At this time, Liu Liangchang, a political officer in eastern Sichuan, and Li Zhanchun, a staff general, returned to Chongqing and reported to Ma Gan, the governor of Sichuan, and Zeng Ying, the deputy general, about borrowing grain. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

Hearing Yang Xuan say that his 50,000 people were just a rabble, Zeng Ying was furious, and said to the left and right with his hand on the hilt of the knife: "This Yang Xuan is ungrateful, if it weren't for the old man to report to the governor of the four provinces, Wang Yingxiong, that he had occupied Shunqing Mansion, how could he, a small Qianzong, be in charge of one side and be promoted to the prefect, a general or something?" ”

Ma Gan, the governor of Sichuan, was also quite annoyed, he was the governor of Sichuan, and the other party was just a prefect and general from an unknown place, and now he actually committed public disobedience.

This kind of thing, no matter which Shangguan does, does not allow it.

In addition to urging this, he had to transfer 10,000 loads of grain and grass, and spent a lot of effort to allocate 5,000 loads, but he also had to capture Hezhou by the Ming army and take it himself.

Zeng Ying, on the other hand, was full of confidence in attacking Hezhou, not to mention anything else, his troops had just defeated Zhang Wenxiu's tens of thousands of troops, and now the morale of all departments was booming.

In addition, everyone is more envious of the life of the loyal and righteous army, although the Ming army has just defeated the Great Western Army and occupied Chongqing, but the damage in various places is serious, the people's livelihood is hard, and many wealthy families are not willing to pay taxes at all, everyone lives a hard life.

And Yang Xuan's life is extremely luxurious, I heard that he eats tiger meat every once in a while, eats bear paws or something, not to mention that there is a shortage of soldiers now, even in the peaceful and prosperous world, everyone is not so rich. (I hit it myself)

Everyone secretly made up their minds to capture Hezhou first, and after the two armies bordered, they would use force to force the loyal army to borrow money and grain.

Not to mention how Zeng Ying actively dispatched troops and prepared to attack Hezhou, just say that the situation in Shunqing Mansion has taken a sharp turn for the worse in the past two days.

In late July, after three months of study, the cadets of the first officer training camp completed training in ordnance, tactics, terrain, and human body.

On this day, Yang Xuan came to the training base at the foot of the West Mountain early, and after the three drums, Yang Xuan met with the students who had completed the graduation one by one, and distributed the Zhongyi Sword as a sword.

For the generals who have performed well in the course of study, such as squadron leaders Wang Zhiyao and Yang Guangtai, more than 10 outstanding cadets will be appointed as staff officers or transferred to the guard battalion to take up posts for future promotion.

For other trainees, they generally return to their original battalions, or take their original units, or reorganize their brigades and squadrons to be promoted again in the future.

As the saying goes, the three armies are easy to obtain, but one general is hard to find, which is the case in peaceful and prosperous times, and even more so in the chaotic times of war and chaos.

This time, more than 100 grassroots officers have been trained, and through three months of study, they have learned and trained some methods of leading troops to fight wars, and they will become the backbone of the army in the future.

With these backbones, it is much easier to form an army.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Yang Xuan also decided to expand the scale of the Loyal Army, and the escort battalion was expanded to 6 infantry brigades.

Except for Liu Weiming's 6th Battalion, which is still 4 brigades, the other infantry battalions have been expanded to 5 infantry battalions, of which the 5th battalion is a supplementary brigade.

The cavalry battalion was truly formed and expanded to 4 brigades,

Yang Xuan planned to improve the quality of middle- and lower-ranking officers through the officer training camp, and after a winter of training, and then after the whole army was expanded to more than 10,000 people next year (the second year of Hongguang), he would lead his troops to expel Zhang Xianzhong.

The autumn harvest is imminent, and in addition to the Shunqing Prefecture to get a bumper harvest, in order to prevent the surrounding local rioters from snatching grain and protecting the territory and the people, these newly graduated students are first dispatched to various places to train security brigades and control local security forces to support the army's operations.

Yang Xuan decided to postpone the expansion time until after the autumn harvest, and after determining the rectification plan, he immediately devoted himself to the autumn harvest activities.

In this era, due to the sparse population (less than 10% of the previous life, even if you deduct the towns, less than 20%), and the lack of large-scale promotion of high-yield crops such as corn, potatoes, and sweet potatoes, the land cultivated by the people was relatively flat.

It's still morning, and the fog in the mountains has not completely cleared, while in the plains there are endless rice fields, and it is harvest season, and the rice fields that used to be green are now golden.

The rice is heavy, pressed low ears of rice, like fruits, looking at it from a distance, it is particularly attractive.

The old farmer around him pulled an ear of rice from time to time, carefully counted how many grains of grain were on an ear of rice, and looked at the full grain, the old farmer did not crack his wrinkled black face, and bluntly said that this year's wind and rain were smooth, and the harvest was quite rare.

In the past few years, natural disasters have continued, and from time to time there are heavy floods, that is, drought, the weather is quite cold, and the rice in the sky is sparse and pulled, less than six or seven percent of the normal year.

This year, the weather has improved, there are no major disasters, and the weather is not as abnormal as in previous years, and the rice in this field has probably recovered to eighty or ninety percent of the harvest year.

Listening to the old peasants nagging on the side, I was shocked in my heart, in my previous life, I said that during the Xiaoice River period, from the last years of Wanli to the last years of Chongzhen, the Xiaoice River period, which lasted more than 50 years, was in great drought in northern Shaanxi, everyone had nothing to eat, and the displaced people rose everywhere, and finally caused a peasant uprising (or liukou).

Of course, the old farmers don't know what the Xiaoice River period is, the old farmers nag about the harvest in the field, just as this field has an area of more than three acres, and the parents said that they can harvest more than ten loads of rice, but since they have understood things, they have never exceeded nine loads, and most years are more than seven or eight loads.

(The yield of paddy fields is high, in the early years of the Republic of China, the yield of paddy fields per mu was more than four quintals of grain.)

In the late 70s and early 80s, when the fields were divided, the hometown divided the paddy fields according to four quintals of grain and one acre)

Don't underestimate these two or three loads of grain, which is equivalent to the rations of many families of four for two or three months, without these grains, the whole livelihood has become very difficult.

The old farmer seems quite proud, he has twenty-five acres, including ten acres of paddy fields, fifteen acres of dry land, belongs to the well-off level in the village, when he was young, the wind and rain were smooth, the family also made wine, when he was small, he went out to herd cattle, and his grandfather often poured a small glass of wine, which could keep out the cold.

(Grandpa always said that before liberation, the family had 20 acres of paddy fields, and could harvest hundreds of loads of grain a year, and did not hire people to farm, and was rated as a middle peasant during the land reform.

The cultivated area of the Ming Dynasty was 700 million mu, and the population of the Ming Dynasty was conservatively estimated to be between 100 million and 140 million. ）

But when he grew up, although he tended to this field all day and night, the harvest was limited, and the officials made it difficult in every way, and there were many local taxes and miscellaneous taxes, and the days were tight, and every July and August when the green and yellow were not harvested, he only drank gruel all day long.

The old farmer just counted the number of rice grains in the field, not only is it much fuller than in previous years, but also one or two more than in previous years, and the old farmer is full of confidence, and this year it may exceed nine quintals.

In addition to the harvest in the field, the old farmers are also particularly concerned about the field endowment, in previous years received the highest, 2 yuan of silver per mu of paddy field, and 1 yuan of silver on dry land, and now all the traffic arteries are written with eight cents of silver per mu of field endowment, when the time comes, if the township, the village is apportioned, or as in previous years, this is more than double the past.

In the end, in order to avoid paying taxes, many people registered their fields in the names of the gentry in order to avoid paying taxes from the imperial court.

Seeing the excited appearance of the old farmer, Yang Xuan explained again and again, and in the end, he bluntly said that it was the failure of the local government, and all the burden was put on the ordinary people, so that everyone couldn't stand it, and finally became a homeless person and a rogue.

Seeing Yang Xuan's fierce criticism of the past policies, Qian Bangzhi's face turned blue, and he endured it a few times, and finally did not say anything against it.

Of course, today to the farmland, not only to see the local harvest, but to test the new threshing machine, last year I felt that everyone threshed all the threshing by hand, very hard, Yang Xuan hopes to reduce the burden of the people through the threshing machine a little.

In his previous life, he was born in a farmer's family, and he also threshed grain when he was a child, and he vaguely remembered the appearance of the threshing machine, and drew the drawings as early as ten months ago, so that the craftsmen tried to make them according to the drawings and appearances, but many things, from the idea to the actual implementation still take time.

It was half a month ago that the trial production of the tenth sample was completed, and it was tested in half a barrel, and it was still presentable, and it was used in the sky today.

The master of the blacksmith workshop was installing, and when he saw Yang Xuan bending down and taking off his boots, pulling up his pants and preparing to go to the field, everyone admonished him repeatedly.

The magistrate is the lord of the blue sky, the magistrate travels to open the way, and the surrounding people who beat gongs and drums avoid, Yang Xuan is the prefect, how can he do this kind of farm work?

Yang Xuan smiled and pushed everyone away: "Everyone, why are the homeless people everywhere and the gangsters are rampant in the township, it is because many of our officials keep saying that they are farmers and industrialists, and they say that it is a big deal to go home and farm.

What is it actually? It is that he thinks that he is superior to others and looks down on farmers and workers.

As you know, every year the Son of Heaven will personally farm, and he will find old farmers to help with farm tools, and all the cabinet scholars have a decent kind of farming.

In Xia Tian as a magistrate, he should be an example for everyone, and he will threw grain with everyone today, everyone says okay? ”

How dare everyone sweep Yang Xuan's sex, they all applauded loudly, Qian Bangqi, Fan Wenguang, Zhao Sixuan and others had to pull up their pants and work in the fields.

What about others, Yang Xuan doesn't care, in addition to inspecting the harvest, the main purpose of this trip is to verify the threshing machine, after seeing the threshing machine pressed, he first tried to shake dozens of circles, which was very easy.

Then people put the rice in the threshing machine, and the force suddenly increased, and it was very difficult to shake.

But to everyone's surprise, the iron ring on the body of the threshing machine kept scratching, constantly peeling off the ears of grain on it, and in less than a moment, a large number of them were finished.

Yang Xuan shook the threshing machine while interviewing to see everyone's threshing actions, summarized with everyone, and finally tried to put rice by himself.

In his previous life, he had beaten rice, and of course his movements were very skillful, and a large handful of rice was finished in a moment, which surprised everyone again and again.

The rice was beaten very quickly, at first only two or three people were cutting the rice, and finally five or six people were too busy, which was very unexpected.

The old farmer was worried that it would not be clean, so he counted more than a dozen in a row, and looked at each one very carefully, fearing that the harvest would be reduced or something, but after looking at a few handfuls one after another, there was nothing left except for a small amount of hollow that was not knocked out.

In the past, it was not only laborious to beat it by hand, but it was also not clean at all, but now it seems that this threshing machine is much stronger than in the past.

After working in the field for half a day, at the end of the day, the whole field was finished before the sun set, and the efficiency was more than three or four times that of the past.

In addition, if you remove those straws and dry them in the ground, the harvest will be ten quintals, which is close to the level of previous years' harvests.

In addition to being happy, everyone has summarized the reasons, the most important thing is, of course, the wind and rain are smooth, there is more grain in the field, in addition, the threshing machine is cleaner, that is, the use of the threshing machine, the rice will not fall in the field again.

In the past, although I was very careful when I threshed the grain, it danced, and from time to time some of the grain fell into the ground and could not be harvested.

Back at the prefect's yamen, Yang Xuan and the master of the blacksmith workshop made a summary again, discussed overcoming the difficulties, and discussed assembling a new threshing machine overnight.

As the old farmer concluded, the use of threshing machines alone has increased the harvest by 5%, and if it is fully promoted, it will definitely be very popular.

Due to the successful use, the threshing machine was first promoted in the large households, and the threshing machine 8 taels of silver was popular.

As evaluated, if the autumn harvest is more than 20 days, the threshing machine threshing can increase the output by 5%, so that after 20 days, the cost of buying a threshing machine will be earned.

Large families pondered the use of threshing machines and no longer hired as many short-term workers as in the past, while small families got together, several families bought together, and when the time came, they threshed together.

The successful development of the threshing machine and the bumper harvest of autumn grain in the counties under its jurisdiction would have been a happy thing. But as the saying goes, in this troubled world, the greatest treasure is not gold, silver and jewelry, but grain.