At the beginning of September of the third year of Longdao, a convoy of immigrants was walking on the land of the Liaodong Peninsula.

The convoy departed from Fuzhou a month and a half ago, about two kilometers away from the other convoys in front and behind, and was in the middle of a long line of immigrants.

At present, there are 83 households and 315 people in the convoy. Among them, there were 151 men in Ding Zhuang and Banding, 95 young women, 62 children, and 7 elderly people over 50 years old.

The convoy consisted of three caravans, ten oxen, six mules and two pack horses.

In addition, there were two flintlock muskets, fifteen arquebuses, two wooden cannons, and thirty-five muskets.

It's like a moving village, and this convoy also has a village chief.

He was a sturdy man who looked to be about forty years old, not tall, his right eye had been shot by a Korean arrow, so he always wore a black blindfold, and his face also had a deep scar left by a Tartar waist knife.

His name is Zhang Dalang - the meaning of the boss of the Zhang family. After joining the army, because there were too many Zhang Da Zhang Er in the army, his company commander Xu Shizhen gave him a big name: Zhang Qiang.

Meaning to hope that he can become a strong warrior.

Zhang Qiang is indeed very strong, he joined the New Army in the twelfth year of Jianxing, during which he made many meritorious contributions, until he was injured in the second year of Longdao and retired from the front-line field army.

After retiring, he did not choose to transfer to the new barracks as an instructor, but applied for a civilian cantonfort and became a militia captain.

When the Governor's Office began to call for volunteers, Zhang Qiang took the initiative to sign up, so he was appointed as the captain and village head of the migrant convoy.

Zhang Qiang walked quietly at the front of the convoy, holding a short flintlock pistol of cavalry loaded with medicine in his arms, a flintlock pistol hanging from his waist, a waist knife captured from the Tartars, and a ring knife snatched from the Goryeo, except for no armor, it can be said that he is fully armed.

Several young militiamen, carrying spears or arquebuses, followed Zhang Qiang, staring at the pistol at his waist with envious eyes, and one of the ignorant guys even unconsciously stretched out his hand to touch this expensive weapon.

In fact, this is also one of the main problems of the migrant ranks: the weapons and equipment are not balanced, for example, a veteran of the field army who has just retired from the field army, for example, as long as he spends about half the price, he can take away the guns he used in his service.

Ordinary militiamen who have not joined the army can only buy weapons for self-defense at the marked price.

For them, flintlock pistols were too expensive, and even if they could take out a loan to buy an arquebus, they were well equipped, and many of them lived in Qi Province for a relatively short time, and those who had no savings even had to use cold weapons such as spears to make up the numbers.

As for flintlock pistols...... This kind of weapon, which is mainly equipped for officers and cavalry, is actually rarely sold to the outside world, and Li Qiang can have one, purely because he is a retired veteran of the dragoon company of the field army.

"Brother Qiang, show me your gun." A little fat man carrying a three-barreled musket said with a grin: "This gun is so beautiful." ”

"It cost Lao Tzu 400 catties of food stamps, of course it's beautiful."

Zhang Qiang said, glancing at the weapon on the little fat man's shoulder.

The first appearance of this thing was a Jurchen "original" firearm captured by the Qi army in Fuzhou, which was essentially a three-barreled musket bundled together in a triangle to compensate for the density of firepower with the number of tubes.

Even, because it has three barrels, it can be used as a warhammer after running out of ammo, which seems to be a good weapon.

The arsenals of Qi Province were reluctant to produce what the people called the "Three-Eyed Gun" - the range and power were far from those of shotguns, let alone the knowledge arquebuses and flintlock pistols.

But the folks especially like it, because it can shoot three times in a row, eliminating the need for complicated and problematic reloading. And the recoil is small, and young women can shoot with a clip under the armpit.

What's more, it's very cheap - the folk can make a few of them by their own blacksmiths.

This is also the reason why Zhang Qiang's village is equipped with a large number of muskets - of the thirty-five muskets, twenty are three-eyed guns, and the other fifteen are directly equipped with healthy women in the village, so that they also have a certain combat effectiveness.

And all these weapons add up, and the price is equivalent to two flintlock pistols.

Zhang Qiang took out his pistol and handed it to the little fat man: "Baozi, Lao Tzu has always wanted to ask, your family is an old tun household in Rizhao, and you used to be the owner of the dock fort, and you don't have no money and food, why do you use such a thing as a three-eyed gun?" ”

The little fat man, who was called a bun by Zhang Qiang, sneered: "There is indeed money and food in the family, but it is not my house, it is the property of the sister-in-law in charge of the family." In the past, a concubine like me was actually a Zhuang Ding head. Otherwise, why would I go to this Liaodong to pioneer? ”

Qi Province has always been a province with relatively strong clan power, this was the case when the imperial court was in Jiangbei in the past, after the Great Zhou court moved south, although the population suffered heavy losses, but the clan power became more and more entrenched.

In the past, except for a few families with more open personalities of patriarchs, people in most other places were clearly class-the eldest son inherited the family business, and the other sons could obtain a certain amount of property, and the concubines could only make a living as a village head.

If it weren't for the Governor's Mansion to break the clan shackles, Baozi's life would actually be like that - starving to death, but don't think about how good it is.

That is, after the Governor's Office fully occupied Qi Province, it used a strong policy to break the clans of Qi Province: those who resist by force will be suppressed by force.

Those who did not resist by force, in addition to making a register of all the land and paying for grain, also continued to force the division of households.

A family concubine like Little Fat Man, with the support of the Governor's Mansion, can confidently ask for a part of the family property, go to other mansions or simply come to Liaodong to develop his own family business.

This part of the family property will not be very large, because the purpose of the Governor's Mansion is only to break the clan relationship and prevent the big family from uniting against the rule of the Governor's Mansion.

As long as the big surname can be forced to divide the family, how much assets can be taken away by the concubines who are divided, the Governor's Mansion only sets a minimum asset ratio, and then it doesn't care much.

For example, the little fat man, his actual surname is Bao, from the lord of Rizhaowu Fort, and he is also one of the earliest families to serve the Xu family, and there are quite a few people in the family who are local officials under the Governor's Mansion.

But that's all, when the buns were separated, they only took away thirty acres of fields, a cow and a mule.

Baozi sold his fields and cattle, and ran to Liaodong with only his mules - he fantasized that he could earn a family business far from his family, preferably larger than the Bao family's estate, and when the time came, he would return to his hometown and envy his grandparents' property.