Qiming 1158

Chapter 706 Lin'an City with Soaring Prices
Hearing Shi Hao's words, Zhao Tan's expression changed and he sighed heavily.

"Teacher, do you still want me to surrender? The battle hasn't been decided yet, and Da Song has not been helpless, so you let me surrender? I can't do this kind of thing!"

Shi Hao sighed.

"Your Majesty, Liu Qi was defeated, the royal power was defeated, and the forbidden army was also defeated. The three troops in the Jianghuai area were defeated by the Ming army. The Ming army drove straight in. It is only more than 300 miles away from Lin'an. If you continue, how can this battle be fought? "

"The king's power has not yet been determined to fail! Maybe there is an army that can cut off the Ming army's food supply! As long as we resist the Ming army's offensive in Huzhou, it will be enough to turn the tide of the battle and let the Ming army suffer its own consequences!"

Zhao Tan waved his hand: "All in all, I will never admit defeat in this battle, and I will never lose! The first battle since I became emperor, although it is not what I want to happen, but now I have no choice. Must fight!"

Zhao Tan's expression was very determined, and his words were full of non-negotiable determination.

Shi Hao wanted to continue to persuade, but Zhao Tan refused to accept it.

"Teacher, I've made it very clear. It seems like my destiny to face such a thing as soon as I ascended the throne, but I never believe that I am destined to achieve nothing and can only be an incompetent emperor who surrendered as soon as he ascended the throne! I will never believe it!
If God destined me to be an incompetent emperor who can accomplish nothing, then let the Ming army break through Lin'an, humiliate me wantonly, and even kill me, but it is absolutely impossible for me to surrender and kneel!I am the descendant of Taizu, and the descendants of Taizu will never bow! "

Zhao Tan's will to resist is very firm and will never surrender.

As a descendant of Zhao Kuangyin, he decided to show the world the difference between him and Zhao Guangyi's descendants with practical actions.

Seeing that persuasion was useless, Shi Hao had no choice but to retire, thinking about what to do after the defeat of Song Dynasty.

The Ming Kingdom is sure that the lion's opening will definitely make the Song Dynasty very uncomfortable, but how to mediate through diplomatic means to win a diplomatic victory for the Song Dynasty is a skill.

Weak country diplomacy is not necessarily without a chance of victory, that's for sure.

Although only a relative victory.

Since Shi Hao's persuasion was meaningless, the rest of the courtiers who hoped to persuade Zhao Tan to surrender naturally gave up and no longer tried to persuade Zhao Tan to give up the battle.

But the gathering of more and more bad news made the court turbulent, and Lin'an city turbulent.

There was news from Jiaxing Prefecture that the Navy Division dispatched troops to land in Jiaxing Prefecture, and destroyed several very important salt fields in Jiaxing Prefecture.

They killed the salt officials, looted all the salt cubes, destroyed all the salt-making tools, and sent people to be stationed in the local area, making the salt fields unable to operate and produce salt.

Now Jiaxing Prefecture is shaking and uneasy, and many people choose to take their families and take their mouths to escape to a safer place further north. The order in Jiaxing Prefecture is very chaotic, and the armed forces are seriously insufficient. As long as the Ming army launches an attack, Jiaxing Prefecture will definitely not be able to hold on.

The salt tax was a very important fiscal revenue in the Southern Song Dynasty, and it was also a necessary material for people's survival. The officials did not expect that the Ming army navy would actually start to attack the salt field.

Moreover, since they attacked the salt fields in Jiaxing Prefecture, it is hard to say that they would not attack the salt fields in other areas. If the main salt fields in the coastal areas were attacked and controlled by the Ming army, then the Southern Song Dynasty would face an extremely serious salt panic.

Although there is well salt in Sichuan, it cannot quench thirst from far away!

That's not the only bad news, there's bad news.

The Ming army navy blocked Suzhou Ocean, intercepted ships from all over the world to and from Lin'an, seized the ships, and drove all the people on board to the shore, triggering a wave of refugees.

They lost their livelihood and suffered heavy losses. They turned to the local Southern Song government for help. The government was as big as a fight, and they didn't know how to deal with it, so they could only throw the pot at Lin'an.

But Lin'an is also very difficult.

Since the Ming army took control of Suzhou Ocean, there has been no ship carrying supplies from Suzhou Ocean to Lin'an for several days. The city of Lin'an is facing a serious shortage of supplies, and there is no solution in a short period of time.

The direct consequence of this situation is that many things in Lin'an City began to rise in price.

Because of this wave of price hikes, some profiteers tried to seize the opportunity to make a fortune in the country, although there was no shortage of sources, but they followed suit.

The first is the rise in food prices.

For the feudal dynasties, whenever there is turmoil or any unrest, food prices are always the first to rise, just like a harbinger of bad times, as long as food prices rise, turmoil will appear immediately.

This time, too, when the news that Suzhou Yang was blocked came, the price of food in Lin'an went up.

It is obvious that most of the food in Lin'an does not arrive by sea, and land and water transportation is the bulk, but it doesn't matter. The profiteers who smelled the business opportunity still raised the food price collectively at the first time, and began to drive the market to panic, thinking about taking advantage of the chaos. A wave of national distress.

These grain merchants often have their own channels. They know that the Ming army cannot really threaten Lin'an City for the time being, and that Lin'an City is still safe, but the people of Lin'an will definitely panic. If they don't take this opportunity to make a fortune, when will they wait?
Grain merchants began to act, the market began to fluctuate, the people began to become unstable, and the wave of panic buying began to appear.

Seeing that the grain merchants made a fortune, other merchants were naturally not to be outdone, and immediately began to raise prices.

For example, oil prices, cloth prices, and charcoal prices, the prices in the Lin'an market are like runners hearing the gunshot, and the whole line goes up at the sound of an order.

A lot of daily necessities are still a few cents a pound in the morning, but in the afternoon they become more than ten cents a pound. The upward trend in prices is ecstasy.

Prices have risen, and Lin'an residents have suffered.

Lin'an residents can earn an average of [-] pennies a day, which seems a lot, but basically they are the Moonlight Clan. Once prices fluctuate, their lives are unsustainable.

As a result, the people complained and were very dissatisfied with this, and there were people who shouted at the gates of major shops and even started fighting, causing one civil dispute after another, and causing the Lin'an County Government responsible for the management to be quite a headache.

Lin'an county magistrate reported that if this situation continues, it may affect the stability and popular sentiment of the entire Lin'an city.

On the one hand, Zhao Tan issued a government decree to strictly prohibit the increase in the prices of the daily needs of the people, and sent people to arrest a group of profiteers who wanted to increase prices, suppressing a wave of prices, and then sent people to Jiaxing Prefecture and the coast. The region understands the situation and conducts further investigation.

And once these things happen, they are not easy to solve, they will be very difficult.

Zhao Tan had just become the emperor, so he was inexperienced in this matter, so he could only pull the ministers to constantly consider, think about the situation, and think about ways to break the situation. .

The prices were forcibly controlled by administrative means, but the merchants were dissatisfied and began to reduce the scale of sales, selling in fixed quantities every day, while stocks lasted, so that there were situations in the market where people could not buy things with money.

As a result, the underground black market in Lin'an City suddenly became lively.

It is precisely the so-called policy and countermeasures, because many merchants are involved in high officials and nobles, and no matter how Zhao Tan orders, it cannot solve the actual difficulties.

The government of the Southern Song Dynasty was rotten here, and the actions of the Ming army were unambiguous. On April 22, the vanguard of the Ming army arrived in Changxing County, directly attacked Changxing County, and Changxing County fell in an instant.

The next target is Huzhou.

At sunset on the 23rd, the vanguard of the Ming army arrived in Fucheng, Huzhou.

In the early days, Huzhou Fucheng was Wucheng County. In the Northern Song Dynasty, in order to celebrate the surrender of King Wuyue, [-] townships in the southeast of Wucheng County were divided into Gui'an County. The two counties are governed by the same city. They are also the capital of Huzhou. Rich.

When the Ming army arrived in Huzhou, Zhao Mi, the commander-in-chief of the front office, had already been stationed in Fucheng for a while, and he had spent a lot of time setting up the city defense. Ready.

However, when the preparations were done, the Song army had no will to fight. Some military facilities outside the city on the hills and highlands could have been able to protect the safety of Huzhou City, but when the Ming army formed an attack, the Song army always Collapse quickly.

The routine of the Ming army's attack has not changed. Big rockets and thunder cannons plus ordinary stone bombardment, and then infantry arrays to attack.

When the Song army attacked from a distance, they could often insist on fighting back, posing a certain threat to the Ming army. Then, when the Ming army launched an infantry attack, the Song army could not resist and quickly retreated.

Using this method, in less than a day, on April 25, the vanguard of the Ming army advanced to the city of Fucheng. Looking at the panic-stricken Song army at the top of the city, they launched a siege operation without saying a word.

Yangzhou did not attack, mainly to speed up the progress of the war and reduce food loss.

Huzhou must attack, in order to use the waterway controlled by Huzhou to go directly south to Lin'an, and the Song army in Huzhou is far stronger than Yangzhou.

(End of this chapter)