Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1406 Shandong Severe Drought ([-])

On June 1665, 6, the brisk "Polaris" anchored near the Yexian wharf, and then sent people ashore to try to get in touch with the Denglai pioneer team.

Since this is the defense line of the Seventh Division of the Shandong New Army, a warlord's territory, the construction is naturally very ordinary.But fortunately, Ding Mingwu, Ding Daxing and his sons were all born at the bottom, and they know a lot about the suffering of the people. In addition, their seventh division has only 3000 soldiers, so the exploitation of the local area is not too much. In a blink of an eye, it is not as miserable as the people in Qingzhou Mansion next door.You know, there are [-] to [-] Qing troops stationed in that mansion, and there are even tens of thousands of Manchurian Eight Banners cavalry. Did people do it?

The arrival of the light cruiser "Polaris" surprised Liang Xiangjian, because the local people had already sent someone to announce his appointment as the captain of the Denglai Pioneering Team (Chang Kaisheng returned to China to serve as the Deputy Minister of the Army, and the former Deputy Minister Mao Desheng was transferred to the Southern Railway The third president of the company), this meeting sent people here, I don’t know why, does the local government have new guidelines for the jurisdiction of the three pioneering teams in the Far East?

Captain Ding Zhen soon met Liang Xiangjian, the new official, and after congratulating him, he handed over some documents related to diplomacy, military affairs, personnel, intelligence, economy, etc. to Liang Xiangjian, because these were in accordance with regulations. It was to be personally launched by him, and it included the latest attitude of the local people towards the Ming, Shun, Qing and other forces.

After handing over these documents, Liang Xiangjian also handed over some reports, data collection, and letters to Captain Ding Zhen, who would bring them back to the mainland on their return trip and hand them over to the members of the Executive Committee for review.In addition, some antiques, cultural relics, books, calligraphy and paintings collected from the Ming and Qing Dynasties will also be brought back to the mainland. As for Ku Pingyin, who was sent back several times in the era of Marshal Mo and Shao Shude, sorry, there is no more, now There was a severe drought in Shandong, everyone was relatively poor, and there had been no war for several years, and the internal expenditure was huge, so the "Polaris" was doomed to not be able to work part-time as a silver ship this time.

"Captain Ding, since you are not in a hurry to leave (in fact, the wind direction is not right, after all, the ship is a sailing warship), can you help us patrol the offshore waters of Jinan, Laizhou, and Qingzhou in these days? Don't worry, There are no enemy ships here that can threaten you. The Liaohai Navy of the Qing Dynasty was destroyed by our army in the era of Marshal Mo and has not yet recovered. With you here, they dare not do anything. Of course, you are not the only ones who can act. The four warships of the water task force will also be dispatched, and everyone is responsible for a defense area." Liang Xiangjian patted Captain Ding Zhen on the left shoulder and said with a smile.Then he explained why.

It turns out that although the Qing Dynasty had moved borders and banned the sea, it had not been implemented thoroughly.Especially after the de facto peace negotiation with the people on the east coast and the start of commerce and trade, Shandong's policy of relocating borders and banning the sea has only existed in name only.Coupled with the abundant fishery resources off the coast of Shandong, the people have a tradition of fishing and cooking salt since ancient times, so many people began to go fishing quietly; what's more, some daring people even took risks and ran to the east coast control area. In terms of trade, officials of the Qing Dynasty turned a blind eye and turned a blind eye, becoming a community of interests. Therefore, Jinan, Qingzhou, and Laizhou (Laizhou was not under the jurisdiction of the Qing court) along the coast of the three prefectures began to increase significantly. It became a very natural thing.

And with more ships, the scope of activities of the people will be wider, because they can not only be confined to the land, especially in the difficult situation of severe drought in Shandong and thousands of miles of red land, many people from the four prefectures in the east and west of the mountain People go to sea to escape from famine, and their destination is mainly the east coast control area, and secondly, there are even people who go to Liaodong - don't think it is impossible, because Shandong has frequent disasters in history, and many people went to sea to flee famine. There were 10,000+ people who smuggled to Liaodong and successfully reclaimed wasteland, and even more people died on the road or failed to stay; and by the 41st year of Qianlong, according to the "Concise History of Chinese Immigration" written by later Ge Jianxiong, it was already There have been 180 million Shandong people smuggled to Liaodong to reclaim wasteland, but the vast majority of these people have not been included in the population statistics.

The smuggling of migrants on such a scale, in addition to frequent disasters in Shandong (earthquakes, droughts, locust plagues, Yellow River breaches, etc.) and the lack of government relief, can only show the aggressiveness of Shandong people, and this is undoubtedly what people on the east coast like to see.Without him, there are many more immigrants who bring their own dry food. The large white land under the rule is finally filled by someone. Can you not be happy?

It was also based on this idea that Liang Xiangjian, the captain of the Denglai Pioneering Team, negotiated with the navy and asked them to transfer all other large warships except the "Cadiz Rock" to patrol the coast and respond to the famine in the four prefectures of Shanxi Province. Immigrants, by the way, frightened the Qing Dynasty so that it could not prevent these immigrants who left by sea from reaching their destinations smoothly.

Captain Ding Zhen accepted the task as a matter of course, and after a little replenishment of fresh water, the light cruiser "Polaris" left the Yexian Wharf and headed for the Laizhou Bay area to patrol.The scenery of the Liaohai Sea in June is beautiful, the sky is as clear as blue, the sea surface is quiet, the temperature on the deck is just right, the sun shines on people's body slightly warm, it's just that the cabin is a bit stuffy.

"The water temperature is 18 degrees, sir. It's good weather for fishing." A sailor who had measured the water temperature greeted the kind officer with a smile: "The southeasterly wind is force four, and I feel that the temperature off the coast of Patagonia is just like that. I hope I won’t encounter ships from the Qing people, I don’t want to bully their small sampans with 12-pound naval guns.”

"No, Sergeant, you need to correct your little mistake." A somewhat older and middle-aged officer responded: "The ships of Qing civilians are not within our attack range. Instead, we should escort them to our control safely. Of course, if the warships of the Qing Navy (if there are any) try to stop all this, then we can open fire, anyway, we will resolutely refuse to admit it afterwards. Besides, I heard that the Qing Dynasty has planned to tear up the ceasefire agreement and make a large-scale southern expedition. Therefore, we have nothing morally to blame for firing on the armed ships of the Qing Dynasty, everything was brought on by them.”

It is said that since the Qing government made the plan to unify the country by the Southern Expedition, starting from the second half of last year, Jiangnan, Zhejiang, Henan, Huguang (half), Henan, Sichuan and other places have received orders to secretly hoard food and grass, straighten roads, Repairing armor, collecting means of transportation, and the frequency of troop drills have also been greatly increased, and the situation of preparing for a big battle is quite obvious. This naturally aroused the vigilance of people from the southern Ming Dynasty, Dashun, Daxi, and King Lu, and at the same time made the people on the east bank a little bit Headache - why?In fact, it is very simple. Before that, a wave of 45 immigrants was made in Huai’an Mansion, and then tens of thousands of immigrants from Danmin and Guangfu were taken intermittently in the south, and then the Shun Army sent another 50 Hunan Ming Army prisoners of war. That's more than [-] people.

Considering that these immigrants who are waiting to be transported have also married and had children in the past few years, it is not unreasonable for the Blackwater Pioneering Team to estimate that all immigrants will not be transported until 1668.Therefore, from the standpoint of the people on the east coast, before 1668, they did not want to start wars on the land of China again.Especially Chang Kaisheng, Liang Xiangjian, Liao Xiaoyao, Jiang Zhiqing, Wei Boqiu and others who are in power. After all, they are from the same generation, and they still have some feelings for China. I hope that this country has been hit too hard, and I still hope that they will have a few more years to recuperate. Otherwise, the population on this continent may be very slow to recover.

It is also based on this consideration that they are extremely disgusted with the grand ambition of the Manchu Qing regime to unify the country.A tartar is a tartar, what are you doing so blindly!Isn't the confrontation between the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty in history an example for you to learn from?What are you trying to do to unify the country, do you really think the guns in the hands of my Dadong’an soldiers are fire sticks?Therefore, the upper and lower sides of the east bank are now ready. The ten divisions of the servant army (the 3000 members of the Hu Xingbang Department of the Independent Regiment have been reorganized into the No. 12 Division of the Zhejiang New Army), five brigades of the Standing Squad, the Cavalry Wing, and the Seventh Mixed The battalion, the four heavy infantry battalions of the Eight Banners New Army, the Heilongjiang Security Regiment, and various artillery units have all raised their combat readiness levels. .What’s more, even the Kingdom of Korea was notified that the Imperial Battalion Office selected [-] elite soldiers to practice continuously and be ready for dispatch at any time, just to blow your chrysanthemums when the Qing court made a large-scale southward move, and teach these Tartars a lesson.

However, according to the current situation, the more than 20 Qing troops deployed in the Jiangbei camp on the front line of Huguang may have to suspend their southward movement because of the unprecedented severe drought in Shandong, and the four populous cities of Jinan, Qingzhou, Dongchang, and Yanzhou The government's summer crops were in short supply, and the court's relief was not in place. In some places, there were even tragedies of cannibalism.

After entering June, the drought continued to intensify. Seeing that the autumn grain could not be planted, the harvest was destined to fail for a whole year.And what is even more frightening is that the drought has begun to spread to millions of people in the surrounding Jiaodong Peninsula, Hebei, Henan, Jiangnan provinces and many prefectures adjacent to Shandong; Many prefectures and counties in China, Zezhou and other places also experienced extensive drought, and farmland failed or even failed to harvest (this affected millions of people), which made the Qing court feel anxious, so much so that the court began to debate whether the people's livelihood should be maintained in this period. At a difficult time, the South China Expedition was launched-and as long as this kind of debate comes together, it basically means that this offensive will end without result, at least this year may be out of play.

To put it darkly, people on the east coast are actually quite happy about this situation.Although Liang Xiangjian has already greyed a lot of hair in order to feed the people in the area controlled by the Second Mansion of Denglai, but he has the ability to deal with the drought crisis, but he has turned his attention to the area controlled by the Qing court and wants to help the Qing court. "Compulsory disaster relief".Of course, maybe the Qing court didn't like his method of disaster relief, because someone like Liang liked to distribute food after receiving people in Dengzhou, rather than providing relief on the spot.

However, considering that the fleeing Shandong people may not have much surplus food on hand, and it is not easy to penetrate the Manchu Qing army blockade on the front line of Qingzhou Prefecture, so the best way is to provide relief from the sea, that is, to send people and ships to Jinan, Qingzhou and even Hebei. The coastal area of ​​Hejianfu was used to take the local disaster victims out to Dengzhou for resettlement.Even, if possible, hire Qing fishermen who own fishing boats on the spot, let them help transport people back and forth, and contact local refugees who don't know where to flee.And if Qing officials or gentry obstruct it, report it immediately, and the ships on the east coast will escort a group of small-scale troops to land in the offshore for support, which can be regarded as a big investment.

Now the light cruiser "Polaris" is sailing on the west side of Laizhou Bay, somewhere in the sea at the junction of Qingzhou Prefecture and Jinan Prefecture.Standing on the front deck, Captain Ding Zhen looked through the binoculars and saw two small black dots in the distance. He reckoned that they were two small fishing boats from the Qing Dynasty, which probably carried a large number of victims fleeing the famine. Well, so he immediately ordered the navigator to adjust his course and sail in the direction of the two ships.

The brisk "Polaris" quickly approached the two brand-new fishing boats of more than a dozen tons at most. Ding Zhen could clearly see from the deck that the two boats each carried dozens of ragged and dusty people. All kinds of Shandong victims, including men, women and children, seem to be fleeing with their families.After seeing the east coast warship with a load capacity of 581 tons approaching, I was a little uneasy, but there was no big panic, because even though the Qing court repeatedly smeared the yellow-clothed thieves, they had good military discipline and did not harm the people to succeed. It's true, the elders of the four prefectures in Shanxi are not dead yet, and many people have not forgotten the heroic appearance of Marshal Mo who entered Jinan prefecture. In this matter, if you want to discredit it, it will be half the result with half the effort, and the effect will not be great. .

The "North Star" quickly put down a traffic boat, and a second lieutenant officer and seven or eight sailors rowed past.

"Sail down, stop." The second lieutenant officer with a flintlock pistol jumped onto one of the refugee ships, and ordered loudly: "Everyone transfer to our ship, move quickly. Who is the boss of the ship, turn around and return From your starting point, more people will come out, a strong man will be given three taels of silver, and the old and weak women and children will be paid in half, and the payment will be made on the spot, and there will be no default."

After finishing speaking, the second lieutenant asked someone to bring over a cash box, pointed to the stacks of silver coins in the box, and said, "Those who want to earn more money can go back now, and we will be patrolling here for the next few days." , you can easily find us. If you have any difficulties, you can come and contact us, and we can even send some people ashore to help, isn’t it just some township warriors, beating them is just like playing.”

(End of this chapter)