After Zheng Chenggong received Chen Shuren's instructions, he only lingered in Wuchang for a few days to ask for advice, and then returned to Poyang Hukou to continue his duties of tax inspection and economic blockade.
In addition, he also said hello to his family, and gave 300,000 taels of silver, 150,000 taels each from the north and the south, to the Shen family in case they could open up the joint at any time.
The Zheng family was really happy to give them money. Three hundred thousand taels was just a word from the eldest young master. He signed a note with Zheng Chenggong's name, sealed it with a seal of fire, and sent his confidant butler to take it. He paid as soon as he saw the letter. The Zhengjia Shanhai 5th Road shops in the north and south Beijing basically just moved around and it was done.
There is no way, who can let the Zheng family collect flag money every year, there are three to four thousand big ships, each ship has three thousand taels per year (a small half is self-operated, and the other half is operated by other families and the Zheng family collects protection fees), this Xiang's income is more than 10 million taels per year.
All water transport merchants in the world who pay protection fees to the Zheng family will pay their money to the five ports on Shanwu Road, and the northern and southern capitals are originally one of the Zheng family's import and export bases on Shanwu Road.
Now that it's almost the end of the year, each of the Zheng family's businesses in the five major commercial cities has received at least two million taels of silver. It's so easy to withdraw 150,000 each.
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The effect of the economic blockade is not immediately visible. Compared with a direct military strike, it will definitely be much slower.
Winter has just begun now, and the shortage of supplies in the mountainous areas is not yet obvious. The real desperate situation will not come until the coldest period of midwinter, or even when the spring is famine.
Therefore, Chen Shuren is not in a hurry to make an emergency landing immediately. There is still a wait-and-see period of two to three months.
Taking advantage of this window period, he had nothing else to be busy with, so he naturally devoted his energy and attention to the industrial construction of the territory.
Starting from mid-November, Shen Shuren left Jiangxia County, a prefecture-level government, and went to Daye County to live for a period of time in person to reorganize and inspect the mining of Tieshan, as well as the construction of military technology and production capacity.
In addition, when Shen Shuren first took over Wuchang at the beginning of last month, he ordered his close confidants and servants to relocate all the war bureaus and workshops previously built in Huangzhou, as well as the craftsmen and managers. to facilitate unified management.
Now, more than a month has passed, and the relocation work has been successfully completed. Anyway, the house can be built again in Daye and Wuchang, as long as the people and equipment are transported here.
Chen Shuren made this arrangement because he also considered moving the most important military industry under his nose to facilitate unified management.
In the future, he will definitely continue to develop science and technology in military production. If metallurgy and machinery manufacturing are deployed on the north and south sides of the Yangtze River, transportation will be too troublesome and it will not be conducive to confidentiality.
Moreover, Huanggang is, after all, a remote mountain ravine, and its conditions, environment, and transportation convenience are obviously incomparable to those of later provincial capitals like Wuchang.
After the relocation was completed, Shen Shuren also inspected it immediately to learn about the latest situation so that he could have an idea of the current situation.
The last time he personally visited military production was in April this year.
At that time, the military workshop in Huangzhou had just completed the production of collared bayonets and long-handled gun tomahawks for the 1,200-man musketry unit. Then it began to switch to the production of Lumi blunderbuss and turtle dove blunderbuss, and worked backwards. How to imitate the original Dutch red barbarian cannons sent by the Zheng family.
It's a pity that after just a few trial productions, Erhe attacked one after another. Shen Shuren went to the front line to supervise the battle. In the next six months, he basically kept the war workshop in a free-range state.
After not seeing each other for half a year, the craftsmen and management staff were quite nervous when they encountered the Daotai inspection again. After Shen Shuren arrived, the chief craftsman Zhou Tiedan took a copy of the latest accounts compiled by his apprentice and the Shen family manager a few days ago and personally Submit it to him for review.
Chen Shuren took advantage of the situation and ran through the accounts first. According to the accounts, from April to October, the production capacity of Huangzhou Military Artillery Workshop's Rumi Guns and Turtle Dove Guns increased from more than 100 guns per month at the beginning.
Gradually, the number has grown to more than 300 per month.
The various foot-operated boring machines, grinding machines, drilling machines, and coiled pipe forging machinery that were initially promoted also worked well. Two to three hundred craftsmen who were accustomed to using the new machines were trained - compared with the beginning of this year , the number of blacksmiths has not increased significantly, but skill training has improved a lot.
It’s not that these blacksmiths were not good at craftsmanship before, but that they mainly mastered the art of manual blacksmithing before. Now at least everyone is proficient in several simple machine tools, and their work efficiency is much faster.
The doubling of musket production capacity is the best proof of the improvement of craftsmen's proficiency.
Of course, considering that the initial run-in period was relatively slow, an average of 1,800 light and heavy muskets were produced in the past seven months. Added together with the 1,200 muskets owned by Shen Jiajun before the war, the total number of self-produced muskets reached 3,000.
In addition, in the past half year or so, Chen Shuren also obtained some firearms from other channels. First of all, the thieves from various families were eliminated, and more or less hundreds of firearms were seized from each family.
It's just that the firearms of the bandits are of poor workmanship, with no turtle dove guns at all and very few Lumi guns. They are mainly bird guns and old-fashioned fire guns.
Old-fashioned fire guns are almost worthless to today's Shenshu people. If the gun is severely rusted and in poor condition, it can only be remanufactured and used as steel.
Guns in better condition cannot be used by field troops, because they are too unreliable, fire slowly, and cannot keep up with the training rhythm of the troops. However, Chen Shuren will not blindly pursue refinement and waste. These guns are in good condition but have poor performance. Yes, at least it can still defend the city for the second-line troops.
In the past, the Chenshu people's base areas were all in mountainous areas. The terrain was difficult and there were no enemies that could directly attack the city, so there was no need to consider the defensive strength.
Now only more than half of Shen Shuren's territory is in the mountainous area, and the remaining half has extended to the Jianghan Plain. The city defenders must also pay attention. He picked out all the old-fashioned firecrackers and loaded them with tedious tasks, and concentrated them in Wuchang and Xiangyang. These two important towns on the plains.
Finally, one part was given to Fang Kongyu for use in guarding strategic places such as Yiling and Jiangling. This was not because Shen Shuren was a good old man, but because he knew the two dangerous places in Fang Kongyu's Zongzai Town. The land is the key to preventing Zhang Xianzhong from returning to Huguang. Helping Fang Kong Shuguo〖岢千舜2huan is helping Shen Shuren himself.
If Zhang Xianzhong dares to bypass the fortified city to attack in the future and rely on robbery to maintain logistics, then the square holes and large tombs can also threaten Zhang Xianzhong's retreat at any time. Shen Shuren must join forces with him to beat Zhang Xianzhong until he can't see each other. .
In addition to the firearms from the bandits, Chen Shuren's last source of firearms income was the three military guards who stayed in Wuchang and Hanyang after Zuo Liangyu moved to the town.
The Ming Dynasty's guard station had a full strength of three to four thousand people and should have at least 700 firearms.
However, more than half of the soldiers in the guard station are empty, and of course the firearms will also be damaged. In fact, each battalion only has more than 200 guns, and the three battalions combined only have 800 guns, which is slightly more than a full battalion. That's all.
The bandits and local guards officers and soldiers provided a total of 1,700 firearms of various types to the Shenshu people.
After screening, 200 rusty guns were scrapped and returned to the furnace, 900 old-fashioned fire guns were converted into city defense guns, and only 600 guns could be directly equipped with the Shen family's new army, reaching the standard bird gun and Lumi gun quality.
Including the previous 3,000, Chen Shuren can equip his field troops with a total of 3,600 muskets of bird-gun level or above.
Moreover, the Huangzhou Military Workshop has been allocating manpower to produce bayonets during this period. Anyway, the manufacturing cost and labor consumption of bayonets are much less than that of firearms. It is not much money to equip more than 2,000 bayonets. So these 3,600 people , all equipped with bayonets.
Of the 900 fire guns used to defend the city, Shen Shuren left 300 in Xiangyang and Wuchang each, and the last 300 were given to Fang Kongnashu.
When this batch of firearms were delivered to Jiangling, it had been less than half a month since Chen Shuren last visited Fang Kongyu and Zheng Ye. Fang Kongyu was really happy when he chewed his clothes, thinking that Chen Shuren was here for In return for his support last time, he was immediately assigned to the city defense troops.
There is no way, Fang Kongsong is good at making Huai Clam and Shen Shuren so wealthy. The Fang family is a traditional scholar. Even if they are liberal scholars, they have a lot of knowledge in science and engineering, but after all they do not know how to do business and produce.
Fang Konghan has been relying on the government to allocate ordnance. Even if it has a certain production capacity for military warfare, it still manages some cold weapons and armor. Basically, it has never produced its own muskets. It received 300 pieces of city defense goods at one time. , which is a lot for him.
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In addition to muskets, in the past half year or so, the artillery manufacturing business of Huangzhou Arms Workshop has also begun to take shape.
Although there is no large-scale mass production, at least the samples obtained before have been tinkered with and understood, and 5 samples have been trial-produced. However, uukanshu.com www.uukanshu.com these 5 cannons are not standardized at all. I'm afraid the actual combat effect is also lacking.
After all, they were there for the purpose of accumulating experience. The first two of these five guns were simply incapable of actual combat. They also had records of explosive chambers and had different calibers and sizes.
Because Shen Shuren asked them to try all kinds of things and not be afraid of making mistakes. So Zhou Tietang not only tried to build a 12-pounder cannon, but also had the courage to try an 18-pounder cannon as well. With more projects being launched, it was natural to make mistakes. More.
Fortunately, the live ammunition testing environment in the workshop has relatively tight security. During the test, the igniter was kept far away, and the explosion did not kill the craftsman. It was a blessing in misfortune.
After one of the 12-pound and 18-pound models was scrapped, the subsequent three models were finally similar in appearance. Two 12-pound models and one 18-pound model were all successful.
Only the weight of the powder and bombs must be reduced by 20 to 30% compared to the original ones from the Netherlands to ensure absolute safety. In fact, they are only loaded to 10 pounds and 15 pounds respectively, and the maximum range can only ensure shooting of about two miles.
Zhou Tiedan was afraid that Shen Shuren would be blamed, so he specifically emphasized in the report that the external dimensions of these cannons, and even the surface of the inner bore, were the same as the original Hongyi cannons, and there were no obvious blisters or cavitations, but that was It is less able to withstand heavy charges, the reason is unknown.
Of course Shen Shuren knew that this was all a matter of raw material quality. The metal quality of copper and steel itself was not good, and it was of no use that the cannon casting master was good at craftsmanship.
Previously, there were no iron mines in Huangzhou, and raw materials were purchased from outside. The Huangzhou workshop was only responsible for mechanical processing and casting.
Now that we have the conditions, we still need to start from the bottom, starting with upstream metal smelting, in order to hope for a decisive breakthrough.