Chapter 935: Turning Offense to Defense

As Emperor Chongzhen originally envisioned, Xuanfu and Datong, which are relatively safe areas in the border, and the best land and land are distributed to Datong Town, Xuanfu Town, Shanxi Town, as well as the first and second towns of the Guards, as well as the meritorious soldiers of the third and fourth towns of the Guards.

There were also other large tracts of relatively good land, all of which were purchased by merchants from Nanzhili and other places as merchants, and produced grain nearby in exchange for salt.

The vast majority of those displaced people from Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and even the Jianghuai region who applied for reclamation were penniless and destitute people, and they had no money to buy the fertile land of Xuanda.

Except for those displaced people who were unwilling to leave their homeland and continue to go north, who signed a contract with the Xuanda Governor's Mansion for regular labor or relatively high land rent, and got the land in the Xuanda border as they wished, most of them could only continue to be at the mercy of the Xuanda Governor's Office's arrangement, and went north from the places such as Killing Hu and Deshengkou, and went to the Wuchuan Zhenshoufu and Jiningbao respectively to obtain the grassland land that was completely distributed free of charge.

Therefore, in addition to the popularity of the city after a year, the north of the Hara Una Pass (Daqing Mountain), as the northern gateway of the city of Naturalization, Wuchuan Fort, has also gathered a lot of people.

In addition to the thousands of generals and soldiers belonging to the Wuchuan Town Guard, Han Chinese immigrants from the interior had already exceeded the 10,000 mark by the end of October.

The Wuchuan Fort, which had been abandoned for a long time, has now been renovated, and there are patches of semi-underground manholes and shanty towns inside and outside the newly built city walls of Wuchuan Fort.

Liu Tianlu, the envoy of Wuchuan Town, has been by Zu Dashou's side for many years, and now for the first time, he has such an opportunity to enter the field of vision of Emperor Chongzhen and become the only party in the north of the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, for this opportunity now, he cherished it very much, and since he was ordered, he quickly led 4,000 cavalry under his command to garrison Wuchuan Fort in the north, and began to recruit displaced people from the Guannei to build a city north of Hara Wuna.

Now almost a year has passed, and the area of Wuchuan Fort (that is, the county seat of Wuchuan in Inner Mongolia in the later generations) a hundred miles north of Guihua City has not only built a circle of tall cement and stone city walls around Wuchuan Fort, but also built a bunch fort every thirty miles from Wuchuan Fort to the north, and built three in succession, pushing the soldiers of Guihua Town north for nearly a hundred miles.

And the ancestor who was named Wuchuan Bo, naturally no exception, was given to him as Wuchuan Bo or the ancestral family of the world of 300 hectares, just north of the Hara Wuna Mountain.

In the Ming system, one hectare is one hundred acres, and three hundred hectares is thirty thousand acres, which is a remarkable number!

Even if it is a remote land, let alone give you 30,000 acres, even if you are given 10,000 acres, it is very tempting.

What's more, in terms of Zu Dashou and the character of the ancestral family, since the imperial court gave the ancestral family 300 hectares of Shitian, then of course they want to allocate the best land near Guihua City and Wuchuan Fort to their own family.

Therefore, whether it is Zu Dashou or Zu Dashou's clan family, they also regard Guihua City and Wuchuan Fort as the places where their families operate permanently.

Whether it is the shops and merchants of the ancestral family in Ningyuan and Jinzhou and other places, or the relatives and slaves, especially Zu Dashou himself, after Zu Dashou was awarded the title of Earl of Wuchuan, he began to move to Guihua City and Wuchuan Fort in 66 succession.

With 30,000 acres of fertile land near Guihua City and Wuchuan Fort, what else can you not let go of that bit of ancestral industry in Ningyuan City?

Therefore, at the end of November of the third year of Chongzhen, although the place in Guihua City was cold and unusually cold, its popularity did not decrease because of this, on the contrary, there was smoke curling everywhere.

Tumochuan is not as thorough as Mobei's steppe landscape, because it is close to the Hara Una Mountain, there is no shortage of wood for heating in winter, and of course there is no shortage of people who cut down and burn charcoal.

And because it is close to several large coal producing areas in the Ming Dynasty, such as the Datong area, such as the Yulin area, the arrival of a large number of inland immigrants not only allowed the coal kilns and mines in various places to restart, but also provided a bottomless pit of sales for the large and small coal yards around Datong Yulin.

Especially after the arrival of winter in Saibei, the Han people in the interior who immigrated here were not accustomed to using horse dung and cow dung from the original grassland as fuel, and at this time, the Mongols on the Tumut Plain had either moved west or north, and the rest were also included in the jurisdiction of the three town guards of Jiuyuan, Shuofang, and Wuchuan.

However, there were no large number of Mongols in the area of Guihua City, so naturally there would be no large number of cattle, sheep and horses, and at the same time, there would naturally be no large amount of cow and horse dung that could be used as fuel.

At the same time, the price of coal is much cheaper than wood cut from the mountains of Harauruna or charcoal made from it.

Therefore, the coal from Datong and Yulin became a must-have for the Han people and military families who immigrated to Saibei during the harsh winter of Chongzhen's three years.

Whether it is used to boil water for cooking, or to burn kang for heating, coal has become the best choice.

The Hengyuan Company of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Deshengkou and Jiningbao, and the Hengfeng Company in Zhuhukou and Guihuacheng, quickly gained a firm foothold in these places and opened up the situation by relying on the coal business.

Han Zanzhou, the deacon and eunuch of the Hengyuan Company of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Li Fengxiang, the deacon and eunuch of the Hengfeng Company, also relied on the craftsmen from the factories of the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Metallurgy, and the coal coking process brought by these craftsmen, they quickly surpassed the Dai Wangfu, the largest coal mine owner in the Datong area, and became the largest coal trading operator in Datong and Yulin.

A large number of destitute people who originally went to Saibei to divide the fields and settle for reclamation became miners in the coal yards of Hengyuan Company and Hengfeng Company in Datong before they were allocated land, while earning meager wages by digging coal to support themselves, and on the other hand, they also provided a large amount of much-needed fuel, namely coal, for the cold cities of Saibei.

In the cold winter of the northern part of the country, those who live in the city are better, with the city wall house hot kang can avoid the cold and keep warm, and can survive the harsh winter, but for those who have just arrived and can only escape the cold in the semi-underground manholes in the wilderness, not everyone can bear it.

When the cold winter passes and the spring season arrives, I don't know how many people will die in the cold wind, ice and snow in the north.

In order to prevent the immigrants from going out of the Saitun Reclamation from starvation and cold to die too much in the cold winter, and to affect the continued immigration to the north in the future, Emperor Chongzhen also asked the Military Aircraft Department to send a message to the Trilateral Governor's Office, the Xuanda Governor's Office, the Zhili Governor's Office, the Liaodong Governor's Mansion, the Lushun Town Shoufu, and the Anton and Tumen Town Shoufu in Dongjiang Town, so that the civil and military officials from all over the country could provide grain to help the people in the Guannei who went to other places to apply for the cantonment.

Therefore, at the end of November and the beginning of December of the third year of Chongzhen, the northern part of the Ming Dynasty, especially the northeast and northwest, which were war-torn places, rarely entered a period of relative peace.

As Li Banghua, the minister of the Qincha Military Aircraft, and Yuan Chonghuan, the governor of the three sides, turned more energy to the relief of the two or three hundred thousand immigrants in the east of the river, Shengwuwei, Zhenshoufu, and Shuofang, the war situation in the northwest was temporarily stabilized after the Fourth Town of the Guards captured Andingcheng (later Dingxi, Gansu).

The officers and troops in the northwest did not take the initiative to attack Lintao and Lanzhou again, and Gao Yingxiang, the battalion of thieves under the command of the generalissimo of Fengtian Changyi, did not dare to take the initiative to trouble the officials and troops in the northwest.

Chuang Wang Gao Yingxiang just took advantage of the freezing of the Yellow River on the front line of Lanzhou, and sent the battalion under his command across the north to reinforce the former general Li Zicheng, and constantly ordered Li Zicheng and other generals to lead the army to loot grain, cattle and sheep from the adjacent Muman area, forcing Ma Jinzhong's subordinates to continue westward despite the opposition of Mi Layin, the pseudo-command of Ganzhou.

At the end of October, Luo Rucai, who had lost Anding City, once again led the rest of his troops to attach to Zhang Xianzhong, the deputy marshal on the right, and fled into Lintao City with his team.

Corresponding to the stable stage of the northwest war, the Lushun Town Guard Mansion under Li Xin's control also turned from offensive to defensive after taking Fuzhou City at the beginning, and entered a dormant period.

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