When Zhu Youzhen reviewed the self-recommendation of Ming officials about running for the first assistant of the cabinet, the Second Corps of the Second Guards Army and Li Dingguo's troops had already entered the territory of the Mongolian Karaqin Department.

This was the first time that the Ming army took the initiative to enter the Mongolian area of activity after many years.

The Karaqin tribe is not a very large tribe, but because of its proximity to the border of the Ming Dynasty, it often intrudes on the Ming Dynasty.

However, this time the Ming Dynasty was mainly aimed at the Horqin Department.

Therefore, as long as the Karaqin Department does not take the initiative to provoke the Ming army, the Ming army will not do anything to it.

After the Second Army of the Guards Army and Li Dingguo's troops entered the territory of Karaqin, they did not send capable scouts to reconnoiter the location of the royal court of the Karaqin Tribe, except for sending scouts to guard against the surrounding enemy situation.

However, when the Ming army marched fifty or sixty miles from the ancient north pass, until it reached a ruined city called Qingsong, it did not encounter the Mongol cavalry of the Karaqin Department.

The Ming army continued to advance, and 100,000 soldiers and horses covered the endless grassland like thick clouds.

With the arrival of spring, the grassland is already full of water and grass, and the wild wolves that have been hungry for a winter have begun to poke out half of their heads, but now that the Ming army has appeared, even the wild wolves have to retreat.

From Gubeikou to Kaipingwei before it was the territory of the Ming Dynasty, even the current Qingsong City was also the castle built here by Xu Da, Lan Yu and other generations in pursuit of the remnants of the Mongolian army, but now it has been abandoned for a hundred years, and the city wall has weathered into a pile of sand.

According to the current military strategy of the Generalissimo's Mansion, this Qingsong City will not be abandoned once it is occupied.

Therefore, after arriving in Qingsong City, Zhang Huangyan, the governor of the Corps, immediately appointed Meng Sen as the magistrate of Qingsong County, and rebuilt the city here.

Before the army set out, the Ming cabinet had issued an order to the provinces, calling on the merchant groups and the common people to reclaim the customs outside the border in Shandong, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Nanzhili and other prefectures with relatively large population densities.

Originally, it was only after Guangxu at the end of the Qing Dynasty that the Han people were allowed to go out of the customs to farm, but it was too late at that time, and many fertile soils had already been in the hands of Tsarist Russia.

And now Daming is more than 200 years ahead of schedule!

According to the Cabinet Decree, as long as they are willing to go out with the army, the merchant groups and the people can distribute the land, and there is no limit to the land area, how much is divided, and the population (mainly non-Han Chinese), minerals, grass and trees, and even cattle and sheep and other livestock on the land are privately owned.

Although there were not many merchant groups and ordinary people who were called out of the customs at the beginning, there were also a few more daring merchant groups and a group of ordinary people with the spirit of gold digging who submitted applications to the local government and went north with the army all the way.

Among them, the main merchant group is still Huangzhuang.

Huangzhuang is now the largest merchant group in the Ming Dynasty, with countless lands under its command, spread throughout the provinces of the Ming Dynasty, and the number of tenant farmers controlled by Huangzhuang is far greater than the number of tenant farmers controlled by other bureaucratic landlords and common landlords.

Today, Huangzhuang has recruited a group of more than 100,000 people from Sichuan, Fujian, Jiangxi, Shandong and other places to go out with the army to reclaim the land, and its scale is far larger than that of other merchant groups.

After Meng Sen became the magistrate of Qingsong County, he took these leaders of the merchant group and the people and his subordinate officers and soldiers from the north of Qingsong County, and rode his horses until he reached the Liuhe River before stopping:

"With this as the radius, the surrounding places are all under the jurisdiction of Qingsong County, pull the stone tablet and stand here!"

As soon as Meng Sen gave the order, his subordinate officials immediately took the officers and soldiers to pull a cart of stone tablets that had been prepared, and after digging a pit on the bank of the river, they drove the half-zhang long stone tablets into it, and after compacting them, the officers and soldiers began to pull the wire to drive the wooden stakes and drive them all the way along the Liuhe River.

Meng Sen looked back and pointed to a vast grassland: "Now you have horses to ride, those who don't have horses to run, and those who have bows and arrows to shoot arrows, and start to choose your own territory according to the number of the first land tax you have paid in advance, and the time is also limited according to the level of time you pay taxes!" ”

After speaking, Yu Yingshi, the representative of the Huangzhuang with the first serial number, walked out on horseback: "Meng County Order, then Yu Mou will start running?" ”

"You run, but Brother Yu, this official can say it in front, now the cabinet stipulates that the land outside the Guanxi is temporarily taxed according to the size of the region, and all grassland land is equal to the mountains in the Guannei, that is to say, if the area you choose is the Gobi Desert, but as long as there are 100 hectares, you have to be taxed according to 100 hectares of mountainous land, so don't blame Meng for not making it clear when you run in the wrong direction."

Because Huangzhuang is the emperor's property, Yu Yingshi can be regarded as a person who does things for the emperor, so Meng Sen had to remind him first.

"Thank you Meng Xianzun for reminding me, how can Yu be careless with the emperor's errand, and he has already memorized the geographical feng shui of this area in his mind before leaving the customs."

After Yu Yingshi finished speaking, he took the officials of the household in Qingsong County and rushed out with a whip.

After two hours, he ran back from another direction: "The area where there was a horseshoe print just now is the territory of my Huangzhuang, and I also ask Meng Xianzun to file a case." ”

Without any hesitation, Meng Sen immediately took out the paperwork, wrote the title deed, stamped the official seal, and handed it to Yu Yingshi.

Immediately afterwards, other merchant groups began to choose their own land according to the amount of tax they paid.

Individual people do not need to pay fees, they will choose their own land after the completion of the business group's circle of land, limited to one hour, how far they can run or how far they can go is their own land.

Soon, the entire grassland in Qingsong County, from Gubeikou to Liuhe, had its own new owner.

The merchant people of the Ming Dynasty began to develop their land here.

The Han people have always been industrious, not a group that relied on plundering to get things for nothing, and the great country is only expanded by a little bit of hard work, not only a butcher's knife can expand.

After the merchant group and the people got their own land in Qingsong County, they began to cultivate themselves, and some merchant groups began to establish their own livestock bases here, preparing to supply the army and the people's demand for horses and even cattle and sheep;

Some business groups have found coal mines and iron ore here, and have started the construction of their own coal mines and iron ore bases. Most of the individual people choose to reclaim farmland here, and they also raise poultry, cattle and sheep in captivity.

Yu Yingshi, as a representative of Huangzhuang, was instructed by the upper echelons of Huangzhuang, that is, Zhu Youzhen, to take the initiative to undertake some public undertakings, and established the first new-style school in Qingsong County, named Qingsong School.

Of course, in order to establish an agricultural and industrial base in the sparsely populated Qingsong County, the population was needed most, and the surrounding herders were forcibly conscripted as tenant farmers of the various lords.

According to the regulations of Qingsong County, everything in the territory belongs to the lord, and the herdsmen and their horses, sheep and even tents in a certain territory are naturally confiscated by the lord.

The caravans would force them to abandon their traditional nomadic way of life, and arrange them to live in fixed shacks in their territories, and compile their households into registers, stipulate their working hours and salaries, and turn them from free herdsmen to workers in the trade groups.

However, the grassland is sparsely populated, and the herdsmen in Qingsong County alone cannot meet the needs of the merchant groups, and some of the merchant groups have begun to organize armed teams to go to the surrounding areas to plunder the herdsmen and return to Qingsong County to forcibly force them to change to herding people.

Qingsong School is a welfare educational institution run by Huangzhuang, and the Han people in Guannai naturally do not want or need to come to this school, which only has a few dilapidated houses, and can only arrest many herdsmen's children to force them to learn Chinese characters and learn Chinese.

Although several herders were killed in some clashes during the captivity, most of the herders did not resist again after being incorporated into the population in Qingsong County.

For them, being a serf for the tribal leader may not be as strong as the low-level common people in Qingsong County now, at least as long as they work honestly, they can get paid, and they can buy grain, cloth and salt with the payment, and they don't have to worry about other tribes plundering or even being persecuted by slave owners.

The key is that their children can still wear cloth robes and long shirts like Han children, and no longer be dirty on the grass milking goats for tribal leaders.

However, soon the upper nobles of the Karaqin tribe realized that something was wrong.

Thank you Lin Dan for the 100 book coin reward

(End of chapter)