Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1224 Hejian ([-])

On the morning of October 1659, 10, the travel-worn Chen Ke arrived at Dashikou Township on the west bank of the Wujiang River, a town that had been besieged by the aborigines a year ago. The militia and the merchant guards worked together to completely defeat the Guarani natives.Now that a year has passed, the enemy has never organized such a large-scale offensive at that time, which also shows how much their losses were at that time.

"Chen Kechang (Chen Ke's position has always been vague. Although he was authorized by his superiors to lead the development of the northern half of the Hejian area, his position is still only a section chief), quickly follow us to Yehuo Township. There are Spaniards there. Officials have come to stop us from opening up wasteland." An officer of the Lianxiang Association led a horse and said humbly.

These guys are so humble at this time, where is their usual indifferent attitude?snort!Chen Ke slandered fiercely in his heart.The so-called Lianxianghui is actually a loose joint self-protection group composed of the five settlements that developed earlier in the northern part of Hejian—Shanchabao, Dashikou Township, Liushuwan Township, Xinji Township, and Yehuo Township. It's all about organization. The five towns communicate with each other, respond to each other, and rescue each other when encountering enemy attacks. In a sense, they effectively make up for the lack of superior government power.But in the eyes of "airborne officials" like Chen Ke, this kind of organization is abhorrent to them. Damn it, I don't give face to Lao Tzu, refuse to obey discipline, and faintly don't want him to intervene in internal affairs. That's okay!Therefore, it is no wonder that Chen Ke moved his office to the south, giving priority to guiding the development of Xiaolou Township, Liziyuan Township, and Fengyu Township. As for the five townships in the north, there will be opportunities to clean up slowly .

"The militiamen have already passed by Shanchabao, let's go now." The officer who led the horse urged, behind him, there were more than 100 militiamen with rifles on their backs. One in three had horses, the rest probably had to walk or ride in a carriage.

"Let's go, tell me what happened while walking." Chen Ke waved his hand, calling for several policemen who came with him to get on their horses and set off.

"The mestizo regiment is back and stationed in the Spanish town of Posadas." The officer said straight to the point, "They saw us opening up wasteland in Wildfire Township, so they sent officials to stop us. As a result, the local young The Spanish officials were hanged all night, which resulted in Spanish soldiers. Fortunately, both sides were relatively restrained, and there was no accident, but it is true that the situation was tense."

It is said that because of the Crandi riots in the core ruling area, the newly established Buenos Aires Procuratorate District once transferred this infantry regiment of more than 1000 people back to suppress the riots. The arrogance of Spanish officials and priests was momentary. At that time, it undoubtedly encouraged the ambitions of the people on the east coast to open up wilderness. Many towns were established later, and the illegal cross-border reclamation business was booming.But now it seems that the Spaniards may feel that they should curb the "reckless movement" of the people on the east bank in the river area, so they not only set up a fortress-like town in Posadas (based on the original foundation), but also set up a The entire Mestizo regiment was transferred over to station, and its intention was already obvious, which was to interfere and prevent the people from the east bank from pressing on every step of the way.

The so-called wildfire town, located near the later city of Leandro Alem, got its name from the spectacular wildfires when the people on the east bank burned the wasteland.There are currently less than a thousand people in this settlement, and the establishment time is very short. At present, it mainly grows corn and herds cattle and sheep. It is a typical natural agricultural economy.However, the location of Wildfire Township is quite subtle, basically it is the closest to the Spanish city of Posadas, and it is no wonder that the Spaniards want to stop the pioneering behavior of the people on the east coast—maybe they can’t tolerate wildfires The existence of the township is just that it cannot bear the encroachment and reclamation policy of the people on the east coast.

Chen Ke and others rushed to Yehuo Township the next afternoon—a township settlement with a wooden fence and a low earth wall built around it.Here, as expected, he met an old acquaintance, Fu Lei, who had been promoted to lieutenant in the army.

Lieutenant Fu Lei has been training soldiers in the north recently and building the local security and defense system. He is basically busy without touching the ground. Chen Ke saw that his temples were turning gray. He is only in his forties. It can be seen how worried I am on weekdays.

"The number of regular soldiers is too small, and many people are even unwilling to serve. Of course, this is also related to the underpopulation." Lieutenant Fu Lei complained when he met, "I once suggested implementing a mercenary service system among pioneers, so as to Responding to the new normal in terms of security and defense. The core of this policy is that families with better economic conditions give financial subsidies to servicemen, so as to prevent sparsely populated peasant families from being deprived of the last healthy labor force, but no one agreed. Later I It is suggested that all property owners be recruited to serve in the army, and these guys hesitated and refused to agree. Damn, is this still the land of our country? Are these people really citizens? Among the early cadres of the Bingtuanbao Some of them support my opinion, but their voices are too low, especially at Shanchabao, where the relatives of the Chen family and Xu family live together, their voices are very loud, and they must be rectified."

"Then these soldiers..." Chen Ke pointed to the hundreds of officers and soldiers with guns standing on duty on the fence, and asked.

"Many of the garrison soldiers I brought from Shanchabao are non-citizens, and less than one-third of the nationals of the country who volunteered to join the garrison." Lieutenant Fu Lei sighed and shouted: "Doroshenko, you give Chen Ke Please introduce our team well."

"Yes, Lieutenant." Doroshenko was standing behind Fu Lei. He had listened to the conversation between the two sides for a while, and now he only heard him say: "Many of our team are warriors from Poland and Ukraine. They not only fight They're good hands, and they're not lazy at work. You know, they're not like bums in the south of Italy, who don't quit their jobs as soon as they're full and sleep in dirty beds, as long as they have enough money Earn money or the lords give orders, and they'll keep working until they're exhausted."

"Get to the point!" Lieutenant Fu Lei coughed, lest Doroshenko, the former editor-in-chief Cossack, drag the topic away.

"Ah, yes, the point." Doroshenko patted the 1633 flintlock pistol on his waist, and said with air: "We are all heroes who are not afraid of death. I can kill two Indian bastards with one shot. Here we are. There are 165 people; 100 men were organized locally in Yehuo Township. In addition, Chief Chen, you seem to have brought over [-] militiamen. Well, there are also two small cannons. Haha, no problem, that mesti It's not that I don't understand the combat power of the Soren Regiment, so it's not a big problem to hold here."

"I came here to negotiate with the Spaniards, not to fight." Chen Ke breathed a sigh of relief, then turned to Lieutenant Fu Lei and asked, "Maintaining such a team costs a lot, how did the money come out?" ?”

"Let's recruit locally. It's fine if those people don't want to be soldiers. If they don't even want to pay money and food, do I really think I have no way to deal with them?" Lieutenant Fu Lei said with a serious face, "Every soldier in the garrison needs at least 320 kilograms of grain, 80 kilograms of meat, 8 kilograms of salt, wine worth 20 yuan, a variety of non-staple food and medicine, 5 yuan of clothing and other expenses. Shanchabao has a prosperous business and can fully afford it. Of course, if they Tell me that you can’t afford it, and I have a way to make them pay, do you really think there is no king’s law here?”

It seems that Lieutenant Fu Lei also doesn't like those people who live in clusters (the Chen family, the Xu family, and even each family has two or three hundred relatives living together in the township party). They may be good at farming and management, but they have no Lieutenant Fu Lei is somewhat disgusted by the fact that they occupy too much power that originally belonged to the government in the Hejian area of ​​Wangfa - they are like those Italian family, they are all poor people in rags at first, lacking any identification documents (Many fled from Southwest railway construction sites), first detained by the police because they were extremely poor, stole food along the way (without a "bread of justice") and did not want to return to Italy, and then these people Then they were sent to the Hejian area to open up wasteland one after another to enrich the labor force here.These Italian fugitive laborers do not even know the name of the place they are going to, but their desire to emigrate is particularly strong, and they strive to leave early.Many of them couldn't wait for the official permit documents to come down and even didn't even start the registration, so they went out in a daze.

As a result, after several years of tea picking, logging, grazing, fishing, beekeeping, and even farming in the Hejian area, many of them had savings, and then paid money to Yang Valentino, a famous labor broker, to help them get money from their hometown in Italy. Taking over relatives and family members, the result is that there are more and more Italians living in the form of large families in the Hejian area, which has brought a lot of trouble to the control of the people on the east bank-who made the local lack of formal government agencies, lack of What about officials, lack of laws, or even lack of a **** machine?

"You are suffering in the north." Chen Ke heard the words and sighed, "the local support for us is still too little, not only the lack of materials, but also the lack of people. At that time, Committee member Shi Qinjie told me that the central government would In a few years, 3 new and old citizens will immigrate to the Hejian area, but this promise has not been fulfilled, and I don’t know how to do it. No one, nothing can be done! Well, it seems that after dealing with this matter, I I have to find time to go back to the capital again, many of the [-] people promised by the central government are new nationals born in their own country, if these people are brought here and mixed with sand everywhere, I see what tricks those clans can play?"

"This is a good thing. I absolutely support it, because it can increase the authority of the central government." Lieutenant Fu Lei said happily.

(End of this chapter)