When the war in Yangzhou intensified, Chongming Island, located at the mouth of the Yangtze River, was in full swing. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Ren Siqi led the infantry to reinforce Yangzhou, and Mao 18 was ordered to come to Chongming with a large ship that was not suitable for entering the canal and more than 20,000 recruits, along with hundreds of craftsmen who had been plundered from Jinling City.

Daishan is narrow and can't accommodate so many people, so Ren Siqi set his sights on the sand island of Chongming.

Chongming Island is the sediment carried by the river for thousands of years to accumulate and form in the estuary, the area gradually changes from small to large, and the scale has been very large at the end of the Ming Dynasty, more than ten miles wide from north to south and two hundred miles long from east to west, and the area is ten times that of Daishan Island. Unlike Daishan Island, which is hilly and flat, Chongming Island is flat, and it stands to reason that it should be densely populated, but in fact, in the last years of Chongzhen, the population on the island was only more than 10,000.

Because there are just as many natural disasters on Chongming Island, droughts, typhoons, and tides are the main disasters. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, Chongming was basically a place for exiled prisoners, or some people who could not survive on land fled to the island to work as sand people, and made a living by boiling salt and clearing wasteland.

However, since it was inhabited, it was the territory of the imperial court, and the Ming court set up a county in Chongming, and appointed officials to govern the sand people on the island. And Shen Tingyang is a native of Chongming, and he is still a big family on Chongming Island, and his prestige on the island is extremely high.

With Shen Tingyang's introduction and the assistance of the Shen family, the Daishan Army was soon able to gain a foothold on the island. He Bin of Chongming Zhixian readily agreed to the garrison of Chongming of the Mao Eighteenth Daishan Army, in fact, he had no way if he didn't agree, the twenty or thirty thousand troops were more than the population of Chongming Island, and it was not at all that he could compete with a small Zhixian County.

After arriving in Chongming, Mao 18 immediately sent someone to Daishan to deliver the letter, and Sha Fu, deputy inspector of the Daishan Inspection Division, immediately came to Chongming with a group of scribes after hearing the letter. Then it is to excavate brick kilns, fire bricks and tiles, build camps, and reclaim fertile land.

Liang Jiu, the director of Gongcao, also came to Chongming, and under his planning, he prepared to build a new city ten miles southeast of Chongming County. Then it is necessary to build a wharf that can allow large ships to come and go, Chongming Island has many dark sands and sandbars, and the pointed bottom sea boats cannot come and go, and the island is mostly flat-bottomed sand boats, but the big sand boats cannot enter and exit Chongming freely.

In addition to building the city and repairing the wharf, Liang Jiu also planned to build a barrage dam, every day when the tide rises and falls, there will be a tide rushing to the island, which has a great impact on the lives of the islanders, and with a barrage embankment, the tide can be kept out of the island. In this way, it is possible to live calmly on the island and build a tuntian.

Chongming Island is almost a desert island, and there are only more than 10,000 original islanders in such a large area, which makes Sha Fuliang Jiu and others feel incredible. If it is developed, it will be enough to reclaim hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land and relocate more than 100,000 people, which is really a foundation given by God. If it was a peaceful year, how could the imperial court allow any force to control such a large island?

As for natural disasters, there is always a solution. The tidal invasion can build a barrage, drought is easier, outside the island is the boiling Yangtze River water, as long as the canal is repaired on the island, you can naturally find a way to bring the river water into the island. And as long as you build a strong house and castle, you are not afraid of typhoons.

To start such a big project, of course, it takes a huge amount of artificial money and food, and it is easy to say that there are not more than 20,000 newly recruited sailors on the island now, these were originally boatmen, and when they were in Zhenjiang, the Daishan army forcibly seized the nearby river boats, and by the way, they also took over the boatmen on the boat. However, after following the Daishan army, three good meals a day and a much higher salary than being a boatman immediately conquered these original boatmen and gave them a sense of identity with their new identity, and now many people may not be able to get rid of it.

The 20,000 new troops, in addition to taking turns to practice under the leadership of Mao 18 and learn and train the ability of water warfare, spent the rest of their time participating in the construction of the island in full swing.

Three meals a day, fish and meat are often included in the meal, and there is more than one or two taels of silver at the end of the month, such a day is really good.

There is no shortage of manpower, and Daishan is still rich now, and last year he robbed the goods of dozens of sea ships by robbing Zhejiang maritime merchants, and made three million taels of silver by pulling them to trade with the Japanese country, although he spent a lot on purchasing military supplies to support the army in the past six months, but now Daishan still has more than one million taels of silver. Moreover, Sima Nan's fleet that went to Luzon to trade will soon return, and hundreds of thousands of taels of silver will come in at that time. Therefore, there is no shortage of silver in Daishan.

There is no shortage of silver, but grain is a little tight, and the cultivated land of Daishan Islands is limited, and the grain produced is simply not self-sufficient, and it is necessary to purchase a large amount of grain from other places every year. Now there are more than 20,000 troops, and the food supply is even tighter. There was no way, so Shafu had to send a large number of ships to Songjiang, Jiangsu, Changzhou and other places to purchase grain, which caused the price of grain to rise in various places.

Now there are ships coming and going between Chongming and Songjiang every day, transporting a large amount of materials needed for the construction of Chongming Island, and merchants from all over the country are also happy to do business with the Daishan army, because they can often earn two or three percent higher profits than in the past by transporting goods to Chongming.

At first, the local government of Songjiang Prefecture was very uneasy about the Daishan army stationed in Chongming, but after learning that this was the newly sealed Su Lubo's troops, and Su Lubo had led a large army to Yangzhou to resist the Manchu Qing, they instinctively chose to shut up. The Ming Dynasty was in turmoil, and a national general like Su Lubo was the pillar of the imperial court, while the Daishan army was just tossing on a desert island, and did not go ashore to disturb the people and affect their interests.

Since the news of Ren Siqi's acquisition of Su Lubo reached Ningbo, the gentry in eastern Zhejiang have stopped a lot, and no one is willing to go against the Daishan army.

When Ren Siqi was just a small coastal defense guerrilla, the gentry did their best to eliminate the Daishan forces. But now Ren Siqi has been made an earl, this is a hereditary nobleman! Since the establishment of the Hongguang Imperial Court, there have only been a few titles, but Liu Liangzuo, Gao Jie, and Huang Degong have not been knights.

Now that Ren Siqi has been awarded the title of Su Lubo, it means that in the hearts of the imperial court, he has achieved the same status as Liu Liangzuo and others, and such a heavy general is not something that they can provoke local gentry.

Thinking that the Yang family and the Tu family are all Jiangnan Shi clans that have lasted for hundreds of years, they naturally have their own set of survival wisdom. When they learned that Ren Siqi was not provoked by them, many people immediately changed their positions and changed to the Daishan Army to show goodwill.

So Zhang Pujia's father Zhang Jingxian immediately became a fragrant dumpling again, and many people took the initiative to show favor to him, hoping that Zhang Jingxian could speak well in front of Ren Siqi in order to repair the bad relationship between the two parties.

As a result, the fluttering Zhang Jingxian no longer had the sense of humiliation when his daughter eloped, and took the initiative to go to Daishan several times to see his daughter. and planned to hold a marriage for him and Zhang Pujia as soon as Ren Siqi returned to Daishan.

ps: I found that I am still immature in my thirties, I am always troubled by various things, my emotions fluctuate from time to time, and I still can't cultivate at home! (To be continued.) )