Cutting over the end of the Ming Dynasty: a dog-leg knife at the beginning

Chapter 341

Luoyang Guard’s conditions are much better than Wuyang Guard’s—they have ready-made experience, and the most important thing is that Wuyang Guard provides blood transfusions for them. When Yang Menglong started from scratch, there was no guard behind him for blood transfusions, and every penny was paid for. Work hard to earn it!Four days after Xue Siming arrived in Luoyang, a fleet under the name of Wuyangwei also docked.This fleet is fully loaded with seeds, phosphate fertilizers, all kinds of sophisticated agricultural tools, and a large number of craftsmen. Of course, there will also be a large number of cattle. The cattle travel by land and it will take some time to arrive. They just take advantage of this time Go fix the bullpen and cowshed.

The farm tools were quickly distributed, and Luoyang Wei began to get busy.Now is the time when the wheat seedlings turn green, so we have to water them quickly, otherwise it will be over, and the existing military fields in Luoyang Wei are all inconvenient to irrigate, so Xue Siming can only follow suit and transport them from Nanyang A large number of moso bamboos are paved into bamboo canals to replace the rotten canals.The waterwheel is a good thing, but it is not easy to manufacture, and the crops cannot afford to wait. Fortunately, the fleet sent him a good thing: a screw pump.An old and thick iron cylinder is connected to a long iron pipe. Put the iron pipe into the water, shake the handle at the other end of the iron cylinder, and water will gushes out from this strange thing.Yang Menglong Machinery is always full of interest. He asked foreigners for blueprints, and then asked the craftsmen to imitate them according to the gourd painting, and took them to the riverside for experiments. Sure enough, they pumped water from a low place to a high place.Considering that Luoyang Wei might not have time to build waterwheels, Yang Menglong asked the craftsmen to build two hundred screw pumps and transport them to Xue Siming.Now that these screw pumps are in use, the military households moved them to the riverside and set them up under the guidance of the craftsmen of Wuyangwei, and then shook the handle vigorously. Immediately, a water faucet rushed out from the faucet. , fell into the ditch, and flowed along the bamboo ditch to the wheat field.Many military fields are located in high places, more than ten feet higher than the river surface. It was impossible to divert water to irrigate the fields before, but now shaking the handle can solve all problems. The military households have to marvel at the magic of this screw pump!

With water, everything is easy. Under the organization of thousands of households and hundreds of households, everyone worked together. Many military fields that had been abandoned due to inconvenient irrigation were reclaimed and planted with crops such as alfalfa and soybeans. .The military households who saw hope only hated that the day was too short, and they couldn't be allowed to work for twelve hours!
Yang Menglong was taken aback when he received Xue Siming's report: My God, when did military status become so popular!Luoyangwei has more than 9000 military households, and Wuyangwei is even more powerful, with more than 1 households, which means that he now has 10,000 military households, and he has to manage [-]+ people to eat and drink!The worst thing is that while managing so many people, he also has to manage the eating and drinking of a sizable army. What a headache!
That's right, Wuyang Guard has begun to recruit troops aggressively.The imperial court gave [-] soldiers, and he has enough veterans to serve as officers. If he doesn't expand the army, when will he wait?The news of recruiting troops was released long before the Chinese New Year, and it caused a huge sensation in Nanyang and even the entire Heluo area. Many young and strong young people came here after hearing the news, and wanted to join this well-equipped, well-paid, and attractive team. Knowing that there is a promising army, even some bandits and bandits in the Funiu Mountain area secretly went down the mountain to join the army.When the recruiting station officially started recruiting, the staff in charge of recruiting were shocked by the crowded scene. Damn, I thought they were surrounded by rogues, and the baby was scared to death!

There are only so many recruiting places, but there are so many people who want to be soldiers, there is no way, so we have to choose carefully, offending people, hurting feelings!Wuyang Guard's recruiting criteria are:

First: You must be young and strong, preferably between 22 and 25 years old. It is also acceptable if you are under 25 years old. If you are over [-] years old, I will be sorry.As soon as this came out, a large group of people immediately turned around and drew circles in the corner.

Second: It’s best to be the children of the peasant family, and the frontier army is also fine. Those who are businessmen, officials, and bandits at home are waiting. If there are not enough people from the peasant family, then choose from among them—— this hope Very slim, the competition is too fierce!

Third: Physically strong, at least able to run 500 meters within the specified time wearing iron armor.As soon as this article came out, a large group of people were attracted.Of course, the iron armor used for the assessment is not the perverted heavy armor of hoplites, but a sleeveless breastplate weighing 500 pounds. For a person who has not received military training, wearing this thing to run [-] meters It is also a big challenge.

Fourth: Those with certain culture are preferred.As soon as this article came out, it was simply outraged. Are you recruiting soldiers or the emperor recruiting horses? The requirements are so strict!But Wuyang Wei said that there was no need to discuss it. How could an army composed of illiterates win the battle!

Putting these few items there, it is doomed that it is impossible for Wuyang Guard to think of a large number of violent soldiers. In this era when ordinary people are generally struggling with hunger and cold, if they want to recruit a large number of young, strong, clean, and certain Soldiers of culture, it's so hard!Fortunately, Wuyangwei didn't think about recruiting thousands of people at once, so they selected the best from the best, picking one by one, and after one or two years of selection, they could always pick thousands of people.

Wang Tiechui took people to Shandong.The number of soldiers Yang Menglong gave him was not many, only 300, but the standard was very high. After much deliberation, he decided that the Han soldiers from Shandong were the most suitable to be heavy infantrymen - the good news should not go to outsiders!My family is from Shandong. Of course, such a good thing is more biased towards Shandong fellows.Besides, it is a mess in Shandong, and it is necessary to recruit hundreds of soldiers, what a trivial matter!
Xu Gong and Zhong Ning set off again, escorting a large number of miscellaneous grains, ironware, tea, cloth and other goods to Yulin.This has almost become a habit of Wuyangwei. Every spring and late autumn, they will go to Yulin to exchange horses, camels, and cattle with the Mongols with their own materials to fill the gap brought by the rapid expansion of Wuyangwei. huge animal power gap.As for the sheep, they are not very interested now, and only that bastard can do such stupid things as driving tens of thousands of sheep across the state.In addition to trading, they also have another important task, which is to recruit soldiers and horses. As long as they meet their requirements, they dare to recruit them, whether they are frontier soldiers or Mongols. It's too difficult to train from scratch, so it's easier to recruit directly from the border.As for the issue of loyalty... In Yang Menglong's words: "Problems that can be solved with money are not problems!" In the Battle of Daling River, the battle of the Lancers, mainly composed of Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Frontier Army and Mongolian fighters, was not a problem. He said that he also confirmed what he said. These soldiers received no higher salaries and treatment than the Lancers from the Mainland, but they charged the hardest, especially the Mongols, who killed Jiannu even more fiercely than the Han!Putting such a good source of soldiers aside, he insisted on training from scratch with all his heart, and Yang Menglong was out of his mind again!
It's the beginning of spring, and the frontier soldiers and Mongolian herdsmen who have survived the winter are suffering from hunger and cold.

There was a frenzy of conscription and training in Nanyang, and the momentum was so large that it was surprising.Yang Menglong was gearing up and wanted to have a good time training his troops. Han Peng and Qi Hu knew something was wrong at the sight of his green eyes, so they quickly coaxed him to take up a post in Nanyang City.Fang Yizhi also wrote one letter a day, endlessly urging Yang Menglong to the point where he had no choice but to regretfully give up on his plan to indulge in military training and went to Nanyang City to take office with a face full of lawsuits... Hun Dan, his favorite thing is obviously training soldiers, why doesn't everyone understand him!What upset him the most was that Xiao Yufang insisted on staying in Wuyang School to teach, and she didn't want to come to Nanyang with him. It would be a little difficult to meet her in the future.

Yang Menglong, who was full of lawsuits, came to Nanyang City full of resentment on his camel with a bad temper that was well-known throughout Nanyang, and led a group of unwilling guards.

The current Nanyang City is quite different from the economically developed city hundreds of years later. It is the fourth largest city in Henan. It is no different from the Ming Dynasty cities that Yang Menglong is used to. A city wall engulfs the entire city. Once inside, tens of thousands of people live in it, and there is no freedom of entry and exit at all. No matter how you look at it, it looks a bit like a prison.Walking on the streets of Nanyang, you can find that the economy here is relatively developed, and goods such as medicinal materials, cloth, fish and rice can be found everywhere in the market, but there are a little less people and not enough popularity.He sighed: "There are too few people! Such a big city with a population of less than 10, what does it look like!"

The corner of Jiang Zheng's mouth twitched, and he said, "Master, this is not bad! You don't know Nanzhao County, do you? There are only a thousand households in the entire county, less than 1 people, not as many as our one thousand households! "

Yang Menglong's eyes lit up immediately: "Why are there so few people there? There must be a lot of wasteland, so we have to occupy it quickly!"

Jiang Zheng couldn't laugh or cry: "My lord, if Nanzhao can reclaim a lot of wasteland, why is there only such a small population? Besides, the forests and water ponds there are all the property of King Tang. If you go and occupy them, you are not talking to King Tang." Can't you make it through?"

Yang Menglong muttered: "This Tang king is really annoying, almost the whole of Nanyang has been taken over by him!"

Jiang Zheng said: "Compared with King Fu, it's better, but King Fu has occupied most of Henan."

Yang Menglong said: "Maybe I should talk to King Tang and ask him to assign Nanzhao County to me..."

Jiang Zheng shrugged, speechless at Yang Menglong's whims.He knows very well the virtues of those feudal kings. They are all greedy and like to do only two things. One is to select beautiful women among the people and work hard to create human beings, and then ask the court for rice. The more children they have, the more money they will get. The more and more--this is not about giving birth to children, it is simply about making money!There is also the practice of falsely labeling large tracts of cultivated land that farmers have worked hard to cultivate as uninhabited wasteland, and begging the court, often asking for [-] to [-] acres. When those farmers wake up, they suddenly find that their families have been cultivating it for several generations. The land has become the farmland of the feudal prince, and it was ordered by the emperor himself. What can you do?Get out obediently and go to more remote places to open up wasteland, or become a tenant farmer of the vassal king!His family had suffered such a loss, and he hated the feudal kings so much that Yang Menglong actually wanted the Tang Dynasty King to give him a large field. Hehe, it’s only what time it is, and he’s already starting to dream!

Whispering, a group of people came to the general's mansion in Heluo Town—in fact, the highest general in the town should be the general soldier, but considering that Yang Menglong was too young and the speed of his rise was too scary, the new Sun Chengzong, Shangshu of the Ministry of War, had no choice but to wrong him and let him actually lead a town of troops as a general.The general's mansion was cleaned and decorated. Needless to say, Fang Yizhi really worked hard to coax him over.But Yang Menglong didn't appreciate it at all. He was still immersed in the frustration of being separated from his wife and not seeing him several times a month. He waved his hand and asked the guards to light a bunch of firecrackers and throw them at the door. The bamboo pole picked up the red cloth covering the plaque, which was to announce the official opening of the general's mansion... no, it's office.This surprised many people who were waiting outside the door to watch the fun. Boss, at any rate, you should set off a few more strings of firecrackers. Please invite some relatives and friends to set up a few tables, right?A string of firecrackers was sent off, isn't it a bit of a joke?
As Yang Menglong's loyal little follower, Qi Polu pointed out this point tactfully: "I said, you're too foolish, aren't you? Moved into the general's mansion, don't hold a grand ceremony, invite local celebrities to come over to celebrate , what does it look like!"

Yang Menglong rolled his eyes: "It's this damn place that makes me want to be separated from my wife. It's this damn place that makes me unable to live my addiction to military training. I'm so angry, and I'm still celebrating? What a big celebration!"

(End of this chapter)