11-65 The Great Development of the Western Region

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With the advanced Thunderbolt, the level of the Red Shirts' thermal weapons has risen to a level, and the continuous improvement of firepower has greatly reduced the chance of using bayonets, and there is no need to fight the enemy face-to-face, which is a great advantage for the Red Shirts who lack experience in white-knuckle combat, and the soldiers will be all right as long as they shoot at the enemy from a distance.

In this battle, the Western Xia army was defeated, the infantry collapsed, and the cavalry had to retreat from Jiayu Pass, so far, the siege of Zhangye was lifted, but Liu Ziguang did not enter Zhangye, and he was still camped outside the city, but he only ordered the generals of the Western Army in the city to come to meet the commander.

Liu Ziguang took the command of the Western Army from Yuan Chonghuan, and now he has become the real general of the Western Army, Liu Zongmin is unhappy and suspicious, Liu Ziguang is afraid of his hatred, and the previous suspicion is not good for him, and he does not go to see the chief general under the pretext of injury and illness, but only appoints his subordinate Hao Shaoqi and other officers to listen to the order.

Liu Ziguang ignored his previous suspicions, ordered people to distribute grain to the Western Army, but the officials saved their hearts and gave the worst grain and grass to Hao Shaoqi, Hao Shaoqi and others led dozens of truckloads of white flour and canned food, and immediately after they went back, they made a fire to cook and make white flour cakes and eat them in cans.

This kind of canned food is not the product of Shanghai Meilin Canning Factory, but some small factories in the south of the Yangtze River, I don't know through what relationship, through the Ministry of War, the competent officials only entered the procurement list, the canned food is made of the meat of the wild dog disease pig that died of plague in the countryside, plus the pepper material, after high temperature cooking, put it into a crockpot, seal it with an iron lid, and it was loaded and transported to the Western Regions, and many crockpots bumped along the way can not be kept sealed, plus the taste is very poor, so the Red Shirts do not like to eat this.

But Hao Shaoqi, they are not so picky, Zhangye besieged the city for several months, they have eaten all kinds of garbage, and now they eat this kind of spoiled canned food, it is just like a delicacy in Qionggong, the gang leader army also opened a few canned meat, poured it into the cauldron, burned a big pot of hot broth, came out and cut noodles with knives, everyone sighed while eating, Liu Ziguang has a lot of suspicions, and Liu Zongmin has a lot of suspicions, and Liu Zongmin has robbed people's wives, and the Western Army once gave the red shirt army small shoes to wear, but now people have come up with such delicious food to help themselves, people's hearts are meat, and people are so virtuous to repay themselves, what else do they have to say, since then, the Western Army Liu Zongmin no longer hates the Red Shirts, but Liu Zongmin himself can't let goGrievances suspect that Liu Ziguang deliberately invited people to buy people's hearts and drive a wedge between him and his subordinates, and hate this person even more from then on.

After the defeat of Danzila, a large number of soldiers surrendered to the Ming army, Liu Ziguang took Wu Sangui in full, they were worried that too many prisoners would cause instability in the rear and the supply of military food was insufficient, it was recommended to follow the example of the predecessors to kill the prisoners, Liu Ziguang did not think so, to build the railway from Chang'an to Jiayuguan, the need for no less than hundreds of thousands of workers, this batch of prisoners just came in handy, as for the logistics problem, there is no need to worry about the logistics at all, they do not know how abundant the financial and material resources of the Ming Dynasty are, just the land of Huguang, a season of grain is enough for the people of the world to eat, plus Siam, Annan, Taiwan and other places to transport cheap rice grain, the granaries of various places are full, there is no place to put a lot of old grain, can only be used to feed livestock。

As for the problem of wearing, Songjiang Prefecture produces millions of cotton cloth a year, even if the whole country makes two sets of new clothes every year, there is a surplus, new textile machinery and jacquard machines have greatly improved the output and quality of cotton cloth, and the Jiangnan water network intensive breeding industry has reached a large number of duck down, which was originally wasted in vain, and now it also replaces cotton wool to become the filling material of military uniforms, and the red shirt army wears the outer layer of tribute satin, the inner layer of poplin (all cotton fabrics), and the light and warm military uniform filled with duck down in the middle, even in the bitter cold land of the Western Regions, can not feel the cold.

At present, the power of the whole country is used in the west, because the emperor is so happy, looking forward to the great victory, after the Taishan Feng Chan, so unreservedly support the war, the court bigwigs have a lot of war bonds in hand, and the victory of the west is closely related to their interests, so everyone also fully supports the war, and no one dares to slack off the report from the west, all of which are all over the day.

The people are also very concerned about the war, because countless factories rely on the war to make money, the Western Expeditionary Army is fed and clothed, the laying of the Western Regions Railway, and the production of various new weapons provide a large number of labor jobs and financial opportunities.

Those who took the opportunity to fish in troubled waters also tried in vain to produce some fake and shoddy products, and passed the customs in exchange for silver taels, but these people were quickly dealt with, as long as the front line was a little dissatisfied, the South Factory would investigate and deal with the supplier, and now the factory door has been affixed with the seal of the South Audit Factory, the boss was arrested, and the officials in charge of auditing the Ministry of War were also investigated and punished.

The two countries fought against each other, the Ming Dynasty has entered the era of imperial power, bureaucracy, capitalism, the army has also entered the age of firearms, and the Galdan regime is the perfect feudal monarchy, the national army has reached the peak of the cold weapon era, if the Ming Dynasty goes back 20 years, it must not be the opponent of the Western Xia, but fortunately, in these 20 years, science and technology have undergone earth-shaking changes, the older generation of Peng Jianguo, they used the steam engine to drive the new generation of industrial civilization Liu Ziguang, they created a revolution in war technology, the cold weapon era is far behind, even if such as KangxiHeroes as eloquent as Galdan can only sigh in the face of overwhelming technological superiority.

Daming Xing mobilized the strength of the country to fight this war, countless materials were transported to Chang'an through 6 waterways, and then transferred to Lanzhou, classified according to priority, and then transported to the Zhangye front line by air or camel caravan, the traffic flow on the Hexi Corridor continued, in the past, those merchants who ran on the Silk Road were also recruited to contract the transportation business of the army, for a time, millions of people led their own mules, horses, camels into the torrent in front of the branch, from Chang'an to Tianshui to Lanzhou, from Lanzhou to Jinchang, Zhangye, Jiuquan, In addition to the transportation team, there are also a large number of carriage and horse shops, restaurants, brothels, and brothels, which serve the transportation personnel, and they have also sprung up like mushrooms after a rain.

The laying of the railway progressed very quickly, Liu Ziguang transferred Liu Zhijun, the former prefect of Ezhou, to serve as the Sipinti Division of the Railway Yamen, and transferred a large number of supervisors and technicians from the Liguo Iron Works and the Qishuyan Machinery Factory, and under their full cooperation and the bloody and sweaty work of 100,000 railway soldiers and 100,000 prisoners, the railway was extended to the west to an astonishing degree.

After the defeat of Danzila, there were still 20,000 or 30,000 cavalry in hand, but the weather was cold, the horses were frozen, there was no food, the soldiers were frozen and hungry every day, and the 50,000 troops who were sent to attack Jiayuguan in vain were trapped in Jiuquan City, struggling to support the cannons of the redshirt army outside, roaring day and night, the people in the city were panicked, the army was unstable, just imagine that they were besieged half a month ago, and now they have become besieged, and this retribution will inevitably come too quickly.

There were airships, cannons, and the redshirts broke through the city easily, but in order to reduce unnecessary casualties, they just besieged but did not attack, and the people in the city themselves froze and starved to death, but Danzira did not have the determination of Wu Sangui, they decided to break through without waiting to kill the horses to satisfy their hunger, he left tens of thousands of infantry, led 10,000 strong cavalry to rush out of the city, and went straight to Qilian Mountain, intending to cross the mountains and mountains and return to his hometown.

The Ming army knew the truth of the poor Kou Mo chasing, and let them enter the Qilian Mountain, which was triumphant, Jiuquan City was broken, and tens of thousands of prisoners were taken, Liu Ziguang still incorporated them into the labor team to build the railway, and now the number of workers is as high as more than 200,000, all of which are used to build the railway, which is a waste, so they built a wide road with eight horses walking side by side along the railway, digging drainage ditches on both sides, the road is smooth and solid, and the gravel is sprinkled with gravel, even if it rains, it can be unimpeded.

The Ming side was in full swing, the western part of the country was opened, but the Western Xia side did not hear any movement at all, the Tianshan Seven Swords moved several times against His Majesty Galdan's assassination, the imperial court was tired of dealing with the assassination, and it was inconvenient to recruit soldiers and grain and grass for winter reasons, so the war was temporarily suspended.

The Ming army conquered Jiayuguan and finally completed the unification from Shanhaiguan to Jiayuguan, since then the land in the Great Wall is all Han Chinese, Liu Ziguang is not in a hurry to fight out of the customs for a while, he wants to consolidate the occupied area and plan the next step.

Out of Jiayuguan, there is the vast and boundless desert and Gobi, as well as basins, mountains, plains and river valleys, surrounded by the Altai Mountains, the Karakoram Mountains, the Kunlun Mountains, the Altun Mountains, across the Tianshan Mountains, the Tarim River, the Erchisi River, and the Ili River, nourishing this land for thousands of miles.

This land is called Xinjiang in Liu Ziguang's mind, but now there is no such name, but it is generally called the Western Regions, and the Central Plains regime once set up the Western Regions Protectorate during the Western Han Dynasty. The Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Tang Dynasty all had effective rule over the Western Regions, that is, the Ming Dynasty also set up Hamiwei, so this place should be counted as the sacred territory of the Ming Dynasty since ancient times, and conquering it was only to regain the lost territory.

To completely conquer the Western Regions, colonization must be carried out, but the Han people do not like to migrate due to their national nature, in order to change this habit, Liu Ziguang personally wrote a song, asked Dong Xiaowan to help compose the song, and ordered people to sing it all over the Central Plains to attract Han immigrants, the lyrics are like this:

We're in a good place in the Western Regions

Good pastures in the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains

Gobi beach turned into fertile land

Snow melts and irrigates farms

Come, come on,

Our beautiful countryside

Our lovely hometown

Our beautiful countryside

Our lovely hometown

The ears of wheat are golden and the rice is fragrant

The wind blows the grass and sees the cattle and sheep low

Grape melons are sweet and sweet

Coal, iron, gold and silver are everywhere

Come, come on,