Back to the end of Ming Dynasty to be a warlord

Chapter 299 Gathering of Refugees
The reason why Yang Chao set up a scholar to practice martial arts, which is considered harsh or even insulting by the scholars of this era, is deeply considered.

Because the literati in Ming Dynasty were too lacking in blood.

And these people have control of the culture, which leads to the lack of blood in the main culture, and the culture will make the nation weaker and weaker.

This is the result of long-term cultural development, roughly starting from the Song Dynasty, and it was also formed with the improvement of the imperial examination system.

There are no mistakes in the imperial examination itself, but the content of the imperial examination is too scientific, and it is fully biased towards writing ability.

Therefore, every scholar has been immersed in reading the Four Books and Five Classics since childhood. He does not work hard and does not distinguish between the five grains. Two words.

Whether the ruler did it intentionally or unintentionally, Yang Chao couldn't say for sure.

But it is very clear that as the body of the scholars who master culture weakens due to long-term inactivity, the culture with their spiritual will will also weaken more and more.

In fact, men are naturally aggressive. Don’t you see uneducated wild children in the countryside. How can there be no one who doesn’t fight, not to mention people, even male animals must fight, otherwise there will be no territory and no mate. Aggressiveness is male Biological nature naturally includes men.

But each of these scholars, because of their weakened bodies and immersion in literary ethics, gradually this kind of cultural education suppressed their aggressive nature and became bloodless, and they later pushed the culture further towards frailty, It's a vicious cycle.

Before the Song Dynasty, this situation was not obvious. First, because the imperial examinations were not well developed, there was no atmosphere of scholars studying literature desperately. Second, Confucianism at that time still had the style of ancient times, and did not completely abandon martial arts. Confucius The six arts of a gentleman advocated include archery.

Just look at the Tang Dynasty. This is one of the most staunch eras in China. Civil officials like Changsun Wuji could follow Tang Taizong to charge into battle, and famous officials like Wei Zheng advocated the complete massacre of Turkic people on the grassland. It can be seen that although there is some flavor of genocide in it, it reflects the extremely staunch temperament of a literati.

As a result, in the Song Dynasty a generation later, jealousy began to weaken. Scholars no longer practiced archery, but instead devoted themselves to classics.

To say that these people are also very persevering in studying, ten years of hard work, enduring a life of poverty, it is very hard to study, and all of them who can read are top-notch people with extremely high IQs, but they have exhausted their physical strength. Become frail.

You can't blame these people, the system is like this, they have no way out in martial arts, only in reading, so each and every one of the poor family put all their energy on reading and literature, where there is time for martial arts, and there may not be conditions , Poor culture and rich martial arts, the cost of martial arts training is much more than that of studying, and the humble family simply cannot afford it.

Therefore, it was the system that forced these scholars with perseverance, perseverance, and top intelligence to abandon martial arts and follow the path of literature.

Yang Chao still can't change the institutional issues, but he is a practical man with the ability to act, and he believes in the philosophy of not talking about reasons or conditions, but just doing it, so Yang Chao plans to start from himself.

The batch of scholars I recruited were of course the most embarrassing ones, otherwise it would be impossible to agree to such harsh conditions, and IQ is not considered top-notch, otherwise it is impossible to fail the exam for a scholar.

But Yang Chaoning can use these not-to-be top people, but also insist on training scholars, so he keeps a large number of smart people out of the door.

In addition to long-term considerations, the original intention of reinjecting blood into the national culture also has short-term considerations. After all, although these scholars are Yang Chao's staff, they will inevitably go to the battlefield in the future. They are desperate, but they have to be able not to be scared and run away.

This kind of courage cannot be restrained by discipline alone. You must train them and make them strong before they have courage. Feared by the soldiers, he abandoned the city and fled.If the same is true for the scholars under Yang Chao, even if he sets strict military regulations, they will involuntarily want to escape. Only by training their physiques to be strong and giving them a courageous basis can they not run away.

Of course, if there is a chance, Yang Chao still hopes to change the system and not overthrow the imperial examination. That thing is the most elite thing developed by the Chinese, and it is highly respected by Westerners. Later, the British were the first to study and established the civil service examination. system, but the Chinese want to overthrow her and introduce variants from the West.

Changed to Yang Chao, only a little modification is needed to completely change the view, such as adding some practical things to the content of the imperial examination. The art of war, instead of relying on the Four Books and Five Classics no matter what it is like now, can only recruit a large number of false Taoists who only talk about benevolence, righteousness and morality, and they themselves don't believe in it.

Of course, everyone needs to exercise their bodies. This is also necessary. Is the body the capital of the revolution? It is cultivated with great difficulty, but the result is short-lived, which is the loss of the country.

Because of these long-term and short-term considerations, Yang Chao trained these scholars in the army.

Of course, these scholars are not soldiers, they only need to receive basic training, and they don't need to go to battle, and their names will not be included in the military register. They are Yang Chao's staff, not soldiers, otherwise these scholars would not have come .

However, after repeated observations, these soldiers' ability to grasp is indeed very poor. They are obviously smart people, but they are not as good as a fishing soldier in practicing military posture and steps. This probably has little to do with the brain, but with the muscles. Remember it more closely.

So two months have passed, and the pace training of these scholars has not yet been completed, while Haizhou Minzhuang, who started training at the same time, has been practicing assassination for a month.

Of course, Haizhou Minzhuang's progress is definitely not because they are so much better than scholars, but because their foundation is good. Yang Chao has been in Haizhou for two months and has never stopped training these people, so these people come here After arriving in Nanjing, you only need to undergo some adaptive training and recovery, and then you can start martial arts assassination training.

And according to the situation feedback, their assassination practice is almost the same, and the next step is to be assigned to different general banner corps, and start more professional bird guns, bows and arrows, and even cavalry training.

As for the new arrivals from Haizhou, although they are still in the military posture, no one doubts that they may be able to walk out of the new barracks in a month or two. On the contrary, whether the batch of scholar soldiers of their predecessors can go out , not necessarily yet.

After looking at the situation, Yang Chao didn't specifically intervene, and left. The system he established has slowly entered the right track. Like a machine, it can operate by itself. What Yang Chao has to do is to supervise It's good that the machine is running normally, and it doesn't get out of control.

Military training is the business of Jin Yong and Lao Jin. Lao Jin has done a good job, and there are a large number of former veterans who have turned into military training instructors. Even Jin Yong is very relaxed, let alone Yang Chao.

So Yang Chao left the barracks soon, and went back to deal with other things, such as opening up wasteland, repairing the barracks, and so on.

Everything is in order. Thanks to the active efforts of a large number of soldiers, brothers and parents, pieces of wasteland have been leveled out, and now grass seeds are sprinkled. Yang Chao promises to buy fodder according to the market price. After all, Yang Chao wants to raise horses.

Speaking of that batch of horses, there are only more than 6000 horses left now. When they were in Haizhou, there were 8000 horses. , there were about [-] horses left.

Although Yang Chao invited several grooms from the Xiaoling Guard who specialize in raising horses, they still couldn't stop these war horses from adapting to the climate in the south of the Yangtze River, and some war horses continued to get sick. However, after careful care of the grooms, black beans, millet and other concentrated feed After feeding, he gradually got better, and now he is no longer losing weight. When he fully recovers, Yang Chao should train cavalry.

However, it is impossible to feed war horses all the time. The groom said that horses still need to eat grass, otherwise they will get sick, so planting grass is very necessary. The Mongols occupied the Central Plains for nearly a hundred years and brought various pastures. Horses are raised in the royal garden of Xiaolingwei all the year round, and there is a large area of ​​artificially planted pasture, so the grass seeds are not difficult to find.

Yang Chao planted tens of thousands of acres of pasture grass, plus rice bran and other things, enough to feed tens of thousands of war horses, so Yang Chao was not worried about not being able to support these war horses, but worried that they would die of illness.

In addition to land reclamation, planting grass and raising horses, it is the dock.

The year before last, Yang Chao had cleared the pier, but it was just the old Shuying Wharf, using giant logs to fix the sand, and hollowing out some waterways to park ships. It is no problem to dock warships, but it is not convenient enough to dock civilian ships.

So after agreeing with Shi Kefa to do maritime trade, Yang Chao began to rebuild the pier, and still contracted it to Bai Jiangtou to rebuild the wooden pier into a masonry pier. It was the wharf designed by Yang Chao himself for Bai Jiangtou.

Yang Chao is a student of architecture, so it's easy to draw some drawings of the wharf, and he doesn't need to draw them in detail. He only needs to give a sketch, and an expert like Bai Jiangtou can perfect it. But he really draws a detailed three-view, Bai Jiangtou. The craftsman is also worried about whether he can understand it.

The new wharf designed by Yang Chao will extend from the Qinhuai River Shuying area to the Yangtze River. The long-term plan is [-] feet long and has [-] berths, ten of which can berth [-]-ton giant ships, and thirty can berth The thousand-ton ship, and the rest are also considerable docks, and there is no problem with Yang Chao's three-masted ship berthing.

Bai Jiangtou tried his best to persuade Yang Chao about this. What he said was quite reasonable. There were no such big ships near Nanjing, and there was no need to build such a big wharf. However, in Yang Chao's plan, once the sea trade opened, Many ships sail directly from Xinjiangkou to enter the sea. He doesn't mind letting the Zheng family's fleet dock directly at Xinjiangkou when the time is right, but that will have to wait until the court feels at ease with the Zheng family.

In addition, Yang Chao plans to build a super ship by himself. Yang Chao cannot always rely on the Zheng family. Sooner or later, Yang Chao will directly trade with the sea. Since he has the conditions, he will naturally build a good base for his future fleet.

Therefore, besides silently slandering Yang Chao's prodigal son, Bai Jiangtou can only continue to help contract the wharf project.

In fact, Yang Chao's financial pressure is also very high. Once the pier opened, he has been unable to make ends meet recently.

Land reclamation is nothing to Yang Chao, and the profit from shipping is enough to support it, but after planning to open sea trade, the cost suddenly increased.

Needless to say, the port also has to spend money for shipbuilding. Although the wood is provided by Shi Kefa and the construction is also distributed to the Longjiang Shipyard, Yang Chao is really not at ease. If it is Shi Kefa, it really does not cost a penny. Take out the boats from the shipyard, but these boats belong to Yang Chao, so Yang Chao dare not challenge the unspoken rules of the shipyard. Not to mention anything else, those boatmen's crude construction is enough for Yang Chao to drink a pot.

After discussing with Yao Jiangtou of the shipyard, Yang Chao agreed to give the shipyard 300 taels of silver for each three-masted ship, and Yao Jiangtou agreed to help Yang Chao build it carefully.

As for the large materials allocated by Shi Kefa, according to Master Yao's calculations, it is enough to build fifty three-masted chasing boats. After private discussions, the shipyard also agreed not to blackmail Shi Kefa's materials, and helped Yang Chao build warships. Chao wanted to give Craftsman Yao 1 taels of silver at once, and Yang Chao agreed. Originally, he could only get 1 taels of silver, and the extra 500 taels of silver was only [-] taels per ship on average, which was quite cheap.

Therefore, Yang Chao needs to give 2 taels of silver to the shipyard. The barracks are still being rebuilt. The old Zuosi camp was naturally perfect, but although the new barracks have also been renovated, the facilities are not perfect. For example, there is no bathroom in the Zuosi barracks, so Need to add.

Moreover, it is impossible for Yang Chao's future expansion of the army to be satisfied with a thousand general camp, so at least the front or rear thousand general camp must be rebuilt. Given the abandoned state of these two barracks, the repair and reconstruction are not much different, which is at least A project worth tens of thousands of taels of silver.

But the real cost of money is the port wharf, which is five hundred feet long and more than two miles long. Even if it is placed in later generations, it is not a small port. It is impossible to complete it without hundreds of thousands, and millions of taels of silver. To build it, generally you can only rely on the power of the state, but Yang Chao has to build it by himself, and it is indeed a lot of pressure.

Even if there are still more than 10 taels of silver snatched from Huai'an, the Jinchai Building can still get 6 taels of dividends, and shipping can earn [-] to [-] taels of silver this year, but compared to the cost of the wharf, it is still a drop in the bucket. Fortunately, the wharf The project funds are not allocated at one time, but paid gradually according to the project quantity, but it is enough to make Yang Chao nervous for many years to come, and there will probably be no surplus after raising troops.

Fortunately, labor was cheap enough, and the siege of the docks attracted a large number of unemployed people, but they dragged their families to build shacks on the docks, and the whole family lived on the docks, which really caused a lot of trouble.

(End of this chapter)