prosperous age

The urgent report from Shanxi was like a pebble thrown into a calm pond, creating ripples.

Previously, everyone's attention was focused on Feng Bao, wanting to see what punishment this treacherous official would ultimately receive from the emperor.

However, after learning how severe the disaster was in Shanxi, most officials shifted their attention there.

The Ming Dynasty is now thriving, with the court's fiscal revenue soaring year after year. This is not only due to the recovery of a large amount of back taxes, but also to the huge amount of tax revenue generated by customs duties at the four major foreign trade ports and the exchange of silver through brokerage firms.

In the past, the Ming Dynasty nominally had an annual tax revenue of 30 million taels of silver, but the bulk of it was in-kind taxes such as land tax, with cash amounting to only two or three million taels.

Today, the imperial court's tax revenue is approaching 37 million taels, and its cash revenue is close to 6 million taels, more than doubling.

The Mint of the Ministry of Revenue also consistently contributes 200,000 taels of silver in minting profits to the Ministry of Revenue each year.

Currently, the only coins circulating in the Ming Dynasty are official copper and silver coins. Privately minted coins have completely disappeared from the market. There are indications that some of the newly minted silver coins have been taken away by foreign merchants and are circulating in ports throughout East Asia.

The silver coins minted by the Ming Dynasty were much more attractive than the Mexican peso.

In fact, thanks to China's minting technology, the Spanish peso was ridiculed for a long time as a bunch of silver lumps, and no one thought it was a silver coin.

Especially after seeing the silver coins minted by the Ming Dynasty and coming into contact with the copper coins minted by China a thousand years ago, the foreign merchants themselves no longer had the confidence to say that the silver dollars in their hands were silver coins.

Indeed, no matter how you look at it, their eagle dollar is more like a silver ingot, or rather, a silver ingot that has been bitten countless times.

Just as everyone was discussing the disaster relief efforts in Shanxi, Zhang Xueyan and Chen Kai, who had just left the Ministry of Revenue, returned to their respective offices and immediately gathered their men.

The Ministry of Revenue issued a series of orders, instructing Zhengding Prefecture and Shunde Prefecture, which belong to Beizhili, and Luoyang Prefecture and Huaiqing Prefecture, which belong to Henan Provincial Administration Commission, to immediately open their granaries and transfer grain to Shanxi.

The messenger, carrying documents bearing the official seal of the Ministry of Revenue, left the city and, on horseback, delivered the grain requisition documents to local government offices at breakneck speed.

Meanwhile, the Censorate's Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi circuits selected censors to leave the city overnight and go to Shanxi for inspection.

Although they acted together with the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Chen Kai ultimately chose to go their separate ways, using a combination of overt and covert methods to investigate Shanxi.

In doing so, he was actually reminding the dispatched censors not to try to deceive the emperor.

If their patrols are not thorough, the Embroidered Uniform Guard might discover something amiss and report it to the authorities.

Ultimately, he was also afraid that the censor would quickly fall into depravity after leaving the palace, be defeated by silver bullets, and then the Censorate would lose face.

With the Embroidered Uniform Guard secretly gathering clues and evidence, even if these censors wanted to act on their own, they would have to think twice.

Emperor Wanli, who was in a good mood, was greatly annoyed by Wei Guangde's report on this matter.

With corpses strewn across the land, the imperial court realized that even though the cabinet had issued an emergency disaster relief order, the bitter consequences had already been sown.

"This is my dereliction of duty, and I am willing to accept Your Majesty's punishment."

Wei Guangde admitted his mistake in the Qianqing Palace, but it was merely a gesture in front of the emperor.

Although Emperor Wanli was young, he was well-educated by Zhang Juzheng, and Wei Guangde taught him to see through the surface of events and explore the essence. Therefore, after reading the memorials, he easily discovered that the problem actually lay in Shanxi, and the reason why the court was slow to receive the reports was because there were problems in the Shanxi officialdom.

Considering that Wei Guangde handled the matter without letting Zhang Siwei get involved, the young emperor unconsciously began to imagine something.

"Master Wei, there's no need to blame yourself. I think the problem lies with Shanxi."

This matter will be handled by the cabinet; I will only observe the outcome.

All the convicted officials will be brought back to the capital. I will personally interrogate them to find out why they were so vicious, disregarding the lives of countless people and committing such a horrific act.

Emperor Wanli was indignant. He was young and full of vigor, and he wanted to be a wise and capable ruler. Naturally, he could not tolerate any dissent.

He was determined to bring the person to the capital for a thorough interrogation by the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and to uncover the mastermind behind it all.

Even if he had just used someone to bring down an enemy, if that person had played a dishonorable role in the matter, Emperor Wanli would not hesitate to take action against him.

Upon hearing the emperor's words, Wei Guangde immediately replied, "I have already contacted the Censorate and the Embroidered Uniform Guard, instructing them to conduct a covert investigation of the Shanxi officialdom. I am confident that they will be able to capture all the lawbreakers without leaving any behind."

Emperor Wanli was quite satisfied with Wei Guangde's arrangements, as he knew how to conduct investigations using both overt and covert methods.

This is also because Emperor Wanli had not been in power for long, and many of the powers he had previously relinquished had not yet been taken back. Otherwise, it would have been difficult for a wise and enlightened emperor to accept that his personal army could be commanded by ministers of the outer court.

Even the Grand Secretary is not acceptable.

However, since Wei Guangde had been allowed to use the Embroidered Uniform Guard for his work before, Emperor Wanli had not yet considered this possibility.

When Wei Guangde left the Qianqing Palace again, he was actually a little proud of himself.

He came alone to report the disaster situation in Shanxi this time, without inviting Zhang Siwei and Shen Shixing.

Because Wei Guangde actually had his own plans. It seemed as if he was the one who shouldered everything and bore the emperor's anger alone. If word got out, no one would dare to criticize him. He was a magnanimous chief minister.

In reality, by emphasizing the disaster in Shanxi, a seed of distrust towards Zhang Siwei would be planted in the emperor's mind to some extent.

Zhang Siwei was from Shanxi. Logically, even without reporting through the Shanxi government, he should have known about the situation in Shanxi through letters from home.

However, Zhang Siwei had not revealed any information beforehand.

Of course, this doesn't mean Zhang Siwei knew but didn't report it; perhaps his family kept it from him, but in any case, it was his dereliction of duty.

If Wei Guangde didn't bring him to the Qianqing Palace, he naturally couldn't bring Shen Shixing either, otherwise it would be a clear sign that he didn't trust Zhang Siwei.

This is detrimental to Wei Guangde, who is currently trying to create a peaceful and stable atmosphere within the cabinet, so he simply submitted the report alone.

In this subtle and imperceptible way, he revealed his distrust of Zhang Siwei to the emperor, planting a seed of distrust in the emperor's heart.

No matter how he targets Zhang Siwei in the future, Emperor Wanli will always keep this in mind, which will increase his chances of siding with him.

It's true that doing nothing is not wrong, but sometimes, even if you do nothing, you'll still be taken advantage of, just not as obviously.

For lower-ranking officials, this choice is correct, but for cabinet ministers, actively winning the emperor's favor is the most important thing.

In this matter, what Zhang Siwei should do is to be courageous and take responsibility, proactively admit his mistakes to the emperor, and take the initiative to investigate the matter. Even if his own family is involved, he should put righteousness above family ties and win the emperor's trust.

Without the emperor's trust, anyone who wants to replace Wei Guangde as the chief minister is dreaming.

The emperor would never appoint a cabinet minister who prioritizes his own family over the greater good as Grand Secretary; that would be no different than appointing a thief as a warehouse manager. At this moment, Zhang Siwei was preoccupied with avoiding suspicion and trying his best not to get involved.

Moreover, he genuinely had no idea.

Back in his duty room, Wei Guangde began to process the memorials he had been assigned.

Official business still needed to be done, but in the afternoon, the Ministry of Revenue and the Censorate delivered documents to the Cabinet, informing him that the two major government agencies had begun to handle the matter.

At this moment, Wei Guangde also remembered what Emperor Wanli had said in the Qianqing Palace earlier, hoping to mobilize more elite troops to help in the battle.

After thinking it over, Wei Guangde took out a note, wrote a note, and asked Lu Bu to arrange for someone to deliver it to the Ministry of War.

They could disregard the emperor's will, but they still had to do what needed to be done openly.

After that, naturally, they waited until the end of the day, then called Zhang Siwei and Shen Shixing here to show them the documents submitted by the Ministry of Revenue and the Censorate. That would complete today's task.

The note from Wei Guangde to the Ministry of War ended up in Zhang Ke's hands, which caught his attention.

The main force of the Northern Army was the Liaodong troops, and nearly half of the new recruits trained by Qi Jiguang were deployed as elite troops to the northern front of Iwami to block the troops of the Oda clan and the Hojo clan from advancing south to the Iwami region.

At this time, Liaodong only retained a small number of new troops for support, and with the troops from Jizhou and Xuanfu, the northern defense line was temporarily safe.

This is why the troops from Jizhou were mobilized as reinforcements instead of being immediately dispatched to Japan by ship.

Liaodong, Jizhou, and Xuanda have always been key points of the Ming Dynasty's northern defense line. The reason why the Ming Dynasty dared to mobilize troops from Liaodong for a distant expedition was because Qi Jiguang had built a large number of defensive fortifications in Liaodong in the past two years.

Historically, the main defensive fortifications of the Ming Dynasty during this period were located in Jizhou, but with Qi Jiguang's northward transfer, they were established in Liaodong.

Of course, Dong Yiyuan, who was in charge of Jizhen, also rebuilt a number of fortified towns at important border passes.

Xuanfu, on the other hand, is mostly flat land outside the Great Wall, with almost no passes to defend. So the focus is on training two cavalry battalions.

In particular, because of Ma Fang's strict requirements for training, the thousand-piece breech-loading breech-loading machines made by Weng Wanda were already old and unusable. Therefore, Ma Fang kept asking the Ministry of War for newly cast breech-loading breech-loading machines.

However, the Ministry of War could not produce the firearms that Ma Fang demanded. Now that Ma Gui has taken over as the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu, he is following Ma Fang's plan and hopes that both cavalry battalions can be equipped with a large number of these firearms instead of using three-barreled guns.

Yes, after the breech-loading breech-loading cannons became unusable, the firearms operators had to switch to three-barreled muskets. The Ministry of War sent quite a few of these, which could be used by both cavalry and infantry.

After firing the firearm, it could be used as a hammer in combat, which was indeed very practical.

At this moment, Zhang Ke was calculating which towns in the north could spare troops.

However, no matter how much they calculated, they couldn't seem to find any high-quality recruits.

The Southern Army seems to be at ease for now. Its main land force consists of the land division of the South China Sea Navy and the Zhejiang Army Battalion, which was urgently summoned from Zhejiang. This battalion of soldiers was trained in the style of Qi Jiguang's army and used firearms and the Mandarin Duck Formation to fight the enemy. It has as many as 8,000 men.

On the southern front of Iwami, they could also receive naval assistance, and naturally they were full of confidence against the remnants of the Mori clan.

"Do we really have to call in the wolf soldiers to join the battle?"

At this moment, Zhang Ke recalled the local soldiers he had once commanded, who were brave in battle but lacked discipline.

To be honest, if we only consider the Ming Dynasty's garrison troops, the wolf soldiers were undoubtedly an important fighting force.

However, after seeing the new recruits trained in various towns over the years, Zhang Ke actually paid much less attention to the Wolf Soldiers.

The gap is too wide, unless they are incorporated into the army and transformed from temporarily recruited mercenaries into long-term, organized, and trained soldiers.

After a moment's thought, Zhang Ke finally made a decision: to immediately recruit 3,000 wolf soldiers in Guangxi to supplement the northern army corps as the main armed force for close combat with the Japanese army.

According to intelligence from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Iwami area is hilly with undulating mountains, so these wolf soldiers, who are skilled in mountain warfare, might be very effective.

As for the White-Spear Soldiers, who would later become even more famous, they had not yet truly appeared at this time.

The White-Spear Soldiers first appeared on the battlefield more than ten years later, when the chieftain of Bozhou in the southwest of the Ming Dynasty rebelled.

The imperial court mobilized troops from Huguang, Sichuan, Guizhou and other places, as well as local soldiers recruited by chieftains, to suppress the rebellion of Yang Yinglong in Bozhou. Ma Qiancheng from Shizhu, Sichuan, who was the husband of the famous female general Qin Liangyu, recruited able-bodied men from his clan to form the White Spear Army.

They used ash wood to make spears and trained using the climbing skills of the local Tujia people.

The White-Spear Soldiers made their first real combat appearance, successfully scaling a 90-zhang-high cliff using a "centipede ladder" made of spears and iron rings, capturing a large amount of armor and equipment. This battle made the White-Spear Soldiers famous.

When the White Spear Army was passed down to Qin Liangyu, its achievements in Liaodong not only made the name of the White Spear Army widely known, but also made Qin Liangyu the only female general in the History of Ming Dynasty, with her own biography.

Therefore, Zhang Ke's first thought at this moment was not the non-existent White-Spear Soldiers, but the more widely known Wolf Soldiers.

Having made the decision, Zhang Ke immediately summoned the officials and assigned tasks to them.

On the one hand, he sent a document to Guangxi to summon 3,000 wolf soldiers, and on the other hand, he wrote an official document to report to the imperial court.

Wei Guangde only saw the Ministry of War document the next day and learned that Zhang Ke had added three thousand wolf soldiers to assist in the battle because of the note from the previous day.

However, he didn't say anything. Even if he played the entire match, the total cost would only be an extra 100,000 taels of silver.

In the past, this would have been an enormous expense, but now it's not much at all.

The imperial court began to busy itself with relief efforts in Shanxi, while the Ministry of War continued to make various preparations for the army's eastern expedition. At this time, at the Changlu Saltworks, the Salt Inspector Cao Yikui put down his brush and quietly looked at the nine matters concerning salt administration that had just been completed in front of him.

After years of learning about the salt administration, Cao Yikui, who had become the Salt Inspector, had become increasingly aware of the various problems that existed in the Ming Dynasty's salt administration.

He wanted to gradually change the current corrupt practices in the salt administration and gradually improve it to a more beneficial system for the people.

By this time, the salt administration of the Ming Dynasty had undergone several reforms, making it vastly different from that of the early Ming Dynasty.

The biggest difference lies in the surplus salt. In the past, all salt producers sold their salt to major salt fields, and then it was allocated to salt merchants.

However, nowadays salt producers no longer sell their salt to salt fields, but directly to salt merchants.

Salt merchants transported and sold salt using salt permits, while salt fields collected a fixed salt tax from the merchants every year. This weakened the Ming Dynasty's control over the salt industry. Although salt tax revenue seemed to have increased significantly compared to the past, in reality, only a small portion of the enormous salt tax could be collected.

Because salt merchants colluded with each other, official and smuggled salt were mixed together, and the amount of salt produced was reduced to evade taxes.

In Cao Yikui's view, only by having the government purchase salt and then resell it to salt merchants could this tax evasion be prevented; this was the key point of his proposal. (End of Chapter)