kvmb Chapter 164 Expedition
Chapter 164 Expedition
"Since you have come to Liaodong, you can settle down here with peace of mind. You don't have to worry about any party disputes, nor do you have to worry about the Jinyiwei coming to invite you to have tea. In this land of Liaodong, your talents will be fully displayed.
Whether you are good at building water conservancy projects, supervising education, or mediating disputes among the people, as long as you have a skill, you can use it to benefit the people. The people of the entire southern Liaoning land need people like you who are knowledgeable and talented to come and govern. I welcome your arrival."
He met with these frightened officials, gave a brief impromptu speech to reassure them, and arranged a temporary residence for them.
Afterwards, the officials in charge of Haizhou Wei examined these officials, found out their original positions and areas of expertise, and then assigned them to suitable positions.
In fact, among these officials brought over from Kyoto City, there were not many who were truly capable of doing practical work. Many of them were low-ranking censors who were best at talking nonsense and finding fault.
Of course, there is a shortage of talents everywhere in southern Liaoning. Even if someone is only good at talking big, at least he is a scholar or a cultured person, so there will be no problem for him to be a teacher.
These people have been exiled from the capital to Liaodong. They have no other choice but to obey Lu Cheng's arrangements.
As for those who were unwilling to cooperate, Lu Cheng would not tolerate them and would directly send them to farm. When they came to their senses, he would send them to school and start as teachers.
Lu Cheng learned about the situations of several officials who came here, and naturally he also learned about Zhou Wencheng, the sixth-rank official of the Ministry of Works.
This Mr. Zhou is a capable man, but he is good at garden architecture and is also a good painter.
Of course, this kind of talent does not play a big role in the large-scale construction work in southern Liaoning.
After all, Lu Cheng himself didn’t have time to build any gardens, let alone other generals at all levels.
Therefore, Director Zhou was directly assigned to assist in the construction of defensive fortifications.
Lu Cheng did not give him any preferential treatment just because he had two beautiful daughters.
Although there is a lack of talented people in southern Liaoning, there is no place for idle people.
The Ming Dynasty survived the uprising crisis in the second year of Tianqi and entered the third year of Tianqi in a precarious situation.
In the past year, although the Ming Dynasty had superficially resolved the rebellions in various places, the government's strong oppression also laid the seeds for larger-scale peasant uprisings.
In Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other places, the chieftains of various tribes could not bear the exploitation of the government and began to rebel against the Ming Dynasty.
The troops of various tribes gathered together and launched a long tug-of-war with the Ming army. Both sides suffered losses and the war never stopped.
Because of this, the troops in Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces were all used to suppress local rebellions and were unable to send any food, wages and troops to the court.
At the same time, Wei Zhongxian in the court had already truly monopolized power.
The carpenter emperor Zhu Youxiao was busy with his carpentry work every day and had no time to care about other things. Wei Zhongxian always interrupted Zhu Youxiao when he was doing his carpentry work most seriously and sent the court officials' letters to Zhu Youxiao. Every time this happened, Zhu Youxiao would be annoyed and directly hand everything over to Wei Zhongxian to deal with.
It was also because of this that Wei Zhongxian completely controlled the outer court and was known as "Nine Thousand Years Old".
After he seized power, Wei Zhongxian went even further. On the one hand, he further eliminated dissidents and suppressed the Donglin Party. On the other hand, he colluded with Keshi and controlled the entire harem.
Although Zhu Youxiao was busy doing carpentry work every day, he was not averse to women and there were quite a few concubines who were favored by him in the harem.
Whenever a concubine became pregnant with a dragon seed, Keshi would secretly persecute her, either by poisoning her directly or creating various accidents to cause all the pregnant concubines to miscarry. Even the pregnant queen was forced to have an abortion.
Afterwards, Keshi and Wei Zhongxian selected some beautiful women and sent them to the harem to present to the emperor, completely controlling everything about Emperor Tianqi.
Emperor Tianqi did not care about these things. Keshi and Wei Zhongxian, one was the wet nurse who raised him, and the other was the loyal eunuch who grew up with him. Zhu Youxiao trusted them both completely.
Anyway, as long as there was carpentry work to be done, Zhu Youxiao wouldn't care whether there was chaos in the court.
The spies in the capital also brought back news that Zhu Youxiao gave the furniture he made to a young eunuch and asked the eunuch to take it outside to sell. Zhu Youxiao was very happy to hear that the furniture he made was sold for a lot of money outside.
It has to be said that this carpenter emperor was indeed very talented in carpentry. No matter what kind of furniture it was, as long as he had seen it, he could imitate it after just a few glances.
Some of the wood carvings carved by Zhu Youxiao can be regarded as top-notch works of art.
If he had not been born into a royal family and had become emperor, this carpenter emperor might have really become a top carpenter.
In fact, after Wei Zhongxian came to power, he suppressed the Donglin Party and also took a lot of money from them. Although some of the money went into his own pocket, some was handed over to the court.
This also meant that the Ming Dynasty's treasury, which was big enough to support horses, was no longer as empty as before, and even the long-overdue military pay of the Liaodong soldiers was partially paid.
Apart from anything else, at least when it comes to making money, Wei Zhongxian is still very capable.
Under Wei Zhongxian's oppression, all civil and military officials in the court had no choice but to obey, and many officials even wanted to build a shrine for Wei Zhongxian.
Even the generals from various regions far away in Liaodong sometimes had to give some silver to Wei Zhongxian.
However, these are just small matters and have no impact on Lu Cheng's development.
After two years of technological innovation, the newly established chemical workshop under Lu Cheng can already mass-produce nitric acid and sulfuric acid, and then use nitric acid, sulfuric acid and cotton to make smokeless gunpowder.
After producing more than a thousand muzzle-loading rifles, the firearms workshop began to switch to producing breech-loading rifles and produced a batch of revolvers.
Today, all we need is a metal fixed ammunition to achieve further leaps in the development of rifles.
Moreover, after two years of training, the total number of troops in the entire southern Liaoning region has reached nearly 50,000.
Although most of these 5 soldiers were just city defense soldiers, and their combat capabilities were slightly inferior to those of the field army, if they could all be equipped with rifles, these tens of thousands of soldiers would be enough to do a lot of things.
Not only are the rifles being updated, the production of mortar shells in the firearms workshop is also becoming more and more mature.
After stockpiling enough soldiers and weapons, Lu Cheng finally decided to take the initiative to send troops, sending a part of the infantry carrying guns and heading south with the pirate group, occupying the Gulf Province, attacking Manila in the Philippines, and snatching the fertile land in Southeast Asia from the Western colonists, using it as his own reserve food base and production base.
Lu Cheng had been preparing for this expedition for a long time. The pirate group had also looted enough ships from various places. Some pirates had already arrived at some islands in the south and established outposts in advance.
In the spring of the third year of Tianqi, Lu Cheng sent out 3,000 infantrymen in batches, carrying new muskets and mortars, and a pirate group of 3,000 people, to head south towards Wan Province.
In this battle, Lu Cheng also sent fifty special forces members to accompany Ding Tai to ensure the victory of this expedition.
If he didn't have to stay in Liaodong, Lu Cheng would have wanted to participate in this expedition in person.
The distance from the Northeast to Taiwan Province is too far. It would probably take several months for the news of the expeditionary force's victory to come back.