As early as the Han Dynasty, Gaizhou was an important town in Liaodong where merchants gathered. In the Jin Dynasty, it was known as Gaizhou. In the fourth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty, Gaizhou was renamed Gaizhou Wei, and Gaizhou New City was built the next year. This new city is now Liaodong Garden.
Ma Siqing's summer and autumn residence (spring and winter residence in Haizhou).
Gaizhou is located in the southeastern part of Liaoning Province and in the northwest-central part of the Liaodong Peninsula. It is the junction of the Liaohe Plain and the hills of southern Liaoning.
And if we focus purely on the current period of the Ming Dynasty, then the Gaizhou area is still the choke point that divides western Liaoning and eastern Liaoning - because at this time, the Liaohe Hetao area was still in the hands of the Mongols. To be precise, it was
In the hands of the fried flower department of Duoyan Sanbu.
Yuanmasi Temple in Liaodong was originally an institution that managed horse administration, so the setup was relatively simple, with "One Chief Minister, Two Shaoqings, Four Prime Ministers, and One Chief Secretary", among which the Minister of Yuanmasi Temple was the chief official and the third rank subordinate;
The fourth rank of Shaoqing is responsible for the affairs of the temple; the sixth rank of Si Cheng is responsible for supervising the horse breeding affairs of the Sixth Prison and Twenty-Four Gardens under the jurisdiction of Yuanma Temple in Liaodong; the seventh rank of Chief Bookkeeper is responsible for compiling and correcting documents of the province.
However, as mentioned before, this job of raising horses has basically been abolished. Qing Yuanmasi seldom devotes his time to raising horses, and has become the chief military and political officer in Liaonan. Therefore, among these subordinates
For example, Shaoqing, although his rank is not low and he is already a prefect elsewhere, his actual status in southern Liaoning is very average.
There are only two truly important figures in southern Liaoning. One is the Minister of Yuanmasi, whose main authority comes from his concurrent position as Deputy Military Envoy; the other is a military officer, "the right general guarding Haigai".
The currently serving Haigai General is named Kong Dongru, a member of the Liaohai Guards. He took up his position in the seventh year of Wanli, and was previously a guerrilla in Guangning Zuoying. (Wufeng's note: According to "Records of Shenzong.")
What does this mean? It means he is Li Chengliang's man.
why?
First of all, he is from Liaohaiwei. Although Liaohaiwei has the word "Hai", it is actually located in Kaiyuan, the northernmost place in Liaodong. Kaiyuan has two guards: Thirty Thousand Guards and Liaohaiwei. And Liaohaiwei
To the south is Tielingwei, the hometown and foundation of Li Chengliang.
After Li Chengliang became famous, the first thing he did to expand his power was to control the Thirty Thousand Guards and Liaohai Guards north of Tieling Guards, because in this way, he formed his "sphere of influence" in northeastern Liaoning. This happened many years ago
.
Since Kong Dongru was able to reach this stage with his background as Liaohaiwei, without Li Chengliang's nod or even recommendation, it can be said to be almost impossible.
Secondly, his former position was Guangning Zuoying guerrilla. This position was not simple. In fact, he ranked first among the most critical guerrillas under the Liaodong General Army - the Liaodong General Army is currently stationed in Guangning.
Li Chengliang has managed the Liaodong Army almost into the "Li Family Army" over the years. How can the most critical guerrilla under him not be a close confidant?
Besides, if it weren't for his close confidants, how could he release a top general like General Hai Gai from Liaonan? It's a dream.
General Kong Dongru, probably under the orders of Li Chengliang, was very affectionate towards Gao Pangshi, but never had a heart-to-heart relationship with him. Although he personally led more than a thousand soldiers and horses to the Empress' Palace in Yingkou to welcome Gao Pangshi when he came to Gaizhou,
On the road, I just talked about being pragmatic and did not say anything serious.
Gao Pragmatic has seen this kind of flattery a lot, and Kong Dongru's flattery doesn't necessarily have any new ideas. It's just about being both civil and military and having unparalleled achievements. Gao Pragmatic has long been immune to this.
So Gao Pragmatic took the initiative to change the topic. On the way from Yingkou to Gaizhou, Gao Pragmatic mainly asked some questions about the topography, transportation and even the economic situation of Gaizhou and even Haizhou.
Gaizhou's landform is characterized by "six mountains, three waters and one field." Judging from the grain output of this era, farming alone cannot support people. Moreover, it is not convenient to cultivate fields in Gaizhou because there are too many saline-alkali lands, so it is difficult to cultivate them.
There is not enough land to grow much food - later generations of the Red Dynasty solved this problem. As for now, it is out of the question. They are very pragmatic and do not have such professional agricultural technology.
Therefore, Gaizhou's economy mainly uses its geographical location as an intermediate station - the intermediate location between Liaodong and Liaoxi, which is exactly what it does.
Other than that, it's all about water.
There are two types of water, one is the Liaohe River, Daqing River and other rivers; the other is the sea, Gaizhou faces Liaodong Bay to the west.
Rivers such as the Liaohe River were not originally very useful. After all, the people of Liaodong preferred land transportation. However, since Gao Pragmatic built the new Yingkou Port near the Empress’ Palace a few years ago, everything began to change quietly.
Because Yingkou Port is backed by Jinghua, a commercial giant, and has business partners with huge resources, its annual throughput is rising rapidly and steadily.
Like other ports, goods cannot just be transported to the port, they must also be transported to various places, which requires convenient transportation.
In fact, with the location of Yingkou, even by land route, it can easily reach Liaodong, the two wings of western Liaoning, and the same is true for southern Liaoning. But if we only talk about Liaodong (east of the Liaohe River), then rivers such as the Liaohe River and the Taizi River are very useful.
Jinghua quickly discovered the business opportunities - of course this was because Jinghua always did this kind of thing, so he quickly established river transportation. From the beginning, there were more than a dozen inland river transport ships to more than a hundred large and small inland river transport ships now.
So much so that they completely control the inland waterway transportation business in Liaodong.
Although inland river ships are far smaller than sea-going ships, there are obviously too many ships to transport Jinghua's own goods. Being able to operate like this can only be achieved by changing the local transportation methods in Liaodong.
After all, in this era, water transportation is definitely cheaper than land transportation. The only trouble is that it is too cold in Liaodong. When winter comes and the river freezes, it will be difficult. Even these ships have to leave early and sail to special river ports for storage. The serious situation
Affects Jinghua’s transportation efficiency and money-making efficiency.
Gao Pangshi already knew these things before he came. Kong Dongru's general talk did not arouse much interest in Gao Pangshi. He simply changed the subject and asked: "How many troops are there in the sea and the sea, and how many can be used?"
?Horses...oh, I won’t ask you about that.”
Although Kong Dongru is a member of Li Chengliang, he obviously also knows about Gao Pragmatic's background. This is not something that Li Chengliang can easily manipulate as the former Minister of Yuanmasi, and he cannot take it lightly.
So when Gao Pragmatic asked a question, he quickly said: "Haigai has more than 40,000 soldiers."
Gao Pragmatic was shocked and immediately asked: "How much?"
"More than 40,000." Kong Dongru said humbly but firmly.
At this moment, Gao Pragmatic gradually came back to his senses, put away his surprise, coughed lightly, and asked: "So, is it useful?"
"Two thousand six hundred people." Kong Dongru said honestly without doing Tai Chi.
Gao Pragmatic was simply shocked!
What's going on in Liaodong? It's an important place with one of the Nine Borders. How come its army availability ratio is worse than that of Guangxi?
Kong Dongru may have seen Gao Pragmatic's surprise, and said seriously: "Gao Observation, I'm telling you the truth, because there are fewer battles in Haigai, Liaonan, there are too many soldiers to use. The two thousand six hundred soldiers mentioned by the last general
No one in the army that can be used is from Liaonan, they are all servants brought by the general from Guangning." As he said this, he couldn't help but show a hint of pride in his eyes.
Oh, now I understand.
Gao Pinggong said sincerely: The total number of guards on the Liaonan Jinfu Haigai side is about 40,000, but in the eyes of Li Chengliang's favorite general, these are all useless and cannot fight at all.
It cannot be considered "useable". The only ones who are truly "useable" are the servants he brought with him.
The so-called accompanying servants are the personal direct descendants of a general. The reason why they are called "accompanying" means that these people do not belong to the place, but belong to the member. If the general is transferred to another place, these servants will also be taken with him.
With 2,600 servants at his disposal, Kong Dongru is quite powerful. Why am I not impressed by such a character?
