The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 289 Panama and Italy

At the end of October in the fourth year of Tiangong, the rainy season in Panama came to an end and continuous sunny days began to appear.

A huge Ming fleet, carrying tens of thousands of Ming immigrants, a large number of agricultural tools and engineering machinery, took the North Pacific route and arrived in Panama on November 1.

To the west of the Panama Canal construction site, on land that will belong to the Ming Dynasty in the future, the construction of the Ming Dynasty’s new Panama City port and city has now officially begun.

Most of the immigrants were responsible for continuing to expand the port and the settlement area around the city, building temporary houses using local wood.

When building a house for long-term use, the wood must be processed in advance, but there is not enough time now, so we can only build the house directly with the logs.

There will be enough time in the future, and after enough wood is dried, we can build a house for long-term residence.

At the same time, special pioneering teams were arranged to log and open up new land inland along the gravel roads originally laid by the Spaniards and the existing semi-finished canals.

At the same time, re-exploration of the existing canal site, the planned canal route, and the rivers and mountains in the surrounding area began.

The original 80,000 black slaves were now all put to use, with some helping to process felled trees and doing odd jobs on construction sites.

More were assigned to dig out tree roots, remove weeds, build canals, level the land, and construct farmland.

The original canal project construction itself was completely stopped temporarily.

By mid-November, the rainy season in Panama is completely over and the area enters a dry season with almost no rain.

The rainfall frequency has changed from once every two days to twice a month, and the overall precipitation has dropped to the level of semi-arid areas.

However, the dry season is also the most suitable time of the year for various construction projects in the area.

Another group of immigrants organized by Duan Yucai and Liu Quanzhi also took the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean routes from the other side and arrived in Panama from the Atlantic side.

They began to open up wasteland and build ports and cities in the Panama region on the Atlantic side.

According to Li Baozhu's plan, the immigrant groups on both sides sent out pioneering teams to open up new land inland along the canal construction site and gravel roads.

After the two pioneering teams successfully met inland, they began to expand the pioneering area westward.

Two other engineering teams entered the reclaimed area at the same time and began to build temporary railways connecting the port cities on both sides of the isthmus.

When the rainy season arrived in the fifth year of Tiangong, the new paddy fields in the development area began to store water and apply fertilizer, and at the same time, the prepared rice seedlings were planted in the paddy fields.

The Panama region has been sufficiently preheated. The entire rainy season plus the relatively wet period before and after lasts a total of more than eight months. Combined with early seedling cultivation, it is just right to harvest two crops of rice.

It is not possible to work at full capacity during the rainy season like during the dry season.

When it rains heavily, you can't see anything clearly and people can't stand steadily in the rain. In addition, there is water everywhere on the ground, so it is impossible to work normally.

But Li Baozhu still arranged for the workers of Daming to set up temporary sheds on the edge of the development area.

At regular intervals, keep some trees when felling them and cut off the extra branches below the crown.

Use the trunks of several nearby trees as pillars, and use nails and wooden boards to build a temporary shed to shelter from the rain.

When it rained heavily, the workers and slaves would hide under the shed to rest. When the rain stopped, they would go out to continue cutting trees, digging canals, and leveling the land.

Of course, the progress of such work could not be fast, but the workers of the Ming Dynasty believed that they could not let tens of thousands of slaves sit idle and eat for free.

The Spanish slaves have discovered that when they live with the Ming people, they get sick less often and fewer people die from illness than when they live with the Spanish.

But there is a lot more work to do, and there is almost no chance to rest except when it rains heavily.

In addition to understandable work such as cutting down trees and digging canals, there are also many jobs that they cannot understand, such as filling garbage and feces.

The people of the Ming Dynasty seemed to have many unfounded demands, which made many black slaves complain.

But most of them did not have the courage to escape. The weapons of the Ming people were more terrifying than those of the Spanish. Those rifles could hit people's bodies from hundreds of meters away.

There are also those really scary chain saws that can literally smash a person's limbs apart.

In addition, the black slaves could indeed eat enough food, and the probability of illness and death was indeed lower, so most of the slaves had no intention of escaping.

The black slaves could only continue to work with sad faces.

During this rainy season, the food prepared by the Spanish was exhausted, but the Ming Dynasty began to import food allocated from the United States into the canal area.

Thanks to Zhu Jianxuan's reminder, a large amount of farmland was developed in North America, and grain was continuously supplied to Europe in the past few years. However, the amount of exported grain has decreased in recent years.

The price of grain in North America is now almost the lowest in the world, and it is much cheaper to ship it through the Panama Canal than to Europe.

Four months later, the rice fields in Panama had a bumper harvest. With sufficient supply of fertilizers, the yield per acre of rice reached 600 kilograms.

Although the Spanish craftsmen and black slaves did not obtain the specific per-acre yield data of the rice, they knew it was a bumper harvest when they looked at the lush rice stalks and heavy rice ears.

While the Ming people were harvesting, they had already prepared the second batch of seedlings in advance. They applied fertilizer and planted rice again immediately after harvesting the first crop of rice.

Another four months passed, and shortly after the rainy season of the fifth year of Tiangong ended, the second crop of rice was harvested, with a yield of more than 500 kilograms per mu.

The total output of rice for two seasons exceeded one thousand kilograms, a yield that had never been imagined anywhere before.

In this dry season, the canal, which has been suspended for a year, has not yet resumed construction.

Li Baozhu asked other craftsmen to command the railway construction team to speed up the laying of rails, while he himself commanded another group of craftsmen and black slaves to build a dam in the local river valley.

The Ming mainland also sent a second batch of immigrants from the two guards, who were settled in the newly built residential areas on both sides of the isthmus.

Before the rainy season arrived in the sixth year of Tiangong, the railway connecting the two oceans was fully completed.

Two small reservoirs were also built using the original river valley.

Even with the railway and two small reservoirs, Li Baozhu still did not work on the canal. During the rainy season, the canal was filled with water and no construction was possible.

Most of the Ming Dynasty immigrants, along with the remaining black slaves, remained west of the canal construction site to continue opening up more land.

By the end of the sixth year of Tiangong, the existing farmland had harvested two more crops of rice, and the Panama region had basically achieved food self-sufficiency.

The fleet from the Ming Dynasty also brought the third batch of immigrants and more construction machinery.

When a new round of drought season came, Li Baozhu finally ordered most of the manpower and construction machinery to be dispatched to the construction of the canal.

At the beginning of the seventh year of Tiangong, the Panama Canal project, which had been stalled for two years, was finally resumed.

First, dredge the completed part of the river, use excavators to dig and remove the collapsed soil, and use prefabricated cement frames with gravel and grass to fix the river.

A small number of manpower and construction machinery are used to build more reservoirs and canals.

With enough reservoirs and canals for irrigation, farmland here can grow an extra crop of rice during the dry season.

The preliminary preparations for the canal have been basically completed, and the next step is to build the canal itself.
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On the North American continent, in the autumn of the fourth year of Tiangong, officials of the Ming Dynasty's North American Jing'an Guard received notices from the Ming court and Spain.

The militia was immediately arranged to cross the major North American river (Mississippi River) and take over St. Louis on the other side.

St. Louis is located at the intersection of the Great River and the Missouri River, which is basically the center of the Great Plains of North America. At the same time, it is also a terrace, which is obviously more than 20 meters higher than the river next to it and will not be flooded by the river.

There are some low hills to the west, and endless long grass grassland to the northwest. The urban area and its surroundings are suitable for building a city, and the northwest is suitable for reclaiming wasteland and farming.

It was originally a fur trading base specially selected and built by the French thirty years ago.

Purchase buffalo leather from the indigenous people living around, or organize people to hunt and skin the buffalo themselves.

At this time, most of the European settlements in the interior of America were commercial settlements and had little to do with land reclamation and farming.

The land carrying capacity of mainland Europe has not reached its limit, and most people will not go to the interior of America specifically to farm.

Even adventurers usually go to the United States. In the southeastern states of the United States, they can get land and farm on their own without having to go inland.

The population of these inland strongholds was usually very limited. St. Louis was Spain's most important stronghold on the Great Plains of North America, but at that time it had less than two thousand people.

Jing'anwei first sent militia to take over public security, and then began to continuously send immigrants to this area suitable for reclamation.

A full complement of 1,000 households was transferred from the White Tiger Vanguard and the Taiping Guard, directly increasing the local population of St. Louis to 10,000 people.

The original French and Spanish people directly became minority groups.

The officer in charge of the St. Louis area directly notified the local French and Spanish, asking them to either be incorporated into the military farms according to Ming standards or leave on their own.

Most of the locals were businessmen and were not very willing to become farmers, so most of them chose to leave by boat, and in the end there were only less than a thousand people left.

The Ming Dynasty will continue to immigrate to the local area in the future. There may be a gap of two orders of magnitude in the future. Sooner or later, they will be fully integrated into this group of Ming Dynasty immigrants.
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On the European continent, the war between the anti-French alliance and the French Republic also unfolded in full swing in these years.

Napoleon was a natural general. At this time, he led 100,000 new French troops and, with the support of new bitter acid grenades, he made unstoppable progress across the Italian peninsula.

First, they invaded the Kingdom of Sardinia again. The King of Sardinia found that the army was unable to withstand the French offensive and fled directly to Venice.

Napoleon invaded Turin, announced the abolition of the original king and established the Republic of Sardinia.

The Sardinian nobility was stripped of their titles and their wealth was confiscated, but instead of being distributed to the local civilians or given to the newly established republic, it was sent directly back to France.

Then, in northern Italy, in the territory of the Republic of Venice, they fought against the Austrian army that came to support them and won another major victory.

The Austrian army withdrew from Venice after its defeat, and Napoleon occupied the major cities in northern Italy.

Then he announced the dissolution of the original Grand Council, the abolition of the original aristocratic republic, and the establishment of a new civilian republic.

At the same time, they did the same thing again, confiscating the wealth accumulated by the Republic of Venice over hundreds of years and sending it back to France in batches.

The Venetians, Sardinians, and Austrians all thought that Napoleon would take advantage of his victory to continue his offensive eastwards and push the front back into Austrian territory.

However, Napoleon did not continue the counterattack, and even directly gave up the land of the Republic of Venice across the Adriatic Sea, allowing the Austrian army to directly occupy and control it.

Napoleon led his army south into the Papal States, causing widespread panic and Pope Pius VI condemning France.

But verbal rebukes could not stop Napoleon's fierce offensive. The French army quickly occupied a large amount of land in the Papal States and soon captured the city of Rome.

Napoleon gathered local radical youth and established a Roman Republic.

Pope Pius VI prepared to flee, but Napoleon's army arrived too quickly and there were many young people in the area who believed in the Enlightenment and hoped to build a republic.

The Pope failed to escape and was captured alive by local youths and handed over to Napoleon.

Napoleon did not waste any time talking to the Pope. He sent the Pope himself and the huge wealth accumulated by the Papal States back to France.

After taking control of the Papal States, Napoleon himself led the French army further south to attack the Kingdom of Naples.

At the same time, they asked the three republics of Sardinia, Venice and Rome to organize volunteers to "liberate" the Grand Duchy of Tuscany which was surrounded by them.

At this time, Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany was the younger brother of Austrian Emperor Joseph II and the first heir to the Austrian throne because Joseph II had no heirs.

According to the original history, Joseph II died in 1790, and Leopold had succeeded to the throne and became Emperor Leopold II of Austria.

Leopold II's third son, Karl Ludwig Johann Joseph Laurencius, was the very famous Archduke Karl in history.

Karl was one of the most important military commanders in the anti-French alliance during the Napoleonic era and played a very important role in the entire war to defeat Napoleon.

At this time, Karl was already 26 years old, almost the same age in the original history, when he began to show his military talent and was responsible for commanding part of the Tuscan army's deployment.

In the three fledgling republics of Sardinia, Venice and Rome, most of the volunteers temporarily recruited were new soldiers, and there were no picric acid grenades.

Encountering the talented and famous general Karl, a large-scale defeat occurred soon after the war began.

Karl immediately led his troops in pursuit, and soon drove the enemy out of the borders of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and counterattacked into the former territory of the Papal States.

At the same time, Karl sent people to contact the Austrian emperor, who was also Karl's uncle, and prepared to cooperate with the Austrian army to cut off Napoleon's army's retreat.

Napoleon was quite shocked when he heard the news of the defeat in the rear, especially that his own retreat might be cut off.

He immediately gave up Naples temporarily and led his troops back to provide support.

Napoleon's military talent was originally higher, and he had more combat experience at this time, and his army was larger in number and more experienced.

The army of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany commanded by Charles was able to defeat the armies of Sardinia, Venice, and Rome, but was clearly no match for the French army commanded by Napoleon.

Napoleon personally commanded all the troops and defeated the Tuscan army that was leaving the border before the Austrian army counterattacked.
Then they continued to invade the territory of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and pushed all the way to the capital city of Florence.

Charles could not withstand the French offensive, but he managed to slow down the French advance, creating conditions for Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Leopold successfully escaped to the Ming city in Tunisia.

After the Grand Duchy of Tuscany was destroyed, Napoleon turned back and fought again with the pursuing Austrian army, and defeated the Austrian army again.

At the same time, the King of Naples and his ministers thought they had seen a suitable opportunity and took the initiative to attack the French army.

His choice seemed to be correct. The Neapolitan army once defeated the garrison troops arranged by Napoleon and attacked near the city of Rome.

However, Napoleon had already defeated Austria at this time, and immediately arranged for the main force to move south again, and quickly defeated the Neapolitan army.

Napoleon's army continued to move south to attack Naples itself.

Ferdinand IV appeared very brave when he attacked, but he soon fell into panic after learning that his army had suffered a series of defeats.

Before the French army approached Naples, Ferdinand fled to Sicily with his entire family.

The King of Naples fled, and the Republicans of Naples organized to welcome the French army and, with the help of the French army, suppressed the local aristocratic royalist forces.

A republic was then established with French support.

By this point, under Napoleon's command, France had basically completely occupied the Italian peninsula.

(End of this chapter)