On the Lanzhou Festival in the seventh year of Chongzhen's reign, Lanzhou City was filled with lanterns, red gauze and books, and all kinds of bizarre lanterns made the largest city along the Yellow River seem to reflect the stars in the sky.
A huge lantern wheel rises on the south bank of the Yellow River, and it is colorful; a tall lantern tower is built on the arch gate of Nanguan, which is bright and bright; inside the Sode River Gate of Xiguan, Sufan servants hold high lanterns and dragons, and follow the lion dance team as they meander through the street. Countless women dressed up and walked together. In accordance with the custom of curing all diseases, the teams crowded together and boarded dozens of pontoon boats on the Yellow River connecting the two banks along the base of the city wall. They walked on the bridge to overcome dangers and pray for blessings.
There are even boys and girls who like each other go out together, chase and fight with lanterns, and set off fireworks in the sky outside the city.
The city of Lanzhou was filled with laughter, gongs and drums, and at the grand night banquet at Prince Su's Mansion, the officials and dignitaries who were invited to participate toasted to celebrate. It was a scene of festive joy.
Only on the Fuyun Tower on the north wall of the royal city, the atmosphere was particularly dull.
During the banquet, Su Wang Zhu Shihong invited Lanzhou General Shi Xiang and others to go up to Fuyun Tower and look at the roaring Yellow River below the city. The bright lights upstairs reflected a worried face.
Zhu Shihong is thirty years old this year. He has been in power for thirteen years since he succeeded to the throne at the age of seventeen.
Among many clans, Su Fan ranks high in terms of poverty. This result is not because their vassal state is in Lanzhou. It is mainly due to two reasons. One is poor management and the other is excellent tutoring.
The fiefdom of Su Fan was not rich, but it had a horse farm, so it was not poor at first. They were once the war horse sponsors of the Ming Empire. During the Yongle period, they twice paid tribute to thousands of war horses for state use. Later, they almost became custom-made.
Respond to the imperial court's demands for war horses.
Su Fan was poor, and he had been poor since Zhu Hui in the early Ming Dynasty. Emperor Taizu set the ancestral system, and King Su's Lumi was five hundred shi.
Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang was not bad to his youngest son. Young Master Lumi allocated a lot of pasture land and farmland because Su Fan was remote. King Su had a total of more than 440,000 acres of farmland in Gan, Liang, Lan, and Gu, and he could receive
The tax is converted into more than 12,000 shi of grain.
It is precisely because of this that Su Fan was able to continue to pay tribute to the court. Emperor Renzong Zhu Gaochi gave King Su a salary increase of one thousand dan per year.
However, during the Longqing period, Su Fan's financial resources declined sharply. At that time, the great clan died out. Zhu Shihong's grandfather, General Zhu Jinqian, requested to succeed him as the minor clan of Su Fan. Naturally, the court would not miss this opportunity to recover the fiefdom.
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There are two conditions for Zhu Jinqian's succession to the throne. The first is that he succeeds to the throne of Su Wang, but still enjoys the 800 shilumi of the auxiliary general; the second is that Su Fan returns his Zhelu Zhuang farmland in Ganzhou, Liangzhou, and Guyuan to the imperial court.
Used as military expenses for Gansu and Guyuan counties.
More than 400,000 acres of farmland were handed back to more than 300,000 acres at once. Zhu Jinqi had been thinking about one thing since he took the throne, which was to get Sufan's farmland back from the imperial court.
From the fifth year of Longqing to the sixteenth year of Wanli, Zhu Shihong's grandfather struggled all his life to get more than 100,000 acres back from the court. When his father succeeded to the throne, Su Wang Lumi made another concession, with a nominal amount of 800 shi.
In fact, we get two hundred and forty stones per year.
However, Zhu Shihong's father was a hard-core wise king. During his reign, he paid tribute to the court every three years. He also took the initiative to report to the court and returned more than 100,000 hectares of land in Zhuangtian to the court. Emperor Shenzong was so moved that he dedicated
Send officials to build the memorial arch for his father.
It was Zhu Shihong's turn to succeed to the throne. His annual income was only more than 2,000 dan, and the entire small farm property of the entire vassal state was only over 20,000 dan.
Since Emperor Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, Zhu Shihong's good tutoring has made Prince Su, who was not considered extravagant, even poorer. He donated stipends to the emperor twice, each time worth one thousand taels of silver.
He paid tribute to horses three times, but the grand event of his ancestors' tribute of thousands of horses could not be repeated. He struggled to collect a hundred horses, and could only contribute fifty horses each time.
To make matters worse, Liu Chengzong even wrote a letter saying that some of his subordinates were greedy and ridiculed him.
This has already happened, and his relatives are still writing letters from thousands of miles away to deceive him into losing his family.
Zhu Shihong received a letter from Han Fan yesterday, saying that General Yang and Commander Ren, who were supported by Yan'an Prefecture in Lanzhou, had led their troops into Pingliang. He mobilized the Han Fan clan to donate 3,000 taels of labor force to the imperial court.
Han Xiaowang wrote a letter and used the words Liu Chengzong taught him to teach King Su: If you want to survive, it depends on the human heart. Come on, donate money together.
King Su's team didn't have any business acumen. Zhu Shihong felt that what King Han said was reasonable, so he took advantage of the Lanzhou Festival to call Lanzhou General Shi Xiang to Fuyun Tower and asked: "General Shi, if
Liu Thief comes to attack Lanzhou, what are the chances of winning?"
What are the chances of winning?
To be honest, Shi Xiang doesn't want to think about this matter.
At this moment, he was feeling uneasy. He shook his head and said, "Prince Su, it depends on whether the Western Army attacks the city before General Yang arrives or after he arrives."
Originally, Shi Xiang should be the person least worried about being beaten in the entire Lanzhou City. The fall of Zhuanglang Acropolis, a dangerous sign in the eyes of others, was the talisman of Lanzhou City in his eyes.
In other people's eyes, Lanzhou City was a stumbling block for Liu Chengzong's march to Gansu. However, Shi Xiang believed that with himself as a traitor and general, Liu Chengzong would not necessarily waste his troops in the direction of Lanzhou, and would probably concentrate his efforts on Gansu first. p>
However, Yan'an General Yang Yanchang arrived with his army. This news that made others happy made Shi Xiang particularly frightened... The situation suddenly became extremely dangerous for him.
Because his plundering accomplices did not account for half of the officers of the Lanzhou Battalion and could not control the entire battalion to defect, the risk of internal strife was very high. And once a strife broke out in Lanzhou City, the probability of him being hacked to death was greater than the risk of internal strife. It is not impossible to lead his cronies to defect, but he and Liu Chengzong do not have a deep foundation of mutual trust. He must hold this battalion of troops in his hands and defect to Liu Chengzong to feel at ease.
For him, it is a matter of risking wealth.
So in the coming time, he hoped that Liu Chengzong's army would better not come over, or at least not have any plans to storm Lanzhou City.
Su Wang Zhu Shihong asked in confusion: "What if General Yang hasn't arrived yet, and what if he has arrived?"
"If General Yang leads his troops into the city, Lanzhou can stand firm and wait for reinforcements; if General Yang leads the army to attack the city before the Marshal's Mansion, I'm afraid the city cannot be defended."
"That's why he didn't capture this city last year."
"Your Majesty, it's not that we didn't capture the city last year, it's that the Marshal's Mansion didn't even want to break the city." Shi Xiang reminded King Su: "But this time, they are likely to attack Lanzhou before the imperial reinforcements arrive."
Zhu Shihong nodded. He had great attainments in calligraphy, but he knew nothing about military matters. Even though Shi Xiang made it clear, he was still confused, but this did not hinder his desire to do good things. He asked: "What about Lanzhou City?
If there is any place that needs repairing, the palace can fund it."
Shi Xiang shook his head and said: "Your Majesty just spent four hundred taels of silver to build the city in the autumn. There is nothing to repair on the city wall, but what is guarding the city is the people's hearts. Lanzhou's commander-in-chief Yang Qi and his family surrendered to the enemy. There are many Lanzhou guards in the Lanzhou camp."
With the old troops united inside and outside, the city cannot be defended."
"The human heart! Yes, yes, the human heart!"
Zhu Shihong thought, and the King of Han also said the same thing. He said: "In that case, I will reward the sergeants with eight, no, one thousand taels of silver, and one thousand taels of silver to help pay for the soldiers!"
Shi Xiang thinks, aren’t you doing something bad to me?
What's more, your prince is even poorer than me, yet you are still so poor and generous. He frowned and said, "My prince has given you salary, tribute horses, and donated money in the past few years. I'm afraid Su Fan doesn't have much money anymore." But Zhu Shihong does not think that he is poor, on the contrary, he feels that he is very rich.
Because the two generations of Su Fan princes did not have the bad habit of bullying men and dominating women, they lived a very comfortable life and did not have many places to spend money. Therefore, even though they earned little, they were extra generous in doing things.
The two generations of princes accomplished only one major thing that cost money: handing over the "Chunhua Pavilion Notes" to the people of the world.
"Chunhua Pavilion Calligraphy" is the earliest calligraphy calligraphy collection in the history of Chinese calligraphy. It has ten volumes and contains 420 calligraphy works by 103 emperors, officials and famous calligraphers from the pre-Qin Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
works.
Because it was compiled by the Gaolianghe Cheshen Organization in the third year of Chunhua, it is called Chunhua Getie.
The original copy was destroyed in a fire during the Qingli period, and the private copies have been copied and reprinted back and forth, so far they have been mixed up and their quality is uneven.
When Zhu Gai ascended the vassal vassal, Zhu Yuanzhang gave him a Song version of "Chunhua Pavilion Notes". The first eight volumes were the original engravings of the Northern Song Dynasty palace engravings. They were extremely precious and became a family heirloom of the Su vassal. p>
In order to prevent unworthy descendants from destroying the national treasure, Zhu Lai left a note on it, mentioning the words "Mianfu Xiaozi" and not allowed to share it with others.
Therefore, for two hundred years, this "Chunhua Pavilion Calligraphy" has always been secretly hidden in the inner treasury of the royal palace. The children of the Sufan clan were lucky enough to use it to practice calligraphy, and outsiders had no chance to see it.
It was not until the 43rd year of Wanli that Zhang Heming, a right-hand political advisor in Shaanxi, accidentally obtained an incomplete copy of "Chunhua Pavilion". Hearing that Su Fan had a complete pavilion, he pretended to be brave and asked to come to him, hoping to compare it with the Song version.<
/p>
Zhu Shihong's father made a decision that went against his ancestors. He not only lent the imperial calligraphy to Zhang Heming, but also felt that the royal palaces had little contribution to the country. He decided to invite Wen Ruyu, a famous epigrapher and stone engraver at that time, and Zhang Yingzong engraved this precious calligraphy in stone.
, let the scholars from all over the world make rubbings.
This is an extremely huge project. Wen and Zhang worked on the stone day and night, just like Bodhidharma facing the wall for seven years in the cold winter and summer heat. The Su King Zhu Shenyao who funded the project passed away before he could see the stone carving completed.
Shihong inherited the legacy, and it was not until the first year of Tianqi that the one hundred and forty-four carved stones were completed.
In addition, the two generations of King Su had no chance to spend big money.
Zhu Shihong spread out his hands in the sleeves of his python robe and said: "I don't lend money, so what can I do with so much money? If the skin is gone, how can the hair be attached?"
The number of people is withering, and the words are tough.
In the past three generations, Su Fan had only six sons. It was not until the Jiajing period that they finally had six sons. After all, they died out. When it was replaced by Zhu Shihong's grandfather's branch, the number of people was still withering. The whole family, including the whole family, had fewer relatives than Liu Chengzong's relatives after marriage.
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The whole Lanzhou clan, including all the men, women, old and young of the large clans and small branches who receive salaries, is barely close to 200 people.
They really have nothing to spend money on.
"Your Majesty, according to my position, the vassal state should prepare early. If General Yang's reinforcements do not arrive and the rebels attack the city." Shi Xiang thought for a while and said: "I would like to send someone to escort the royal family to Pingliang for refuge, and leave me here.
Stay in the city and wait for help."
Shi Xiang has no bad intentions. No matter whether he wants to or not, he cannot harm King Su.
Because King Su has paid a lot of money to the army in recent years. Although the money spent is not much, it can really give ordinary soldiers a lot of money, not to mention the occasional work of wine and meat.
Many times, a few coins can save a tragedy and save the life of the whole family.
With this little money, it is a fantasy to let the army fight to the death for the country, but a favor from a meal is enough to make a bloody man risk his life for Zhu Shihong.
This is a big trouble in Shi Xiang's view, and King Su must leave Lanzhou.
He threatened: "If Lanzhou falls, I'm afraid the vassal state will be in danger of losing its heirs."
Unexpectedly, although Zhu Shihong was like a humble gentleman, he was very calm about this kind of thing, saying: "The ancestors decided that I would be the successor of Su Fan, support Lu Gongzhenbi, Jin gentry know loyalty, Xihui will be rich and lucky, Kai
Admonishment is at Henglong."
"If the country is really ruined to this extent, and the first one to be captured is my vassal state, how can it be possible to flee before the city is broken, leaving the soldiers to fight to the death in the city?"
"Tsk!"
Shi Xiang frowned and turned his head to the side. He heard Zhu Shihong's implication that he was not determined to stick to it.
To put it bluntly, I still don’t believe that this city will really be breached. What I want to think about is to run away, but I have to wait until the city is breached before running away.
"Your Majesty, if the city is broken, we can't escape."
Zhu Shihong waved his hand and said: "General, there is no need to persuade us anymore. It is still the Shangyuan Festival now. No matter what, we have to wait until the Shangyuan Festival is over."
The Shangyuan Festival in the Ming Dynasty has been a ten-day holiday since Emperor Taizu.
Zhu Shihong thought to himself, Yang Yanchang had already entered Pingliang, why did he lead his troops to Lanzhou in ten days?
At this moment, a loud exclamation suddenly came from outside the palace, and Shi Xiang saw a rising flame reflected in the pupils of King Su Zhu Shihong.
Looking back, the huge lantern dragon on the street was thrown to the ground, and the fire was burning from bottom to top, towards the high-spirited dragon head.
Someone rushed into the royal city in fear and shouted: "Thieves and soldiers will thin the city, thieves and soldiers will thin the city!"
In an instant, the dancing music in the palace stopped abruptly, porcelain plates shattered amidst screams, and beasts and beasts in costumes came out, each one of them with six gods and no masters.
Zhu Shihong was also panicked and couldn't speak coherently: "Why, why are you here today!"
One of Shi Xiang's trusted guards ran up to him with a sword in hand, his eyes wide open: "General, what should I do?"
"Your Majesty, the matter has come to an end. Please quickly pack your luggage, gather the clan and run east to Pingliang." After Shi Xiang said this, he pointed to the close guard who rushed forward and said: "Hurry up and escort the royal clan out of the city from the east gate.
Go to Pingliang."
Having said that, before the lost King Su could come to his senses, Shi Xiang clasped his fists and said, "Don't worry, Your Majesty, Shi will live and die with Lanzhou, and he is still in the city!"
The trusted guards didn’t show much respect to King Su, so they dragged him away.
Shi Xiang stood on the Fuyun Tower, looking around the city where many flames were rising in panic. He closed his eyes and took a few breaths with a calm expression. Until the hair on his face stood up slightly, he finally took a deep breath and walked downstairs.
"Please ask General Li Qian to lead the troops to put out the fire. General Zhang Qian will lead the troops to sit in camp and not move."
Returning to the camp, Shi Xiang successively ordered: "The remaining soldiers will follow me to Xiuchuan Gate. Life or death... depends on today."