"Sea freight?"

Zhu Yuanzhang said with some astonishment.

"The Tartars can transport grain by sea to supply most of the capital, why can't you transport grain by sea to supply the Northern Expeditionary Army?"

Yang Feng said.

The Yuan Dynasty developed sea transport, a large number of ships transported grain to the north every year, the highest record has more than 1,000 ships to transport more than 3 million stone grain to Dadu every year, in fact, it is also transporting now, whether Chen Youding or Zhang Shicheng transports grain to the north still take the sea route, Zhu Yuanzhang controls Zhenjiang, Zhang Shicheng also can not enter the canal. His control area is Taizhou Nantong and Gaoyou but the entrance to the canal is in the hands of Zhu Yuanzhang, before he attacked Jiangyin many times but failed, so his fleet is from Taicang Port, but out of the Yangtze River estuary is not directly north, so you have to go against the coastal current, their route is to the northeast insertion of the Kuroshio and then go directly to the Shandong Peninsula and then turn to the Haihe estuary, they call the Kuroshio Heishui Ocean, when the wind direction is right, it only takes half a month to reach the Haihe estuary, and when the wind direction is wrong, it is only a month.

This is also in the case of their boats are mostly sand boats.

So the sea route is feasible.

And it's a must.

It is impossible for Zhang Shicheng to facilitate Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition, although Yang Feng can force him to let go of the canal, but a water bandit operating in southwest Lu can easily solve this problem for him, anyway, there are already bandits everywhere, since it was the bandits who did it, it has nothing to do with him.

What can Zhu Yuanzhang do if he knows?

Could it be that the same water bandits are engaged in Zhang Shicheng halfway?

Although he definitely wants to do this, but the fact is that he can't do it at all, Zhang Shicheng controls the canal for hundreds of miles north of Yangzhou, and he actually only controls the entrance of Zhenjiang and Guazhou, and the Huai'an he controls is symbolic at all, Huai'an with a population of seven households has a fart value, so even if Zhang Shicheng needs to take the canal, it is nothing more than to open up a transportation line between Nantong and Taizhou to Gaoyou, this area is completely the water town and the river, and those small boats can pass in this area at will, It is very simple to transport the materials from the south of the Yangtze River to Gaoyou without Guazhou.

So it is impossible for Zhu Yuanzhang to choose to beg Zhang Shicheng and then give him his neck.

Sea freight is the only option.

At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang's control area already included Jiangyin, and the fleet that set sail from this area could go down the Yangtze River in one day, and on the river more than ten miles or even dozens of miles wide, a huge transport fleet marched in formation, and it was not a small fleet pretending to be a water bandit to intercept it. Unless Zhang Shicheng's navy is dispatched, but in that case, he will break the rules and face the punishment of the angels, and the rest is that the two sides compete in the open sea, which is completely possible, after all, Zhang Shicheng's maritime strength is not weak, and it is also possible for him to engage in a navy to intercept Zhu Yuanzhang's shipping in the open sea, anyway, it is nothing more than saying that he is a widow, but ......

But that's exactly what Yang Feng was looking forward to.

The result of Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhang Shicheng fighting at sea behind his back is to train a navy in the true sense, and the final victor will own this navy.

Then all that's left is shipbuilding.

"It's a good problem to solve."

Yang Feng said.

"I can teach you to build some new warships specially used for the sea, which are fast, have a larger transportation capacity, and have strong combat effectiveness, you can use these warships to go north, first occupy a seaport in the area around Dengzhou, and at the same time collect some flat-bottomed sea boats suitable for navigation in the shallow waters along the Bohai Sea, especially the Haihe River, to ensure that the military needs are transported to Haijin."

He continued.

"It's just that this shipbuilding needs craftsmen!"

Liu Ji said.

"That's your own business, maybe you can find Fang Guozhen to cooperate, he is not on the shortlist of the Mandate of Heaven."

Yang Feng said.

Fang Guozhen is indeed not on the Mandate of Heaven candidate list, there is actually Zhang Shicheng left, as for how to get Fang Guozhen to help, this is Zhu Yuanzhang's business, in fact, at this time, it is inevitable that all the princes will hold together, for example, now Chen Youliang will be forgiven by Ming Yuzhen, and then Ming Yuzhen will supply him with various materials, including salt, as a reward, Chen Youliang promised that once he becomes the emperor, he will be named Ming Yuzhen as the king of Shu, below the crown prince, above all other kings, and use the entire Chengdu Mansion as the fief of the king of Shu.

Then Zhu Yuanzhang and Fang Guozhen can also be together.

However, he had to take Jinhua and Chuzhou first.

Although Yang Feng asked all the princes to cease fighting, in theory, Zhang Shicheng was still the Zhang Taiwei of the Yuan Dynasty at this time, so Zhu Yuanzhang could take this opportunity to recapture these two places, and it happened to be for him to avenge Hu Dahai and Geng Zaicheng.

Yang Feng will try to delay until they take these two lands before leaving.

And taking these two places will also open the road to Ningbo or Qingyuan, Fang Guozhen has been doing wall grass before, and even paid tribute to Zhu Yuanzhang, he is not too ambitious, someone has persuaded him to send troops from the sea to the north to fight for Jiangdong and then fight for the world, and then he honestly replied I am not so ambitious. So as long as Zhu Yuanzhang gives him enough promises, and Yang Feng becomes a guarantor to make him believe that Zhu Yuanzhang will fulfill his promise, then Fang Guozhen will definitely fall to Zhu Yuanzhang, and he has everything Zhu Yuanzhang needs, he has the largest shipyards in this era, and the sea ships used by Zhang Shicheng are all built by him, and he also has the most experienced navy in this era, or it can also be said to be a pirate.

In short, it depends on Zhu Yuanzhang's bid.

He's afraid he'll have to pay a lot of money.

After all, Fang Guozhen and Zhang Shicheng also maintain a cooperative relationship, and the latter's territory has already reached Shaoxing.

As for Yang Feng's new ship to Zhu Yuanzhang......

This is, of course, an old lock ship, which can sail on the Yangtze River and the Pearl River, can sail the South China Sea for trade, can be used as a frigate, and can also sail in the shallow waters along the Bohai Sea.

After loading twenty or thirty cannons, this thing was a warship that was rampant in Asia in this era, at least east of the Strait of Malacca.

The remainder, of course, is the military industry.

Zhu Yuanzhang's conditions are better than Chen Youliang's, Tongling's coal and copper mines, Ma'anshan iron ore is a military base, guns and cannons are not worth mentioning, and there is also smooth foreign trade, as long as he and Fang Guozhen partner then the sulfur of the Wa Kingdom can continue to come, from Ningbo to Boduo This route has been maintained for hundreds of years, and the merchant ships from the Northern Song Dynasty to and from the Wa Kingdom have continuously brought sulfur there. However, the source of saltpeter on his side also has to rely on Ming Yuzhen, Yang Feng has already pointed out all the nitrate caves in Sichuan to Ming Yuzhen, from Chongqing to Jiangyou There are nitrate mining points everywhere, including several saltpeter producing areas in Hanzhong, so both Zhu Yuanzhang and Chen Youliang have to serve him next, and Ming Yuzhen, who is also so thrifty that he is reluctant to repair his own capital, will become an upstart.

That's for the best.

What Yang Feng wanted was for these princes to carry out large-scale trade with each other under the common banner of the Northern Expedition, and then gradually form an economic community.

He didn't expect the Mandate of Heaven to really end this kind of division after the election, what Chen Youliang could think of, of course he could also think of, this kind of unification was not the unification that Zhu Yuanzhang fought hard in the original history, although this unification minimized deaths, but it also made the successful emperor become a role similar to a bald man. If Chen Youliang succeeds, will Zhu Yuanzhang, who has hundreds of thousands of troops, listen to him? Similarly, if Zhu Yuanzhang succeeds, will Zhang Shicheng and others listen to him if their strength is not damaged? At most, they will recognize his status as emperor, but it is still difficult for Zhu Yuanzhang to reclaim their territory, so the success of the Northern Expedition is only the first step towards reunification, and there are still countless troubles to be solved.

But this is the trouble for the winners.

This is not something that Yang Feng needs to worry about, what Yang Feng wants is not to die too many people, after all, there are really not many people at this time.

After Hongwu took Yunnan in the 14th year, the number of households in the country was 10 million, and this number of modern brick families said that it was incredible, because it increased too much compared with the early years of Hongwu, but even this was only equivalent to half of the number of households in the first year of Chongning in the Northern Song Dynasty. At this time, the area of the Ming Dynasty was equivalent to the sum of the most densely populated areas of the Northern Song Dynasty, Western Xia, Dali and Liao, if calculated in the Chongning period, the population was estimated to be one-third of that time, and it was even worse than the Southern Song Dynasty after being killed by the Mongols. That is to say, from the first year of Chongning to the present, in more than 200 years, this land has lost two-thirds of its population, countless originally prosperous places have become ruins, there are still 90,000 households left in Sichuan, which once had a population of more than 10 million, and Bianliang, which was once the most prosperous city in the world with a population of more than 1 million, at this time, together with the surrounding 38 counties, a total population of 180,000......

Well, this is pre-war.

In fact, it is difficult to say whether there are still living people there at this time, after all, it was the main battlefield when Liu Futong was on the Northern Expedition before, and he even used it as the capital of the Great Song Dynasty.

In fact, both the Yuan Dynasty and the princes in the south were not interested in Henan, they largely regarded this hinterland of the Central Plains as a strategic buffer zone, so whoever went on the Northern Expedition had to solve the problem of water transportation first, because it was impossible for them to raise food to supply the army in Henan.

Further north, the same situation is similar, there is no population, there is no enough to solve the food problem, and there is still a famine in Hebei, even if most of them are in the capital? The entire 22 counties of Dadu Road add up to 400,000 people, which is also before the war, in fact, after the famine to now, I am afraid that only half of them are left, and the rule of the Mongols is completely disastrous for this land, even if there is no war in the north for more than 100 years, the result is also the stagnation of population growth. This is the only dynasty that ended the troubled times, but as a result, the population growth almost stagnated, and the Yuan Dynasty, which had the largest territory in all dynasties, was only slightly more than the population of the Jin State, and their own statistics were 13 million households, so they had to boast that they were more than the Han and Tang Dynasties, but they did not dare to compare with the Northern Song Dynasty, which was half of their territorial area, or even the Southern Song Dynasty, which was in a corner of peace, and the population of the capital as the capital was actually not as good as that of the Jin State, to be precise, the number of households was slightly more than half of the latter.

The Yuan history records that the population of 22 counties of Dadu Road is 140,000, and the population of Zhongdu Road in Jinguo is 220,000.

And the really densely populated area is in Jiangnan.

Jiangxi first, Zhejiang second, Hangzhou, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Suzhou, Changzhou, Wuzhou, Taizhou, Raozhou, Ningguo, Jiqing that is Nanjing, Fuzhou, Longxing that is Nanchang, Ji'an, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, there is not a single less than a million, the most terrifying number in a modern unbelievable place.

Raozhou.

It is the east of Poyang Lake, modern Poyang, Dexing, Jingdezhen, and Yujiang at this time, there are a total of three counties and three states, and the six cities add up to 4.03 million, do you know what this number represents? It means that the population of this small plot of land alone exceeds that of most provinces, and that Jiangxi has more than a quarter of the country's population. Therefore, the integration can be provincial, the north is not integrated, the north is all killing the few remaining population, the entire population north of the Huai River combined, it is estimated that it is about the same as a province in Jiangxi, the vast majority of them are still Han people, so how to integrate with the huge population in the south? As for what is circulating in Shanxi Hongdong, it is all nonsense, Shanxi may have had emigration, but the main force of real outward immigration is Jiangnan, and Zhu Yuanzhang forcibly relocated southern residents to Jiangbei.

Jiangxi fills Hubei.

Zhejiang fills in two Huai.

Hunan fills Sichuan.

As for Shanxi......

The population of the entire Taiyuan Road is 150,000, and the population of more than 20 prefectures and counties including Jinning and Pingyang Road, including Hongdong, is only about 200,000, which is not as good as a county in Raozhou.

The real sources of immigration are Jiangxi and Zhejiang.

Zhu Yuanzhang used coercive means to drive those powerful clans out of their hometowns, confiscated their land into official land, and even their real estate was not official, and then let them go to the resettlement land north of the Yangtze River to plant grass as a standard, and reclaimed the land that was abandoned because of the war, and finally re-let the population north of the Yangtze River begin to recover, and the population migration from Jiangxi was not interrupted throughout the early Ming Dynasty.

The Han Chinese then regained their absolute control over the land.

This is also Yang Feng's willingness to let them play secession rather than let them fight, the population left in these places is too precious, this is all the seeds of the future Han people, no matter who they are, the result of the war will be to delay the speed of population recovery in the future. Improved seeds, agricultural technology, medical and health care are all easy to solve for him, but the number of people is something he can't achieve overnight, and there must be enough base to achieve skyrocketing. Nothing else matters to him, even if it is a formal unity, it is also unity, and then a nationwide market-money and financial system, especially the common interests brought about by foreign expansion, will little by little turn formal unity into real unity.

The rest of the princes who want to solve the division only need an edict.

Do you dare to listen?

Then you are resisting the destiny of heaven.

(My town is said to have migrated from a general surnamed Liang under Zhu Yuanzhang, but my family is not, although it has a surname, but my family is said to have fled from Suzhou during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.) ）