As the Manchus were completely forced by the Ming Dynasty to abandon all coastal territories, they retreated back to the hinterland of the Liaohe Plain and even further north.

The war of the Ming and Qing dynasties finally came to an end, and it had to usher in a new peace phase that lasted for two or three years - mainly because the Ming Dynasty had previously placed too many resources on the naval technology tree, so in the past few years, a considerable part of the strategic deployment has been played around the advantages of sea routes.

When the Manchu Qing recognized the situation in this regard, they completely stopped playing with the Ming Dynasty in their own shortest board, and also gave up the attempt to import talents and trade profits, and threw away all the coastal areas, so the water advantage accumulated by the Ming Dynasty before could not be exerted through military means.

Of course, this does not mean that the maritime superiority of the Ming Dynasty is completely useless, it can only be said that it is useless militarily. In terms of non-governmental development and industrial and commercial construction, of course, there is still great room for the advantages of maritime transportation to be brought into play.

It's just that all this takes time, and it is necessary to transform the advantages of infrastructure into farming and accumulation, and then into comprehensive national strength.

If the Ming Dynasty had to launch an attack on Shengjing in the Liaohe Plain in the seventh year of Longwu, it would not be impossible.

But the problem is that Zhu Shuren's ambition is even greater, what he wants is not to seize the core city of the Manchurians, but to completely conquer the other party.

If Shengjing is defeated now, the Manchus will completely flee into the white mountains and black waters, and the Ming army does not have the strength to pursue and annihilate the guerrillas. Then it doesn't mean much to take Shengjing, it's nothing more than to stretch Daming's logistical supply route, and it's easier to be dragged down financially.

In this case, it is better to leave this goal that cannot be run, wait for the Ming Dynasty to completely rebuild the north, organize the cavalry strength of follow-up pursuit and guerrillas, and ensure that "the Ming Dynasty can destroy the Manchu Qing Dynasty by relying on cavalry troops alone", and then launch the final blow to the Shengjing regime.

……

Under such a delicate balance, from the beginning of the seventh year of Longwu to the summer of the ninth year of Longwu, another two-and-a-half-year period of recuperation, the Ming and Qing dynasties completely restored a state of peace.

In the past two and a half years, Zhu Shuren has also gone to Beijing in person, as he agreed with the imperial family, to restore the ruling order of the entire six northern provinces. and took his wife, princess Zhu Yuchan, away, leaving only the side concubine Fang Ziling in Nanjing, responsible for taking care of her two sons.

In this chaotic autumn, the emperor can only trust Zhu Shuren to sit in Beijing for a long time and coordinate the entire north, without worrying about the warlords. If anyone else is in charge of this game, it is impossible for the emperor to rest assured.

At the same time, considering Shi Kefa's status in the Nanjing court, it was only lower than Zhu Shuren and higher than Shen Tingyang. So Zhu Shuren also made adjustments in the power arrangement in Nanjing-

He by no means distrusts Shi Kefa, but wants to protect Shi Kefa, so that he can get along with Emperor Longwu and work hard for the rest of his life. Otherwise, whether you are promoted or transferred, it is an easier option.

Zhu Shuren's insurance operation was to transfer his cousin Zhang Huangyan, who had made great achievements in the north and had also been the governor of Beizhili and Henan for a year, back to Nanjing, and then officially took over as the secretary of the military department.

When Zhang Huangyan was the governor in the north, he was the secretary of the military department, but there was still a gap between the title and the official secretary of the military department. Zhang Huangyan must be willing to be able to officially serve as the secretary of the key department and enter the cabinet, but as for the local power, it doesn't matter.

Zhang Huangyan has been a magistrate for many years, from Chongzhen's thirteen years of donation to the office, from the county level to the peak post of governor in 12 years, and now he is in his thirties.

After Zhang Huangyan entered the cabinet, the cabinet was still headed by Shi Kefa, the secretary of the Ministry of Officials, but Shen Tingyang, the secretary of the Ministry of Households, Zhang Huangyan, the secretary of the Ministry of War, followed by Zhu Shuren's brother-in-law, and Fang Yizhi, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, even if Zhu Shuren left Nanjing, three of the four powerful figures in the cabinet belonged to his family, which could be regarded as an iron bucket.

……

After stabilizing all the power structures in the front and rear, you only need to farm with peace of mind, and in the past few years, the construction achievements of the Ming Dynasty have certainly made extraordinary progress.

Zhu Shuren in the north lightly dismisses the meager endowment, encourages industry and commerce, personally grasps the water conservancy construction work in various places, preaches the policy of perpetual tenant rights, educates the people in the north to farm well, and ensures that they can always cultivate the leased land, and protect the land as a fixed asset that can be passed down from generation to generation, even if the land property right is not yours, you should also protect it, because the future Ming Dynasty is already "buying and selling without breaking the lease".

Even if the landlord sells the property rights of the land, it cannot harm the interests of the tenant farmers who have contributed to the construction of the land, the fertilization and the repair of water conservancy.

In just a few years, the water conservancy in the north has recovered very well, and as the most intense years of the Xiaoice Age have completely passed, natural disasters have also decreased, and mild floods and droughts can be carried over by water conservancy auxiliary irrigation.

In Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong and other provinces, the Ming Dynasty was completely recovered at the beginning of the sixth year of Longwu, so by the summer of the ninth year of Longwu, it was already the fourth year of the grain harvest season.

With several years of recuperation, the population of the Ming Dynasty has re-stabilized at the 60 million mark - the war has not completely ended, there is a consumption of military service and conscription every year, and it is unrealistic for the population to grow.

Fortunately, with the cultivated land of the Ming Dynasty today, 60 million people will definitely not be too little, but it can ensure that basically everyone has a field.

If you have to roll it yourself, it won't help the total productivity. Unless the land is opened up to the outside world, or the rapid development of industry and commerce, more labor can be absorbed.

Although the absolute population figure has not increased, after three years of recuperation, production in the north has been completely restored, and the population structure of the north and south is much more balanced and healthy than that of the six years of Longwu.

Combined, the population of the six northern provinces has recovered to 15 million. The southern provinces combined have dropped to 45 million people.

In the past three years, a full 7 million people who were originally born in the north and went to the south to become displaced people due to famine and war finally returned to the north with the reconstruction of the north. The imperial court also gave benefits to the northerners who returned to their hometowns, and reallocated a guaranteed area of the ownerless fields that had been abandoned due to the war and population decline to the returning civilians, so that the people could live and work in peace and contentment.

In the sixth year of Longwu, the northern part of the country achieved self-sufficiency in food rations.

At the beginning of the seventh year of Longwu, the imperial court set up a standing position to purchase surplus reserves for future military rations, and raised as much as two or three million stone of surplus grain in the north that year - this figure is definitely the income from moderate grain purchases, and there is no rush to achieve it, no need to think sensitively.

By the eighth year of Longwu, the surplus grain raised by the northern purchase had further increased to as much as seven or eight million stones, and the savings were enough to launch another wave of military operations with a scale of hundreds of thousands of people that lasted for more than a year.

Similarly, during these three years, although there has been no significant progress in agricultural production in the South, the progress in industry, commerce, and science and technology has been very obvious.

From scientists like Descartes, explorers and discoverers like Tasman, to military engineers like Vauban all worked for the Ming Dynasty in an open academic environment. Yang Sen. In recent years, Tasman has continued to dig people from Europe, which had just ended the Thirty Years' War.

As the secretary of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty and the supreme person in charge of the Academy of Sciences system, Zhu Shuren's brother-in-law and friend Fang Yizhi of the same year also did his best to provide the best and most inclusive research environment and hardware conditions for the following scientific researchers.

The progress of engineers in the field of chemistry is most obvious. Since six or seven years ago, when Zhu Shuren first developed nitrocellulose, that is, cotton wool, the new smokeless gunpowder was originally very expensive to produce, and could only be used by a small number of advanced and elite troops, mainly rifled gunmen. Since then, the production efficiency and cost of fire cotton have not been significantly improved.

Now, with the mutual inspiration of the Chinese and Western team, coupled with strict R&D management, excellent laboratory conditions and incentive system, the production of sulfuric acid by soil method, nitric acid production by soil method and finally fire cotton production has been improved by several times.

Now the vast majority of breech-loading firearms in the Ming Dynasty can be uniformly dispensed with smokeless propellants in the future, which can be regarded as a qualitative upgrade of military industrial strength.

Moreover, the technological upgrading of the chemical industry is actually greater for the promotion outside the military. After nitrate and sulfur can be produced by the soil method at a lower cost, there are many by-products that can be carried out.

In this process, Zhu Shuren himself couldn't help but open a little hanging, helping to put forward some high-level ideas and guide the research of technicians.

For example, he can inspire engineers to imagine that the world is made up of "innumerable elementary particles," and with the addition of Western scientists, it is easy for them to think of the assumptions in ancient Greek philosophy that are close to the "atomic theory", and thus easily understand this idea.

For example, someone who measured the air pressure through an air combustion experiment and was able to prove that about one-fifth of the air in nature is "oxygen", which led to the discovery of the existence of this kind of gas-supporting gas, and the idea of "atoms".

Of course, it will take more than half a century of efforts from the "simple atomic theory" to the "atom/molecule theory" that is closer to the truth of nature in the Western scientific community. This is mainly due to Dalton's insistence on pure atomism and his disbelief in the existence of molecules, so he took a detour, which was finally resolved in Lavoisier's time.

But since Zhu Shuren can directly repay Eucalyptus, he can inadvertently design experiments to encourage engineers to better discover the truth.

For example, he only needs to use a little knowledge of high school in his previous life to make engineers think of designing a simple ratio of air pressure and volume ratio between oxygen and natural gas after combustion, verifying the volume ratio of oxygen before and after the reaction, and the volume ratio of carbon dioxide and water vapor after the reaction, and calculating the atomic number ratio of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in the above types of substances.

If an experiment is not enough, then with a little other auxiliary supporting hydrocarbon, hydrogen and oxygen combustion experiments, it can be combined with the daily research of the gunpowder research units of the Daming Academy of Sciences.

Of course, considering that Zhu Shuren himself is based in Beijing, some research and opening are not suitable for him to come forward in person, and there are no supporting scientific research institutes in Beijing, it is impossible for Zhu Shuren to waste resources in the next few years to reproduce a set of independent scientific research institutions in the north.

After all, the development of science is still in its infancy, and it is necessary to concentrate resources to do great things, work together to inspire each other. If another portal is set up, it is easy to "reinvent the wheel" of scientific research waste, and the communication conditions at the end of the Ming Dynasty are not developed, and it is difficult for scientific researchers to obtain the latest progress in real time after they are dispersed, and it is easy to work blindly.

Therefore, many of Zhu Shuren's prophetic preconceptions can only rely on his side concubine Fang Ziling and his brother-in-law Fang Yizhi to move to Nanjing to find out.

Fortunately, Zhu Shuren is already a great man from heaven, and he doesn't need much fame at all, and he doesn't need to compete with scientists for any reputation, so it doesn't matter whose mouth he borrows.

After a few years, under the impetus of Zhu Shuren, scientists finally discovered the atomic and molecular theories "on their own", and realized the most superficial entry laws of the microscopic world.

After Zhu Shuren led these people into the door from a theoretical height, the follow-up was much easier. With this way of thinking and understanding the world, scientists' curiosity naturally drives them to synthesize more things, taking down a whole bunch of "low-hanging fruits that are easy to pick."

The traditional research department of the Academy of Sciences took the lead in thinking of using chemical methods with traditional Chinese medicine minerals to refine purer poisons and disinfectants, as well as other sterilization and external drugs, which greatly improved the basic medical and public health level of Daming.

With the world of primitive disinfectants, the rate of outbreaks of infectious diseases and plagues can be greatly suppressed.

And the gunpowder production department, with the addition of chemical knowledge in the new era, has also created better blasting drugs. Even if it is far from the level of explosives made by Nobel in later generations, it is more than enough to surpass the level of early explosives in the middle and early 19th century in the West in history.

With better civilian explosives, all kinds of infrastructure projects in the Ming Dynasty, building bridges and roads, the cost is much lower.

Although there is still no mechanized construction equipment, at least it can be used cheaply and on a large scale. The south was originally mountainous, and until the 17th century, the infrastructure of Jiangxi, southern Hunan, Sichuan, and Yunnan-Guizhou was still very backward, and the road conditions were very poor.

With cheap explosives, the imperial court can open up roads into Sichuan with better road conditions along the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, and then raise the road conditions connecting Sichuan to Yunnan and Guizhou to a higher level.

It is of great benefit to the transformation of the land and the cohesion of the Southwest Yi, the strengthening of the trade in tobacco and other tropical hobby crops, and the enhancement of the recognition of the Southwest Yi with the rule of the Ming Dynasty.

After three years of farming development, the control and recognition of the remote provinces in the mountainous areas in the south of the Ming Dynasty has been significantly improved, while the north is rich in food and clothing, and the army is rich in food.

The training and construction of the army did not fall behind, and for the future guerrilla pursuit warfare, the Ming Dynasty devoted more resources to the construction of musketeer cavalry units.

More dragoon snipers were trained to wield rifled guns, and the rest of the elite cavalry was armed with full-barreled breech-loading trolls and revolvers.

The firearms ratio of the main cavalry units of the Ming Dynasty has basically approached 100%. Even if it is a cavalry based on close combat, it can be equipped with a revolver, and the combat power is directly off the charts, even if it encounters five times the number of full-man archers in the field, it can have the power to fight-

No matter how flexible the fire output of the archers is, can it compare to a revolver with six shots in a row? It is nothing more than that the effective range of the revolver is much closer. But as long as the large-scale legion fights, does not give the Manchurians the opportunity to fly kites, and the pistols and cavalry are combined with melee weapons, they are invincible.

After being suppressed by the grassland Hulu for more than a thousand years, the cavalry of the Han people finally returned to the level of "one Han as five Hu" with another qualitative upgrade of weapons.

……

In the past three years that Daming has been crazy about farming and climbing technology, of course, other forces have not been idle.

After the Manchus had to abandon their coastal territories, they could only shift their strategic focus and choose to develop northward.

The Liaohe Plain, which was already well developed, has little value and potential for further development, and the cultivated land that is easy to cultivate has already been reclaimed in the past half century.

Haoge and Shunzhi devoted their main energies to the Songnen Plain on the north side, where they cultivated and farmed.

In particular, they brought hundreds of thousands of Han Chinese from Guannai. These Han people may have a national identity with the Ming Dynasty, and if it is too dangerous to put it around Shengjing, if the Ming army fights these people again, the Manchu Qing will be completely finished. Therefore, these hundreds of thousands of Han people, especially some of the craftsmen, were brought to the Songnen Plain by the Manchu court.

This can also be regarded as "breaking through the Kanto" under the butterfly effect of the new time and space.

However, in order to farm in the hinterland of the northeast, which is further north than the Liaohe Plain, it is clear that the existing technology alone is not enough. Because the seeds and habits of crops are different, the Songnen Plain is colder than the Liaohe Plain.

Fortunately, the potential is forced out by a desperate situation, and when the Manchu Qing Dynasty is facing life and death, it can be regarded as unscrupulous, working together, and willing to try the tricks that can tide over the difficulties.

After a few years, they have really found some ways to find out one after another-

They approached the Rakshasa merchants who had just come to Eastern Siberia and the Heilongjiang River Valley to do business, learned from each other, and finally learned a trick from the Rakshasa merchants, saying that they could grow rye on the drier plains of the northeastern hinterland.

Then, through the exploration and trade in the Sea of Japan, the Manchu people came into contact with Kuye Island, the Fuso people of Hokkaido, and the Anouyin people, and discovered a cold-tolerant rice variety that could be cultivated in both Hokkaido and Kuye Island.

In fact, the Manchu Qing Dynasty in history only brought subarctic rice varieties from Fuso Hokkaido in the middle and late periods, and began to promote rice in Northeast China.

At this point, the Manchurian Northeast Development Plan can be regarded as making up for both legs. Rye can be grown on dry land, and Hokkaido rice can be grown on paddy fields. In time, food production can skyrocket again and feed more people.

But it is a pity that they only had more than three years of exploration, survey, and experimentation. Generally, there is basically no harvest in the first year of land reclamation, and it is very good to be able to recover the cost of seeds and earn two or three times the yield ratio.

In the second and third years of land reclamation, basically only four or five percent, six or seven percent of the harvest of fertile and ripe land can be reached. Basically, it takes five years of land reclamation before the land can completely achieve the effect of fertile and ripe fields.

Of course, considering that the land in the northeast is black soil, and fertility accumulates all year round, even if it is just planted at the beginning, the effect will be much better than that of opening up the land in the Guannai. But at most, it will speed up to "reach the peak output three years after the reclamation".

The truce left by the Ming Dynasty to the Manchus was only three years, so the peace period was almost over when the Manchus matured the first batch of wasteland and settlements along the banks of the main rivers of the Songnen Plain.

The fields they worked so hard to plant were destined to be planted for Daming. Breaking through the eastern part of the country to open up the wasteland is also destined to be opened for the Ming Dynasty. From this point of view, as far as the matter is concerned, Zhu Shuren will have to thank Haoge and Shunzhi for this matter in the future.