The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

The next day.

Liu Sheng asked Ma Jinshui to send guards from the Xunfeng Camp who had been trained for a period of time to disguise themselves as traveling merchants and travelers into Wuyang County for investigation.

At the same time, one guard of the Xiaoqi Battalion and two guards of the Shengjie Battalion were patrolling around Tieshanji.

The purpose was to isolate communications between Tieshanji and Wuyang County, and to delay as much as possible the time when the county knew that the rebels controlled Tieshanji.

Liu Sheng took the remaining personal guards and standing troops to seize the homes of the Tieshanji mine owners one by one.

After this copy, Liu Sheng learned that the iron mines of the five largest mine owners, Zhao, Du, Liu, Liu, and Xiao, were on the iron mountain behind.

The iron mines of the remaining seven are not far from Tieshan and belong to the "roots" of Tieshan's ore veins.

Only then did Liu Sheng remember that later generations had discovered that the reserves of Wugang Iron and Steel Mine seemed to be as high as 800 million tons.

Iron Mountain is one of the best mined areas with the richest iron ore, and has been mined for thousands of years.

Further to the south and west, there are more iron ores in various mountains and underground, but they are not as concentrated and easy to mine here.

The owners of these mines were able to own Iron Mountain not only by bribing the mine supervisors and iron yard supervisory officials, but also had certain connections and backgrounds in the county government offices, government offices, and even the chief minister's office.

Liu Sheng doesn't know how much iron each family can produce each year.

But the amount of iron materials confiscated from various mines and warehouses already made Liu Sheng smile.

The rebels had enough hands, and in just three days, they confiscated all the iron materials, money and food from these 12 families.

A total of more than 87,000 kilograms of refined iron was confiscated!

On the other hand, there is not that much pig iron and wrought iron. There are only 47 kilograms of pig iron and only 16 kilograms of wrought iron - both are wrought iron for civilian use that is less than five times refined.

Although the total amount of iron materials confiscated from 12 companies was not much more than that of the government-run iron works.

But don't forget that the government-run iron yard has accumulated almost three months' worth of inventory, which was supposed to be escorted to the capital and other places.

These 12 companies all have their own trading channels. As long as the profit is suitable, the iron produced will be sold as soon as possible, so the inventory is not large compared to the output of each company.

The quantity of pig iron and wrought iron is smaller, also for similar reasons.

The largest amount of pig iron is cast cannon. If it is used by civilians, it will basically be tempered into wrought iron.

Through interrogation of various families, we learned that only a small amount of the wrought iron produced here was supplied to the Ming Dynasty. Most of them were made into iron pots and sold to the northern grasslands or overseas.

The Ming Dynasty iron pot is also a famous item in contemporary maritime trade and is highly profitable.

As for fine iron, it was sold to local government troops, rural soldiers, local braves, and even bandits and rebels.

As long as someone can afford the price, they dare to sell.

Therefore, after the iron fields produce pig iron, they will try their best to refine the mature iron and even refined iron, leaving very little.

The 47 kilograms of pig iron confiscated by the rebels were not produced for more than half a month, and most of them were produced for no more than ten days...

In addition, the rebels also confiscated 12 taels of gold and taels of silver from the homes of these mine owners.

A lot of grain was surrendered, totaling more than 13,000 shi.

One of the reasons for hoarding so much food is that these mine owners are landlords themselves and own at least a thousand acres of land.

The second reason is that they all maintain many iron smelting craftsmen and mining slaves, and there are also many thugs who serve as mine supervisors.

The iron smelting craftsmen in these 12 mines, whether they were hired or prostituted, were forcibly incorporated by the rebels.

At the last count, there were more than 3,000 people!

This number seems quite large, but on average there are 12 mines, which only has two to three hundred people in each mine.

It should be noted that at this time, the large-scale private ironworks in the south had a record of more than 2,000 iron-making craftsmen.

There are hundreds of people in an iron yard, which can only be said to be very ordinary.

Even the government-run iron yard next to it has more than 500 craftsmen.

In addition to the iron smelting craftsmen, there are also mining slaves who consume food in each family.

The rebels rescued more than 12 mine slaves from iron mines!

Among them, the largest number of slaves rescued from the Du family mine was more than 800.

The Zhao family also has many mining slaves, more than 600 of them.

After these mining slaves were rescued, Liu Sheng did not let them go all at once, but first dispersed them into ten camps to take care of them.

The rebels provided three meals a day. Although there was only one dry meal, it was enough for them to eat. Every meal is a little oily and meaty, which is quite nourishing.

They can't get this kind of food in the mines, and they can't even get it outside.

Therefore, even though they were locked up in the camp and monitored by the rebels, few people were in a hurry to leave.

Of course, this also has a lot to do with the rebels' control of force.

Finally, the number of captive overseers from these 12 companies was also quite large, more than 1500 in total!

If you include the nurses and male servants of each family, these 12 mine owners probably have more than "soldiers", which is definitely a considerable force.

Unfortunately, when the rebels came, the supervisors (thugs) from the 12 families still had to stay in the mines to suppress the slaves.

Coupled with the mine owner's own compromising nature and fluke mentality, he was easily manipulated by Liu Sheng and allowed to be rubbed.

Then, within a few days, all their homes were ransacked and captured, showing no power to resist.

···

Xunfengying's investigation of Wuyang County quickly yielded results.

The information provided by Qiu and Chen was basically correct.

But Xunfeng Camp detected more useful information.

For example, there are nearly a thousand soldiers stationed in the northwest corner of the city - the weapons bureau Qiu Sheng mentioned is also there.

There are not many hungry people outside Wuyang County, less than a thousand people.

It’s not that Wuyang County Magistrate provided relief services to all the hungry people. But once the hungry people gathered outside the city exceeded a thousand people, they would be forcibly dispersed by the magistrate's troops.

During this process, many hungry people were treated as bandits by camp soldiers and village soldiers, and their heads were cut off to claim credit.

Over time, the surrounding people knew that they could not gather outside Wuyang County.

In addition, Wuyang County also strictly checks people entering and leaving, especially large groups of business travelers.

Fortunately, the guards at Xunfeng Camp were all from Henan, and the interrogating government officials accepted bribes just like those in other places.

When a person or a few people enter the city, as long as they pay the gate tax and put in more money, the government officials will let them go directly without searching the person or checking the road signs.

After learning about these situations, Liu Sheng knew that it would be impossible to capture Wuyang City Gate by pretending to be refugees in a surprise attack like he had done with Suiping.

As for a surprise attack with two hundred knights, it would be equally risky.

Because there are plains for twenty or thirty miles around Wuyang County, when a large group of cavalry comes, the defenders on the city wall can see it from a distance and respond.

After discussing with the battalion officers, Liu Sheng decided to try out the planned method of attacking Ruyang City - to let the guards of the Shengjie Battalion disperse and infiltrate, and attack the city from within when the rebels attacked the city.

Since it is a disguised infiltration, weapons such as swords, spears, and flintlocks are not allowed to be brought in.

Daggers, self-defense weapons that ordinary people can carry, are portable.

But relying only on daggers, even if the guards of Shengjie Camp can fight three or five of them one by one, it will not be effective. Not to mention, the equipment of Wuyang's camp soldiers and rural soldiers are not bad.