1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2370
Chen Yixin took two sips of hot tea, and the drowsiness that was not much drowsiness was quickly driven away. He immediately asked Ma Yuling to go back to the room to rest, and planned to take a look at some official documents that had yet to be processed.

The population and area of ​​the area under the Jinzhou rule are relatively limited. In terms of civil affairs, there are not too many things that Chen Yixin needs to ask personally.However, when he is free, he will still take a look at the recent data and various reports compiled by various departments, as well as some information forwarded from other regions.

Especially the information from Shandong, Chen Yixin will devote time to pay attention to it.He is still in charge of the control areas of Zhifu Island and Fushan County. In the winter of last year, there was news that the local government in Dengzhou was eyeing the Fushan Copper Mine. Although nothing happened this winter, Chen Yixin did not dare To the effect, we have been following up the local situation.

Zhifu Island and Fushan Copper Mine have always been directly managed by the Haihan military, while a considerable part of the local civil affairs, commerce, transportation and other affairs in Fushan County, including dealing with the government on their behalf, have been handed over to the The Ma family was appointed to take charge.

Strictly speaking, this approach is of course suspected of private use of public equipment.After all, after mastering the resources given by Haihan, the Ma family turned them into a lot of wealth with a little use, and quickly became the most powerful local power in the Dengzhou area. This is an objective fact that no one can refute.

Now Majiazhuang has developed into Majia Town and has become a well-known trade center in the Shandong Peninsula. There are even many merchants who transport goods from Hebei, Henan and other places.And the Ma family took advantage of the advantage of the home court, coupled with the various exclusive management rights granted by Shanghai Han, and they only needed to do some simple operations with the left hand in and the right hand out, and they had already made a lot of money.

After the Ma family rose to power, their influence in the local area also increased, and even overwhelmed the Fushan county government.Although Ma Dongqiang has no official status, he has actually become the invisible magistrate of Fushan County. In many cases, the one in the county government is not as effective as him.

Chen Yixin's support for Ma's family seems to be out of order, but in fact it is the practice that the executive committee acquiesces to.These areas controlled by Haihan in the Ming Dynasty not only need some local people who are familiar with the situation and have relevant interests to work, but also let the Ming people realize the various privileges and benefits that can be obtained by working for Haihan.As for Chen Yixin's father-in-law, Ma Dongqiang, whose family interests have been firmly bound to Haihan, he is undoubtedly an extremely suitable support object.

In other words, the Ma family is the "role model" that Haihan intends to set up. The rapid rise of the Ma family is to make Ming people realize the benefits of cooperating with Haihan.

On the other hand, for the sake of their own family interests and long-term development, the Ma family will take the initiative to maintain the cooperative relationship with Haihan, and strive to complete various tasks assigned by Haihan, including some that should have been handled by the Fushan County Government. Affairs - Supporting local tyrants to overthrow the local government is one of Haihan's usual methods in the process of external expansion.

Of course, Chen Yixin didn't completely ignore Shandong. He asked the Ma family to submit written reports on a regular basis, to report all kinds of local situations in Fushan County truthfully, and to implement various instructions issued by him.To a certain extent, the Ma family is actually equivalent to the grassroots administrative department under the jurisdiction of Haihan, but it has not been given a formal establishment at present.

Chen Yixin quickly found the report sent by Shandong from the documents on the desk. It was a large envelope with Ma Dongqiang's personal seal and wax seal. There was no other writing on the cover, only a military postmark, indicating that the report was It was sent to Jinzhou through the military's postal channel, which can also be regarded as one of the little privileges that the Ma family can enjoy.

Chen Yixin had the impression that this report should have been delivered the day before yesterday, but in the past two or three days, he has been busy dealing with the Qing Dynasty's request for a truce, so he hasn't had time to unpack it for review.

Chen Yixin scraped off the wax seal on the envelope with a paper cutter on the table, and pulled out the letter paper inside.Chen Yixin could recognize the familiar handwriting on the paper as Jiang Sheng's handwriting at a glance.Usually, the written reports sent by Fushan County are written by Jiang Sheng. After all, he is Ma Dongqiang’s brother-in-law, and he is also half of the Ma family. Sheng, this kind of errand that requires a certain level of writing skills, only he is the most competent.

Jiang Sheng obviously knew what Chen Yixin was most concerned about at the moment, so he reported the recent developments of the Dengzhou government to him at the beginning of the article.

The Dengzhou government has not mobilized troops to Fushan County recently, but there have been other new moves. The Fushan County Government has received an order from Chen Zhongsheng, the prefect of Dengzhou, asking him to try his best to organize the civilian husbands and veterans in the county to go to Dengzhou Prefecture as soon as possible. check in.

Naturally, this abnormal phenomenon could not be concealed from the eyes and ears of the Ma family. After investigation, they learned a shocking news.

Since the Qing army broke through the Great Wall last winter, it went all the way to the south and killed it.Among them, the troops led by Dorgon went all the way to 43 cities in the Gyeonggi area.But this time the Qing army did not stop and retreat to the north after they succeeded as in previous years. Instead, they seized the gap when the Ming army did not dare to go out to fight in the city, bypassed the capital, entered Hebei, and went straight to Shandong.

Yang Sichang, the newly appointed minister of the Ministry of War, believed that Dezhou was the only place for the Qing army to go south, so he sent a message to Yan Jizu, the governor of Shandong, to concentrate his forces in Dezhou to stop the Qing army.

Mr. Yan's predecessors, Zhu Dadian and Li Maofang, did not end well in the post of governor of Shandong. One was the Dengzhou Rebellion during their term of office, and the other was impeached for embezzling military pay. They all left in despair.He didn't want to continue the bad luck of his predecessor, so he wanted to do his best to make some achievements in his tenure. He had already transferred the troops in Shandong to Dezhou to gather troops in accordance with Yang Sichang's request, trying to make some achievements on the battlefield to show his own strength. ability.

As one of Shandong's main combat forces, the Dengzhou garrison is naturally on the list of orders to be mobilized. Therefore, after the Dengzhou government government expressed its position on the Fushan Copper Mine last year, there was no further action. This is one of the main reasons.The garrison has been transferred away, so naturally there is no way to continue to deal with the issue of the Fushan Copper Mine with a tough attitude.

But Yang Sichang, Minister of the Ministry of War, was originally a peace advocate. Since he took office, he has persuaded Chongzhen to negotiate peace with the Manchus, but he was impeached by the court officials, and Chongzhen did not dare to express his support explicitly, so he failed.It is conceivable that such a person organizes and directs the blocking war against the Qing army.

Yang Sichang believed that the Qing army must attack Dezhou when it goes south, but he did not take into account that Dezhou is a plain area with a radius of [-] miles. Not only is there no danger to defend, but also the speed of the cavalry advancing on this terrain is extremely fast. It is not a situation that can be solved by defending the city .

And the actual situation was exactly like this. The Qing army detected the signs of the Ming army's mobilization, so they let the main force bypass Dezhou without fighting, and went directly southward to Jinan City.

By the time the Ma family heard the news, it was said that the Qianfeng Battalion of the Qing Army had arrived outside Jinan City, and it seemed that they planned to raise troops to attack Jinan City.As for the garrison in Jinan City, it is said that a considerable part of it has been transferred to Dezhou for garrison, so its city defense is already in jeopardy.

The transfer order Fushan County received was not to send these county-level armed personnel to Jinan City, which is [-] miles away, for reinforcements, but to let them go to Dengzhou City to temporarily replace the local garrison, because almost all the remaining Ming troops in Dengzhou He has been transferred to Jinan to fight the fire, and now he can only mobilize manpower from the subordinate counties for emergency response.

Jiang Sheng spent a lot of space explaining the connection between this series of events, but Chen Yixin still didn't fully believe the information he provided after reading it. , must have noticed these situations, but they need more time to verify their authenticity. If the situation is true, it is estimated that a more detailed report will be sent to Golden State later.

But Chen Yixin thinks that the actual situation is probably not much different from Jiang Sheng’s description. He sat upright for a while, then walked to the bookshelf, took out a box from the bottom shelf, took the key to unlock the box, and took out a booklet from inside , Return to the desk and sit down.

There was no handwriting on the cover of this booklet. After Chen Yixin opened it, the contents inside were all small characters the size of mung beans, obviously not the fineness that the printing technology of this year could print.

The booklet that Chen Yixin looked at is an extremely important reference material. Its content is the chronicle of major events in the late Ming Dynasty. It is all materials sorted out by professionals before the journey, printed and bound into a book, and handed over to the overseas colonies in the direction of Daming. Those who carry.

The importance of this thing is self-evident, and if the content spreads out, it will cause big troubles, so the traversers usually keep it in their collections, and only take it out to read when they are alone in private.

Of course, the same information is also stored in the personal computers carried by the traversers, but computers are inconvenient to use in overseas colonies, and it is obviously much more convenient to read the brochures.

What Chen Yixin read was the records of major events in the 12th and 1638th years of Chongzhen, that is, from 1639 to 10.It took him about [-] minutes to slowly digest these contents, and combined with the information provided by Jiang Sheng, he already had a general idea of ​​the current situation in Shandong in his mind.

The winter of 1638 was originally a good situation for Ming Dynasty. Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting planned to ambush Li Zicheng in Tongguan Nanyuan and wiped out almost all of his armed forces. Heavy blow.

But this battle had just ended, and before Daming had time to enjoy the respite he had finally won, the Qing army went south to knock down the pass, easily breaking through the border defenses and entering the Gyeonggi area.Although the capital is difficult to break through, the surrounding small towns cannot withstand the cavalry of the Qing army led by Dorgon and Yuetuo. The battle situation is just like what Jiang Sheng said in his letter. Lost Hebei.

Among them, it is worth mentioning that Lu Xiangsheng, the minister of the Ministry of War, led his army to meet the enemy, was surrounded by the Qing army in Julu, Hebei, and finally died in battle.At that time, Gao Qiqian, the eunuch who was the main peace faction with Shangshu Yang Sichang of the Ministry of War, commanded tens of thousands of Guanning cavalry, and sat idly by in a place less than fifty miles away from where Lu Xiangsheng was surrounded. kill.

For Daming, Lu Xiangsheng's death in battle was not only the loss of a famous anti-Qing general, but also a great loss for the officials of the main combat faction in the court.

However, in this time and space where Haihan has already intervened, there are still some uncertainties about whether Lu Xiangsheng died in the battle of Julu as he did in history.Because some of the weapons that Haihan sold to Daming before were sold to Lu Xiangsheng's subordinates Yang Guozhu, Hu Dawei, Yang Tinglin and others to ensure that these weapons could be used in the anti-Qing war.

If Lu Xiangsheng's troops can make good use of these weapons produced by Haihan, then they will definitely have the power to fight against the main force of the Qing army.However, in the report sent by Jiang Sheng, there was no mention of Lu Xiangsheng's death in battle at the beginning of the year. Perhaps this has changed the original history.

But the life and death of Lu Xiangsheng is not the real focus of Chen Yixin's attention. What he cares about is the result of this war in history.

According to historical records, the Qing army directly broke through the city of Jinan, and Zhu Youshu, the king of Germany, and Zhu Enshang, the general of Fengguo, were captured and slaughtered by the Qing army.

The Qing army's invasion lasted for half a year, and it was not until the ninth day of March that they left the Qingshan Pass and returned to Liaodong.In this battle, the Qing army invaded Daming with a depth of 46 li, captured a population of [-], and took away more than [-] taels of gold and nearly one million taels of silver.As for the number of people whose families were destroyed and their wives and children separated because of this, there is no more specific data to test in history.

After looking through this period of history, Chen Yixin's heart is also quite heavy.Although he is a decisive general, he will inevitably be touched when he sees the huge disasters brought by the war to the civilians.But he also knows that his ability is limited, and he is unlikely to change the real historical trend. He can only see how to benefit Haihan as much as possible in the troubled times. The speed can be slower.

Chen Yixin put the booklet back into the box and took out another booklet.This book is also a chronicle, but the content is only limited to Shandong.After Chen Yixin looked through it, he found something worth noting.

In 1639, that is, this year, Shandong will usher in a severe drought throughout the territory. Due to the serious damage caused by the invasion of the Qing army and the slow recovery of agricultural production after the war, it is inevitable that there will be a large area of ​​drought this year. famine.In the following year, a large-scale locust plague occurred in Yizhou, Shandong, with hundreds of trees without leaves and thousands of miles of red land.In the spring of 1641, another plague broke out, and countless people died of illness.In other words, in the next three years, there will be a large number of refugee populations in this place in Shandong, and its scale may far exceed that of the Denglai Rebellion.

(End of this chapter)