Daming Yinghua

Chapter 198 Cracks
Most of the craftsmen who smelted and cast gun barrels at Zheng Haizhu Songjiang Firearms Factory, including those invited by Zheng Zhilong from the Frankie Gun Factory in Macau, were illiterate, let alone draw drawings.

Of course, Sun Yuanhua and Li Zhizao welcome Gu Shouqian to join.

Mr. Gu knows "Boundary Painting" and can draw the perspective of pavilions, towers and pavilions. He can also draw the side view and top view of guns and artillery accurately. After marking the names and sizes of each part, he can use them as precious materials for the artillery factory. retain.

Gu Shouqian is also a scholar, Sun and Li, who have raised people's fame, talk about learning from Western techniques to strengthen the army, but on the surface they appear to be in harmony with illiterate craftsmen. In their bones, they are like private entrepreneurs of later generations. The concentration of scholars in the team is quite fancy.

Then Gu Shouqian was in a good mood, thinking that he, like his wife Han Ximeng, began to be busy every day, not just traveling in the mountains and rivers, singing the wind and singing the moon.

After a fulfilling half a month like this, Gu Shouqian reckoned that it was almost time for Han Ximeng to return to Songjiang.

He was thinking about how to show his embroidered appearance with a spring breeze on his face when he saw his wife and children. No, it was only Dong Erya who was waiting to come back.

"Master, Young Mistress ordered me to go to Mr. Han's weaving workshop and take two spinners to Chongming." Dong Erya said carelessly.

Gu Shouqian had doubts on his face: "Chongming people's spinning and weaving skills are also well-known in Southern Zhili. Why do we need us from Songjiang to teach them?"

"Returning to the young master, Mrs. Zheng found a novel spinning machine in Chongming. A single spinner can spin a lot of cotton threads at the same time. But the machine is missing arms and legs. The young lady and his wife have been thinking about it for several days. , I just want to invite a few capable women over there to take a look."

Gu Shouqian frowned as he listened.

He is a son of a rich family, and he knows nothing about spinning and has no interest in it.

The expectation for his wife to return home suddenly fell through, which made the husband's manic depression faintly rise.

"Erya, you're rambling on and on. You're so rambling. Have they figured it out, or haven't they figured it out? If Zheng Haizhu herself didn't figure out where the machine happened to be, how would she know where the machine is? How many balls of cotton yarn can be spun by one person at the same time? Does she feel that the two smart heads of herself and the young mistress are not enough, so she needs to add a few more to make things happen?"

Dong Erya is simple and honest, but not stupid.

She discerned the ridicule in and out of the male master's words, and froze in fear for a moment, not knowing how to reply.

Gu's mother, Mrs. Lu, has always been soft-hearted, so she calmed down and said to Erya Dong in a harmonious voice: "You go to Han's mansion to invite someone. By the way, after you arrive in Chongming this time, tell the young lady that the waking of stinging has passed, and the island is still alive. There must be more insects. Just leave the craftsmen there to study, and the young lady, she should take the young master back to Songjiang as soon as possible."

Erya Dong responded, and went to the back house to pack up two summer skirts of Han Ximeng and some puppet items of the young master Gu Zuoyou, and left Wenzhe Garden like a rabbit.

……

In mid-spring, the cottonseeds in the dry fields have been sown, but the season for transplanting rice seedlings in the paddy fields has not yet arrived.

Chongming Island, at the mouth of the Yangtze River, had a short period of slack for farming.

Zhengjiazhuang, with nearly 200 people, is much busier than the surrounding local villages.

The sea trade dividends sent by Mao Chengbei from Hangzhou Haoming Trading Co., the matchlock gun payment paid by Fujian Yu Zigao, plus the shipping insurance premiums for the Zhenjiang-Songjiang section of the canal, excluding various expenses of its own industries, and emergency expenses After the reserve, Zheng Haizhu transferred a small 500 taels of silver and asked the rice store opened by relatives in Yuezhi County to buy grain for three months. The remaining money was enough to buy a lot of tiles.

"Fellow folks, after a while in the south of the Yangtze River, it will be the rainy season. It's not good to smell musty and feel like a drowned chicken. Let's take advantage of the slack time and replace the thatch on the top of the head with tiles. At the end of the year, there will be cotton in the field. After the harvest, the salt cloth is also exchanged for money, we will replace the mud walls of the house with brick walls, and fortify the outside of the village."

After hearing Zheng Haizhu's mobilization, the farmers saw that the warehouse was full of the grain bought by Manager Wu, and the tiles had arrived in trucks, and their whole bodies were filled with the desire to improve the quality of life.

Even a girl like Hua Er, who is not yet at the age of Ji, has the spirit of taking the lead, and her efficiency in picking grass and laying tiles is not inferior to that of men.

When the thatched hut had a new look, the two instructors selected by Wu Bangde from Qi Jin in Zhenjiang, together with several canal trackers who had become soldiers of Zheng Haizhu and Han Ximeng, all came to Chongming Island to prepare for a month before the busy season. Here, Xu Yilong, led by Zheng Jiajun, began to train the young and strong Liao people.

Zheng Haizhu fully believed in Qi's army's training methods for the mandarin duck formation infantry, and Xu Yilong's training methods for the jumping to help the navy.

At the level of specific drills, Zheng Haizhu didn't bother to ask, but only watched the Songjiang Firearms Workshop send some machine guns, so that grassroots soldiers, whether on land or on ships, should get used to using firearms.

In terms of personnel organization, Zheng Haizhu divided the young and strong men into two echelons from the very beginning.

The first echelon is the most capable hundreds of people selected by the instructors. They enjoy the status of battalions and are divided into ten small teams for training.

During the training period, the battalion soldiers were given rations as usual, and each of them also received copper coins equivalent to half a tael of silver.

Wu Bangde told them that Mrs. Zheng is not a real guerrilla fighter like a male military officer. Madam took it out of her pocket. Looking at Daming, there is no other commander of the second battalion who can be so righteous.Take a look at Yao Qianhu, who is a dog in Beidao, who treats military households like tenants to exploit and humiliate them. After eating the flesh and blood of military households, he wants to fatten his bones.

The first batch of battalion soldiers were moved when they heard this, but Zheng Haizhu didn't really pretend to be great and outstanding.

Her current situation of raising soldiers is actually similar to that of Mao Wenlong a few years later in real history.In the early years of Chongzhen, Mao Wenlong couldn't get the military pay from the imperial court in Dongjiang Town, but he still led the soldiers to guard the country with hungry stomachs?Even Mao Shuai was forced to do nothing, and after playing in black and white the Emperor Chongzhen's request to do border trade in exchange for rations, he was charged by Yuan Chonghuan and Luo Zhi as "trafficking for self-fertilization" and included in the crimes that could be beheaded.

Is it bitter, is it tired?Think about what Mao Shuai has suffered.

Zheng Haizhu then looked at the grateful faces of the soldiers and said solemnly: "Wu Guanshi called me a Bodhisattva, but in fact I am a King Kong. You are all at the age that can kill tigers. If you don't train well... ..."

Having said that, Zheng Haizhu stopped and glanced at another thirty or forty young Liao people who were watching outside the school grounds.

That was the second echelon she named "Zhengjiazhuang Peasants", similar to the Xiangyong Reserve.The physical fitness of the peasants and soldiers is not bad, but when they are selected by the instructors, their reactions are relatively slow, or their strength is slightly weaker, so they are not eligible for the battalion.

Zheng Haizhu pointed to the peasants and men, and said to the battalion soldiers: "If you don't train hard, disobey the instructors, steal and play tricks, violate military discipline, or fail the instructor's performance test after one month, you will have to be demoted to the peasants and soldiers. , change farmers and soldiers to train, be my battalion, and get my salary!"

Everyone responded one after another, showing high fighting spirit and not to be outdone.

The instructors formed the battalion into formation, and according to their own characteristics, after setting up different types of arms such as spearmen, swordmen, shieldmen, and rattan shieldmen in a small formation of 12 people, the basic training began with exercising eyesight and reciting formulas.

Zheng Haizhu got into the mule cart driven by the young girl Hua Er, and went back to Tang Po's ancestral house in the county town to see the restoration progress of the Daming version of the "Spinning Jenny".

(End of this chapter)