When Jinxi City was defeated by the 19th Regiment and the 23rd Regiment, Shengjing City had been besieged for almost a month. Although it took such a long time, the city was not worried about food at all, but there was a slight shortage of coal and firewood. It was a loss.
It's summer now, so there's no need to light a fire to keep warm, and the consumption of firewood is relatively small.
As the companion capital of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, Shengjing was the foundation of the Qing court outside the customs. Not only was there the general Shengjing who was like the "Tu Emperor", but there were also five ministries of household affairs, etiquette, work, punishment, military affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which governed the entire Northeast.
, both in terms of food, money, and soldiers, they are very sufficient. In these years, the Qing army gathered a large army in Jilin to deal with Beihai Town, and almost half of the money, food and soldiers were supplemented from the Shengjing area.
Before Beihai Town built the Xingkai Lake and Shuangchengzi areas into farming areas, the Shengjing area was still the largest and most important grain-producing area outside Guanshi. When natural disasters occurred in the capital, Zhili, Shandong and other provinces, people often left Shengjing.
The region's shipping grains are provided for relief; Chahar, Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin and other places have poor harvests, and they also rely on them for relief.
The Qing Dynasty's grain storage system in Shengjing was divided into flag warehouses and civilian warehouses. The flag warehouse was reserved for the Eight Banners garrison and bannermen, and the civilian warehouse was the Changping warehouse. For example, the civilian warehouse in Chengde County under Fengtian Prefecture stored 40,000 shi of rice, and the flag warehouse
It is as high as 160,000 dan. The combined grain storage in the two granaries can save more than 100,000 people on food. Plus the private grain storage, there will be no problem in holding on for three or four months.
After talking about food, let’s talk about money. When it comes to wars, wages and reward money are spent like running water. But Shengjing is the least short of money. There are still more than three million taels of silver stored in the bank of the Ministry of Household Affairs in the city.
In the forty-second year of Qianlong's reign, because the Ministry of Household Affairs in Shengjing was unable to make ends meet, Qianlong specially sent an edict to allocate 10 million taels from the Ministry of Household Affairs in the capital for permanent storage to improve its finances. Later, the Qing government also allocated military pay for its troops in Jilin.
Come down, there is still so much left.
Finally, there are the soldiers, not to mention this. The number of Eight Banners soldiers in the city was originally as high as 15,000, and including their families, the total number was no less than 100,000. In the past, the number of soldiers was limited due to the lack of soldiers, which was a waste of money and food. Now, there are
No matter how many soldiers there were, it was felt that there were not enough soldiers, so all the banner men in the city who were over fifteen and under fifty were conscripted.
Ancient China was an agricultural society. Under this economic system, as long as the army could pay and the officers and soldiers could have enough to eat, their morale would not collapse completely and they would still retain their combat effectiveness. Therefore, although the Qing army in the city could not defeat the North in the field,
Navy, but the courage to hold on to the city remains.
At the beginning of the eighth lunar month - that is, at the end of August in the Western calendar - the sorghum outside the city was ripe, so the Beihai Navy began to harvest sorghum under the eyes of the Qing army. When Zhao Xin came with supplies before, he had already figured it out.
The time for harvesting crops is based on the idea of "defending the enemy with food".
Although the taste of sorghum is worse than that of white flour, its caloric value is higher than that of rice and white flour, with 350 calories per 100 grams, and it is rich in crude fiber. For those soldiers of the Northern Navy who are from the north, sorghum has been their staple food since childhood.
Wheat has become a major staple food only in the past few years.
"Dajunmen, the pirates from the North Sea are collecting the sorghum outside the city!" The visitor was Bolin, the Minister of Household Affairs in Shengjing, who also served as the Yin of Fengtian Prefecture. His expression was not only anxious, but also a bit confused.
"Yuting, I had known this would happen, so just let them go. How many people can the Beihai Pirates take?" Shu Liang showed a look of disdain when he heard this.
He had made a plan a few days ago. The Beihai Navy would definitely harvest the hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum outside the city. The other side would harvest it during the day, and he would organize people to go out from the small south gate to harvest it at night. In addition to sorghum, straw is also a good thing. Right now
There is not much firewood and coal in the city, so we just need it.
The city has been besieged for so many days, and he can estimate how many men and horses the Bei Navy has. Twenty or thirty thousand people were killed, so they can't all go out to harvest sorghum, right? They can't defeat you in a war, and they can't harvest grain from you? There are ten people in Shengjing City.
There are tens of thousands of people, but they can still get back less than half.
"No, Dajunmen, go and have a look! They don't use people to cut sorghum, they use, they use... I can't explain that thing clearly. They don't use oxen and horses and they don't have people to drive them. It's so weird!
"
"Oh?" Shu Liang's face turned solemn.
Half an hour later, Shu Liang, escorted by a group of cavalry, rode his horse to the outer gate of the outer city. Before he entered the city, he saw people standing on the city wall from a distance. The scene was very noisy, which made Shu Liang very upset.
I was annoyed. Those who knew it were fighting, but those who didn’t knew it thought they were rushing to a big market!
Seeing that the general looked wrong, the soldier Geshiha hurriedly went to find the city gate guard. After a while, a burst of drums sounded under the city tower, and then a soldier shouted at the top of his voice: "The army gate has arrived!"
Those people on the city wall who were stretching their necks to look out looked back in astonishment. They saw two carved feathers rising from the edge of the stairs leading to the city. Then a black mink tail was revealed, and then, an engraved gold-leaf treasure cap.
A helmet with a tray base, decorated with golden flowers and clouds and dragons, and ear protection and neck protection wrapped in python-patterned azure satin also appeared. The face under the helmet looked to be in his early fifties, with a dark and red complexion, a nose that seemed to be hanging, and eyebrows that seemed to be wide open.
Siguan, with a beard and a long beard under his chin, is Shu Liang, the local emperor of Shengjing City and a first-rank general.
Shu Liang walked slowly up the city wall. He was wearing a cotton armor with an azure satin bottom, iron leaves in the middle, and silver nails on the outside. He wanted to hang a sword. On his feet, he wore a pair of foundation soap boots. On the left and right shoulder pads of the armor, on the front
The chest and left and right crotch are each embroidered with a python dress. The shoulder pads are connected with iron leaves and decorated with golden dragons. The silk tapes at the shoulder pads, the left and right armpit armor and the body armor connection are all azurite. There are so many.
How majestic and majestic it is, but it’s a bit overwhelming...
"See the Grand Army Gate! Say hello to the Grand Army Gate!" A large number of people on the city wall shouted and knelt down. Among them were armored soldiers and gunners holding shotguns, as well as flag men holding bows, arrows, spears, and swords.
Shu Liang had a livid face, stroking his beard with one hand, and made a "hum" sound from his nose, thinking that he would deal with you later, and he would have to find a few unlucky guys to beat with military sticks. He walked to the city wall, and from the hands of the soldiers, he
I took the telescope, which was more than two feet long and as thick as my forearm. I pulled it open and looked in the direction of Bolin’s fingers. I was immediately shocked!
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! On the endless fields to the west of Shengjing City, several large harvesters are roaring, which can be heard clearly from a few miles away. On the front of these harvesters
At the lower position, there is a six-tooth drum header with a width of five meters; as the harvester continues to advance at a speed of five kilometers per hour, in the blink of an eye, there is only half a foot of straw left behind.
Suddenly, Shu Liang noticed that a harvester stopped motionless after harvesting a ridge of sorghum, and then the header in front slowly rose. Only then did he see the "giant shovel" painted red through the telescope.
It was white in color. When the header was raised to about one meter, the harvester drove straight onto the dirt road next to the field and stopped next to several four-wheeled carriages. Those carriages were all pulled by four horses.
The carriage is surrounded by a wall panel four to five feet high, just like a square barrel.
At this time, the harvester threw out a thick and long white tube from the top, with the opening facing downwards, facing the first carriage carriage. Just when Shu Liang was confused, he saw reddish-brown unshelled sorghum.
It gushed down like a waterfall. After a while, the carriage seemed to be full, and the white pipe stopped spraying, and then turned to a carriage behind it. After all three carriages were filled with sorghum, the harvester turned around.
Return to the position at the head of the field, put down the header, and continue the previous operation.
"This!" Shu Liang's eyes widened, his mouth opened wide, and his whole body felt bad.
Bolin behind him said: "Dajunmen, that thing can harvest ten acres of sorghum with just one cup of tea."
The guard of the city gate on the other side was also worried about the world being in chaos and said: "People have been staring at the mark for a while. Those monsters have only been out for more than an hour, and hundreds of acres of sorghum have been taken away."
Ten acres!! Hundreds of acres!!!
Shu Liang had long heard that Beihai Town was good at using machinery and equipment. Apart from other things, the Thunder God alone was well known to everyone and amazed countless people. However, Beihai Town's extensive use of machinery in farming was only rumored and had never been seen before.
A few of them. When I saw them today, they were simply appalling!
Bolin behind him said softly: "Dajun Gate, not only here, but also outside the North Gate and East Gate!"
"Let's go! Go take a look!" Shu Liang turned around and left with his men. At this moment, he no longer cared about punishing those who were watching the fun.
When he went to the north and east of the city, it was just as Bolin said, and the efficiency was exactly the same as what he had seen before. During this period, he received a report from the South Gate guard, saying that there were also several huge harvesting machines on the south bank of the Hun River.
Shu Liang suddenly felt dizzy after hearing this, and was immediately helped by his own soldiers to mount his horse. His face was extremely ugly.
Not to mention sorghum, now we don’t even have to snatch the straw, leaving only half a foot high! The pirates in the North Sea are really ruthless!
Since there are only six regiments of the troops of the Northern Navy participating in the siege of Shengjing, there are only 15,000 people in full. Even if you include the former migrant workers, it is less than 30,000. Even if all these people are put into battle, if you want to use the sickle in a short time
It is simply impossible to harvest hundreds of thousands of acres of sorghum and put it into storage, and there are not that many sickles in the logistics area.
In order to shock the hundreds of thousands of Manchu and Han people in Shengjing, and to vigorously develop agriculture after taking over Liaodong, Zhao Xin transferred more than 200 drivers and maintenance workers from Fuldan City to Weiyuan before opening the plains.
Fort. After the troops captured Tieling, he made a special trip back to Fuldan City and brought over more than 30 new harvesters he bought at the beginning of the year. At the same time, the Logistics Department recruited a large number of carpenters and blacksmiths in Kaiyuan and Tieling.
, let them build hundreds of four-wheeled carriages in an assembly line manner according to the drawings.
Although the process took a lot of trouble, he was still very satisfied with the final scene and result.
In the future, the main crops in Liaodong will still be sorghum and soybeans. Zhao Xin will not be so hot-headed as to plow up all the sorghum fields and plant wheat instead. That would be a complete waste of money.
Even if he unifies the world, what he has to do is to ensure that the people have enough to eat first. China, an agricultural society, has always been a country prone to natural disasters, and food relief needs to be allocated every year. In addition, Beihai Town will have to recruit at least hundreds of thousands of people to manage the Yellow River and the Huaihe River.
, the rations for so many people could not be provided within the customs, so they had to be transported from outside the customs.
The Beihai Navy used the harvester to cause thunder and lightning in Shengjing City. At night, the harvesters outside the city were still busy, and countless bonfires were lit on the fields. The Beihai Navy on duty even
Several rounds of illumination bombs were fired from time to time, causing hundreds of thousands of people to feel restless and terrified all night long.
As the panic intensified, the next morning, the price of grain in Shengjing suddenly rose. Seeing that there was no hope of autumn grain, various grain stores began to hesitate to sell and sell out little by little.
Several grain shops, such as Taihe and Tianhe, the largest in the city, were either backed by the Manchu clan, or officials from the Fifth Ministry of Shengjing or the Eight Banners garrison participated in the shares. These people invited to form a gang, and would meet every night to plan the next day.
Food prices. As a result, the rich and powerful and the Eight Banners soldiers are not worried, but the families of "banner followers" who have fled from outside the city cannot bear it.
It is well known that there are a large number of Han people in the Eight Banners, and these people are collectively referred to as the "Han Army" in later generations. The Han Army of the Eight Banners is generally divided into two groups, the Han Army Jiabing and the flag and drum assistant collars of the three banners covered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
However, in the Liaodong region and Gyeonggi region, in addition to the above two types of Han people living in the banner, there is another unknown group; they are the banner society composed of Han immigrants who have joined the banner. They are large in number, complex in composition, and most of them are missing.
recorded in official documents.
These people claimed to be "people under the rank of Sanzuo of Shengjing Internal Affairs Office", but they did not belong to the bannermen in any manor in Shengjing. The Qing government managed the genealogy and clan registers of this group separately, and they were not included in the Eight Banners Han Dynasty.
military.
To put it bluntly, "people who follow the banner" are the tenants of Huangzhuang. Some of the tenants of Qizhuang took their land and became the head of the village, just like Wu Jinxiao of Heishan Village in "A Dream of Red Mansions"; most of them lacked clothes.
Most of these people, who had little food and were suffering from hunger and cold, had no other choice but to seek refuge in their farms.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Knowing that a large number of "banner followers" could not afford to eat, the General Office of Shengjing, the Ministry of Punishment, the Ministry of Husbandry and Fengtian Mansion issued notices requiring all food accounts in the city not to eat.
If the price increases, the goods must be sold at the usual price, and violators will be severely punished. However, this move is not only unbearable, but the price of food rises even more.
The "banner followers" were poor, and seeing that they could not afford food, they went to the Chengde County government office to beat drums and complain, demanding that profiteers be punished. Shu Liang was worried about the unstable public sentiment, so he handed over the important matter of handling food prices to Chuansen, the Minister of Criminal Affairs.
The manager, Chuansen, went back and discussed it with his men, and finally decided to take action on a grain merchant with a single surname from Huang County, Shandong Province. He deserved to be unlucky because Huang County was now occupied by Beihai Town!
The grain market in Shengjing City is located in the Dizai Gate in the northwest, and it is also where grain merchants gather every day to set market prices. According to legend, Shu Liang, the general of Shengjing in the Ming Dynasty, and Bolin, the minister of household affairs, personally led fifty armor soldiers and officers from the punishment department.
The official suddenly came to the "Hengsheng" and locked up the grain merchant without explanation. Then he circled an open space at the intersection south of the Dizai Gate, laid out a public case in front of the crowd of onlookers, and interrogated him personally.
In fact, the Shan Liang merchant had known Chuansen for a long time, and he had given gifts to him along with other merchants when he arrived, and he showed his respect during every year and festival. He knew that it would be more troublesome if he dared to establish friendship with Chuansen in this situation, so
He had no choice but to kowtow and beg, expressing his willingness to offer 500 stones of sorghum in order to spare his life.
Chuansen's purpose today was to kill him as a warning to others, and it was absolutely impossible to spare him. He picked up the gavel and slapped it hard on the case, and sneered: "Haha, I'm just thinking about donating food now, it's too late! You guys will wait.
Unscrupulous merchants actually hoarded grain privately during the war, falsified the price, and tried to attract others in an attempt to make huge profits. As a result, grain prices soared, making it more difficult for the people to feed themselves! Today, I have received an order from the army, and the people are angry, so they suppressed grain prices. Come on.
!Convict this person of canonical punishment!”
The more the grain merchant heard, the more frightened he became. He knew something was wrong. He kept twisting and struggling, shouting that he was wronged. Why! The increase in grain prices in the city was not my idea. The most we can do is follow the crowd!
At this time, an officer from the Ministry of Justice standing behind him was well prepared. As soon as he complained about injustice, the man reached out and pinched the Shangrain merchant's jaw, lifted and pulled it, and dislocated his jaw joint. He immediately became mute.
Then an executioner with a sharp blade came forward, waited for the servant to pull the opponent's whip, looked at the neck joint, and raised the knife with his hand.
Amidst the exclamations of the onlookers, the grain merchant's head rolled on the ground, he closed his eyes unwillingly, and a bloody arrow shot out from his neck. Because of the suddenness of the incident, some people in the crowd were still sighing.
, I said I would have brought a steamed bun here if I had known better, but it was a waste of good things.
On the second day after the death of the victims, no grain store dared to raise prices. However, not much grain was sold, and they closed after selling for a hundred shi. On the third day, people buying grain ran away before dawn.
Queuing up at the ground floor gate, there was a long queue outside every grain store. As soon as the shop was unloaded, it immediately became crowded, with people pushing and shoving. It was nothing to quarrel and fight over buying grain. I was so anxious that my eyes turned red.
There are people who copy people and cause death.
In the blink of an eye, it was the fifth day of the eighth lunar month, and two thousand political workers and security police teams transferred from Beihai Town were in place one after another. The mobilization meeting before entering the city was also held, and the general attack on Shengjing City was about to begin.