Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 1788 The Gradually Clear Situation ([-])

"...In Beijing in 1665, there was a far-reaching event, that is, Oboi, who held the power of the government, resisted all opinions and trained four new armies in Kaifeng, Jinzhou, and Hanzhong at the same time to adapt to the increasingly The ever-changing battlefield situation. What is surprising is that among the generals commanding the four new armies, two are Han generals, namely Zhang Yong, the commander of the Kaifeng New Army, and Zhao Liangdong, the commander of the Hanzhong New Army. If the Jinzhou New Army, which is under the banner of the Han Army, controls Sun Sike, then three of the four new troops heavily invested by the Qing Empire are commanded by Han generals, except for the second phase of the Jinzhou New Army, which was formed and trained by Tu Hai."

The sky in the east was already pale. Guo Puxia, who had been reading and revising the manuscript all night, rubbed his sore eyes and put down the manuscript about the Qing Dynasty in his hand.These manuscripts were created by a senior intelligence officer under him, and the style is somewhat different from the previous one.Moreover, because the channels for obtaining information about the Qing Dynasty are limited, many parts remain guesswork, and some viewpoints have yet to be confirmed, so the content of the article may not be so convincing in the eyes of some people.

The article is drawn from the reform of the military system with the most information on the East Coast, and it focuses on the three sets of military systems in parallel in the Qing army, namely the Eight Banners Army, the Green Battalion Army and the New Army.

"...The Eight Banners Army is composed of 300 assistant leaders per unit, all of whom are paid by the Qing emperor and given land property. Eight Banners Army officers above the assistant leader will be transferred between various ministries every five years or so to prevent the clan from being cleared. The nobles or commanding generals support their own self-respect. This is a mature military system, and it can also allow the monarch to sleep peacefully, so that he will not die in a court conspiracy in a daze. The entire empire currently has about 20 to 25 such troops or so, but we are highly skeptical about this figure, because intelligence shows that the total number of adult males in the Manchurian, Mongolian and Han Eight Banners of the Qing Empire was only in the early 25s, which means that they counted the vast majority of adult males The number of troops, or as they say, men over the age of 15 and under 60, serve, at least ostensibly."

"...the size of the Green Battalion was huge, almost 50 people, maybe 60, we can't count exactly. In 1645, the Green Battalion at its largest may have reached 80 or 100 million There are so many people, this is because the frontline generals recruited too many soldiers. After that, as the situation changed, the Qing government carried out large-scale disarmament. The health of the finances—the existing green battalion needs about 400 million taels of silver and an unknown amount of food, cloth, and salt to maintain it—and it barely guards the safety of the empire. But it is worth noting that these green battalion soldiers are hereditary The treatment is very average, and in recent years, they have often been deducted by their superiors, and their morale has dropped rapidly. If they could be compared with our servant army in the early years, they are no longer worthy of the newly reorganized new army. Compared with the troops, they are inferior in all aspects.”

"...the new army currently has about 10 people. This is the limit that the Qing Empire can maintain under the current circumstances. Among the new army, the Jinzhou New Army was divided into two divisions, one led by Tu Hai, with about 10 people, including quite a few descendants of the Manchu, Mongolian, and Han Eight Banners, and the other led by Sun Sike, with about 4 people; Under the command of the veteran Zhang Yong, the scale is more than 5000 people. The Hanzhong New Army is led by Zhao Liangdong, and the size is about 10 people; The scale has reached about [-] people, which is not a small scale even in Europe.”

"...Of course, considering the proportion of muskets, artillery equipment, and the difference in the treatment of soldiers, the price paid by the Qing Empire for maintaining the 10 new army may not be as high as the Austrians for maintaining a standing army of 3 to 4. The cost is much higher. However, the quality of many of their self-produced firearms is getting better and better, and the cost of maintaining the army will slowly decrease in the foreseeable future, unless they are determined to further increase the proportion of artillery and other technical weapons.”

"...If the treatment and equipment are only one aspect of the combat effectiveness of the army, then a common chronic disease among the Qing, Shun, and Ming armies severely limited the combat effectiveness of their armies. According to the Germans who trained the new armies of the Qing and Ming The mercenary officers recounted that whether it was the Qing or Ming armies, it was difficult for them to get middle and upper-level officers to participate in training, because they thought it would be disrespectful to participate in training with ordinary soldiers on the playground. What's worse, these middle-level officers He and high-level officers have the privilege of not participating in direct combat in the army, so it is hard to say how much these people know about the new tactics. Of course, they may also understand and learn the new tactics through their own channels in private, but this is not known. I understand. All in all, the combat effectiveness of the new army of the Qing Dynasty should not be overestimated, and its level may be comparable to the new army of five divisions that we have reorganized over the years. It may have certain advantages in local combat, but if you go out for an expedition, The effect may not be ideal."

It can be seen that due to the source of intelligence, this report describing the situation of the Qing Dynasty has given a lot of space to the military, but in terms of the content itself, it is generally more in line with the facts, especially those about the size of the Qing army, equipment The descriptions of expenses, training and combat effectiveness were learned through the acquisition of some European instructors who had participated in the modernization training of the Qing army. It can also be said to be first-hand information.

With such an army, Guo Puxia believes that with the help of the terrain—such as the Jiaolai Xinhe defense line, Siming Mountain, Kuaiji Mountain, etc.—there should be no problem in defending Ningbo and Denglai, unless the Qing Dynasty does its best to attack, but this is obviously impossible.Of course, we should also note that the overall strength of the Qing army should be respected. There is no doubt that they have great advantages against Shun and Ming.

"...Different from the area controlled by the Li Shun regime in the south, the agricultural composition of the huge Qing Empire far surpasses them. More than half of the country's land is mainly planted with wheat, similar to Europe and the east coast, of which the northwest Gansu and parts of Qinghai are dominated by spring wheat, Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi are dominated by winter wheat and millet, Hebei, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Shandong are dominated by winter wheat, sorghum, and new crops imported from overseas. It produces rice, tea, rapeseed and some other crops. Every year, the situation of summer and autumn harvests will be submitted to the imperial court in Beijing as soon as possible. The emperor himself and officials at all levels will evaluate the quality of the grain harvest and formulate corresponding policies Policy, you can think of it as a somewhat strange, ancient budgetary system. It is worth mentioning that because of the pressure of large-scale armies and wars, the financial burden of local states and counties is not light, so many states and counties From time to time, they will report a 'bad harvest' to resist the desire of the Beijing court to increase the amount of tax payment, and the imperial government is often unable to make an accurate judgment on this because of the system and the way of governance."

"...Although the tax burden is not light, the population decreased due to the war in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. Although it has recovered greatly, the per capita land is still very considerable. The life of the farmers is not a disaster. Compared with Guangdong, Guangxi and the Southwest The peasants under the rule of the Ming Dynasty are generally more relaxed. Of course, the temporary increase in war, the greed of local officials, and the possible infestation of bandits will all lead to drastic changes in the living conditions of the peasants in a short period of time, but overall In other words, today, more than [-] years after the establishment of the Qing Empire, the population and food production in the north, which is the core of its rule, have increased tremendously, and water conservancy, irrigation, and storage facilities have been updated and even expanded. It is very important.”

"...Over the past decade or so, according to our observations, the proportion of crops such as mulberry, tea, cotton, sesame, soybean, corn, sweet potato, potato, sesame, and peanut among the farmland planted in the Qing Dynasty has increased. It is the first three. This seems to confirm from one aspect that the market demand for such economic crops is increasing day by day. We have no way of confirming whether there are cotton mills, silk mills or tea factories with sufficient scale and huge investment in the Qing Dynasty. There is too little data, but what is certain is that the Qing Empire has greatly increased its export of raw silk, satin, tea, and cotton cloth in the past decade or so. This can be seen from the financial data released in the London and Amsterdam markets. The two East India companies in the province purchased a huge amount of the above-mentioned commodities in the Qing Empire every year, including an unknown amount of tussah silk produced in the north (in North China and parts of Manchuria, the Qing people used oak leaves to raise silkworms).”

"...The spinning industry is the most important handicraft industry in the countryside of the Qing Dynasty. So far, more than 80% of the cotton cloth in the Qing Dynasty is 'domestic', and only a very small number are purchased from Shunguo, Ningbo and foreign merchants. There is no doubt that the Qing Dynasty More than 95% of the industrial output value is handicraft industry, and only a very small number of industries will use some primitive, crude, inefficient hydraulic or animal-powered machinery for production. In this regard, they were used by the countries of Shun and Ming who had frequent trade with my country far behind."

"...most of the handicraft production is located in the cities, but there are also many in the countryside. Usually the handicraft production is composed of a family model, which is especially common in the north. For example, farmers use their own labor to spin at home. Yarn, weaving, occasionally some wealthy farmers will buy a few additional spinning machines or looms after accumulating a certain amount of money, and then hire labor to operate them. The same is true of some self-employed artisans in cities. They sometimes Some poor citizens will be hired to mill rice, squeeze oil, and gin cotton to make up for the shortage of family labor. It cannot be said that there are no large-scale handicraft factories with centralized production in the Qing Dynasty, but both in terms of the number of hired workers and output. It is far from being able to compare with the one-household model of handicraft production, because many of the latter are sidelines of the huge peasant group in the Qing Empire."

"...it is surprising that we have not been able to collect much information about the modern industry in the Qing Dynasty, because no matter how poor our intelligence capabilities are, it is impossible to know nothing about it. Therefore, whether we can do this It is conjectured that there is no such small-scale modern industry as we aided under the Li Shun regime in the Qing Dynasty, which may be caused by the country's political system, economic form, and ideological culture. Compared with the government-run enterprises with original mechanized production, such as Xiangtan Iron Works, Changsha Gun Bureau, Hengyang Weaving Factory, Ganzhou Oil Press Factory, etc., there is no mining or manufacturing enterprise that uses machines to improve production efficiency in Qing Dynasty. This may be because they Most of the imperial budget was spent on maintaining the army, stabilizing the frontiers, issuing flag salaries, and supporting the government, officials, and royal family. However, according to some unconfirmed information we have received from the British and Dutch East India Companies in recent years, it seems that the Qing Dynasty While trying to find some hydraulic or human machine tools and other equipment for shipbuilding and weapons production, they also seem to be spending a lot of money hiring artisans from Europe to help them design their major exports like tea, raw silk and cotton processing to improve production efficiency. This may be due to the oppression of the huge financial burden brought about by the war, but there is no other explanation.”

"...Although the Qing Empire has suffered various overseas shocks over the years, except for some enlightened people in a few large cities who are willing to learn about overseas developments or new ideas, the cornerstone of the empire living in the vast countryside—landlords and gentry—still lives in the In their traditional spiritual world, they believe in the philosophy of Confucius and Mencius, and they take part in the imperial examinations organized by the imperial government based on traditional Confucianism year after year, and they are relatively indifferent to new knowledge from overseas. Except for Songjiang, Suzhou, Hangzhou and other places We have found no trace of these schools elsewhere, perhaps not at all, or because we do not know enough about the empire, except for some schools that impart modern knowledge."

Seeing this, although I still have doubts about some of the passages, and I always feel a little confused about certain contents, but in terms of the overall feeling, Guo Puxia already feels very clear, that is, the history of the Qing Empire and the Central Empire The feudal empires on Earth were hardly any different.Even because of the obstruction of the Southern Expedition and the existence of people on the east bank for many years, it only stimulated the Qing Empire to strengthen its investment in military industry. In addition, their absorption of modern production knowledge, scientific and technological knowledge, and management knowledge is still very slow.

Guo Puxia even expected that after ten, twenty, or thirty years, with the expansion of the territory and the progress of the society, the production of military supplies such as steel and ammunition, or the production of livelihood materials such as cotton cloth, salt, and oil in Shunguo would all be of great importance. When it grows to a level that is almost the same as that of the Qing Dynasty, will the upper echelons of the Qing Dynasty have a little awareness, and whether the Han officials and generals in the territory can maintain enough loyalty to this old empire? He hopes that when he is still alive can see the day.

(End of this chapter)