When the fleet entered the Beigang wharf, Li Zhi found that the port town was not large. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 There are dozens of rooms and dozens of cargo holds on the Info wharf, which store supplies brought from the mainland by Zheng Jiafu's ship, as well as rice to be sold to the mainland. There was a lot of rice, and Li Zhi's sailors made a rough count and found that more than 100,000 stone of rice were stored in more than a dozen granaries.

The grain of more than 100,000 stones is probably a year's land endowment or land rent for the farmers of Beigang, worth more than 400,000 taels of silver, and all of them have become Li Zhi's bag at this time. The Zheng family thought that they controlled the southeast sea, and they were not afraid of others coming to rob them, and even wanted to rob Li Zhi's Hsinchu, but they didn't expect Li Zhi to dare to rob his Beigang.

There is a gorgeous five-entry courtyard on the north side of the wharf, which is the "palace" where Zheng Zhilong lives in Beigang. At this time, seeing Li Zhi attacking, the Zheng family in the big courtyard all fled, and they didn't know where they had fled. Li Zhi's soldiers were hospitalized and searched for a while, but only found more than 20,000 taels of silver in a warehouse. It seems that Zheng Zhilong does not have the habit of storing a lot of money in Beigang.

Three miles east of the wharf is a town where about 1,000 traders and craftsmen live. At this time, the people of the town were attacked and the people of the town took refuge in their homes, and the roads in the town were deserted.

Li Zhi rode into the countryside again and found the countryside in Beigang in tatters. The people were hiding in mud huts with thatched roofs, and the occasional ill-informed farmer was working in the fields, all of them with yellow faces and thin muscles.

Li Zhi is ready to take over Beigang, ready to manage and operate this place, and naturally can't let the people be afraid of him. Li Zhi asked his soldiers to go into towns and villages in groups of ten to promote his policies:

"The Duke of Jinguo crusaded against injustice, only punished the culprit and did not hurt the people, the people should not panic!"

"The Duke of Jin has occupied the whole of Hong Kong, the order of the town has been restored, the people are relieved to come out to operate, and the soldiers will not commit any crimes."

The soldiers shouted along the street for half an hour, and the people of Beigang gradually stopped panicking. Li Zhi found ten prestigious village elders and borrowed the wine shops in the town to entertain these village elders, trying to understand the basic situation of the entire Beigang.

"Fellow villagers, I am Li Zhi, the Duke of Jinguo! In the future, this North Port will be under the jurisdiction of this duke. ”

The officials loyal to Zheng Zhilong in Beigang have long since run away, and the people left in the town have nothing to do with the Zheng family. When these villagers heard Li Zhi's words, they were about to leave their seats and kneel, but they were stopped by Li Zhi by raising his hand.

"Excuse me, I want to know, how many people and fields are there in this Beigang, and how did the Zheng family collect taxes in the past?"

The villagers glanced at each other, and an old man with a gray beard stood up and replied: "The Duke of Jinguo is above, forgive the old man on the desert island for being rude, as far as the old man knows, there are more than 4,000 households in Beigang, with 32,000 people. I don't know how many fields there are, but the former Zheng family's housekeeper once invited us to drink, saying that there are 2,000 hectares of fields in Beigang, and there are 2,000 hectares of fields. ”

Although the old man spoke official dialect, he had a strong Fujian accent. It took a lot of effort for Li Zhi to understand and nodded.

"How does the Zheng family collect taxes and how does it collect land rent?"

The old man said: "These fields of the people of Beigang are still spontaneously reclaimed in the hands of Li Dan, the 'Oriental Ship Elder', and they are all private fields of the common people, so there is no such thing as land rent. However, after the Zheng family came, we received sixty percent of the field, and the people had to pay six buckets to the Zheng family for one stone of grain, and the people were very poor. ”

It turned out that the Zheng family set the field endowment so high, although it was a field endowment, it was actually no different from the ground rent.

"This prince also collects sixty percent of the land rent from the people in Hsinchu, and the people are very rich, why are the people of Beigang poor when they pay sixty percent of the land endowment?"

When the villager heard Li Zhi's question, he didn't dare to speak, for fear that his crying behavior would contradict Li Zhi. A chubby old man next to him stood up and said:

"The land in Beigang was cultivated by the people by the valley, and the irrigation and watering all relied on the flat buckets to carry water, and the young couple could plant 25 acres of land before they were tired and half died. Moreover, manpower is always insufficient to carry water for irrigation, and the grain harvested is limited, so it is good to be able to harvest two stones a year. After planing the fields, only a dozen stones were left for personal use. ”

"You can only harvest such a small amount of food in a hard year, and if you want to feed your whole family, how can the people of Beigang not be poor?"

Li Zhi understood when he heard the old man's words. The main problem in Beigang is that there are no water conservancy facilities, there is little land for each person to plant, and the yield is also low due to poor irrigation, so the people are poor. In comparison, because of the water conservancy facilities in Hsinchu, the productivity of each strong man is twice that of Beigang.

Li Zhi nodded and said confidently: "Fellow villagers, rest assured, since Beigang is now in charge of this father, it will definitely make the people rich in the future." In the future, not to mention that eating and dressing will not be a problem, I will let the people live in brick houses, wear satin clothes, and eat meat! ”

When the villagers in Beigang heard this, they knelt on the ground and kowtowed to Li Zhi. Although they may not believe Li Zhi's words in their hearts, these villagers have happy and sincere expressions on their faces.

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Leaving 500 soldiers to maintain order in Beigang, Li Zhi sailed the fleet to the open sea outside Beigang.

The advantage of Li Zhi's fleet lies in mobility and firepower. Only in the vast open sea, the surface fleet can be unleashed. If the ship docked in the port and was surrounded by Zheng Zhilong's army, the situation would not be good. The waterway in the port is narrow, and the steamer cannot maneuver quickly, and in the end it will definitely be surrounded by the Zheng family's pirates. When the time comes, thousands of people will climb the side of the ironclad ship with swords in their hands, and no amount of artillery will be useless.

Attacking the enemy's harbor was not what Li Zhi's steamer was best at. There are many reefs near the mainland, and ironclad ships with a deep draft can easily run aground if they maneuver at high speed in the shallow sea near the land. But if you don't maneuver at high speed, you will easily be surrounded by Zheng pirates who are several times the number of you.

So Li Zhi drove the fleet to the open sea outside Beigang and cruised at high speed. On the one hand, it can plunder the Zheng family's merchant fleet returning from Japan, and on the other hand, it can intercept the Zheng family's navy trying to recover Beigang.

Beigang can bring hundreds of thousands of taels of income to the Zheng family a year, and Zheng Zhilong can't swallow this breath anyway.

Li Zhi's fleet cruised off the coast of Beigang for five days, and sure enough, it encountered Zheng Zhilong's huge fleet.

On April 21, Li Zhi was pondering a map at the end of the building when he suddenly heard a loud call from the lookout. Li Zhi looked up and found that countless spots had suddenly appeared on the distant horizon. The spots grew bigger and bigger, and finally they became a line on the horizon. The straight line is getting thicker and thicker, and from south to north occupies the entire end of the sea.

In the bright summer sun of early April, those spots gradually revealed their true face - the sails of a sailboat.

The Zheng family's fleet seemed to cover the entire sea, and they didn't know how many warships there were, and they couldn't attack the fifty-three steam steamers.