As the Manchu Qing Dynasty was completely forced by the Ming Dynasty to give up all coastal territories, they retreated to the hinterland of the Liaohe Plain and even the inland territories further north.
The war between the Ming and Qing Dynasties finally came to an end, and a new peace phase lasting two or three years had to be ushered in. This was mainly because the Ming Dynasty had invested too many resources in the naval technology tree, so the progress in the past few years had
A considerable part of the strategic deployment is based on the advantage of sea routes.
When the Manchu and Qing Dynasties understood the situation in this regard and stopped playing with the Ming Dynasty on its weakest point, and gave up attempts to import talents and trade profits, and threw away all the coastal areas, then the Ming Dynasty's previously accumulated water advantages would no longer be able to compete with the Ming Dynasty.
exercised through military means.
Of course, this does not mean that the Ming Dynasty's maritime advantages have no room for use. It can only be said that there is no room for use in the military. As for civilian development and industrial and commercial construction, of course, there is still a lot of room for the maritime advantage to be used.
It’s just that all this takes time, and the advantages in infrastructure need to be transformed into farming accumulation, and then into comprehensive national strength.
If the Ming Dynasty had to launch an attack on Shengjing in the Liaohe Plain in the seventh year of Longwu, it would not be impossible.
But the problem is that Zhu Shuren's ambition is even greater. What he wants is not to seize the core city of the Manchus, but to completely conquer the other side.
If Shengjing is defeated now, the Manchu Qing Dynasty will completely flee into the White Mountains and Black Waters, and the Ming army does not have the strength to pursue and annihilate the guerrillas. So taking Shengjing is of little significance. It is nothing more than lengthening the Ming Dynasty's logistics supply route.
It's easier to be financially ruined.
In this case, it is better to leave this inescapable target and wait for the Ming Dynasty to completely rebuild the north and organize follow-up pursuits and guerrilla cavalry strength to ensure that it reaches the level where "the Ming Dynasty can destroy the Qing Dynasty with its cavalry troops alone"
, and then launch the final blow against the Shengjing regime.
…
Under such a delicate balance, from the beginning of the seventh year of Longwu to the summer of the ninth year, another two and a half years of recuperation, the Ming and Qing Dynasties completely restored peace.
In the past two and a half years, Zhu Shuren, as he had agreed with the royal family, went to Beijing personally to restore the ruling order in the six northern provinces. He also took away his wife, the princess Zhu Yuchan, leaving only his concubine Fang Ziling in Nanjing.
, responsible for raising two sons.
In this turbulent autumn, the emperor could only trust Zhu Shuren to stay in Beijing for a long time and coordinate the entire north without worrying about warlord separatism. If anyone else was in charge of this situation, the emperor would not be able to rest assured.
At the same time, considering that Shi Kefa's status in the Nanjing court was only lower than Zhu Shuren, but higher than Shen Tingyang. Therefore, Zhu Shuren also made another adjustment in the power arrangement in Nanjing——
He definitely did not distrust Shi Kefa, but wanted to protect Shi Kefa so that he could get along well with Emperor Longwu and work well for a lifetime. Otherwise, promotion or transfer would be easier options.
Zhu Shuren's insurance operation was to transfer his cousin Zhang Huangyan, who had made great achievements in the north and served as governor of Northern Zhili and Henan for a year, back to Nanjing, and then officially took over as Minister of War.
When Zhang Huangyan was the governor of the north, he held the title of Minister of the Ministry of War. However, there is still a gap between the title and the official title of Minister of the Ministry of War. Zhang Huangyan would definitely be happy to be able to officially become the Minister of the Ministry of War and to enter the cabinet. As for the
Local power doesn't matter.
Zhang Huangyan had been a local official for many years before. He donated his official position in the 13th year of Chongzhen and became an official. In the past 12 years, he had risen from the county level to the peak position of governor. Now he is in his late thirties and finally joined the cabinet to participate in central work. He is considered to be a master.
The merits are complete.
After Zhang Huangyan entered the cabinet, the cabinet was still headed by Shi Kefa, the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, Shen Tingyang, the Minister of the Ministry of Hubu, Zhang Huangyan, the Minister of the Ministry of War, and Zhu Shuren's brother-in-law Fang Yizhi was transferred to the Ministry of Works. Even though Zhu Shuren left Nanjing, the four cabinet members
Three of the most powerful people belong to his family, which can be regarded as a powerful force.
…
After all the power structures at the front and rear have been stabilized, all that is needed is to farm with peace of mind. In the past few years, Ming Dynasty's construction achievements have certainly made extraordinary progress.
Zhu Shuren did light corvee and low taxes in the north, encouraged industry and commerce, personally took charge of water conservancy construction work in various places, promoted the policy of permanent tenant rights, educated the people in the north to farm well, and ensured that they could always cultivate the land they rented, and regarded the fields as fixed assets that could be passed down from generation to generation.
Protect, even if the property rights of the land are not yours, you should protect it, because in the future Ming Dynasty, "sales and leases are not broken".
Even if the landowner sells the property rights of the land, it cannot harm the interests of the tenant farmers who have contributed to the construction of these lands, fertilization and water conservancy.
In just a few years, water conservancy in the north has recovered very well. With the most intense years of the Little Ice Age completely over, there have been fewer natural disasters. Mild floods and droughts can be overcome with water conservancy-assisted irrigation.
In Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and other provinces, the Ming Dynasty was not completely recovered until the beginning of the sixth year of Longwu, so by the summer of the ninth year of Longwu, it was already the fourth year of grain harvest.
After several years of recuperation, the Ming Dynasty's population has stabilized at the 60 million mark again - the war has not yet completely ended, and there are consumption of military service and corvee every year. It is unrealistic for the population to grow, and there must be complete peace.
, light corvee and low tax will lead to a period of rapid population growth.
Fortunately, with the current cultivated land in the Ming Dynasty, 60 million people would definitely not be too small. On the contrary, it can ensure that basically everyone has a field.
If there is more, you will have to roll it yourself, which will not help the total productivity. Only by opening up wasteland or developing industry and commerce at a rapid pace can more labor be absorbed.
Although the absolute number of the population has not increased, after these three years of rest, production in the north has completely recovered, and the population structure between the north and the south is much more balanced and healthy than it was in the sixth year of Longwu.
The total population of the six northern provinces combined has returned to 15 million people. The combined population of the southern provinces has dropped to 45 million people.
In the past three years, a total of 7 million people who were originally born in the north and went to the south as refugees due to famine and war finally returned to the north with the reconstruction of the north. The imperial court also provided benefits to the northerners who returned home.
The reduced and abandoned ownerless fields will be re-allocated to a guaranteed minimum area for civilians returning to their hometowns, so that the common people can live and work in peace and contentment.
In the sixth year of Longwu, the north became self-sufficient in food rations.
Beginning in the seventh year of Longwu, the imperial court set up Changpingcang to purchase surplus reserves for future military rations. In that year, it raised two to three million shi of surplus grain in the north - this figure was definitely a modest purchase of grain, and there was no rush.
Seek success without any sensitive associations.
By the eighth year of Longwu, the surplus grain collected from northern purchases had further increased to seven to eight million shi, and the savings were enough to launch another wave of military operations involving hundreds of thousands of people and lasting for more than a year.
Similarly, in the past three years, although there has been no obvious progress in agricultural production in the south, the progress in industry, commerce and science and technology has been very obvious.
From scientists like Descartes, to explorers and geographical discoverers like Tasman, to military engineers like Vauban, they all worked for the Ming Dynasty in an open academic environment. Janssen Tasman has continued to work for the Ming Dynasty in recent years.
Europe, which had just ended the Thirty Years' War, was poaching people from the Ming Dynasty.
As the minister of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty and the top person in charge of the Academy of Sciences system, Zhu Shuren’s brother-in-law and close friend Fang Yizhi also tried his best to provide the best and most inclusive research environment and hardware conditions for the following scientific researchers.
The progress of engineers in the field of chemistry is the most obvious. Since Zhu Shuren first developed nitrocellulose, also known as collodion, six or seven years ago, the new smokeless gunpowder was originally very expensive to produce and could only be used for rifled guns.
It was mainly used by a few advanced and elite troops. Since then, the production efficiency and cost of guncotton have not been significantly improved.
Now, with the mutual inspiration of the Chinese and Western teams, coupled with strict R&D management, excellent laboratory conditions and incentive systems, the production of sulfuric acid, nitric acid and final collodion production by local methods have increased several times in efficiency.
Nowadays, most of Ming Dynasty's breech-loading firearms can be uniformly distributed with smokeless propellants in the future, which can be regarded as a qualitative upgrade of military industry strength.
Moreover, the technological upgrading of the chemical industry will actually bring greater improvements beyond the military. After nitrate and sulfur can be produced locally at a lower cost, there are still many by-products that can be produced.
Zhu Shuren himself couldn't help but make some tricks during this process, and helped put forward some high-level ideas to guide the technical staff's research.
For example, he can inspire engineers to imagine that the world is composed of "countless basic particles." With the participation of Western scientists, they can easily think of the hypothesis similar to the "atomic theory" in ancient Greek philosophy, that is,
It's easy to understand this idea.
Although it needs to be concretely accepted, it must be proved through experiments. For example, someone measured the air pressure through an air combustion experiment and was able to prove that about one-fifth of the air in nature is "oxygen", thus discovering the existence of this gas-supporting gas and proposing the
The idea of "atom".
Of course, in history, it still took more than half a century for the Western scientific community to move from the "pure atomic theory" to the later "atomic/molecular theory" that was closer to the truth of nature. The main reason for this was that Dalton did not believe in the pure atomic theory because he insisted on it.
Due to the existence of molecules, it took a detour and was finally solved in the era of Lavoisier.
But since Zhu Shuren can repay Eucalyptus directly, he can inadvertently design experiments to encourage engineers to better discover the truth.
For example, he only needs to use a little knowledge from high school in his previous life to let engineers think of designing a simple volume ratio through the pressure ratio of oxygen and natural gas combustion. Verify the volume of oxygen before and after the reaction, and the volume ratio of carbon dioxide and water vapor after the reaction, and calculate
The atomic number ratio of the three elements carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the above-mentioned substances.
If one experiment is not enough, then add some other auxiliary carbon, hydrogen and oxygen combustion experiments, which can be done in conjunction with the daily research of the gunpowder research units of the Daming Academy of Sciences.
Of course, considering that Zhu Shuren himself is based in Beijing, he is not suitable to personally come forward for some research and cheating, and there are no supporting scientific research institutes in Beijing. In the next few years, Zhu Shuren will not waste resources to go to the north to create a self-contained system.
scientific research institutions,
After all, scientific development is still in its infancy, and it is necessary to pool resources to do big things, and to work together to inspire each other. If a separate branch is established, it is easy to waste scientific research by "reinventing the wheel". The communication conditions in the late Ming Dynasty were not developed, and scientific researchers were dispersed.
, it is difficult to obtain the latest progress in real time, and it is easy to work blindly.
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Therefore, Zhu Shuren had to rely on his concubine Fang Ziling and his brother-in-law Fang Yizhi to move to Nanjing to discover many of Zhu Shuren's foresights.
Fortunately, Zhu Shuren is already a great man descended from heaven. He doesn't need much fame at all, and he doesn't have to compete with scientists for status, so it doesn't matter who he uses to express his words.
Over the past few years, driven by Zhu Shuren, scientists finally discovered the atomic and molecular theory "on their own" and realized the most basic laws of the microscopic world.
After Zhu Shuren brought these people in from a theoretical level, the follow-up work became much easier. With scientists having this way of thinking and understanding of the world, their curiosity will naturally drive them to synthesize more things and synthesize a large number of things.
Piles of "low-hanging fruit" that are easy to pick are picked off one after another.
The traditional research medicine department of the Academy of Sciences was the first to think of using chemical methods to combine traditional Chinese medicine minerals to refine more pure poisons and disinfectants, as well as other antiseptic external drugs, which greatly improved the basic medical and public health levels of the Ming Dynasty.
With a world of primitive disinfectants, the outbreak rates of infectious diseases and plagues could be greatly suppressed.
The gunpowder production department, combined with the addition of chemical knowledge in the new era, has also created better explosives. Even if it is far from the level of explosives developed by Nobel in later generations, it surpasses the early and middle 19th century in Western history.
The level of explosives is more than enough.
With the availability of better civilian explosives, the cost of various infrastructure projects in the Ming Dynasty, including building bridges, cities, and roads, became much lower.
Although there are still no mechanized construction equipment, at least blasting can be used cheaply and on a large scale. The south was originally mountainous. Until the 17th century in Jiangxi, southern Hunan and Sichuan, the infrastructure in Yunnan and Guizhou was still very backward, and the road conditions were extremely poor.
With cheap explosives, the imperial court could open up a road with better road conditions into Sichuan along the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, and then improve the road conditions between Sichuan and Yunnan-Guizhou.
It is of great benefit to the reform of the land and the unification of the southwestern barbarians, strengthening the trade of tobacco and other tropical crops, and enhancing the southwestern barbarians' recognition of the Ming Dynasty's rule.
After three years of farming development, the control and recognition of the remote mountainous provinces in the south of the Ming Dynasty has been significantly improved, while the north has abundant food and clothing, and Changpingcang has abundant military rations.
The training and construction of the army have not fallen behind. For future guerrilla pursuit wars, the Ming Dynasty devoted more resources to building musketry cavalry troops.
More dragoon snipers were trained to use rifled guns, and other elite cavalry were also equipped with double-barreled breech-loading spray guns and revolvers.
The firearms ratio of the main cavalry units of the Ming Dynasty is basically close to 100%. Even the cavalry, which focuses on close combat, can be equipped with a revolver. Its combat power is directly off the charts, even if it encounters five times the number in the field.
All the Manchu horse archers are capable of fighting—
No matter how flexible the firepower output of the cavalry is, can it be compared to a revolver that fires six shots in a row? It's just that the effective range of the revolver is much closer. But as long as a large-scale legion fights, the Manchus will not be given the opportunity to fly kites.
Pistol cavalry combined with melee weapons are invincible.
After being suppressed by the steppe barbarians for more than a thousand years, the Han cavalry troops finally returned to the level of "one Han acting as five barbarians" with another qualitative change in weapon upgrades.
…
During the three years when the Ming Dynasty was crazy about farming and advancing science and technology, other forces were certainly not idle either.
After the Manchus had to give up their coastal territories, they could only shift their strategic focus and choose to develop northward.
The Liaohe Plain, which was already well developed, has little value and potential for further development. Cultivated land that is easy to reclaim has been gradually reclaimed over the past half century.
Hauge and Shunzhi devoted their main energy to the Songnen Plain in the north, where they cultivated wasteland and farmed.
In particular, they brought hundreds of thousands of Han people from within the pass. These Han people may have ethnic identity with the Ming Dynasty. If they were placed around Shengjing, it would be too dangerous. If the Ming army came again and these people rebelled, the Manchu Qing Dynasty would be completely over.
Therefore, these hundreds of thousands of Han people, especially some of the craftsmen, were moved to the Songnen Plain by the Manchu Qing court.
This can also be regarded as "breaking into Guandong" under the butterfly effect of new time and space.
However, to farm in the Northeast hinterland further north than the Liaohe Plain, it is obviously not enough to rely on the existing technology. Because the seeds and habits of crops are different, the Songnen Plain is colder than the Liaohe Plain.
Fortunately, potential is forced out by desperate situations. When the Manchus were facing life and death, everyone at the top and bottom was unscrupulous, working together and willing to try any trick that could tide them over.
After a few years, they really found some solutions one after another——
They contacted the Rakshasa merchants who had just arrived in Eastern Siberia and the Heilongjiang River Basin to do business, and learned from each other. Finally, they learned a trick from the Rakshasa merchants, saying that they could plant black on the relatively dry plains in the hinterland of the Northeast.
wheat.
Then, through exploration and trade in the Sea of Japan, the Manchus came into contact with the Fuso and Anuyin people of Kuye Island and Hokkaido, and discovered a cold-resistant rice variety that could be grown in both Hokkaido and Kuye Island.
In fact, it was only in the middle and late period of history that the Manchu Qing Dynasty obtained subarctic rice varieties from Fuso Hokkaido and began to promote rice in the Northeast.
At this point, the Manchus' Northeast Development Plan has completed both legs. Rye can be grown in dry land, and Hokkaido rice can be grown in paddy fields. In time, food production can definitely increase sharply again to feed and breed a larger population.
.
But it is a pity that they only spent more than three years exploring, surveying, and experimenting. Generally, there is basically no harvest in the first year of land reclamation. If you can recover the cost of the seeds, you can earn a little more.
Three times the harvest ratio is very good.
In the second and third years of land reclamation, the harvest can basically only reach 40-50% or 60-70% of that of fertile and mature land. Basically, it will take five years of land reclamation before the land can completely achieve the effect of fertile and mature land.
Of course, considering that the land in the Northeast is black soil and has accumulated fertility all year round, even if you just plant it at the beginning, the effect will be much better than opening up wasteland in the pass. But at most, it will be accelerated to "reach full production after three years of opening up wasteland."
The truce period left by the Ming Dynasty to the Manchu and Qing Dynasties was only three years, so when the Manchu and Qing Dynasties matured the first batch of reclaimed fields and settlements along the banks of the main rivers in the Songnen Plain, the peace period was almost over.
The fields they worked so hard to cultivate were destined to help the Ming Dynasty. The invasion of Guandong to open up wasteland was also destined to be opened for the Ming Dynasty. From this point of view, judging from the facts, Zhu Shuren will have to thank Hauge for this matter in the future, and say Shunzhi.