I haven't been to Jiangnan before the crossing, this is the farthest time Mao Jue has gone out in more than 20 years, for this outing, he has put on a full show, five sail battleships including the Black Pearl, and borrowed six lucky boats in the Dongjiang River, and the fourth regiment of the huge sea of eight hundred personal soldiers, borrowed and originally had sailors in their early thousands, a total of 1,900 entourage, but this move is not to save face, but to make money.

The ballast stone was almost thrown away, the full corn wine, the upper box was full of ginseng, more than the big radish, the more the territory went to the north mountain, the wild ginseng in this era has not been destructively mined, ginseng is not so scarce, this thing is one of Mao Jue's cash cows.

Even so, Mao Jue didn't want to fish all the time, so he harvested a large number of ginseng seeds into the woodland last year, and it is estimated that he will have more ginseng next year.

The best deck cargo on the upper deck was a large pile of delicate wooden crates filled with ura grass, all of which were filled with crystal clear glass lampshades, and dozens of lampstands of various sizes on the outside, the largest of which was the size of the largest in his officers' club.

In fact, the crystal lamp of this era is not practical, there is no electricity, you can only add lamp oil, the brightness is not as bright as the electric lamp, refueling is a tedious job, every day to light up two giant lanterns, it takes ten people to be busy for an hour, the lamp oil consumed is two taels of silver, and the lamp is spent on the lamp a year, it is seven hundred and twenty taels.

However, this money is for the gold leaf as a snowflake flakes cast from the temple just to see what kind of Yangzhou tyrant Jin Xue is, for the wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan, this bit of silver is estimated to be not worth mentioning, and it is this row of noodles that you want! Row noodles!

Finally, there is the treasure of the entire north, Mao Jue's beiyang mirror, this time a one-person-high coat mirror, a half-person-high dressing mirror, and two palm-sized mirrors, which is simply generous for the sales of one or two pieces a year.

With these things, Mao Jue is ambitious, this time he will at least slaughter those wealthy businessmen in Jiangnan, and at least he will have to take a million taels of snowflakes and silver back to Tieyi.

And to equip such a fleet, Mao Jue's most important purpose is not to take the canal.

Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, since the Yuan Dynasty, is the largest thoroughfare to communicate the north and south, Qianlong seven times to the south of the Yangtze River, walk is the Grand Canal, and even Beijing City is the canal to float to say, Zhu Di built the Beijing City, the wood, bricks and tiles, rock and soil porcelain, most of them are transported to Beijing through the Grand Canal, here can definitely be called the main artery of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties.

Mao Jue has seen a lot in later generations, in order to gather silver, the protagonist set up a card on the Grand Canal to collect taxes, but this move is actually backward enough, they can think that the ancients have long thought of it, the tax customs stuck on the Grand Canal, layer upon layer, I don't know how many.

The burning lantern grass chapter in the Ming Dynasty miscellaneous book "Jinling Trivia" vividly reflects this social phenomenon.

Lu Er, a merchant in Suzhou, heard that Jinling lantern grass was out of stock and the price was rising, so he sold a batch of lantern grass in Suzhou and went north to Jinling to sell it for profit.

The price of this batch of lamps and grass, plus the money for hiring a boat in the Grand Canal, is a total of eight taels of silver, taking advantage of the night on the road, sitting on the boat, Lu Er is still thinking about it, when he arrives in Jinling, how can he earn eleven taels of silver, but the boat has not yet gone ten miles, and he heard the captain shouting loudly.

"Collect taxes!"

The official errand collects taxes, it is normal these years, a few errand officers inspected Lu Er's goods, collected a few coins of silver, Lu Er didn't care, paid the money, and continued to move forward, but he didn't walk ten miles, and the captain shouted again.

"Collect taxes!"

This time, Lu Er was a little annoyed in his heart, how far had he gone, and he had to pay taxes twice? Just like the captain inquired, the captain also had a bitter face: "This is the tax sent by the Lu Governor's Mansion to increase the tax!"

Magistrate? Unable to afford to be offended, Lu Er could only obediently pay the silver, and the boat went north again, but it didn't go more than ten miles, and the captain shouted loudly: "Collect taxes!" ”

This time, it was the card set up by Eunuch Zhang again, and he couldn't afford to offend, so Lu Er had to dig for silver again.

After three steps and a stop, in the second half of the night, Lu Er didn't know how many times he had paid taxes, sitting in the cabin, his face was already as pale as earth, but the captain shouted again.

"Collect taxes!"

A face became the color of pig liver, Lu Er sadly went to the deck, but fortunately, this time, the captain was smiling and told him that he had heard a fork, this is the time to Shou Sui Mountain, homonym!

But this way, Lu Er has already paid four taels of silver tax, his goods are a total of eight taels of silver, here to Jinling, there are thousands of miles away, according to this method, I am afraid that to Jinling, at least a dozen taels, even if his lamp grass is doubled and sold, he has to fold the capital, and he has to pay a few taels, thinking of this, Lu Er cried loudly, got off the boat at Shousui Mountain and burned a boat of lights, empty-handed, and returned to his hometown gloomily.

On this Grand Canal, it is really called big fish to eat small fish, even if it is like Yangzhou big merchant Fan family, it is inevitable to shed the skin, Mao Jue is the emperor of the soil in Tieyi, but in the Ming Dynasty, there are more deputy generals, and I don't know how many big fish can eat Mao Jue, for example, when Jiajing was in turmoil, Zhejiang Patrol Imperial Shi Hu Zongxian was only from the third product at that time, Yu Dayou, the general soldier of the second grade, plus the general Pingman, asked him to turn the regiment, Mao Wenlong is indeed a little related in the court, but his biggest backstage is Wei Zhongxian, who has fallen, not to bird him Mao Jue more, If you take the Grand Canal, scrape and political revenge, Mao Jue estimates that his underwear will have to be scraped clean.

And there are a lot of things I want to scrape from Jiangnan in the future, and this time I went to the sea, which can be regarded as exploring a way for the future.

However, Mao Jue's first stop was not to go straight to Jiangnan, but to the south of Li Chao.

Since beating the Tokugawa shogunate last year, whether he or Li Chao, in fact, he is chewing fat on one side, and on the other hand, he has been gnawed on a bloody scar in the northeast, but the Japanese country with sharp teeth and claws has palpitations, Mao Jue borrowed about 5,000 soldiers and sailors from the Dongjiang River, and left the two regiments of the Xiongjin mercenary regiment on Tsushima Island and Jeju Island.

It's really called taking people's money and eliminating disasters for people! After receiving the benefits of Mao Jue, he was also afraid of getting into trouble, and just became a soldier Cao Jushu, Li Shanhai did his best, although the Li Chaobanwu boat from Minglianghai did not reach the point of crossing the river, but there were always more than a dozen boats every day, transporting Mao Jue's timber and volcanic ash, rocks, metals and other materials to the two islands.

More than 5,000 soldiers were mostly used as coolies, and Mao Jue also paid 100,000 taels of silver to recruit local hired workers.

After seven or eight days of traveling south, Mao Jue's fleet arrived outside Jeju City, twenty miles off the sea, and was stopped by another 70-meter sail battleship Water Tiger, which belonged to Tieyi Military Town.

At this time, Jeju has changed a lot from the last time Mao Jue came, the low and dilapidated Jeju City was directly blocked, a mud gray, eight meters high, 400 meters long military fort blocked it, and the Jeju port in front of the military fort, a barrage of several kilometers also expanded the port.

Under the leadership of the Water Tiger, Mao Jue's fleet sailed like an inner harbor.

Catching up with the ruthlessness of the Opium War, the inspector followed his command to the city tower, under the shed, facing the sea on one side of the full sixteen cast iron Hongyi cannon batteries, and facing the east hill of the port, facing the woods of the port, a steamed bun-like cement bunker level is hidden in it, look closely, the clear gray cannon barrel from the pillbox head exposed.

Mao Jue is from later generations, I have eaten and seen, I have seen several versions of the Normandy landing movie, this kind of artillery bunker is also commonplace, although the sea is boundless, in fact, there are traces to follow, the navigation technology of the Japanese people is actually not up to par at all, if you want to invade the Li Dynasty Peninsula, you must pass through Tsushima Island, Jeju Island, and use this as a springboard to attack the land.

There are not many locations for the army to land, even if it is World War II in the later generations, it can only be seen that Normandy, a heavily defended beach of the German army, can be seen as a breakthrough, surrounded by reefs and cliffs, if you attack Jeju Island here, you can only land on the beach of Jeju Port and Shuluo County and Yanhae County, even if it is like the ironclad ship of the size of the Japanese Kou in the last year, on this beach, you have to encounter the blow of the Ming army's torrential rain like pear blossoms, even if they barely rush to the beach, seven or eight of the ten stops have to be removed.

A group of frightened Japanese soldiers under artillery fire came to attack this hard toothy fortress, and Mao Jue was not optimistic about the Japanese army.

After inspecting Jeju Fort, Mao Jue stayed here for two days, and then went south by boat again.

This time it's not a straight trip to Gangnam.

In the Ming Dynasty, it was very strange that Liaozhen was under the jurisdiction of Shandong, so Mao Jue had to go to Denglai first and report to Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai.

Later generations had the opportunity to come to Yantai once, but at this time, Dengzhou and the Yantai metropolis in memory are also completely different, the vast urban area is now just a piece of wilderness, a few miles offshore, you can only see the dilapidated and low Dengzhou city wall and a terminally ill old man, standing tremblingly on the shore.

The port is also very small and dilapidated, and Mao Jue's sail battleship can't get in, so he can only dock at the edge of an island in the open sea, and then take the Daifuku ship to the shore.

He didn't plan to stay here for long, Mao Jue simply left his plain clothes on the Black Pearl, and landed with dozens of pro-soldiers.

"Official! Master! Okay, if you have any food to eat, give us something! ”

A few of them were still strong and strong, and they kept bowing, but the accent made Mao Jue feel very familiar, and this hair lance was a little annoyed and wanted to whip it away, so he stretched out his hand to stop it.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there will be no goods to move!"

Seeing Mao Jue make a move, these poor people couldn't help but show a disappointed look on their faces, but they didn't dare to complain about anything, and they couldn't muster up their strength and walked towards the broken houses on the edge of the port, but Mao Jue reached out and grabbed one of them, and asked in amazement.

"Listen to the accent, you are also Liao?"

"The general is also a Liao?"

As soon as he heard this, the guy who was the leader suddenly became excited.

Denglai Governor Sun Yuanhua and Dongjiang did not deal with each other, and Mao Jue didn't have the heart to go into the city to stick his hot face to people's cold butts, so he simply sent Mao Lance to Dengzhou with his seal letter to change the official document for customs defense.

Because he had to take the waterway, the ship brought a lot of food, Mao Jue ordered to move it down, and lit a fire in this port, and boiled the corn cob with the help of seawater.

Sitting in the corner of the wall, a child who was only five or six years old was as thin as a reed stick, and his shriveled hands reminded Mao Jue of the African disaster victims under the lens of later photographers.

At the same time, this scene was shocking, but it also made Mao Jue happy, fortunately Suyi did not accompany her, otherwise this girl would not have to cry like a tearful person.

"Thank you, General! Thank you, General!"

The man who just grabbed him was still a filial son, and he didn't gnaw the food in his mouth first, but sent it into those broken houses, Mao Jue watched him stuff the corn to a thin old lady, and the two shirked a few times, and the man simply ran out of the shack, but ran directly to Mao Jue's side, knelt on the ground and kowtowed a few times.

"Okay, they're all from my hometown! Who can not help! Get up!"

Stretched out his hand and dragged the man up, looking at his embarrassed appearance, Mao Jue asked again with astonishment.

"You guys, why did you get to this?"

"General, it's hard to put it into words!"

After more than 200 years of development, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was already prosperous in Dingkou, and there were almost 2 million people in the registered household registration.

However, the Liaodong War, the most densely populated Liaoshen Plain was occupied by Houjin, millions of people were displaced, the battle of Liaoyang, Nurhachi slaughtered 70,000 people, plus Xiong Tingbi, Wang Huazhen Guangning defeated, a large number of Liao people fled back to Guannei, Liaodong Town belongs to Shandong, and the population here is mostly immigrated from Shandong, so hundreds of thousands of Liao people fled to Shandong.

However, the Ming Dynasty has been full of disasters and difficulties at this time, and the land annexation of Shandong has also reached an extreme, the rich and wealthy fields are even strange, the poor have no place to stand, and the locals lack arable land, not to mention their outsiders, and in two hundred years, the local feelings are almost indifferent, and the vast majority of the Liao people have no one to take them in.

Even many Shandong people blame these Liao people for the sin of the war in eastern Liao, and the two sides are even more contradictory, and the livelihood of the Liao people here is becoming more and more difficult.

This person's name is Yang Mengzi, and it is already good for someone like him to be able to nest in Dengzhou, work as a coolie porter in the port, and earn a subsistence that barely fills his stomach.

"General, our Liao people are bitter! More than 400 people in a village fled together, and more than 100 people died of illness and starvation along the way, and more than 200 people died of hunger over the years! That's all there are left! ”

Looking back at the bitter brothers who nested in one place, gnawing corn, and the thin old lady, this Yang Mengzi couldn't help but sigh.

"Are there many Liao people like you nearby?"

"I don't know anywhere else, let's Dengzhou, at least more than 30,000, right? Governor Sun was merciful and recruited more than 3,000 Liao troops, and the rest were either like villains who helped carry military rations and goods in the port, starving and being full, or serving as tenants for those locals in the countryside and eating together!"

The fall of his hometown, leaving his hometown, sending people under the fence, this kind of taste, in other words, anyone is estimated to be miserable, followed Mao Jue to sit on the wood on the side, it is rare for someone to listen, Yang Mengzi is spitting bitter water and narrating in detail, Mao Jue shook his head while listening, and pinched his chin and thought about it.

After a while, Mao Jue raised his head and looked at this thin layman very solemnly.

"Do you dare to be a soldier?"

(End of chapter)