Zhao Xin wanted to go to Sendai Domain to attract people, but what he didn't know was that at this time, Sendai Domain was already in huge trouble due to famine.
It is said that in addition to the four great famines that occurred in the Edo period, the "Horeki Famine" that occurred from the second year of Horeki (1753) to the sixth year of Horeki (1757), centered in the northeastern region of Honshu, is considered to be the second largest famine.
Yu Tianming, Tianbao's most serious regional famine.
Due to the famine in Hori and the general request of the shogunate, the financial burden of the Sendai Domain was greatly increased.
You must know that the shogunate's general invitation in the Edo period was based on the stone high system. For example, the Date family, a daimyo with a height of 620,000 stone in public but more than 2 million stone in private, the Tokugawa family had already
The investigation revealed everything.
I will kill you while you are sick! Hurry up and start the large-scale project. This bridge will be built by the Date family, and this city wall will also belong to you.
However, the Ida family still insists on saving face. Not only is it difficult to save money, it also insists on maintaining its gorgeous and majestic style.
When Date Masamune was in power, he went to Kyoto to meet Hideyoshi and held a grand parade of 3,000 people. Later generations began to call those who behaved in exaggerated and gorgeous manners "Date people" or "Date men". Therefore.
, even if the successive lords of the Sendai Domain did not compete with the Tokugawa family for the world, they still had to inherit the one-eyed dragon family tradition. The participation in the lordship became an excellent occasion to compete with the Tokugawa family and other feudal clans.
The finances are so tight that the number of people attending each duty call cannot be less than 3,000. (The largest number of people in history was when Yoshioka Yoshioka, the eighth generation shogun, was in power. The Sendai Domain’s duty team was as high as 3,480.
Ten people not only defeated the Satsuma Domain, but its scale was comparable to the Kaga Domain, which was said to be a million stones high.)
Under the huge financial pressure caused by the desperate need to save face and suffer punishment, the Sendai Domain has restored the previously abolished "rice purchase law" since the first year of Tenmei. The first is to forcibly purchase the tribute rice distributed to retainers in the domain at low prices, and the second is to use
The remaining rice after farmers paid their annual tributes was purchased at a lower price and shipped to Edo for sale to make up for the clan's financial shortfall.
The consequence of what the Sendai Domain did was that the peasants in the domain did not have rice stored in their homes, and the local tycoons did not store rice either. As a result, rice smuggling became rampant and the price of rice skyrocketed.
When the "Shanbei" freeze hit in the second year of Tenmei's reign, the Date family didn't take it seriously at all, and did not purchase grain from other high-yield areas. Therefore, in the spring of the fourth year of Tenmei's reign, famine immediately broke out in the area under its jurisdiction.
The top bosses immediately panicked because there was no food to help them!
As of the end of February in the fourth year of Tenmei, hundreds of townspeople and farmers in Sendai Domain had starved to death. Of course, those landless farmers who fled to Sendai Domain were "non-humans". Inhumans are not human beings at all, so how many people die every day
No one cares about it, and it won't be included in government statistics.
Katayama Kanbei, the co-worker of the Matsushima Town Administrative Office, dragged his tired body back home. Since Masato, he has been busy dealing with robberies and fights every day. Due to the outbreak of famine, the originally peaceful Matsushima Town
It's also messy.
As the disaster continues to intensify, cannibalism has begun to appear in surrounding villages.
This morning, Katayama received an order from the town. On a black market outside the town, someone was selling human flesh disguised as dog meat, and he needed to lead a team to arrest him immediately.
After Kanbei Katayama led a dozen of his men and more than a hundred others to kill all the black market dealers, he discovered that those bastards chopped up the flesh of the recently deceased and mixed it with weeds and leaves.
Together, they are sold in baskets pretending to be dog meat.
Katayama Kata'er was so angry that he flew into a rage on the spot. He pulled out his knife and was about to kill those bastards. Fortunately, everyone held him tightly, so those bastards selling human flesh escaped.
Several colleagues kept trying to persuade him, why bother with these bastards? Anyway, their final end was to be taken to the river beach and "shot". (The person was tied to a shelf, and then two spears, one left and one right, were stabbed to death at the same time.
)
However, one of the several arrested bastards sneered at Katayama Kanbei who was being hugged with an indifferent expression: "If you samurai masters hadn't taken away all our food reserves, we would
Why bother doing this! Master, tell me, what are we going to eat?!"
Yeah, what do they eat?!
After Katayama Kanbei came out of the training camp, all he could think about was that man's roar. Not to mention the peasants, even low-level samurai like them could hardly bring the pot to light at home.
The feudal clan forcibly purchased the tribute rice distributed as wages at a low price. At the same time, the price of rice on the market soared, and the little money obtained could not buy much food. After the famine broke out, the price of rice doubled again.
If Katsu Kaishu hadn't presented him with a small deposit of 20 taels before leaving last year, Katayama Kanbei's family would have starved to death.
"Master, we don't have much rice at home." During dinner, my wife Duohe mentioned it gently.
Hearing this, Kanbei Katayama couldn't help but put down his chopsticks and rice bowl.
"Master, tell me, what shall we eat?!"
The contemptuous and angry face of the farmer appeared before his eyes again.
"Master, what's wrong with you?" The wife put down the bowl and chopsticks in her hands and looked at Kanbei Katayama worriedly.
The two daughters are still young and can eat. Now they are holding a bowl of brown rice, with some pickles and home-pickled seaweed, and they are very delicious.
"I had a full meal at lunch, so I'm not hungry now. You can eat." Katayama smiled at his family, then stood up and left.
His wife Duohe stared at her husband with a worried look on her face.
Katayama Kanbei's home is only about 30 square meters, which was left by his grandfather. Otherwise, with his small salary, he would not be able to afford it. In the small yard, there are more than a dozen radishes and a few eggplants.
, and a little green onion.
Katayama Kanbei was sitting on the porch, looking into the distance, not knowing what he was thinking. "Gu~gu~" protest came from his empty stomach, and he raised his hand to rub his stomach with a wry smile.
There were footsteps beside him, and Dohe took the bowl of rice he had left and only had two bites of it and placed it in front of Katayama, along with a pot of hot tea.
"The rice is cold, so let's soak it in tea soup and eat it." Duohe did not point out that her husband was lying about being full at noon. She was just worried that the only man in the family, the head of the family, must not fall down.
"Today I went to buy rice, but I didn't expect that the price of a liter of rice in the rice store had risen to 100 yuan. I didn't bring enough money at the time, so I ran back and took out some more money. When I went back, the price of rice had risen to 105 yuan.
Money. Many neighbors scolded the shop owner for being evil."
(As mentioned earlier, in the Edo period, one stone of rice equaled ten bushels, or one hundred liters, which is about 130 kilograms today. In an era when rice was the main source of food, a family of four would have to eat 2 kilograms of rice a day.
OK. If you are a coolie, at least 1.5 to 2 kilograms of rice per person per day is enough.)
"Oh? No one cares?" A trace of anger flashed in Katayama's eyes.
"I heard that the owner of that rice shop is attached to Mr. Ishikawa. Who dares to take care of it?"
Ishikawa-sama is the elder of Sendai Domain's clan, Ishikawa Murafumi. This person is the ninth generation head of the Tsunoda Ishikawa family. In the twelfth year of the Hōryū calendar (1762), the thirteen-year-old Ishikawa Murafumi succeeded the family governor and became Tsunoda.
Lord of Ishikawa.
Duohe's tone was relaxed and flat, as if he was telling someone else's story.
"Does the family have enough money?" Katayama Kanbei turned to look at his wife and asked in a low voice.
"Don't worry, I still have a lot of the 20 taels of gold that your friend gave me last year. I plan to buy more rice tomorrow to prevent the rice store from raising the price again."
Katayama nodded upon hearing this, expressing his agreement with his wife's decision.
"Master, when do you think this famine will end?" Duohe asked worriedly.
Katayama shook his head and sighed. Judging from the current situation, where is the beginning?
Suddenly, a person flashed through his mind. He remembered that person had said to him last year that it seemed that the famine would take at least five or six years to end.
"Ah, I don't know what happened to that young man Katsu Kaishu?" Katayama patted his forehead, and then, the figure of Zhao Xin and the strange boat appeared in his mind.
"Eat quickly, the tea will be cold soon." His wife Duohe reminded Katayama worriedly, and then stood up and returned to the house.
"It's been a long time since I had eel rice." Katayama thought silently.
Takasakiya, a restaurant in the town that specializes in eel rice, suddenly closed down a month ago, and the owner and his wife have left Osaka to join relatives.
Katayama poured hot tea into the bowl and thought to himself: "Katsu Kaishu, spring has arrived, will you come back?"
"Lord, the dock has been completely laid." Sheng Haizhou said after saluting Zhao Xin.
Zhao Xin said that he immediately got off the watchtower and prepared to go to the beach to take a look at the situation. Sheng Haizhou and Li Ji followed Zhao Xin closely.
Liu Sheng and the others have been gone for seven days. If nothing else happens, they will be back the day after tomorrow. If the aborigines who launched the attack can be dealt with by them, then Zhao Xin can lead the team to leave with peace of mind.
Walking to the beach, Zhao Xin saw that the simple pier modules he bought had been assembled. The long light red trestle stretched out from the beach to the sea like a pair of big hands. The longest trestle stretched out for more than two hundred meters.
meters away.
"Has the water depth there been measured?" Zhao Xin turned to ask Sheng Haizhou.
"I tested it with a rope and a hammer. The shallow water area here is very short. At the southernmost trestle, the water depth has exceeded forty bays." Li Ji said quickly from the side.
A room in the ancient island country was 6.3 feet, which is about 1.82 meters in modern times. Zhao Xin converted it in his mind, okay! The water depth is already more than 70 meters. It is really a natural deep-water port!
He then said to the walkie-talkie on his shoulder: "Deng Fei, Deng Fei, did you hear that? It's over."
Soon, Deng Fei's answer came over the walkie-talkie. Zhao Xin immediately told Deng Fei that the dock had been set up and the water depth at the southernmost end of the trestle was more than 70 meters, so the Thor could be driven to the shore.
It is said that the docking process of large ships is a very troublesome matter. Generally, the mooring cables can only be docked by jacking or pulling the tugboat. Zhao Xin originally wanted to buy two fully-rotating port tugboats.
But the problem is that no one drives it. Driving a tugboat is not like driving a yacht. It requires strong professional skills.
In response to this situation, the Thor, which originally had two fixed thrusters at the bottom of the bow, was installed with two computer-controlled pod thrusters at the stern during the early transformation (the propulsion motor was placed on the
The outside of the cabin is directly connected to the propeller and can rotate horizontally within 360° to achieve vector propulsion.) This thing is easy to use, but it is very troublesome to maintain and extremely expensive.
On the Thor, Deng Fei stared nervously at the three computer screens in front of him, carefully manipulating the pods on the bow and bottom of the ship. If he hadn't been guarding the Thor during the early stages of modification, he wouldn't have been able to play with this thing.
.
A few hours later, Deng Fei, who was sweating profusely from nervousness, finally slowly docked the boat beside the five-meter-wide simple trestle. Zhao Xin, who was on the shore, led a group of more than a dozen people to hurriedly dock the boat.
The few cables that were thrown were firmly tied to the cable piles.
After the ship stopped and the huge anchor dropped, everyone let out a sigh of relief. After the gangway was lowered, veterinarians Liu Zheng, Pan Xiucheng, Heng Ji, Yalha and others began to board the ship, preparing to bring the horses down.
"Sir, we also want to help." On the beach, a Qing prisoner suddenly stood up and walked towards Zhao Xin, who was walking back to the shore.
"Go back and sit down!" Jiuzang drew out his sharp samurai sword and shouted sternly at the Qing soldiers.
Zhao Xin turned his head and squinted his eyes, staring at the Qing soldier who came up to speak for a while, and then asked: "Can you speak Chinese?"
When the prisoner saw Zhao Xin questioning him, he quickly stood up and knelt down and said, "It will take a while. I once went to Sichuan and followed A Dashuai (Dingxi General A Gui) to fight against Xiao Shaluoben."
"What's your name? Are you an old Manchu or a Kurkhachi?"
"The villain's name is Samusu. He is from Kurkhaqi. His family is in Hunchun. His ancestors moved to Xianghuangqi in the third year of Tiancong's reign. In the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi's reign, they moved from Suifen, Wusuli to Hunchun."
Historically, father and son Nurhachi and Huang Taiji conquered the outer Northeast and gathered various ethnic minorities in the Suifenhe, Ussuli and Heilongjiang river basins under their control. Among them, the Xibo people were killed the most. Although these aborigines also put up constant resistance.
, it is a pity that the aboriginal tribes who live in scattered places and have backward weapons cannot defeat the wolf-like Manchu Bajala soldiers, and they can only surrender in the end.
Zhao Xin thought about the information he had read before, nodded and said: "This place is thousands of miles away from Hunchun. Even if you escape, you will not come out of the mountain alive. Do you all know this?"
Samusu lay on the ground, kowtowed and said: "I know, sir. You and your men are gods from heaven. I don't dare to think anything wrong. All we ask for is a few meals in exchange."
Eat well. If a villain tells lies, he would rather be struck by lightning."
After listening to Samusu's weird Chinese accent, Zhao Xin showed a subtle smile on his face.