Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 110 Eunuch Tax Collectors' Control of the Inner Court (Part 2)

Zhu Jue looked up at Wei Zhongxian, then shook his head again.

His shaking of his head made Wei Zhongxian's heart skip a beat.

Wei Zhongxian still thought he had done something wrong.

Unexpectedly, that wasn't the case at all.

Zhu Jue suddenly asked with great interest, "Zhilong, I heard that you also took disaster victims from the coastal areas of Zhejiang and Fujian to Dongfan to reclaim wasteland and cultivate land. How many people did you take there, and how much land is there?"

I didn't bring many people over.

Zheng Zhilong estimated, "Your Majesty, I have only brought over less than 10,000 households, totaling about 30,000 people. However, there is a lot of land there. I estimate that there are at least tens of millions of acres."

Does Dongfan have tens of millions of acres of land?

Upon hearing this, Xu Guangqi couldn't help but become interested.

There is enough land in Dongfan, but the population is too small.

Zhu Jue thought for a moment and then asked, "How many people were originally on the island?"

How do you say this?

Zheng Zhilong thought for a moment, then carefully said, "Your Majesty, I did not stay in Dongfan for very long, nor did I have time to travel around. Therefore, I do not know much about how many people originally lived there."

However, I have read General Chen Di's "Records of the Eastern Barbarians," which contains a detailed description of the Eastern Barbarians. According to General Chen Di, the Eastern Barbarians originally consisted of about ten communities, each with a population ranging from a thousand to five or six hundred, totaling no more than ten thousand people.

General Chen Di?

Is this person very famous?

Zhu Jue thought for a moment, then simply asked, "What position does Chen Di currently hold?"

Uh, he's gone.

Zheng Zhilong explained in detail: "Your Majesty, Chen Di was the Gubeikou Guerrilla General in the early Wanli period. In the eleventh year of Wanli, his benefactor, the famous general Qi Jiguang, was transferred away from Jizhou Town, and General Chen Di also resigned and returned to Fujian."

General Chen Di was well-versed in military strategy and enjoyed traveling. In the 30th year of the Wanli reign (1611), he accompanied Vice Commander-in-Chief Shen Yourong to Dongfan (Eastern Barbarian Lands) to expel Japanese pirates. After driving out the pirates, he traveled to Dongfan and wrote "A Record of Dongfan."

Was he a guerrilla general at Gubeikou in the early Wanli period?
It's been forty or fifty years; the person must be long gone.

It's a pity; if he were still here, he would be a valuable asset.

Zhu Jue thought for a moment and then asked, "Have you ever met the people who originally lived over there? Were they easy to get along with?"

Zheng Zhilong nodded repeatedly and said, "Near Beigang, the stronghold of Dongfan, there is a Zhuluoshan community. Most of them migrated there during the Tang and Song dynasties, and most of them are fellow villagers from Quanzhou Prefecture. They are easy to get along with. If we give them some cloth and porcelain, they will help us reclaim wasteland and farm there."

That's good.

Zhu Jue thought about it carefully again, and then asked, "What about the Dutch and the Spanish? It seems they have also seized strongholds in Dongfan. Can your men drive them away?"

Zheng Zhilong nodded solemnly and said, "Yes, Your Majesty, the Dutch and Spanish have seized strongholds in Dongfan."

The Spanish were easier to deal with. They had only recently arrived in Keelung, with just a few warships and a few hundred men, and had not yet had time to build fortifications to defend themselves.

The Dutch have been entrenched in Dayuan for several years, and they seem to be building a large fortress to hold it. Liu Xiang has also fled there. Right now, there are more than ten Dutch galleons and over fifty of Liu Xiang's pirate ships in the harbor of Dayuan, with an estimated force of five or six thousand men. It will be very difficult to take them down.

Does this mean the Dutch fortress wasn't finished yet?
We need to attack them quickly; it will be even harder to attack if we wait until their fortress is completed.

Zhu Jue asked, somewhat puzzled, "Don't you already have over 100,000 men? Why are you afraid of a mere few thousand? Last time, didn't Hong Kui rob ten galleons from them? What's there to be afraid of with just over ten galleons?"

This cannot be measured in terms of manpower or horses.

This galleon is not the same as that galleon.

Zheng Zhilong said with some helplessness, "Your Majesty, the Dutch have more than one type of galleon. I have seen three types. The one that Hong Kui robbed was their armed merchant ship, which was about a thousand taels and had only a dozen or so cannons on each ship."

The galleons at Tai Yuen Harbour were Dutch warships, weighing over two thousand tons each, with more than twenty cannons on each ship, including the most powerful cannons, with a range of five or six miles.

They also have many muskets, and the entrance to Tai Yuen Port is narrow and easy to block. If I send a large army to attack, they will definitely have Liu Xiang block the entrance with pirate ships, accompanied by close-range musket attacks and long-range artillery bombardment.

We don't have as many muskets as they do, so it's difficult to even break through their defenses. Our artillery also doesn't have the range of theirs, so we can only take the beating from the outside.

Zhu Jue asked bluntly, "How many muskets do the Dutch have, and how many do you have?"

Zheng Zhilong explained in detail: "Your Majesty, the Dutch are in the business of firearms. They already have thousands of firearms. If they equip Liu Xiang with another thousand, that would be more than two thousand firearms. But I only bought a few hundred firearms from them in total, and some of them are already broken."

What's a few hundred or a few thousand games?
Tongzhou City can now produce nearly 10,000 muskets per month, and the muskets we produce are all new flintlock muskets.

The question is, can I equip you with a musket?
This new type of musket must be kept secret. Zhu Jue frowned and pondered for a while, then decisively said, "I will dispatch two thousand musketeers from the Beijing Garrison to you. They are all wearing iron armor and are not afraid of ordinary musket bullets. Moreover, our muskets have a very fast reloading speed. For every bullet they fire, we can fire at least four or five."

With these two thousand musketeers, your men should have no problem taking over Tainan Port, right?

How can musket ammunition be loaded so quickly?

Forget it, I won't ask about that. His Majesty would never lie to me.

Upon hearing this, Zheng Zhilong nodded repeatedly and said, "That's definitely no problem. As long as we can quickly break through the defenses and then use fire ships to besiege the Dutch warships, the Dutch will surely be defeated and flee."

Then hurry up and recapture the high-ranking official.

Zhu Jue decisively said, "Zhenghua, immediately send someone with an urgent message to convey my decree, ordering Jizhou City and Santun Camp to each send a thousand musketeers on horseback to return from there. I will order the Beijing Garrison cavalry to send the horses back to them."

Upon hearing this, Fang Zhenghua quickly bowed and left.

Zhu Jue thought for a moment, then carefully instructed: "Taimeng, tomorrow you will take Zhihu, Hongkui, and Zhibao back to reorganize the troops and prepare to capture Dayuan and drive out the Dutch and Spanish."

Hong Kui will command the two thousand musketeers of the Beijing garrison. In addition, you should select more than ten thousand of the old, weak, sick and disabled men from Zhilong's existing forces to engage in business. The remaining one hundred thousand men will be divided into two fleets. One fleet of fifty thousand men will be commanded by Zhihu as the commander-in-chief and Zheng Cai as the deputy commander-in-chief, equipped with large ships of eight hundred liang or more. The other fleet of fifty thousand men will be commanded by Zhibao as the commander-in-chief and Zheng Lian as the deputy commander-in-chief, equipped with small ships of less than eight hundred liang.

"You will first lead these two fleets to Dongfan to capture the port of Dayuan, drive out the Dutch and Spanish, and then have Zhibao lead his men to serve under Zixian."

I will lead 100,000 troops to Dongfan?

Alright, anyway, with Zheng Zhihu, Zheng Hongkui, and Zheng Zhibao in command, I can just watch from behind.

Xiong Wencan quickly cupped his hands and said, "Your humble servant obeys the decree."

Zhu Jue pondered for a moment and said, "We don't have many large telescopes with a range of five or six miles right now. I can only give you six for now. You, Zhihu, Hongkui, Zhibao, Zheng Cai, and Zheng Lian will each have one. I can give you twenty small telescopes. Go and equip the adjutant generals and guerrilla generals over there with them."

Wow, they even provided so many telescopes!

Xiong Wencan said with delight, "Thank you for your grace, Your Majesty."

Once the Dutch and Spanish were driven away, a large influx of people could be migrated there for development.

However, people need to eat, so there needs to be enough food over there, otherwise transporting food there would be too troublesome.

Zhu Jue thought for a moment and then asked, "Zhilong, how much land did the more than 30,000 people you migrated cultivate, and how much grain did they produce in a year?"

Zheng Zhilong explained in detail: "Your Majesty has provided each household with oxen for plowing, and they are very hardworking. They cultivate as much land as they can. Nowadays, each household has at least thirty or forty mu of land, which means each person has at least ten mu on average."

The climate there is also quite good, especially suitable for growing rice, and the yield is not low, generally more than two shi per mu. Based on this calculation, they can produce at least 600,000 shi of grain a year.

Six hundred thousand shi?

That's far too little. Even with fishing boats to catch more fish, it would only be enough to feed 60,000 to 70,000 people at most.

Zhu Jue thought for a moment and then asked, "Zixian, how many people would you need to cultivate seedlings in Dongfan?"

That's enough land, a full tens of millions of acres.

The problem is, we don't have enough seedlings.

Xu Guangqi pondered, “Your Majesty, these seedlings cannot be cultivated overnight. Currently, the sweet potatoes and potatoes I have cultivated are only enough to plant a few dozen acres of land. We need to continue cultivating them to increase the number of seedlings.”

These potatoes seem to ripen faster, taking about three months to mature. If the weather is good in Dongfan, we can cultivate three rounds a year without any problem. This way, we can cultivate several thousand acres of seedlings a year, and several million acres of seedlings in two years.

Sweet potatoes take a while to mature, roughly four to five months, and can only be cultivated twice a year at most. However, people in Zhejiang, Fujian and Zhejiang have been growing sweet potatoes for a long time, so we can go there and harvest more to use as seedlings.

Based on this calculation, it would take us at least two years to cultivate several million acres of seedlings.

As for manpower, not many people are needed in the early stages. Planting sweet potatoes and potatoes is much easier than planting rice. There is no need to turn the soil back and forth. We just need to make a special ox-drawn plow, plow it with one hand, and then trim it with a hoe before planting sweet potatoes and potatoes.

In other words, even if it's only a few thousand acres in the first year, it's enough with the help of these few hundred farmers. But in the second year, we'll need a lot more manpower, at least tens of thousands.

That's good.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Jue decisively said, "Tai Meng, after you drive away the Dutch and Spanish, you should relocate civilians to the eastern frontier. Anyone who is willing to go should be provided with oxen and farming tools. In the first year, before they produce any grain, you should provide them with food to ensure they are well-fed."

You can modify about a hundred of those pirate ships suitable for fishing and use them for fishing there, specifically to feed the local farmers. Don't charge them money at first; feed them for free. We'll buy the grain from the local farmers, and you can withdraw the money from the internal treasury.

In short, you need to relocate as soon as possible. This year, you must relocate at least 30,000 people, and next year the population there must reach over 100,000. As for how many more people need to be relocated after that, you and your son should discuss that first.

Upon hearing this, Xiong Wencan nodded repeatedly and said, "Your Majesty, I understand."

(End of this chapter)