Prime Minister Bizen

Chapter 131 Anecdotes about Ezo

The core of samurai morality is to serve the public with kindness. For a group of violent gangs who put their lives aside and are ready to slash people with knives at any time, how can they be required to serve the public wholeheartedly without rewards?

The early days of Kamakura, the battle time of the last nine years.In order to save rewards, the imperial court defined the conquest of Olu as a private struggle.

It was Minamoto Yoshika who, at the risk of being punished by the court, rewarded the land they had laid down to the samurai who came to participate in the exhibition, and gathered the hearts of these samurai who had profiteering machines, and established the Kamakura Shogunate for the later Minamoto Yoritomo. foundation.

During the Chengjiu Rebellion, Hojo Shizheng led the Bando Samurai to Shangluo, abolished the three emperors, confiscated more than 3000 manors owned by the court ministers, and distributed them to the imperial family. The Hojo family gave too many reasons for persecuting Genji's family and being indifferent.

In the old days, Yuen Fenggong was actually the simplest exchange of benefits. If you want horses to run fast, how can you not give them high-quality horse feed?
And the Bushido in the Edo period, which blindly required samurai to be obedient and dedicated without reservation, was in itself a violation of human nature. If you don't give me benefits, why should I let me work for you?
The end result is that no one in Edo Eighty Thousand Banners dared to stand up and judge the civil unrest for the general when they faced protests from farmers. Do you still expect such useless soldiers to fight the new government army?And indirectly led to the end of the Edo Shogunate.

The ending of the Edo shogunate is still vivid in my mind, of course the Hideka would not do such a thing as digging their own foundation, which is why the Hideka tried their best to prevent Hanabou Masayuki and other important ministers from wanting to hand over part of their salaries.

Seeing that there were no voices of objection from the senior ministers at home, the Xiu family went back to the imperial steps to continue making arrangements.

"Misaku Shou, you happen to be at the junction of the five countries. Hoki, Inaba, Bingo, and other countries have relatively poor land. There are always refugees crossing the border and hoarding land for themselves. In the past, most of them would be repatriated for the sake of friendship and harmony. From this year onwards, all people who cross the border will be included in their own families, given to Lutian and Qianbo, and asked them to undertake part of the land cultivation of the local people."

In fact, during the Warring States period, the people were the primary productive forces, and each family adopted many policies to compete for the people of other families. The most typical one was the land tax policy of the Hojo family's five public and five people.

In the Western Kingdom, Yuxiduo also implements the policy of five publics and five people, while the surrounding daimyos generally have six publics and four peoples. This also leads to many people from other countries crossing the border to seek livelihood in Yuxiduo.

After the armistice of the Western Kingdom, the relationship between the Mori family and the Hashiba family was relatively good, and the Hide family also symbolically returned some of their leaders to the Mori family. As for Inaba Hoki's daimyo, they were already under the Hashiba tent, so they naturally had to maintain a good relationship. Therefore all subjects who crossed the border were sent back.

But at this moment, Ukido has just occupied Sanuki, and Sanuki has become sparsely populated after eight years of chaos, and there is an urgent need for new leaders to join in the reclamation of wasteland.

Coupled with the recruitment of manpower from Mizuo and Bichu, Xiujia no longer cared about the so-called appearance, and encouraged Oka Lisheng to recruit more new citizens from abroad.

As for the newly recruited citizens, naturally they cannot be resettled nearby. The Xiu family plans to transport all of them to Sanuki to reclaim wasteland, so that if the Mori family or other Hashiba family names come to inquire, they can be allowed to patrol the territory at the junction.

When they found out that there was indeed no trace of recruiting refugees or reclaiming new fields at the junction of Yuxi's family territory, they naturally had no reason to trouble the Xiu's family again.

The matter of building the city of Osaka was decided, and the important officials in the family left.Hideka left Hanabou Masako behind, and called Seto Yamasa to listen to his report on the latest situation in Ezo.

The Seto family is holding up the account book to restore, "There are 6 cities and 6.4 stone territories in the Ezo region, with more than 3.2 people. This year, the number of people who immigrated from their own family is relatively small. The immigration from North Korea and Liaodong has just begun, and it is not a climate. These are the main factors behind the slowdown in population growth."

In fact, the reason why the local people believe in religion is precisely because they live in poverty, and they can only seek self-consolation in the nothingness of religion.

In the past, the Xiu family sent the people of the country to the Yezo to open up wasteland, with the purpose of solving the extremist religious elements in the territory.

As most of the extreme Yiyi believers were sent to Ezo last year, the "Sitian Law" promulgated last year greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of the people to open up new fields, and the believers changed their minds one after another. I believe that the Yuxi family lost a time bomb that could cause instability, and the Hide family gradually reduced their plan to immigrate to Ezo.

The Xiu family's development of Ezo is an absolute secret.In order to avoid attracting the attention of other daimyos, it is natural not to summon the citizens of other countries to go there.

After losing the immigration of their own territories, the foreign population on the Ezo side mainly came from the Koreans who could not survive and some immigrants from the Ming Dynasty.

East Asians have a natural affection for their homeland, and Ezo is an uncivilized land.Therefore, even if the Xiu family offered very generous conditions to the people of North Korea and Ming, no matter how hard their lives were, they rarely chose to follow the sea merchants to emigrate to Ezo.

In the past year, there were only a few dozens of Ming people who chose to immigrate to North Korea, more than a hundred families.There are only a few hundred households of Koreans, with a population of more than [-]. The increase in the population directly under the Ezo territory is mainly from Ainu women who married male leaders.

This group of filthy men who couldn't find wives in the Western Kingdom ran to Ezo and became uncles all of a sudden. Each of them had one Ezo wife, and some had as many as three or four. In Ezo, The men are mainly responsible for armament training, and these naturalized Azo women are responsible for farming most of the fields at home.

Don't underestimate this group of Azo women, all of them are stronger than the men of the He tribe. Although they were a little stupid at first, they are all good at farming now.

In terms of land, the northernmost Ukido has controlled the Yujin area, which is the east of the Sapporo Plain and is also the location of the largest farm in Hokkaido in later generations.

At this time, the Mikawa Yujin land was still a plain covered with forests and swamps. Ukita just established a pioneering base again, and had no ability to expand further.

Master Xuanzhu said in the letter that the Seto family brought back, "The land of Ezo is vast and sparsely populated. In order to protect the territory, all the people are soldiers."

He differentiates by region, every 200 to 250 households is a village, and each household subcontracts and reclaims 10 ping (about 1000 mu) of land, and refers to the "Four Fields Law" of Yu Xiduo's ability to use 1000 ping of it as a grant. The fields are allowed to be passed down from generation to generation by the people in the farmland, and another [-] pings are cultivated for open fields.

Due to the integrity of Hokkaido's land mass, these lands are not as dog-toothed as in the West Country. Xuanzhu directly divided the cultivated land into blocks of 54 meters by 270 meters.

There are independent roads and fences in every 10 blocks. The residential land is adjacent to the road, and the cultivated land is basically far away from the road and close to the water source.

At the same time, Ezo also relied on the local animal husbandry resources to use pack horses in the cultivated land earlier. Xuanzhu divided the land into neat squares, and it was also convenient for the local people to pull the pack horses to reclaim wasteland and grow wheat.

There are currently more than 5000 households in Ezo.At the time of the war, more than 3000 elite soldiers could be pulled out, and together with the tribal soldiers from the surrounding vassals, Ukido's rule in Ezo had been initially consolidated.

However, due to the insufficient population base, Xuanzhu did not dare to continue to develop into the Sapporo area. There is also the largest tribe in Ezo, which is said to have more than 2 soldiers.

Xuanzhu is currently infiltrating through trade and kinship, with the main goal of stabilizing the existing territory, opening up wasteland, and multiplying the population in a short period of time.

It is worth mentioning that the Jiushan Shigeke who moved from Bizen Jiushan Castle to Ezo, the new Jiushan Castle he built now has a territory of 6000 shi and more than 3000 people, which exceeds his Zhixing in Bizen. On behalf of Xiujia, Xuanzhu recognized all of its pioneering success.

Looking at the data, Xiujia was actually very satisfied with the work of the local officials in Ezo. Over there, it took 4 years to open up a new land in the icy and snowy, swampy land.

The development speed of the Ezo region exceeded Hideka's expectations. He originally thought that it would take about 20 stones for the Ezo area to reach the height of [-] stones until the time of Sekigahara.

But according to the current speed of development, it doesn't take 10 years for Ukido to become the biggest force in the land of Ezo.

At present, the main factor that delays the control of Ezo by the Yuxi family is the population. There is no good way for this Xiu family, after all, he can't change people out of thin air.

Although he has encouraged business and increased the population through the method of polygamy in Ezo and the children born to the public, but it will be 20 years before this group of people can grow up, and it will not solve the problem of his previous life. Increased strength needs.

The current plan is to attract refugees, but Japan's Japanese population cannot be attracted, so they can only try their best to attract Koreans and Ming people to immigrate to Ezo, Xiujia thought for a moment and said to the Seto family.

"Kichizaemon, please remember: we can't passively attract refugees to move to Ezo, we should let the refugees who migrated to the local area actively return to their hometowns to attract refugees."

"Previously, Master Xuanzhu's method of dividing villages and population by region was very good. Can this policy be applied to these foreign refugees?"

"For example, encourage the refugees they attract to arrange together nearby. Every time a new household is attracted, the propagandist will be rewarded with rice, gold and silver. If 10 households are attracted, they will be made landowners, and if 100 households are attracted, they will be directly Become a village chief or even a warrior, and give him the power to manage the village."

"We can't stay in the vicious circle of eating big pots of rice. The matter of attracting refugees is actually very simple. The most important thing for the people is survival and land. North Korea and the Ming Dynasty have seriously annexed the land. Just let them see that the land of Yezo is a piece of land. The unexplored blessed land is naturally willing to come to Ezo to live."

"In addition to the ever-changing businessman's propaganda, after all, it is just a legend of outsiders, and it is not as good as the real homecoming of a fellow villager."

"There is an old saying in the Ming Dynasty: riches and honors do not return to their hometowns, such as walking in brocade clothes at night. I think the group of new leaders are very willing to wear gold and silver to return to their hometowns to show off."

"It is a very good propaganda model for the first group of citizens to dress well and bring their wives back to North Korea and the Ming Dynasty. Bringing the old with the new, the pioneering population of Ezo will surely develop rapidly. "

What Xiujia said opened up a new vision for the Seto family, especially the phrase "the rich and the rich do not return home, like walking at night in brocade clothes" deeply expresses human nature, and the Seto family deeply agrees.

The matter of Ezo has been slowly getting on the right track, and Xiujia is just providing a little advice on top of the main policy to speed up the pace of Ezo's development.

In Xiujia's plan, Ezo will be a place for population evacuation, a place for exporting raw materials, and a place for dumping goods for a long time to come.For Ezo to develop, it just needs to go with the flow.

After chatting about Ezo, the Xiu family asked him again, "I like the new iron cannon you presented last time, but if things like armaments are decorated with patterns, they will lose their original mission and the price will be false. high."

"When you have time, ask the Spanish businessman how much the most common new iron cannon is worth, and see if you can buy dozens or hundreds of them for imitation."

"I noticed that his core component is on the spring structure. This component is probably very fragile. Since the Spaniards can take him to the other side of the world, if they want to come to their home port near them, there must be craftsmen in charge of logistical maintenance. .”

"If you can send people to Luzon and invite craftsmen to cast key structures for your family, it will be a great achievement."

"The other thing is casting cannons. In this battle of Sanuki, the role of cannons is particularly significant. I have decided that my family will cast copper cannons by myself. When I send people to Luzon this time, I will recruit their cannon casting craftsmen." It's also a matter of urgency."

"In addition, I saw that livestock farming is widely used in your Ezo region. I think animals are more common than human labor in the local area. After you go back, the last few merchant ships brought back some pack horses and cattle this year to help develop agriculture and save people's labor. So You can discuss with Chun Gongliang the funds you need, and he will allocate them to you."

The Seto family is writing down the arrangement of the Hideo family in their own notebook, and after confirming the completeness to the Hideo family, they bid farewell to the Hideo family and left. Ask Xiujia questions.

"My lord, I have no objection to the development of new iron cannons in my family, but should I reconsider the matter of casting cannons? Nowadays, there is a shortage of copper in the country and everywhere, and the cost of casting copper cannons may be more expensive than purchasing directly from Westerners." what!"

Hideka looked at Hanabang Masayuki and knew that his worries were correct. Japan is rich in gold and silver, but lacks copper mines, and lack of copper means that it lacks the key raw materials for casting cannons. Astronomical figures.

But Hideka knows that the Besshi Copper Mine in the east of Iyo will be the largest copper mine in Japan in the next 500 years.

And Besko is not far to the west of Sanuki controlled by the Xiu family. Not far from the foot of the mountain is the seaport, which can directly transport copper ore to Okayama for smelting and casting cannons. It is a strategic location that the Xiu family must absolutely master.

At this moment, Besshi has not been discovered yet, and it will not be mined by the Sumitomo family, a royal businessman of the shogunate, until a century later, becoming the main financial pillar of the shogunate in the middle period.

Therefore, Xiujia said to Huafang Zhengxing, "The casting of cannons does not happen overnight. First, the Internet talents will start casting from the big iron cannons, and gradually produce artillery. I will naturally have a way to solve the raw materials in the future. You can rest assured."

Fortunately, Huafang saw that the Xiu family insisted, so she stopped talking and resigned to the Xiu family to leave the city.

(End of this chapter)