1635 Han style rises again

Chapter 273 War and Peace ([-])
New Huaian, Shiba Township.

After Yang Guangde arranged the road construction tomorrow, seeing Zhu Yougen still following behind, he couldn't help but wryly smiled.

"I said, are you going to spend a day with me today? Are you not busy with the farm work in the field?"

"You haven't given me an explanation yet!" Zhu Yougen muttered, "According to the days, it's my turn."

"Why don't you just dig out a latrine, it's a bit fat!" Yang Guangde said helplessly, "Old Sun's family just did it a week ago. How much can be accumulated in the latrine in the past few days?"

"If there is a little bit, let's get a little bit, so it's better to accumulate some fertility in the field earlier?" Zhu Yougen said: "Otherwise, when the field is harvested in autumn, I won't be able to pay the quota grain. Can you free me?" gone?"

"You can't afford a thousand catties of grain for your fucking fifty acres of land, so why don't you plant the land!" Yang Guangde said with his eyes wide open, "I don't know what you're thinking! Some rice, more money!"

In the northern area of ​​Hanzhou, the land is barren, and crops such as corn, potatoes, and sorghum can produce some grain.However, rice, wheat and other refined grain crops have pitifully low yields.

At present, tens of thousands of acres of rice and wheat are planted in Heishan City and New Huai'an City (now Palmerston, Australia), using several river valleys.Relying on extensive planting and low harvest, thousands of tons of fine grain can also be produced.However, for the population of more than 5000 in Hanzhou, it simply cannot meet the needs.

Zhu Yougen was one of the thousands of starving people who came from the Huaibei of Daming on the Hanzhou immigration ship three years ago.He successively carried out colonization and reclamation in several production villages in Heishan City and New Huai'an City. After completing the three-year reclamation period this year, he was assigned to the stone village more than ten kilometers south of New Huai'an City together with his Johor Nyonya wife. Settled in Ba Township and granted [-] mu of farmland.

Although he has his own land, as a poor and white resident immigrant, he owes a whole lot of debt to the Hanzhou people's government, housing, rations, seeds, farm tools, and renting cattle in the village, etc.Even if these debts need to be paid off by Zhu Yougen's family in 20 years, the amount that needs to be repaid each year is very small.But as an honest farmer, he would never dare to accumulate debts to the government for a long time.

Therefore, I am very concerned about the [-] acres of farmland at home.The feces of chickens and ducks in the house and the ash from the fire were all collected and sprinkled on the farmland.I just want to harvest more food from the fields and sell some money.The several latrines in the township were even divided up by several of their farmers who allocated the land, and it was agreed when each family would clean up the excrement without unreasonable delay.

Originally it was the turn of Zhu Yougen’s family to settle in one of the latrines in Qingyun Township this week, but the head of the village did not make it in time because the above family was forced to build a road leading to Yongxingbao (now the small town of Adelaide River in northern Australia). The reason for cleaning the toilet is that he is temporarily not allowed to dig out the toilet.The reason is that it would be extremely unfair for the excrement belonging to the previous family to be cleaned up and transported away by the next family.

"Tun chief, I only transport away the excrement accumulated in the past few days. I will leave it to the old Sun's family." Zhu Yougen continued unwillingly, pulling Yang Guangde's sleeve.

Impatiently, Yang Guangde shook off Zhu Yougen's tugging, and said loudly: "Isn't it just a matter of urinating? It makes me feel like I owe you hundreds of silver dollars! Or, counting from this month, the latrines of your family Clearance, changed to once every half a month."

"Then it's my turn this time, isn't it a disadvantage?"

"Would you like me to go to your field to make you some more shit and urine in the future, as compensation?" Yang Guangde was a little dumbfounded.

As the head of the village, they are not actually Hanzhou civil affairs officials. Most of them are the first batch of old immigrants or marine soldiers who retired due to injuries. They receive a monthly subsidy of one silver dollar from the county and township.They need to manage Hanzhou's most grass-roots settlement immigrants and assign settled farmers. They have to cooperate with the township barracks to organize and train township soldiers, expropriate the grain and other types of farm output, and recruit voluntary labor, build roads, and build water conservancy, etc. .

Above the production village is the basic administrative organization of Hanzhou Civil Affairs, the township.It is equipped with various rural management departments and personnel such as the township head, the township captain, the patrol squad leader, the agricultural affairs sponsor, and the taxation sponsor.A township, according to the size of the population in each area, has different production villages.In places such as Jianye City, Heishan City, and Xinhuai'an, which are relatively densely populated, there will be more than a dozen production villages below the township.In Kaiyuan Fort, Yongxing Fort, Songcheng Castle and other places with relatively small populations, there are even only two or three production villages in some townships.

In order to alleviate the food crisis that may be caused by the Dutch East India Company's blockade, the Hanzhou people's government has recently been vigorously constructing farmland water conservancy in Heishan City and New Huai'an. About 12 mu, more than doubled to 30 mu.Trying to expand the cultivated area in exchange for more food and other crop output.

In the vicinity of Jianye City, the main economic crops are soybeans, sugar cane, flax, sisal, peanuts, rapeseed, sunflowers, etc. After harvesting, the roots and leaves of these crops can be plowed into the field to improve soil fertility.

At the same time, in order to better communicate with several settled towns in the north, the Hanzhou people's government also planned and implemented a major transportation construction project.Try to build roads in all towns within two or three years.In the early stage, it is planned to build the road to Yongxing Fort, and gradually realize the hardening of the road surface (laying cement).

For road construction, Yongxingbao Commander Liu Qichun very much agrees.As a new settlement less than a year old, with a population of less than 2000, not only could they not be self-sufficient in food, but they also had to bear the responsibility for the Beiliangbao (now the small town of Pine Creek, Australia) more than 200 miles away. ), more than 300 miles away, Song Castle (now Catherine, Australia) was tasked with transporting supplies.

This material supply base, which was once built to attack the inland indigenous alliance, has now been transformed into a simple castle with a circumference of 800 meters. A large number of nearby forests have been cut down and turned into a large area of ​​farmland, planted with corn, sorghum, and potatoes. and vegetables.However, the harvest was very poor.

If the road is unimpeded, it will definitely play a particularly important role in promoting the development of Yongxing Fort.But building roads is hard work and requires a lot of manpower and material resources.

A large number of road construction materials are naturally undertaken by Kaiyuan Fort and New Huai'an in front, but as a major project planned and designed by the civil government, Yongxing Fort certainly cannot do nothing.If the length of road construction here is longer than the above regulations, and the development of agricultural production exceeds expectations, then, as a small commander of Yongxing Fort, he will definitely give Shangfeng an impression of being able to handle things in the future.

To do all of this, it is naturally inseparable from people.The resettlement plan is uniformly arranged by the civil government, and the resettlement input is mainly carried out according to the farmland colonization of each town and village.More than 2000 people in Yongxingbao have to undertake part of the road construction task and want to reclaim more arable land, so the manpower is a little tight.Therefore, Liu Qichun, the commander of Yongxingbao, set his sights on the Hanzhou aborigines captured by a large number of rural soldiers.

"Commander Fu, have you reported the aborigines you captured this time?" Liu Qichun asked tentatively.

"I reported it to the military preparation department half a month ago. What's wrong?" Fu Jinbiao asked.

"A lot of people must have died on the road, right?"

"Well, four or five died. Two of them tried to run away, but were chased and hacked to death by our men."

"Then you have returned to Kaiyuan Fort, can you report more deaths to the higher authorities?"

"Ah?" Fu Jinbiao looked at Liu Qichun in confusion, "Why?"

"I want to leave dozens of roads behind."

"No, no!" Fu Jinbiao shook his head vigorously, "There are only a hundred people in total, and you want to keep a few dozen. You will be scolded when you go back."

"Commander Fu, you can help me out, okay?" Liu Qichun begged with a bitter face, "Just leave me a dozen or so, so I can free up manpower to reclaim more farmland, right? Your cavalry go deep into the inland frequently. , we need to go through our Yongxing Fort. We can get more food, vegetables, melons and fruits here, and we can provide you with more supplies, don’t you think? Besides, there are still more than 200 indigenous people in Song Castle Well. The road is difficult, and it is normal for more people to die."

As he said that, Liu Qichun motioned for a subordinate official to weigh several pots of sorghum liquor and put them into Fu Jinbiao's arms.He knew that this cavalry commander, who was from the northern Shaanxi frontier army, liked sorghum shochu, so he specially "bribed" him.

Fu Jinbiao glanced at several cavalry captains nearby, saw that they turned their heads away, hesitated for a moment, then happily took the sorghum shochu, and then said to Liu Qichun, "I can't give you too many people, at most twenty."

"Thirty."

"Only twenty. . . . Two more at most."

"That's 25."

"……Fine."

Liu Qichun immediately ordered his subordinates to quickly pick someone up, secretly proud of himself.In the future, it is indispensable to intercept some natives from the passing village soldiers every time, and drive them to build roads, cut trees, and build houses.These people only need to spend some coarse food, and they don't have to worry about excessive "wasting" their labor and causing certain damage.

It was not easy for Ming people to immigrate to Hanzhou, so they were particularly precious.Not to mention oppressing and exploiting them, even driving them to reclaim farmland, build water, build houses and pave roads, they dare not use too much force, for fear of unnecessary losses due to fatigue or physical discomfort.

Therefore, not to mention that Liu Qichun, the commander of Yongxingbao, was thinking of ways to intercept the captured Hanzhou natives to undertake some of the more arduous tasks, even Jianye City, Heishan City, Xinhuai'an and other places with relatively abundant populations also responded to a large number of captured natives last year. The natives of Timor Island fought fiercely.Although, in the end, the Black Mountain Mine and Kaiyuan Mine took the bulk, but several places still got a small amount of Timor Island natives.

They immediately drove these natives to start building roads leading to various townships and villages one after another. They did not require the standard of cement paving, but at least they could pass horse-drawn carts and ox carts normally, so as not to be unable to communicate with the townships below in the rainy season. Contacting villages and villages, but many things were delayed.

So, if you get some useful free labor, then don't just spend your life on road construction.As for whether these natives would flee due to excessive squeezing, the civil affairs agencies in various places are not very worried.

Gein, a farmer in each production village, has more or less been trained by some village soldiers, and his family has cold weapons such as swords and spears.The township soldier squads and township soldier squadrons equipped in each village and township also hold muskets eliminated by the Marine Corps, so it is easy to deal with some fleeing natives.

(End of this chapter)