Recently, Feng Yunshan has been really busy. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

First of all, the oil refining unit has a result.

The Xihua Shanxia Oil Refinery in the west of Guangzhou has been built and put into trial production, and after four or five consecutive failures, it has finally succeeded in refining a fairly qualified refined oil product, gasoline, diesel kerosene, and diesel residue oil.

The reason why I say this is because although Xu Shou, director of the Department of Petroleum and Fertilizer, refined the oil, he also successfully pumped out the oil and gas in the atmospheric distillation tower, and condensed it, the gasoline is very standard, but the diesel and kerosene are not mixed clearly, and the diesel and residual oil are mixed together, Feng Yunshan had to explain the principle to him again, and finally let Xu Shou understand why the gasoline is pumped from the top layers, and the diesel and kerosene are separated from the middle is the most appropriate.

The rest is to let Xu Shou try again on his own until he adjusts the qualified kerosene and diesel.

Feng Yunshan sent nearly 100 catties of kerosene to the palace as oil for lighting at night. For this kind of privilege, Feng Yunshan will not shy away from it. He was originally a holy king, so he should enjoy the best resources of the holy kingdom, not to mention, if he didn't take the lead in using them, how could he guide other people to use them?

The second is the issue of prisoners of the US military. After some "intimate exchanges" with Liu Shengbang, Lieutenant Colonel Buchanan has agreed to surrender to the Holy Kingdom and serve the Holy King. Feng Yunshan was very happy to hear that Liu Shengbang had come to report the news, he had already learned that this Lieutenant Colonel Buchanan turned out to be a big treasure.

The former principal of the US Naval Academy had studied warships powered by steam engines very thoroughly, and Feng Yunshan couldn't help but think that there was no school to train naval officers in the Holy Kingdom, and he couldn't help but have the idea of establishing such a school. However, now that the war is about to take place, and this Lieutenant Colonel Buchanan is also a good commander of naval battles, so Feng Yunshan decided to first take Buchanan as Zuo Zongtang's deputy and directly appointed him as the deputy director of the training department of the General Staff of the Capture Army, directly responsible for training naval officers.

What made Feng Yunshan even more pleasantly surprised was that this Lieutenant Colonel Buchanan, he not only defected to the Holy Kingdom himself, but also immediately changed his role, quickly regarded himself as the Admiral of the Holy Kingdom, and recruited talents for Feng Yunshan: under his persuasion, a total of 55 of the 87 captured American Navy soldiers were willing to follow him and submit to the Holy King, and only 32 soldiers were unwilling to submit and cry to return to the United States.

Buchanan interceded for them, and Feng Yunshan agreed, but he proposed that considering that they were all prisoners of war of the Holy Kingdom, they could not be let go directly, and they would always have to pay a price: as long as they served the Holy Kingdom wholeheartedly for two years, they would be sent back to China.

Feng Yunshan's trick successfully deceived the foreigners, they didn't know that Feng Yunshan didn't want to let them go at all, but found another excuse to recruit them, but this excuse was to use compulsory service as an excuse, in fact, these 32 American soldiers did the same work as the 55 American soldiers, but they didn't take money.

Feng Yunshan thought of the upcoming diversion of the Yellow River and the bursting of the embankment, so he thought about the Northern Expedition as soon as possible to save the time of the people.

He secretly thought about it and felt that the conditions for the Northern Expedition were basically ripe!

However, Guangzhou was too far away from the north, and thinking that in the last year or two, the center of gravity of the war would be in the north, and it would be very inconvenient for him to communicate and command in Guangzhou, Feng Yunshan first came up with the idea of moving the Shengwang Palace, the palace and other institutions to the north.

In this era, transportation facilities such as railways have not yet been built and popularized, mainly relying on waterways to travel boats and carriages, information transmission is too slow, once there is a change in the north, and when you know it, it is already a few days later, and you have missed the best time to deal with it. Therefore, this holy king's palace should be set up in the center of the holy kingdom, and the transportation should be convenient.

And Guangzhou, or let it be the first major trading port of the Holy Country, as well as the basic industrial base of the Holy Country, as the economic capital of the Holy Country is the best, as for the military and political capital, I have to say that Guangzhou is indeed not so suitable.

Feng Yunshan remembered that a certain force in history also developed in Guangzhou, but after the Northern Expedition, he immediately shifted his political focus back to Nanjing and Beijing. Since ancient times, the reason why these two places are called Nanjing and Beijing is that they have always existed as "Beijing", which is not unreasonable.

In this way, if he chooses to move the Shengwang Palace's palace out of Guangzhou, he will most likely have to give priority to choosing these two places.

However, this matter is too important, even if it is Feng Yunshan, he must be cautious and decide where to go after thinking about it carefully. Now, it is better to think about the Northern Expedition first, and then consider the specific place.

According to the recent reports from various places, this year's summer grain has been basically harvested, and the southern rice-growing areas where the Holy Kingdom is located are basically in the southern rice planting areas, and the first crop of rice has been harvested.

In fact, as early as last year, since the implementation of the new version of the acre system in the Holy Kingdom, the enthusiasm of the people under his rule for cultivation has been unprecedentedly high. The Holy Kingdom seized a large number of land belonging to the Manchu gentry and distributed it to the poor people, and although some ordinary gentry and large families did not confiscate the land, they also urged them to reduce rents and interest rates.

In this way, the poor people have their own fields to cultivate, and unlike in the past, most of the grain grown had to pay rent and taxes, but now with the new acre system of the Holy Country, as long as the small half of the grain grown is paid to the tenant or the township office of the Holy Country, the rest is their own, so the people's enthusiasm for farming was ignited at once.

It turns out that with this huge policy stimulus, the bursts of productivity are extremely terrifying.

According to the statistics of last year's autumn grain, the largest grain-producing province, Munan. The population of the whole Munan is 22 million, with a total of 53 million mu of cultivated land, of which 45 million mu are paddy fields, with an average yield of 2.8 stone of rice per mu. Among them, the taxes and grain paid to the treasury of the Holy Kingdom alone amounted to 3.9 million stones, and 2.3 million taels of silver were taxed.

In this way, the proportion of tax grain collected by the Manchus in the south of the country is much higher, although the proportion of taxes and grains collected is much higher. This was naturally due to the fact that the Manchus were unable to collect taxes on the local gentry and wealthy families, and they were exploited at multiple levels in the middle.

For the private land of the people, the Holy Kingdom only collects a grain tax of a bucket of grain and a silver tax of half a penny; For public rental land, a grain tax of 8 buckets and 5 liters of rice is charged, and the silver tax is not collected.

This policy was more advantageous to both the gentry who had a large amount of private land and the tenants who had no land to cultivate. Especially for those who have private land, Feng Yunshan used this method of not only collecting grain, but also collecting money to promote the circulation of grain and currency, so that the people have surplus grain to sell, and the holy country needs grain, which can be directly purchased in the market, avoiding the cumbersome large-scale grain transportation and handing it over to the market for operation.

Now the effect has been revealed: the originally high price of grain in Munan has quickly been reduced due to the sharp increase in grain production last year. The squires and wealthy families are selling a large amount of grain, and they can't help it, if they don't sell it, seeing that this year is another year's harvest, they are afraid that the price will be lower.

Of course, there were also adventurous people who smuggled grain to the Manchu ruled areas in the north to sell it, but once it was discovered by the Holy State's secret service department, there was a danger that it would be confiscated.

In Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, and other places, a total of 7 million stones of grain and 3.9 million taels of silver were also included in the treasury of the Holy State last year.

Counting the pastan, the treasury of the Holy Kingdom received a total of 10.9 million stone of grain and 6.2 million taels of silver in taxes.

And this year's summer grain, because of the stability of the territory of Munan, coupled with the wind and rain, the output has increased slightly compared with last year's autumn grain, especially in Changsha and other places, there is the use of phosphate fertilizer, and the grain output in many places has increased significantly, of course, this is still a very small part of the whole Munan. The grain tax on summer grain is being paid one after another, and it has not yet been counted, but judging from the increase in grain production, it should not be less than the harvest of last year's autumn grain.

It is conceivable that with the large-scale application of phosphate fertilizers, there will be more grains.

The food problem is solved, and the rest is the troops.

In this Northern Expedition, Feng Yunshan was actually ready to use the historical route of the foreigners, concentrate the key forces on the sea attack, capture Beijing in one fell swoop, defeat the Manchu Qing's heavy troops in Beijing, and smash the Yellow Dragon.

And the most important thing is the Northern Expedition soldiers, as well as warships and artillery, as well as muskets and other weapons.