Chapter One Hundred and Forty-two Wishes Come True
From the beginning of the second year of Chongzhen to the period after the autumn harvest, Wu Shigong seemed to have been blessed by the goddess of luck, and everything he wished for seemed to come true.
First of all, of course, his three pregnant wives gave birth to three children, two girls and one boy. First, Zhu Yun gave birth to Wu Shigong's eldest daughter, then Zhao Ruya gave birth to his second daughter. Finally, Li Xin gave birth to his second son.
However, regarding the surnames of these children, everyone, including the mothers of these children, remained silent, waiting for Wu Shigong's decision. Wu Shigong showed his strength at this time, and he decided without hesitation that all these children would be named Wu.
No one dared to raise objections to Wu Shigong's decision. On the contrary, Li Xin, who had given birth to a son, was very happy. When she was alone with Wu Shigong, she and Wu Shigong were particularly close.
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And Xiuzhu finally became pregnant as if she were looking forward to the stars and the moon. Now, the entire inner house seemed particularly lively despite the sounds of children crying. Wu Shigong also never got tired of teasing these children.
However, Wu Shigong still often thinks of his eldest son Xue Chenglin who is now in the capital. Sometimes he takes out Xue Chenglin's small footprints to take a look. He hasn't seen the sleeping boy in more than two years.
With sufficient manpower, the Qianhusuo Fortress was finally completed according to Wu Shigong's vision. And because these manpower basically did not need to pay labor costs, the cost of building the Qianhusuo Fortress was also greatly saved.
After two failures, Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop finally produced a three-pound cannon. However, the production of this cannon cost Wu Shigong a total of more than 1,300 taels of silver. However, after careful
After careful calculation, it will only cost 700 taels of silver to manufacture the same type of artillery in the future.
However, although the artillery has been manufactured, according to Yang Goudan's introduction, the range and power of this artillery are not satisfactory, but the manufacturing cost is still too expensive. Don't talk about going to Macau to find the Fo Lang machine to buy the same type of artillery, as long as
More than four hundred taels of silver, even if the same type of artillery can be manufactured in a workshop in Tianjin, it only costs a little over 500 taels of silver.
In this regard, Wu Shigong was also very helpless. He still had too few skilled blacksmiths. But he couldn't rush this kind of thing, so he should take his time. At least he could make it himself. The more expensive it is, the more expensive it is. Wu Shigong arranged for Yang
If Goudan makes one more, Wu Shigong will not have the extra financial resources to make more.
In addition, Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop also produced a large number of firecrackers. Wu Shigong now owns 150 medium-sized firecrackers and 250 heavy firecrackers.
After completing the manufacturing of these firecrackers, these firecrackers basically met Wu Shigong's current needs. Therefore, Wu Shigong asked Yang Goudan to slow down the production of firecrackers.
At this time, the blacksmith workshop had more manpower. Through the relationship with local gentry such as Yao Yuanwai and Lu Yunhuan, the blacksmith workshop received a large number of jobs for manufacturing ironware for civilian use, which also increased a lot of income.
All of Wu Shigong's businesses have also entered an upward trajectory. Especially the sales of salt products in the mountainous area in the northern part of Runing Prefecture have caused Wu Shigong's income to grow explosively. Now Wu Shigong has not only achieved a balance of payments, but also has a monthly
They all made a profit of five hundred taels of silver.
What is even more gratifying is that this year has been a smooth one. Both the land bought by Wu Shigong and the land owned by thousands of military households have achieved a bumper harvest.
The only fly in the ointment is that the bumper harvest caused food prices to plummet, and there is no need to issue Wu Shigong's food stamps for the time being.
After Wu Shigong captured Li Yaozi's village, he recruited a hundred bandits from other villages controlled by Leiying. Therefore, these 300 recruited bandits could not be issued food stamps, but could only be issued to each of them.
Half a stone of grain per month was given as military pay.
However, after last year's drought, especially after the drought, when the grain played a huge role in collecting and exterminating the bandits, Wu Shigong's sense of crisis became even stronger. Taking advantage of the sharp drop in grain prices, Wu Shigong spent a lot of money
Come to buy food. Everyone was not surprised by Wu Shigong's behavior.
But no one thought that Wu Shigong's somewhat morbid behavior would play a huge role later. Since the third year of Chongzhen, Henan will suffer from severe drought for four consecutive years.
Although life seemed to be going smoothly, Wu Shigong did not relax the training of his soldiers at all. He even strengthened it a lot on the original basis.
Now Wu Shigong, in addition to the 300 bandit vassal troops and the 300 militiamen led by Zhou Xun, he himself has 500 cavalry (the current cavalry has been expanded to 100 cavalry per squadron) and one
Thousands of infantry, plus more than fifty people from the artillery team.
Wu Shigong no longer has the financial and material resources to expand his army. But even if he had the financial and material resources, he would not dare to expand his army. After all, Wu Shigong is just an agent for thousands of households, and his current military strength is already greater than the thousand soldiers he should have.
The amount is.
Since we cannot expand the army, we can only strengthen training and improve the combat ability of our soldiers. But even so, on the ground nearby, the strength of Wu Shigong's army is second to none.
Different from Wu Shigong's smooth sailing, there was a sudden turmoil in the court. Because they thought the external environment was calm and due to the bad nature of Ming Dynasty officials, these officials soon started fighting.
The first is Emperor Chongzhen's complete finalization of the Wei Party. As expected, Emperor Chongzhen's actions to eliminate the remnants of the Wei Party have indeed been expanded. Because I will oppose whatever Emperor Tianqi agrees with, and I will agree with whatever Emperor Tianqi opposes.
Emperor Chongzhen quickly replaced most of the academicians.
At this time, the Donglin Party members, who had been most suppressed by the Wei Party, stood up. And the bachelors in the cabinet now are all Donglin Party members or people who sympathize with the Donglin Party. After these bachelors stood up,
Naturally, they launched a counterattack against the Wei Party.
In the political structure of the late Ming Dynasty, the Donglin Party members were the most powerful political group. The quality of the Donglin Party members and the rise and fall of the Donglin Party will not be discussed here for the time being, because this is a historical research topic.
Suffice it to say here that the biggest feature of the Donglin Party is that when the Donglin Party gained power, the Donglin Party members controlled the appointment and dismissal of officials in the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and appointed some key official positions in the Ming Dynasty to the Donglin Party.
Lin Party members.
It can be seen from this characteristic that this approach of the Donglin Party not only harmed the interests of non-Donglin Party officials, but also greatly threatened the emperor's power. Therefore, from the later period of Emperor Wanli's reign, the emperor openly or covertly
to attack the Donglin Party members.
Therefore, it can be said that Emperor Tianqi and Wei Zhongxian were completely on the same side when it came to attacking Donglin Party officials. In order to eliminate the threat of Donglin Party members, Wei Zhongxian even did not hesitate to use the unspoken rule of imprisonment to imprison Donglin Party officials.
Lin Party officials were arrested and imprisoned to destroy them physically.
Of course, what Wei Zhongxian did also crossed the red line in the political struggle, and in the end, Wei Zhongxian also lost his life for it. But in any case, it is evident that the power of the Donglin Party is strong.
Since Emperor Chongzhen was not a crown prince and had not received any training in how a prince governs the country, he was not aware of the threat to his throne that this feature of the Donglin Party posed to his throne.
Now let’s talk about the composition of the Wei Party. Except for some ministers who flatter Wei Zhongxian, the other members of the Wei Party have complicated backgrounds. Some joined Wei Zhongxian after being squeezed out by the Donglin Party, and some, like Xue Lian,
They are only loyal to the emperor, because Wei Zhongxian is very loyal to Emperor Tianqi, so when they listen to Wei Zhongxian, they are also listening to Emperor Tianqi. Of course, many members of the Wei Party even have the above situations.
And now Emperor Chongzhen wants to wipe out these ministers, which has created such a problem: a large number of experienced civil servants have been dismissed from their official positions. Emperor Chongzhen has less support from the civil servants. This makes Emperor Chongzhen
Then a strange phenomenon occurred where no one was available.
In addition, because Wei Zhongxian's official position as Governor of the East Factory was eliminated in this way, the spy organizations such as factory guards were completely paralyzed. You must know that although the factory guards have a bad reputation, they play a huge role in understanding the dynamics of officials and local situations.
Even any civilized country in modern times has its own secret service agency. In this way, Emperor Chongzhen blocked his ears and eyes again.
What is even more regrettable is that in Liaodong and northwest, a large number of civilian officials who led troops were removed from their official positions because of their status as Wei Dang. To be honest, because they wanted to receive military pay from Wei Zhongxian, who was at the height of his power at that time, those civilian officials who led troops did not want to
If you want to be a Wei Party member, you must also be a Wei Party member. There is no second choice at all.
But now that these civil servants were dismissed, it immediately aroused a fierce backlash from their soldiers. Of course, these soldiers did not know and did not care about the struggle in the court. They were only worried about one thing: after these civil servants were dismissed,
, will the military pay, which has been delayed to begin with, not be paid in the future?
Therefore, during this period of time, many large-scale mutinies by soldiers demanding pay occurred throughout eastern and northwest Liaoning. The density of these mutinies was even much greater than that in the last years of Chongzhen, when the court was completely bankrupt and could not pay any military pay.
density.
In Liaodong, because Yuan Chonghuan arrived in time after being summoned by the platform, relying on his prestige, the mutiny was quickly quelled. Of course, after the mutiny subsided, Yuan Chonghuan also dismissed several official positions that were not military attachés. These exemptions
Among the military attaches, there is one who deserves special attention, he is Zuo Liangyu.
In the northwest, the situation got out of control, and there were many incidents where soldiers killed Shangguan and defected to the peasant rebel army. We should also pay special attention to one person here, and that is Li Zicheng.