Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 89

Farmers are simple people. They don't have much. If you can show higher abilities in the fields they are good at, they will be convinced and willing to listen to you.

It was precisely because of the preliminary preparations made by these agricultural officials that the imperial decree requiring all prefectures and counties in northern Shaanxi to uniformly plant millet was implemented very smoothly. The people did not have any resistance, and even listened to these small agricultural officials. People say that if it is managed properly, a second season of millet may be planted within a year, and the crops can be harvested twice a year!

For farmers, yield is the last word. Harvesting more grain is better than anything else. Therefore, just after the first month of the year and when the weather has just gotten warmer, more than [-]% of the fields in northern Shaanxi have been sown with millet.

After finishing sowing, the farmers in northern Shaanxi were not idle. They all went out to reclaim wasteland. After all, reclamation was encouraged by the imperial court. The reclaimed wasteland belonged to them, and they could also get tax exemptions and exemptions. Such a cheap thing It can be said that the son is rare in a thousand years.

In fact, the land annexation situation in the late Ming Dynasty was already very serious. More than half of the fields in the Ming Dynasty were in the hands of a very small number of large landowners. On the contrary, many people lost their own fields and became tenants or long-term workers.

On the one hand, the gentry and landlords plundered and plundered, but in order to reduce their taxes and servitude, some people also volunteered and entrusted their land in the names of the gentry and landlords, and they themselves were willing to become the domestic slaves of the gentry and landlords.

Therefore, it is not that ordinary people are unwilling to be the owners of the land, but that as beings at the bottom of society, they are unable to be the owners of the land. They will either have their land taken away by others, or they will be forced to donate the land to others.

Fortunately, the implementation of the new tax law has changed this situation. In the new tax law, taxes are based on the number of acres of land, and the more acres, the higher the tax rate.

As a result, in order to avoid taxes, the gentry and landowners will no longer be willing to accept donations from the people. Some gentry landlords will even return the land donated by the people. Of course, it is not ruled out that some bold and evil people would rather hide. It is inevitable to conceal the land property and dominate the people's fields.

However, generally speaking, a considerable number of farmers have regained their own fields and become the owners of the land. This time the court encouraged reclamation and allowed them to expand the area of ​​their fields, or allow those farmers who lost their fields to regain their land. Access to fields.

Of course, everything has two sides. Take the matter of land reclamation as an example, because the land is there, and whoever reclaims it will own it. The people in northern Shaanxi are inherently strong, so the land grab happened. There are countless bloodshed incidents, and the government can't control it, and it can't control it.

But even if there are many chaos, overall, the situation is still good. In just one month, the area of ​​cultivated land in northern Shaanxi has doubled. Of course, the quality of these newly reclaimed fields is very poor. , I am afraid that a considerable part is not suitable for growing crops, and the remaining part is estimated to be difficult to guarantee yield.

The common people are scrambling to reclaim wasteland in order to occupy more fields, and to reclaim the land as soon as possible without delaying the spring sowing, so they only pay attention to speed, and the work is naturally done carefully, but this is not a big problem. After all, this matter is a great thing that will benefit the present and benefit the future. I may not be familiar with it in the first year of this year. When I manage it well in the future, it will be a good land in the future.

In addition to paying attention to agricultural matters, Zhu Tianqi has also been paying close attention to the situation at Sun Yuanhua's side. Now, Daming's military industrial base hidden in the valley has taken shape, and all personnel in the valley have moved into the newly built cave dormitories. At the same time, supporting facilities such as canteens and warehouses have also been built.The large cave in the middle has been dug nearly a hundred miles deep, and the space inside the mountain has been expanded as much as possible. The cannon foundry is to be built here, and the space cannot be too small.

On the opposite mountain side to the south, kiln digging has begun, imitating the mountain side to the north. A gunpowder factory is planned to be built here, mainly to develop and manufacture gunpowder and cannonballs.

During this time, Sun Yuanhua was immersed in reading the books Zhu Tianqi sent him. Although there were many things in them that he couldn't understand or understand, he still gained a lot from them.

For example, regarding the matter of smelting iron and steel, although the iron-smelting blast furnaces built in the Ming Dynasty were still advanced in the current world, they were naturally backward compared with later generations, so trying to build more advanced blast furnaces can achieve higher furnace temperatures , and greater progress can be made in smelting iron and steel.

In fact, Sun Yuanhua has very high attainments in smelting and casting. He is very good at making Western-style artillery, and cannon-making is inseparable from the two professional technologies of smelting and casting, especially Western-style artillery, which requires these two aspects. All are very high.

As early as when Sun Yuanhua was in Liaodong, he had already copied the Hongyi cannon he bought from the Franji people in Haojing'ao, and copied it into the Ming Dynasty's domestically produced Hongyi cannon, which was more powerful and had a longer range. The range could reach up to five miles. , nearly three times that of imported Hongyi cannons.

Moreover, this is an artillery made by Sun Yuanhua by using copper-iron composite casting when the smelting and casting technology is relatively backward and the objective conditions are limited. If he can make new breakthroughs in smelting and casting technology, then he will have It is possible to develop a new type of artillery that is far more powerful than the Hongyi cannon.

Sun Yuanhua also saw this possibility, so he immersed himself in reading these professional books without sleep and food every day. In addition, he often discussed with Thai and Western craftsmen the professional knowledge of casting artillery and making firecrackers. It can be said that this Although he failed to cast a single gun for a while, he made a qualitative leap and improvement in his knowledge and ability.

During the construction of the base, Yulin Guard also sent additional manpower many times to support the construction. The efficiency of the construction was greatly improved. Walls and gates were built at the entrance and exit of the valley, and the entrance of the small canyon was also repaired. Entering an inner city gate, the inner city gate is the core of the base, and not everyone can enter at will.

Therefore, due to the need for security and confidentiality, even though Yulin Guard has sent people over more than once to support the construction, except for some senior officers, ordinary officers and soldiers have no idea what this place is, and they have no idea about the situation inside the base. Nothing is known.

In most cases, soldiers transporting supplies are only allowed to enter the city gate of the valley, but are not allowed to enter the inner city gate. Instead, they have to unload the supplies outside the inner city gate. After unloading the supplies, they have to leave. They are not allowed to enter. If you stay for a long time, even if special circumstances require you to stay overnight, you must live in a camp built outside the inner city gate.

(End of this chapter)