Chapter 232 There is a problem with the private mine
Wu Shigong listened to Li Lu's address to him. He originally called himself "cousin-in-law", but now the word "cousin" has been omitted, and he directly calls himself "brother-in-law. Such an affectionate and somewhat disgusting title,
It shows that Li Luxiang’s request for him must not be too small.
So, Wu Shigong smiled and continued to ask: "We are all a family, there is nothing hard to say. Stop playing riddles, what is it? Tell me about it, little brother."
Li Lu and Wan Wendong looked at each other, and immediately told Wu Shigong the purpose of their visit: "Brother-in-law! You came to my brother and I to buy some iron materials a few days ago. My brother didn't hide it from his brother-in-law. The iron materials were all
I got it from Wan Yuanwai. My brother came to Runing Mansion this time just to thank his brother-in-law together with Wan Yuanwai."
"You're welcome! You're welcome! That's also a matter of mutual benefit." Wu Shigong immediately said a few polite words, and then waited for Li Lu's next words.
To be honest, Wu Shigong went through Li Lu several times and purchased large quantities of iron materials from Nanyang Mansion. The price of those iron materials was indeed much cheaper than the official price of iron materials, which also saved Wu Shigong a lot of money.
You must know that the Ming Dynasty implemented a monopoly on salt and iron, and the official price of this iron material was quite high. As an iron ore producing area in Nanyang Prefecture, several large mines were managed by the Mine Supervision Office sent by the inner court. Wu Shigong
There is no way to buy some cheap iron materials.
Wu Shigong also found out from Yuan Xingshan, who was responsible for the specific work, that the iron materials taken from Li Lu must have been mined from local private mines, so the price was so cheap. However, Wu Shigong got a benefit anyway, and
They don't care whether the source of these iron materials is correct or not. They don't care about how much money Li Lu earned from this kind of transaction.
"Wan Yuanwai owns several iron mines at my brother's residence." Li Lu introduced Wan Wendong to Wu Shigong, "I'll let Wan Yuanwai and my brother-in-law talk about this specific matter."
Wan Wendong also immediately bowed to Wu Shigong and said: "Wu Shoubei, this little man has taken the liberty to come to visit because he has something to ask Wu Shoubei!"
Then, Wan Wendong introduced their purpose of coming in detail.
It turns out that Wan Wendong did own several iron-producing hills in Nanyang Prefecture and opened a private mine. As the owner of a private mine, Wan Wendong must be a black and white man in the local area.
character.
Let’s not talk about him. In order to compete for territory with other private mining owners and to better exploit the miners, Wan Wendong maintained a team of five or six hundred servants in his family. And this kind of
The situation is also very normal, which can be seen from the behavior of modern small private coal mine owners.
However, as a private mine, Wan Wendong's iron sales channels are always somewhat inconvenient. Wu Shigong purchased Wan Wendong's iron through Li Lu, which also solved the iron sales problem for Wan Wendong. Therefore,
After going back and forth, Wan Wendong also became familiar with Li Lu.
In the Ming Dynasty, there were no laws to protect miners such as the Labor Law and the Safety Production Law. In order to earn more money, private mining owners such as Wan Wendong exploited the miners viciously.
How to describe it? The life of those miners was even much worse than that of Wu Shigong's lowest serfs, who lived in dire straits.
But wherever there is oppression, there will definitely be resistance. However, although the miners were more numerous, they were once scattered. Under the threat of force from servants like Wan Wendong, and the recent drought that caused a large number of refugees,
Therefore, Wan Wendong's private mining bosses were able to easily suppress the resistance of the miners.
But this situation started to go wrong the year before last. A group of horse bandits came from nowhere. They first beat away the owner of a small private mine near Wanwendong and occupied a private mine themselves.
Then, the group of horse bandits began to organize the miners in their iron mines, improved their treatment, and conducted simple military training for the miners.
And when those horse bandits seized a private mine at the beginning, because they were unwilling to be the first to take the lead, nearby private mine owners like Wan Wendong just stood by and watched. Now they were in trouble.
Once the horse bandits established a foothold, they immediately began expansion operations. With the help of some miners who were dissatisfied with the owners of private mines, the horse bandits successively captured several nearby private mines.
Something was wrong with this situation. Sensing the crisis, the private mining bosses immediately united and sent out their servants to attack this group of horse bandits.
You must know that Wan Wendong and other private mining bosses have more than a thousand servants in total. In addition, the food and training level of those servants are not low. It should be said that the combat effectiveness is still above the combat effectiveness level of the general Ming army at that time, so
Wan Wendong and other private mining bosses all believed that their operation should be easy to capture.
What I didn't expect was that the group of horse bandits had already trained the miners, and they had already trained an army. In addition, there were many miners, the terrain was familiar, and there were also those who worked for the private mine bosses.
The miners acted as internal agents. After a fight, the servants were severely defeated, and the group of horse bandits robbed several private mines. Even Wan Wendong's private mine was seized.
Now, Wan Wendong's private mining bosses were in a hurry. In desperation, they immediately collected money and asked for help from the local garrison, namely Li Lu and Li Shouwei, and asked Li Lu to lead troops to exterminate this group of horse bandits.
Li Lu has been working as a garrison in Nanyang Mansion for more than four years, so he has some understanding of the local situation. Of course he knows what those private mines are about.
As for those private mines, since they have become private mines, they must be some mining areas where mining is inconvenient and transportation is inconvenient. As the saying goes, poor mountains and harsh waters bring out unruly people. Li Lu is not unaware of the fierce competition among miners in these private mines. Therefore,
, Li Lu was not willing to wade into this muddy water at first.
However, those private mine owners did collect a lot of money, and Li Lu also received a lot of money in the process of providing iron materials to Wu Shigong, so in the end, Li Lu agreed.
Li Lu also relied on something to do this. After the Holy Spirit Society rebelled, he also seriously trained more than 400 soldiers. In addition, he temporarily recruited some people from refugees, and he also collected 1,200 soldiers.
Hundreds of people.
In addition, the private mine owners recruited thousands of servants, and the private mine owners hired seven to eight hundred bandits and horse bandits. In this way, Li Lu also had more than 3,000 horses.
So, Li Lu led the army of the official and bandit families and began to suppress the bandits. According to Li Lu's idea, as long as his army arrived, those mud-legged miners would definitely flee. By that time, Li Lu
As long as the recaptured mines are returned to the private mine owners, the mission will be completed.
As for whether the private mine owners can keep the mines in the future, that is not Li Lu's concern. It would be better if those private mine owners cannot keep the mines, then Li Lu can send troops again and earn such extra money.
But to Li Lu's surprise, the miners not only did not escape, but under the organization of the group of horse bandits, they gathered almost all of the more than 4,000 miners and launched a battle to fight Li Lu.
This behavior made Li Lu very angry at that time, because in the eyes of the officers and soldiers at that time, as long as the officers and soldiers took action, no bandit would dare not escape. Of course, the combat effectiveness level of the Ming army at this time was also much higher than those of those
Bandit's.
However, I did not expect that when the battle came, the miners fought very methodically. In contrast, Li Lu's army became a ragtag group because it was composed of several parts. In the end, Li Lu was also severely defeated.
If the miners were still a little afraid of the official army, so they did not pursue Li Lu's army after they won the battle. Otherwise, the losses of Li Lu's army would have been even greater.
The occurrence of this situation made the private mine owners Wan Yuanwai and Li Lu worried. Because those private mines are illegal after all, it is impossible to go to the higher-level government to ask for reinforcements to uphold justice. But Li Lu was inexplicably
After suffering this defeat, I didn’t want Shangfeng to know about it, and he would be punished inexplicably.
But the matter of the horse bandits occupying the private mines must be solved. In the end, Li Lu thought of Wu Shigong, his brother-in-law, and the force in Wu Shigong's hands. When he raised his ideas with the private mine owners, those
Of course, the owner of the private mine agreed as if he had found a life-saving straw. Because no matter what, it was better than having the private mine seized and losing everything.
At this time, they heard that Wu Shigong was celebrating his birthday, so they sent representative Wan Wendong and Li Lu to Runing Mansion with gifts to pay homage to Wu Shigong.