I really don't want to be emperor at the end of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 135
Chapter 134

Although Cheng Shijie used banks to stimulate the economic development of southern Liaoning, the end of the Ming Dynasty was not the posterity of the information explosion. Whether it was for the people of southern Liaoning to build houses, or for businessmen to build factories and roads, it took time.

The refugees are like Populus euphratica in the desert, possessing a strong vitality, and they will also find water sources on their own in order to survive.Just when the special working group of the Immigration Bureau established by the Liaodong Management Committee arrived in Dengzhou, Shandong, they discovered that a large number of refugees had already flowed towards Shandong.

"Go to Liaonan, there is a way to live in Liaonan!"

Last year, Henan was in a drought, especially when the crops were jointing. There was no rain for more than 40 consecutive days. Except for a few fields that could be irrigated, most of the fields suffered severe production losses.

This year, one rain after another, but it never ends.

Forty miles west of Luoyang, there is a valley called Tanlong Valley.There is a group of bandits in Tanlong Valley, but the leader of the bandits is a young woman named Hong Niangzi.

Hong Niangzi is her nickname, and her real surname is Tang, and she is the third, so she is called Tang Sanniang.

Originally, she followed her father and brother to the rivers and lakes to perform arts. When she came to Luoyang to perform arts, Hong Niangzi was spotted by the head of the bandits in Tanlong Valley, nicknamed Yulangjun.

When Tang Sanniang was arrested in Tanlong Valley, under the arrangement of several women, she put on a bright red wedding dress and was forced to marry Yulangjun.

After worshiping, Mr. Yulang drank happily with his minions. When Mr. Yulang remembered that he was about to enter the bridal chamber, the red lady broke free from the restraints, took the red candlestick, and smashed Mr. Yulang's head to pieces.

Tang Sanniang, who was no one else around, was dressed in red and covered in blood, so frightened that everyone shouted: "The master!"

In this way, Tang Sanniang became the matchmaker and the head of Tanlonggu.

The red lady who became the leader of the bandits was originally kind-hearted. When she saw Mengjin crossing the Yellow River and the embankment burst, countless people's homes were destroyed and their wives were separated, she used the food stored in the cottage to help the victims.

This rescue was not a big deal, but it caused a lot of trouble. More and more refugees went to her. In a short period of time, the number of people in Hong Niangzi's cottage skyrocketed to 4000.

Tanlong Valley was originally a small valley with limited food storage, but now Hong Niangzi was eaten by the victims and was about to go bankrupt. "The red lady wanted to find food, but most of her subordinates were old, weak, sick and disabled. She tried to attack a big landlord, but she didn't get any food. Instead, 500 people were killed.

Hong Niangzi heard that Cheng Shijie organized people to farm in southern Liaoning, so she led these refugees all the way east to join Cheng Shijie.

"Have you heard of Marshal Cheng?"

"no!"

"Marshal Cheng is a good man. He led people to reclaim wasteland in southern Liaoning and set up factories. When they arrive in southern Liaoning, as long as they work, they will have food!"

"Master Cheng, Marshal Cheng is an official, we are bandits, officers and soldiers catch bandits, if we go to southern Liaoning, wouldn't we die?"

The red lady explained to everyone: "In southern Liaoning, Marshal Cheng doesn't kill people, it's a big deal..."

"What's the big deal?"

"Big deal, I'll hand me over to him!"

Cheng Shijie's plan was also disrupted because of the red lady's intrusion.

The Red Lady's team is like the greedy snake in the game. Wherever they pass, the people who can't survive will follow their team.

A large number of refugees have heard the news that there are jobs in southern Liaoning and they can live.These refugees dragged their families along, begging all the way, wandering all the way, flocking to southern Liaoning.

When walking east from Luoyang, Hong Niangzi had more than 4000 people under her command. When she arrived in Kaifeng Mansion, there were tens of thousands of people around her.

According to the investigation report of the management committee, the vanguard of the refugees has passed Jinan Prefecture and is heading towards Dengzhou Prefecture. The refugees will arrive in Dengzhou within ten days at most, and after half a month at most, southern Liaoning will usher in a large stock market. of refugees.

A large number of refugees flocking to southern Liaoning will cause great pressure and burden on the people's livelihood in southern Liaoning. This is an inevitable phenomenon.Although the population is strength, the problem is that it requires an upper limit. Once the upper limit is broken, more contradictions will arise.

Looking at Cheng Shijie's attitude, Song Xiance didn't persuade him anymore. What Cheng Shijie decided to do must be done. What he needs to do is to do a good job in the essential work, to ensure the stability and normal operation of southern Liaoning, and to ensure the work of the autumn harvest. went well.

Song Xiance frowned slightly and said: "My lord, I don't understand, our Ning Haijun clearly occupies a solid line of defense, but Jiannu is not good at attacking fortified cities. If we take the initiative to attack, isn't it using our own weaknesses to attack the enemy's strengths? "

"Although you are right, the problem is that our Daming will be timid in the face of Jiannu!"

Cheng Shijie nodded and said: "We take the initiative to defend, but Haizhou does not have a Great Wall. Although more than a dozen castles have been built, can Haizhou be completely protected?"

Song Xiance shook his head: "I'm afraid not!"

"It's absolutely impossible!"

Cheng Shijie smiled wryly and said: "It's hard for us to lay a foundation in Jinzhou. Once Jiannu sends out a small group of elite troops to learn from Deng Ai's old wisdom, go to Yinping, cross Motianling, and sneak attack Chengdu, it will be over!"

There is another problem. If Haizhou is used as the location of the decisive battle, I am afraid that Haizhou and Fuzhou will suffer heavy losses. Cheng Shijie is not willing to passively defend, but is willing to fight outside the country.

Song Xiance continued: "My lord, if we take the initiative to attack, our Ning Haijun rank is too small!"

Cheng Shijie's total strength is nearly 5 horses, but in fact, among these troops, 1 people belong to the garrison capital of the Ning Navy, responsible for guarding the 750 towns and forts along the Haizhou line, as well as Jinzhou, Gaizhou, and Fuzhou. Defensive work, these men and horses can't move.

During the actual war, Cheng Shijie could only mobilize more than 4000 people from the left and right capitals, plus 2 cavalry, and more than [-] artillery, plus reconnaissance troops, the full battle was less than [-] horses.

When attracting more than [-] people from the Dongjiang Army, Cheng Shijie did not expand the army. The most fundamental reason was not that Cheng Shijie had no food or money, but that there were too few Ning Haijun veterans under his command.Ning Haijun's real old background, the soldiers who have been trained for more than three months, only have the original [-] horses of Ning Haijun.

More than [-]% of the soldiers were either from the Denglai New Army, the Dongjiang Army, or the Dengzhou Navy. Under such circumstances, Cheng Shijie did not dare to expand the army.

After more than half a year of uninterrupted training and particularly strict ideological education, it has basically achieved a unified thinking. Now the Ning Navy no longer distinguishes between the Denglai New Army, the Dengzhou Army, the Dengzhou Navy, and the Dongjiang Army. Yes, Cheng Shijie used the officer literacy class trained by Ma Shilin, and now there are more than [-] officers who can read more than [-] characters and can write official documents, summary reports, reconnaissance reports, and military training reports.

Many veterans can become officers. When will we stop expanding our military?
Cheng Shijie looked at Song Xiance and asked, "If this commander wants to expand the army? How much food and grass can the management committee provide?"

Food supply has always been the lifeblood of farming peoples, and most of the frontiers are barren lands, such as Shanxi, Shaanxi and Gansu, and of course Liaodong.

In fact, the land in these places is not bad. Although the rainfall is slightly less, the victory is that the land is large enough. As long as it is managed properly, it can completely support the frontier army.

But the problem is that, affected by the disaster of the feudal towns in the middle and late Tang Dynasty and the Anshi Rebellion, like the Song and Ming and Qing Dynasties, they all adopted a policy of weak sides.

Liaodong obviously has the most fertile land, but it does not immigrate to the border, and does not spend effort on governance, so that the frontier army has always received the supply of food and grass from the imperial court.

Therefore, under deliberate manipulation, the food produced in the border area is not enough for even the local people, let alone provide for the army. Every grain of rice and every piece of cloth needed by the army has to be transported inside the customs.

From the mainland to the frontier, it is more than a thousand miles away. It takes unimaginable manpower and labor to transport grain for thousands of miles, and the consumption halfway is also unimaginable. The treasury allocates [-] shi of grain, and finally [-] can be transported to the border. Thank God for the stone, where did the other [-] stone go?
Of course it was eaten on the way!Coupled with the fact that officials at all levels were greedy for ink, the consumption was even more astonishing.

When Sun Chengzong was serving as the envoy of Liaodong Economic Strategy, he adopted the policy of garrisoning fields and solid borders. He has actually made achievements and reported to the court that garrisoning fields produced "more than [-] shi of grain!"

Although the 50 shi of grain is not much, it is enough to feed 50 to [-] troops. If the [-] shi of grain is transported from the inland, despite the advantage of sea transportation, tens of millions of shi of grain will be lost.

However, Sun Chengzong was kicked out of the stage just after he made his achievements.

Cheng Shijie's biggest advantage is that he emptied the treasury of Dengzhou and took advantage of Kong Youde. In short, his entrepreneurial capital was stronger than that of Sun Chengzong, and he cultivated more than 500 million mu of grain fields in one go.

"Don't worry, my lord. Although we have reclaimed more than 500 million mu of land, and the autumn harvest is still two months away, we have never given up on buying grain from within the pass!"

Song Xiance smiled proudly: "At present, the management committee has established six permanent grain depots in Jinzhou, four in Gaizhou, two in Fuzhou, and two in Haizhou. A total of 16 can store 30 shi There are currently more than [-] shi of rice in stock, [-] shi of wheat, [-] shi of flour, and a total of more than [-] shi of miscellaneous grains. Even if there are another [-] immigrants, we can support the autumn harvest!"

"There are more than 30 shi of grain, so the confidence of this handsome man is enough!"

On July [-]th of the fifth year of Chongzhen, Cheng Shijie promulgated the conscription order for the Ning Navy. With the issuance of the conscription order, the entire southern Liaoning area, and even Shandong and Henan areas caused a sensation.

Serving as a soldier in the Ning Navy's army has many benefits.These young and strong people who came to sign up to join the army have already found out clearly that as long as they pass the recruit training period for three months, they can be allocated [-] acres of military land. This is the welfare of Ning Haijun soldiers. Job fields are definitely not fertile fields, and they need to be cultivated by themselves.

Of course, if you are lucky enough to chop off the head of a slave on the battlefield, then congratulations, you can get a reward of [-] acres of land, if you are a white armored soldier, it is even better, you can be promoted and become a reserve officer If you pass the training in the officer training class, you can become a real officer.

As the development of Ning Haijun became more and more formal, it was impossible to go to the sky in one step. It was even said that it would be as difficult as going to the sky from the post commander to the hundred commander level.

Not to mention that it is difficult to be promoted in the Ninghai Navy, it is even difficult to become a soldier.Ning Haijun’s recruitment requirements are very strict. First of all, age is not recruited. Young soldiers must be at least 16 years old. Originally Cheng Shijie wanted to set the age at that age, but the problem is that the 16-year-old young man in the Ming Dynasty, the father no longer knows how much.

To get married is to start a family and start a career, so try to limit the age to 16 to 22 years old. If you have a skill, the age can be relaxed to 25 years old, such as those who can operate artillery, those who can operate firecrackers, those who can archery, and those who can ride horses ...the age can be relaxed to under 35 if literate.

If you are qualified, you cannot become a soldier of the Ning Navy. This requires a height assessment, and the height requirement must exceed 1.6 meters five. Cheng Shijie is very unaccustomed to the measurement units of the Ming Dynasty. Both use "stone" as a unit of measurement.

The units of length are inches, feet, and feet.

Cheng Shijie originally thought about bringing over the measurement units of later generations, but on second thought, the craftsmen and common people of Ming Dynasty had long been accustomed to units such as chi, inch, zhang, and step.

I am also used to weight measurement units such as liters, buckets, and stones. If I have to move the units of later generations, I will be very uncomfortable.

Then think of the small country of Great Britain, which can spread their feet and inches to the whole world, so why can't Ming Dynasty?
Therefore, Cheng Shijie specially ordered a batch of measuring tapes in a hardware tool store in later generations. The scales on the scales directly canceled millimeters, centimeters and meters, and changed them to standard units of zhang, chi, inch, cent, centimeter, and millimeter.

The recruits of the Ning Navy need to be five feet two inches high, which is approximately (160 six centimeters).The second is the weight, no matter how thin you are, you must not be lighter than one hundred catties.

After reaching the age, weight, and test endurance, the examiner needs to wear the Ning Navy standard armor, hold the Ning Navy standard long gun, dogleg knife, lunch box, and carrying equipment, and run a thousand steps fully armed. time to qualify.

The next step is to check the family background. It is best to be a farmer's son, and the frontier army is also fine. Those who are businessmen, officials, local hooligans, and bandits are waiting. .

But hope is very slim.

This time, not only soldiers from the Dongjiang Army came to join the army, but even soldiers from the Guanning Army also ran to join the army.

……

At the same time when Cheng Shijie started conscription in southern Liaoning, a carriage drove into Jinzhou City. The carriage was engraved with the cloud pattern of the word Fan, and dozens of tall men in common clothes with bare hands were behind, their palms were covered with thick Calloused, muscular and fierce-eyed, apparently his bodyguard.

The owner in the carriage was wearing a blue round-neck Confucian shirt. He was about 30 years old. He was fair and clean. There was a smell of books between his eyebrows. It makes people feel good.

This person is Fan Yongdou, the head of the Jiexiu Fan family and a representative of Shanxi merchants.

The Fan family did business in Shuntianfu (Zhangjiakou), and it has been passed down to Fan Yongdou's generation, which is already the seventh generation. It can be described as a wealthy family in Shanxi with deep roots.

Although the Fan family has a lot of wealth, they are still one step away from being a real wealthy family.At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang imposed strict restrictions on merchants. The biggest restriction was that merchants and their children and relatives were strictly prohibited from obtaining fame.In that era when only high school students were educated, there was no one who had a reputation and was always close to work.

In the year when Fan Yongdou was a weak crown, before he took over the Fan's business, by chance, as the big boss, he led a caravan to trade with Jiannu for the first time, and was received by Nurhachi.

And rewarded Fan Yongdou with a bucket of the most precious pearls and two beauties. During that time, Fan Yongdou received extremely high courtesy from Nurhachi.

Nurhachi rewarded Fan Yongdou with beauties and pearls. The reason is that in modern terms, the Ming Dynasty imposed strict trade sanctions on Jiannu and prohibited trade with Jiannu.And Zhangjiakou, to be precise, the Shanxi merchants doing business in Zhangjiakou, became the only channel for Jiannu to obtain supplies.

After building a friendly bridge with Jiannu, the trade volume between Fan Yongdou and Jiannu has increased, especially after the 47th year of Wanli. Although the days of Jiannu were sad, a stone of grain was only four coins in Zhangjiakou, which could be sold to Jiannu. The slave is eight taels of silver, a full twenty times the profit.

In the first year of Tianqi, the price of grain increased tenfold. The greedy Fan Yongdou even sold the grain to more than 80 taels of silver per stone. In just a few years, Fan's business branch established six hundred In the Yu family, there are as many as 4 men and servants serving the Fan family.

And Fan's family property also exceeded 500 million taels of silver, surpassing Cao Sanxi, the richest man in the past.

In December of the fourth year of Chongzhen, severe snowstorms broke out in Liaodong, especially in February of the fifth year of Chongzhen, which was cold in spring, which made Jiannu worse and suffered heavy losses.

Under such circumstances, Jiannu had no choice but to use the money they had looted from the customs to buy valuable materials such as grain, salt, silk, and tea from their only good friend Shanxi merchants, as well as prohibited materials such as steel and gunpowder.

But the problem is that from Datong to Zhangjiakou and then to Shenyang, the journey is more than 2000 miles.During the 2000-odd miles of transporting grain, the consumption on the road was too great. When the 44 shi of grain arrived in Shenyang, only less than [-] shi was left, and the loss on the road was as high as [-]%.

Due to the severe drought in the north, the low grain output, and many factors such as the rebellion of bandits, Fan Yongdou spent one or two or three taels of silver on the grain he bought. The 44 shi of grain cost nearly 60 taels of silver. But only less than 20 taels of silver.

This is a huge profit. In more than a month, 60 taels of silver turned into more than 80 taels of silver. This is a lot of money in itself. However, human desires and greed are endless. Hearing that Cheng Shijie had a large amount of grain in southern Liaoning, he decided to buy grain from Cheng Shijie.

You must know that the direct transportation from southern Liaoning to Shenyang takes less than [-] miles, saving nearly two-thirds of the distance on the road. More importantly, this commercial road does not need to pass through the territory of the Mongols, nor does it need to pay to the Mongols. protection fee.

Entering Jinzhou City, Fan Yongdou observed this brand-new city through the car window. There were people coming and going, bustling, and there were a lot of goods in the shops on the street.

This increased Fan Yongdou's confidence even more, as long as Cheng Shijie didn't discriminate against businessmen.

Located in the Ninghai Navy General Mansion, opposite the current Liaodong Economic and Strategic Envoy Mansion, there is a bustling teahouse. Fan Yongdou came to the door of a private room on the second floor, and saw two fierce and strong men standing in front of the door.

Entering the private room, Bao Chengxian was drinking tea leisurely: "Mr. Fan, you are late!"

"When doing any business, the first thing is to find out the opponent..."

Bao Chengxian said with disdain on his face: "The surname Cheng won a few battles by chance, and he couldn't tell the difference between east, west, south, north, and south. Do you really regard him as a person?"

"He was a big man!"

Fan Yongdou said: "If you can do his job well, he can provide as much grain as you want. He has reclaimed more than 500 million mu of land. Excluding his own consumption, he can sell at least a million shi of grain."

Bao Chengxian sneered sinisterly: "Do you think we need to spend money on these grains?"

"If Mr. Bao thinks this way, then Fan will leave now!"

Fan Yongdou got up and left without any hesitation.

Bao Chengxian stared at Fan Yongdou's back coldly: "You dare...you are not afraid!"

"It's you who should be worried now. General Cheng has a family-destroying feud with Jiannu. Guess whether he will send you to the capital, or directly Lingchi in southern Liaoning!"

"Since you know that he has a deep blood feud with Da Jin, you still want to bribe him, how stupid are you?"

"That's because you don't have enough money. As long as you have enough money, it's fine if you let Fan kill your own father!"

"Bao wants to see, how do you buy it?"

"Please wait and see!"

Fan Yongdou is full of self-confidence, he understands human nature very well, especially when he bribes other people, his favorite thing is to hit people with money.

If you want to give a gift, then give a big gift.

With Cheng Shijie's current status and status, a few thousand taels of silver would definitely not be noticed, but what about 10 taels of silver?
Will Cheng Shijie be moved?

……

Fan Yongdou directly asked someone to deposit 10 taels of silver in the Liaodong Bank. After the 10 taels of silver were deposited in the bank, he signed a supplementary agreement with the bank staff to authorize other people to operate the money and withdraw it on his behalf. .

Take the bank's special password and seal, and send these things directly to the General Military Mansion.

While eating, Cheng Shijie received a report from Yang Yuniang that a distinguished guest came to Liaodong Bank today, and he deposited 10 taels of silver without blinking.

"Who is the head of the household?"

"Jiexiu Fan's family Fan Yongdou!"

Before Cheng Shijie could speak, he received an invitation from Fan Yongdou.

"I'll go, the fat pig will take the initiative to come to the door!"

Cheng Shijie knew very well who Fan Yongdou was, this was one of the eight imperial merchants in the Qing Dynasty, and Fan Yongdou actually came to the door in person and sent it to him to clean up.

"Come here, tell him to wait in the front hall!"

(End of this chapter)