Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1255 After the voyage to the Western Ocean ([-])

The two looked at each other and smiled. They understood the mentality of military officers who came to the frontier to seek military exploits.

It is really difficult for the victors to be blamed, plus the group of people who did this in Dashun before have all been promoted, and many people are naturally inclined to repeat the stories of the past.

Regardless of Du Feng or Niu Er, they are all stepping on the window period, that is, the first few batches of graduates during the military reform, they all follow the steps and don't need to start provocations without authorization.

This is purely to catch up with the trend. When the elementary school students behind were still reading and learning, Dashun's over-trained officer corps had already occupied the first batch, the second batch, and even the subsequent fleet captains and trainee captains. full.

The army caught up with Dashun's expedition to the Northwest, Japan, and Southeast Asia.After these few battles, one radish and one pit are basically filled.

Since they got into the car first, they naturally have to be worthy of their own buttocks, so as not to cause accidents and complications.

Du Feng felt that since the Nanibala Kingdom has been divided into 36 states like the Western Regions, and has not paid tribute for a long time, it is okay to send some people to torment Boda.If it was done, Longyan was overjoyed when the emperor awarded him a knighthood; if it failed, it had nothing to do with him, who was in charge of the war in India.

Since Niu Er made it clear, Du Feng followed Niu Er's point.

After settling down, Niu Er said: "Then let's leave now, I will follow Siraj back to Rajshahi. You still have some things to do here, so I wish Brother Du the title of Marquis."

After speaking, the two shook hands and said goodbye.

A few days later, Du Feng arrived at Fort William, and his deputy took part of the troops to escort Siraj back to Rajshahi, and a skirmisher company he dispatched followed.Niu Er's identity is a bit similar to the prime minister of the princes and states in the era of parallel prefectures and states. In name, he is the consolation envoy of Dashun's side in the Siraj court, but in fact he is responsible for presiding over tariffs, land reform, checking land, suppressing opposition, etc. series of things.

On the Calcutta side is the barracks garrison area.

Although theoretically Dhaka's location is better, but the environment in Dhaka, the garrison is really unbearable.

The swamps and seasonal floods also decided to use the basis of the British for more than a hundred years to place the military camp in Calcutta.

The swamp here has been drained and developed, which just saves a lot of trouble.

It’s nothing more than changing the name of Fort William. Fort William, when you look at the name, you know that it was built when the British welcomed the landing of the Dutch government. Like Fort St. George, the political flavor is too strong, and the name must be changed. of.

After Du Feng came to Fort William, he rested for about half a month.

Troop carnival, money distribution, consumption, prostitution, drinking.

For a while, he was famous, because he gave money for buying things, drinking and whoring, and basically gave money for drinking and whoring. Those who didn't pay would be punished with military sticks, so they quickly stabilized the mood after the change of rule here.

The shops and warehouses of the British East India Company were seized; the locals working for the East India Company were also basically arrested.

The rest near Calcutta are basically local handicraftsmen from Bangladesh.

It can also be regarded as the United Kingdom before, compared to Dashun's coming to Bangladesh, which is objectively slightly beneficial to the local area.After all, Dashun only needs spinners, not weavers, and the level of the British cotton textile industry is far behind that of India. It needs both cloth and yarn.

It will take some time for the transformation. What Dashun needs is long-staple cotton, and now Bangladesh is planting degraded Indian cotton.

We have to wait for the change of land ownership between Niu Er and Chaida Minger from all over the world, wait for the Academy of Sciences to send people here to test cotton seeds, and wait for large-scale long-staple cotton to become popular before setting up a hand-spinning factory here. , continue to expand the scale of the hand spinning industry here, and use dumping to completely exterminate the weavers here.

In a short period of time, Dashun was not even interested in cotton yarn from Bangladesh.Only cotton from Bangladesh will be selected.

Because the budding area of ​​capitalism in Dashun, that is, the cotton textile area centered on Song, Su, and Nantong, the pedal iron wheel looms used cannot use this kind of short-staple cotton yarn. The long-staple cotton supporting products of North Nanyang.

Cannot be used universally.

However, because of Dashun's large-scale entry into the Guandong, the price of cotton has been okay in recent years, and the profit has been good.Therefore, all the cotton in Bangladesh can definitely be bought to make stuffing for cotton-padded jackets and trousers.

Therefore, within a few years, the cotton textile artisans around Calcutta may experience a cruel... fate.

Or starve to death.

Or change careers.

At least as far as the surrounding area of ​​Calcutta is concerned, they are not considered self-sufficient economic systems, but purely export-oriented textile industries.

In this regard, Du Feng is quite familiar with it.People in the new school have basically read the classic case of Dashun going to Nanyang in the newspapers and periodicals of their system.

That is, after Dashun went to Nanyang, the cotton textile industry in Mumbai and Surat suffered a catastrophe.In the Dutch market in Southeast Asia and Persia, there was a wave of replacement of Dashun Songsu cotton cloth with Surat cotton cloth, which led to chaos in Surat.

In view of the endless strikes and uprisings of weavers in the previous dynasty, Du Feng was still a little worried about the uprisings of weavers around Calcutta.

Therefore, he is still busy with surveying and mapping these days, preparing for strengthening the fort in the future, setting up forts in Diamond Bay, preparing to dig rivers to block the connection with the residential areas of Calcutta, and a series of issues.

After being so busy for more than half a month, Dashun's second batch of fleet finally arrived in Calcutta.

They stopped in Calcutta, not to support the Indian squadron.

Dashun mobilized armed merchant ships, naval transport ships, and a group of cruise ships to unload a group of people here, and then loaded a group of people to Europe.

The main fleet led by the Seventh Prince was one step ahead, and they were going to control the sea dominance of the Mediterranean Sea.

Along the way, at several strategic strongholds in Dashun or bases of allies, fast communication frigates and fast sailing boats refitted from specialized anti-smuggling ships will be left behind to connect information from various places.

From the Mediterranean to Senegal.

From Senegal to the Cape of Good Hope.

Then there are Swedish pirates occupying Madagascar, where the stolen goods are sold, and then there is Mauritius in France.

Relying on a method similar to the eight-hundred-mile express relay, learn as much as possible about the situation in West Africa and Europe.

This batch of fleets did not have battleship escorts, only a group of cruisers.

Their task was to transport three of Calcutta's four battalions of combat engineers, together with a portion of artillery and a supply of explosives, to the Cape of Good Hope.

It is possible to spend the winter at the Cape of Good Hope for rest, and after receiving news from Senegal, go north to Gibraltar.

It was an opportunity for Dashun's merchant ships to enter the Mediterranean Sea to trade everywhere. It must be won, and after winning it, Spain will inevitably go to war with Britain and Portugal.

As for the Cape of Good Hope, there is no shortage of supplies there.For cattle, sheep, and even citrus and lemons, Liu Yu has already started preparing for them after the Sino-Dutch Nanyang War. The number of people who will be given hundreds this year and fifty next year will increase. Supplies will definitely not be a problem.

Historically, it was only after the North American War of Independence that Britain became aware of the logistical problems of naval transportation and supplies, and set up the Naval Logistics Bureau.And Dashun's Navy Century helmsman has been preparing for wars tens of thousands of miles away from the very beginning. He dare not say that the scale of transporting tens of thousands of people across the ocean at one time and the logistics of thousands of people can still be understood. of.

The people sent by this fleet to Calcutta were new students recruited by Dashun to work in the colony.

Surveying and mapping, inventorying of acres, measuring land, opening up plantations, etc., are also considered colonial "officials".

This also reflects Dashun's manpower advantage and low cost advantage.

As a group of people outside the imperial examination forces who were actually literate, they were marginal people in Dashun.

Colonial officials and imperial examination officials are not in the same system.One is under the administration of officials, and the other is not under the administration of officials.

And as it was agreed at the beginning, the inside is inside and the outside is outside, and people from the new learning system will not occupy the imperial examination quota and official vacancies.

Theoretically, hundreds of thousands of students who were born in the imperial examination, including those in Dashun, could go to the colonies to serve as officials if they wanted to.

However, no one would come.

Because in Dashun, as long as he wins the election, he will immediately become a country gentry. He has a house, land, social status, cultural circle, and money. Only fools are willing to come to the colony.

And this group of people who were born in new schools are basically from poor families, and they go to the kind of cheap and subsidized schools.After literacy, they will be given two or three taels of silver a month, some colonial subsidies, and an upward channel within the "external" system. Dashun can use this group of people with very low labor costs.

Anyway, this group of people can write and count, know how to solve algebra, have a world view of general education, and recognize the cutting-edge theories at this time, such as universal gravitation and the conservation of matter.

In this era, looking at the whole world, such a high level of literacy, according to the calculation in Europe, is four and a half shillings a week, and it can run to the colonies with high fever and high death rate, which is unique in the world. portion.

After all, in a few years, for example, in Lancashire, a 50-year-old illiterate grandmother's cotton yarn worker will have a weekly salary of 8 shillings.With half of the wages of the women workers in the textile factory, Dashun can attract a group of non-students who are highly educated at this time.

After all, the real industrial revolution has not yet come, and Dashun cannot provide so many decent jobs that require both literacy and culture.Liu Yu has invested in volunteer schools over the years, and has over-trained a group of literate people who are not scholars, which is quite embarrassing-the textile factory in Songsu, a bunch of women workers sent by mother-in-law or parents, and a large number of flexible fingers The wages of child laborers are extremely low, 100 catties of sorghum rice a month, and some of them are rushing to do it.

These newly literate people thought it would be better to come to the colony to live and eat than to go to the textile factory.

In addition to these people, the fleet also sent the first batch of troops stationed in India.

That is to say, after the service is completed, the group of people who will be placed in the local area or choose to be sent to the colony to open up land and grant land are also recruited from the refugees and disaster victims. .The rest...the rest are weak and useful, and can be sold to traffickers to sign a contract to work.

After these soldiers came to India, they had to gradually replace the professional field troops, and the field troops still had to organize drills in Ceylon, Temasek and other places.

Always maintain a fixed number of field troops with high wages and high salaries, and will not easily increase the number of field troops.

In addition, Dashun does not allow generals to recruit Indian soldiers at all, which can be regarded as a check and balance strategy of the imperial court. They are worried that someone who has been working in India for a long time will directly follow Babur's story-I can't win at home, so I came to India to serve Emperor, wouldn't it be beautiful to be the head of a chicken rather than the queen of an ox?He did it from Kabul, how can I not do it?

After the first batch of troops stationed here in India after being trained in Dashun were handed over to Du Feng, Du Feng handed over the three combat engineer battalions that had been repaired and replenished to the navy.

The fleet completed the handover at the port of Calcutta. Before the handover, there were three old things: combat engineers burned their hair with a wet towel to extinguish it, washed their hair and bathed with potion, changed their clothes and killed lice before boarding the ship and ate dumplings or eight-treasure rice.

This early potion for killing lice was the neem tree popularized by Dashun in the rural areas of northern Jiangsu to replace the Chinese tallow tree. Many years have passed, just like the emigration to Ceylon many years ago, and it has also come to blossom and bear fruit. when.

The oil extracted from the seeds is used as lice head oil. It is one of the few lice killing drugs that generally do not kill people at this time, and it is also an important export material of Dashun.Oriental medicinal hair oil was very popular in Europe as soon as it came out, especially by Eastern European hussars, but the previous profits were made by second-hand dealers, and Dashun's merchant ships could not enter the Mediterranean and Black Seas.

Dashun's side is mainly for military use, especially as an important material for long-distance combat in the logistics department. After all, compared with lead bullets, it is much more effective in combating diseases such as typhus and relapsing fever.

Although it is said that the body, hair and skin are the parents, the Dashun soldiers have no resistance at all to burning and washing their hair.At least, compared to the several uproars caused by the fact that the corpses are not allowed to be buried in the sea with ballast sand in the navy regulations, this matter is not stagnant.

People living in these military camps are really afraid of being bitten by lice.

Of course, it will take some time before the stuffy factories and the steam engine turns the scalp and pulls one's head, and short hair becomes popular.But in the end, this is the natural evolution of cultural customs in the age of steam.In other words, it is a kind of universally applicable inevitability in the age of steam, which is what some imperialist awakeners in Dashun thought about disguising the general choice of the times as a cultural symbol of the nation.

But before this cultural symbol was exported, Dashun's army embarked on the journey to Europe earlier than Dashun's steam engine.

They had to use enough blood to fight for a long-term right of passage in the Mediterranean Sea for Dashun's industrial and commercial capital.After all, it was the Gibraltar fortress that the British had been operating for 50 years. It was not comparable to India, where a total of [-] European-style new troops could be assembled at this time, and half of them were Bangladeshi soldiers.

At this time, the combat engineers who had just experienced an easy victory did not know where they were going to fight, they only knew that they must continue to fight.But with the help of India's two siege battles, they are full of confidence and a sense of dismissive ease for future battles.

(End of this chapter)