Chapter 191 On the River

In addition to grain and cargo ships, salt ships also occupy a very large proportion on the river network from Jiningzhou to Henan and Nanzhili.

To be precise, it should have begun to become rare after the seventh year of Chongzhen. Of course, Li Meng integrated the private salt market in Shandong and suppressed the original market of salt merchants in the two Huai Rivers. There was even Huai River salt. However, in Yanzhou, at the end of the nineth year of Chongzhen, the transportation of Huai River was somewhat revived.

Due to Liu Zeqing's reasons, some markets in Yanzhou Prefecture and Dongchang Prefecture were opened. By March of the tenth year of Chongzhen, at least the private salt in most areas of Yanzhou Prefecture began to be occupied by Huai salt again.

The salt merchants in Lianghuai were not satisfied with this result, but the current situation was the best they could do. Liu Zeqing, who had originally expressed great hope, and Liu's troops were killed by more than 4,000 people within ten days, which really made people feel chilled and scared.

Huai Yan's fleet is more than 30 ships. The escort leader at the bow was once a military officer from Nanzhili. To be a salt merchant's guard, it would be much more oily than to be a small military officer in the garrison. The task of this guard is not only to guard the house, but to escort the salt goods and even kill people.

The escort leader was a little frustrated. He was far from going to Huguang or Zhejiang. Moreover, the situation is very different from before. When the salt ship was traveling on the canal transport, he didn't have to worry about anything. He just needed to walk swagger. Although there were officials who investigated and smuggled salt along the way, he only had to spend money.

But now this road has become very dangerous. During the first month of the year, several of his subordinates were attacked by "horse bandits" while escorting salt goods in Dongchang Mansion. Let's not talk about salt goods. All the people's heads were chopped off. What's so hard that the heads of these people were put in lime bags and sent to the door of their shopkeeper in Jiningzhou.

Since that incident, my own salt goods have to be equipped with a guard of about a hundred people when they go out. They dare not leave on the boat day and night, and they will be nervous for a long time if they have some movements.

The escort leader once walked this road, not only did he say that there were wine and food on the boat, but he usually asked a woman to accompany him along the way. The comparison between the front and back was really angering.

But no matter how angry he was, he should be careful. The escort leader lay on the side of the boat and took a few handfuls of river water to wash his face. The canal water in March and April was still very cold, and it seemed like a needle was stabbing on his face. The escort leader finally woke up a little. Hearing the loud shouts of the men of the ship in front:

"There are ships, canal transport flat ships, and the southern ships go south."

That is to say, there is a fleet in front of me, which is transporting grain to the south, and it is already loading other goods. At this time, it is heading south along the grain transport. There are many ships on the grain transport, so naturally it will not be just a fleet. However, the ships that the salt merchants escorted salt cargo cannot be careful every time they pass by. There are old oil boys who often run on the river in front of me, and they are responsible for it.

When the escort leader heard that it was a grain ship heading south to return to the salt bag, he breathed a sigh of relief and stuffed the knife he pulled back into the gap in the salt bag.

Although the river channel is wide, the speed is still slow when the two ships are traveling intersected. Each ship has a wind light sign on the bow and stern. The guards on each salt ship come to the place where the two ships are intersected. Although it is determined that the other party is safe, they should still be careful.

There was no way to tell anything wrong. The cargo on the other party's ship was covered with oil cloth. When the grain ship went south, it carried some special goods from the north. In a single transport, the profit was mainly from the goods brought by the cargo going north and south.

Apart from the light of the wind lamp, the darkness on the river surface was so dark that the escort leader gradually relaxed, thinking that he was too nervous, so he found a shelter on the boat to squint for a while to replenish his energy.

But the two ships were walking in an interlaced manner, and the ships passed by him, without any abnormality, but they always heard the sound of blowing air, as if there were such sounds on each ship, which seemed to be there and not be seen in the end, but it made the escort leader always feel uneasy.

It was a coincidence that the other party's fleet was about the same length as his own. The fleets of the two sides were tied up directly at the end and paralleled on the river surface.

Suddenly someone started shouting loudly on the grain ship. The command was "preparation", "shang", "ping", etc., but these sudden loud shouts made the fleet of the salt merchants in Lianghuai suddenly nervous. All the escorts stood on the side of the ship with swords, guns and weapons, staring nervously, and several leaders shouted, scolding each other for why the other party was clamoring for fear.

The escort leader standing on the second ship felt something was wrong, but there was nothing unusual on the ship opposite, except for the hood and wind lamp.

"shooting!"

He finally understood this sentence, but as soon as he realized, he saw that the tarpaulin opposite was already pulled away. Under each tarpaulin was not a cargo, but a shadow of people. He was standing in a half-kneel position, and he couldn't see clearly what he was holding, but he could only see the stars of Mars.

"Boom boom boom boom~~~" There were a series of continuous sounds, and many water birds and small beasts were shocked around. There was still smoke between the two fleets, and the smell of gunpowder was everywhere.

The screams were heard, and many escorts standing by the boat fell into the water and could never get up. The escort leader was very lucky. When the shooting sounded, he lay down towards the deck on the boat, and even heard the sound of lead bullets whizzing past his head.

"Must gun, must gun!!"

The escort leader had been a small officer in the Ming army. He knew something, but what was the use of shouting? Because the other party's loud shouting attracted almost all of his subordinates to the side facing each other, and they were all shot directly by the muskets prepared by the other party.

The two fleets are parallel, and the distance between each other's ships will not exceed thirty steps, and the water surface is very stable, so the power of the musket can be maximized.

Although the initial speed of this kind of black gunpowder-made ammunition is not fast, the impulse is enough to break people's internal organs and bones, and the penetration is a little worse. However, in such a close range just now, many people in the escort team of Lianghuai salt merchants were shot against each other by muskets.

The flesh and blood splattered on the salt bag behind him. More than a dozen escort people escaped the shooting by chance, but they were just lucky just now. The other party's fleet was approaching here and there was no need to post them all. As long as there was a ship hanging on it, the rest of the people could come up.

The bosses and sailors on the ship carrying salt cargo were already scared. Anyone who survived either lay on and did not dare to move, or jumped into the river and swam to the other side without any life.

When the escort leader stood up from the ship, he saw that the other party's head boat was already hanging on the salt boat here. He could see that the other party was running towards the ship here. The escort leader choked a few times by the smoke that had not yet dissipated and couldn't help coughing somewhere.

If you dive and run, it would be a huge responsibility to lose so many salt ships. Even if you destroy Haizhou, you will probably be chopped off by your own master. It would be better to fight like this and earn some money for your family to burn. The sound of fighting in front soon dissipated.

The dozen people did not resist, and only heard screams and plops of falling into the water. The other party had already arrived in front of him. The escort leader was not anxious. He lay down on the side of the boat and took some water, wiped his face, muttered in a low voice:

"I still don't know who to beat me. I'm just a fool to die. It's really awkward..."

But then he raised the big knife in his hand and shouted:

"I have eaten, drank, and been prostituted. I won't live in vain. Damn it!"

The man shouted, held up his knife and rushed up. After running through two ships, several spears opened blood holes on his body and fell directly into the river.

In April of the tenth year of Chongzhen, the salt merchants in Lianghuai were destroyed in Yanzhou Prefecture and Jining Prefecture, and two groups of salt ships traveling on the canal, and the salt was either dispersed directly or dumped into the water. This could be said to have suffered heavy losses to the salt merchants in Lianghuai.

What's worse is that the representatives stationed in Shandong from two salt merchants in Jining Prefecture were rushed in by thieves in the middle of the night, their heads were cut off, and all the gold, silver and treasures were plundered. What's kind is that this representative's family is small and no one touched them, but fortunately it was not considered extermination.

In Caozhou, there was the place where General Liu Zeqing was guarding, so such a vicious case did not happen. However, the salt merchant butler living in Caozhou was lost in the yard in the middle of the night. When he woke up in the morning, he was bleeding all over the ground, and the smelly smell made the whole family frightened.

Near Yanzhou Prefecture, a local gentry who colluded with Liu Zeqingsu was charged with the White Lotus Cult of the Transportation. Before the gentry could defend himself or escape, he was surrounded by a large number of soldiers from Jiaozhou camps, opened the village in a few seconds and destroyed the whole family.

As a result, in May, no grain of salt in the two Huaihe River came to Shandong, and no one in Shandong did not use Shandong salt. A literati recorded these things in his notes and named them "Blood Salt April".

Since Mu Yunyao was responsible for the task of interpreting Dibaotang newspaper, the girl has the power to entrust merchants in Jiaozhouying to search for some information she requested.
Chapter completed!