I'm sure of the prosperous age of Kangxi and Qianlong!

Chapter 494 Returning to Beijing
  The Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese Army of Northern Zhili, Dingguo Gong Yang Gong, who has been fighting in northern Xinjiang all year round, finally returned to Beijing this year to report on his duties, accompanied by two hundred soldiers.

After many years, he was quite moved to experience the prosperity of Jiangnan again.

After all, even if several provinces in northern Xinjiang have been cultivated for several years, their civil affairs have only been almost restored. If they are to be prosperous, they will definitely be far less prosperous than those in the south of the Yangtze River. Moreover, Northern Xinjiang also needs to support the imperial court in fighting wars, immigrate to Liaodong to reclaim wasteland, guard the border with the Great Wall, build cities, etc.

Yang Gong took an official ship all the way to Nanjing via the Grand Canal, without stopping at any state capital along the way.

Those state officials also pretended not to know about this matter.

Going south along the canal, you can often see many construction sites near the canal. Most of them have been forced to stop due to heavy snow, and some are still being inspected.

These are the river ditches dug and dredged by the river governor Sun Jiagan. The water control in the Huanghuai River is a long-term project, so it has not yet affected the water transportation function of the Grand Canal, but it has been gradually restricted.

Until now, the entire Grand Canal has been basically only allowed to be used by military and official ships, and civilian ships have been completely prohibited from passing through the Grand Canal.

Nanjing, Forbidden City.

Yang Gong saluted respectfully: "Your Majesty, Yang Gong, pays homage to your Majesty!"

"Excuse me, give me a seat."

Zhu Yijiong smiled and said: "Yang Qing has worked really hard in Northern Xinjiang these years!"

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Yang Gong quickly raised his hands and said: "Guarding the border for the country. I am a minister by nature. It is my duty to do so. I dare not say how hard it is."

"Haha." Zhu Yijiong couldn't help but joked: "My General Yang, after so many years in Northern Xinjiang, he has learned how to use flattery."

Yang Gong said: "This is what I say from the bottom of my heart, and I don't mean to flatter you."

Zhu Yijiong just made a joke casually to relieve the cautious atmosphere in the palace and change the topic by the way. Not long after, the monarch and his ministers sat across from each other and started chatting under the heater in the palace.

It can't be regarded as idle talk, because most of what they talked about was the general development of Northern Xinjiang in recent years, as well as the general situation of the previous Monan Grassland War. Many details cannot be seen in simple battle reports, as well as the opinions of the Grand Governor Yang Gong before the battle.

Zhu Yijiong only listened for a moment, and sighed inexplicably: "So, the Monan Grassland is indeed in decline, and the three major tribes can only make up less than [-] cavalry. In the former Ming Dynasty, the Longqing switch, I agreed to pay tribute, just The land of Hetao can pull out [-] cavalry."

Yang Gong said: "Not only that, the policy of the pseudo-Qing Tatars on the grassland has had too many sequelae. Especially the surrendered Chahar tribe, in addition to the Chahar tribe itself, there are also Erut Mongolians in its internal organization. . These Erut Mongols were all forcibly moved to the Chahar garrison by the Tatars. This also resulted in the fact that although Suzhuktu was canonized as the Chahar Khan by our Ming Dynasty, and even took the surname of the Golden Family of the Prairie, he was It has always been difficult to truly control the Chahar Ministry.”

Zhu Yijiong shook his head and laughed: "Haha, this is what the Tatars call a Manchu, Mongolian and Han family. It is really eye-opening."

In fact, this cannot be said to be true. The reason why Chahar was treated so differently by the Manchu Qing Dynasty was because Burni, the grandson of Lindan Khan, took advantage of the San Francisco period to lead the Chahar tribe to rebel.

As long as the Tatars are not stupid, they will definitely have to guard against these Chahar tribe.

However, this saved the Ming Dynasty a lot of time and energy, because these policies of the Tatars caused the various tribes in the Monan grassland to accumulate a lot of Han slaves and Mongolian herdsmen who knew how to farm.

Even in the Horqin Grassland, which is closest to the Tatars, many noble leaders have vast tracts of fertile farmland, and there are also many tenant farmers and herdsmen who work for them. Yang Gong quickly complimented: "What your Majesty said is true. Now our Ming Dynasty has implemented a capital system in the grasslands, and we have given Han names and surnames to the leaders of various tribes. These leaders of the Mongolian tribes are all grateful to our Ming Dynasty! "

This is true. After all, they lost the battle, but they were still able to retain their leadership positions, and were given Han names and surnames by the Han Emperor.

Although in essence, the so-called Dusi and Weisi in the new Ming Dynasty are not much different from the Dutong and Zasak systems of the Pseudo-Qing Dynasty, they are better than the first impression and have the honor of giving names to Han people.

If it had been the last years of the dynasty, he would have been ridiculed by the grassland and even angered the nomads. However, during the period of power of the dynasty, it would have been the great emperor of the Han people's favor to the grassland.

In order to show their loyalty to Zhu Yijiong, these leaders of the grassland tribes heard that Yang Gong, the Han governor, was going to return to Beijing to report on his duties. They hurriedly came to give Yang Gong gifts and asked him to take a few gifts from the grasslands back to Nanjing.

Including the bribes given to Yang Gong by the leaders of the grassland tribes, these gifts were all presented as memorials by Yang Gong in advance, and Zhu Yijiong had already seen them.

As gifts from the grassland tribes, as expected, there were several large sable furs and two cages of rabbits and leopards.

There were supposed to be three cages, but one cage died of illness on the way due to poor care and seasickness. The rest were taken care of meticulously by the accompanying Mongolian herdsmen. They themselves were tired and sick, but they were not nourished to death.

These rabbit cats were pets given to the Han emperors by the leaders of various ministries. They were mainly produced in Monan and Mobei. Moreover, as early as the Tang Dynasty, the royal family had been raising wild species including rabbit cats.

And the sable fur, this thing is even more extraordinary, it is the top fur of this era. In the future, sable fur will no longer be expensive, but will have a price but no market. The imperial court even banned it on many occasions, and ordinary people were not allowed to wear sable fur.

It wasn't until Anda paid tribute and the grassland's relationship with the Ming Dynasty deepened that the price of sable fur dropped, and the ban gradually became useless.

Then... the Tatars entered the customs, and the price of sable fur was once again increased, because the Tatar court did not allow officials above the third rank to wear sable.

The Ming Dynasty lifted this ban, but the price of mink skins remained high, which attracted the natives of Mongolia and Liaodong to hunt them and sell them to Chinese merchants.

Along with sable skins, sea otter skins are also sold, which are also top-quality furs.

The capital of Heilongjiang is bitterly cold and remote. Except for the exile of criminals, the people are unwilling to move there, no matter how much land they are given.

But there is an endless stream of merchants going to Heilongjiang and Liaodong places every year. Especially in Heilongjiang Dusi, there are already many private merchant ships berthed in Pyongyang Prefecture, Lelang Province.

Just waiting for when Binjiang City and Linjiang City will be built to open up the post road from Liaodong to Heilongjiang Dusi, they will send people to the two cities to establish trade acquisition bases, specializing in purchasing those precious and high-grade furs, as well as the Dongzhu that is abundant in Wula City in Liaodong.

The Tatars have strict regulations on the harvesting of East Pearls. Private mining is not allowed, and it is not allowed to be circulated among the people. It is even difficult for the clan to obtain East Pearls.

But the Ming Dynasty lifted this ban because Zhu Yijiong felt that it was unnecessary and they were just some rare pearls.

Issuing an imperial edict like this is not conducive to the development of Liaodong. Instead, it would be a break point and directly allow the free trade of Dongzhu, so as to further attract civilians and merchants to develop Liaodong.

In future generations, this will properly destroy the ecological environment, but it is harmless at this time. On the contrary, Sable, Sea Otter, and Dongzhu are all profitable, and their huge profits are astronomical, which is completely enough to attract the people to excuse themselves and stabilize the world. Frontier rule.

(End of this chapter)