I really don't want to be emperor at the end of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 204 Fighting the country is easier to defend the country is more difficult

Chapter 203

In the process of developing the Maoshan Iron Mine, an unexpected discovery was made that the original grade of iron ore in most of the ore in the No. 013 open-pit mine according to the internal number actually reached 60.00%.

In the later generations, there are iron ores that can reach 60.00% or more in the world, but only Australia and Brazil have them, and there are very few high-grade iron ores in China.However, Maoshan iron ore is magnetite, and the theoretical highest grade of raw stone can reach about 70.00%.

Xie Jinglin, who was in charge of this project, was ecstatic and reported to Cheng Shijie immediately. He even wanted to open a smelting factory in Maoshan to directly smelt iron ore into steel ingots and then transport them to Liaodong.

Cheng Shijie expressed different opinions: "Once a steelmaking plant is opened in Maoshan, with this iron mine, maybe there will be a conflict between Liaodong and North Korea, and there may even be a war. At that time, the capital will be greedy." , At that time, the ownership of Maoshan will still cause controversy."

"Ning Haijun is capable enough to keep the Maoshan Iron Mine!"

"No, once there is a conflict with the capital, or even a war, we will become Daming's sinners!"

Cheng Shijie knew very well that with the current strength of the Ning Navy, he was definitely not afraid of North Korea or the capital, but the problem was that the Emperor Chongzhen now held righteousness and had a strong influence on the immigration work in Liaodong.The most important thing is that in this way, Huang Taiji would wake up laughing from his dreams.

"Then what do we do now?"

"Muffled and made a fortune!"

Cheng Shijie said slowly: "The iron ore should be dug as soon as it is needed, and the iron ore dug out will be sent directly to Liaodong. No one can leak this news. When the time comes, I will award you medals, which are made of gold!"

Xie Jinglin is very sober. The quality of Musan Iron Mine is so good that it will drive many people in the world crazy: "However, we have hired many local North Koreans. Even if we don't leak the news, they will leak the news!"

"This problem is easy to handle!"

Shen Mingyu smiled and said, "In this world, only the dead can truly keep secrets!"

Shen Mingyu didn't think there was anything wrong with this. In fact, Shen Mingyu saw Cheng Shijie's world map located in the General Military Mansion. For Ning Haijun, Liaodong was still too small, and Ning Haijun was about to start expanding. Liaodong, Nurgandusi, North Korea, and even the entire Xiaotian are all the targets of the Ning Navy.

Of course, Cheng Shijie also had the same idea. Since he came to this era of great voyages, if Ning Haijun only had the two capitals and thirteen provinces of Ming Dynasty, then he would be sorry for this era.

The expansion of the Ning Navy's strength requires a solid foundation. This foundation does not refer to a large number of troops, but an efficient and clean civil servant team.

It is easy to fight the country, but it is difficult to keep the country.

Cheng Shijie has no doubt that if he continues to expand after the autumn harvest with the strength of Ning Haijun at this stage and wins Shenyang, there will be absolutely no problem at all.

But the problem is that the expansion of the site requires someone to fill it in immediately. Only when the immigrants are solid and well-governed, can the site be truly owned.

With the current strength of the Ning Navy, it would not be too easy to expand. The Ning Navy not only crushed Jiannu with weapons and equipment, but also crushed the provinces and governments of Ming Dynasty.

For Liaodong, the biggest task at this stage is to cultivate talents. If Cheng Shijie now has the world's largest righteousness and can let most scholars work for him, then he will definitely expand rapidly, directly lead troops to occupy Shenyang, destroy and build slaves, Then lead troops to the south, occupy the Indochina Peninsula, Luzon and Malacca, turn the South China Sea into the inland sea of ​​Ming Dynasty, and turn Nanyang into Nanyang of Ming Dynasty.

At the current point in time, the most critical issue in Liaodong is to develop education and train enough talents. According to the current method of Liaodong, at least a few thousand excellent local officials are needed to promote the industrialization of Liaodong.

But in fact, there is a huge talent gap in Liaodong.

Secondly, it is about the development of the navy. As far as the current situation is concerned, two thousand gunboats are equivalent to Europa's fifth-tier warships. There are five or six hundred ships.

The gap is huge, and it will take some time for Liaodong to catch up.In all fairness, the current Dutch East India Company has enough strength to crush the Ning Navy's navy at sea. Even if they dispatched one-fifth of the warships, the Ning Navy's navy would not be able to deal with it.

Under Cheng Shijie's order, Maoshan Town adopted the development method of making a fortune silently, and North Korean workers worked with the Shuangcheng Development Company, and the number of them was increasing.

Inevitably, news of the number reached North Korea.

The king of North Korea, Li Zhen, heard the news from the north: "Gu heard that the north is very lively!"

"The meaning of the king..."

"Moshan!"

Jin Zidian replied: "Your Majesty, I have also heard rumors that Daming is building a Great Wall along Xianjing Mountain!"

"Great Wall!"

"That's right, they blasted mountains and quarried rocks all day long, and built a Great Wall based on bluestone. This Great Wall will become a barrier for us in northern North Korea!"

Hearing this, Li Jing no longer doubted: "After a while, we will send them food and grass. Daming spent a lot of manpower, material and financial resources in order to defend North Korea. We can't show it!"

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

Musan City, the scale of this city is getting bigger and bigger, and more and more roads are built. In order to facilitate work, the Koreans built small wooden houses along the road.

The grain and food at the beginning made the North Koreans very happy, but as the grain they earned met their needs, they began to need daily necessities, such as cloth, silk or cotton cloth. Of course, in this era, the price of cotton cloth was very expensive. Pure cotton padded clothes are more than twice as expensive as real sheepskin jackets.

This is the value determined by productivity.

However, as more and more North Koreans came to work, they gradually discovered the difference.

"Your Excellency, Your Excellency, may I ask why he has more money than me when we do the same job!"

"He can speak Chinese, can you?"

"I do not know!"

"From now on, those who can speak Chinese will double their wages!"

"But he only said hello!"

"That's considered good at speaking, so it should be rewarded!"

This should be Cheng Shijie's bad taste. In the future time and space, in order to learn English, this makes Cheng Shijie want to die. His English is dumb English. He knows many words and grammar, but the problem is that he is afraid to speak.And with the English in the direction of the vast sea, not to mention the real Europeans and Americans can't understand it, even the domestic elites can't understand it.

Cheng Shijie sometimes thinks that one day in the future, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, everyone will be learning Chinese, and Tang Tang will lie down and chat with each other.

Thinking about this scene, Cheng Shijie felt a little wonderful.

Because of the interest in industry in Liaodong now, there are Westerners, Koreans, Xiaori, Mongolians and others, so standardizing language has become another policy of Cheng Shijie.

No matter who you are, you must speak Chinese in Liaodong. If you don’t speak Chinese, or openly speak a foreign language on the street, you will be fined, just like the license plates from other places in Beijing in later generations, with limited numbers.

Cheng Shijie stipulated that if he could not speak Chinese in southern Liaoning, he would pay a special tax of [-] yuan per day. This money was for translation services.

You can bring your own translator, but you will be fined.

As for bilingualism, there is no such thing. Now Daming mainly focuses on exporting overseas trade, with very little importing, and there is no need to take special care of those foreigners.

Just when Cheng Shijie promulgated the special bill, Song Xiance, director of the Liaodong Management Committee, asked Cheng Shijie to report an incident, which caught his attention.

"What did you say, within this month, five ships have disappeared?"

"My lord, these five ships are three rice ships from Shanghai. They are large sand ships. Each ship is loaded with [-] shi of rice. There are also two immigration ships from Huizhou Prefecture. These five ships are estimated to be half We were supposed to arrive in Lushun a month ago, but we never did, and five days ago, we met the second batch of ships, and only then did we know that these five ships set off as planned, but they disappeared!"

"Is something wrong?"

In Cheng Shijie's mind, the current sea transportation is like the aircraft in the early [-]th century, which is extremely risky, and the wooden sailboats of the Ming Dynasty are generally small, and their ability to deal with storms is very low.

The [-]-ton cargo ships of later generations have a strong ability to survive in the face of a typhoon of category [-]. Today's sailing ships, even if they are superior sailors, have a high probability of accidents in a typhoon of category [-].

"If the ship is sunken, there will definitely be some clues, but the problem is, our waterway is fixed, so it is impossible not to see all the traces. Besides, there is no storm this month, and it is impossible for accidents to happen one after another!"

Cheng Shijie thought for a while and said, "Is this because some pirates are causing trouble on our territory?"

Thinking of this, Cheng Shijie said, "Meng En!"

"Big guy!"

"Let Li Zhixiang and Shen Shikui come over!"

"Yes!"

……

To say that the busiest branch of the Ning Navy is the navy of the Ning Navy, the navy has tens of thousands of troops and has more than 300 large and small ships. Although this fleet is completely incomparable with Zheng Zhilong's Zheng's fleet , placed in the north, it is already considered a relatively large force.

Of course, the work of the Ning Navy Navy is mainly to help the Ning Navy transport food and immigrants. Most of the time they travel between Lushun and Dengzhou.

Although there is no battle, Li Zhixiang is also very happy, because Cheng Shijie is different from other generals. He attaches great importance to the development of the navy. In order to add ships to the navy, Cheng Shijie built a huge shipyard in Lushun. The original Lushun shipyard had only Four large docks have now been expanded, and there are already eight docks.

These eight docks all have the capacity to build large ships with 620 materials, which is equivalent to [-] tons if converted into tons.Such a tonnage, placed on Europa, can also be counted as a first-class or second-class battleship.

Of course, Europa's battleships are not divided according to tonnage, but according to the number of artillery pieces. A first-class battleship refers to a battleship with three decks and a total of one hundred or more artillery pieces;

The second-tier battleship also has three decks and is equipped with a total of about 64 guns; the third-tier battleship is the heavy ship in the battle fleet, which has two decks and is equipped with a total of 74 to [-] guns.

Tier 48 is built according to a compromise plan, equipped with fifty guns (two decks), and is called a cruiser, and Tier V is a light cruiser with less than [-] guns and has two decks.

In addition, there are heavy first-class battleships, with 130-140 guns equipped with artillery, super battleships (or heavy first-class ships) with four decks, such as Spain's "Holy Trinity", or the British Sea Monarch .

The number and classification of the artillery back then were classified according to different periods.

Equipped with such a large number of artillery, it is actually directly related to the tonnage. A small ship carries a lot of artillery, and the battleship cannot withstand the huge recoil of the artillery. , fire the broadside and it will tip over.

Like the [-]-material gunboat currently produced by the Ning Navy, although it has the tonnage of the Europa V-level cruiser, its artillery is far inferior to that of the V-level cruiser.

Li Zhixiang has never seen the large warships of Europa, but he is very satisfied with the new ship of [-] materials.For example, now, Li Zhixiang is riding on a new warship of the Ning Navy. The hull of this warship is very slender, which refers to the advantages of the Venetian Gatlet-class warship.

The Gatley-class battleship is a classic of Venice, and the Galese even has a displacement of more than [-] tons, which can be called the giant in the Mediterranean at that time.With its "unparalleled" size, Galese can carry artillery and armed personnel several times more than traditional Calais ships, and its firepower and military strength are its greatest advantages.

The famous battle of Calaisé was the naval battle of Lepando in 1571.In this naval battle that claimed to determine the fate of Christian Europe, both sides assembled huge fleets and armed personnel. The total number of sailors and soldiers in the Ottoman fleet was 250, and there were 4000 warships. Hundreds of warships.

On the books, the Ottomans have a great advantage, but the result of the ensuing battle was surprising.The Ottoman fleet suffered a disastrous defeat. Its commander Ali Pasha and 230 soldiers died in battle, more than [-] people were captured, and [-] ships were lost.The Venetian fleet lost thirteen ships.

The result of this naval battle was thirteen to 230, which was equivalent to one to twenty, which made the reputation of the Gartley-class battleship spread like wildfire.Since then, the Venetian Galese warships have been imitated by the navies of the Mediterranean Sea and the Baltic Sea. France, Ottomans, Spain, Sweden, Russia and other countries have all developed their own Galese fleets. Galese has been active until the eighteenth century. disuse.

This new type of warship is the first steel keel manufactured based on the advantages of the Gartley-class warships combined with the Ming warships. It has three thousand materials, which is equivalent to a 970 five-ton warship.

For this new type of three-thousand-material warship, the entire ship is equipped with 68 artillery pieces, of which there are a total of 36 three-inch rear-mounted smoothbore guns, two five-inch guns, one front and one rear, plus 34 French-type rear guns. Load the cannon.

Its firepower is so strong that it is currently the most powerful warship of the Ning Navy Navy. Since it is the first time to manufacture a warship with [-] materials, there is only one batch in total. The other seven ships are still in the state of laying keels. Make sure that the steel keel is suitable.

This kind of battleship with 68 guns is placed in the Europa Navy sequence, which is barely considered a third-tier battleship.However, due to the slender hull, this new type of warship has not been named.

While sailing on the boundless sea, Shen Shikui burst out laughing.

This made Li Zhixiang somewhat inexplicable: "What are you laughing at?"

"Cheng Shuai must have miscalculated!"

"Miscalculated?"

Li Zhixiang was even more puzzled.

Shen Shikui smiled and said, "Cheng Shuai remembered naming warships with place names. How many states do we have in Liaodong? Even if all the places in Liaodong are added together, there are only fifteen ships, but looking at the wood prepared by the shipyard, I am afraid that 150 ships cannot be built. Finished, the question is, do we have so many place names in Liaodong?”

Li Zhixiang smiled and said, "How many provinces does our Daming have?"

"Two capitals and thirteen provinces!"

"How many prefectures?"

"150 three houses!"

"How many states?"

"76 Zhili prefectures, 48 ​​scattered prefectures!"

Shen Shikui understood: "Together, there are 150 three prefectures and 120 four prefectures, which is 270 seven!"

"Understand!"

Li Zhixiang smiled and said: "In the future, if the names of the prefectures and states are used, we will still have 420 counties in Daming!"

At this moment, a sailor reported: "Master Li, Master Shen, we seem to be off course!"

"Where are you now?"

"Now it seems that we are approaching Quxian Port (Lianyungang) in Huai'an Prefecture!"

"It's okay. Let's go to sea this time. We have water and food. When we arrive in Shanghai, we will return!"

"Yes!"

While talking, suddenly there was a dull thunder in the distance.

Li Zhixiang frowned slightly: "Is the sky going to change?"

Sailorhui, who was on the watchtower, reported: "Lord Li, there seem to be pirates ahead!"

Li Zhixiang couldn't see farther away, so he immediately grabbed the binoculars, through the binoculars with a power of [-] times, he finally saw clearly. On the southeast sea where they produced, there were four ships running ahead, followed by more than a dozen clippers. The clippers fired from time to time, and one of the ships had already been shot, and the burning fire formed a huge column of smoke.

The navy soldiers who hadn't fought for a long time looked at Li Zhixiang and said, "My lord, should we..."

"Immediately adjust the course and head towards the direction of the gunfire at full speed. Let's meet these pirates. Dare to come to our Ning Haijun's territory to smash the field!"

"Master Li, I'm afraid this is not our territory!"

"Yes, it will definitely become our territory in the future!"

As the three-thousand-material ship moved forward with full sail, its speed increased all of a sudden. After half an hour of sailing, the distance between the two sides became closer and closer.

Because the distance was closer, the people on the ships on both sides could see more clearly at this time. These pirates who were chasing were not naval anti-smuggling ships from all over the coast, but real pirates. Although there were no flags on the ships, the sailors on the ships, Typical confinement hair in the days of combing hair.

The so-called Yuedai head, all the hair on the top of the head is shaved, and only the side and rear hair is kept, while the long hair on the back of the head is tied into a bun.

If you want to say that the ugliest hair on the temples in the world, it must be the money rat tail of the Qing Dynasty. However, there is something uglier than the money rat tail, and that is the samurai hair temples and moon generation heads in childhood.

"Damn it, it's actually a pirate!"

At this time, the sound of Japanese pirates' cannons was clearly audible, and the pirate ship could be seen clearly. There were as many as [-] ships. Many soldiers of the Ning Navy Navy looked at Li Zhixiang and said, "My lord, what should we do now?"

A pair of seventeen, the Ning Navy Navy has never fought such a disparity between the enemy and ourselves.

Although this new type of ship is large, the problem is that the key is that this is a new ship. They are only for sea trials. Although the battleship is equipped with 68 cannons, the problem is that each of these cannons only has five rounds of ammunition for test firing. .

If it is a naval battle of later generations, 68 times five, there are at least 340 shells, enough to fight, but the problem is that this is the era of smoothbore naval warfare.

The warships on both sides fired hundreds of shells, and no one could do anything to the other.

What's more, there was a serious shortage of sailors for this sea trial.

Li Zhixiang gritted his teeth: "Brothers, the opportunity to make a fortune has come, rush up and kill them!"

Shen Shikui said, "Lord Li, be careful!"

Li Zhixiang said: "If something goes wrong, the commander will take responsibility!"

"The key to the question is can you afford it?"

Shen Shikui pointed to the boat under his feet and said, "This is a new boat, if something goes wrong, how will you explain it to the commander?"

Li Zhixiang pointed to his head and said, "Can I use my head to confess?"

After Li Zhixiang said this, Shen Shikui stopped talking nonsense.

Li Zhixiang said: "Brothers, cherish this opportunity and strive for the first hit!"

The words sound nice, but the problem is that no one takes it seriously. The chance of being hit by the first strike is lower than the chance of being struck by lightning.

(End of this chapter)