The two clansmen of Deng Mingchao, the prefect of Mingdu, Deng Ming'an and Deng Mingli of the Deng family of Changguo, and Ren Yijiang, the judge of the Military Affairs Department, sat in the carriage next to Chen Dexing today. The three of them were only recruited to Liaoyang Prefecture a day ago, and today they will go with Chen Dexing to Nanfen County, which is under the jurisdiction of Liaoyang Prefecture, and Fushun County, which is under the jurisdiction of Shenyang Prefecture, to inspect.

Sitting in the carriage, the Deng brothers obviously felt the different atmospheres of the Northern Ming Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty.

The martial arts of the Northern Ming Dynasty is extremely strong, and this country is a complete militaristic state, which is fought by Chen Dexing's Shijue army! Drive Mongolia, make eight banners, control Goryeo, and choke the sea, all rely on the army! In order to motivate soldiers to fight, Chen Dexing also promoted the military aristocracy and advocated the spirit of martial arts - in the north, Wang Zhu's "Prodigy Poem" is the only banned book!

In order to advocate martial arts and educate the people, Chen Dexing also encouraged the people to hold weapons, except for bronze cannons and heavenly thunder arrows, other weapons are allowed to be held by the people! Guns and armor included!

Moreover, after the Shijue was granted the manor, Chen Dexing began to encourage the Shijue and the Eight Banners to prepare their own armor and horses. The individual armor, clothing, and horses of the generals are all assigned to individuals! become their private property. At the same time, a monthly installation fee will be issued for the generals to purchase and repair the equipment themselves. In the same way, the weapons, armor and horses captured by the generals on the battlefield also belonged to individuals.

The reason for this arrangement is actually related to the current handicraft production model. After all, the handicraft industry is not a big industry, and the quality of the product depends entirely on the craftsmanship and enthusiasm of the craftsmen. However, in the past, the Military Administration Department was in charge of the Ordnance Bureau and produced a complete set of weapons and equipment, and it was very difficult to provide truly sophisticated equipment -- how could a person who worked for the public be able to strive for excellence? This is also one reason why the quality of Song Jun's weapons is always poor!

Such a weapon production model can be used to meet the weapon needs of low-quality mercenaries like Song Jun. But for the Da Ming Shijue, who has become the first generation of military aristocrats. They need better equipment and can afford it. So. Under Ren Yijiang's administration, the size of the Ordnance Bureau was greatly reduced. Only the departments that produced cannons, cannonballs, H-medicine, thunder arrows, small thunderbolts, three-bow bed crossbows, and arrow clusters were retained. All of them are concentrated in the Ming Mansion, which is convenient for the Military and Political Department to supervise nearby!

As for the military work of producing other weapons and armor, all of them were disbanded, and the dismissed craftsmen were also allocated some riverside land and capital to facilitate the construction of water wheels in the capital and state cities of the three prefectures of Liaodong, so that they could open their own workshops, so that the soldiers of the Sergeant and the Eight Banners could buy weapons and armor that they wanted.

Therefore, the more well-stocked sergeants and Eight Banners, and even the soldiers who have just enlisted in the army and have not yet been knighted, are all enough to buy satisfactory armor. Now return to his hometown to help the peasants (because of the shortage of labor, so the sergeant and the Eight Banners do not serve all year round.) Instead, half of the people take the spring sowing holiday, and half of the people take the autumn harvest vacation to ensure that agricultural production can be carried out reluctantly. In addition, in winter and summer, generals and soldiers can also take turns to go home on vacation to make humans. Most of the generals carried armor, and the wealthier ones also led horses.

Even travelers who didn't carry armor and spears were mostly armed with swords and swords! And it is not a short sword and short sword used for self-defense that is more common in the Great Song Dynasty, but a long sword that is really used in battle. The blade is straight and narrow. The head of the knife is sharp and angular and often more than three feet in length, similar to the large horizontal knife of the Tang Dynasty. Different from the cheap goods ring first big knife installed by the Song army, the big horizontal knife adopts the technology of steel or steel clamping. Therefore, there is no wide blade and back, and the weight is also light. In actual combat, direct stabs are used instead of slashing, which is a real militaristic weapon. But the price is also expensive. Only wealthy military aristocrats and merchants could afford to be armed. And only if you pay for it can you guarantee that every horizontal knife is of high quality.

In addition to the saber with a sword. There were also travelers who carried guns, crossbows, or bows and arrows with them. Whether they were riding on horses or on foot, they stood tall and pressed their swords. One by one, their expressions were upright and magnificent. It makes the people of the Northern Ming Dynasty very different from the gentle and elegant people of the Southern Song Dynasty, they appear strong and simple, and they are full of martial and heroic temperament.

And what surprised Deng Mingan and Deng Mingli even more was that. The peasants who were working in the fields also brought out their weapons and armor and placed them in the fields. It seems to be ready to fight in armor at any time! No, not as if, it's always ready to fight!

Liaoyang Prefecture was already close to Tachar's Urus, and the terrain was flat, which was conducive to cavalry movement. So at any time there is a possibility of an invasion by the Mongol cavalry! Now it's the autumn harvest season again, and theoretically it's a good day for nomads to come to the land of the Han farmers to loot! And the farmers of Beiming naturally have to be ready to fight at any time!

Deng Mingli turned his head, looked at Ren Yijiang with a melancholy expression, and asked in a low voice: "Judge Ren, pedestrians on the road, farmers in the fields, all have armor on their bodies - is it really possible to fight with the Tartars at any time?" ”

"The battle with the Tartars has not stopped, it is just a big fight." Ren Yijiang said in surprise, "Judging from the situation in spring and summer, it is mainly us who invade the grassland and rob people and horses. ”

"It's too ...... to go to the Tartars to grab people and horses Too dangerous, right? ”

Ren Yijiang laughed and said: "Wealth and danger are begging!" Don't you see that the road and the fields are full of horses? ”

As soon as Ren Yijiang said, Deng Mingli noticed that there were many horses on the ground in Liaodong, as if every household had horses. Most of the travelers on the official road use horses to walk, and the four-wheeled carriages are endless, transporting grain and goods, all with horse-drawn carriages. The manpower wheelbarrows and sedan chairs that were common in the Song Kingdom were not available in Liaodong.

"These horses...... All robbed? Deng Mingli asked uneasily.

Ren Yijiang said: "Where did you come from if you didn't rob it?" Not only the horses were robbed, but also the territory of Liaodong, the serfs of the Shijue and the Baqi family, and the slaves in the Nanfen mine who were going to go for a while, most of them were robbed......"

Under Ren Yijiang's explanation, the two brothers Deng Mingli and Deng Ming'an quickly understood what kind of country Beiming was. Unlike the Great Song Dynasty, which cultivated and studied the country, the Northern Ming Dynasty was actually based on the military. There is no essential difference with the Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongol barbarians. The rural areas of the Northern Ming Dynasty did not have a large amount of land like the Southern Song Dynasty. There are only Shijue Farm and Eight Banner Farm. The former is larger, and the latter is smaller.

Whether it is Shijue Farm or Eight Banner Farm, the source is "Fengqi", which is used to reward military merits instead of military pay (partial replacement). The main labor force in these farms was serfs, and there were very few Han Chinese farmers who rented the granges while still freeing some land. Because it was easy for the young and strong Han people in the Beiming Dynasty to get a knighthood from the army -- because it was easy to get a knighthood, the young and strong Han peasants who had no title and no money in the Northern Ming Dynasty were often looked down upon, and it was difficult for them to even marry a wife. Therefore, the atmosphere of joining the army rose rapidly after Chen Dexing seized the Liaodong Peninsula. In less than a year, nearly 20,000 Han Chinese enlisted in the army and obtained military status. As a result, the size of the Han army of the Northern Ming Dynasty exceeded 90,000! At the same time, the number of Eight Banners also reached 30,000. A total of 120,000 soldiers is already an astonishing number for Beiming, which has a population of only 700,000, excluding the newly acquired Zhoushan Islands.

Among the Han people who did not serve in the army, they were mainly merchants and craftsmen living in the cities. Although it is not easy for them to become gentry, they have a lot of income, and now they can buy gentry status, so they are not interested in joining the army.

And in this way, the agricultural production of Beiming became more and more dependent on serfs! There were only two sources of serfs, one was to recruit poor people from Goryeo, but the number was not large, because the nobles of Goryeo's own gate lords had a very strong control over the lives of the peasants, and they would not be allowed to go to the land of the Northern Ming Dynasty to become rich serfs - the life of serfs was not necessarily hungry and unclothed.

In fact, the landlord's old wealth is almost as black-hearted as the serf owner, and because the landlord does not own the tenant's person, the exploitation is often more cruel, even if the tenant starves to death, there is not much loss to the landlord, and another batch is enough. On the contrary, the serfs starved to death, and the serf owners were about to lose their money!

And the second source of serfs is war! Through the guò war, plunder the enemy's population and turn it into serfs! The herdsmen and various Tartars in the territory of the four kings of the Mongolian host were the targets of plunder by the military nobles of the Northern Ming Dynasty.

In the past year, the main cause of dozens of small- and medium-scale battles between Chen Dexing and the Mongol host Four Kings was the frequent entry of the Northern Ming army into the territory of the Four Kings to plunder the population and serve as serfs and slaves (captured Mongols). Due to the avoidance of the main force of the four Mongol kings, the Northern Ming army often won a complete victory, and the serfs and slaves plundered by them reached as many as 50,000 or 60,000!

As the night deepened, the horses and chariots traveled for an unknown amount of time, and the farmland on both sides of the road was gradually replaced by large woods, and the terrain changed from plains to hills, and the horses and chariots traveled on the mountain roads. There were fewer and fewer travelers on the road, and finally there was no trace of them. The night breeze blows, the trees sway gently, and the sound of the clashing of leaves sounds, like the waves of the sea.

"The land of Liaodong is still empty, and it is only 100 miles away from Xiangping (Liaoyang Prefecture), and it is inaccessible." Chen Dexing looked at the surrounding scenery and couldn't help but sigh, "I don't know when Liaodong can be like Jiangnan?" ”

Ren Yijiang raised his face, he didn't know when the beard he had grown was fluttering in the wind, his eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be calculating the process of Liaodong's development in his heart, and said for a long time: "If you want to make Liaodong everywhere in the south of the Yangtze River, I'm afraid it may not be successful in a hundred years, but the two counties of Nanfen and Fushun, within ten years, will be able to become rich, and the household registration should be up to 100,000!" ”

Hearing Ren Yijiang's Haikou, the Deng family brothers couldn't help but shake their heads. A county with a household registration of 100,000 is not a small county in Jiangnan! is the sum of the household registrations of Renhe and Lin'an counties in Lin'an City, which is only 200,000. What kind of place is Nanfen and that Fushun? How can there be 100,000 accounts?

The heads of the two have not yet shaken, but Chen Dexing has already opened his mouth: "Fushun has coal, Nanfen has iron, this second time is really the foundation of my Ming hegemony, and it should be able to prosper!" He paused for a moment, and then said, "Hurry harder tonight, and rest tomorrow when you arrive in Nanfen." (To be continued......)