Chapter 87 The Taicang Incident

Author: Pei Xuanhuang

Chapter 87 The Taicang Incident

Zhu Yuan received various news from Jinling one after another. The opening of Zhiyongzhai was a little too popular. Although it was a little surprising, it did not completely exceed expectations.

After all, they have been giving away pens to others for a long time, and they are still the spiers of Jinling City.

This is a kind of celebrity marketing.

His Majesty the Emperor is using fountain pens, and this one alone is enough to stimulate many people to rush to buy it. What's more, there is also the two-character trademark "Zhiyong" written by Lao Zhu himself, which is also a style. Therefore, even if there is no idea in it, In order to indirectly please him, the emperor's favorite, Zhi Yongzhai would not have to worry about selling his pens.

Compared to the bustling excitement in Jinling City caused by this, Zhu Yuan didn't have much time to care about it.

As more and more people arrive in Mingzhou, the number of soldiers and civilians gathered around Dinghai County has exceeded 40,000, not counting Zhang Cundao's troops who will arrive soon.

More than 40,000 people will be nothing in future generations. At present, the entire Dinghai County has a registered population of only 34,000.

Not to mention other things, Zhu Yuan was almost overwhelmed with the eating, drinking and eating of more than 40,000 people.

It's really eating and drinking.

When some health-related problems were discovered before, Zhu Yuan had to take care of them himself and designed public toilets for various guard barracks, civilian residences, and even shipyards, docks, etc. Moreover, just building public toilets was not enough, he also had to establish various rules and regulations. Even the subsequent cleaning team around public toilets.

These are no small things.

Tens of thousands of people gathered together, and it was a spring day that was getting warmer. If we didn't pay attention, it would be a disaster if any disease spread.

In fact, the ancients did not have no solutions in this regard, but they were actually full of loopholes. Moreover, the more important problem is 'knowing what is happening but not knowing why'.

If you don’t know why you do this, it’s hard to follow it from the bottom of your heart.

Therefore, Zhu Yuan held a special class to let everyone understand why we should pay attention to hygiene issues.

I also specially selected some images of ‘bacteria’ that Dai Sanchun recently painted to show to everyone. If they are not clean, these things will get into your body, and even if you don’t get sick, they will continue to deplete your vitality and lifespan.

It’s faster than ‘kneel down and seize’!

Are you scared?

Anyway, with the on-the-spot verification using the microscope, many people were frightened, and the matter spread quickly, even to some extent. Anyway, no one questioned Zhu Yuan's various arrangements.

Besides these, the most important thing is of course transporting food.

Ships that have been inspected and maintained and can be put into use have recently been going to warehouses along the coast to load grain, and have begun to return in the past few days.

Zhu Yuan also had to personally deal with all the complicated matters.

Furthermore, something unexpected happened recently.

When Wu Zhen arrived in Mingzhou, the Navy Governor's Office also increased the pressure on the pirates from all sides entrenched on the coastal islands. More pirates either voluntarily or were forced to surrender themselves to the shore. At the same time, there was naturally no shortage of die-hards.

One of the pirates, led by Zhao Dingxi from Huaidong, led an attack on Taicang Guards at the mouth of the Yangtze River on the fifth day of March.

Coincidentally, the data shows that Zhao Dingxi, who is in his thirties this year, happened to be a ship owner in the Yuan Dynasty who was responsible for transporting grain. Before Zhang Shicheng's rise, Zhao Dingxi's father could not bear the Yuan Court's oppression of the ship owners, so he led a group of fellow villagers to the sea and deployed as bandits. .

In the early years, Zhang Shicheng also recruited Zhao Dingxi and his son, but the negotiation failed.

Zhao Dingxi's father was killed by a rebellious boatman during a maritime robbery five years ago. Zhao Dingxi slaughtered more than 200 people in the entire fleet to sacrifice his father's blood, and then took over, nicknamed "Zhen Dongyang", and led

The deployment has been located in the Shengsi Islands area far away from the coast.

With the establishment of the Navy Governor's Office, Zhao Dingxi also felt that the food along the Ming Dynasty was not very good, and he was unwilling to go ashore to surrender, so he united with other pirates who were also unwilling to surrender, and gathered more than 1,600 people in the name of surrender.

, attacked Taicang Wei.

The Taicang Guard was just established last year. It is worse than the Mingzhou Guard. The total number of officers and soldiers is only more than 1,300. The highest officer is Zhu Yu, the deputy commander of the fourth rank.

The war broke out suddenly.

However, although the incident occurred suddenly, Zhao Dingxi also significantly lied about the number of people, resulting in the Taicang Guards only preparing less than 700 officers and soldiers to receive them. However, they were all veterans who had experienced battles and did not collapse due to being caught off guard.

In the end, Zhu Yu, deputy commander of the Taicang Guards, was killed in the battle, Pu Zhongheng, the commanding officer, was seriously injured, and the Ming army suffered more than 300 casualties. Correspondingly, the pirates left more than 500 corpses and more than 100 prisoners.

Didn't take advantage.

Unsatisfactory, Zhao Dingxi and other pirate leaders escaped. Moreover, due to lack of preparation, more than 30 large and small ships were robbed of Taicang Guards and surrounding ports. The pirates also set fire to the houses around Taicang.

There are dozens of warehouses.

When he heard the news that afternoon, the naval commander Hua Gao was furious. He dressed in uniform and beat drums to summon the generals, and sent the navy deputy commander Wu Zhen to go to sea overnight. Six thousand naval troops were divided into three groups to pursue Zhao Dingxi's troops.

The open-air shipyard in the west of Dinghai City.

In the blink of an eye, it is already the eighth day of March.

Zhu Yuan hurried here after lunch today without taking a nap to personally inspect the newly completed thousand-material marine ship repair dock.

Mainly the gantry crane system.

As more and more new logging materials were shipped to Dinghai, Zhu Yuan selected about ten feet of aniseed materials, and combined them with masonry structural supports and the pulley technology he had just taught the craftsmen recently to start construction in the shipyard area at once.

There are six maintenance docks, three for ships with a capacity of 500 tons, and three for ships with a capacity of 1,000 tons.

No matter how big it is, it is not cost-effective for the time being.

Three special repair docks for ships with a capacity of 500 materials have been completed, and today is a further step towards the repair dock for ships with a capacity of 1,000 materials.

The dock in front of us is, first of all, a rectangular ship berth dug near the shore, twenty feet long and eight feet wide.

On both sides are a row of vertical wooden shelves.

Ten feet of wood, three feet buried underground, the ground is seven feet high, which is about 23 meters. To be more precise, it is about as high as seven or eight floors later.

You can imagine how spectacular it is.

What Zhu Yuan is most impressed by is the abundance of giant trees that can easily last a hundred or two hundred years in this era. A few hundred years later, giant trees that are more than ten feet tall will either be fenced up for protection in China, or they can be found in deep mountains and wild forests. The corresponding level of wood can only be imported.

, shockingly expensive.

Therefore, if he had a choice, Zhu Yuan still hoped to build an iron crane that would be stronger and save these materials.

After all, use a little and use less.

Zhu Yuan is a practical environmentalist who does whatever he can.

As for the maintenance dock, the rectangular berth extends 60 feet further inward to the shore and can accommodate three thousand-material sea-going ships. There are also towering wooden frames on both sides. The large ships are lifted from the berth through a pulley system and inward.

Move and place the pre-erected bottom bracket.

Zhu Yuan and a group of officers from the Yinghai Department stayed here all afternoon and watched with his own eyes as the three large ships with thousands of materials were successfully hoisted ashore one by one.

The efficiency is actually very low.

It takes more than half an hour for each ship to be tied up and settled. However, compared with the nearby 500-material gantry crane system, the visual shock of a thousand-material-level ship being hoisted ashore is more shocking. Therefore, all other people except Zhu Yuan at the scene Onlookers watched the whole process with their mouths open, and every time a ship was successfully placed, involuntary cheers erupted from the surrounding area.

All three ships had settled down, and it was already sunset.

Zhu Yuan, Liu Lian, Yao Feng and other subordinates of the Yingying Haisi had a discussion in a temporary wooden house next to the dock, and decided on various detailed modifications. When they left the wooden house, they saw Hua Gao, who was dressed in regular clothes, and several people. The subordinates stood nearby, looking at the three large ships on the shore with amazement.

It's just a ship made of thousands of materials. It doesn't show up when it stays in the water. When it gets ashore, it's nearly 18 feet long, not to mention how wide or tall it is. It's equivalent to about 50 meters later. If you think about five buses connected end to end, it will be like that. What does it look like?

Zhu Yuan walked over, but before he could speak, Hua Gao already praised: "What a wonderful workmanship."

Zhu Yuan stood beside Hua Gao with his hands on his sleeves, looking up. In his heart, he actually liked the heavy industry atmosphere brought by this large machine. He still said: "The most basic pulley transmission system is simply primitive, and it is far from ingenious. .Actually, I would rather build an iron frame and use steel cables for the cables, but unfortunately I can’t do it now. In a few years, I’ll let you see what truly ingenuity is.”

"Then I'll wait," Hua Gao nodded with a smile, took out a few pages of documents from his arms and handed them over: "The Lord's handling of the Taicang incident."

Zhu Yuan took the document and asked, "Has the grain ship from Hangzhou arrived?"

"We're here. I've seen them one by one. They're full of food. You've been busy all day, so you should go back and rest early. We'll worry about this tomorrow."

Zhu Yuan hummed, thinking a little in his mind.

The Hangzhou grain ship has arrived, and when the last grain loading fleet to Wenzhou returns, the first batch of 200,000 shi of grain will be collected.

One step further.

Then he turned to the document in front of him.
Chapter completed!