Ming Zuo

Chapter 404 Dengzhou Navy [Ask for a monthly ticket on Monday]

Nearly noon, the fighting in Dengzhou City finally subsided.

Zuo Menggeng, Li Banghua, Sun Yuanhua and others, surrounded by guards, walked into the tenth town of the Ming Dynasty.

Because the battle was going on quickly and the new army's combat effectiveness was too strong, the damage in the city was not very serious, and the city walls of Lucheng and Shuicheng were even intact.

Looking at the past, the rebel prisoners were all detained on the school grounds, at least thousands.

Zuo Menggeng was not polite to these people.

"All of them are sent to Liangshan Mine. Whether they can survive or not depends on their luck."

These are all executioners with blood on their hands, and they will not be wronged if they are sentenced to capital punishment.

However, there is a shortage of human resources today, especially dangerous jobs such as mines are in urgent need of labor.In line with the principle of waste utilization, Zuo Menggeng did not clarify the canon punishment.

Returning to his hometown, Sun Yuanhua really had mixed feelings.

Just last year, he was still here with great power and command.Just a few months later, he has become a passer-by here.

This time, Dengzhou City was taken over, because Sun Yuanhua was the governor of Denglai and was very familiar with it, so he came to assist in taking over.

As for the administrative staff here, Zuo Menggeng never considered Sun Yuanhua from the very beginning.

This one is good to shine in the field that he is good at, he is really not an administrative talent.

The person in charge of the Dengzhou Administrative Committee, after deliberation, everyone unanimously recommended Zhang Jimeng.

Because of Linqing's duty to prepare soldiers, Zhang Jimeng has always been on temporary duty in the army.But he still has the official position of Shandong Patrolman, strictly speaking, he is a civil official.

Zhang Jimeng himself didn't know much about the military, and he stayed in the army to mislead others.

In addition, his status is respected, and it is not easy to arrange.Taking Dengzhou this time gave him a chance to change.

Li Jiucheng retreated in a hurry, which led to the complete documentation of Dengzhou City, which facilitated the reception of the new army.

"Dengzhou was originally a military town, and most of the local people made a living there. The arable land is limited, and most of it is mountainous. In the future, the role of the military town will be lost, and economic development will be a problem."

After sorting out the yellow book, Zhang Jimeng knew what he knew, and also complained to Zuo Menggeng.

According to the plan of the new army, after winning Shandong, Denglai will lose its original function as a border town.And if there is no army stationed here, and there is no need to support Liaodong, obviously all kinds of resources will not be allocated here.

This made Zhang Jimeng quite a headache, not knowing how to develop the local economy.

He is ambitious, and doesn't want to work in such a place for the rest of his life.

Now he is still a leader of the camp, and his status is respected, but if he can't show his political achievements, even if he wants to be promoted in the future, it will be difficult and difficult to convince the public.

Zuo Menggeng felt that Zhang Jimeng was in the midst of happiness and did not know the happiness.

"Although Dengzhou has lost the navy station, the entire Dengzhou capital has a lot to do. If nothing else, the gold mine in Zhaoyuan alone is a huge wealth."

As the saying goes, China's gold is in Shandong, and Shandong's gold is in Yantai.

The rich gold mines here have been excavated as early as the Song Dynasty and are now an important source of wealth for the imperial court.

Now that it has fallen into the hands of the new army, Zuo Menggeng certainly does not intend to let it go.

Besides the gold mine, Zuo Menggeng has other plans for Dengzhou.

"Penglai has no other advantages except being close to Liaodong. It is not conducive to long-term development. My idea is to move the government to Fushan. Use the good deep-water port area there to develop the marine economy. In the future After establishing economic relations with overseas, I will give you an open port in Dengzhou."

Fushan is the urban area of ​​Yantai in later generations.

The Zhifu Mountain in the sea and the Yantai Mountain in the southeast just formed a vast and open deep-water port.

Ships of any size can dock here, and they are closer to the deep sea.

Hearing his thoughts, Zhang Jimeng was satisfied.

"That's it, when the situation here is stable, we will start to study the relocation."

On the Dengzhou side, what Zuo Menggeng values ​​most is actually the Dengzhou navy.

After Zuo Menggeng went south to Songjiang Mansion, he had long had the idea of ​​developing the navy and shipping.

Nai He's subordinates are poor in this regard, and they have never been able to enter.

Most importantly, there are no boats.

That is, there are no craftsmen who build ships.

This time, the Dongjiang rebels captured Dengzhou before fleeing to Liaodong, so the Dengzhou navy and those mature shipbuilders all fell into his hands.

"It was all thanks to the special forces that it would be so smooth to take the entire water city. Not a single ship escaped, and they were all here."

When reporting to Zuo Menggeng, Ji Conghua was very proud.

The mission of their second regiment was to capture the water city and capture the ships. Ji Conghua was certainly qualified to be proud of it.

Standing on the wall of the water city, looking at the ships in the harbor, Zuo Menggeng seemed to see the majestic scene of the Chinese Shenzhou covered the sea.

"With these ships, we will open up the world. From now on, we will no longer have to rely on the canal to communicate with Songjiang Prefecture."

During the first battle of Dengzhou, the new army captured [-] Fuchuan, [-] Haicang ships, [-] 艨艟, [-] sand boats, plus net shuttle boats, eagle boats, serial boats, fire dragon boats, etc. There are nearly two hundred ships.

The reason for so many is only because the Dongjiang rebels captured the Tianjin Navy earlier.

In other words, what fell into the hands of the new army was the sum of the ships of the two naval divisions.

The others were very happy looking at the full boat, but Zuo Menggeng was only slightly happy.

"These ships are all unusable. They can be used to transport goods and train sailors. In the deep sea, they are no match for the Europas. We have to wait for our new ships to be built and scaled before we can dominate the ocean."

After seeing the naval ships of the Ming Dynasty navy, Zuo Menggeng was more and more fortunate that he had insisted on building the Galen ship.

These ships of the Dengzhou Navy, even the largest fortune ships, could not deploy heavy artillery.Even the big general cannons and the Flange aircraft can only be loaded with four per ship.

This firepower, encountering the Dutch and Spanish fleets at sea, is purely for food delivery.

But with these ships, at least two things can be done.

One is to form a navy, and these ships can be used to train soldiers; another is to transport back and forth between Shandong and Songjiang Prefecture, avoiding the checkpoints on the canal.

In addition to boats, the most important thing is of course people.

The ship is lost and can be rebuilt.

If there were no people, there would be no navy.

"Sit, these are the craftsmen."

The shipbuilders were miserable. Just looking at their appearance made one's eyes filled with bitter tears.

The weather has started to get cold, yet many of these craftsmen are still wearing torn singles.

Compared with the worsening weather, the situation in Dengzhou made the craftsmen a little numb.After all, in a short period of time, the city changed its owner three times, and the craftsmen did not know whether they would still be alive tomorrow.

In this case, Zuo Menggeng invited E Honglue.

He was in charge of shipbuilding and artillery building in Dengzhou before, so he was most familiar with the craftsmen.

With Er Honglue here, the craftsmen finally have vitality.

"General, we have long since stopped. The rebels asked us to repair the ship, so they gave us some food. But everyone has several families, and that little food is not enough. The baby in the family is still young and weeps when he is hungry. Yell, it hurts."

Zuo Menggeng immediately ordered that the new army transported a batch of supplies and distributed them to these craftsmen.

Everyone was given a bag of rice noodles, in addition to oil, salt and some vegetables.

Seeing what they got, the craftsmen all burst into tears.Enough crying, they all knelt down in front of Zuo Menggeng.

This means that from now on, they will sell their lives to Zuo Menggeng.

Zuo Menggeng accepted the allegiance and asked the craftsmen to send the food home first and settle the family.Looking back, he talked about the arrangement for them.

"E Honglue, you all know him. He is now building ships for me. In the future, I will build a lot of ships here, so I will need a lot of craftsmen. But the shipbuilding place is not here, and you need to move to Jiaozhou Bay in the south. If anyone does not If you are willing to go, say it now, and I can arrange it here.”

When they heard that they were going to leave their homeland, the craftsmen talked a lot, and many people showed their dismay.

But they had just received Zuo Menggeng's food, and if they refused, the general would turn his face.

"General, is Jiaozhou Bay far away?"

Zuo Menggeng was stunned, only to realize that the craftsmen didn't even know the basic knowledge of geography.

"Hehe, it's not far, it's in Qingzhou House. From here, you can reach it in three or five days."

I heard that Jiaozhou Bay is very close, so the craftsmen feel at ease.

Zuo Menggeng took advantage of the situation to offer conditions.

"Working here, you can eat enough, wear warm clothes, and never owe your wages. If any of you have good craftsmanship and work well, you can get better pay. Even small workers have eight hundred wen per month. wages."

As soon as this statement came out, the craftsmen were all shocked.

Eight hundred yuan a month's wages...

They never dared to think about it before.

Even when Sun Yuanhua was there, they offered them a salary of one tael per month.But after layers of exploitation by officials and stewards at all levels, it would be good to have [-] wen in their hands in the end.

Just here, or they have to pay enough filial piety to come to the shipyard to work.

Now go to the new shipyard and pay [-] wen as long as you are willing to work. No matter how stupid the craftsmen are, they will know how to choose.

(End of this chapter)