Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 681 New Deal ([-])

Throughout February the situation in North China was in turmoil.First, the yellow-clothed thieves made a big fuss in Shandong, which led to the deployment of a large number of troops from the northern provinces of the Qing court. As a result, the actions of the Qing army in Shanxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan and other places were very difficult and progress was extremely slow.It wasn't until the end of February that the Qing army managed to catch Zhang Xianzhong in Sichuan, and destroyed his main force in the first battle. Zhang himself was wounded and fled, while the rest fled for their lives.

At present, the Qing army is still cleaning up the remnants of Zhang Xianzhong in Sichuan, and at the same time recruiting people from all walks of life, including the Nanming armed forces, but at this time the prestige of the Qing court is not as strong as in history. The embarrassing situation where all these famous cities were breached caused the Qing court to lose a lot of points. Coupled with the strong resistance brought about by the forced shaving of hair and easy clothing, the number of armed forces in Sichuan who were willing to surrender to the Qing suddenly decreased a lot.By the way, the commander-in-chief of the Qing army is Nikan, and Hauge is currently under confinement-because of his poor performance when he was facing the yellow-clothed bandits on the opposite side of Shandong.

The Qing army did not go well in Shaanxi and Sichuan, and it was even more embarrassing in Shandong.In the Battle of Baodugu, Marshal Mo wiped out more than [-] people from the ace army of the Seven Generals, the most capable former Mingshan Customs General. Gaodi himself fled to Xuzhou with more than a thousand cavalry go.After defeating the Gaodi Department, the army on the east coast went to Ganyu and Haizhou counties to replenish and rest, and at the same time transferred a large amount of spoils back to Yantai Port, which had begun to thaw.

After resting and replenishing, the east bank army then slowly marched westward under the leadership of the new commander in chief, Mao Desheng. Yantai, ready to persuade the new leader of the pioneering team, Shao Shude, to revoke the previous order to withdraw troops, and let himself lead the troops to spend another few months with the Qing army.

He understands that Li Huajing of Caozhou is currently revolting, with more than [-] troops from the local bandits in Dongping, plus more than [-] Yuyuan Army who are noisy, and Qu Shuai, leaders, and kings swarming from all over the country. There is probably only Jinan Mansion and half of Dongchang Mansion that Ting can completely control in his hands.As for Denglai Qingsan Mansion and Yanzhou Mansion, the local ruling order of the Qing government has basically disintegrated, and even the gentry forces (mainly landlords and businessmen) who supported them have been hit a lot, and their strength is not as good as before. Shao Shude laid the groundwork for the implementation of the so-called New Deal in Dengzhou.

It is worth mentioning that currently in Shao Shude’s planning, Dengzhou and Heishui areas are completely two systems, that is, Dengzhou is managed by servants such as Chen Zhilong and Dong Xueli. For example, Dong Xueli is in Dengzhou, and Chen Zhilong is in Ninghai Prefecture , Xie Qian accounted for Weihaiwei; while the Heishui area (including Yantai, Jeju Island, Rishiri Island, Sakhalin Island, Outer Northeast and Hokkaido) was run by himself, well, it was actually Wei Boqiu who was doing it.

Of course, as the nominal suzerain of these surrendered soldiers and generals, Shao Shude felt that he was also obliged to guide these Qiuba bandits, who were extremely proficient in robbing money, food, and women, to govern the territory under their jurisdiction.For example, the so-called "rent reduction and interest rate reduction" campaign he promoted in Dengzhou with great fanfare a while ago reduced the land rents of the few remaining landlords in the second prefecture of Denglei, allowing farmers to recuperate.In fact, the landlords in Shandong had already started to lower the land rent due to the sparse population at this time, and Shao Shude only further promoted this trend.

In addition, due to years of war, the contradiction between people and land in Dengzhou has become less prominent.In the Wanli period, the prosperous place with a registered permanent residence of more than one million (about 400 million people) is now estimated to have less than 60 people left, which is just over [-]% of its heyday.This kind of population is scattered on such a vast land of Dengzhou, and it is really diluted like pepper noodles in the blink of an eye.

Compared with Dengzhou, the population of Laizhou is slightly smaller, but not small.For example, in 1644, Zhang Haoqian surrounded Jiaozhou with rioters, and there were more than 50 people, which shows that the population of Laizhou is also quite large.Moreover, the army on the east bank never killed civilians in Shandong. The military discipline was much better than that of the Qing army. Therefore, although the population of Laizhou did not increase, it would not decrease significantly. It is estimated that there will still be a population of [-] million at this time.

These two prefectures already have more than one million people.Although compared with the nearly 7000 million population of the entire Ming Dynasty at this time (the Qing court statistics in 1645 were less than 1700 million Dingkou, converted into a population of about 7000 million), it is not as good as compared with the poor population of 15 on the east coast. Same day.In addition, since half a year ago, people from the east coast have been grabbing the grain in the fourth prefecture of Denglai Qingji, and then attracted a large number of poor farmers to come to Dengzhou with their families. Now it is conservatively estimated that the population of the second prefecture of Denglai has Breaking 120 million, and its number is still increasing.

Shao Shude is different from his predecessor, Marshal Mo, who is afraid that the extra population will overwhelm the fragile Blackwater economy, so the number of people he collects is calculated in advance every time.However, after Shao Shude took charge of Heishui, he began to allow the servants who had defected to openly accept the people who entered Dengzhou from Laizhou, Qingzhou and even Jinan Prefecture, and then distributed large areas of wasteland to them and registered them.And in order to reassure them, he also issued the title deeds issued by the Blackwater Pioneering Team to these poor people, which immediately won the hearts of the people.

After the distribution of wasteland (mainly near the garrison of the slave army on the east coast, there are actually still large areas of land left uncultivated), the next step is the vigorous mass production movement.Although it is not yet time for spring sowing, it is not so easy to reclaim the land that has been abandoned for a long time. Moreover, some water conservancy and irrigation facilities have been in disrepair for a long time, and it is just in time for the dry season in winter.

Shao Shude was used to working on construction projects at home before, but after arriving in Shandong, he was not acclimatized to the environment and he was old, and his health was not as good as before, so he left a lot of work to Wei Boqiu, who was urgently recalled from the position of the frontline army supervisor.Wei Boqiu actually had a lot of slanders against Shao Shude's "Shandong New Deal". He believed that construction in Dengzhou was pure nonsense, because it would become a war zone if one was not careful, and these farmlands might be destroyed by the warring parties in the future.

Besides, he didn't quite agree with Shao Shude's behavior of evenly distributing land to landlords (a lot of wasteland was seized by landlords taking advantage of the chaos), forcing rent and interest reductions, and imposing large amounts of taxes on landlords and wealthy businessmen, because it was very detrimental to the united front of these gentry, but all of his All opinions were choked back by Shao Shude's sentence "I am a member of the Communist Party", and he didn't come back to his senses for a long time: Marshal Mo, a **** maniac who left with the Far East, now came another one who was said to have never been a construction contractor. For Shao Shude, a member of the Communist Party who has been in arrears of wages, it is really hard to say what the people of Shandong will face in the future. After all, this is an enemy of the gentry all over the world.

However, the mainland has not yet had a clear strategy for the Far East. The only thing they care about is the population. Every captain of the Blackwater Pioneering Team is qualified and competent as long as he can send a large number of people to the mainland with quality and quantity.If you can send some gold and silver to the mainland from time to time, it will be an outstanding achievement.Therefore, Wei Boqiu didn't bother to take care of Shao Shude's policies in Shandong. Anyway, Dengzhou is not directly under the control of the Blackwater Pioneering Team, but an area indirectly managed by the servant army. , gradually turning these places into the basic territory of the East Coast Republic in the Far East, and at the same time reaping a lot of political and even economic benefits for themselves.

Under such circumstances, Shao Shude's Shandong New Deal has been implemented quietly for more than two months.Over the past two months, Yantai, Dengzhou, Ninghai Prefecture, and Weihaiwei have allocated more than 100 million mu of land (including reclaimed abandoned land), an average of about 15 mu for each adult man.Among them, the officers and soldiers of several servant armies were told that they had been allocated land, so their morale was greatly improved.

Of course, the process of dividing land was not all smooth sailing.Some landowners and gentry who were quite obedient to the people on the east coast saw that their fields were going to be "land reformed", and they didn't care about the disparity in strength. They brought their slaves to fight armedly.However, due to the lack of cadres, most of the people who presided over the operation of dividing the land this time were officers from the self-propelled team and the servant army. They were all outsiders. This land-dividing operation seems to have brought such a trace of tragic color.

Wei Boqiu looked down on this so-called land reform process.He thinks that in less than ten years, if the people on the east coast do not fail in Shandong, the officers and soldiers of these assigned servants at all levels will gradually evolve into large and small landlords, and the society will continue to return to the original order. Everyone continues to live in accordance with the original way of life.

However, he is not opposed to the division of land, after all, those landlords who have been suppressed are not good birds.At the beginning, there were some small landlords or self-cultivating farmers on these stretches of land, but these gentry took advantage of the chaos in the world to clean up these people who were not as powerful as them, and they had a lot of blood debts in their hands. .Besides, a large number of servants will pour into Dengzhou next, so you have to give them some benefits, otherwise who will continue to work hard for you!And land and women are obviously the best rewards, and they are also the things that can win the hearts of the officers and soldiers of the servant army the most.

I believe that with the passage of time, when the people on the east coast have eliminated these servants and left the strong ones, they may really be able to gain a foothold in Dengzhou relying on Shandong's wonderful terrain (peninsula) and necessary fortresses and other defensive facilities.And once the people on the east bank successfully stabilized the situation in Dengzhou, the Qing army would have little hope of taking it back, unless they mobilized more than 20 troops to attack (the logistics line is long and heavy troops need to be deployed for defense), But judging from the current situation in the country, the possibility is not great.Therefore, the Shandong issue seems to be like an increasingly serious tumor on the body of the Qing court. Sooner or later, the health of this body will be completely destroyed.

(End of this chapter)