stubborn thief

Soon, the Marshal's Mansion held two funerals for the soldiers who died in the battle of Yulin.

Two cemeteries, each covering 200 acres, were planned and their later construction was overseen by Chen Qihuang, the prefect of Yulin, and Zuo Guangxian, the general of the Yulin-Ningxia Brigade.

The construction costs were drawn from the spoils of war obtained by the Marshal's Army in the Battle of Yulin, specifically from the homes of those veteran generals.

The exact amount of spoils from the battle of Yulin City cannot be tallied in a short time, because Ren Quan'er's camp is still digging deep into the city, trying to dig out any gold and silver that may be buried under those unclaimed houses.

Although most of this work was futile, most soldiers in the Marshal's Army quite enjoyed doing it.

For a period of time after capturing Xi'an, the Second Brigade gained extensive experience in excavation within the city. Experienced soldiers could guess the location of buried gold and silver with a single glance just by entering a courtyard.

Another major find in Yulin City was copper, including bronze statues and bronze artifacts.

This city has the most temples Liu Chengzong has ever seen, even more than Kangning Prefecture. He even suspects that there are more temples in this city than in the entire Kangning Prefecture.

For centuries, Yulin has been one of the most intense front lines of the war against the north, and has always borne extremely heavy military pressure.

The people here have never engaged in production, but have devoted themselves to warfare. Fathers, husbands, brothers, children and grandchildren join the army, families pray for blessings, temples prosper, and many generals will fund the construction of family temples next to ancestral halls.

After the battle, they all became ownerless.

The marshal's army took away the golden statue and the giant bell, leaving the temple behind.

Strangely enough, when they were in Liaoyang, they dumped copper blocks into the moat by the cartload. At that time, they knew that too much weight and quantity of things couldn't be brought back, so they didn't care about it at all.

But once back in Shaanxi, the extremely low transportation costs meant that even the smallest mosquito was still a bargain.

However, compared to gold and bronze artifacts and silver, the most abundant spoils of war in Yulin City and even Yansui Town were weapons and armor.

With the fall of Yulin City, the castles and garrisons of the Marshal's Office in all directions that once belonged to Yansui Town, centered around Yulin City, began sending their stored military equipment to the town. In a short time, a massive amount of military equipment poured in.

Liu Chengzong originally ordered his soldiers to deliver the weapons to the armory in Yulin Garrison City, but he quickly changed his order and placed the weapons outside the city.

Firstly, the city's warehouses couldn't hold it all; secondly, although the quantity was huge, not much of the equipment was usable.

The helmets, hats, iron arm guards, leather belts, leather bags, flags, and various military equipment could be taken directly, but most of the armor and clothing needed to be disassembled and reprocessed. This part of the work was handed over to the newly established Yulin-Ningxia Brigade.

The most numerous spoils of war were firearms; the marshal's army looted the military museum.

There were over 60,000 firearms and guns, including a large number of low-value, discarded military equipment, which Liu Chengzong even felt were not worth refurbishing.

The category of firearms, after being classified, includes cannons from the Hongwu era, muskets from the Yongle era, quick-firing guns from the Zhengde era, three-eyed muskets from the Jiajing era, bird guns from the Wanli era, and wolf-tooth muskets from the Tianqi era. There are over a hundred types of firearms.

There were more than 8,000 muskets, but only about 800 were actually used by the Marshal's army.

Because many of them are old arquebuses from the Jiajing and Wanli periods.

The "old" here doesn't refer to the era, but rather to the form or style.

In addition to matchlock guns and heavy muskets, each brigade of the Marshal's Army was equipped with thousands of light muskets. Apart from a small number of early homemade ones, most of them came from Ming army captures.

After several large-scale battles, they are currently equipped with only two specific models of arquebuses.

One of them was the Folang-type breech-loading electric musket used by the Guanzhong Brigade cavalry. There were very few in stock, and it was a spoil of war that Zhang Tianlin obtained from Bai Guang'en.

Secondly, there are the three-long guns used by most garrison brigades, which can be further subdivided into the Heji Xuanyuan three-long guns.

This was also the main model of the arquebus used by the Ming army during the Chongzhen period. It was generally a three-shot arquebus with a combined mechanism, and the Xuanyuan was an optional rainproof accessory.

The so-called "three long" refers to the three most popular firearm models during the Wanli period: the Japanese gun, the Western gun, and the Lumi gun.

These three outstanding musket designs each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Japanese muskets were lightweight and comfortable to use, but their short stock design was not suitable for the hand shape of Ming soldiers, resulting in poor shooting stability.

The term "Western gun" refers to the early Portuguese gun, which was accurate but had a small powder charge and a long but small and thin barrel.

The Rumi gun was an Ottoman musket, powerful but too heavy, well-designed, and had a touch port.

After improvements, combining the strengths of the three manufacturers, a new musket was made. Based on this, a combined mechanism was created, which uses two gears of different sizes to drive the touch gate cover and the matchlock lever, so that when the trigger is pulled, the matchlock lever falls and the touch gate cover opens at the same time.

It can reduce the action of opening the firing door cover when firing.

In Liu Chengzong's eyes, the three-long gun had almost reached the technological limit of a muzzle-loading matchlock smoothbore musket.

The only remaining improvements were the flintlock firing mechanism and the rifling in the barrel technology.

But this is the Ming Dynasty.

This seizure, as always, still contained many ingenious and innovative pieces of equipment.

For example, there were more than 100 matchlock three-barreled guns, called the Three-Beat Divine Machine; similarly, there were more than 200 matchlock five-barreled versions, called the Five-Thunder Divine Machine.

The Wansheng Folang machine gun, with over a hundred muzzle-loading pistols for rapid reloading, features a small pin with an iron chain at the rear of the gun barrel. The barrel is a large-caliber tube, 1.6 feet long, equipped with a front sight and rear sight.

The musket comes with nine small-caliber barrels, each 1.7 feet long. It is pre-loaded with ammunition and has a locking groove at the breech. In combat, the musket is inserted into the large barrel from the front, and the pin at the breech is inserted into the barrel to lock the musket in place for direct firing.

After firing, remove the pin, pull out the tube, replace the tube, insert the pin, reverse the ignition at the flint valve, and continue firing.

These are all weapons with significant design value and good combat performance, but they also greatly increase logistical pressure.

Liu Chengzong had seen similar weapons in the hands of the Jin after the Lingdong Campaign.

Zuo Liangyu also presented Liu Chengzong with a treasure: a steel whip, the kind used by Yuchi Gong, called the Thunderbolt Fire God Whip, which was passed down in You Shiwei's family.

The workmanship is very exquisite. The whip handle is three feet two inches long, with an inner steel and outer copper structure. The front is five inches hollow and has a fire hole drilled in it. It is an iron whip-style firearm.

Upon disassembling the wooden fittings of the whip handle, wow, the inscription reads "Datong Guard, 38th year of Jiajing"—an antique from the last century.

It might even have been overseen by Yu Dayou, making it extremely valuable for collection.

Liu Shizi fiddled with the steel whip. To be honest, he felt that this thing was not very useful in actual combat, but it was quite interesting.

Once back in Xi'an, you can have the Ministry of Works make a few and distribute them to the generals as a reward.

But compared to doing that, Liu Chengzong was more concerned about firearms that could be widely deployed in the army.

"Classify the captured weapons, select three to five of each type in good condition, load them onto trucks and send them back to the Xi'an Prefectural Works Office. As for the three long guns, see if the first and second brigades need to replenish them. If not, transport them back to Xi'an as well."

"The old matchlock guns and three-barreled guns were sent to the Lanzhou Ordnance Bureau. The matchlock guns were used for trade, and the three-barreled guns were transported to Taimengwei; the rest were all left to the Yuning Brigade."

"Rockets and cannonballs were dismantled for training purposes after the gunpowder was removed, and old muskets were used as scrap metal."

Subsequently, the central army of the Marshal's Mansion and the First and Second Brigades set off, while Zuo Guangxian stayed in Yulin to manage the Yulin-Ningxia Brigade. The scattered troops drawn from various garrison brigades also returned to their respective posts in Linliang and Yanqing.

Liu Chengzong is returning to Xi'an. His father sent a letter saying that the compilation of the local gazetteers for each prefecture will not be completed until next year. However, the early statistics on land and population have been compiled and sent to Xi'an Prefecture. Zhang Jinyan of the Provincial Administration Commission is in charge of organizing them, and a first draft has already been completed.

This news made Liu Shizi eager to return home. However, the return journey was still a long detour. The main force of the army and the First Brigade still took the route through Qingyang, while the Second Brigade took the official road through Yan'an Prefecture. However, Zhang Zhen of the Yanqing Brigade had to drive about a hundred sheep ahead of them.

Liu Shizi ordered Zhang Zhen, the brigade commander of Yanqing, to clear all landmines along the official roads of Yan'an Prefecture within a year, and to repair and reinforce the official roads of Yanqing and Yanqing Prefectures, and remove all tree stumps.

In fact, there are almost no landmines on the official roads of Yan'an Prefecture nowadays.

After several years of exposure to the elements, many of the landmines that were buried at the time have become ineffective and broken.

Even so, no one is willing to gamble on this.

If there is even one landmine that could potentially detonate, Liu Chengzong would rather take a detour of 200 miles during non-combat hours.

旱。

This year is still a severe drought, and a great deal of farmland has been left uncultivated.

In Qingyang Prefecture, Liu Chengzong paid a visit to Prefect Ju Sirang and inquired about the situation in Qingyang Prefecture.

Liu Shizi did indeed pay his respects, because he greatly admired Ju Sirang for governing Qingyang, a remote and impoverished area, so well.

Liu Chengzong had personally visited Qingyang Prefecture and witnessed what it was like. In the early years of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, tens of thousands of people abandoned their homes to avoid taxes and dug their own caves in the mountains.

This place, after Ju Sirang became the prefect, he recruited bandits to farm, gained the support of the militia, and transformed the area into a paradise in Shaanxi.

Liu Shizi really didn't dare to cause him any trouble, fearing that his own ingenious ideas and political pressure would easily crush Qingyang.

But when he met Ju Sirang, he found that Ju Sirang's attitude towards him was quite good, and he was very relaxed. He had obviously adapted to being an official in the Marshal's Mansion, and even felt that Liu Chengzong had solved the biggest problem in Qingyang Prefecture.

Because of years of tax arrears, Liu Chengzong did not force local authorities to collect them, which gave Ju Sirang the opportunity to make his mark.

Now, Ju Sirang's ability to restrain himself from Liu Chengzong is an excellent example of his skill.

The number of registered males in Qingyang Prefecture was only 10,819, and the cultivated land amounted to 19,838 hectares.

Due to the drought, 7,713 hectares of land were left uncultivated, leaving more than 12,125 hectares of irrigable land, of which 4,782 hectares were government-owned land leased to tenant farmers.

With a small population and abundant farmland, the area is peaceful despite its remote and desolate location, free from the troubles of famine and war.

Moreover, Qingyang Prefecture established a large household register for private chicken and duck farming, with more than 150,000 chickens and 70,000 ducks raised locally.

There will be even more next year.

These chickens and ducks are being raised to control the local locust plague.

The fields in Qingyang are abandoned because they cannot be irrigated. Although there is a river in the area, it is called the "Fool River" by the locals in Huanxian County because the water is bitter and poisonous. Drinking it can cause people to become stupid or even die.

This is because it is adjacent to a salt lake to the north and connected to the Yanchang Petroleum Formation to the east, resulting in excessive cyanide levels.

However, at that time, no one knew what compounds were in the water, so they just called it the Ma Sha Zi River, and it was only the downstream Ma Lian Chuan that provided some irrigation.

This has resulted in locusts constantly infesting Qingyang.

The best place for locusts to grow is when a drought has just ended, and the soil has very little moisture left. Because no one is taking care of it, the soil becomes hard and compacted, which is the place where locusts love to lay their eggs.

But if there is even less moisture, the locust eggs will not be able to survive.

Unfortunately, the soil in Qingyang was suitable for spawning in places far from water sources a couple of years ago. But when those places became unsuitable, places near the river became suitable.

Every year, during the season, there are local locust plagues.

During the Wanli era, there was a man named Chen Zhenlong who brought sweet potatoes back from Southeast Asia, making him the first person to introduce sweet potatoes to the country.

His son, Chen Jinglun, was a scholar from Changle County, Fujian Province, who created a biological control technique of using ducks to control locusts.

But for Ju Sirang, raising ducks to control locusts was a proven method in the southeast. Duck farming requires water, but the water upstream of Huan County was undrinkable even for people, let alone ducks. So, adapting to local conditions, he mainly promoted raising chickens among the people under the jurisdiction of the prefecture.

Only in the lower reaches of the Malian River, in areas where water could be drawn for irrigation, did people raise ducks.

Raising chickens and ducks isn't free. In Qingyang, if you want to graze sheep, you must obtain a household registration as a chicken and duck farmer. This status is not hereditary; it's just an entry requirement. Only those with this status can graze sheep.

Ju Sirang leased all the abandoned land to registered poultry and duck farmers. Those near the lower reaches of the Huanhe River raised ducks, and those near the mountains raised chickens. For each hectare of wasteland, five pairs of chickens or ducks were levied annually, registered with the government, but still allowed to be raised by the farmers.

The tax paid in kind for this abandoned land is worth more than 2,300 taels of silver per year.

Ju Sirang didn't intend to increase his income through this. He just set a minimum standard for farmers: they must keep four chickens and ducks on every acre of wasteland they rent, because the government might requisition them sometime.

Because of this policy, the stock of chickens and ducks in Qingyang Prefecture increased significantly, and the price dropped from 46 coins per chicken to 30 coins, with young chickens and fat ducks being a little more expensive.

The price has remained stable because the troops stationed in Yanqing and Longxi always need to buy food.

This situation deeply impressed Liu Chengzong; Ju Sirang was truly remarkable.

With people and land, chickens and ducks, they controlled the locust plague, supplied the army, and quelled the rebellion.

Although there were fewer people, in this era, Liu Chengzong couldn't find any fault with the matter.

Liu Shizi stayed at the Qingyang Prefectural Government Office for three full days, discussing many issues related to local governance with Ju Sirang and taking notes of his policies before setting off south.

In comparison, Li Jiayan, the prefect of Fengxiang, was far inferior.

Liu Chengzong, in high spirits thanks to Qingyang Prefecture, traveled to Binzhou and summoned Li Jiayan.

He thought to himself that the situation in Fengxiang Prefecture was much better than in Qingyang, with more people, more land, and better irrigation.

Who knows what the actual situation is... It's not that it's far off, but there's nothing surprising about it.

Fengxiang Prefecture had 350,000 men, which was 35 times that of Qingyang.

But it only has 77,000 hectares of farmland, nearly four times that of Qingyang.

There are 36,000 hectares of cultivated land, with each person having an average of 10 mu of land, and more than 40,000 hectares of uncultivated land, which are completely unused.

This wouldn't normally be a big deal; it's actually quite standard. The governance of Fengxiang Prefecture is inherently more difficult than that of Qingyang.

But after Ju Sirang governed Qingyang so well, look at Fengxiang Prefecture, where more than four million mu of land are left uncultivated.

Liu Chengzong was dissatisfied with Li Jiayan, the prefect he had casually appointed years ago, no matter how he looked at him.

"Damn it, I entrusted such a good place as Fengxiang to you, and you can't even do anything right?"

"Summon your county magistrates, all of you mount your horses and go to Qingyang to learn how to govern a region, Zhang Yong!"

"Prepare horses for them and have cavalry follow them. If they can't ride, they should run. Unless they are lame, no one is allowed to ride in a sedan chair. They are to bring their own food for a month. In October, all seven magistrates of Fengxiang will have to hand over the strategies they learned in Qingyang to Xi'an."

"If you do well next year, you'll get a promotion; if you don't, you'll be replaced!" (End of Chapter)