taels of silver. People everywhere were in dire straits, but at this time Gao Heng intervened and sold grain directly to the government at a price of two taels of silver. Of course, officials in various places were happy to accept it. The difference in price was one tael of silver when he sold it back, and Gao Heng's grain was of high quality. Wait, this kind of rice can be sold for a high price of four taels of silver.
This is only sold in the Guangdong and Guangxi areas. In fact, the officials and big purchasers are not fools. How can they sell it locally? Instead, they use various channels to bring the grain to war areas and disaster areas for sale, and even sell it. The high price of twenty taels of silver.
This is no nonsense. According to historical records, in Huazhou, Shaanxi Province, in the 16th year of Chongzhen's reign, grain had been sold at a very high price of twenty-three taels of silver per stone. At that time, the price of food also exceeded five taels of silver.
No matter how much Gao Heng has, the most important task now is to cash out, convert the grain into cash, and sell 500,000 shi of grain through Zhennanguan, Guangzhou, Leizhou Peninsula and other places, and get back one million taels. With cash in hand, Gao Heng invested all the money in the construction of the army and workshops, and soon these work started to improve.
What a coincidence is that the area controlled by Gao Heng is the largest coal-producing area in Annan. People who study geography in later generations will know that Vietnam’s coal resources are located in Quang Ninh Province and the Red River Delta area. Lang Son Prefecture and Xin'an Port, controlled by Gao Heng, are located in these two areas and are extremely rich in coal resources.
There happened to be thousands of prisoners of war on hand. Except for half of them who were sent to mine iron ore, the rest were sent to various large and small coal mines. This is an important energy source, whether it is people's lives or industrial production. They all require a large amount of coal mines, so with these resources, Gao Heng's industry can develop on a large scale in the future.
The army is training, the workshops are producing, and the farmers are farming. Everything is developing towards a good place, and the entire Lang Son Province has a prosperous scene. Not only that, a small shipyard has been established in Xin'an Port. Large ships cannot yet be produced, but small and medium-sized ships can already be produced. Pudman used his good eloquence to persuade many Westerners to join his fleet. Anyway, he would share some profits when the time came. In this way, Pudman continued to win over small fleets or single ships, and he just pieced together a fleet. A commercial fleet of more than twenty large, medium and small ships.
Pudman sold grain, ceramics, and tea leaves in exchange for real money and silver and brought them back to Lang Son to promote the development of Lang Son. Many people are willing to work with Pudman, mainly because Pudman is more generous and gives them higher profits than others.
When his fleet arrived in Luzon, many expatriates in Luzon heard that Lang Son had such a policy, and they were willing to follow Pudman back to Lang Son. Pudman screened and brought back craftsmen first. In the few months from May to August alone, Pudman's caravan made several trips to Luzon and brought back more than 2,000 people, including hundreds of craftsmen and many who knew how to build ships. General Gao Heng They were all settled in Xin'an Port.
"Your Majesty General, it's quick, our musket is about to succeed." In early September, Gao Heng took time to visit Tuo County during his break from military training-related matters. The first step was to go to Boymige's gun workshop. Boymige enthusiastically introduced his research results to him. After more than half a year of trial production, the flintlock gun has begun to take shape, but the reliability of the firing structure still needs to be improved. .
This is also a point that bothers Boymig very much. During his trial production process, he discovered that the structure of the flintlock gun does not fire every time it is fired. If so, it will misfire, especially when the battlefield environment is different from usual. If the shooter forgets to fire the gun before it goes off due to nervousness, the gun will explode if loaded repeatedly. At the same time, the fire gun that cannot be fired will also greatly affect the morale and shooting rhythm of the army. Regardless of whether Bu Mige or Nan Huairen No matter how it is improved, the effect is not ideal.
"Can you let me see what the problem is?" Gao Heng asked.
Nan Huairen took a sample. From the appearance, this fire gun is not much different from the match rope gun they are currently equipped with, except that the body of the gun is slightly longer. If you look closely, you will find that the structure of the gun machine is completely It was different. Gao Heng had visited flint-haired muskets in the museum. He had to say that Bu Mige and the others were really capable. From the appearance alone, this fire-gun was no different from the flint-haired muskets that would be used a hundred years later.
Nan Huairen is a creative young man. He introduced: "Your Excellency General, we already have samples of flintlock muskets, but as Priest Bomig said, there are still defects. I have calculated that the probability of misfiring is 10%. One percent, that’s too high.”
Gao Heng opened his mouth. The misfire rate was one-tenth, and it would shut down once every ten times. How could this be used? He asked: "What do you think the reason is?"
Nan Huairen said: "It should be that the spring is not strong enough."
Bu Mig immediately added: "This young man is very creative and even thought of using a spring to strengthen the force of pulling the trigger and drive the hammer to hit the flash cap."
Gao Heng nodded. Spring was not a rare item at this time. Spring has long been used on a large scale in Western clocks and watches, but since there are springs, why are they said to be not strong enough?
Nan Huairen said: "The spring is just made of bent fine iron, but the thin wire has no strength, and the thick wire is easy to break. Unlike clocks, we need a spring with just the right strength, but unfortunately, we haven't made one yet. come out."
Gao Heng had an idea. As a master of gun play in later generations, he knew the structure of the gun mechanism very well. He immediately thought of a plan.
