Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 183 Recovering Khurawen

"One hundred horses, two hundred sheep?"

On June [-]th, in Heilongjiang, less than a hundred miles away from Hulawen City.

Zhu Gaoxu was sitting on the deck of the warship. Listening to the words of the Hu Lawen slave who was released in front of him, he couldn't help but smile and look at the Bohai Navy on the left and right:

"Did you hear that? Atai Wailan is going to spend this little money and send us away."

"Hahahahaha!!"

"Just these cattle and sheep are not enough meat for our 3000 people on the road."

"I've been tired of mutton lately, so it would be nice to eat some mutton."

"It's too tangy, let's eat chicken, duck and fish..."

The officers and soldiers of the Bohai Navy burst into laughter. They didn't know whether to call Atai Wailan stingy or short-sighted.

The messenger slave who was kneeling on the deck saw everyone laughing and was frightened to his wits' end.

Zhu Gaoxu looked at his slave dress and asked curiously: "Since you are a slave, why don't you take the opportunity to escape and come here to die?"

"I...my family is still in the hands of my master..."

The slave stumbled and spoke, but after hearing this, Zhu Gaoxu raised the corner of his mouth:
"You can go back, but you won't go back alone."

Zhu Gaoxu said, turning to look at Meng Zhang and Xu Sheng: "You take five hundred cavalry and go to the north with him first. Atai Wailan sent him here, probably to delay time. Now you are rushing to Hula Wen City. Go, we can probably intercept him."

"Yes!" Meng Zhang and Xu Sheng raised their hands to bow, and then motioned to the left and right to lift the slave up.

The slave flapped his legs and tried to struggle but to no avail. In the end, he had no choice but to accept his fate and was taken to another warship.

Soon, the warship and the three horse boats transporting military horses took the lead along the river, while Zhu Gaoxu and the others slowly and leisurely built the water station along the way.

Within three days, Zhu Gaoxu led his fleet to see Tulemei Mountain lying on the west side of the Ussuri River.

This river was called the Hulu Ancient River by the Mongols in the Yuan Dynasty due to its meandering channel and many sandbars and shoals in the river.

Just after entering this section of the river, Zhu Gaoxu saw horse ships and warships parked a few miles ahead.

On the shore, Meng Zhang and others, who arrived here early, had people use trees to build a simple wooden plank road in the muddy swamp. Otherwise, Zhu Gaoxu and the others would have to row a boat away.

Not long after, the warship stopped, and Zhu Gaoxu also stepped off the warship after the ladder was lowered, and stood on the wooden plank road that was wide for one person.

He looked around and saw that there was mud and swamp for more than a hundred steps from where the boat was parked to the forest.

The Songhua River washes the wooden plank road, and river water splashes on the plank road from time to time.

This wasn't what made Zhu Gaoxu uncomfortable. What really made him uncomfortable was that as soon as he stood on the wooden plank road, many mosquitoes flew around him.

Even though he kept waving his hands to drive them away, he still got a few big bites unknowingly.

In order to avoid mosquitoes, he had to walk quickly to the river beach.

He covered a distance of more than a hundred steps in an hour, and finally reached the beach where it was easier to explain. Zhu Gaoxu also saw the soldiers who had been waiting here earlier.

"Your Highness, a thousand years old!" Several soldiers saluted quickly when they saw that the person coming was Zhu Gaoxu.

Looking at them, Zhu Gaoxu also stepped forward and asked, "Where are Meng Zhang and them? Didn't they manage to intercept Atai Wailan?"

"Go back to Your Highness..." Several soldiers bowed, and one of them, the flag officer, explained:

"When we arrived here, Na'atai Wailan was leading people to harvest young crops for horse feed. When they saw our warship docking, they ran away quickly."

"Meng Qianshi and Xu Qianhu pursued north with three hundred Qingqi, leaving Wang Baihu and Wu Baihu to stay in Hulawen City with their armored cavalry brothers."

"How many days has he been gone?" Zhu Gaoxu frowned slightly after listening to Xiaoqi Guan's words.

"Less than two days." The flag officer replied. Zhu Gaoxu nodded when he heard this, then turned around and greeted the soldiers who were disembarking:
"Expand this wooden road into a ferry. This will be our bridgehead to defend against enemies in the future."

"Yes!" Although they didn't know what a bridgehead was, the soldiers responded cheerfully and started working immediately.

Zhu Gaoxu, led by the little flag officer, walked towards the city of Hulawen at the foot of Tulemei Mountain.

The distance from the river beach to Hulawen City is two or three miles, and there is a mile in the middle of a dense forest with thick shrubs. Only a man-made earth road of about ten feet can pass through.

Along the way, Zhu Gaoxu could see that the shrubs here were very dense. Some shrubs grew so fast that they were as thick as a wrist, which showed how rich the nutrients of the land were.

After crossing this mile of dense forest dirt road, our eyes suddenly opened up.

At a glance, two miles ahead was a wooden village built on Tulemei Mountain. Zhu Gaoxu estimated that this was the so-called Hulawen City.

On the dirt road leading to Hulawen City, there are pieces of cultivated land that have been cultivated for many years. At a glance, the amount is thousands of acres.

On these thousands of acres of fields, some millet seedlings were eaten up by cattle, sheep and horses, but most of the millet seedlings were still preserved.

After all, this is an agricultural society, so Zhu Gaoxu naturally has to pay attention to farming, so he walked to the edge of the millet field and squatted down, pulled out his knife and inserted it into the soil.

It was only a few feet long, but he couldn't insert it anymore. This shows that this farmland has never been deeply cultivated since it was opened, and the yield may not be too high.

He looked at the millet seedlings again. In the same season, they were much shorter than those in Jilin City.

Zhu Gaoxu remembered that in the Sanjiang Plain in his previous life, especially the area northeast of Tongjiang City, the temperature would basically drop before mid-September of the lunar calendar.

Calculating the time, these millet seedlings will have less than three months to grow before they have to be harvested.

The growth cycle of millet varieties in the Ming Dynasty is generally between four and five months, while the winter period in Hu Lawen is basically around seven months after Zhu Gaoxu's inquiry before departure.

In other words, only cold-resistant crops within five months, such as sorghum, can be grown here in Hulawen.

However, if a nursery field is built here, rice can also be grown here. After all, the main crop in Fuyuan City not far from here is rice, followed by soybeans, then potatoes and corn.

Among these four crops, soybeans are impossible. The growth cycle of soybeans in the Ming Dynasty was too long. If they were planted here, they might have to be harvested before they mature.

Potatoes and corn are actually the most suitable for planting in this area. After all, the growth cycle of potatoes only lasts two to three months, and corn only lasts four months.

Unfortunately, these two crops are thousands of miles away, and he can't find them at all, so rice became Zhu Gaoxu's only way out.

Standing up, Zhu Gaoxu continued to walk towards Hu Lawen City under the leadership of his soldiers.

In about a quarter of an hour, he and his soldiers walked into the city of Hu Lawen.

This city is originally a wooden village, and the so-called city wall is an earth wall surrounded by two wooden fences.

Although the wall is five feet thick, it is not strong enough at all.

If Zhu Gaoxu wants to attack here, then unloading a few Hongwu iron cannons from the ship will be enough to knock down the wall.

He regarded Atai Wailan as a bandit, which was indeed true.

With this in mind, he also visited the simple Hu Lawen City under the guidance of his soldiers.

After looking around, I found that not even a few practical things were left in the city, like locusts passing through.

This situation also shows how fragile the economy of the Jurchens outside the customs is.

"This place will be changed to Blackwater City in the future."

Zhu Gaojiu thought for a while and found that counting the places before him, only the Heishui Governor's Mansion in the Tang Dynasty had a name that did not have any national attributes in words and could show its "since ancient times". Therefore, Hula Wencheng was renamed Heishui. Water City.

"Yes!" The soldiers on the left and right wrote down this incident, and then took Zhu Gaoxu to a newly cleaned wooden house to rest.

As for outside the city, the military scribes were taking the soldiers off the ship to measure how many acres of cultivated land there were in Heishui City, and to see which side of Heishui City was more suitable for future land reclamation.

Busy from noon to dusk, under the measurement of more than two thousand people, the amount of cultivated land outside Heishui City was recorded and finally handed over to Zhu Gaoxu.

He looked through it and found that there were 970 two acres and four quarters of land outside Heishui City, which was much less than Zhu Gaoxu had imagined.

Just thinking about it carefully, this Blackwater City was originally a place used by Xiyang Ha for temporary refuge. It is not surprising that there is not much cultivated land.

"Did the previous slave tell you about the yield of this land?"

In the dim wooden house, Zhu Gaoxu sat behind a bonfire and asked Wu Ming, the official of the Hundred Households. After hearing this, he also bowed and replied: "The man said that if you grow millet, you will still have five buckets of food in a few months."

"Five fights? Not bad." After hearing Wu Ming's words, Zhu Gaoxu nodded.

Five buckets of millet, after fine processing, can yield about [-] kilograms of grain, enough for one person to eat frugally for a month.

In other words, the nearly 300 acres of dry land outside the city can produce about [-] sorghum grains, which can basically solve the food ration problem for more than [-] people.

If we rely on the fish caught in the Heilongjiang and Wusuli rivers and the prey in the forest, it will not be a problem to feed 800 people.

Such land resources relieved Zhu Gaoxu a lot of pressure, so he raised his head and ordered Wu Ming:

"We brought five thousand shi of grain, leaving [-] shi on the boat, and the rest of the grain should be transported to the city for storage."

"This batch of grain, plus the fields outside the city, is enough for Meng Zhang and his more than 1000 people to work here for a year."

As Zhu Gaoxu said this, the sound of horse hooves was also heard outside the wooden house.

He had sensitive ears, and he heard it before others heard it. He immediately put a torch into the bonfire, lit it, and walked out.

"They're back."

"Who?" Wu Ming and the others responded in confusion, but after a few seconds they also heard the scattered sound of horse hooves.

He and the flag officers on his left and right looked at each other, both surprised that His Highness's hearing was so sensitive.

After reacting, they followed Zhu Gaoxu. At this time, Zhu Gaoxu also opened the door of the wooden house and saw hundreds of Qingqi carrying torches entering Blackwater City.

"Meng Zhang and Xu Sheng, have you gained anything?"

Zhu Gaoxu shouted loudly, and several figures rushed out of the firelight, turning over and dismounting in front of the wooden house.

Meng Zhang and Xu Sheng, who were holding torches, beat their chests with one hand as a salute, and then said: "Your Highness, those guys went into the mountains. We searched the mountains for several days and couldn't find any trace of them, but they were captured." They left behind hundreds of tribesmen, more than twenty cattle, and hundreds of sheep."

"As long as it's captured." Zhu Gaoxu chuckled. He had no intention of hunting down Atai Wailan.

The main purpose of his visit this time was to seize Blackwater City and study artillery and muskets in Blackwater City.

Now that half of his goal has been accomplished, he only needs to complete the other half in the next few days, so that he can safely lead his troops to Zhaozhou City to prepare for the northern patrol before the autumn harvest.

After all, after collecting Lao Zhu's one hundred thousand shi of food, this matter cannot be delayed.

"Go find Wang Yuan." Zhu Gaoxu turned his head and ordered Wu Ming, and at the same time said to Xu Sheng: "You arrange for the army to rest. Meng Zhang, you and I come in, and everyone else goes out."

"Yes!" Xu Sheng turned around and led the horse away without thinking much.

However, Meng Zhang knew very well what he wanted to do in Blackwater City, so he called in his old brothers from Sanchang to surround the wooden house tightly.

The two walked into the wooden house and sat down. Before Wang Yuan came, Zhu Gaoxu said to Meng Zhang:

"As long as the location of the workshop is chosen in a few days, I will leave with the rest of the brothers from the south, leaving only Ha Zhen and the wild Jurchen who followed him, as well as Wang Yuan and his hundred craftsmen for you."

"The rest of clearing land, forging cannons and recruiting Jurchens are all in your hands. How far you can do it depends on your own ability."

Zhu Gaoxu's expression looked very solemn under the light of the bonfire. Faced with his solemnity, Meng Zhang knelt on the ground with a calm expression: "Your Highness, please rest assured, even if Meng Zhang dies, he will keep Hula Wen City for Your Highness. "

Meng Zhang didn't know yet that Hula Wen City was renamed by Zhu Gaoxu, so Zhu Gaoxu helped him up with a smile: "This city has been renamed. It will be called Heishui City in the future, after the Heishui Governor's Mansion in the Tang Dynasty."

"Yes!" Meng Zhang didn't care what the name of the city was, he only knew that he had to keep everything His Highness entrusted to him.

Just as he sat down, there was a knock on the door.

"come in!"

Knowing that the visitor was Wang Yuan, Zhu Gaoxu let him in directly. Wang Yuan outside the door also opened the door and bowed to the two Zhu Gaoxu inside: "Common people, please see Your Highness, Meng Qianshi."

"How about it? Did you find your favorite place during the day?"

Without too many polite words, Zhu Gaoxu went straight to the topic. Wang Yuan nodded when he heard this and said: "There is a mountain col in the southeast. The terrain there is long and narrow. It is very suitable for building a workshop whether it is for concealment or experimental artillery."

"Okay." After hearing what Wang Yuan said, Zhu Gaoxu also chose to believe him. However, Zhu Gaoxu still planned to get up early tomorrow and take people to see the place he mentioned.

Seeing that Zhu Gaoxu trusted him so much, Wang Yuan also talked about his achievements:

"Based on the modules given by His Highness, the common people made smaller artillery pieces in the iron field. Although they are all [-]-[-] kilograms of artillery, the modules can be enlarged proportionally. They only need to thicken the walls. enough."

"If the artillery your Highness needs is to be the most powerful, it would be best if the barrel length is eighteen to twenty-six times the caliber, and the weight of the shells ranges from ten to twenty kilograms."

"What about the weight?" Zhu Gaoxu asked about the weight, and Wang Yuan said truthfully: "If the cannon is made of copper, the material used will be between [-] kilograms and [-] kilograms."

"If it is made of iron, it will be between [-] and [-] kilograms."

"Too heavy..." Zhu Gaoxu frowned. What he currently needs is a field gun with sufficient mobility, and what Wang Yuan said is more suitable for siege cities and equipping warships.

"This..." Wang Yuan said hesitantly: "If we want to reduce the weight, it will not have the power to destroy the city."

"You don't need to break the city. It's enough to be able to penetrate the baggage trains." Zhu Gaoxu interrupted Wang Yuan. Wang Yuan nodded after hearing this and gave a rough answer after thinking for a while.

"If this is the case, then we can make a cannon weighing about five to six hundred kilograms. However, the specific weight and range of the cannonball will not be known until the cannon is successfully cast."

"However, if you use a mud film to cast a cannon, it will take three months at the fastest to get the clay mold. If you use a baking field to bake it, although it can be made in one month, [-]% of it will be defective products, which is quite expensive. Manpower.”

Wang Yuan was worried about wasting manpower, but Zhu Gaoxu interrupted:
"You don't have to worry about this. The dozens of Jurchens captured by Meng Zhang can be handed over to you to make clay molds."

Seeing what Zhu Gaoxu said, Wang Yuan bowed in return and said, "In that case, the common people have no objection."

The speed of mud film casting cannon is very slow, but Zhu Gaoxu has no more advanced method.

He naturally knew what the technology of iron mold casting cannons was like in the late Qing Dynasty, but it was impossible for him to use this technology.

Of course, iron-moulded cannons have many advantages over clay-moulded cannons. For example, the cannon mold can be used repeatedly to reduce molding costs. It does not have to wait for the mold to dry like clay molds. This greatly improves production efficiency and is beneficial to the military in complex and changeable situations. Under the environment, a sufficient number of iron cannons were produced to cope with the war.

In addition, iron cannons cast with iron molds have less water vapor, so they have fewer blisters and are as smooth as copper cannons. This improves the stability of the cannon to a certain extent and reduces the possibility of the barrel exploding.

However, compared with these two advantages, it has more disadvantages.

Although the iron mold casting method greatly speeds up the casting of cannons, because the heat capacity of the iron mold is lower than that of the mud mold, the cast gun body is rapidly cooled from the outer layer to the center when it is cooled, so a large amount of hard and brittle white cast iron will be produced.

To rely on this relatively poor material to withstand the bore pressure when the artillery is fired, one can only rely on stacking casting materials to thicken the tube wall, resulting in the embarrassing situation of heavy artillery firing small projectiles.

Doing so not only violates the principle that the pressure decreases from the medicine chamber to the muzzle, but also wastes casting materials. Sometimes, the larger the cannon, the heavier it becomes, but the range power is not as good as that of the light cannon.

Many heavy artillery in the late Qing Dynasty that used the iron mold casting method were not only inferior in power and range to foreign artillery, but were even inferior to some of the better artillery in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.

What looks like progress is actually a kind of technological degradation called innovation.

Zhu Gaoxu learned about this in his previous life at the Humen Naval War Museum.

Since iron mold cannon casting could not produce the artillery that Zhu Gaoxu needed, he naturally had no choice but to use clay mold cannon casting technology.

However, in order to prevent problems in artillery research, Zhu Gaoxu turned his attention to simpler muskets.

"How is the research on the matchlock gun? Is there any progress?"

Zhu Gaoxu changed the topic, and Wang Yuan grinned after hearing this: "The matchlock gun that His Highness mentioned has made progress, and we have almost finished the research on the most difficult matchlock machine."

"The methods of the flintlock and the matchlock are similar, so after the matchlock was understood, the flintlock was also understood."

"Now we just need to install all these devices as your Highness said, and then we can conduct experiments to see how powerful this thing is."

Wang Yuan was very confident. After all, Zhu Gaoxu had given the working principle and appearance design of the matchlock gun.

With these two things, some minor details of its internal structure were not difficult for Wang Yuan and the more than 100 craftsmen of various types selected by Jilin City.

During the month on the ship, they had already begun to think about how to solve the problems of the matchlock machine and the medicine room. They even thought about the firing problem of the flintlock gun.

All they need now is a workshop that can make matchlock machines and flintlock machines, and then experiment with the range and diameter ratio of the two muskets, as well as the proportion of propellant.

It has to be said that Wang Yuan and the others gave Zhu Gaoxu a surprise. Although he could not defeat the Southern Army with only muskets, at least the muskets could be used as a trump card to help him pacify Liaodong as soon as possible.

"Okay!" Zhu Gaoxu nodded excitedly: "If you can get the matchlock gun and flintlock gun out, I will allocate money from the treasury. Anyone who participates in the design and succeeds will get ten thousand coins! Your hundred dollars The household official will also get it!"

"Thank you, Your Highness!" When he heard that Zhu Gaoxu valued their achievements so much and was willing to spend so much money and food to reward them, Wang Yuan suddenly felt that it no longer mattered whether there was a decree from the court or not.

How could he get this kind of treatment when he was a clockmaker?

This kind of treatment and status is what Wang Yuan has dreamed of for many days and nights.

"Cannon, I will give you three standards..."

Wang Yuan was still greedy for his current status and power, but Zhu Gaoxu set standards for him, and he quickly stopped and listened carefully.

In front of him, Zhu Gaoxu said: "There are three types of artillery, a field gun, a siege gun, and a naval gun."

"It is best to control the weight of field guns at around [-] kilograms, siege guns no more than [-] kilograms, and naval guns no more than [-] kilograms."

"As for the muskets, I will personally hand over the musket drawings I want to you tomorrow. You just have to find a way to get them out according to the appearance and description."

Zhu Gaoxu stated his request, and Wang Yuan kept nodding: "The common people accept the order, please rest assured, Your Highness!"

Seeing his serious commitment, Zhu Gaoxu also turned his head after a moment and talked about other things with Meng Zhang beside him.

"Let's call this factory the Ordnance Bureau. If Wang Yuan and the others successfully develop it and it's powerful, you can just invest manpower and material resources to help them build the factory."

"Before winter, I hope to see the Ordnance Bureau producing the artillery and muskets I want."

Zhu Gaoxu gave his expectations, which made Wang Yuan on the side feel pressured.

However, Meng Zhang felt no pressure at all. He bowed in agreement and stood up at the same time.

Wang Yuan also realized what was going on, and he and Meng Zhang bowed in return, and then left the wooden house one after another.

When Zhu Gaoxu saw them leaving, he immediately stood up and walked back and forth in the room humming a tune.

"When I get to this place, I can finally climb the technology tree."

Zhu Gaoxu, who was secretly happy in his heart, hummed the music until midnight. He didn't wash up and fall asleep until midnight.

But perhaps because he was too excited, he only slept for three hours before getting up and looking for the mountain col that Wang Yuan mentioned.

But when he went to see the mountain col, something he had been waiting for also happened in the south...

　"Bohai Chronicles": In the seventh month of Yimao, Shang led more than [-] troops to conquer Hu Lawen, and the boat commander followed the Nao Wen River to attack Hu Lawen.At that time, the infantry also advanced to Khurawen, and Ataiwailan fled north. He commanded Qian Shi Meng Zhang and others to pursue the troops to Yi'ergu Mountain (Amursk, Russia), but they returned before they could catch up.He was granted the title of "Nüzhi Town", with more than [-] men and women, as well as hundreds of cattle and sheep.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)