Daming Military Empire

Chapter 263 Building a new city in full swing

After more than half a month of trekking, the Dingliao Army and Wuwei Army finally drove nearly 30 captives to the capital. According to the unified arrangement of the Ministry of Industry, they will camp ten miles west of the city, because there happens to be the center of the future Xicheng District The location is very convenient no matter which direction you go to build a city wall or build a factory.

Qin Gongming and Li Mingfu have seen a lot after years of fighting abroad, but when they arrived west of the capital, they couldn't help being shocked by what they saw. They originally thought that the place to build a new city should be similar to the wilderness. It's just the rough outline drawn by lime on the ground, but the west of the capital is already in full swing at this time, and tens of thousands of migrant workers have already worked there first!
Of course, they were not building the city wall, but planning the layout and moving materials under the command of officials from the Ministry of Industry.

In other words, does it take tens of thousands of people to draw an outline with lime and prepare some supplies?The answer is necessary, because the planning is too detailed, and the amount of supplies is terrifying. Qin Gongming and Li Mingfu were surprised by the piles of supplies everywhere.

What kind of materials are actually piled up like mountains?

First of all, it is food. Two legions plus 30 captives are 50 people. At least 50 shi of food will be consumed in a month. Obviously, the new city cannot be built in a month. You can’t let people work on an empty stomach, right? The Ministry of Grain and Industry alone mobilized 100 million stones, one stone is equivalent to about 120 catties today, and 100 million stones is more than 1 million catties. The volume of the pile is not only as big as a mountain!
Then there are stone and wood. If the Dingliao Army and Wuwei Army are allowed to escort the captives over and then go to the mountains to mine stone and wood, then the new city may not be able to be built in a year, so the Ministry of Industry applied to Zhu Cijiong to let the Beiyang Marine Division open The warships went to Shandong, Liaodong, and even North Korea and Dongying to purchase stone and wood, then transported them to Dongdaying, and then pulled them over by train. It can be said that they bought all the ready-made stone and wood that could be found in the nearby two provinces or even the two countries. , How many piles up, you can imagine.

Finally, there are bonding materials such as lime and fine sand. At this moment, the cement has not been made yet, so we can only make do with the old method. Fortunately, the city wall is already thick, and it is relatively strong by its own gravity. A strong binding material, such as lime and fine sand, is sufficient.

It can be said that the Ministry of Industry has almost done the preparatory work. The Dingliao Army and Wuwei Army only need to escort the prisoners to dig some clay and burn some square bricks. Clay may be rare in other countries, but it is everywhere in Ming Dynasty. There are a few good clay layers, and the Ministry of Industry even prepared brick molds and coal for them to put in those places. They just need to dig them out and burn them hard.

In fact, the tens of thousands of migrant workers recruited by the Ministry of Industry are not specialized porters. Sprinkling lime lines and moving things are just their sideline jobs. Most of them are skilled workers who have participated in the construction of the Jingdong and Beijing-Liaoning railways, and their main job is railway repair.

The west of the city is the transportation hub of the Beijing-East Line and the Beijing-Liaoning Line. All trains have to turn around here. Now that a new urban area is going to be built, it will definitely not work without some renovation.

The Ministry of Industry has made a detailed plan for this. The general structure of the ring road remains unchanged, except that the ring where the train turns around is concentrated on the periphery of the steel factory and cable factory in the north of the city, so as not to affect the lives of residents in the central part of Xicheng District as much as possible. Then it will be transformed into an internal loop line between China Unicom Wanggong Factory and the four new factories. That is to say, the goods produced by these five factories do not need to be moved out of the factory, and can be loaded onto the train directly in the factory.

Of course, this inner ring road also passes through the urban area, but it doesn’t matter, just choose to transfer in the early morning every day. At that time, there are basically no people on the road, and it will not affect the normal life of residents at all.

The people from the Ministry of Industry are waiting for the Dingliao Army and Wuwei Army to escort the prisoners. Now that they are here, they can hand over the supplies. Once they hand over the materials, they can take the migrant workers to rebuild the railway ring. Anyway, the plans for the city walls, roads, and factory areas had already been marked out with lime, and they only needed to repair them according to the lime lines.

The Dingliao army is worthy of being a legion from eastern Liaodong. It is proficient in building the city wall. It does not need Qin Gongming's command. They know how deep it is, how many stones will be laid underneath, how much soil will be piled on top, how many stones and bricks will be used for the outer layer, etc., and so on.

The next day, the Dingliao army and 30 captives spread out on the outskirts of Xicheng District. There were 40 people in total, with a clear division of labor. On each of the three walls, 7 Dingliao troops led more than 5000 captives to dig directly. The remaining 7 people also led more than [-] captives to dig directly, but instead of digging the foundation, they dug clay and fired bricks.

The Wuwei army led by Li Mingfu is not idle either. It doesn’t matter if they don’t know how to build city walls. They need people to move materials, stand guard, make fire and cook food.

With the full cooperation of the Dingliao Army and the Wuwei Army, and under the active command of the generals at all levels of the Dingliao Army, uh, it seems that this should not be said. It should be under the wise leadership of the army commanders Qin Gongming and Li Mingfu. The three city walls emerged from the ground at a maddening speed, why use the word "mao", because the speed is too fast.

Here is a little estimation. According to historical records, the Ming capital is composed of the inner city and the outer city. The inner city is 6.65 kilometers long from east to west and 5.35 kilometers wide from north to south. Kilometers, the inner city is in the north, and the outer city is in the south, in the shape of Lu.Now we want to build a new urban area that is as big as the original capital city, that is to say, it is about 7.95 kilometers wide from east to west and 3.1 kilometers long from north to south. It is about 8 kilometers, and each side is about 8.5 kilometers. 24.5 people are lined up on the 8 kilometers. There are about 10 people per meter on average, and the materials are ready-made, and there are 8 people who are giving them Burning bricks, 12 people are in charge of logistics for them, and they just build bricks, can this speed not be fast?

In less than half a month, the main body of the city wall was basically completed, and the rest is the female wall and the city gate tower, but these can't be as sloppy as the Liaodong side. This is the capital city, and it is the face of Ming Dynasty, so it must be carefully crafted. Even the city gates have to be cast with reliefs in the shape of various animal heads and inlaid on them. Each city gate has to be named by the emperor and written by a famous calligrapher!

I won’t go into details about these, but in short, this winter in Beijing is not very cold, because more than 50 people are building a new city in full swing in the west of the city.

Since then, the people in the capital have added another after-dinner entertainment, which is to go to the west of the city to see people building walls, repairing roads, and building factories. More than 50 people started working at the same time.
(End of this chapter)