Li Xunxue, the Minister of Rites, died of a normal illness.
When Wang Yuan returned to Guizhou to get married, Li Xunxue suddenly fell ill, and the seal of the Ministry of Rites was handed over to Wang Zan, the right minister.
The new Minister of Rites was named Mao Cheng. Since the emperor was not in Beijing, the imperial concubine presided over the court promotion on behalf of the prince, and the ministers jointly recommended Mao Cheng to be the minister. In fact, he was from Yang Tinghe. Lao Yang was very good at liaison, and I didn't know that he gave it to Lu
What's the benefit? They actually let Lu Wan's faction also vote for them.
In other words, when Wang Yuan and the emperor returned from the south, the power of the Ministry of Rites returned to Yang Tinghe's hands.
At the same time, the Minister of Household Affairs has also been replaced.
Shi Jie was a true Qingliu, not someone who was just trying to gain fame. He tried to stop Zhu Houzhao from going south to no avail, and he went back and forth every three days to persuade him to return. As a result, the emperor was stunned and did not return to Beijing for a year. Shi Jie was so angry that he went back to his hometown to "recuperate".
Strictly speaking, this is an absence from duty and could result in deprivation of honors if pursued.
But the imperial court could not be so cold. The imperial concubine sent people to visit the patient many times and asked Shi Jie to return to Beijing as soon as possible to be the Minister of Household Affairs. As a result, Shi Jie actually fell ill and contracted a cold on the way home. His age caused a problem.
He had many old illnesses and could only lie in the hospital bed and drink medicine all day long.
Therefore, the imperial concubine once again presided over the court recommendation, and the ministers elected Huang Ke to be the Minister of Household Affairs.
Wang Yuan's father-in-law took charge of the household department, which was purely the result of compromise among many parties.
Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu mainly recommended Yang Tan, Yang Yiqing, Jin Gui, Wang Qiong mainly recommended Yang Lian, and Lu Wan mainly recommended Zhang Jun. The three parties couldn't argue, and Ting promoted twice in succession. The third time Wang Qiong suddenly recommended Huang Ke.
Huang Ke was already serving as the Left Minister, and he had previously served as the Right Minister of the Household Affairs Department, so he was fully qualified to be promoted to the Minister of Household Affairs.
In addition, Huang Ke is Wang Yuan's father-in-law, and he usually likes to make friends without offending others, so he immediately won the votes of many ministers. Lu Wan could not fight against the other two factions, so he simply recommended Huang Ke instead, Quan thought it was to show good relations with Wang Yuan
.
Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu were helpless, and Huang Ke was Yang Tinghe's confidant before, so he just agreed.
Wang Yuan and the emperor were busy messing around in the local area, and all the officials were busy messing around in the court, which was quite unrelated.
It's morning again.
Wang Yuan suddenly pointed at the wat tablet and came out of the queue: "Your Majesty, the Ming Dynasty has not minted money for almost forty years. There are not enough coins in the world for a long time. Please cast the Zhengde Tongbao!"
Wang Yuan had already reported this matter in advance and the cabinet had approved it.
Zhu Houzhao nodded and said: "If you agree to mint money, let Erlang do it."
Yang Tinghe and Liang Chu looked at each other and felt something was wrong, because the cabinet approved it to be handled by the Ministry of Household Affairs.
Liang Chu hurriedly came out and said: "Your Majesty, the matter of coining money should be handled by the general manager of the Ministry of Household Affairs and the Ministry of Works. Wang Shilang is an important member of the Ministry of Rites. According to the regulations, he cannot also be in charge of the affairs of the Ministry of Household Affairs. Your Majesty, please choose another person."
Zhu Houzhao began to perform according to the script: "Making money is a major matter for the country. I believe in Wang Erlang. I ordered Wang Yuan, the left minister of the Ministry of Rites, to supervise the Baoquan Bureau in various places and take charge of the matter of coining money in the Ming Dynasty. Erlang, remember, what I want to cast is new
You have to think carefully about money and coin styles."
"Your Majesty, think twice, the six departments must not make mistakes in their important tasks." All the officials tried to dissuade him.
Zhu Houzhao immediately compromised: "Then I will order Huang Ke, the Minister of Household Affairs, to personally supervise this matter. Wang Yuan, the left minister of the Ministry of Rites, will be responsible for co-organizing the casting of coins. The style of new coins will be formulated by the Ministry of Rites. Doesn't this break the rules?"
The officials were then satisfied that although Weng and his son-in-law were indistinguishable from each other, the Ministry of Husbandry and the Ministry of Rites really couldn't mess around - at least not in a formal way!
After retiring from the court, Huang Ke held a banquet at his son-in-law's home and asked, "A good son-in-law, I'm afraid it's more than just making money, right?"
Wang Yuan smiled and said: "Master Taishan, please wait and see. The new coin-making machine has been made and details are still being improved."
Chinese coins have always needed to be minted, while European coins were made by melting gold and silver into small pieces and then hitting them with a hammer to print out the corresponding patterns.
Just twenty years ago, a coin-making machine appeared in Italy, using a screw press. It had to be operated manually and could not rely on animal power or water power. It could only press out gold and silver coins. Copper coins were too hard to press out patterns at all -
- Until the late Qing Dynasty, this kind of coin-making machine (improved version) was still the mainstream in Europe, but it was changed to press coin molds, and the coin-making was handed over to steam engines.
School of Physics.
The craftsman Lingxia spent several years and finally completed the modification of the steam engine. The two-way cylinder, external condensation, and the efficiency are several times that of the first generation version. Unfortunately, the gasket is still made of cotton, which is not as airtight as the rubber gasket.
It has been almost a year since Wang Yuan wrote to Ling Xia to develop a coin-making machine. This disciple gathered a group of classmates and worked on the matter for more than half a year, producing several versions.
"Sir, look!"
What was placed in front of Wang Yuan was not one machine, but a set of three supporting machines.
The first one is a large scale, which was made by Wang Yan and others. It can weigh 300 kilograms of materials at a time with very, very, very high accuracy. The raw materials for minting coins are weighed on this scale, and then the proportions are mixed, so that each coin can be weighed.
The coins all have the same alloy proportions.
There is currently no engraving machine, and the coin molds require manual engraving.
There is no mold turning equipment, and it is all made by hand, so there must be slight differences in coins from different places.
The second one is a flaking machine, a steam rolling mill. The manual rolling mill is not complicated. It is said that Leonardo da Vinci invented it. Physics disciples designed a simple rolling mill by themselves, and it is driven by steam. The cast gold and silver are
Copper bars can be used to make coins after being rolled into standard thickness using a flake mill.
The third one is a cake press, which is a steam punch press that presses metal sheets into the shape of coins.
It doesn't seem like there are many machines, but the physics disciples have worked hard and researched and produced various parts countless times.
Compared with modern coin-making machines, the craftsmanship is very rough, and manual intervention is often required in the intermediate process. Moreover, there is no edge rolling machine. If the coins produced in this way have gear-like edges, the edges of the coins will easily be worn during use.
Wang Yuan took the machine to the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Household Affairs and asked for the formula for coining coins in the past. Of course, the coins are not pure silver, but pure copper. They are all alloys. Ancient Chinese copper coins are also copper alloys and need to be added with lead, tin and other substances.
In the winter of the 14th year of Zhengde's reign, Wang Yuan had been busy with this matter and spent three months adjusting the formula.
The style design also requires a lot of thought, and the materials should not be used too much, so as not to be melted down by the private sector. The materials should not be used too poorly, leaving room for private coiners to make profits, otherwise counterfeit coins will inevitably become rampant.
During the trial production of coins, another serious problem was discovered. After the metal sheets were cold-rolled into cakes, they would become hard and brittle, which was not conducive to suppressing patterns. Wang Yuan and his disciples thought of many ways, and finally experimented with the method of annealing.
But after annealing, the surface will oxidize and turn black.
If you want to remove the oxide layer, you have to throw it into an acid solution and wash it. Wang Yuan doesn't know that this can be done, and he doesn't bother to care about the aesthetics. The blackness of the coins is a sign of anti-counterfeiting - such as the coins painted with Grand Feu lacquer, so he specially
Copper coins are baked black to make them more difficult to prevent counterfeiting.
In the late spring of the fifteenth year of Zhengde, Wang Yuan came to his father-in-law's house again.
"Is this the new money you made?" Huang Ke was quite surprised.
There are three types of copper coins: one-cent, two-cent, and five-cent. Even the one-cent copper coins are larger and thicker than those in circulation on the market, and they are black, shiny and have a good texture.
There are the words "Zhengde Tongbao" on the front, and patterns on the back, with small characters such as "Dang X Wen" and "Zhengde Fifteenth Year System" printed on it (year coins were very popular in the Song Dynasty and occasionally appeared in the Ming and Qing Dynasties). The edges are in the shape of fine gears.
, which is directly pressed out when pressing the cake.
Huang Ke was not a fool. He was very familiar with the affairs of the Ministry of Household Affairs. He picked up a copper coin and asked: "Such a beautifully made copper coin is only worth one penny. Will you not lose money by casting money like this?"
Wang Yuan shook his head and said: "No, there is still money to be made. As long as there is enough copper, I can make as much as you want, and I can make as much money as you want."
"Is this really true?" Huang Ke was overjoyed and clapped his hands in praise. "If we can really make money in large quantities, within three to five years, counterfeit money will disappear from the market."
There is a profound reason why bad money drives out good money.
If you can't get a complete set of coin-making machines, private counterfeiting will definitely lose money. If you want not to lose money, you have to cut corners when making counterfeit coins. Normal people can distinguish the counterfeit coins.
In the beginning, wealthy private households would definitely collect these new coins and only use low-quality and counterfeit coins. But when the new money keeps flowing out, it loses its collection value, and the bad coins are automatically eliminated by the market.
Huang Ke picked up a larger silver coin, which was still black: "This is also a copper coin? Why is there no hole in the middle?"
Wang Yuan explained: "This is a silver dollar. There are one yuan, five jiao and one jiao. There are three systems in total."
"Jiao" and "fen" are both units of silver measurement in the Ming Dynasty. A jiao of silver is the corner of a silver ingot cut off, and a penny of silver is 0.01 taels of silver.
The silver dollar made by Wang Yuan has "Zhengde Yuanbao" on the front and Zhu Houzhao's head on the back.
Don't worry about the circulation credit of silver coins, because historically, foreign silver coins were popular in Jiangnan in the late Ming Dynasty.
Just because the Ming Dynasty silver coins were complicated to use, foreign standard silver coins were intuitive, so the people particularly liked foreign silver coins and gave nicknames to the silver coins of various countries. For example, the Spanish silver coins were called "Benyang", and based on the different patterns, the silver coins of various countries were called
Big bun, small bun, pompadour, bat, double pillar, horse sword, Wapo, Sangong, Xiaohua, Xiaojie, rotten board and so on.
The Ming Dynasty silver dollar is also very intuitive. One silver coin is one tael, and a five-cent silver coin is worth five qian.
The Ministry of Revenue and the inner government need to cooperate. From now on, when paying officials and soldiers, or when the emperor issues rewards, or when various yamen collect taxes, they will only recognize silver coins and new-style copper coins.
In the summer of the fifteenth year of Zhengde's reign, new money was produced on a small scale in the capital, and its first appearance was to pay wages to officials.