Because Daming and Huai Jun signed a relevant agreement, Da Ming could not recruit Huai Yong on board.

This agreement was mainly to protect the Huai army, otherwise Li Hongzhang would not have dared to garrison troops in Shanghai at all.

Then you can't sell yourself the whole camp and the whole camp?

But there are loopholes in this agreement.

Although Daming does not recruit Huaiyong on board, the retired Huaiyong can still be recruited.

As long as the letter of guarantee issued by the Huai army general is provided, Daming will recruit "retired Huaiyong" to Daming.

As a result, in addition to the first two sums of silver, the generals of each battalion also had a rather generous amount of "ransom silver".

It's like a girl in the Chu Pavilion of Qinlou, who saved a sum of money to redeem herself.

If Huai Yong wanted to cross the sea to Daming, he also had to pay a sum of money to the chief.

In the face of one pot and three meals, a lot of real money, which general can not be moved?

Even Grandpa Li himself couldn't help but have the idea that I would also do a vote.

But the grandfather is the grandfather in the end, and the knowledge is not comparable to those ignorant Qiu Ba.

If you sell all the soldiers, what else do you want the generals to do? What else do you want him to do?

This is equivalent to burning an axe to keep warm in the cold, which is really stupid!

Is this how the axe is used?

Axes are used to chop wood!

Similarly, Is Huaiyong used to sell?

Huai Yong is used to catch twisters!

Li Hongzhang killed a few excessive fellows and raided their homes, and explained the pros and cons and the long-term truth to the generals of each battalion in a serious manner.

After half a month of rectification, the Huai army really started and was ready to embark on the road of the Northern Expedition.

Of course, nominally, Li Hongzhang certainly didn't say that.

What he said to the township sages and gentry is that the reason why Cao Cao and Prime Minister Cao Cheng were able to stand out from the heroes in the late Han Dynasty and achieve a hegemony was that he pacified Shandong in the third year of the early peace and recruited Qingzhou Yellow Turbans as Qingzhou soldiers.

Today, I, Li, am clearly a Ming Gong, but I am really a ...... Ahem, it's actually Ming Gong......

But you know, I, Li, went north to Shandong in northern Jiangsu, and the Shandong twist bandits were the Qingzhou Yellow Turbans of the year, and I, Li, also want to train them to be a strong army to protect the territory and the people.

Southern Jiangsu is rich, and there are many people who trade with the Ming Dynasty.

Among them were many progressives, but there were also many conservative landlords.

In their eyes, no matter how you look at Da Ming's style, there is a shadow of the former Cantonese bandit Juntian's wife, so they also hope to come up with a strong man to protect themselves.

Not to mention that it can block Daming's gang of embryos, at least it can have some bargaining chips, and it can negotiate with it and negotiate one or two.

And obviously, Li Hongzhang is the strongman they chose.

Therefore, it is best to hear that Li Hongzhang wants to build a new army, although he does not have the intention of donating silver, he still has the intention of preparing some local products to work in the army.

At the end of November, gongs and drums outside Suzhou were noisy, and colorful flags fluttered.

The big landlords of Su Xichang and the merchants of southern Hui came to march for the Huai army with fine wine, pigs and sheep.

Mrs. Yang, the landlord of Jiangyin, Wuxi, held Li Hongzhang's hand and said cordially: "Grandpa Li, you must go and catch more Gangbo people to be soldiers!" Gangbo people are the most fierce in fighting, just as fierce as you Anhui people, we are all relieved! ”

……

In this way, the Huai Army's inscription battalion, Dingzi battalion, Kaizi battalion, odd word battalion, and Songzi battalion, a total of 20,000 people, went north along the Grand Canal.

Incidentally, the Grand Canal of this era has long been abandoned.

Historically, even if the Taiping army obstructed and the Yellow River was diverted and sediment accumulation and other practical factors existed, the dispute over the transportation of water and shipping lasted for many years.

The main reason is the so-called food and clothing of millions of workers.

However, now that millions of trough workers have gone to North America to open up wasteland, the Grand Canal that Yang Guang gambled on digging in his head has long been clogged, and he can only wait silently for the birth of the new wonder of "South-to-North Water Diversion" one day, and it will be dredged again as an aqueduct on the eastern route.

The wonders of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project lie in Zhu Fugui's notebook of "The Victory of the Spectacle Party", and it is still far from being realized.

In fact, the priority of the "South-to-North Water Diversion" is still after the Daming Panama Canal.

It's not that Zhu Fugui values commercial interests more than people's livelihood, but it's really unnecessary.

In the future, as long as the Ming Dynasty can master the Mihe Plain, the Mekong Delta, the Red River Delta, and the Heijiliao Plain, the water pressure on the North China Plain, which is full of saline-alkali land, will be greatly reduced.

Since the Yellow River was used as a natural danger to prevent the Liao people from going south, and the Yellow River was allowed to flood and divert its course, the situation of water shortage and unsuitable agriculture in North China has been difficult to naturally reverse.

There is no way for future generations to survive for food security and the survival of the nation.

Now, as long as the ring is too bright to achieve, food security is a false proposition, and the suffering people of the Central Plains in our country no longer need to be bound to the land and live so hard.

And at the same time that the Huai army was heading north to the yellowing area, another Lao Li was in the distant South Seas, setting foot on the place where his predecessors had stopped.

Penang, British Malaya.

Ben Thanh, also known as Penang, is located at the northern entrance of the Straits of Malacca, across a 3-kilometre-wide strait from the Malay Peninsula.

The name Penang was first written in the book "Zheng He's Navigation Chart" written during the Yongle period.

As early as the 15th century, there was a clear record of trade with Penang in our literature, and there were relevant nautical charts.

However, in 1786, Captain Wright of the British East India Company "discovered" Penang and incorporated it as a British colony.

Today, Penang has become an important rubber market and transshipment center in British Malaya.

Something like rubber seems to be unremarkable, but with the development of the times, especially after the invention of vulcanized rubber technology, the importance of rubber has become more and more prominent.

Especially after the end of the Second War between Ming and France, European countries recognized the important military value of rubber.

As a result, Penang is also becoming more and more important.

Rubber plantations have sprung up all over the British Malaya region, but why is Penang so important?

This is because this is actually a Chinese city.

There is no doubt about the industriousness of the Chinese, and even the Celtic people such as the Irish are willing to bow to the wind, let alone the natives of the South Seas.

There are many Chinese in the plantations in Nanyang, and in Penang, there are many Chinese.

There were even many Chinese who became plantation directors by virtue of their ingenuity.

Gu Ziyun is such a "successful" Chinese, and he even has a blonde wife.

His son was later known as the "Master of Chinese Studies", "13 Doctorates", "Learning from China and the West", and Gu Hongming, a spiritual Qing Dynasty man.

Among his titles, I am afraid that only the spiritual Qing people do not need to be put in quotation marks.

However, at this time, Gu Hongming is not the so-called romantic genius who was born in Nanyang, studied in the West, married in the East, and served in Beiyang, but just a ten-year-old kid playing with mud in a rubber plantation.

Mr. and Mrs. Brown, the owners of the rubber plantation, are preparing to return to the United Kingdom.

Due to the sudden eruption of the Krakatoa volcano, the Browns' plantation was severely damaged.

Coupled with Mrs. Brown's poor health, the couple prepared to return to England.

And Gu Hongming is also preparing to leave with them and go to the empire of the sun that never sets.

However, just a month before their departure, several large ships flying the Sun and Moon flags suddenly stopped in the port of Penang.

"Tangshan", a word that is both familiar and unfamiliar, began to appear frequently in Gu Hongming's ears.