Xinshun 1730

Chapter 160 Catastrophe is approaching and human trafficking

Boxes of guns were brought down from the ship. The first batch of alternate officers and the first batch of Liangjiazi soldiers who were already familiar with the use of flintlock guns were each responsible for 200 guns, checking whether they could be fired and whether they could be fitted with bayonets.

Heavy cannons and gun carriages were also transported down.

Each cannon looks very gorgeous, with embossed patterns on it, and different animal heads are cast at the rear of the cannon tail according to different pounds.

It can be seen that the French also have the intention of showing favor this time.

It's just that these cannons didn't satisfy Liu Yu.

The 12-pound gun weighs 3000 catties and is three meters long; the smallest four-pound gun also weighs 1200 catties.

It is slightly stronger than Dashun's cannon, but it doesn't seem to be much stronger in terms of weight alone. Maybe the play value can be smaller, and it can hit farther and more accurately.

Youdao is to buy a set of pearls and send them for sale. If you are not satisfied with the cannon, you are quite satisfied with the cannon mount.

Compared with what I expected, there is only a tiny height adjuster controlled by screw rotation, which can be added by myself.

The main reason is that the structural layout of the cannon cart is very reasonable, and many messy push rod buckets and the like can be hung on it.

There are also a few four-wheeled carriages, which are exactly what Liu Yu needs.

A four-wheeled carriage with a bogie...maybe really useless in the southwestern mountainous area, but it will be very useful if you go to the grasslands of Junggar and the northern line.

He has no interest in recruiting some skilled craftsmen to reproduce these things now. Since there are masters who know how to do it, it will save time to follow suit. Why do you want to reverse engineer it yourself?

What's more, his plan is to go directly to camp schools in various places and recruit some thirteen or fourteen-year-old children who can't inherit the status of good family children and who have been admitted to the inner dormitory of the camp school but can't enter the upper dormitory as apprentices.

It's just that the craftsmen recruited are still in the foreseeable future. At this time, when recruiting apprentices, they have to take care of food, housing and money.Anyway, camp school can't be closed for a while, so don't worry.

It took two days to complete the inventory. During this period, the people on board did not disembark. Liu Yu sent people to deliver some supplies and drinking water to the ship.

[-] flintlock guns are of good quality and can basically be used.The bayonets are also fully furnished.

12磅的野战炮5门，8磅野战炮14门，4磅野战炮25门，还有一些法国的骑兵剑之类的玩意儿。

Liu Yu didn't bargain for all these goods, but when they passed the inspection, he paid a part of the gold. According to the exchange ratio of 1:12, he actually paid a little less.

The Argonaut was also rushing to Guangdong to load cargo and return to India. It didn't stay for too long and left soon.

Before leaving, Liu Yu placed an order for another set of ammunition, half of this quantity, but the guns must be 1728-style. If the delivery cannot be made next year, that is, in 1731, it can be postponed to 1732.

Liu Yu was not at all apprehensive about his request to hire craftsmen.

As long as France is not a group of people with problematic brains, as long as there are a few brains that can be used, they will know that his proposal is very attractive. Why not do it with an additional ally who can contain Britain, the Netherlands, and Russia?
Duplex can be regarded as a famous figure in history, so it's not like he can't even see through this.Unless he is so confident that he can dominate India and defeat the Royal Navy and the Dutch fleet on his own.Although this man is confident and resourceful, he is not arrogant.

The French were sent away, and the days after that were training, giving lectures, testing guns, and writing artillery angle parameter tables.

Once the typhoon was over, Liu Yu stockpiled another wave of food.

Let the two training ships go around the Korean peninsula and go to Vladivostok.

They sent a few people who knew how to map and draw pictures to measure the land that can be cultivated near Vladivostok, the route from Vladivostok to Mudanjiang and Wusuri River, and the valley areas that can be cultivated along the way.

At the same time, to buy a wave of grain along the way, there is no need to buy warehouses, as long as the first payment is made and stored in each household.

He chose a confidant, and wrote a personal letter to the soldiers of some villages that he had fought side by side.Instead of taking the water route, I rode a fast horse to the Songhua River after crossing the Bohai Sea, and asked about one thing.

"If I transport people there for you to do ten-year long-term work for you, you will be provided with food and housing, and after ten years I will give him ten acres of plowed land and one year's grain and farm tools, how much can you pay for each person? money?"

"I know that it is not easy to sell grain in your place. The price of grain is the lowest in Kyushu. This money can be converted into grain. If necessary, you can transport a batch of grain along the Mudanjiang line and hoard it into stacks during the winter when the ice is closed, and send people to guard it. It is suitable for a thousand people to eat."

"The villages and communes will contact each other, and there will be stacks every [-] miles along the way. The first batch can be sent to thousands of people. This is not a state matter, but your private and family affairs. Please be sure to contribute. At that time, the settlement will be carried out in order to transport grain, grain, The guards make their own calculations. The price of food is equal to one tael and one stone."

"Give me a price. What are the prices for women, men, and half-grown children? Not only the prices that you can accept, but also the prices that nearby villages can accept. Ask me."

"Also: The last time we fought against the Raksha people, we shared a sum of money captured. When we fought against the Raksha, the imperial court also bought food directly from you. Make you rich. Now is the time. Speedy must come with the messenger and talk about it."

"say hello."

He had wanted to write this letter for a long time, but today was the time.

Human trafficking is a very taboo thing.

But Liu Yu had to do this, the official emigration court could not afford the money.

It is morally comfortable not to buy and sell people, but once there is a disaster in Shandong and Henan, hundreds of thousands of victims of the disaster can't pretend that they don't see it and feel that their death has nothing to do with them.

There is no courage to cure the root cause.

Then take care of the symptoms.

Use the lowest possible cost to move the most people.

The food in the village is not a rescue for the poor.

Especially in places like Zhaoyuan, where gold is produced, once there is a catastrophe, land annexation can be seen with the naked eye.

Those who are really big business digging gold can buy a few boatloads of sorghum rice from Liaodong casually. At that time, they don't have to think about whether to sell the land to survive or starve to death.

Official immigration, not to mention too much cost, too many deductions in the middle, and emigrating to such a cold place, the death rate is about [-]%.

Waiting for time to immigrate slowly, not to mention how long it will take for the railway to be built, in the current situation where Liaodong is not filled and Inner Mongolia can also be cultivated, no one will take the initiative to cross the Songliao watershed.

The weather has warmed up in recent years, and the grain production in places like the Songhua River has gradually stabilized.

However, although there is a lot of food, it cannot be transported out. At this time, the place where the price of food is the lowest in the whole country is in the group of Fubing villages on the Songhua River.

In the future, when Junggar is pacified, settlements and immigrants, no need to think about it, the places with the lowest food prices must be the cities of the Western Regions.

In the past, these frontier government soldiers were looking forward to fighting. On the one hand, they could have military merits. On the other hand, if they fought in the north, the imperial court would choose to buy grain directly there, which was much cheaper than transporting grain from the rear.

The last time there was a war against Russia, a lot of food was sold along the Songhua River, and a lot of money was collected. Over the past few years, those traders have exchanged some of it back, but there is still a lot left.

There is surplus food, livestock, and large tracts of land, but it lacks people.

That's where the need for the population is most acute.With a large population, you don't have to farm it yourself, you can be the owner.

Instead of letting the victims starve to death in Shandong and Henan, and die of an impossible resistance, it is better to find a way to get them to Songhua River and Heilongjiang.

The swampy area and the fertile soil of the Sanjiang Plain must not be developed now, but the warm valleys along the river can already be cultivated.

There is no Fubing in the world that can be used for a hundred years. The Fubing in Songhua River should be transferred to Kaizhou County.

It just so happened that those government soldiers had accumulated a lot of property over the years, the land there was also fertile, there was a lot of wasteland, and every family had large livestock such as cattle and horses.

In this case, it is better to let them transform.

On the one hand, it can provide food, on the other hand, it can domesticate horses, and the small-scale peasant economy in the customs can neither build a food base nor raise good horses.

As long as the population of the Songhua River reaches 50 million and it grows in the future, the entire north will be stable.

The more food produced, the lower the cost of famine and immigration, and the faster the population growth.

In this way, what Liu Yu wants to do is to store up a wave of grain during the harvest year.

When the disaster year comes, those who are more likely to survive will be picked up on board, signed a contract, and will work for ten years.

The British used indentured slaves in the Americas, which proved to be a good means of immigration.

Dashun opened up trade, which led to the Dutch no longer using Batavia as a transit port, but directly choosing to trade in Guangdong.As a result, Chinese maritime merchants were unable to make profits by selling goods in Batavia, and many maritime merchants also turned to human trafficking, that is, selling "contract coolies."

Dashun Maritime Merchant shipped the poor and disaster victims from Fujian, Guangdong and other places to Batavia. Although the death rate was higher, it is true that there are more and more Chinese in Batavia and other places in recent years.

If Dashun has the ability to bring the government down to the village, it would be most appropriate for the government to do such things as immigration.If you are unable to go down to the village, or even go down to the county, you can barely co-govern with the gentry, so it is better to follow the trend.

Liu Yu did not choose the normal Penglai-Liaonan-Liaohe-Kaiyuan-Jilin-Songhua River line.

Instead, we chose Weihai-Vladivostok-Mudanjiang, Wusuli River, and Heilongjiang estuary to squeeze inward and occupy the estuary—and finally enrich the Songhua River and Jingqili River.

In the first line, his influence is limited, and in the latter line, he also has a legitimate slave who serves as the deputy envoy of Xuanfu, and it is also conducive to occupying Hokkaido in the future.Occupation requires population, not just running up and planting a flag.

Since the emperor approved of the idea of ​​strengthening control over North Korea, Zuo Pingzhang has always been tough. Once North Korea is forced to open up trade, the position of Vladivostok will be very critical.

You can purchase daily necessities such as cloth from North Korea and Japan, and ship them directly to Vladivostok, Heilongjiang Estuary and other places on the east coast of North Korea.

Jiaolaobutu is now in charge of the trade city of Jingqilijiang, and the Russians still have to buy furs there.It is useless for the local tribes to ask for money, and Jiaolaobutu and himself can make a difference: exchange handicrafts such as cloth and ironware for the furs of the local tribes, and then sell them to the Russians.

If Russia wants to trade, it can only exchange in this way.But the cloth they hauled from distant Europe to the Outer Xing’an Mountains by boat and sledge was definitely not as cheap as Liu Yu’s imports from North Korea and Japan and transported directly to the Heilongjiang Estuary and the Jingqili River.

In this way, not only the economy is active, but also the population is enriched.

It’s not too far from Vladivostok to the Mudanjiang River. There were some post stations and village communal systems before, and Koreans who escaped have settled there in recent years.

Along the way from Vladivostok to Mudanjiang, Wusuli River, and then to Songhua River, it is only necessary to arrange a few immigrant villages along the way to cultivate and cultivate, forming a migration line that can not die of hunger and can buy food.

Then there is the line of immigration along the trade route, along the Vladivostok to the Heilongjiang River Estuary and then to the Jingqili River Estuary. With this special fur trade route, many villages can be resettled.

As long as the first step of immigration is completed, subsequent immigration will be much easier, faster and cheaper.

…………

Before the winter freezes, two expedition ships for training hands returned safely from Vladivostok, and sent away a group of surveying and mapping ships, which also brought news from Vladivostok.

Now Vladivostok is a small port with a population of about 2000.There are a lot of fishers, and there are also farmers. Half of them are North Koreans who fled from North Korea and grow rice there.

Life in North Korea has always been very difficult. Since the Ming Dynasty, a large number of people have fled abroad. However, Jurchen was not a good person at that time, and the weather in the north was also cold.

In the past few years, it has gradually warmed up, Liaodong has changed, more and more people have fled from North Korea in places like Vladivostok, and now they have gathered into a small town.

There is basically no labor recruitment there, and it is a state that has jurisdiction in name but basically does not care about it. There is a team of soldiers in the local army station, and basically they have no combat effectiveness.

There are indeed villages along the way to the Mudanjiang River. The villages are relatively far apart, but the villages are self-sufficient in food.Almost every family feeds the pigs when they can’t finish their food. In winter, the pigs are killed and eaten all winter. There is a natural refrigerator without fear of spoilage.

It used to be a special smuggling channel, so it can fully support the food needed to transport one or two thousand immigrants every year along the route. Some wealthy local farmers can also accommodate some people and are happy to accommodate them.

It’s just that most of the people who were accommodated before were escaped Koreans, so many village communities actually speak Korean.

Although it is bitterly cold, wild animals appear frequently, and mosquitoes are everywhere, but as the so-called tyranny is fiercer than tigers, dozens or hundreds of people flee every year.

The news from Vladivostok has been received, but the news from the village community on the Songhua River has not been answered.

In the blink of an eye, it is November, and the weather is getting a little bit wrong.

The news that Kang Buxie brought back from his travels outside was very worrying.

This year's winter wheat was planted according to the season, but when the frost and cooling days came in previous years, this year it was delayed, and it was a weirdly warm winter.

Wheat grew wildly, tillers pulled cores and jointed, and then the temperature began to drop.Although the temperature dropped, there was no snow.

Winter wheat cannot be tilled and core-pulled and jointed before winter, so it needs to reserve more energy for overwintering instead of starting jointing before wintering.

After the winter, it was a weird day again. It was warm before, but it was cold after the winter, and it was dry and cold. Not a single snowflake fell.

The Jiaodong area has been known since ancient times. Jiaodong is mountainous, and the sea breeze comes from the southeast, so there is more rain in the south and less rain in the north.But there is little rain this year.

Not only Wendeng, but also Zhaoyuan, Longkou, Pingdu, and Juzhou all had such strange weather.

Some people have already realized that there may be a disaster next year, and the wealthy households began to stockpile grain, and the price of grain increased, but those who were able to sell grain saw the problem and did not sell it, so the price of grain increased.

The poor can do nothing but pray to God that there will be a heavy rain tomorrow when the grouting starts in spring, and the dry hot wind must not be blown.

If this is the case, the disaster brought about by this warm winter may be a little smaller. The original yield of 120 catties of wheat per mu may be 60 catties, and they can still make do with it.But if it doesn't rain and the hot wind blows... I'm afraid there is only one way to sell the land and flee to the east of the Guandong.

(End of this chapter)