January 31, 1632. Clear.

It's the second day after the war, and a solemn funeral is taking place in the National Cemetery, where the remains of seven soldiers who died yesterday will be buried. Today, not only all the members of the Executive Committee have arrived, but there are also many soldiers or people who have come spontaneously.

The soldier is the last to see off his brothers who died in battle, although they have not been together for a long time, but after all, they have gone into battle together to kill the enemy, lived and died together, and they have to come to send them off; The crowd came to see the soldiers who defended them.

Ye Yongxing and Pastor Francis appeared again, and after the whole set of procedures was completed, all the members of the executive committee went around the grave for a week, and then the funeral was officially completed.

The enemy fleet had pulled anchor and set sail the previous night, and probably they had guessed what was happening. With the enemy withdrawing, the threat lifted, and life back on track, the first thing the Executive Committee had to do was to make good on its pre-war promises.

At present, the armed forces of the Executive Committee include the first battalion of the newly built army, the first post of independent field artillery, artillery batteries and 40 Cossack serfs, with a total number of more than 570 people. Except for about half of them, the rest are immigrants from all over the world, mainly in the first and second groups, mostly Swiss and Finns.

According to the statistics of the Executive Committee, a total of 290 soldiers (including 6 who died in battle) were officially granted freeman status at this time, and the families of the 6 immigrant soldiers who died in the war could also be granted freeman status according to the policy. This would bring the total number of freedmen to 297 people.

With their status as freedmen, they ceased to be indentured servants of the East Coast Company and received a large monthly salary. Although the financial expenditure has increased a little, the Executive Committee is now extremely financially well-off, and it does not care about this small amount of money.

In addition to this, monetary rewards must also be paid before the war. According to the Ministry of Finance's estimates, the amount of money was tens of thousands of riyals due to the "indiscriminate promises" made by some people before the war. However, in order to maintain the prestige of the traversal, the executive committee decided to release the money in full. Moreover, since there was no clear regulation before the war, the surrender of property captured by soldiers on the battlefield was no longer mandatory this time. As for the future, it is definitely not possible to hide the loot privately, and the specific rules will have to wait for the rules and regulations to be perfected.

In addition, the Executive Committee had long been troubled by the complicated collection of British, French, Spanish, and Venetian gold and silver coins. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Tang Yuan, a member of the Finance Committee, simply suggested to the Executive Committee that he mint coins himself. In fact, this is not the first time that the matter of coinage has been mentioned, and the people have long had an appetite for the strange-shaped Spanish cross silver coins, and the Ministry of Finance has submitted an application last year, and even the styles and designs have been made, but at that time, the Executive Committee did not have much gold and silver coins in hand, so they did not consider self-minting coins. However, now that the stock of all kinds of gold and silver coins has reached more than 170 million riyals, it is time to mint your own currency, and this kind of thing is also very profitable.

The plan launched by the Ministry of Finance is to mint copper, silver and gold coins at the same time, with a full set of 7 pieces, using the decimal system, that is, 1 yuan = 10 jiao, specifically divided into: 1 jiao, 2 jiao copper coins; 1 yuan, 2 yuan, 5 yuan silver coins; 50 yuan, 100 yuan gold coins. Of course, the latter two types of gold coins are basically impossible to encounter in daily life.

In the center of the obverse is a horizontal row of "One Corner" or "Two Corners", and at the bottom of the arc are a few small letters "First Mint" and the year of minting; On the reverse side is a "grassland, ox" motif and an Arabic numeral "1" or "2", of which the copper coin weighs 39 grams and the second jiao weighs 78 grams.

Silver and copper coins are similar in style. Taking the One Dollar as an example, the obverse is still the word "One Yuan" and the mint and the year of minting, but there are more patterns and decorations around; On the reverse is a wave, a sailboat and the Arabic numeral "1". The whole silver coin is made of silver and copper alloy and weighs 30 grams, of which it contains 90% silver. By analogy, a 2 yuan silver coin weighs 60 grams, and a 5 yuan silver coin weighs 150 grams.

The latter is a gold coin that is expected to be minted in very small quantities. Cast from gold and silver alloys, the gold content is up to 92%. The obverse still resembles a copper and silver coin, while the reverse features a bamboo panda with Arabic numerals 50 or 100. Among them, the 50 yuan gold coin weighs 94 grams, and the 100 yuan gold coin weighs 188 grams.

After the unification of the currency system, the total value of various gold and silver coins in the hands of the Executive Committee is about 200,000 yuan after conversion.

The location of the mint has been chosen, on the north bank of the Big Fish River, near the barracks. As for the molds and forging hammers for casting, the steel mill is responsible for solving them, which is not a complicated matter. As soon as the equipment is in place, the casting can start in these two days.

After solving the top priority, the next thing is about the army.

The enemy had retreated, and it was not appropriate to maintain such a large army with the number of people under the current control of the Executive Council (1,978 men). Therefore, a certain scale of demobilization is required. Moreover, the general population and resources of the Executive Committee are still relatively tight, and all departments are complaining about the lack of manpower all day long.

In this way, it is imperative to reduce the number of troops, but it is still very particular about which units to cut. No, don't look at Peng Zhicheng and Wang Qinian's usual relationship is quite good, but when it comes to meeting the poor dagger, the two don't care about what to say, and in front of the rest of the members of the executive committee, it is a spitting argument.

The core issue between the two men was whether to reduce the number of batteries or the number of the first battalion of the new army. Peng Zhicheng thought that the total number of the three batteries of the navy was as high as 240, which was really unacceptable, and proposed to reduce it to 150 people; Wang Qinian resolutely disagreed, saying that the current manpower to serve the three batteries with a total of 32 cannons is a little nervous, and there are no wealthy personnel, and this is also to train artillery talents in advance for the construction of warships in the future. For this reason, he suggested that one of the three outposts of the first battalion should be abolished, and that the Cossack cavalry should also be eliminated as a whole, and the number of the first field artillery post could be appropriately reduced.

The two quarreled over the issue, and neither seemed to be backing down. In the end, Ma Qianzu came out to mediate, and both sides made some retreats. That is: the number of naval coastal defense artillery was reduced by 75 people, and the remaining number was 165 people. The first post of the first battalion of the newly built army will be maintained at full strength, and the second and third posts will each be reduced by two platoons; The establishment of the first post of the independent field artillery remained unchanged; As for the temporary cavalry unit, the establishment was naturally abolished, and only one reconnaissance unit was retained, with an establishment of five people and two horses, which was under the direct command of the battalion headquarters of the first battalion. In this way, the army was reduced by 99 men, with a surplus of 236 men, and the navy and army disarmed a total of 174 men, leaving a surplus of 401 men.

At the same time, as a supplementary measure, regular military drills for ordinary people have also been put on the agenda, and they can be discussed and implemented only after the navy and army have put forward specific plans.

The battle also captured 198 French, Dutch and English prisoners of war, including 68 French prisoners of war, 108 Dutch prisoners of war, and 22 English prisoners of war. These were all prisoners who were physically intact and uninjured, and as for those wounded soldiers, Jiao Tang, the internal affairs commissar, had already asked his policemen who had never seen blood to give them the last ride.

These captives are now a considerable resource at the hands of the Executive Committee, no, the limestone mines want it, the cement kilns want it, the brick kilns want it, the construction team wants it, and even the farms want people to farm the fields. Since it was too cumbersome to disperse the guards, it was decided that all the captives would be sent to the limestone mines to be mined, and the mines would allocate some manpower to other departments as appropriate.

With these external threats resolved, the Executive Committee was finally able to resume economic construction that had been stalled for a while.

The first is the construction of Dingyuan Fort. Before the war, a wall and moat with a circumference of about 600 meters had been built in Dingyuan Fort, and there were all kinds of factory facilities and living facilities in the city. Before the war, the Executive Committee decided to reduce its manpower, and most of the personnel of Dingyuan Fort were withdrawn, leaving only a team of 30 people to guard. Now that the war is over, fishing in Dingyuanbao must resume as soon as possible, and the fish processing plant must start immediately.

After experiencing this war, the Executive Committee was also aware of the limitations of the current living and production areas. It's not bad that the houses and factories are inside the city, but the farmland, pastures, and water sources are outside the city, and they are not very far from the coastline, so they can be easily destroyed by the enemy.

The French and Dutch who came this time were only a few ships and more than 300 people, and they dared to go out of the city to fight with their excellent equipment. But next time, if the Spaniards and Portuguese mobilize dozens of boats and thousands of people to press over, everyone will have to shrink into the city as turtles. At this time, all enemies outside the city can wreak havoc, burn farmland, rob livestock, cut off water sources, and all those who pass through must die.

Therefore, the Executive Committee felt that it could not put all its eggs in one basket. Dingyuan Fort is more than ten kilometers away from the coastline, and there are rich fishery and salt resources nearby. The transportation is also quite convenient, it doesn't take half a day to arrive by boat, and once something happens, you can rescue in time. Moreover, the Crossing has already carried out preliminary development and established a solid base, which is the most ideal choice of sub-base.

To sum up, the Executive Committee decided to carry out large-scale development near Dingyuan Fort, not only to restore the original manpower, but also to send more manpower to build more reclamation sites around Dingyuan Fort.

Of course, the Executive Committee has not forgotten the Charruya attack that occurred six months ago. Although these aborigines have not appeared near Dingyuan Fort for a long time, they must not be taken lightly. It would not be nice if the large-scale resettlement activities across the crowd touched their sensitive nerves, and then a conflict broke out, resulting in casualties.

After thinking about it, he finally made up his mind to transfer the battalion headquarters, the second outpost and the third outpost of the first battalion of the newly built army to Dingyuan Fort as a whole, and to carry out a public order clean-up operation in the area north and east of Dingyuan Fort to create conditions for future resettlement and reclamation. The operation was limited to one month and was to be completed by March 1, 1632, with the goal of exterminating or driving out the Charuya tribes.

On February 2, 1632, the newly formed Dingyuanbao bandit detachment set off by boat in the morning light.