Looking at the twenty students of the staff class selected, Liu Yu breathed a sigh of relief. Six hellish months of physical and mental exhaustion have finally passed.

In the past six months, I became a company commander in the morning and a teacher in the afternoon, and I finished teaching the content of those infantry drill manuals little by little.

Fortunately, these people are all from Wude Palace, and they have received military education in the camp since they were children, otherwise they would have collapsed.

There is a way that if you want to destroy it, you must first hold it.

Since Liu Yu has thought about destroying the privileged class of Liangjiazi, he will naturally find a way to put it into practice.

It's been a long process, and now these young people are full of spirit, just like the rising sun, he still has to teach it well.

For the time being, I am still a fellow traveler.

Now, the affairs of the new army of the army should be put aside for the time being, and Liu Yu must prepare for the next major event.

"Childe, I've inquired clearly. This year's grain prices in Liaodong are very low. Beans are no more than seven dollars, and wheat is no more than five dollars. The grain in Jiaodong is also a bumper harvest, but most of them are spring wheat and autumn bud grains, and the price of bud grains is not high. ”

Kang Buxian went out to play for a few months, and not long after he came back, he was sent by Liu Yu to Penglai for a turn and asked about the price of grain in Liaodong.

This year's ripening, the price of beans in Liaodong is now falling, and the new grain will be sold and paid as soon as it comes, so the grain price will be violently suppressed by profiteers after the new grain comes down.

The people have no money in their hands and are short of money, so they all know that they can sell more if they save it and sell it in a few days, but charging an extra three or five buckets means that the price of grain will plummet by three or five dollars.

If you don't sell, how to pay all kinds of land taxes, Ding Kou silver, and repay usury?

In recent years, the population of eastern Liaodong has grown, constantly immigrated, and along the Liaohe Plain all the way north, the climate of the Xiaoice Age has ended, and there is a scene of soybean sorghum everywhere.

There are more and more ships transporting grain along the sea, and a few days ago there was a ship to the sea to transport soybeans through Liugong Island.

Kang Buxian knew that Liu Yu was not going to engage in grain trade, and the meaning revealed before seemed to be to buy a bunch of grain and put it up.

As a doorman, Kang Buxian felt the need to persuade Liu Yu.

"Childe, when a soldier eats the emperor's grain, after recruiting soldiers, in addition to the silver salary of each soldier, three buckets of rice are used to support the family. This is all from the granary. ”

"Wendeng Prefecture used to have a closed position, with a grain storage of 40,000 stones. Now the DPRK and China have built several large warehouses near Weihai for the sake of Qingzhou soldiers, and this batch will try to ship rice by sea in the future. In the future, the grain and rice that the recruits ate were all from the warehouse. Grain is mildew, flammable, and easy to beetle, and it is really unwise to store grain. ”

He knew that Liu Yu now had a large sum of money in his hand, a total of more than 400,000 taels.

The emperor asked Liu Yu to train a battalion, that is, an army of 7,500 people, according to the recruitment of four taels and one person. In addition to the ordnance money, Liu Yu didn't want armor, arquebuses, spears, etc., so he gave another 200,000 taels, which included the cost of barracks expansion.

It is equivalent to using this money to let Liu Yu make a new army, and let the navy have a certain scale, as for how to do it, the emperor said that it really doesn't matter, as long as there is no such thing as competing with the people for profit and forcibly seizing it.

It was a good deal for the emperor, with low costs and high returns.

Not counting the military salary, four or five hundred thousand taels of silver can be trained to train a new army that can be compared with the Beijing camp, which is simply equivalent to no money for the emperor.

Anyway, Liu Yu has gambled his life, the emperor is still very trusting, and it may not be enough to speak, but Liu Yu really hasn't asked about the fact that he hasn't recruited a soldier so far.

Of course, you have to give money for recruitment, and the military salary in the future is not counted, and you have to give a few taels of security money for the first recruitment, and arrange for your wife and children.

Ordnance, of course, also costs money.

I don't know how many people in the court are jealous of the hundreds of thousands of taels of silver in Liu Yu's hand, and they all want to do nothing and hold it in their hands, embezzle it, that is, lend it out, what is the annual interest?

Kang Buxian also knew that the imperial court had the intention of letting Liu Yuqian make money, as long as he did not compete with the people for profit, and no one would be jointly impeached, so he would turn a blind eye.

However, even if money makes money, it is very unwise to engage in grain trade. This year, the north and south are ripe, and the price of grain in various places is not high, so the soybeans in Liaodong can be sold to Songjiang and other places to make hard money.

If it is a grain stockpile, everyone knows that grain prices are so low this year, and it is impossible for next year to be lower than this year. However...... How much is a year for a tael of silver that you take out to take out to eat interest? If the grain tun is counted as a loss and loss in a year, what price can this cost be more than the money that can be made by lending?

After a few persuasions, Liu Yu thought about it for a long time, and finally didn't explain a word, only said: "Zhongxian, don't persuade this matter anymore." I have made up my mind, and I will go and draw the money and store some more food in a moment. ”

Kang Buxian knew the advance and retreat, and he also knew that Liu Yu would basically talk to him about everything and let him consult, but since he didn't want to explain this matter, he didn't ask anymore, just do it.

Liu Yu didn't want to be a god, but this time there was really no way.

The Japanese love fireworks as beautiful and ephemeral, and later Tokyo had a famous Sumida River fireworks festival, a tradition of fireworks festivals to commemorate an impending famine.

The famine, which could come next year or the year after, had a great impact, giving the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune the title of "Rice Shogun", and it also caused Japan to completely tighten its trade policy, trying to reduce the amount of precious metals outflow, and the number of trade licenses issued also decreased sharply.

The Sumida River fireworks festival in Tokyo is still very famous, and there are many people who know about it.

The reason for this is to commemorate the great famine.

It is said that millions of peasants starved to death in Japan, especially in the Saikaido region, where grain production was only 20 percent of what it used to be.

Liu Yu knew about this and had heard about the Sumida River Fireworks Festival, but he didn't know that this great famine was even more terrible than what he knew.

The cold summer caused by the Kuroshio Current and the Kuril Cold Current, which is abnormal, is not only affecting Japan.

Maybe there were too many great famines in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and this one was not cannibalism, and it was not famous, at least Liu Yu didn't know.

But in fact, from Feicheng in Shandong Province to Jiaodong, it has been seriously affected.

There is a great hunger in Feicheng, and the dead are sleeping on each other; Wendeng, Juxian, Zhaoyuan, there are many people who flee the famine.

In the following two years, it spread to Jiangsu, and even Shanghai and Jiaxing, which are the hometowns of fish and rice.

Liu Yu didn't know that there was going to be a catastrophe in Shandong, but he originally wanted to take advantage of the disaster year to immigrate and recruit soldiers, and food must be prepared.

Anyway, in the old era, there was a famine every year, and the average was cannibalism once every two years, and the famine was only a matter of size, which did not even need to be considered.

Especially Shandong, Henan, Anhui...... In these places, since the Sanyi River destroyed the hinterland of Huanghuai, don't ask which year these places have been affected, but ask which years these places have not been affected.

Therefore, Liu Yu wanted to stock up on grain, but he just regarded the disaster in the Central Plains as the norm, and saw the disaster in Japan as an opportunity.

In addition to preparing food to recruit disaster victims as soldiers at low prices, Liu Yu also had to take advantage of this opportunity to seize a little more share of Japan's trade, and to "send charcoal in the snow" and "bring water with water" when the famine was at its worst, in exchange for a few trade licenses.

Relying on Japanese silver to build a fleet enough to blockade Japan and force Japan to only allow free trade with China, for which he could sell horses, samurai riding and archery techniques, military books, cattle horns, and even grain.

The emperor and the court didn't know how much a navy would cost, and if Liu Yu quoted the real price, he would be able to scare the Tianyou Hall and the six governments into collectively opposing it, thinking that it was better to squat at home and pretend not to know that Westerners were around him.

He gave himself 20,000 taels of silver and 500,000 taels of start-up capital, thinking that he could train a new army and a navy, which was no different from dreaming.

However, this 500,000 taels is already the limit, and the one million that the emperor promised to give at the beginning was to be divided into five years, and now it seems that this is the follow-up military salary.

In Liu Yu's eyes, the new army is raised by the stepmother, but it is just for the emperor to see, and the navy is the real meat of the heart, and it is also a gold-swallowing monster.

The price of a battleship is very fixed, according to the algorithm after the reform of the Niu Jue currency system, a ton of battleship is about 25 pounds. One pound and three taels of silver.

Cannon decoration, etc., is on average 50% to 60% of the overall tonnage cost of the battleship, of course, if the wealth has to use copper cannons instead of iron cannons, the price may be higher.

Maybe the local lucky boat can be used to convert the wooden ship into a warship, or maybe there is really a miracle of a 20,000-ton Zheng He treasure ship, but one Liu Yu can't, and the other is that the miracle is not as realistic as praying.

Thirty years ago, the Dutch and the Spaniards bombarded each other in the Manila Sea for an afternoon, and the shells and gunpowder on both sides were gone, and no one sank. If the ship is changed, it is estimated that it will be enough to resist an afternoon of shelling.

Liu Yu thinks it's better to follow the path of Westerners, and there is no shame in learning from others.

For the time being, in East Asia and Southeast Asia, where naval rookies peck at each other, there is no need for too big a warship, what is needed is a fifth-class ship of seven or eight hundred tons.

Fourth-class ships are chicken ribs, their artillery is less and smaller than that of third-class ships, and their speed is much slower than that of fifth-class ships.

According to the price of about 150 taels of a ton of warships to set aside the profits of the French, two fifth-class ships will cost 200,000 taels, not counting the follow-up training.

In the eyes of the naval powers, the two fifth-class ships are not qualified to participate in the line bombardment.

Poor people are not qualified to play the navy.

Dashun's strange port opening and naïve policy of true free trade are not qualified to build a navy.

It can only be said that "thanks to" Japan's lockdown policy and Zhengde New Order, trade is not free at all, and only trade can be obtained by obtaining trade cards, otherwise the Dutch, who have merchant houses in Guangdong and can buy and sell freely, will squeeze none of the Chinese maritime merchants to survive.

In view of this special situation, as well as the impending great hunger in Japan, Liu Yu saw an opportunity to seize the trade license.

If you can take advantage of the great famine in Japan to transport grain to a wave of "charcoal in the snow", then it may be possible to change two more.

In this way, you can buy a fifth-class ship in a year. In about five to eight years, we will be able to try to force Japan to free trade.

Japan's special trade policy determines that trade with Japan is not about navigation and trade goods, but only about whether or not you can get a trade license.

He wanted to use a batch of grain to lick out the silver of a battleship. Feed the enemy.