On May 25, Chongzhen received letters from Wang Zhixin, Zhu Cilang and Zhang Tongchang one after another.
After reading Wang Zhixin's letter, Chongzhen was very happy.
Chongzhen didn't care how Xu Mingbi and his grandmother died, nor did he care what the truth was, nor did he care about Xu Yifan's attitude. He only cared about how much money the Xu family had.
Xu Yifan was a first-class "meritorious official" in the Biography of Traitors, and Chongzhen wished he would die sooner.
"Wang Chengen."
"The servant is here."
"Calculate how much these things are worth!" Chongzhen pointed at a sentence on the letter.
Wang Chengen came forward to take a closer look.
The letter said: The Xu family has thousands of acres of land, more than a hundred pawnshops and businesses, and earns hundreds of thousands of yuan in interest every year. There are no less than a thousand servants and hundreds of ships.
Although Wang Chengen is not very smart, he is very good at estimating assets.
Not only him, but the eunuchs in the inner court, especially those in the Eastern Depot, were particularly good at this.
He counted on his fingers and said, "To answer your Majesty, the total value of these properties is at least three and a half million or even four million!"
"Okay, write back to Wang Zhixin and tell him to do it with confidence."
Chongzhen picked up the second letter casually.
He was even happier after reading the content of the letter.
Zhu Cilang said that Nanjing is likely to be in chaos, and that chaos is good, the more chaotic the better.
Chongzhen threw away Zhu Cilang's letter and picked up Zhang Tongchang's letter.
After reading Zhang Tongchang's letter, Chongzhen was no longer happy.
"Hiss—clan!" Chongzhen took a deep breath.
Why did Chongzhen let Zhang Tongchang go south?
No matter what his short-term goal is, his ultimate goal is to make businessmen pay taxes.
The collusion between local officials and businessmen in Fujian and the failure to pay taxes was just an appearance. In reality, local forces represented by large clans were in confrontation with the imperial court.
This reminded Chongzhen of the words of a great man: political power, clan power, divine power, and husband power represent the entire feudal patriarchal ideology and system, and are the four ropes that bind the Chinese people, especially the peasants.
This sentence also made Chongzhen realize how deep the water in the south of the Yangtze River was.
But no matter how deep the water is, he has to take the risk and wade through it.
After all, if you want to recapture Liaodong, you have to send out the navy, and if you send out the navy, you have to be on guard against Zheng Zhilong.
Zheng Zhilong was an official soldier, a pirate, and a businessman.
We should not resort to war unless it is absolutely necessary. The best option at the moment is to engage in a business war with him.
To fight a business war, you need businessmen, and behind the businessmen are clans.
In short, he wants to use clan to fight clan.
After understanding this truth, he began to write back to Zhang Tongchang.
Just after writing the reply, Li Ruolian asked for a meeting outside the palace.
"Let him in." Chongzhen ordered.
After the greeting, Chongzhen glanced at Li Ruolian and asked, "Any news from Nanjing?"
Li Ruo Lian looked around cautiously and said, "Yes, Your Majesty. Someone secretly tampered with the silver-copper ratio of the coins minted by the Nanjing Baoyuan Bureau. They increased the proportion of white copper and reduced the proportion of silver."
"Who did it?"
"According to insiders, the masterminds of this incident should be Liu Kongzhao, the Earl of Chengyi, and Zhu Guobi, the Marquis of Funing."
"What do you mean should be?" Chongzhen looked somewhat displeased.
Although he trusted Li Ruo Lian, he was very disgusted by such ambiguous words. As the commander of the Jinyiwei, he should not say such words.
"There is only one insider, and these words are his one-sided statement, so the Nanjing Jinyiwei should have used three words in the letter." Li Ruolian answered cautiously.
I see...
Chongzhen lowered his head and thought for a while, "Tell the Nanjing Jinyiwei to keep the insiders dormant and not expose themselves."
"The issue of counterfeiting coins in Nanjing..." Li Ruolian asked.
"Pretend you don't know. For the next few months, don't care, don't hear, and don't ask."
Li Ruolian didn't dare to ask more questions. The Ming emperor in front of him must have his reasons for doing so.
"I'll take my leave." Li Ruolian bowed and left.
At the end of May, war reports came from various places.
The three border areas of Shaanxi, Xuanfu and Datong, all encountered the situation of Mongolian cavalry looting from the south.
The Mongols had no choice but to do so.
During the Little Ice Age, the global climate entered a cold period, which affected the Central Plains and the northern grasslands even more.
The sky is vast, the wilderness is boundless, and the wind blows the grass low, and you can see cattle and sheep on the grassland?
Sorry, that was a dream.
The real grassland is covered with yellow sand, and weak grass grows on the barren soil.
The cows looked at it and shook their heads, the sheep looked at it and sighed, and the war horses looked at it and shed tears.
I can’t eat enough. I can’t eat enough at all!
After finally feeding the cattle and sheep, a heavy snowstorm in winter froze them all to death.
This shows how poor the Mongolians’ living conditions are!
The Mongols moved south to plunder the people living on the border, and the border soldiers sent troops to meet the enemy.
Both sides won and lost.
Generally speaking, the army won more battles than it lost, and the few defeats were due to the generals' greed for merit and reckless behavior, which led to ambushes by the enemy during the pursuit.
Chongzhen did not express his anger in his edict. After all, many soldiers' families were border residents, and they chased the enemy for revenge.
As the number of Mongols' raids to the south increased, Chongzhen decided to fight another small-scale battle on the grassland.
Let the Mongols understand the strength of the Ming army and force them to send envoys to pay tribute or temporarily cease fire.
He left the specific implementation to Li Xingzhong and Liu Zhaoji.
On the last day of May, Chongzhen convened a cabinet meeting.
"I wonder why Your Majesty has summoned me here?" asked the Chief Minister of the Cabinet, Fan Jingwen, bowing.
"Liaodong!" Chongzhen said these two words directly.
The cabinet ministers held their breath and looked at Chongzhen.
Fan Jingwen was a little worried: "Your Majesty, now that silver coins are about to enter the market, the people are taking a wait-and-see attitude. If the silver coins are not promoted smoothly, there will be a brief chaos in various places. Secondly, a major mining case occurred in Nanjing, and the people in Jiangnan are panicking. Sending troops to recover Liaodong at this time seems a bit... inappropriate."
"We second the motion." The other cabinet ministers saluted.
Chongzhen had a blank expression on his face: "Of course I know that it is not wise to mention the recovery of Liaodong at this time, but the purpose of training troops is to fight. Officers and soldiers from all over the country, especially the newly recruited navy, have not yet been baptized by war. They cannot become elite troops just by training."
"What does your majesty mean?"
"Let the navy go to southern Liaoning to take a look at the local coastal defense situation."
Fan Jingwen nodded but was a little worried. He frowned and asked, "Your Majesty appointed Yuan Shu as the governor of Denglai because you want to use Yuan Keli's naval and land warfare method to recover southern Liaoning. I wonder if my guess is correct?"
"That's right," Chongzhen said directly.
Anyone with a discerning eye knew his purpose, so there was no need for Chongzhen to hide it.
"I think we should not show the strength of our navy to the Jiannu at this time, otherwise it will give the enemy time to prepare. I suggest temporarily hiding our naval forces in the Denglai area, and at the same time order Yuan Shu to strengthen training in Denglai, wait for the right time to launch a sudden attack and catch the Jiannu off guard." Fan Jingwen proposed.
Chongzhen laughed and said, "Minister Fan is wrong! Although a surprise attack can win a battle, it can only win one or two battles, not a long-term victory."
"What is your majesty doing?"
"Drag the Jiannu into the trap of building a navy."
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