Chapter 137: Clouds of chaos rising from all directions (Part 2)
April of the sixth year of Chongzhen (the first year of Yonghe), Nanzhili, Nanjing
——Like Beijing, Nanjing, another capital of the Ming Empire, also has a magnificent palace city in the city. This is a huge building complex five miles long from north to south and four miles wide from east to west. It is surrounded by tall red walls and the bright yellow glazed tiles on the roof shine in the sun.
Within the palace city, Chengtian Gate is the boundary, and to the north of the gate is the Forbidden City. After walking through Duanmen and Meridian Gate, you will see three main halls: "Fengtian", "Jinshen" and "Huagai". There are also "Wenhua Hall" and "Wuying Hall" on the east and west sides, as well as "Wen Tower" and "Wu Tower" respectively. This is the place where the emperor received homage from officials and held grand ceremonies. The north of the "Three Main Halls", all the way to the Houzai Gate, belongs to the scope of the "Houting". There are many palaces with different names and an imperial garden where the emperor lived his daily life.
In addition to this part of the Forbidden City, in the south of the palace city, there is a wide imperial road that stretches straight from the Wulong Bridge outside Chengtian Gate to the main entrance of the palace city, Hongwu Gate. On the east side of the imperial road, there are five yamen of the official, household, ritual, military, and industrial departments besides the Ministry of Justice, as well as several minor government departments such as Zongren Mansion, Honglu Temple, Qintianjian, and Imperial Hospital. To the west of the road is the highest military institution of the Ming Dynasty, the Governor's Mansion of the Five Armies, as well as the locations of Jinyiwei, Tongzhengshisi, Taichang Temple and other yamen.
However, such a large and magnificent palace has been abandoned and idle for two hundred years since Emperor Chengzu Yongle moved the capital to Beijing. Now it has become depressed and dilapidated, and it is no longer what it used to be. Since Emperor Yongle, except for Emperor Zhengde who once went to the south of the Yangtze River, the rest of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty have basically never left Beijing and visited the capital in the south.
As a result, due to the long-term absence of the owner, most of the palaces in the Forbidden City in Nanjing were in disrepair and were almost in ruins by the end of the Ming Dynasty. Even the various yamen in Nanjing where officials have always been stationed, except for a few entrance halls, which are kept neatly because officials come to the ministry to handle matters, most of them are left to fall apart and no one cares about them. . It looked like it was in dire straits.
Although the current Nanjing court has supported Emperor Yonghe Zhu Yihai, this palace once again has an owner. But the Donglin Party Group has always been committed to tax evasion. How could they be willing to spend millions of taels of money to renovate the palace for the new emperor they supported?
Therefore, compared with the idle years in the past, the Forbidden City in Nanjing still has not changed much. The vermilion palace walls of Chengtianmen are still covered with signs of peeling and appear mottled. The roof of the tower was covered with lush small trees and weeds, which had obviously not been cleaned for many years. There were finally a few eunuchs and guards standing at the entrance of the palace, but they were all listless and did not look like they were royal at all.
At this time, in the Wenhua Hall, the only one in the Forbidden City that has been slightly repaired, the former second son of King Lu, now Emperor Yonghe, Zhu Yihai, is sitting boredly on the paint-peeling and cracked throne, perfectly playing the role of a clay puppet, with eager eyes. He watched the Nanjing ministers bickering below.
It seems that due to the critical situation, the scholar-bureaucrats under Danqi were all very angry and irritable, and they no longer cared about being polite and decent.
Of course, I couldn’t care less about respecting Zhu Yihai, the puppet emperor...
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In general, although the Nanjing army has not yet been invaded by troops, the situation is already very bad. Not to mention the demons of the Wen Xiang Cult in the north, the Australian thieves in the south, and the late Emperor Chongzhen in the west. Even the remaining territory south of the Yangtze River is still in turmoil.
——The place with the most money in the Ming Dynasty today is naturally the fertile land in southern Zhili and northern Zhejiang, which is a fertile land in the south of the Yangtze River with developed industry and commerce. There are many wealthy people with millions of dollars. But the Song Dynasty's "Suhu and Suhu are good for the whole world" is already a thing of the past - now there are many kinds of mulberry trees in the countryside around Suhu and Lake, and the profit from collecting mulberry and raising silkworms is far better than planting rice. Therefore, in the Ming Dynasty, the era of "Huguang cooked enough for the world" had entered. After Huguang and Jiangxi were fully developed, they replaced Jiangnan and became the granary of the world. Even the so-called fertile land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River relies on food imports from Huguang, Jiangxi, and Lianghuai to meet the basic needs of the large non-agricultural population.
But the problem is that with the secret support of travelers from all walks of life and the self-respect of the bandits, the peasant uprising army in southern Jiangxi has become increasingly rampant since the early years of Chongzhen, causing great damage to Jiangxi's grain production and export. In view of the fact that the Wenxiang Rebellion rebels have been wreaking havoc in Huainan and Huaibei for a whole year, there is no hope for food in the two Huaihe Rivers. Therefore, Jiangnan, the "land of fish and rice", has become increasingly dependent on the import of grain and rice from Huguang.
However, now this Huguang grain road, which is vital to the lives of Jiangnan people, has been cut off.
——At the beginning of this month, the deposed emperor Chongzhen came to Wuchang and took over the military and political power of Huguang Province. At the same time, he ordered the closure of the river and banned the export of grain to the lower reaches.
So, as soon as the bad news reached Nanjing, the entire Jiangnan water town exploded.
Although it is now a lean season, and the summer grain will not be harvested for several months, there will not be many grain merchants going to Huguang to purchase goods at this time, but they cannot withstand the market panic effect caused by this bad news! Suddenly, thousands of citizens took out their treasured coins to buy food and store it at home, which inadvertently pushed up food prices further. In addition, many profiteers took the opportunity to hoard, create rumors, and hype wildly... As a result, when the price of food was the highest in the Nanjing market, brown rice was once sold for sixteen taels of silver per stone!
Not only are there difficulties in importing grain, but the channels for exporting goods are also unsmooth - since the Australian bandits have invaded Zhejiang in a large scale, although their troops have temporarily stopped in Hangzhou and have not continued to invade South Zhili. However, its navy used the Shengsi Islands as a base to launch a long-range blockade at the Yangtze River Estuary, intercepting and detaining any ship that dared to go to sea! As for the trade routes for selling cotton cloth and other goods to the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, they were also cut off by Emperor Chongzhen's order to seal the river!
——There is no supply of imported grain, and export commodities are blocked! And it is surrounded by powerful enemies on all sides... Such heavy military and economic pressure immediately overwhelmed this country that was born less than half a year ago! Suddenly, textile factories in Suzhou, Songjiang, Wuxi and other places went bankrupt, leaving tens of thousands of citizens unemployed. The sharply rising rice prices caused riots over rice grabbing in markets all over the country. At the same time, there are at least 300,000 to 400,000 war refugees who have fled northward from Hangzhou and are stranded in Huzhou, Jiaxing and other places, bringing huge security risks and social burdens to the local area.
The direct consequence of this series of bad news is that the price of food in Nanjing is rising three times a day, like a monkey in the sky. The entire Jiangnan region was filled with grief and complaints. Not only were the common people unable to afford food, but even ordinary petty officials could only survive on porridge every day.
Faced with such a severe test, Zhou Yanru, the chief assistant of the Nanjing Communist Party, was overwhelmed for a while. As a professional politician who once served as the chief minister under Emperor Chongzhen and held great power in the world, he certainly would not fail to understand the threat that rising food prices pose to the ruling order. But the reason why the Donglin Party Group in Nanjing supported the ill-named Yonghe Emperor in the first place was to avoid paying taxes as much as possible. Therefore, the Ministry of Household Affairs in Nanjing has already exempted all taxes that can be exempted. Now even the rats are crying and moving out of the treasury. How can there be food reserves to stabilize food prices?
Therefore, without any food reserves, Zhou Yanru, who was forced to panic, once became ruthless and sent Jin Yiwei to arrest profiteers who were driving up food prices. But the result was that the thunder was loud but the rain was small - the court officials collectively rebelled against this, almost threatening to overthrow the cabinet, forcing Zhou Yanru to take back the above-mentioned "random order": the so-called profiteers who speculated on food prices to make huge profits were actually He is the big financier behind the Donglin Party. How can this *** be suppressed?
——From the beginning of its birth, the Yonghe Emperor’s court in Nanjing was an out-and-out small government. Not only is the so-called Emperor Yonghe a puppet of the Donglin Group, but even the senior minister above the imperial court must also serve the interests of the large Jin gentry in the south of the Yangtze River. This sounds a bit like the relationship between the American consortium and the government in later generations, but the gentry in the late Ming Dynasty was more short-sighted than the leaders of the American consortium, and they also preferred to seek death...
In desperation, Zhou Yanru had no choice but to burst into tears in the court, trying to persuade the Donglin gentlemen and the financial backers behind them to stop their efforts and stop speculating on grain prices at this time, which would make it difficult for the country to make money! Otherwise, it will almost certainly trigger a civil uprising and get out of hand!
But such a weak protest with no confidence was naturally rejected by the selfless gentlemen - the imperial court finally decided that Nanjing, the capital of the country, would enter a state of martial law from now on, and severely suppress all the treacherous and rebellious people who looted grain stores... At the same time Recalled Lu Weiqi, the Minister of War who was in charge of Yangzhou, to abandon Yangzhou and other strongholds in the north of the Yangtze River, and withdrew more than 10,000 troops and horses from the north of the Yangtze River to prepare for possible chaos...
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After discussing the issue of food prices and deciding to let the people starve to death, the court officials began to discuss more serious military issues.
——With the fall of most of Zhejiang Province, after deducting the immobilized city defense troops, the only field legions with a certain combat effectiveness under the name of Emperor Yonghe of Nanjing were left with more than 10,000 under Lu Weiqi, the Minister of War in Yangzhou. Soldiers and horses.
Although it had been decided to abandon the land in Jiangbei before, relying on the natural dangers of the Yangtze River and the Nanjing Navy, there was no need to consider the threat of the Wenxiang Cult demon for the time being. But even so, Shangshu Lu Weiqi had no way to deal with the deposed Emperor Chongzhen in the west and the Australian bandits in the east at the same time with this small force. Not to mention that the imperial court also had to maintain a certain amount of mobile troops in Nanjing to suppress rice-grabbing riots that might break out at any time in major cities in the south of the Yangtze River.
Under such circumstances, military expansion and preparation for war naturally became the top priority of the Nanjing court and the top priority of all work!
"...Nowadays, the imperial court's territory is shrinking, with only a corner in the southeast left, and there are strong enemies on all sides, so we have to spend all our financial resources to recruit soldiers..."
Although he had just been severely slapped in the face on the issue of stabilizing food prices, out of his sense of responsibility as the chief minister of the imperial court, Zhou Yanru still bit the bullet and launched the military expansion plan he had just conceived—in Songjiang and Suzhou Important towns such as the textile industry advertised a recruitment list of 100,000 soldiers. On the one hand, they were used to strengthen several important strongholds such as Jingying and Xiaolingwei in Nanjing. On the other hand, they also gave local unemployed weavers a way out to prevent them from gathering in crowds and rioting...
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But Qian Qianyi immediately raised objections. He plausibly said that since ancient times, if you want to train an army that can fight, you need to recruit soldiers from farmers, because country people are timid, honest, hardworking, and obey orders. Most of the people in the city have the habit of being traders, can't afford much hardship, and are better at sneaking and cheating... Therefore, it is better to recruit soldiers in the relatively barren mountainous areas of southern Anhui.
In this regard, all the officials in the DPRK agreed one after another. Most of them have a fixed thinking pattern in their hearts, that is, the poorer they are, the more capable they are of fighting, and the richer they are, the more useless they are. For example, if the Mongolian Tatars and Liaodong Jiannu had not grown up in barren mountains and rivers and were so poor that they only had one life left, how could they be so ferocious?
By analogy, most of the citizens in the prosperous areas south of the Yangtze River must be weak and cunning, and dare not face the enemy in battle, so it is better to go to the mountainous areas of southern Anhui to recruit soldiers... Of course, the unemployed weavers in Songjiang and Suzhou also have to appease them. Let’s capture them all and work as coolies for the army!
Therefore, Zhou Yanru had no choice but to hold his nose and modify the recruitment plan, and then came up with the real highlight-asking for money!
According to his calculations, the cost of raising and training one hundred thousand troops and sending them into battle would cost at least five million taels of silver!
Because now there is almost nothing in the arsenal of the Nanjing imperial court. Even the ordnance and robes have to be made on a temporary basis. In addition, a large number of artillery still need to be cast. Nowadays, the treasury in Nanjing is basically empty, and the salaries of civil and military officials are one month in arrears. This huge sum of money can only be plundered from the heads of the gentry. It is useless to increase agricultural taxes and land taxes - Jiangnan Region It was the headquarters of the Donglin Party's gentry, and the peasants were either dependent on the officials of aristocratic families or were the tenants of these people. Homesteaders here are as rare as giant pandas, and even if they are squeezed dry, they can't make much money.
Hearing that such a large amount of money was actually required, all the Donglin gentlemen in the court immediately jumped up and reprimanded Zhou Yanru for extortionate taxes and cruelty to the people... But Zhou Yanru said that he really had no choice and wanted to pull out a An army that can fight must spend a lot of money on it.
——No matter in which era or country, the cost of establishing and maintaining a regular professional army is quite huge.
First of all, this requires recruiting a large number of strong men and paying each recruit a settling-in fee.
Secondly, those who have just been recruited cannot yet be called real soldiers and must undergo military training. For this purpose, instructors must be hired, training grounds must be established, food, accommodation and equipment must be provided, and a lot of money must be spent to support these "quasi-soldiers" in training. ".
Thirdly, after training, these soldiers still need to be paid, equipped with ordnance, and need various benefits such as clothing, quilts, and shelter. These are all regular expenses that are indispensable in peacetime.
Then, when it came to wartime, all kinds of expenses came like a flood - ammunition, arrows, etc., of course, are absolutely massive consumables; and the service life of guns and swords is actually quite limited. It needs to be replaced after two or three battles.
In addition, in order to maintain the combat effectiveness of the troops, it is necessary to purchase building materials to build fortresses, hire merchant ships and convoys to transport supplies, and prepare medicines and doctors to treat the wounded... Any one of these means astronomical figures. Horrible expense.
Finally, the injured and injured soldiers will be paid pensions and burial expenses, and the old soldiers will also be paid a pension.
To sum up, when a country carries out a large-scale military expansion and the number of professional troops reaches a certain level, these consumptions will quickly turn into horrific expenditures that are enough to drag down the finances. No matter how rich the national treasury is, it will be completely emptied in a very short period of time. For traditional agricultural countries with relatively poor real monetary income, this contradiction is particularly prominent.
Therefore, the so-called "war is more expensive than long-lasting" is by no means as simple as a general statement.
Corruption in the military will further aggravate this consumption rate - the level of corruption in the Ming army is enough to make anyone feel desperate. Of the five million taels of silver budget, if one million taels of silver can be put to practical use, it is already a thank you to Amitabha. But even if they knew there would be such corruption, the court had to hold its nose and allocate military funds, otherwise the situation would only get worse.