Chapter 174: The Power of the Steam Engine

When the steam engine reached the edge of the triangle, it encountered the most difficult part of the road, which was to move from below to the embankment.

There is also a large embankment in the triangular lake.

Otherwise, in summer and autumn, it is easy to have the situation that the triangle is reversed to Baoding County. and even soaked the entire county town of Baoding in water.

It took countless strong men a lot of effort to put this big iron lump up.

Kuaixiang naturally doesn't need to do it himself, just instruct a few children of the Kuai family.

It took a whole afternoon to finally install the steam engine.

After Kuaixiang installed it, he immediately ordered the fire to start below. It's just that the coal was not prepared, and immediately someone ran back to carry it.

Before Zhu Qizhen was in power, he began to implement the exchange of coal for firewood.

This policy was implemented in the north of the Ming Dynasty, or the people adopted this method intentionally or unintentionally. The main reason is that China's coal resources are relatively abundant.

Most of the whole north, within a few hundred miles, must have had coal mines. There are even many places above the coal mountains and coal seas.

It is precisely because of the prevalence of coal that there is no need for good coal in addition to honeycomb coal, which is blooming everywhere and in many places.

In a short time, there were strong men carrying bags of coal to the embankment, but in a moment the flames began to burn fiercely.

After waiting for about half an hour, Kuaixiang finally turned the valve himself, and the steam gushed out, lifting the tall lever high, and a huge iron bucket at one end had fallen into the triangular lake.

Submerged in the water of the lake.

After a while, a white smoke erupted, and the entire iron bucket was suddenly lifted out, and it fell into the large pool prepared in advance.

The first bucket of water entered the pool.

The whole process doesn't seem fast, but the power of the machine is its endlessness, as long as the machine is not fast, it can continue. In a moment, the pool was filled with water.

Chen Yi was overjoyed and immediately said, "Open the gate." ”

This pond was originally the source of many rivers and canals in Baoding County, but on weekdays, it was fetched by water trucks. Now it's a new one.

It was under Chen Yi's order to open the gates.

The water taken from the triangular lake rolled along the canal, stirring up waves all the way.

It made I don't know how many people cried with joy.

When the lake water flooded into the fields, the wheat seedlings rose up almost visibly, and some even felt that the shriveled ears of wheat had become plump.

Of course, there was also some noise in the cheers.

For example, in order to compete for the order of watering, many villages have fought. For Chen Yi, it is the trouble of happiness.

For the first time, the steam engine exerted great power in the fight against drought.

Of course, there are still a lot of problems.

For example, failure rate.

If a lot of things aren't used on a large scale, you don't know what kind of problems are going to go.

Fifteen steam engines were sent down, and none of them failed to fail. Some even take longer to repair than to run.

However, although these 15 units could not completely alleviate the drought in Hebei, they did alleviate the drought in several important production areas, plus other water conservancy projects.

At least let Hebei please save the situation of no harvest.

This is not the case elsewhere, though.

In the southern part of Hejian Province, which is hundreds of miles away from here, it is the Daimyo Mansion and other places, which is another style of painting.

Ma Wensheng came here to take charge personally.

Twelve thousand officials were transferred from Tianjin and Beijing.

Thousands of them are working, and the remaining nearly 10,000 are from schools and even secondary schools. Don't measure the age of secondary school students in later generations and the age of middle school students in this era.

Most middle school students in this era are in their twenties.

All exist as an adult.

In addition, the local talent students were all transferred by Ma Wensheng.

Then he sent it down, and Ma Wensheng unified the forces of three or four prefectures and counties, and so many officials managed every village like a capillary.

Even every single one.

All the people were called.

Although it was said that this was also a conscription, the people did not refuse.

Men, women, and children, even children, went out of their homes with brooms and torches, and under the organization of the government, they drove out the locusts from north to south.

In this mobilization, Ma Wensheng mobilized at least three or four million.

and ordered that every stone of sun-dried locusts could be exchanged for a bucket of grain. The locusts can also be used as fodder for horses.

It's a decisive battle.

Countless locusts covered the sky and the sun, and a field of green wheat seedlings, after a locust fell, when they flew again, it was already a white field.

Not even the straw will be left.

And a large number of people were organized, beating during the day, and even releasing all kinds of poultry, such as chickens, ducks and geese.

These things do not know the troubles of people, but for such a plague of locusts, it is a carnival for them.

These poultry didn't have to hunt at all, and countless locusts pounced on them, and one by one they ate with big shoulders and round waists, and walked, whether they were ducks or not.

But it's the size of their bellies that has affected their center of gravity.

And at night, it is even more in the field to light a fire.

The locusts could not get rid of the habit of insects, and one by one they threw themselves into the fire, and then the fire made a crackling sound.

This is another reason why there is no big problem in Shuntianfu.

The large-scale encirclement and suppression of locusts in several prefectures and counties in southern Hebei Province was pulled by Beijing

A protective net hundreds of miles wide was erected.

When Zhu Qizhen didn't know it, the fundamental policy of Zhili that he formulated at the beginning exerted a powerful force.

Don't think that this is normal, it can be done anywhere in Daming.

Contrary.

In most places, when the locust plague broke out, it could only be dealt with passively, and the way was nothing more than opening a warehouse to release grain, or as Ma Wensheng ordered, exchanging grain for locusts, and using rewards to drive the people to kill locusts.

When Zhu Qizhen encountered locusts before, he used the army.

But to be honest, as long as the organization is in place, how much slower can the efficiency of the people in culling locusts than the army?

This time, Zhu Qizhen did not use the army.

However, the war in the Western Regions continued, and nearly half of the men and horses in the Beijing camp were fighting in the Western Regions, and Zhu Qizhen did not dare to easily empty the army near Beijing.

Of course, even so, Zhu Qizhen was still able to dispatch tens of thousands of horses to help Zhili hunt and kill locusts.

was only rejected by Ma Wensheng.

It is because of the strong mobilization ability of the people of Hebei.

This ability is the foundation laid by Yu Qian when he governed Hebei.

When Yu Qian repaired water conservancy, he mobilized almost every male in Hebei, and there were not even a million households in Hebei at that time.

On top of the system, there is room for it.

After all kinds of system reforms, such as the Qingzhang, such as the reform of Xu officials, and so on, Hebei is the best place to implement.

There is no other reason.

This is what Zhu Qizhen is most concerned about.

Zhu Qizhen knew very well that with the greatness of the Ming Dynasty, it was impossible for him to control the situation of all provinces in every detail.

This impossibility made Zhu Qizhen formulate a policy of using Hebei as the fundamental counterweight to the world.

Therefore, in other provinces, Zhu Qizhen can't stretch his hand, but in Hebei, it must be implemented in place.

Moreover, officials in Hebei are generally the best among their colleagues. Even in general, the magistrates who want to be promoted to the center have to be the last one in Hebei.

And so it goes.

That's where it is now.

Ma Wensheng can now rely on the blessing of a large number of officials to mobilize several prefectures and millions of people, which means that in an emergency situation, if men are drawn as soldiers, hundreds of thousands of soldiers can be drawn out of the whole of Hebei.

This is what Zhu Qizhen has always wanted, the mobilization ability of China's classical military empire, like that of the Qin and Han dynasties.

It can also be regarded as the result of Zhu Qizhen's decades of hard work.

Even if there are changes in the world in the future, the horses of the south of the desert, the iron of Zunhua, and the grain and grass of the soldiers of Hebei are enough to dominate the world.

A lot of changes happen unconsciously. It's only when he looks back that he has a feeling of being in a different world, even Ma Wensheng is the same, he actually didn't expect to be able to do this.

Just doing it and doing it.

In this way, Ma Wensheng has also become the most solid supporter of the reform of officials.