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

Anthony's eyes seemed to be on a pilgrimage as he said piously: "Yes, this is the capital of the Ming Dynasty!"

Although Beijing in the seventeenth century was not the most populous and economically developed city in the Ming Dynasty, compared with other cities in the world except Jinzhou, Beijing would pale in comparison.

The capital of the Netherlands is Amsterdam, which is now the largest city in the Netherlands and a famous big city in Europe. Compared with older Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam and Utrecht, Amsterdam has a relatively short history. A city that developed from a small fishing village.

However, in Anthony's opinion, Amsterdam has a rustic smell of rich people. Everyone in Amsterdam wants to have the words "I am rich!" written on their faces. Apart from showing off their wealth, Amsterdam has nothing to do with it. Other features.

Beijing is Antony's ideal capital. Since Constantinople was burned, no city in the world is as majestic and spectacular as Beijing.

Since Emperor Chongzhen's Northern Expedition, it was discovered that there was a lot of turmoil around the city of Beijing, especially around Chaoyang Gate and in the south of the city. The shantytowns in the city walls were almost destroyed by the war. After the establishment of the Dingxin Dynasty, a new reconstruction of the original Sijiu City was carried out. Planning, the originally narrow streets were widened and low-rise houses were demolished.

Although there are still many old buildings and houses in Beijing now, there are no low shacks outside the city. They are almost all houses made of clear-colored reinforced concrete. They are not very luxurious, but they are very solid. At least these houses outside the city could serve as strongholds in the event of war.

In Cheng Shijie's view, this was just taking off his pants and farting. The 108 squares of Chang'an City in the Tang Dynasty were designed as fortresses. Once the enemy attacked Chang'an City, they could defend the city. In fact, Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was It was breached six times, but none of them was defended. Compared with Zhang Xun's defense of Suiyang, Chang'an did not hold on at all.

If a country is beaten to the capital, it will have a huge impact on the morale of the people and it will be difficult to hold on. If that day comes, Beijing will definitely fall easily.

However, looking at the re-planned Beijing city, Cheng Shijie was quite satisfied. Almost like Jinzhou, the entire city uses culverts for drainage. You can see a manhole cover every twenty or thirty steps. The sight of sewage flowing across the street no longer exists. The whole city is very neat and clean.

Specks looked at the clean streets. These roads were even cleaner than the castles of many dukes or marquises in Europe. Compared with the smelly city of Amsterdam, Beijing was an ideal paradise. And Amsterdam is a huge pigsty.

"Compared with the Dutch, the Ming Dynasty's talents are civilized people, while the Dutch are country barbarians!"

Specks watched the people in Beijing throw their garbage in the trash can not far away. Even if a rotten vegetable leaf fell accidentally, he would consciously pick up the rotten vegetable leaf and put it in the trash can.

There are countless mules and horses on the street. Each of these mules and horses has a dung bag hanging on the back of their buttocks, which will not let a drop of excrement fall out. Even children will not drop garbage casually.

Of course, what Specks didn’t know was that the people in Beijing were not so fond of cleanliness and hygiene at first. The first person to deal with the sanitation issues in Beijing was Wang Zhixin, the admiral of the East Factory. Later, these powers were transferred to the urban management.

The Urban Management Council charges sanitation management fees from each household. This fee is not high, only a few dozen dollars per month. However, there are many people in Beijing and many merchants, so the sanitation management fees collected will be large. You can hire some people to specialize There are two to three thousand sanitation workers responsible for cleaning up garbage and cleaning the entire city of Beijing. These two to three thousand people make the entire city of Beijing tidy and clean.

Anthony looked at the shops on the street. Every shop was open, including a breakfast shop, a restaurant, a medical shop, a medicine shop, a gold and silver shop, a pawn shop, a tea shop, a warehouse, and an inn. At a glance, he couldn't even see the end. I don’t know how many stores there are.

In addition to the shops along the street, you can also see alleys extending deeper into the city. The streets are lined with various stalls and filled with people who get up early from all over the country to go shopping, including strong soldiers and scholars with fluttering long gowns. There were shiny merchants and women in red and green. The shouts and the braying of pack horses, mules and donkeys kept coming and going, making it very lively.

“It’s much more lively than Amsterdam!”

"There is no comparison at all!"

Anthony smiled lightly and said: "The street we just came over has hundreds of shops selling all kinds of food. When we come to Daming and taste several kinds of food every day, we probably won't be able to finish them all in ten years!"

The officer responsible for protecting Anthony and his party smiled and said: "If you are just pursuing food, you will never be able to finish all the Ming Dynasty's delicacies in your lifetime!"

"How can this be?"

Specks expressed disbelief.

The officer smiled and said: "Because new foods are invented every day. Look at this delicacy. It is said that it was introduced from South America!"

What the officer was talking about was eel soup. This kind of food was not common in Ming Dynasty. In fact, it was a kind of soup made from eel with lemon and it had a very special taste.

As navigation became more and more developed in the Ming Dynasty, the amount of various seafood foods also increased greatly. Of course, northerners in the Ming Dynasty still preferred mutton. Although the restrictions on eating beef were relaxed, the people were still reluctant to kill cows, let alone eat them. .

Anthony looked at the dazzling array of goods and more food, which made him linger. Anthony hoped that his mission could be successful. From then on, the Dutch East Indies could become a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, and the Dutch East Indies would not have another war with the Ming Dynasty. , everyone makes money together, and everyone enjoys peace together.

As for the interests of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, this is not within the scope of Anthony's consideration. After encountering Maria's betrayal and the groundless accusations from the gentlemen in the country, Anthony came up with such an idea. This kind of idea may be felt in the Ming Dynasty. Somewhat incredible.

But the question is, in the eyes of the Dutch, this is very normal, businessmen? In the end, the consideration is still interests. If the interests are enough, let alone betraying the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, what will happen if you betray the Pope?

Without the strong rise of the Ming Dynasty, Anthony would never have had such pedantic ideas, but in recent years, the Netherlands and Spain have been at war. The people planted some food and the merchants made money, but they all used it to fight the war. Agriculture declined, business withered, and internal fighting continued. The most critical issue was that the Ming Dynasty was an existence they could not defeat.

Cheng Shijie actually doesn't care about Anthony's arrival. Now he is worried about another thing, which is food pricing. Now the Ming Dynasty's food output is getting higher and higher. With the cessation of civil war, even the bandits have been almost eliminated. , it is not an exaggeration to describe it as not picking up lost things on the road and not closing the door at night. But the problem is that the Ming Dynasty's grain output is getting higher and higher. Even if restrictions on wine making are lifted, too much grain will still not be consumed. People are encouraged to breed and raise livestock and poultry to consume too much grain, but the grain will still not be able to be consumed. Finished eating.

Now in the rice-producing areas south of the Yangtze River, the price of rice has dropped to thirty cents per dou, and one stone of grain costs only three cents of silver, which is only one-tenth of what it cost in the seven years of Chongzhen.

In fact, grain prices can be controlled at the national level. For example, the Changpingcang system has been implemented in all dynasties. In Cheng Shijie's words, this is called strategic grain reserve. So far, it is in Beizhili, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, and Gansu in the north. Ning established more than a hundred Changpingcang, large and small.

The year-round grain reserves exceed 30 million dan, but this is only an insignificant part of this year's grain output. If the land in the 26 provinces of the Ming Dynasty is counted, the planting area of ​​the Ming Dynasty now exceeds 1.2 billion acres. Calculating two shi per mu, the annual grain output exceeds 2.4 billion shi.

But in fact, the current grain output of the Ming Dynasty is generally between two shi, five buckets and three shi. If you count the two or three crops of rice in Jiangnan or Luzon, the output is almost between three shi and five buckets.

Now the Ming Dynasty has fallen into a virtuous cycle. Because there is enough food, the food cannot be sold at a high price. The people have no choice but to raise livestock and poultry. Because raising poultry and livestock will produce a lot of excrement, which is used to fertilize the land and increase grain production. higher.

Because there are enough livestock and poultry, people have a lot more meat on their tables. Because eating meat plus sufficient oil and water, people will find that their food intake is slowly decreasing. In the past, when there was a lack of oil and water, an adult person would not eat a meal. Eating three liters of rice is a normal amount of food.

Nowadays, anyone who can eat three small bowls of rice is considered a big-bellied man. Even in the Ming Dynasty army, which has a very strong training volume, ordinary soldiers only consume an average of thirty-nine kilograms of rice per month, which is equivalent to a little more than one kilogram a day on average. It was unimaginable in the past. You must know that when Cheng Shijie first established Ning Haijun, the army's food supply was one stone and two buckets per person, which was equivalent to four liters of food per day.

Nowadays, soldiers' food consumption is only one-third of what it used to be. This is really a happy trouble.

"Your Majesty, I believe that the imperial court should not regulate food prices, but let nature take its course and govern by doing nothing!"

The reason Sun Zhiwan considered was to prevent land annexation. Although through land reform, there were no large landowners with hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the Ming Dynasty, and it was impossible for one family to control tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of acres of land, even because of military merit. The meritorious soldiers who were awarded land only owned a few thousand acres of land.

But the problem is that with the Ming Dynasty’s superiority in weapons and equipment, beheading has become easier. Just like not long ago, a battle near Yangon on the sea was discovered. During the battle, the Toungoo people used poisoning. , causing a company of Annan troops to lose their combat effectiveness.

The only five soldiers who were not poisoned were cooks. These five cooks operated a hand-cranked machine gun and two rocket launchers. They killed more than 1,300 Toungoo troops who came to attack in one go. people.

Five pairs of more than 1,300 people. Even if Li Yuanba is reborn, Xiang Yu is alive, and Lu Bu is alive, it is impossible to do it. But the problem is that this is a real battle. Five cooking soldiers consume 680 More than ten machine gun bullets, plus twenty-four rocket shells, dealt a devastating blow to more than 1,300 Burmese troops, and more than 800 of them were directly killed.

More than 250 people were seriously injured, and more than 200 people were frightened and went crazy.

If according to the previous military merit system, the two cooks responsible for operating the rocket launchers would each kill an average of 243 people. According to the reward scale in Indochina, each person would be rewarded with fifty acres of land, and each person would be rewarded with one Twenty-one hundred and fifty acres.

Sun Zhiyi and the cabinet once suggested that Cheng Shijie revise the standards for military merit rewards, but Cheng Shijie refused. Why should the standards be reduced? Is it because the enemy has poor equipment and weak combat effectiveness that the reward standards should be revised?

How can this be true in the world?

Furthermore, rewarding meritorious officers with land in the Indochina Peninsula is conducive to boosting morale. However, in Sun Zhiyi's view, the Ming Dynasty has eliminated the gentry and landlords. In the future, the Ming Royal Army or Royal Navy officers will become the new landlords. Although Chen Qiaoen, a cook, set the current record for the highest number of beheadings by the Ming Dynasty Royal Army, with 257 personal kills.

In fact, this is far from the top combat power of the Ming Dynasty. If it is the sharpshooter of the Ming Dynasty, there are many people who maintain a personal record of thirty to fifty kills, especially in the navy: the current highest record of the "Haizhou" battleship is zero to fifty-two. This Not fifty-two people, but fifty-two ships, large and small.

Because potential landowners have appeared, in order to prevent large-scale land annexation, Sun Zhiman means that food prices will take their course. As long as farming is no longer as profitable as before, the Ming Dynasty will not find land annexations like the previous dynasty. It is a serious situation where the people are in dire straits.

Cheng Shijie shook his head and said: "The state must intervene. Low grain prices hurt farmers. Farmers face the loess and turn their backs to the sky. They have worked hard for a year and still lose money on the food they grow. Isn't that a big irony in the world?"

Such funny things are relatively common in later generations. In many places, no one wants cabbage, radish, pepper, or even green onion. In the supermarket, you can buy cabbage for two cents a penny, or eight cents a penny. One pound of peppers (the author’s personal experience) shows that farmers are actually losing money by farming.

“But the imperial court doesn’t have that much money to purchase these grains!”

"Our intervention is not just a purchase!"

Cheng Shijie said calmly: "We can guide people to plant cash crops, such as flax. Now our textile industry in Ming Dynasty is becoming more and more developed, and the production of cotton and linen is getting higher and higher. These produced cloths can be exported and dumped to Europe. , thereby increasing farmers’ income!”

Sun Zhiman said: "If that's the case, that's okay!"

“Also, make a lot of wine and export a lot!”

Cheng Shijie said: "Don't Europeans like to drink beer? We can introduce hops and brew beer and wine in large quantities. The state will rebate taxes on alcohol subsidies and lower the price of alcohol."

Just when Cheng Shijie and Sun Zhidao were discussing how to increase farmers' income, the cabinet received a report, and Anthony, the governor of the Dutch East India Company, requested to attach it!

"Holy crap, what the hell is this!" (End of chapter)