Liuhang No. 6 Steam Passenger Ship, a steam passenger ship with a displacement of just over 150 tons, uses a high-pressure shipboard steam engine produced by Guangzhou Machinery Company, and adopts a very typical two-sided paddle wheel propulsion method.
In addition to steam power, it is also equipped with sails, but they are not traditional Chinese hard sails or Western soft sails, but upper edge gaff sails that have been widely used in the civil shipping industry in recent years.
This kind of sail is easy to operate and requires very little manpower. It is very suitable for use on civilian commercial ships where personnel cost control is strict.
And it is not only suitable for fast sailing in the ocean, but is actually very suitable for sailing in shallow water areas. It is especially capable of resisting headwinds and is especially suitable for sailing in rivers and lakes.
Therefore, in fact, since the emergence of this kind of sail, this kind of schooner has also been widely seen in the rivers and offshore basins of the empire.
Steam power and sails are used together, and the hybrid power of sails is also a major feature of the steamships of the Dachu Empire in the past two years.
So far, except for a few special ship types, such as tugs and guide ships used in ports, all steam ships that conduct long-distance voyages will basically use sail power.
At this time, on the deck of the Liuhang No. 6 passenger ship, a group of people stood on the bow deck looking at the scenery on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. The leader was Wang Tu, who was wearing ordinary Confucian clothes. Behind him, there were people sent by Heping County to pick up people. officials, and also the director of the Heyuan Prefecture's Civil Affairs Department who came to take office.
It's just that these people, even the director of the Heyuan Prefecture Personnel Affairs Office, are actually the same as Wang Tu in rank six, but they still stand respectfully behind Wang Tu and don't dare to disturb Wang Tu. Enjoy the scenery on both sides of the Dongjiang River.
Seriously speaking, no one in the entire Heyuan Prefecture, or even the entire Huizhou Prefecture, has a stronger background and connections than Wang Tu, who was born in the Imperial Academy Secretariat!
You want to say who his background is... Nonsense, who else could it be? As the secretary of the Secretariat, he can only have one backer, and that is the Emperor Luo Zhixue!
Why would such a proud son of the emperor, the darling of the official career, and a close official of the emperor come to serve in this hilly place in Heping County, Huizhou Prefecture?
Why else, everyone knows he is here to get gold!
After all, if he wants to continue to rise and go further, the experience of being in charge must be indispensable. If he doesn't choose to be a county magistrate while he is young and of low rank, will he continue to hang out in Gyeonggi? ah?
When you become a fifth-grade or even fourth-grade official in the future, it will be difficult for you to seek opportunities to take charge of politics.
Because the positions of prefects are limited, but there are many officials, the competition between such mid-level officials is greater and more cruel.
Once you have not had the experience of being in charge of a party at the middle and low levels, then you can't even think about becoming a high-ranking member of a party.
You don’t even have experience in governing hundreds of thousands or millions of people. How can you be trusted to govern millions or even tens of millions of people?
If they are not governors, they will have nothing to do with officials who are relatively strong in vertical professional fields such as industry, justice, finance, etc. They basically have no experience in governing local governments.
But for officials who go through regular channels, the trouble is big... Officials who have never been a governor can't expect to become a minister.
Don’t even dream about entering the Imperial Study Room!
At least this is the case now in the 23rd year of Chengshun!
Wang Tu is naturally ambitious, otherwise he would not have chosen to work well in the Hanlin Academy Secretariat. He was favored by his superiors, the deputy directors of the Secretariat, and even received several compliments from Luo Zhixue for his hard work. Decisively and proactively apply for external placement.
To be honest, many people don't understand his choice.
Wang Tu, he is not from an ordinary background, but came from the fifth place in the second class of the Jinling Palace Examination in the 19th year of Chengshun. According to the relevant imperial examination system, he was awarded the rank of seventh grade just after passing the second class of the Middle Palace Examination. Entered the Imperial Academy Secretariat to work.
Three years after he joined the Secretariat, his working experience was very good and he was highly regarded by his superiors. Last year, he was naturally promoted to the official Third Secretary of the Secretariat, which was a sixth-grade position.
Although he is only a third-class secretary, in fact, to a certain extent, he can already enter the sight of some big bosses, because the secretariat is an important organization that assists Luo Zhixue in handling many military and political affairs.
There are actually not many formal secretaries in the entire secretariat. There are only about thirty in total. In addition to the first secretaries who serve as deputy directors, and the few second secretaries who accompany them on a daily basis, the remaining There are actually not many third-class secretaries, only a dozen or so.
Judging from Wang Tu's background and career history, as long as he doesn't mess around or make mistakes, even if he continues step by step, he will be transferred out of the Secretariat in about two years, and there is a high probability that he will be transferred to serve in various ministries, and Basically, you will be promoted to one level this time, and you can continue to move up after working in the ministry for a few years.
I don’t dare to say that I will be high in this life. As long as I don’t make mistakes along the way and don’t join the wrong team, there will definitely be no problem in being a third-level player. If I’m lucky, I might even be able to become a director or something.
A third-rank director in the Great Chu Empire could be considered a real high-ranking official.
But...Wang Tu wanted more!
He also wants to be in charge of politics and be a minister, just to realize many ambitions in his heart, but more importantly, power is too tempting.
Working in the Secretariat, he has met too many high-ranking officials of the empire, let alone third- and second-rank officials. Even the top group of ministers in the empire, namely the counselors, he does not say that he can see them every day, but he can see them every day. We can meet each other every three days.
He has been in contact with the top officials of the empire for a long time, and he is very aware of the huge power held by these top officials of the empire!
Regardless of these ministers, the co-organizing ministers were all behaved and respectful when they met the saint. If they were not careful, they would have thought he was an honest little old man.
But among these people outside, some of them are considered to be movers and shakers, especially the counselors in the civil service group. Their casual speeches are all big shots that can cause policy changes and market turbulence.
Having seen this a lot, Wang Tu naturally had the extravagant hope that one day he would become such a top civil servant.
But... it is extremely difficult to become a counselor, no, even to become a co-minister...
The imperial examination is already a single-plank bridge, and the road leading to the imperial study is a straight, difficult-to-climb steel wire rope, and it is ten thousand feet long... Below is an abyss, and if you fall down, you will be shattered to pieces.
Over the years, not many military attachés have been dismissed for committing crimes, but there have been quite a few among the civil service group. Almost every year, third- and even second-class civil servants have been dismissed due to various problems, and in minor cases, they have been dismissed from office. There are also very few The unlucky guy was jailed and shot.
This is not because Luo Zhixue treats civil servants harshly. In fact, Luo Zhixue is quite tolerant of his ministers. As long as the influence is not too bad, he usually pretends not to see it.
So why are there so many unlucky people in the civil service group? Because the civil servants fought so fiercely among themselves... In order to compete for the top position, they wanted to chop up their competitors and throw them into the Pacific Ocean, and they were very ruthless.
Especially when it comes to the change of the position of the imperial study room. Although there are nine counselors in the imperial study, except for the two in the military, one in the Hanlin Academy, and one in the judicial system, there are only five positions for counselors who belong to the traditional civil service group. .
Although the Hanlin Academy and the judicial system can barely be regarded as civilian factions, the successive counselors of the Hanlin Academy have always been imperialists...people who have close contacts with civil and military officials from outside. Basically, you can't get to this position.
In the judicial system, the Supervisory Yuan Zuodu Censor is the main one. How did the previous Zuodu Censors get to the position? They all came to power by killing countless traditional civil servants.
If you want to become the censor of Zuodu, if you don't have the blood of a minister or governor-level official on your hands, there is basically no hope of getting there.
And among these six, we have to include the Counselor of the judicial system who actually has nothing to do with the traditional civil service group.
Therefore, although the Hanlin Academy and the Supervisory Council can barely be regarded as a civil service system, they are not the same as the traditional civil service faction.
There are only five positions that truly belong to the traditional civil service, one is a carrot and the other is a pit!
But the main body of civil servants in the imperial officialdom is still these traditional civil servants. The major governors, ministers of various ministries, and powerful ministers of various ministries are all eyeing these five positions!
With so many people competing for just five seats, you can imagine the intensity of competition!
In order to compete for the top position, there must be countless dirty things, and the loser will be arrested and imprisoned if he is not careful.
Sometimes Luo Zhixue has to protect some ministers who have failed in political battles... Otherwise, according to the ruthless methods of internal fighting among civil servants, several second-grade senior officials will die every year. Such excessive turmoil will have a negative impact on high-level political circles. The impact is too great.
It is not easy for him, Luo Zhixue, to train second-grade officials who can do things... How can he let them kill each other and kill a few of them every year, and then imprison a dozen of them in prison... In this way, the high-level officials of the empire will not need many The years will be used up.
Although Luo Zhi learned to protect them, the civil servants' fighting methods were indeed ruthless, and sometimes they could produce convincing evidence to kill their opponents.
Regarding this situation, Luo Zhixue could only say that the loser was so unlucky, and then deal with it according to the law.
Therefore, it is actually quite dangerous to be a civil servant, especially a senior civil servant, in the Chu Empire.
Of course, if you can go all the way to the imperial study room and become the co-organizer of the minister, then your safety will basically be guaranteed.
Even if it was to avoid political turmoil, Luo Zhixue would not let his ministers mess around!
In addition, these top civil servants are actually quite busy. They need to assist Luo Zhixue in handling a lot of government affairs. If the ministers are messing around and do not do serious business, there is no need for the ministers to fight among themselves. Luo Zhixue will directly let him do it. Get out of here.
Therefore, the endings of successive ministers and co-organizing ministers are generally considered to be relatively good, but it is more dangerous when the competition enters the imperial study room stage.
Wang Tu had seen the wind and clouds in the center and appreciated the elegance of power, so he naturally had ambitions in his heart.
And he is also a very determined person. Now that he has ambitions, he decisively applies for release after making up his mind.
This matter must be done as soon as possible, otherwise if he hangs around in the capital for a few more years, his grade may exceed the sixth grade... By then it will be too troublesome to let the ruling party go outside.
At that time, he was in the sixth rank, which was just right. After he was promoted to the sixth rank, he served as a deputy in the local prefectural government for a few months. After adapting to the local environment, he took up the post of county magistrate and began to take charge of the government.
Wang Tu took this path. He arrived in Huizhou Prefecture at the beginning of the year. He first served as the sixth grade in Heyuan Prefecture. After a few months of transition, he was transferred to Heping County in the north as the magistrate.
By the way, today's Huizhou Prefecture is very large, stretching from Dingnan in southern Jiangxi to the north, to Haifeng on the coast in the south, and finally to the sea. It borders Chaozhou Prefecture in the east and Guangzhou Prefecture and Shaozhou Prefecture in the west.
But in terms of area, it is currently the largest city in Guangdong. Because of its huge area and complex terrain, it has coastal areas, small inland plains, and rolling mountainous areas in northern Guangdong. In addition to coastal cities, there are also A Dongjiang River flows through.
As for this kind of large government, the Great Chu Empire would usually set up a number of additional prefectures and prefectures within its jurisdiction. The magistrates were at the fifth level and were in charge of multiple counties.
Heyuan Prefecture was established under such circumstances, and Heping was under the jurisdiction of Heyuan Prefecture.
Heping County in the north is located in the mountainous area of northern Guangdong. Although it has a vast area, it has a small population and an extremely backward economy. Moreover, conflicts between local natives and foreigners are not small, and they often break out into armed fights.
Even though the Chu Empire had unified China for many years, carried out high-pressure internal campaigns for many years, and started industrialization, it was still very troublesome to deal with the conflicts over water sources and land in rural areas.
When you talk about arresting people, the whole village is dispatched collectively... some even involve men, women, old and young.
If you really want to arrest, then you will arrest everyone in the village, including the old, weak, women and children. This is unrealistic... Although it is nonsense that the law does not punish everyone, the reality exists.
Besides, if you really want to arrest the whole village, the villagers will not be arrested by you. I'm afraid it won't work if you send a few patrolmen to arrest them... Send a large number of military police there, the villagers are really They will bring out muskets and small cannons... In this way, fighting will turn into rebellion!
The nature has changed!
No one can afford the huge negative consequences of triggering a popular uprising!
After all, they are not fighting against the government, they are just fighting for water sources and land. If the government insists on taking care of things and arrests people, the villagers will not reason with you and just pull out the guns...
Once this happens, the nature changes and the trouble becomes big.
Therefore, every time a large-scale armed fight occurs, the local government will have a huge headache. Regardless, both sides of the armed fight can really use real fire and cause a large number of casualties.
Never mind, people don't appreciate it and it can easily lead to anger.
If you take too much control and still arrest people, they will simply stop fighting and attack your government...
Who asked you to meddle in other people's business and arrest them?
As for what law?
If the laws in these places were reasonable, there would not be such large-scale and frequent armed fights.
Fighting with weapons has become a local tradition. If there is no problem, just have a fight!
Wang Tu had some knowledge of these things before, but after he went to work in the mountainous area of northern Guangdong, he realized that the situation was actually more cruel than what he had seen in writing when he was in Jinling City.
In February this year, he had just arrived in Heyuan Prefecture to take up a post. As soon as he took office, he encountered a fighting incident. At that time, he was not the main person in charge, but just followed him to take a look.
Good guy, there are thousands of men and horses on both sides of the fight. In total, more than 2,000 people are confronting each other. When the young men and women on both sides are confronting each other in the front, there are healthy women in the back who are boiling water and cooking for the young men who are confronting in the front. They provided food and drink, and behind them there was a group of half-year-old children and old people who continued to transport things from the village to the front line.
Not to mention cold weapons such as swords and spears, many people also wore simple armor made of simple iron sheets!
And there are even muskets, matchlocks and even flintlock guns!
When the young men of the two sides faced each other in formation, what Nima listed was a serious line formation...
This, there's a fight, it's nothing more than a serious war.
Just looking at the formation and weapons of the young men in front, I am afraid that many small indigenous countries could be wiped out if they were pulled out.
Looking at the logistics supply for the old, weak, women and children in the rear, this mobilization system would make a large number of countries ashamed.
Such a confrontation caused the local garrison to be dispatched urgently. However, after the local garrison was dispatched, they did not dare to act rashly... they could only guard the edges and did not dare to suppress it directly.
Although it is simple to suppress, the people in front are all the people of the empire, and they are not rebelling, but fighting for survival resources.
The old man and the child are on the stage together just to survive!
Even those indifferent officers who have received formal military school education and regard their lives as numbers; and those soldiers who only follow orders, advance when the officers above tell them to advance, and shoot when they shoot, when they see these people That’s too much to do!
Therefore, Wang Tu saw with his own eyes a young lieutenant colonel who looked like a dog outside and had a bright future. He said all kinds of nice things in front of the villagers on both sides just to persuade both sides to disperse.
It's a pity... I don't have any birds!
After a long-lasting confrontation, the two sides started fighting in front of the eyes of more than a thousand garrison troops!
After the garrison stepped forward and forcibly separated the two sides, more than thirty people were killed and dozens injured on both sides.
The total casualties were directly in the hundreds!
Damn, these people are really ruthless in fighting with weapons. The wooden poles and iron-tipped spears they made themselves are really stabbed into people's bodies. The muskets are even close enough to shoot people in the face!
This time the fight allowed Wang Tu to truly see what it means to have unruly people come out of poor mountains and harsh waters.
It became clearer that behind the surging industrialization and prosperity of the empire, there were still countless dark corners hidden deep inside.
The lives of most people in the empire were not as good as he imagined!
But these did not scare Wang Tu, but instead aroused his fighting spirit!
Why does it lead to unruly people coming out of poor mountains and rivers?
Why is there such a large-scale armed fighting?
Many people say that this is a local tradition, a hatred accumulated by many local villages for decades or even centuries, and conflicts between natives and guests.
But in Wang Tu's view, these are just appearances, and there is only one real reason: poverty!
He checked many local information and found that most of the many armed fights in the past twenty years were caused by fighting for water and land.
And water resources and land mean survival!
In the mountainous areas of northern Guangdong, farming conditions are harsh, and people can barely make a living relying on the little land in the ravines. This is already an extremely difficult life.
Once there is too little rainfall in a certain year, fighting will basically occur due to competition for water.
This kind of armed fighting is often extremely cruel, and large-scale casualties are common.
It is human nature to fight for survival resources!
You can't just let them stay at home and watch their crops die, and then you can't just stay at home and wait for death.
Survival is human instinct.
So what can be done to change this situation?
What Wang Tu thinks about mediating the conflict between the two parties? If this conflict could be mediated, it would have been mediated long ago, and it wouldn't have been a fight for hundreds of years!
Although it is necessary to collect civilian guns and cold weapons, it is not reliable in fact. In many armed battles with a lot of casualties, both sides did not have a musket, but they used various homemade cold weapons and even wooden sticks. Fighting with bamboo spears and the like can cause more casualties than fighting with muskets!
Wang Tu believes that to truly solve the problem of armed fighting, other means are auxiliary and secondary. The real key is to improve the local economic level so that local people can obtain other sources of income and get rid of the need for that little land. dependence.
When the economy improves, people have money in their pockets and are no longer hungry, they will naturally change from unruly people to obedient people.
Then, supplementary measures will be taken to adjust conflicts, break up clans, and sort out the distribution of land and water resources in each village, in order to completely resolve the local tradition of fighting that has existed for many years.
Only when we have enough to eat and a better life can we talk about other things, otherwise it is all nonsense.
So while riding the Liuhang No. 6 steam liner north along the Dongjiang River, Wang Tu seemed to often admire the scenery on both sides of the strait, but in his heart he was still thinking more about how to develop the local economy.
There is no need to count on agriculture. There are many local people but little land, let alone flat land. In order to survive, local people have even built terraced fields. If they want to do any farming or food industry, there is basically no chance.
Even if he wants to engage in agriculture, he must also engage in some economic crops. Wang Tu thought, maybe growing tea is a feasible business?
It just so happens that the many mountainous areas in the area can be used without having to free up the cultivated land that was originally used to grow food.
In the future, we can also rely on tea planting to develop the tea-making industry. These days, the tea-making industry is a serious light industry.
And since there are many mountains and forests in the target area, this wood is naturally indispensable. Maybe we can start logging at that time, but we won’t get anywhere just by exporting wood raw materials. The added value is too low.
It would be better to introduce a factory that produces various types of woodware, such as making furniture and then selling it.
We still need to survey the local area to see if we can find a mineral, whether it is coal, iron ore, copper ore, etc. If we can find one that can be developed on a large scale, we will make a lot of money.
When Wang Tu arrived, he was ready to do some research to see if there were any local specialties suitable for commercial operation.
In short, Wang Tu has made up his mind that he must achieve results this time when he takes office as Heping County Magistrate, and he must do it beautifully.
After he has achieved enough political achievements, it will be a matter of minutes for him to quickly rise to the top by virtue of his background and connections.
(End of chapter)
