Emperor Hongzhi has been emperor for eleven years. In this position, he naturally has many feelings and gains.
Although he reused civil servants and had a good relationship between the emperor and his ministers, the Ming Dynasty, under his hard work, also reversed the situation of Emperor Hongzhi's advantageous father, Ming Xianzong.
But after being emperor for many years, he was actually a very frustrated emperor.
My family of three saved more and more on food and clothing, but I still received many memorials every day asking Emperor Hongzhi to be frugal, diligent and frugal, and not to be extravagant and wasteful.
Everyone wanted to point their finger at Emperor Hongzhi’s nose and say, Emperor Hongzhi ate too much, it was so good, he should cut down his expenses and be more frugal.
In the past ten years or so, I have been frugal and saved millions of taels of silver. All the ministers in the dynasty were watching me every day.
It's the emperor, a pig, and it just so happens that Emperor Hongzhi is also named Zhu.
The armaments were depleted, the border troops were trapped, and their combat effectiveness was low.
Emperor Hongzhi also wanted to reorganize the army and increase investment and expenditure in this area, but Mei was always subject to the six ministries of the cabinet. In terms of military expenditure, these civil servants in the DPRK would reduce it if they could, suppress it if they could, and maintain the original status.
Some are good, but it is simply impossible to organize an army.
Therefore, every time the little prince went south to seize the border, he could only defend passively. It was impossible for him to hunt the northern part of Saibei, chase Yuanhu in the north, and defeat the northern nomads one by one like Emperor Chengzu.
From all aspects, he felt huge limitations. Even if he wanted to make some changes, he was often unable to do so. What struck him the most was that he had no money and was simply too poor.
Now when I heard Zhu Houzhao's analysis of peeling off layers of cocoons and drawing silk threads, I was immediately deeply touched and couldn't help but nod my head.
Then he looked at Zhu Houzhao, and he really didn't believe that he could analyze it, so he said, "Is this what Liu Jin told you?"
"No, do I need him to tell me?"
"With my intelligence, I can figure it out myself."
"This matter is easy to analyze, but it has something to do with Liu Jin."
Zhu Houzhao was not happy when he heard that. He was not happy that the things he had finally analyzed should be blamed on Lao Liu.
"Since you analyzed it, tell me what to do?"
Emperor Hongzhi nodded, also dubious.
"This is easy to deal with. I have three plans: upper, middle and lower. Which one do you want to hear first?"
Zhu Houzhao rolled his eyes, thought for a while and said.
"Oh, there are three strategies, upper, middle and lower. You should tell me and listen to them all."
Emperor Hongzhi immediately became interested and said with great interest.
"The next step is very simple. We have to find out who resold the grain and whose hands the grain ended up in. This shouldn't be difficult. Then we punish these people with thunderous means, take back the grain, and use it to survive the famine and survive the famine.
It's not difficult, but this strategy can only punish some grain merchants and officials, but it will do no harm to the real people behind it. They will have similar schemes against us in the future."
"Well, we can use the trick first, lure the snake out of the hole, and find out how many of their people are in the court. Then we will not only annihilate this profiteer in one fell swoop, but also sweep away these moths in the court."
"The best strategy is to use this incident as an opportunity. We will not only make these profiteers bankrupt and wipe out these worms and profiteers' spokesmen in the court, but we must also completely get rid of their control over our money and let us control it."
Money has the right to speak, so when you want to do something in the future, you no longer need to be constrained by money."
Zhu Houzhao stated the three strategies in his mind in one breath.
"Although your suggestion is good, how should you implement it?"
"Now the food is in their hands. If we don't find out and force the food to be taken back, how will we survive the current famine?"
Emperor Hongzhi listened carefully and thought carefully. After thinking for a while, he asked: "Do I really want to use the money I finally saved to buy their food?"
"Father, you have reached the key point."
Zhu Houzhao nodded and continued: "The reason why these people dare to formulate this conspiracy is because they have food in their hands, which is the biggest bargaining chip during the current famine. If the food problem is not solved, we will always be led by their noses."
of."
"But I already have a way, father, you may not know, but here in Tianjin, many victims of the disaster have eaten meat until they vomited."
"Eat meat until you vomit?"
When Emperor Hongzhi heard this, he was immediately dumbfounded. He didn't even have any food, and he even said he would eat meat until he vomited. How could this be possible?
"Father, what they eat is sea fish meat."
Zhu Houzhao laughed happily when he saw Emperor Hongzhi's expression.
"Sea fish meat?"
Emperor Hongzhi was even more confused.
"Yes, there are too many fish in the ocean. The fleet heading to America is training at sea. Lao Liu thinks that he is going to sea anyway, so he can catch fish and so on."
"So trawl fishing is used. This boat goes out to go around the sea. It takes a day and a night to bring back tens of thousands of kilograms of marine fish. There are several boats in Tianjin that go out to fish every day. This
We couldn’t finish the fish we brought back, so we recruited a large number of victims to do the work.”
"If they don't have food, they will be given fish and meat to use as food. They will eat meat until they vomit."
Zhu Houzhao smiled and told what happened in Tianjin.
"How many kilograms of fish does a boat have? A round trip takes a day and a night?"
Emperor Hongzhi was shocked when he heard this. Meat was very rare in this era. He didn't expect that the harvest from fishing would be so huge. It was simply unbelievable.
"The ocean contains endless treasures. The fishery resources are extremely rich. The various types of sea fish are hundreds or thousands of times more than the river fish. As long as there is a boat to fish, you can easily get a large number of fish, and this sea fish
It has high nutritional value and is definitely the best meat.”
"We only need to send more boats to fish. The sea fish harvested every day is enough to feed tens of thousands of people. Moreover, the three provinces affected by the disaster this time are Beizhili, Shandong, and Shanxi. Beizhili and Shandong are all close to the sea.
, it is very convenient to go fishing at sea.”
After saying this, Zhu Houzhao also said with emotion: "I have seen those hungry people eating all the tree bark, and eating Guanyin soil, their stomachs are as bloated as if they were pregnant in ten months."
"There is no food on land, but there is so much food in the ocean that we can't eat it all. Why don't we open the sea and ban fishing?"
After hearing Zhu Houzhao's words, Emperor Hongzhi fell into deep thought. Regarding the sea ban, this was decided by his ancestor Zhu Yuanzhang, but he, the emperor who defended the city, had never thought about this matter.
Unexpectedly, the harvest of fishing in this ocean is so great. A boat can bring back tens of thousands of catties of sea fish in two days. These tens of thousands of catties of sea fish are tens of thousands of catties of meat. As long as there are enough boats and the sea ban is opened,
With the Ming Dynasty's thousands of miles of sea territory, how many sea fish could be harvested and how many people could be fed?
Thinking of this, Emperor Hongzhi was shaken in his heart. This was to use practical things to illustrate the benefits of opening the sea, that is, you can fish, get a lot of food, and meat, and you can feed more people.
Just thinking that this was decided by his ancestors, thinking of the many things that happened during Zheng He's voyages to the West, and thinking of the fierce opposition from the courtiers, he frowned again. It is definitely not that easy to establish a sea ban, and it is not his rule.
The emperor opened it as he asked.
"The Tianjin Shipyard is building a special fishing boat, and it will be launched soon. By then, the fishing volume will be even greater, enough to meet the needs of the victims in the Beijing-Tianjin area."
"In addition, Liu Jin has also sent a fleet to North Korea for short-distance training. By the way, he is also doing business with North Korea, selling glass and mirrors from the glass factory, and then buying food from North Korea.
, one visit only takes less than half a month."
"Now the first batch of five ships should be almost arriving in North Korea. They will be able to return in five or six days. By then, they will be able to purchase a large amount of food."
"After the food problem is solved, the biggest bargaining chip in their hands will have no effect. If we bring in grain from the south and use a three-pronged approach, the price of this food can be quickly suppressed and these profiteers will go bankrupt. The most important thing is
What we want is to preserve our own financial resources and control greater resources, so as to step by step get rid of their control over us."
"As the saying goes, if you have money in your hands, you don't need to panic. As long as we have the royal family with its own sources and channels of money and sufficient resources, they will never try to control us financially."
Seeing Emperor Hongzhi thinking deeply, Zhu Houzhao continued to explain his best plan. The core point was actually to solve the food problem. Only with enough food in hand can he have enough confidence to fight back.