The victorious Ming Army's naval division anchored on the shore of Dongting Lake, and the naval division's camp was filled with celebratory joy. www.biquge.info Although the Ming army also paid the price of sinking a large ship, 53 small boats, and 14 pole mineboats, killing more than 500 officers and men, and wounding more than 1,000 people, the joy of a complete victory did not make people care about the dead for the time being.

Seven years ago, Zheng Chenggong went on the Northern Expedition, because he brought his family members by his side, but after the great victories in Zhenjiang and Guazhou, the families of the fallen soldiers cried all over the world, which made the morale of the soldiers plummet, which led to the later fiasco.

The Qiongzhou army will not make the mistake of taking their families to the battle, and the death of their comrades-in-arms who get along day and night will definitely make some people sad, but the celebration after the victory can make people temporarily forget the pain of losing their comrades. The real silence needs to be reserved for the burial of the fallen warriors. If you think about those things after a big victory, it will affect morale a lot.

Naturally, in the current Ming army, the treatment of the fallen soldiers is quite good, not only there are special martyrs' tombs, Wang Xinyu also set up a monument to national heroes. In the future, the children of martyrs will grow up, their sons can be assigned jobs, and their daughters can find a good family.

With this set of measures, it has boosted the morale of the soldiers.

The Sailor Battalion of Pole Mineboats, which was the largest loss in this campaign, suffered losses of more than one-tenth of the Pole Mineboats and more than 20 percent of the casualties. But in the pole mineboat camp, the atmosphere of celebration even surpassed that of other camps!

Masao Kuroda raised his glass: "Brothers! This time we won by a big margin! Cheers to our victory! ”

"Cheers!" The Japanese samurai and ashigaru in the camp raised their glasses.

Masao Kuroda drank a glass of sake, which tasted much better than Japanese sake. At this time, his mood was extremely good, he was originally a low-status ashigaru in Japan, but in fact, he was a tenant in peacetime and an ordinary infantry in wartime. When I was in Japan, many samurai lords didn't necessarily have enough to eat, not to mention their ashigaru, so you can imagine what kind of life they lived.

But after the envoy of the Ming Dynasty came to Japan, Masao Kuroda's hard days came to an end. The Ming army recruited mercenaries in Japan, recruiting not only noble samurai, but also lowly ashigaru.

Japan is a small country with many people, and even after years of war, the population density is still extremely high. In fact, most Japanese people live a hard life without enough to eat just because of Japan's farmland. However, with the exception of the Satsuma Domain, the other feudal lords of Japan were very conservative, and even if they did not have enough to eat, they did not engage in maritime trade.

It may also be due to the fact that the Japanese have not been able to eat enough for a long time, and their race has not improved. Although during the Song Dynasty, many Japanese women came to the Great Song Dynasty to borrow seeds, they still could not change their short fate. This is also related to nutritional deficiencies, and later Japanese, didn't they grow taller?

Japan has little land and many people, even if it is a tenant who rents the land of the samurai's family, there will not be much land that can be rented, and no matter how high your farming skills are, you will not see a day of turning over, which is different from China.

In the Ming Dynasty, although it was impossible for peasants to become big landlords, because big landlords also needed people with meritorious names in their families, but diligent peasants with good farming skills, even if they were tenants, as long as they rented a lot of land, they also had the opportunity to turn over and become rich peasants or small landlords. After having a certain amount of savings, if you can cultivate a reader, it will be a complete turnover. Of course, it is not easy to cultivate a famous scholar, many people have been children all their lives, and at most they will stop at the step of Xiucai, and it is difficult to move forward.

What about Japan? No matter how skilled and diligent you are, don't even think about turning over, because there is not so much farmland for you to rent. If you rent more, won't others have less? The only way for peasants to turn over is to become soldiers and make military exploits, so that they can enter the samurai class.

But even if they become samurai, most of them are still poor, because there is so little land in Japan! Those poor samurai didn't have a few acres of land in their homes.

The Ming Dynasty came to Japan to recruit a large number of mercenaries, which gave the ashigaru a way out.

Although the treatment of the mercenary is far inferior to that of the samurai, the life of a mercenary can be said to be much better than that of living a hard life in Japan. Joining the Ming Army, not only can you let go to eat a full stomach every day, but you can often eat all kinds of meat, such as pork, fish, shrimp, mutton, and even beef!

Beef is a good thing, and even the Tokugawa family can't eat it so often in Japan!

In addition to being able to feed himself, Ashigaru who joined the mercenary army can also earn a lot of money for his family's living expenses. The living expenses are a military salary of one tael of silver.

In addition, the Ming army also provided the mercenaries with silver to buy physical goods, and helped the mercenaries send the purchased goods home.

Almost every Japanese ashigaru who joined the mercenary army would exchange their military pay in kind and mail it home via the Yongfu Princess.

There is no shortage of precious metals such as gold, silver, and copper in this part of Japan, but the most important thing is food. The military salary paid by the Ming army to the mercenaries' families could buy three buckets of rice and one stone of miscellaneous grains every month, and the miscellaneous grains were sweet potatoes and corn.

Every three months, Masao Kuroda also buys half a horse of cotton cloth, some salt, vegetable oil, and more than a dozen cans of various canned meat, and then goes to a special express station to send things back. With these things, it is enough for the family to live a good life, and most samurai in Japan do not have such a good life.

At first, there was only one post office under the Nanyang Company that could send express delivery, but soon after, various express companies sprung up, and the goods could not only be sent domestically, but also to Japan, Southeast Asia and other places, and even to the Americas across the ocean!

At first, the delivery rate at the Nanyang post office was not cheap, but with the emergence of a large number of delivery companies, there was competition, and the delivery fee was much cheaper than before, and it was within the range that the Japanese could accept.

In fact, other courier companies also use Nanyang Company's mail ships to deliver goods, but in order to compete, they have lowered their prices and implemented small profits but quick turnover.

In the major cities of Daming, there are more than 10 express companies such as Shunshui Express, Shunfeng Express, Hutong Express, Hangfeng Express, Suitong Express, etc., and the young men who deliver the goods are wearing colorful vests and driving the carriage to deliver goods to customers. From the vests they wear, you can see which courier company they belong to.

On the land of Japan, there are also branches of major express companies in the Ming Dynasty. (To be continued.) )