I want to be emperor

Chapter 104 The Non-Traditional Scholar
In the west of Nanzhao County, in Liqingdian by the Baihe River, Luo Zhixue had a rare late sleep.

In the past few days, Luo Zhixue suddenly found that he was idle, so that Luo Zhixue, who had been busy for a long time, was not used to it.

Everything was going well in military affairs, Luo Zhixue didn't need to worry about it at all.

The [-]rd Infantry Battalion heading east has already completed its assigned tasks, and is now stationed in a village called Ansha Village about ten miles away from Nanzhao County. The actions of the army felt reckless.

As a result, there was no war in the east, and everything was calm.

The first cavalry post, the first artillery post, and the first infantry battalion headed by Wang Xiazi went south. All went well. They had gone south for about forty miles and controlled a large area.

Along the way, I didn’t encounter any officers and soldiers, nor did I encounter such strong and stubborn tyrants like Songjiazhuang. I just met a few big landlords who didn’t know how to resist, and these big landlords were not even as powerful as Songjiazhuang at that time. Blind Wang and the others naturally took down these big landlords with ease.

And more landlords, mainly a large number of small and medium-sized landlords, have maintained a relatively restrained attitude towards the southward movement of the rural protection army, and paid the land tax according to the instructions of the monks and bandits with big bald heads.

Although they paid reluctantly, most of them did.

The right is to go bankrupt and eliminate disasters.

After all, these people are not stupid, they have also seen many practices of the rural protection army going south, and know that these so-called rural protection army thieves are relatively well-behaved, as long as they pay the field tax according to their regulations, they will not be embarrassed They are landlords.

Even when some gentry took their families and fled towards the south, the rural protection army would not make things difficult.

Of course, even if the core clan members ran away first, the land tax still had to be paid.

In a word, as long as you pay taxes honestly, the other township guards don't care about you at all...

The actions of the rural protection army also dispelled the panic of many landlords and gentry, and many people even felt that these monks and bandits, all of whom had bald heads, still listened to reason.

It is very different from those thieves who just ran over and didn't ask, and just burned, killed, looted and kidnapped by the way.

Under such circumstances, except for a small-scale resistance by a small number of hard-headed landlords and gentry, the southward movement of the rural protection army did not encounter any actual resistance.

Whether it is eastward or southward, military operations in both directions have been very smooth.

Not only did the military operations go smoothly, but even the establishment of township and village-level action agencies in the above-mentioned localities with the Rural Protection Army was relatively smooth.

In Luo Zhixue's opinion, Guo Quanshu is capable.

When I was in Funiu Mountain and the eastern part of Lushan County, I had already tried my skills. I organized six township yamen successively to manage each village in the control area.

At the same time, as the head of the Civil Affairs Department, he has also done a very good job in recruiting talents.

He aimed at the situation that traditional scholars were unwilling to take the initiative to serve for the rural protection army. At the same time, the rural protection army had also given up the previous practice of taking hostages from the children of landlords and helping them to work for themselves.

In order to make up for the talent gap, Guo Quanshu increased the recruitment of non-traditional scholars.

This non-traditional scholar is just talking nicely, but in fact, as long as he knows how to read and write, he can count as a period of time.

It doesn't matter what you did before, as long as you can read and write official documents, then you are considered a talent needed by the Township Protection Army.

For these talents, the treatment given by the Township Protection Army varies from high to low.

The salary received by the most basic clerical staff can barely support myself and two or three family members.

If it really counts as remuneration, the money spent on hiring a clerk is not as much as raising a soldier.

Don't look at the money that the soldiers get is only a few hundred coins, but they eat well, and now the price of food is soaring, most of the time you have money and you can't buy it.

The food eaten by soldiers in a month is worth more than the monthly salary of a clerk.

It's okay if someone hates the low salary and doesn't want to come.

These days, it may be difficult for you to find a scholar who is serious about playing the imperial examinations, but there are still some people who have no food, but know hundreds of commonly used characters, and can barely read and write official documents.

Not to mention other things, there are quite a few among the refugees.

One must know that Luo Zhixue's family was still refugees...

Luo Zhixue's late father and elder brother still had fame as children, but it wasn't because they were forced to flee and become refugees after years of natural and man-made disasters in their hometown.

How should I put it, these days only ordinary treatment is given, it may be difficult to find any high-level talents you want, but it is still possible to find only some people with the most basic level of education.

Guo Quanshu recruited these unorthodox scholars to alleviate the ever-expanding talent gap in Baoxiangying.

This is Luo Zhixue's opinion that Guo Quanshu has made the greatest achievement since he became the director of the Civil Affairs Department.

With the support of Guo Quanshu, the Township Protection Army recruited a large number of non-traditional scholars who were unable to eat enough to support their families due to various reasons.

There is a dilapidated counting house here.

There are guys who have read books for several years when they were teenagers but haven't been able to get out of it yet.

When I was a child, I studied for a few years and then went back to farming, but was a self-cultivator who went bankrupt after encountering a man-made accident in the field.

There are also a small number of scholars who originally had a good family background and read a lot of books. According to normal principles, they should be rushing for the imperial examination, but they eventually became refugees, just like the Luo family back then.

There are also a lot of sons of rich families, servants and the like.

In short, there are all kinds of people, no matter who they were before, but before they were recruited by the Rural Protection Army, they were all the kind of people who didn't have enough to eat or were extremely dissatisfied with the status quo.

Only these people would not have a heartfelt aversion to such rebels as the Township Protection Army.

On the contrary, they don't mind working for a group of rebels as long as the rural protection army feeds them and enables them to support their families.

In other words, they no longer have the capital to mind!
During this period of time, Guo Quanshu successively recruited more than 100 such talents, which greatly filled the gap in civilian officials in the Rural Protection Army.

This will allow all parts of the General's Mansion to operate normally, and it will also allow the established township yamen to have officials who do things.

The shortage of civil servants has been alleviated to a certain extent, so various internal affairs can be smoothly promoted.

When military affairs and internal affairs were nothing serious, Luo Zhixue suddenly felt like he was doing nothing.

After two days of idleness, Luo Zhixue felt that he couldn't sit still and wait to die, otherwise the main force of the officers and soldiers would turn around and kill him.

So that afternoon he ran out to inspect the arsenal branch under construction.

Yuan Gaofeng, director of the industrial department, accompanied Luo Zhixue to inspect the arsenal under construction, and explained to Luo Zhixue from time to time:

"According to your instructions, General, our Nanzhao County Armory Factory branch will take on the important task of transferring the Songshan Village Armory Factory. At the same time, we must prepare for further expansion, because the overall factory building is relatively large."

"And because there is sufficient water power here, we will also build more and larger hydraulic machines to save power storage and manpower, and can further increase production capacity and obtain the ability to process large iron materials."

"When the colleagues from the machinery factory were building various machinery and equipment in Songshan Village, they basically had already considered the hydraulic forging machines, boring machines, drilling machines, grinding machines and other equipment that you handed over to them, General."

"So this time we have let go of our hands and feet. It is expected to build three hydraulic forging machines, two water boring machines, and one water drilling machine here."

"These machines are used in conjunction with smaller manpower and power storage machines to process various iron materials."

"In addition, the colleagues at the machinery factory plan to build a large-scale hydraulic boring machine, which will be used for internal grinding of the gun barrel."

"Build another large water hammer for the processing of larger iron materials such as iron gun mounts and shells."

"In addition, a special ironmaking plant has been built to support it. We plan to use our own improved iron furnace to directly drive the bellows with water power. This kind of furnace produces less iron impurities."

While listening to Guo Quanshu's words, Luo Zhixue looked at the factory buildings that were still under intense construction ahead and a row of drainage trucks under construction by the river.

Although it is still only an outline, and even a factory building has not been completed, it does not prevent Luo Zhixue from imagining the general scene after the completion of this arsenal.

After it is fully completed, the overall scale should be more than three times that of the Songshan Village Arsenal.

The size of the plant alone is not important, what is really important is the large number of hydraulic equipment under construction.

These hydraulic machines are nothing new. As early as in Sanshui Village, when there were only two or three kittens in the arsenal, in order to improve the processing efficiency, Luo Zhixue personally designed a large number of various mechanical equipment together with the craftsmen.

At that time, only some small-scale, simple machines using energy storage and manpower were produced, but the basic principles were all there.

With the basic principles and structures of these machine tools, the craftsmen of the machinery factory continued to improve them in Songshan Village, and worked hard to make them large-scale and hydraulic.

Nowadays, the arsenal in Songshan Village basically uses all kinds of machinery and equipment for the production of all kinds of ordnance. Otherwise, it would be impossible to produce so many ordnance with so few people.

The ordnance production of the Baoxiang Army is different from that of the Ming Dynasty, which was hammered by craftsmen with hammers.

Luo Zhixue personally formulated the division of processes, taking muskets as an example, separating each process of making muskets and measuring them uniformly.

Subsequent guns are easy.

Qualified iron materials are trained in the ironworks, and then the hydraulic forging machine, um, is actually a large hammer that repeatedly beats the mold, and shapes it during the beating process.

Finally, the pipe rolling process is carried out. After continuous beating, the iron material is closed and becomes a hollow iron pipe.

After forging the iron pipe, it is necessary to finish the inside and outside of the iron pipe. The outer part is simpler and not so demanding, but the inner processing is very troublesome if it is done manually.

But when it comes to the Baoxiang Army, it becomes much simpler, and the inner diameter of the barrel is directly cut and expanded with a special hydraulic boring machine.

The fine steel tool of the boring machine can be done twice casually, and the work is basically done after repeated several times, saving time and effort.

(End of this chapter)