The end of the Ming Dynasty swept the world

Chapter 598 Self-sufficiency
This time Ding Yi increased his troops more, and he recruited [-] cavalry and [-] sailors at once.

The navy was better. Ding Yi’s troops went out to fight Japan or North Korea, and they often took boats. The former Dongjiang soldiers used to serve as sailors.

You can get familiar with it after a little practice, and with gunners and sailors, you can basically fight.

But cavalry is more difficult to train. Fortunately, Ding Yi now occupies a large area between Jin Fu and has space to train cavalry.

Ding Yi set goals for each cavalry battalion. When there is no battle to fight, we must practice desperately. We have enough horses, so don't be afraid.

There were more conscriptions, and more officers were promoted. For example, Chen Yang, who fought against the Manchus in North Korea this time, performed well, so he was promoted to deputy battalion officer.

He is a veteran of Dongjiang Town, and he had a feud with Ding Yi before, so he can be promoted to the deputy battalion officer, which makes the former officers of Dongjiang Town more at ease and happy, and supports Ding Yi even more.

In view of the increasing expenditure of Dongjiang Township, Ding Yi suggested at the meeting that in the coming year, he would grow red herb, potatoes and corn, eat more of these coarse grains in the future, and sell the grain and rice to Daming.

This is the most difficult time for the Ming Dynasty. Both the court and the localities are short of grain. A stone of grain can be sold for one tael or five silver in the nearest place, and it can even be sold in Shaanxi, Henan and other places. Why not Sell?
It's just that Ding Yi seldom sells to Shaanxi and Henan, the road is too far away, and that area is not under his control, so he basically sells grain in the surrounding area.

After Ding Yi came back, Lushun was busy for several months with conscription, training, fitting armor, and promoting officers. They all learn from Ding Yi to hoard the land and pay.

According to Chongzhen's idea, if all the troops could hoard their own fields and provide for themselves, the pressure on the court's military pay would be greatly reduced.

In fact, in July last year, the imperial court issued an edict to promote Lu Xiang to be the left servant of the Ministry of War, and asked him to go to the governor Xuanfu, Datong, and Shanxi military.

At that time, the Daling River outside the Northeast Pass had fallen, but Songshan and Jinzhou were still there, and the Shanhaiguan defense line was still very strong.The Xuanfu and Datong belts are useless.

Lu Xiangsheng made great efforts to farm the fields there. After the grains were ripe, he harvested one bell per mu, and stored more than 20 stone grains of rice in less than a year (the ability of this kind of field is better than that of Ding Yi).With his efforts, the situation gradually improved.For this reason, Chongzhen issued instructions to learn from Xuanfu and Datong in all parts of the nine borders.

In addition, Ding Yi paid another 9000 taels of silver this time, so Emperor Chongzhen felt that this matter could continue.

When the news came out, all the soldiers from all walks of life laughed secretly, and no one paid any attention to it. It’s okay to ask them to hoard land. There are hoards of land in many places on the Nine Sides, but it’s impossible to pay the same salary as Ding Yi. You won’t give me money from the court , still want to ask me for money?Dreaming?
Until the beginning of August, Ding Yi came to Dengzhou again.

Since the sixth year of Chongzhen (1633), Ding Yi has implemented the drainage of disaster victims in Dengzhou, investing a lot of money and manpower every year. Now that Chongzhen has been in ten years, the whole Denglai has also changed a lot.

Dengzhou port has been expanded twice, and now it can hold more than ten large ships with [-] materials at a time.

According to Ding Yi's idea, Du Ruhai rebuilt a port in the lower reaches of Dengzhou Port, calling it Dengzhou South Port.

Merchant ships go to and from Dengzhou Nangang for loading and unloading. Ding Yi built another road from Dengzhou City to get here. The transportation is convenient. There are carts made by Ding Yi waiting at the port. If there are merchants who want to use them, they can use them for one day if they pay five coins for rent. , very popular among merchants.

After the port is built, it will only be used by foreign merchant ships, and Ding Yi's navy and private goods will be shipped upstream (Dengzhou Beigang), and ships destined for disaster victims will also leave from Beigang, thus ensuring that Ding Yi Yi's privacy.

After entering Dengzhou City, the streets are full of people and bustling. Since the Denglai Rebellion, after several years of recuperation, Dengzhou City has finally slowly returned to its original appearance.

Of course, the population in the city is now slightly lower than it was in the past, because most of the population is hoarding fields and building castles in Denglai, and some of them are transported by Ding Yi to Jeju and Dayuan.

It may take several years to fully achieve the grand occasion of Dengzhou. After all, Ding Yi's main development direction is currently Dayuan and Jeju.

But Dengzhou is in the territory of Daming, and its development speed is the fastest, and its advantages are obvious. If Ding Yi hadn't focused on Dayuan and Jeju, it might have developed better here.

In the afternoon, he convened a meeting at the governor's office in Denglai. Liu Yuan, Wang Weizhong, Du Ruhai, Yan Xiong, Zhou Yougen, Fang Duotai, Yang Duan and other generals were all present.

Du Ruhai first reported the basic situation of the two places in Denglai. After the drainage of the victims in the past few years, there are more than 2 victims in the three places of Dongjiang, Jeju, and Daejun, and Jeju is the most. Secondly, those who can be transported to Dongjiang are craftsmen and craftsmen with special skills.

In addition, the total population of Denglai area is 125 million, and the population belonging to Ding Yi is more than 6 households and 17000 people in June (all of them are refugees and disaster victims who have come from other places in recent years)

Originally, after entering Denglai from all parts of Shandong, Ding Yi's people were guarding at all major intersections to collect and register them, so they would be gathered to the governor's office and Du Ruhai every month.

But there are also some victims who will enter Denglai through some small roads, which can only be encountered by the lower-level officials who go to the countryside to inspect and patrol.

These disaster victims will find some unowned or unoccupied fields or wasteland to hoard, cultivate and leave. (Basically, there are no people in the corners and remote places)
But Du Ruhai once said that those who don't take the big road are probably spies, and they should all be arrested.

Besides, you disaster victims come here and have no assets or food. Why don't you go through our government's relief and find a place to live by yourself? There must be a problem.

But considering that there are indeed some victims who don't know the main roads, or take the nearby small roads, it is impossible to cover everything. After all, Denglai is so big that it is impossible for Ding Yi's troops to arrange every road, so it is normal for someone to come in.

Moreover, most of the fertile land was occupied by Ding Yi, and the land occupied by those people would not be any good.

Liu Yuan finally discussed with Ding Yi that these disaster victims were also taken in, and they were also registered to strengthen control. Don't be afraid that they are spies and prohibit them from entering the city.

Because in the Denglai area now, if you don’t take the main road, you basically can’t reach the big cities and county towns such as Dengzhou.

Even if you are a spy, staying in the backcountry is useless.

Now under the halo of Ding Yi's drainage, thousands of refugees and disaster victims come here every month, and boats of people are transported to various places in Dengzhou Port every day.

Now Ding Yi owns 32 mu of farmland in Denglai, divided into soldiers and refugees. The number of soldiers is more than 2, and more than 1 of them are the earliest surrendered soldiers. They have worked here for four or five years and own thousands of households. In the establishment of military households, each person is allocated four or five mu of land.

Another 6000 or so were selected from among the disaster victims later.

In addition, the refugees and disaster victims who came over hoarded the land, and the various taxes were different.

The output here is lower than that of Dayuan and Jeju. On average, the tax per mu is about 20%. Ding Yi collected [-] shi of tax and grain last year.

This is the tax collected from his own land, and there is another 160 million mu in Dengzhou. The tax is five liters per mu for common people's grain fields, and three buckets for gentry and other mu.

But last winter was very cold, and many fields of common people and gentry lost their harvests. In the end, Ding Yi only got 12 shi, which was less than half.

Starting this year, Du Ruhai used Lushun's experience to send people down to instruct the people on how to make crops survive the harsh winter and reduce losses.

So last year Dengzhou harvested a total of 32 shi of grain, slightly less than the previous year.

In terms of income, there has not been much change. In addition to the income from shops, commodity sales, mining, and card blocking, the annual income is nearly 40 taels, which is a little more than the previous year.

The main reason is that this year's summer grain harvest was in short supply, and the common people had to buy grain, but Du Ruhai sold a batch and made a little profit.

In the end, Dengzhou earned 40 silver and 25 shi of grain for the whole year.

But the expenditure here is equally huge, mainly military expenditure and personnel expenditure.

The hoarding soldiers in Ding Yi's thousand households are currently getting grain and don't need silver. After more than four years of dividing the land, they can now have so much grain that they can sell silver every year.But their food expenses (the food is grown by themselves, mainly meat and fish every few days are paid by Ding Yi), their clothing, armor, and weapons, this expenditure is nearly 5 taels a year.

Here, the two battalions of Wang Weizhong and Yan Xiong (6000 people), and Yang Zhen (2000 people) spend nearly 14 taels of salary and various ordnance materials a year.

The year before last, it cost 20 yuan for [-] soldiers and horses, because it is the most expensive to start a new battalion, and it needs to be equipped with armor, weapons, artillery carts, etc.

All officials in Dengzhou, including artisans, doctors and teachers, have exceeded 2000, with an annual expenditure of [-]. (The year before last was [-], but now there are more and more craftsmen and so on, and the wages are getting higher)
The salary and porridge expenses for the drainage of victims are about 10 taels a year.

Now Tunbao is basically built almost the same, but this year, it has spent another 5 taels to build water conservancy ditches, protect farmland and increase production.

The total expenditure for the whole year last year was 44 taels.

In this way, Dengzhou finally achieved historic profitability last year.

When Du Ruhai came last time, he only had 40 silver in hand, and he was ready to lose money again this year.

Now his income has skyrocketed, and he has sold his surplus grain. He already has 70 taels of silver in his hands.
So from the sixth year of Chongzhen to the present, after four years of hard work, Du Ruhai is currently stockpiling grain in Dengzhou with a guarantee of 30 shi per year and 70 taels of silver in his hands.

Terengganu, like Jeju, has finally achieved self-sufficiency.

Now only the big staff still need Ding Yi to contribute money. As long as the other two bases can withstand natural disasters, they will definitely be able to maintain profits every year.

"The harvest has not been good in the past two years, and the grain output is relatively low. Otherwise, our grain tax will be higher, and we will have more money." Du Ruhai finally said.

Ding Yi thought for a while and said with a smile: "You should thank the sweet potatoes and potatoes, otherwise you wouldn't be able to stock up so much food."

Everyone smiles.

Indeed, Ding Yi's sweet potatoes and potatoes have not been widely promoted in Denglai, mainly in Lushun and Jeju, which offset a lot of grain production and greatly alleviated the negative effects of grain production reduction, which also made Du Ruhai There is surplus grain and rice to sell silver and hoard grain.

Ding Yi thought about it seriously, and tapped his hand on the table lightly: "Starting this year, you have to do a few things."

All the generals listened attentively.

(End of this chapter)