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Half a year passed quickly, and the Qing court still withdrew from the Central Plains! Since the defeat of Suizhou and the annihilation of 30,000 Qing troops in Suizhou, Wu Sangui took advantage of the situation to march into the Central Plains. Yue Le didn't go far before he was bitten by the Guanning Iron Cavalry of the Wu army, and had to mobilize a large army to fight Wu Sangui, and at the same time, he fought and retreated, and lost his territory step by step. When the Wu army and the Qing army were fighting, Geng Jingzhong personally commanded the Mawei army to conquer the entire territory of Anhui and take Shandong, cutting off Yue Le's road from Shandong to Zhili and return to Beijing.

Yue Le had no choice but to retreat into Shanxi with his army, and fought with the Wu army in Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu. Originally, there were not many garrisons in Shandong, and they were all taken by the Mawei army after a month's strong attack, and after Kangxi moved the capital to Shenyang, the capital, including the Zhili area south of the capital, immediately surrendered to the Mawei army. In this way, the world is still divided into three parts.

The Wu army occupied most of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Henan.

The Qing army occupied Shanxi and Shaanxi, plus the entire Liaodong, of course, at this time, Mongolia and Tibet were still under the dispatch of the Qing court, they were still Qing court.

At the moment, the Mawei Army occupies all the coastal line, from Guangdong in the south, then Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shandong, plus half of Zhili. The area is still the largest in the Qing court, followed by Wu Sangui, and then Geng Jingzhong. However, Liaodong is sparsely populated. After the Qing court entered the customs, the population of Liaodong decreased but did not increase. Shanxi also has a small population. Therefore, in terms of population, the Qing court controlled the area with the smallest population.

Wu Sangui occupies most of the inland area, and although the territory is large, the population is not much more than that of Geng Jingzhong. And Wu Sangui's territory is Hunan, Hubei, and Henan, which have the largest population and are also the richest. At this time, the Qing army and Wu Sangui were still entangled in Shanxi, but they maintained this relative calm with Geng Jingzhong.

Since Wu Yingqi led his soldiers and horses to fight with the Mawei Army in Jiangxi two years ago, there has really not been a single friction between the Wu Army and the Geng Army. Now that the Qing court is out, almost half of the two of them occupy half of the country, only one is in the west. One in the East! At this time, the two families also knew that sooner or later there would be a final decisive battle between the two families, and then it would also belong to the world, whether the surname Wu or the surname Geng!

Geng Jingzhong went to Beijing again, except for some magnificent houses built as the imperial capital city for hundreds of years, there is nothing good, and Geng Jingzhong does not like the climate. This place can be kept, and it can be used as a companion capital and a travel palace in the future, but if he wants to live here all year round, he can't do it. He still likes Jiangnan more, how good Jinling City is. Jinling shape wins, unparalleled in the world!

Since at this time, both sides are in full swing to reorganize their armies. Waiting for the final decisive battle, then Geng Jingzhong will have nothing to spare. After receiving a large number of Qing troops, he ordered the reorganization of these original Qing troops. Wu Sangui did the same, but Wu Sangui accepted it all, but the Mawei Army still had the same old rules, eliminating the old and weak, and not wanting those soldiers, and the rest of them had to be disrupted to be trained again.

More importantly, the Mawei Army has a total of more than 160,000 troops, even if 130,000 of them are newly trained in the previous two years, which is not as good as the veterans, but the combat power will not be weaker than the elite of the Wu Army. But in this way, the strength of the Mawei Army is still far from sufficient, and more soldiers are needed to garrison it when the territory is large, so Geng Jingzhong once again ordered the recruitment of troops on all fronts, in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Anhui, and Shandong, plus half of the territory owned by Zhili, and each place will be increased by 30,000, so that it can quickly have an army of 200,000, plus more than 40,000 Qing troops that have been recruited, the total number of troops will reach more than 450,000, so it is not inferior to Wu Sangui.

It is obvious that Geng Jingzhong is richer than Wu Sangui, and he can afford to raise more conscription, and now it is time to catch up, as long as it is calm for another three months, the initial combat effectiveness of these new armies will be there. Even if you don't have a rifle, you can add a cannon and a grenade to a good spear and sword. More importantly, in the past two or three months, the Mawei Army, as well as Jiangnan, Shandong, and Zhili, have been vigorously smelting iron, and a large number of plate armor has been made by the military workshop. Just to rush the work and quantity, the armor is slightly thinner. But even so, when the combat team is in the team, it can't be cut with a single knife. With these armors, Geng Jingzhong is even more confident.

It is not a small amount of money to create tens of thousands of pairs of plate armor and hundreds of thousands of pairs of plate armor, and some Western countries have made a full set of excellent plate armor, and the whole country cannot make up 10,000 sets. The logistics department is just a budget, and it will cost eight million taels of silver. Not counting other expenses, if it were Wu Sangui, he would have gone bankrupt! Paying attention to the economy, it is also Geng Jingzhong's concern, no, after returning to Jinling, he began to inspect the development of industrial zones around the country, in fact, at this time, the wealthy families in Jiangnan and Jiangbei also have a lot of courage to participate in the big gamble, success is from the dragon heroes, failure is of course to rob the family and wipe out the family. The risk is big, and the benefits are not big, so Geng Jingzhong is actually not short of money now, and he is the richest in the south of the Yangtze River in the country.

Geng Jingzhong only stayed in Jin, Yang, Chang, Zhen, and Su for a few days on this inspection, and then went to Songjiang. He had been to several other places before, but Songjiang had not been there. Songjiang Mansion, that is, the Shanghai of later generations, Shanghai was not developed in the late Qing Dynasty, but it is not a small fishing village. During the Song Dynasty, it developed here, and the inexhaustible Songjiang cloth was not called for nothing.

From the Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty Kangxi, in the military history of the two dynasties, Songjiang Mansion is really a little unknown. It doesn't have any outstanding people, no historical events for which it is particularly famous. The predecessor of Songjiang Mansion was a small Huating County. It was upgraded to a mansion in just four hundred years.

However, when it comes to the economic field, it is absolutely impossible not to mention Matsue Prefecture. There are also so many mansions in Jiangnan, in terms of history, Songjiang Mansion is definitely ranked last, and there is no chance to come out at all. However, when it comes to economic power. Songjiang Mansion is enough to enter the top three. Even if it's Jinling. None of them are as strong as the economic strength of Songjiang Prefecture. Even. If it is divided according to the proportion of population, Matsue Prefecture is definitely the first.

According to historical records, from the late Ming Dynasty, the country's main financial revenue came from the southeastern half of the country's Nanzhili, Zhejiang and other provinces. In this southeast half of the wall, Yangzhou, Suzhou, Songjiang, Hangzhou and other areas are the most abundant. The fiscal and tax paid by any government may exceed that of a province in the interior.

This is due to the development of the capitalist economy at the end of the Ming Dynasty. Maybe. At that time, no one had clearly defined what capitalism was. However, the merchants of the Ming Dynasty have already interpreted what capitalism is with their actions. The handicraft farms in Songjiang Prefecture account for more than 80% of the country's total. The other two percent are in Suzhou.

The textile industry in Songjiang Province is second to none in the entire Ming Dynasty. There are almost streets and alleys, even remote villages. They are producing cotton, silk, silk and satin, yarn and other textiles. In Matsue Prefecture, there are very few people who farm the land. Every family is engaged in the textile industry. Since the late Wanli period, there has been a saying that "the Songjiang cloth that cannot be sold can be sold, and the Weitang yarn that cannot be harvested". It can be seen that the production of cloth yarn here is huge.

In fact, the cotton silk and silk produced in Songjiang Prefecture not only met the needs of the country, but also met the needs of maritime trade. Matsue Prefecture has its own outlet to the sea, and a large number of textiles can be sold directly to merchant ships in the port and then sold overseas. If Suzhou's textiles want to go to sea, they have to go through the canal, but Songjiang Mansion doesn't need it at all.

During the Ming Dynasty, the armies in various places were still the guard system set by Zhu Yuanzhang, and the richest in the world belonged to Jinshanwei, and there was no one. Several of the ports under its jurisdiction are all passages to the sea for Songjiang Fufu. At that time, Songjiang Prefecture actually did not have a real civilian port, and all of them were military docks, which were commonly known as water villages. These water villages do not have a combat function, but the trade function is very strong. Later, when it came to the involvement of the interests of all parties, the imperial court also turned a blind eye and turned a blind eye. The wharves of these guards have become real civilian wharves.

In the Ming Dynasty, they did not participate in the Age of Discovery, and they were still in a trade surplus. Why do you earn a lot of silver taels from overseas every year? A big reason is because the cost of China's silk silk and other products is that of other countries, which cannot be compared at all. Even if other countries master the technology of making silk, they will not be able to defeat the Ming Kingdom in terms of cost. There are no famous people in Songjiang Prefecture, and there are no famous historical events, and there are only merchants who are the most famous here. To be precise, a group of handicraft owners. Their main business is the textile industry. Their wealth is not much inferior to that of Jin Shang, and they even win.

In later generations, Shanghai was the largest metropolis in the country, and although it has not yet reached that height, because of its geographical location, Geng Jingzhong will of course also develop vigorously. For such a place, Geng Jingzhong wanted to come and see it in person on the same day, and implement a special economic management policy in light of local conditions.

In order to bring all the textile industries in the south of the Yangtze River under jurisdiction, a relatively high-level organization is needed to carry out comprehensive management and coordination. During the Qing Dynasty, the famous Suzhou Manufacturing Bureau was set up to govern the textile industry in Suzhou and Songjiang. Geng Jingzhong also set up such an organization in Fujian, but he didn't care much about the Jiangnan area now, but the situation changed too quickly, the Qing court was finished, and the affairs in Jiangnan were also accelerated. Now, Geng Jingzhong has also decided to set up another Songjiang Weaving Bureau, which is still directly under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Government Affairs of his Metropolitan Governor's Office, and will also be directly under the state in the future.

When he first arrived in Songjiang, he didn't visit much, so he first listened attentively to the report made by Tian Yaozu, the governor of Songjiang Prefecture.

Good guy, the statistics scared Geng Jingzhong, he has been to Suzhou, there are not so many handicraft workshops, but the scale is larger, and it has been embroidery-based, but Songjiang is different. So far, there are more than 4,000 handicraft workshops registered in each county under the jurisdiction of Songjiang Prefecture. The largest number of employees is more than 1,000. The smallest number of employees is more than 10 people. If there are less than ten people, then it is not counted. Those cannot be called handicraft farms, they can only be called small family workshops.

Every day, the entire Songjiang Prefecture produces at least 100,000 pieces of cotton cloth, as well as other silk silk and satin. Every day, boats carrying cotton cloth and other fabrics travel north and south along the canal from various wharves in Matsue Prefecture. Every day, cotton is transported from other areas to Songjiang Province, and there are at least several large ships. Fortunately, now the canal is all in the hands of the Mawei Army, and if Shandong is in the hands of the Qing court or Wu Sangui, it will not be possible to go north.

In fact, the current Songjiang Mansion is not the most prosperous time. Due to the impact of the war, there was not enough cotton supply, and the cloth yarn produced and the cloth yarn produced were also affected to a certain extent. Some handicraft farms with relatively poor strength had to go out of business. As the situation stabilizes and the supply and sales situation gradually normalizes, the number of handicraft farms is further increasing.

"Are there many merchant ships going inland along the Yangtze River now?" Geng Jingzhong asked.

"It's not a lot, it has been affected since the beginning of the Great War a few years ago, and Wu Sangui and the Qing court have almost no merchant ships passing over and not coming over for so long during the Great War in Yueyang and Wuhan. Although the Yangtze River has stopped, there are still very few merchant ships. ”

"No, this can't work, otherwise even if there is a preferential policy from the Ministry of Government, more and more small workshops will go out of business. The number of merchant ships is too small. Geng Jingzhong said slowly.

"What do you think?" Tian Yaozu said uncertainly.

"Lord Tian, the policy of governance that I have always advocated has never been to firmly bind the people to their own land, cultivate with peace of mind, and do not do anything else. I think that social development and economic development require people to move and earn money to support their families. Therefore, cloth still needs to be produced in large quantities, but if there is no market, we cannot give up the inland market for the sake of war, what a big market it is, so that we can mobilize a part of the ships of the offshore formation to sail inland along the river. ”

"No, Metropolitan Governor, that's Wu Sangui's territory!"

"Don't worry, Wu Sangui doesn't dare to touch our merchant ships, and at the same time they also need our goods. Besides, our Mawei Navy is vegetarian? Wu Sangui, it's not enough for us to stuff our teeth! ”

"This is also true, we have the Mawei Navy to escort us!"

(To be continued......)