Nanming Engineer

Chapter 372 Dodo is Dead
As early as the initial settlement in Hanzhong, when Wang Huan and Meng Qiaofang of Xi'an were still staring at each other across the Qinling Mountains, Mi Layin and Ding Guodong of Gansu Town were guarding a team of miners who came from Sichuan with Wang Huan's warrant. Braving the yellow sand beyond the Great Wall, he came to a desert between Jingtai County and Jingluwei in Shaanxi Province, set up camp and lived there.

Mi Layin and Ding Guodong were at a loss at the beginning, what are these simple-looking miners doing all the way to this place where no shit?Planning to mine here?There has been nothing but sand and dry soil in this underground for thousands of years, and not even a single grass has grown in the ground, so is it possible to dig out any treasures?But they had to listen to Wang Huan's words and had to send someone to accompany them. Horse thieves were infested in the wilderness, and the thieves in the desert should not destroy the lives of these miners.

After settling down, the miners started working in full swing, cracking rocks with explosives and digging holes with hoes in the Gobi, and the sound of chant was endless.

A month later, the news came that shocked Mi Layin and Ding Guodong's jaws. The Kuizhou miners had indeed dug up ore on the Gobi Desert. The best high-grade copper ore.

Wang Huan didn't take this seriously. In later generations, this is a well-known silver and copper mine base at home and abroad. It accounts for one-fifth of China's copper output here. It is strange that no copper can be dug here.

Soon, a mining city was built outside the Great Wall. High ramparts and numerous arrow towers protected the mine like a copper wall. On the outside were soldiers from Gansu Town, and on the inside were the direct mine guards sent by Ma Chongming. There are gold and iron horses inside and out, and even the Mongolians on the grassland dare not easily make an idea here.

Carts of copper ore were quickly pulled out by carts. The Kuizhou system spent a lot of money to build countless military depots on the long official road between Jingluwei and Hanzhong. These military depots are equivalent to large and small fortresses. , It is also a post station, a transfer station for news transmission, and a stronghold for passing carts to rest and tiptoe. Tunpu has permanent residents and horses.

The establishment of Ore City also has another effect, which is to promote official and private trade.In addition to Jiayuguan, Gansu Zhenhu Market also opened here. With the popularity of the Ore City, countless traders from inside and outside the Great Wall soon gathered. The exchanges between the Ming Dynasty and the Mongolian Monan tribe were like newlyweds, blending together, and it was extremely sweet. It turns out that border trade has enriched many merchants and taken away a lot of business in the North.

Like a rainbow studded with pearls, this official road has become the link connecting Hushi in Gansu Township and Hanzhong, the important town of Ming Dynasty. The more foreign people flow, the scale of the city has expanded a lot, and many houses have been built outside the city, which is as prosperous as Suzhou and Hangzhou in the south of the Yangtze River.

Ma Chongming sent his capable sons to Hanzhong to monopolize the bulk trade and set up tax cards to collect taxes.Of course, many people suggested to Wang Huan not to compete with the people for profit, and the practice of extracting commercial taxes is unacceptable.

Wang Huan sneered, he didn't study sages' books, Wang Huan could get high marks in political economy for a long time, and Kuizhou's money was not blown by strong winds. Every day is an astronomical figure. If you don't seize the opportunity to make money, the common people will soon rise up and rebel.

The purpose of exempting food and taxes is to buy people's hearts. The money from a few people levied by this business tax will not arouse widespread resistance.But of course some people would not be willing to pluck hair from the rich, but Wang Huan used high-pressure tactics and confiscated the goods of several unscrupulous merchants who resisted and evaded taxes, and arrested a few Confucian scholars who openly criticized Wang Huan's tax policies. It was quiet immediately.

These big merchants have forces behind them, and Wang Huan is not afraid. Who is bigger than him in the northwest and southwest?Some merchants contacted each other vertically and wanted to unite to boycott the Northwest Mutual Market, but they persisted for less than a month before falling apart. After all, the entire Great Wall along the Great Wall, except for the Northwest where there was no war, was full of beacon fires. Take it easy, is there another way?

Business was booming, and the output of the Jinglubao Copper Mine was becoming more and more stable day by day. By the time Xu Erjue's Hanzhong Military Bureau was established, the copper ingots piled up in the official warehouses in the city had reached a scale of nearly ten thousand catties.

Carloads of copper entered the military battle bureau, smelted tin and lead in blast furnaces, melted into bronze, and then poured into formed iron molds, and the whole was cast into a gold-reddish gun barrel, which was quenched and cooled , installed on the solid frame made by the carpenter, equipped with wheels and other parts, and finally painted and engraved with marks. A standard Napoleon gun is considered to have left the factory.

Under the leadership of the two red-haired ghosts and Xu Erjue, hundreds of craftsmen worked continuously for more than a month. Apart from eating and sleeping, they just went to work and worked hard to build the cannon that Wang Huan desperately needed amidst the flying copper flowers and high-temperature roasting. , like a machine with full horsepower, running at high speed.

……

Wang Huan was preparing for the battle, but the other places in China were not as peaceful as Shaanxi and Sichuan.

Except for Liaodong, wars are everywhere. After Du Yinxi and He Tengjiao in Huguang had internal strife, they were beaten badly by Jierhalang. The hard-earned Changsha was lost, Xiangtan was lost, and the Ming army retreated across the board. It was only after retreating to Yuezhou that the decline was barely stopped, and the whole Huguang returned to its original shape.

In Fujian, although Zheng Chenggong's offensive gained a lot of territory, it was not conspicuous. His internal fighting with his uncles Zheng Cai and Zheng Lian consumed most of his energy.

The troops of Kong Youde and Geng Jimao of the Qing army, led by the Qing general Tan Tai, broke through Nanchang City in Jiangxi. Jin Shengheng and Wang Deren, who had guarded the isolated city for nearly a year, died in the city. With no one to help, sit and watch Nanchang break down.

As for Li Chengdong in Guangdong, except for a few shouts at the junction of Guangdong and Jiangxi, and a few small-scale contact battles, there was no movement.

In the ears of Emperor Yongli, except for the great victory in the Northwest and the recovery of Xi'an, there was bad news everywhere, but he was helpless, he didn't even have the guts to urge Li Chengdong, so he could only sit in Zhaoqing Palace every day, singing and dancing, drunk and dreaming.

But in March of the third year of Yongli, a news came from the north.

**** Dodo is dead.

Yongli didn't feel anything, but to Jiang Yu and Wang Huan, it meant a lot.

Dorgon who personally conquered stayed in Shanxi for less than a week, and Duoduo in Beijing died of smallpox. In this era, there is no cure.

The death of Duo Duo made Dorgon immediately give up his personal conquest and lead his army back to the north. The owner of the Xiangbai Banner died. The huge power vacuum must be allocated and filled in time, and it should be in the hands of his own people. The surging power will immediately counterattack and put Dorgon to death.

Jiang Quan, who was pressed to death, could take a breather. Dorgon took away most of the troops. Azig and others who were left behind could only maintain the siege of Datong and were unable to wipe out the rebels in other parts of Shanxi. So Jiang Jianxun and others The people immediately resurrected, causing turmoil in the whole province of Shanxi. The chaos in Shanxi, which had collapsed due to the arrival of Dorgon's powerful war machine, boiled over again.

This was the moment Wang Huan had been waiting for.

Dorgon returned to Beijing to deal with the post-Jin civil strife. Although there were many generals left in Shanxi, there were not many soldiers. The combined Manchurian-Han coalition forces did not exceed 5. It was the weakest Qing army during the entire Jiangguan period. moment.

(End of this chapter)