Yi Shengzhi still wanted to explain, but Li Xiao had already brushed his sleeves and left. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

"Mr. Ichijo, there is no need to say more. Please go back and report quickly, and I hope you don't delay the time, or our army will attack Hakodate. Wu Liang, the chief manager of Ezo on the side, said coldly.

Ichijo Katsuyuki's face turned pale, and he left the Ascending Dragon in despair, the frustration in his heart unmistakable.

After returning to Hakodate, Ichijo Katsunoki hurriedly reported to the feudal lord Matsumae Keihiro.

The lord of the domain, Matsumae Keihiro, and his son Matsumae Michihiro, were extremely shocked when they heard the news of Ichichi's return to victory.

"Father, the Ming army is so forced, so what should we do now?" Michihiro Matsumae asked in horror.

Matsumae Qingguang shook his head slowly, with a very painful look on his face, he sighed and said: "The Ming army ships are strong and well-equipped, how can I be the opponent of the more than 1,000 soldiers and horses of the Matsuzen Domain!" It's better to agree with their Lord Li as Ming Jun said. ”

"The lord of the feudal domain is very right, and only when he is angry for a while can the entire domain be saved. If we want to be tough against the Ming army, the Shimazu family, which has perished, is a lesson for us. Katsuyuki Ichijo also sighed in agreement.

"Then so be it, Ichijo Katsuyuki, you go and ask the envoy of the Ming army to come to our domain for a detailed discussion, and tell him that my domain accepts all the suggestions of the Ming Dynasty, and I hope that the two sides can sign an agreement on this." Matsumae Keihiro said with a wry smile.

"Hay, I understand."

As a result, Ichijo Katsunogen invited Wu Liang, the head of the Ezo of the LTTE, and after a series of further negotiations, the two sides finally reached an agreement. The details are as follows:

1. The Matsumae clan recognized that Ezo was the inherent territory of the Ming Kingdom, and apologized to the Ming army for stealing the land around Hakodate at the southern end of Ezo.

2. With the permission of the Ming Dynasty, the Matsumae Domain could use the southern Hakodate territory as a place to establish a domain. However, the territory of the Matsumae Domain was limited to the area around Hakodate, and it was absolutely forbidden to go north to expand the boundaries of the territory.

3. Since this land in the area around Hakodate was leased from the Ming Kingdom, it could be recovered at any time if the Ming State needed it. From then on, the Matsumae clan had to pay 1,000 koku of grain every year to rent the land. The Ming Dynasty, as the suzerain, was allowed to trade with the Tigers in return.

4. From now on, in the Matsumae Domain, a Sinology Museum will be opened, and all men and women of school age in the Domain will be forced to enter the Sinology Hall to learn Han culture and etiquette, and the officials of the Matsumae Domain shall not interfere or obstruct it.

5. This agreement shall be signed and sealed in duplicate by Wu Liang, the governor of Ezo, and Matsumae Yoshihiro, the lord of the Matsumae Domain, and shall take effect immediately and shall not be violated.

After signing this agreement, which can be called a loss of power and humiliation of the country, Matsumae Keihiro's heart is dripping blood.

This Li Xiao is really ruthless! The annual grain of 1,000 koku, which accounts for about one-fifth of the grain output of the entire Matsumae Domain, is taken away for nothing in the name of the so-called land lease fee, which is simply a bandit who eats people and does not spit out bones!

There is also that article, to open a Chinese academy in the Matsumae Domain, forcing the school-age men and women in the clan to enroll, this is simply quietly changing the spiritual inheritance of the Japanese, perhaps, in a few generations, the Matsumae Domain will no longer have Japanese, but all Chinese who speak Chinese, wear Han clothes, and practice Han etiquette.

It's just that in front of Wu Liang, the envoy of the Ming army, although Matsuzen Qingguang was extremely sad in his heart, he had to force a smile on his face.

After Wu Liang left, Songqian father and son could no longer control their emotions and hugged each other and cried bitterly.

On Li Xiao's side, after listening to Wu Liang's reply, Li Xiao smiled and said: "This Matsumae Qingguang can be regarded as knowledgeable about current affairs. To tell the truth, although this guy supplies our army with 1,000 stone of grain every year, for our army now, it is just a drop in the ocean. Ben Hou just wants to use this means to remind him not to forget that his own feudal town is the land leased from my Ming Dynasty, as long as he makes my China unhappy one day, Ben Hou can let him get out of the way quickly. ”

Wu Liang nodded, and smiled again: "Master Li is right. In addition, the establishment of the Hanbunkan is a wonderful thing, and it is possible that in a few decades, all the Japanese people of the Matsumae Domain will gradually become naturalized as Chinese people. ”

Li Xiao smiled, and he replied quite comfortably: "Everything must start to grope forward, and the establishment of this Sinology Museum is also a new attempt by our army, to see how those nationalities with mature language and religious beliefs in the land that our army is and will occupy now and in the future can assimilate them and make a useful attempt." ”

After the affairs of the Matsumae Domain were dealt with, Li Xiao left the Sentry Soldiers and Horses from the General Soldiers and Horses of the Zhendong Battalion to be stationed in the Matsumae Domain for a long time to supervise and ensure the smooth implementation of the treaty.

He then led the rest of his army back to Otaru Port.

Ten days later, the port of Otaru was built as soon as possible by 20,000 craftsmen, and it had begun to take shape, and Li Xiao's entire fleet could be successfully anchored in the port.

Seeing that the sailor already had a stable port to be stationed in, Li Xiao immediately ordered the remaining soldiers and horses of General A to guard the port. He himself personally took the general soldiers of Zhendong Yingyi and all the craftsmen, and turned all the way to the northeast and came to the location of Sapporo, the capital of modern Hokkaido, Japan.

After three days of careful inspection, as well as repeated discussions with his officials and craftsmen, Li Xiao finally determined the specific location of Changhua City.

This chosen place, located on a gentle terrain in the Tokachi Plain of modern-day Japan, about six or seven miles from the Sapporo River, is backed by a tall extinct volcano, and is easily accessible and has a wide line of sight, which should be very convenient for future immigrants to come to the city.

In Li Xiao's planning, this Dongsheng Castle, because the north is facing an extinct volcano, so there is no need to open a city gate, there will only be three gates in the west, south and east, and there are moats dug around it, just using the tributaries of the Sapporo River to fill it, so that it can pass around the city.

Li Xiao is a person who strives for perfection and pursues once and for all, he demands, to be the same as Taiwan's Changhua City, each gate, at any cost, designed to hide the way of a jack pendant, and the city wall of Dongsheng City, like the urn city, the city tower, the corner tower, the gun emplacement, the female wall, the pheasant moat, etc., will also be all built. Like the Changhua City he built, it was designed in the style of a city with a height of 15 meters and a wall road width of 6 meters, which greatly strengthened the castle's defenses.

Due to the abundant supply of manpower and construction materials, and the availability of coarse pine wood as construction timber, Li Xiao predicts that the new city should be completed within three months, just in time for the basic construction of this Dongsheng city to be completed before the weather becomes cold and the ground is frozen and hard to dig.

Originally, an ordinary builder earned 1 tael and 5 yuan a month in silver, but considering that they traveled far and wide, it was not easy to work on this remote Ezo Island. Therefore, Li Xiao added another tael of silver to each of them every month, making the monthly salary reach 2 taels and 5 yuan of silver per month, which can be described as very generous.

Moreover, in addition, Li Xiao also told Wu Liang, who was in charge of supervising the work, that he would give other rewards to those craftsmen who worked fast and well, so as to encourage the craftsmen to work faster and better.

The craftsmen were very grateful to Li Xiao for his generosity and generosity, and they worked harder and more actively, but the progress of the work was much faster.

What Li Xiao didn't expect was that the poor and poor Japanese in the Matsumae Domain, after receiving the news from the soldiers of the Tiger Army who stayed behind that Li Xiaojun was building a new city in the north, actually signed up one after another, wanting to come as laborers to earn some wages and support their families.

Li Xiao naturally agreed to their request without hesitation.

In his opinion, as long as this Dongsheng City can be built as soon as possible, it is really nothing to spend a little more money on hired workers.

After getting Li Xiao's consent, more than 200 Japanese who came to the construction site of Dongsheng City began to work as small laborers on the construction site.

What these Japanese didn't expect was that Li Xiao gave them very generous treatment.

The monthly money is 5 yuan of silver, and the cost of room and board is all-inclusive, which makes these Japanese people who do small jobs very happy.

What surprised them even more was that several Japanese who worked hard and meticulously also received additional rewards from Li Xiao, and each of them was also rewarded with iron tools such as kitchen knives and iron kettles.

The price of these items in the Matsumae Domain was extremely expensive, because in Japan, because the smelting technology was not up to standard, the quality of the iron produced was very poor, and it was not at all comparable to the iron produced in China.

According to historical records, at this time, Japan had to import iron needles from China to meet its needs.

And because of the shogunate's lockdown decree, in real history, all iron tools could only be imported from the port of Hirado, and then distributed by the shogunate to all parts of Japan, so the price of such items that changed hands was of course surprisingly high.

According to the Matsue Prefecture Chronicle, if an iron needle were exported to Japan, it would be worth a penny of silver in Japan! It's an unbelievably high price.

You must know that the best Fujian iron in the Ming Dynasty is only one pound of silver and five pounds, and how many iron needles can be made from one pound of Fujian iron?

Even if you include the processing costs and labor wages, the profit of this penny of silver is really amazing, and this is still the wholesale price of the trade sold to the port of Hirado, it is estimated that the price of the Japanese people may more than double when they buy it, and I don't know how they live their daily lives.

In his previous life, Li Xiao read "Edo Teachings", in which the ancient Japanese merchants clearly stipulated to their families and associates that even a piece of waste paper used for accounting should not be discarded at will, otherwise they would be punished by starvation. The correct way is to use the back to make a draft first, and then cut it into small sheets to go to the toilet when there is no space to use it, and stipulate that only one small sheet can be used at a time, and only two small sheets can be used in the case of diarrhea.

Li Xiao was thinking that from ancient times to the present, the reason why the Japanese are so stingy and poor should have a lot to do with the fact that this island country is heavily dependent on imports. After all, the price of goods transported across the ocean and then through several resold trades is so high that ordinary Japanese people can only save money to make ends meet.

Therefore, when an iron needle is so expensive, the price of other things such as kitchen knives, iron buckets, iron kettles, etc., has reached a sky-high price of one to two taels.

Therefore, these Japanese, after receiving Li Xiao's reward, can be called ecstatic.

As a result, these Japanese laborers, after bringing home the rewarded items, immediately became the envy of the entire Matsumae Domain, and the kitchen knives or iron kettles engraved with the Li character seal became a sign of family honor.

Seeing that the Ming army was treated so well, a large number of Japanese adult males of the Matsumae Domain were deeply attracted. They lined up in a long line in front of the military camp in Hakodate, where Li Xiao's army was stationed, hoping that Li Xiao would recruit more laborers and give themselves the opportunity to sell coolies.

Li Xiao was extremely pleased to see that his small incentive measures could attract so many Japanese to come to work, and he immediately ordered that all Japanese laborers who were willing to come to work and had the ability to work would be accepted.

As a result, the number of Japanese male laborers participating in the construction of Dongsheng Castle increased more than tenfold at once, reaching nearly 3,000.

What made Li Xiao cry and laugh was that when he saw such a large number of men from the Matsumae Domain going to participate in the construction of Dongsheng Castle, Matsumae Keihiro, the lord of the Matsumae Domain, thought of an almost shameless way to make a fortune.

He issued an edict to those Japanese laborers who went to participate in the construction of the city, but all the laborers who went to participate in the construction of the Ming army must first ask the feudal government to pay a labor tax based on 1 yuan of silver per person, and those who violate it will be severely punished.

When Li Xiao heard that Matsumae Qingguang treated his own people like this, he really sighed for a while at this person's brazenness. Although he did not interfere in the tax collection of the Matsumae Domain, he became a little more contemptuous of Matsumae Keihiro.

At the time of the construction of Dongsheng City, Wu Liang also sent two civil officials, one of whom, under the escort of the soldiers, contacted the Ezo tribe on the island everywhere, informed them of the news of the Ming Dynasty's recovery of Ezo Island, and told them that after the new city was built, they could come to Dongsheng City to trade in order to improve the difficult life in this bitter cold land.

On the other hand, the civil servant went to the whole island to explore the reclaimable wasteland, as well as the location of minerals, to provide a basic reference and data for Li Xiao's future immigration settlement and factory construction.

In the end, according to the report, Wu Liang reported to Li Xiaoyu that the civil officials had obtained the news.

"Lord Li, according to the investigation of his officials, the topography of this Ezo Island, the whole island is high in the middle and low in the periphery. Although the middle is mountainous and the territory of the Ezo barbarians, there are many barren plains scattered throughout the coast and the middle mountain range. In addition to the Tokachi Plain, where our army is currently building, there are also large plains such as the Ishikari River Plain, the Yongfu Plain, and the Tenshiogawa Plain. There are nearly 3 million acres of land that can be developed into arable land. In addition, officials have discovered a number of minerals, mostly large coal mines, as well as small minerals such as copper, lead, and iron。。。。。。 ”

After listening to Wu Liang's report, the smile on Li Xiao's face became brighter and brighter.

And in his heart, he also has a basic development plan.

Li Xiao decided that because he could only cultivate one season a year, and he could not grow high-yield crops such as sweet potatoes and potatoes, and the climate of Ezo was bitter and cold, it was not easy to settle, so he planned to provide 40 acres of cultivated land for each Han immigrant who came to settle in Ezo, which was four times the amount of land granted to Taiwan. In this way, more than 70,000 households may be resettled.

Based on an average of 4 people per household, nearly 300,000 people can be resettled on Ezo Island, and the number of permanent residents on the island will reach at least 350,000 in addition to the labor required for mineral development, business and trade, and seafood fishing.

Moreover, in order to better attract the people to come over, Li Xiao decided that all the people who settled in Ezo could enjoy more favorable conditions than those who immigrated to Taiwan, that is, Taiwanese immigrants only had half a year of tax exemption, while Li Xiao planned to give each family tax exemption for three years to the people who came to Ezo to farm and settle down.

At the same time, there are also greater benefits when it comes to collecting taxes. That is, Taiwan harvests 1 stone of rice per mu, and Shandong harvests 2 buckets of wheat per mu, and it has to be harvested twice a year. On this Ezo Island, only one season of grain tax is collected a year, and the tax per mu of land is lower than that of Shandong, with only one bucket of wheat per mu as the standard.

The reason why Li Xiao did this was because he was now rich in money and food, and he didn't care too much about collecting this grain tax on Ezo Island to supplement it. What he values more is that after these 350,000 people come to settle on Ezo Island, in addition to providing his own continuous supply of soldiers, this piece of land separated from the bosom of the motherland will become an inseparable piece of Chinese territory forever like Taiwan because of the arrival of so many Han immigrants。。。。。。