On August 10, 1650, Dinghai County, fine, southeast wind level 4.

The wharf, which took more than 10,000 local people to build for several months, has been completely completed, so that large ships on the east coast between Dengzhou and Ningbo can directly dock at the port, and there is no need to use guò small boats to carry them back and forth, and the transportation efficiency has been greatly improved, which makes Wei Boqiu, who has been rectifying the economy in the Ningbo area, extremely satisfied. Of course, Wei Boqiu is no longer here, he went to the foot of the mountain to the south, and Dinghai County is currently presided over by a young French man named Yu Guo, a student he brought from the mainland.

These days, Wei Boqiu and Huang Yi, who is sitting in Yinxian County, have a tacit understanding, and basically do not point fingers at each other's sphere of influence. Huang Yi was in charge of foreign trade matters, and took a group of people to various places all day long to buy tea, raw silk, rice and other scarce materials, and at the same time took a boat to Daishan Island to make some transactions with King Lu and Zheng's subordinates intermittently, so as to strengthen their determination to continue fighting; As for Wei Boqiu, he recently arrived in Fenghua County with some soldiers and horses of the Third Division going south, and then rectified the local tea-making industry.

Fenghua County is located in the southern part of the Ningshao Plain, surrounded by the Tiantai Mountains and the Siming Mountains, and most of the rest of the county is isolated by lofty mountains and mountains, except for a few narrow mountain trails leading to Taizhou and Shaoxing to the south. At the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the dynasties changed, and the wars and battles continued, but the military disasters suffered by Fenghua County were much lighter than those in other places, as evidenced by the fact that the county now has a population of more than 100,000 -- it is not easy for the county to maintain a population of more than 100,000 in 1650, when the population of Zhejiang was greatly reduced. You must know that Fushan County, which is called "prosperous" under the rule of the people on the east coast of Dengzhou, has a population of just over 60,000. There is no comparison!

There are resources, special products, a large population, and dangerous terrain. This is the reason why Wei Boqiu followed the troops to Fenghua County. This is a proper rear, with a fertile plain water system that can be used to grow food; The hilly and mountainous areas on the edge of the plain are actually quite rich, and the bamboo forests all over the mountains are not to mention, which is a treasure; In addition, the tea plantations densely covered with hills and mountains are a big gold mine for the people of the East Coast, according to the figures of 1649, the total amount of tea consumption in the East Coast last year has exceeded 400,000 yuan, that is to say, the average person spent two yuan on the purchase of tea. That's a staggering number! Also a very promising number! It is believed that with the increasing population of the East Coast and the increase in disposable income of the people, the tea market has the potential to continue to expand.

"Have all the tea merchants in this county taken control?" Sitting in the bamboo forest of the mountain house, Wei Boqiu sipped Quhao tea, a tribute from the Song Dynasty, and asked his student Li Cardo, a young man of Portuguese descent, who had studied various knowledge with Wei Boqiu since he was a child, and was one of the backbone of the Mei Agency's business at that time.

"It's all up, a total of thirteen. The arrest carried out by Battalion Commander Sun led the troops, they have been colluding with the Manchu Qing for the past year, and the evidence is conclusive. Can't run away! Li Cardo immediately stood up and reported to Wei Boqiu, "Since around Qingming this year. These tea merchants smuggled tea through the Guò mountain trails to Taizhou, Shaoxing, and Jinhua, which were still in the Manchu-controlled districts, and at the same time had all kinds of information about our army. The Manchu Qing Dynasty's Jierharang and Chen Tai were able to immediately give up the fruits of victory in the battlefields of Guangdong and Jiangxi and quickly return to help, and the ventilation of these people was also one of the reasons. They even sent detailed work in Yinxian and Dinghai under the cover of doing business, and passed on a lot of information about the entry and exit of our army. ”

"Well, all the family members were publicly beheaded, and all the female dependents and children were distributed to the Heishui Coal Mine. In addition, the two leading tea merchants should be praised and praised greatly, so that the people of the whole county and even the neighboring counties know that they are our loyal friends of the Great East Coast. Well, the chairman and vice president of the stability maintenance committee will be handed over to them, and the matter of tea purchase will also be handed over to them. Wei Boqiu listened to the student's report, and said indifferently, the fate of hundreds of thousands of people was decided in a gesture.

"Humble duty!" Battalion Commander Sun of the Third Division of the New Army, who was also standing on the side, agreed. Battalion Commander Sun was a member of the division commander Sun Shouzheng, and there was a battalion of 500 soldiers under his command, well-equipped and armoured, including 100 musketeers equipped with muskets on the east coast. With them coming to Fenghua County to suppress them, the general local bandits and bandits are really not enough to see, and they can be destroyed in a snap of a finger. In fact, he was a member of the servant military system, and although Wei Boqiu had the title of deputy commander, he almost never took care of the military, so he didn't have to obey Wei Boqiu's orders in everything. But who made this guy have the heart to drill the camp and shoot horses, so he obeyed Wei Boqiu's orders and was extremely obedient.

Naturally, the two tea merchants can't form a stability maintenance club, and there must be some local seniors to join, otherwise they won't be able to play at all. It's a pity that Liu Haiyang's brutal methods of sweeping up landlords in Ningbo Mansion half a year ago offended many people, so they have a very bad impression of the people on the east coast, and they shirk the invitation to join the Stability Maintenance Association to maintain local order. I really couldn't push it off, so I sent my family to send some cow, sheep and rice noodles over, just like sending a special flower child!

However, Wei Boqiu, who was short of troops at hand, had no good way, so he could only secretly write down this account, and wait for the East Coast army to withdraw from Shaoxing Mansion, and then calmly mobilize troops and horses to dig out these anti-East Coast group forces in one fell swoop. At that time, not only the gentry of Fenghua County will have to clean up, but even the landlords and old wealth of Xiangshan County, Ninghai County, and Changguowei, who have just been nominally conquered by the people on the east coast (Battalion Commander Sun marched with 500 armed soldiers, and the main force on the east bank that was originally going to go south was stranded in Dengzhou due to the change in the shape of Shandong), but in fact they are still largely autonomous. Damn, we disobey our orders, this is reluctant to shirk that, and secretly we are eye-to-eye, when we are blind? Sooner or later, send the Heishui Coal Mine to dig coal one by one!

Wei Boqiu thought to himself that this day was not far off. Since mid-April, Liu Haiyang led the army west out of Yuyao, and it has been April. During this period, the East Coast Army, composed of more than 17,000 soldiers, successively defeated more than 20,000 Qing troops led by Zhang Jie, the commander of Ningbo, Tian Xiong, and Gushan Ezhen Jinli, captured most of the prefectures and counties of Shaoxing Prefecture, and finally broke through Xiaoshan County in late May, completely driving the Qing army out of Shaoxing Prefecture.

After achieving this phased victory, Liu Haiyang ordered a temporary reinment of troops, and turned to looting the wealth and goods of the eight counties and one guard of Shaoxing Prefecture. After all, their purpose was not to destroy the green battalions and regimental training forces that the Qing army had temporarily raised, which could not be killed, but to weaken the Qing army's war potential, to undermine the prestige of the Qing army, and at the same time to strengthen their own strength. Therefore, in line with this idea, the East Coast army began to carry out a large-scale relocation operation in Shaoxing Prefecture: cotton, looms, weavers, tea, tea farmers, sericulture workers, silk reelers, langzhong, storytellers, low-level readers, handicraftsmen, and other skilled people and their families were forcibly relocated to the territory of Ningbo Prefecture.

In the end, they even brought ordinary landless peasants and tenants to Ningbo. Liu Haiyang instructed the military and political personnel who stayed behind to divide the land among these people in the vicinity of Yinxian County, and the rules were to follow the "Homestead Law" on the east coast, and first help the east bank government to cultivate for five years (during which they could receive wages and be regarded as agricultural workers), and then the land could be redeemed by his personal funds. This policy greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of the new Shaoxing tenants, who were originally landless tenants, who worked for others all their lives, but may not be able to earn a third of an acre of land when they are old. Is it a dream that there is such a good thing now, and in five years, you can redeem an acre of good paddy field for a few taels of silver?

Of course, they are not dreaming, in fact, this is deliberately arranged by the people of the East Coast, and it is also a measure for them to break the local social structure and completely control the place. These foreign Shaoxing tenants had no relatives in the local area, and could only instinctively rely on the East Coasters who sent them here. In addition, the land they cultivated was originally taken by the people on the east coast from the hands of the puppet Qing official families in Yinxian County, and now it has been distributed to them, they actually have a feud with the descendants of the gentry (many of whom were officials in the Manchu court).

These immigrants who had divided the land around the county seat of Yinxian County, together with the retired servants and soldiers who had divided the land, constituted the basic plate for the people on the east coast to divide and control Yinxian County. With the increasing power of the people on the east coast, and the increasing number of soldiers in the land, it is only a matter of time before Yinxian is completely digested and operated at the same time. Do you want these tenants who have been bitter all their lives, as well as retired soldiers, to spit out the land that has been eaten in their stomachs? Dream on, I'm fighting with you!

Naturally, this behavior of the people on the east coast aroused extreme hatred among the landlord class. Therefore, starting in June, the entire territory of Shaoxing Prefecture continued to rebel, and the landlords and gentry went in tandem everywhere, and then organized armed regimental training with clan forces as the core, and began to fight guerrilla attacks with the army on the east coast, which undoubtedly greatly delayed the pace of the westward advance of the army of Liu Haiyang, Liu Guochang and other troops.

After cleaning up these provocative landlords, the Hangzhou government sent a large number of Qing army reinforcements, the number of which was more than 30,000, and Liu Haiyang suddenly realized that the best opportunity to capture Hangzhou had been lost. In addition, the raid of thousands of Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners of Chen Tai's subordinate who rushed back from Fujian defeated more than 1,500 people of Yuan Bao's subordinate of the Shun army (Yuan Bao was wounded and fled back), and the soldiers of the various departments who had been plundered were generally not high-spirited, so Liu Haiyang had no choice but to order the various units to retreat alternately, and in mid-July, the whole army withdrew across Yongdao, ending the campaign of the westward expedition to Shaoxing and Hangzhou in stages. (To be continued......)