A letter of credence was placed in front of Zhao Han.
When the Datong army sailed to North Korea, Mandahai had already withdrawn its troops. Seoul was completely plundered by these goods, and many people in Seoul were captured as civilian laborers to help transport the looted goods.
Li Zheng took thousands of people and landed near Pyongyang by boat, only biting off a piece of the Qing Dynasty's tail.
There were also gains, including killing hundreds of soldiers, rescuing more than 4,000 captured Korean people, and the property transported by these people.
The leader of North Korea, Li Ju, was placed under house arrest. The crown prince, Li Hao, established himself in a coup and quickly won the support of North Korean officials and people. Li Ju performed so poorly that North Korean officials and people alike complained about him. Maybe he could live a better life under another king.
After Li Hao succeeded to the throne, he was doing three things:
First, under the banner of "full of ZTE", they purged old officials who disobeyed them.
Second, ask Li Zheng’s Datong Army not to leave, but to be stationed in Baozhou from now on. Anyway, it was deserted there, and the Manchus had robbed them of ten houses and nine empty houses. After the Datong Army was stationed, North Korea provided food and grass in the first year, and in the second year it was supplied by the Qing Dynasty.
The Datong Army recruited refugees to cultivate supplies.
Third, request the Emperor of Datong to grant him the title of King of Korea and grant him the golden seal of the King of Korea.
Baozhou is located on the south bank of the Yalu River. It was a bridgehead built by the Liao Kingdom to attack Goryeo, and it was also the only place where the Manchu Qing Dynasty invaded Korea.
As long as the Datong Army is stationed in Baozhou, North Korea can rest easy and Li Hao can manage its internal affairs with peace of mind.
Zhao Han looked at the credentials in his hand and couldn't help but laugh: "The new leader of North Korea was full of clever tricks when he usurped the throne. How could he not know that it is easier to invite gods than to give them away? He invited the Datong Army to station and allowed the Datong Army to recruit on its own.
Aren’t you afraid that the entire Baozhou will be lost if the refugees colonize it?”
Instead, Li Banghua was surprised by Zhao Han's thoughts: "Your Majesty, the two countries have diplomatic relations and treat big things as small things. North Korea has been educated and has been a barrier to China for generations. At this time, North Korea is in trouble, but it also trusts me, China. How can the great power of China take advantage of others' dangers?
?Does Your Majesty still want to occupy Baozhou and not return it? Putting aside the big deal and small matter, North Korea has many mountains and little land, and has always been poor and remote. Even if it is occupied, it will be of little use. If the North Korean soldiers and civilians resist, when the time comes,
When North Korea uses troops, the grain taxes collected are not enough to cover the army’s expenses.”
"Haha, I'm overthinking it." Zhao Han instantly cleared up his confusion.
Neither King Li Hao of North Korea nor Li Banghua in front of him believed that China should occupy North Korean territory.
Moreover, Li Banghua has explained the reasons, which are divided into two aspects: political public opinion and practical pros and cons.
No matter what high-sounding reasons Zhao Han found, any invasion of North Korean territory in the future would cause the North Korean monarchs and ministers to alienate their moral integrity, and the scholars in China would also think that Zhao Han was "immoral."
North Korea is a poor place with cold weather and too many mountains and too little land. If you conquer it, you won't be able to grow much food. If you encounter resistance from the North Korean military and civilians, it will most likely become a loss-making business, and the cost of rule and maintenance will definitely remain high.
Jeju Island is an exception. At that time, Zhao Han needed land to raise horses.
Pang Chunlai didn't say too many words. He was too familiar with Zhao Han. Just listening to what Zhao Han said just now, he knew that he would definitely expand in North Korea in the future. After the decision was made, it was useless for anyone to give advice.
Zhao Han ordered: "Order the Ministry of Rites to arrange the canonization of the King of Korea. Order the Ministry of War to recruit peasant soldiers and train the 14th Division of the Datong Army. The soldiers of the 14th Division will be given priority to those who have wives and no children.
After the formation and training of the only son's peasant soldiers, and after the summer grain harvest, the officers, soldiers, and couples of the 14th Division went to Baozhou to settle down together."
Li Banghua looked in surprise, and he also understood that Zhao Han really wanted to invade Baozhou in North Korea.
Baozhou, on the border with North Korea, has long been empty. If the soldiers and soldiers of the Datong Army go there as well as their husbands, they will eventually become the main population of Baozhou.
Zhao Han continued: "Order the Ministry of Civil Affairs, select officials, and go to Baozhou with the army. After the officials go to Baozhou, they try to recruit Korean refugees and assign them fields to settle down. By the way, they also need to give surnames to the Korean farmers.
How can a person not have a surname?"
Li Banghua originally wanted to remonstrate, but he was too lazy to say anything after hearing this.
There are officials, troops, and immigrants, and they can also recruit Korean refugees to organize households and divide their fields. In just three to five years, Baozhou will essentially become Chinese territory, and the Korean king will not be able to take it back even if he wants to - there is no cost of occupation.
Then why not do it?
Li Banghua was not a pedantic scholar. He would support any business that was profitable and harmless, even if it violated Confucian ethics.
Zhao Han said: "Baozhou is adjacent to the territory under the jurisdiction of the Puppet Qing Dynasty. As long as the food there can be self-sufficient, our army can send troops from North Korea at any time. At that time, it will be a three-pronged attack on the Puppet Qing Dynasty, one from Shanhaiguan, one from Gaizhou, and one from North Korea.
!”
Tian Younian praised: "The pseudo-Qing Dynasty will definitely focus on one thing and lose the other."
Zhao Han also said: "The troops in the north are also insufficient. Order the Ministry of War to recruit peasant soldiers and form a new 15th Division. Henan and Shandong are short of food. After the 15th Division is organized and trained, it can be stationed in Xuzhou first. If there is a war, it can be immediately
Dispatch to go north."
In this way, the number of regular divisions will reach fifteen.
Four divisions plus cavalry, totaling 47,000 men and horses, were piled in Liaodong and Korea.
One division in Tianjin, one division in Dengzhou, and one division in Xuzhou. These 30,000 people can go to attack Liaodong, or they can be transferred to fight Li Zicheng at any time.
Four divisions were stationed in Henan, Hubei and the southwest of Beizhili, mainly to guard against Li Zicheng.
Two divisions were stationed in Sichuan, one to attack the chieftains in western Sichuan, and the other to attack the chieftains in eastern Sichuan and western Hunan.
The two divisions are stationed in Guangxi. After occupying the entire territory of Guangxi, they will cooperate with the Sichuan friendly forces to attack Yunnan and Guizhou.
The remaining troops were either the emperor's personal soldiers or the garrison of important ports.
As for the city defense forces in various places, they are all police establishments, and they are mostly recruited from veterans and peasant soldiers. They are only stationed permanently at the city gate, and the number is not very large. If bandits really attack the city, the entire city police can be mobilized, and the peasant soldiers in the suburbs can be mobilized.
It can also be assembled quickly.
Zhao Han carried out a large-scale expansion of the army. In addition to making strategic preparations, he was also adding promotion positions to soldiers and arranging positions for those generals who were demoted for meritorious service.
Li Zicheng lived in Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu, and there has been no movement.
According to the news coming back from the front line, the weather in the northwest is good this year. Li Zicheng seized the opportunity to organize households and people, and a large number of farmers settled down to divide their fields and cultivate land. More than ten years of drought and war have caused the contradiction between man and land in the northwest. Instead, it has become
There is too much land and too few people.
Li Zicheng could easily allocate land to the people without having to engage in land reform.
The northwest was actually prospering, and everything was getting better. However, officials were still greedy. Only under the pressure of Li Zicheng, the greed was not as bad as it was during the Chongzhen period, and the people could finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Many generals in Li Zicheng's uprising troops were also becoming increasingly corrupt, and they often secretly recruited refugees to work as tenants and hide the civilian population. For this reason, Li Zicheng repeatedly issued orders not to hide the population, and had already killed several generals.
In addition to developing internal affairs, we also need to eliminate warlords.
A large number of surrendered troops and generals were surrendered, but Li Zicheng intervened and reorganized them. If they disobeyed, they were beaten. More than ten surrendered generals rebelled, and all of them were beheaded by Li Zicheng's troops.
In addition, last year, Mongolia invaded Shanxi from the border, and about 20,000 Mongolian cavalry went south.
During the Little Ice Age, life was not easy on the grasslands. The Mongolians had a difficult life, so they had no choice but to come to Shanxi to plunder, but were killed by Li Zicheng's Dashun army and fled.
Li Zicheng, who had so many things to do, naturally had no time to come and fight Zhao Han.
The relationship between the two sides is not bad, and people-to-people trade has even resumed. But everyone knows that there is no room for others to sleep soundly beside the bed, and the war between the north and the south will only happen in a year or two.
Before Dashun and Datong go to war, there is also a possibility that the two parties will join forces to defeat Gushi Khan!
Gushi Khan unified Qinghai and Tibet last year. These are bitterly cold places and must be developed outward. The army under his command harassed Li Zicheng's Gansu while encroaching on Zhao Han's western Sichuan. At the same time, they provoked Dashun and Datong.
.
Between a bunch of war information, Zhao Han finally received good news from industry and commerce.
"Your Majesty, sir...I have improved the bed." Xu Zhengming, who devoted himself to building a helicopter, achieved results in less than half a year.
Zhao Han said happily: "Bring it in!"
Xu Zhengming's family has moved to Nanjing. The eldest son is his work assistant, and he and the guards brought the sutra bed in.
The weaving process is complex. Take weaving cotton as an example, there are many procedures to be done: ginning (removing seeds to make the cotton soft), spinning, warping, sizing, and weft insertion (weaving).
Warping is the first process of spinning cotton yarn into cotton cloth.
Xu Zhengming pointed to the sutra wheel in front of him and said: "It is much easier to improve this than to make a flying chair. Today's sutra wheel only has eight kilograms (filament gatherers), but the spinning wheel I improved has twenty kilograms!"
"How many people are needed to operate it?" Zhao Han asked.
Xu Zhengming said: "Two people."
The eight-wheel sutra car is also operated by two people, and the production efficiency is increased by 2.5 times.
The textile industry in the Ming Dynasty was very different between the north and the south.
The north still uses rake warping, while the south used creel warping in the Song Dynasty.
When weaving cotton, creel-type warping has better quality and greater output.
The southern creel-type warping technology initially used a dial car and only had one take-up device (one bunch). By the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the spool bed had been invented and had four take-ups.
The birth of Jiangxi's water conservancy spinning machine stimulated the development of Jiangnan's spinning machine.
So two years ago, craftsmen in Jiading County invented a warp bed with eight yarn collectors. Now, Xu Zhengming has improved the warp bed again and expanded the yarn collectors to twenty.
Zhao Han only stimulated and encouraged, and advanced the invention and improvement of the warp bed.
In the original history, by the middle and late Kangxi period, Chinese craftsmen had produced a warp bed with thirty silk collectors. Compared with one silk collector in the early Ming Dynasty, how huge the development was can be intuitively understood from the numbers.
Zhao Han asked: "Can we continue to improve?"
Xu Zhengming scratched his head and smiled naively: "Yes! If you give me another year or two, I will definitely be able to turn the sutra bed into thirty or fifty beds!"
"The ambition is commendable!" Zhao Han praised it.
In the development of textile machinery, all processes need to be improved. Xu Zhengming only improved the warping link, but there is still a long way to go.
Once the steam engine came out, all existing technological inventions could be installed on the steam engine.
Zhao Han asked: "How did you improve it?"
Xu Zhengming asked doubtfully: "Is it difficult? It was modified like that. You can easily understand how to modify the previous sutra bed at a glance."