In the following days, everyone in the Military Aircraft Department was very busy, which was in stark contrast to the other yamen of the imperial court. But this kind www.biquge.info of busyness has been expected by the people of the Military Aircraft Department for many years, and they can get the attention of the emperor and have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to the cause they have longed for.

Sun Chengzong and Zhang Weixian first went to Tongzhou in Jingdong in person, looked at several places, and finally selected a so-called feng shui treasure in the northwest corner of Tongzhou City with a mountain in the north and a river in the south, as the address of the military aircraft department's lecture hall, and then rushed to Zhuozhou and Yi County non-stop to investigate the site of the new army camp, and finally selected the first new army camp in a relatively open barren valley in Zhuozhou. As soon as their site was reported, it was quickly approved by the emperor.

The first batch of people to recruit people to the field is the emperor's donation of the imperial village, this almost continuous grange, the total area is tens of thousands of hectares, enough to recruit 200,000 displaced people, and the abandoned time is not long, easy to reclaim, and this place is close to the Beijing Division, but also convenient for the military aircraft department personnel to go back and forth to guide. If the recruitment of people is on the right track in the future, then it will expand in the direction of Yizhou and Baoding.

After the address of Zhuozhou's Tuntian was decided, Yang Yingqian, the military commander in charge of Tuntian affairs, began to get busy, first handing over the land and erecting monuments to mark them, and then requesting the transfer of personnel from the household department, the military department, and his old subordinates when they were in Liaodong to set up an office in Zhuozhou, and then he drafted and issued a proclamation to openly recruit landless and unemployed people from Jiliao, Xuanfu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong, and other places to go to Zhuozhou for reclamation. With the help of Jinyiwei and local governments, the proclamation to recruit people for reclamation quickly spread from Gyeongshi to the surrounding areas of Gyeonggi, and even spread along the canal to Nanzhili.

Of course, some people don't believe that the emperor will take out his own imperial village for them to cultivate for free, and give them food, shelter, seeds, and farm tools, after all, the emperor's greed has been known all over the world since Wanli. But there are always some people who can't survive to try it, if what the court's proclamation says is true, then wouldn't it be a steamed bun falling from the sky and just falling at their feet?

In addition, the magistrates of the state capitals of Beizhili are also worried about the relief of the displaced people under their rule, and driving these displaced people away not only completes the task of the Military Aircraft Department, but also reduces their own pressure. Therefore, a few days after the announcement of the recruitment of people for reclamation was issued, the "North Drifters" who were the first to know the news in the late Ming Dynasty began to rush to the Jingshi recruitment point in front of the Yamen of Shuntian Mansion in groups to inquire about the news.

And some of the bold ones registered the names of the head of the household and their families, followed the official messenger who recruited the people, and began to go to Liangxiang and Fangshan. An adult male is given 10 acres of land, and a family with an adult male is given 20 acres of land, seeds, farm tools, and houses to build, and no taxes or grain are collected in the first year, and only 20% of the annual grain harvest is collected in the second year, and if you don't want a tael of silver, you need grain from the field. Soon, those who were the first batch of people who were assigned to the original Huangzhuang farmland, and the first people who dared to eat crabs, became the best volunteer propagandists for each recruiter to the fields, and as the days passed, there were more and more such people. Coupled with the encouragement of some local state officials, the rumors about the emperor recruiting displaced people to cultivate the land of the Huangzhuang without compensation and who will return to the harvest are more and more widespread, and the more they spread, the more suspenseful they become.

Xu Guangqi heard the news on his way to Beijing to meet the emperor. Looking at the groups of displaced people who went to Tongzhou, Zhuozhou and other places to recruit Tuntian, Xu Guangqi was really full of emotion, and his curiosity about the new emperor became stronger and stronger. Originally, he was engaged in agricultural experiments in Tianjin, and he also gathered a lot of displaced people, according to the seeds and methods he taught, cultivated in the ownerless saline-alkali land around Tianjin, and planted a large number of crops that were relatively novel to the Ming Dynasty, such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn.

Historically, these cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant, salt-alkali tolerant, high-yield crops have been planted in many places in southern China, such as Fujian, Guangdong and other mountainous areas, at the end of the Ming Dynasty. These crops are not native to China, of course, they came from the distant Americas, they were discovered by the Spanish when they conquered the Americas, and then introduced to Europe, and decades later, when the Spanish conquered the Philippines, they brought these high-yielding crops to the Philippines, and finally they were brought back to their homeland by Fujian and Guangdong merchants who traded between China and the Philippines, and then gradually spread. However, at this time, the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty had not yet recognized the great value of this high-yield crop, so it had not been vigorously promoted.

Fortunately, Xu Guangqi recognized the value of these high-yielding crops. In the forty-first year of Wanli, that is, in 1613 AD, Xu Guangqi reported illness and left his job, first opening canals to plant rice in Fangshan, Laishui and other places to carry out agricultural experiments. In the forty-seventh year of Wanli, the news of the defeat of the Salhu army came, Xu Guangqi thought that it was more important to train a strong army at present, so he wrote a letter to request military training, and the Wanli Emperor actually agreed, let him supervise the training of the new army in Tongzhou, and later abandoned halfway due to military salaries and equipment. In the year of the Apocalypse, Xu Guangqi, who was disheartened about his career, simply resigned and came to Tianjin Zuojin to carry out agricultural experiments. The objects of the planting experiment were foreign crops such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, and corn. After several years of experimentation, we have now figured out these habits as cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant and salinity-tolerant, mastered the techniques of cultivating them, and cultivated a group of tenant farmers who know how to grow these crops.

It stands to reason that the emperor summoned Tianjin, and Tianjin was so close to Beijing that it would be possible to arrive in two or three days, but now it has been more than ten days since receiving the holy decree, and Xu Guangqi and his party have just arrived in Tongzhou. The reason for the delay was that Xu Guangqi had to personally guide the recruited farmers in Tianjin to harvest the high-yielding crops planted this year. When he entered Beijing this time, the first thing he wanted to do was to suggest that the emperor promote this crop throughout the world, especially in the nine-border areas such as Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningbo. But what he didn't expect was that in just over half a month, the situation of the court had changed so much, it was a change-like change. The eunuch party has completely collapsed, the first assistant of the cabinet has also changed, and recently a second assistant has been downed, and the military aircraft department has also been established, and it is said that the inner court and the Jinyi Wei purge have killed people with rolling heads and rivers of blood, and now they have taken out the cultivated land of Huangzhuang, recruited displaced people from all over the world, and are ready to verify the personnel of the Nine Border Army, and plan to train the new army.

This news came out one by one, which made Xu Guangqi feel excited. This time in Beijing, if you can make a difference, of course, it is the best, otherwise I don't want to go back to Tianjin, if I meet such an emperor who has nothing to do, then I should also tell the old man to return to his hometown, and return to his home in Songjiang Mansion in Nanzhili. Therefore, these days, while directing farmers to harvest experimental crops and dedicate them to the emperor to use as seeds to recruit people to the tuntian, he also summarized the experimental experience of the past few years and prepared to pass it on to the farmers who went to Huangzhuang to reclaim the fields.

The refugees who came from the eastern part of Gyeonggi to apply for the recruitment arrived at Tongju, and they were considered to have reached the end point. One by one, they came to the recruitment point near the canal wharf, registered, compiled the household, received the household registration documents, and after gathering enough for a person A, they followed the official mission to report to the cantonment station. Xu Guangqi looked at the flow of people who seemed to come and go, and thought to himself, this season, so many homeless people who have no food and clothing have come to apply for recruitment, and their food, clothing, and housing are a huge expense, how will the emperor solve this financial problem that has been plaguing the imperial court. What he didn't know was that the emperor at this time was also thinking about the same problem.