The ruthless emperor in the late Ming Dynasty forced Chongzhen to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 165 The Laziest Emperor But the Most Powerful
As soon as Chen Yuanyuan returned to the mansion, dozens of famous prostitutes including Li Xiangjun and Dong Xiaowan surrounded her nervously.

Since Hong Niangzi left, although the gentry and dignitaries in the south of the Yangtze River did not trouble Chen Yuanyuan and the others, they did not sell their brothels to her anymore.

Obviously, the brothels that Chen Yuanyuan bought in the past were all borrowed from the influence of the red lady, coupled with the high price, which made all the dignitaries in the south of the Yangtze River succumb. Notice.

Of course, although no one has thought about Chen Yuanyuan and the others' fat meat for the time being, but after a long time, someone will definitely have a wrong idea.

After all, the brothel industry is the third most profitable industry in Jiangnan after the textile industry and the salt industry.

There are more than 300 brothels, more than 200 flower boats, and more than 1000 famous prostitutes, many of whom are top-notch famous prostitutes. If they are well managed, they can easily reach tens of millions every year.

In the past, this piece of cake was divided up and occupied by nobles and dignitaries from all over the world, but now Chen Yuanyuan, relying on the power of the red lady, has gathered it like never before, which really makes people greedy to death.

It means that Zhang Yan is still staying in Nanjing, otherwise, I am afraid that some people will not be able to help but want to make a move.

The dozens of famous prostitutes who gathered around were all already engaged in good faith, but they were not in a hurry to get married. They were all determined to follow Chen Yuanyuan and his daughters to save all the suffering women in the south of the Yangtze River, and they usually lived in the mansion.

Everyone knows that the brothels and sisters under their jurisdiction have become fat in the eyes of others.

The imperial concubine went to Beijing, but the queen mother didn't care about it, so she was very worried about her future way out during this period, and her original ambition was also hit hard.

"Sister Yuanyuan, what does Your Majesty say? Are you going to sell all the brothels?" Li Xiangjun was the first to rush forward and asked, his tone trembling with nervousness.

The others also looked nervously at Chen Yuanyuan. Although they were all free agents, they didn't want to end up working in vain for a long time.

"Sisters, sisters, you can rest assured. Not only will His Majesty not sell brothels, but he also supports us very much..."

Chen Yuanyuan hurriedly explained, and in order to appease them, she also took out the official document given to her by the emperor.

"Great, Your Majesty is really a strange man."

"I didn't expect that His Majesty would be more enlightened than the imperial concubine, and he would directly appoint Sister Yuanyuan as the female officer of Fengyue Division."

After listening to it, everyone was very excited. Obviously, they didn't expect that today's world would be so enlightened.

"Sisters, it's fine for us to know about it ourselves, but we are not allowed to spread it to the outside world, do you understand?"

Chen Yuanyuan carefully put away the official document, put it in her arms like a treasure, and instructed.

"Well, sister Yuanyuan, don't worry, we all know the seriousness, and this matter will never be reported to the outside world."

Everyone hastily nodded their heads to reassure them that they all understood that His Majesty's reputation was related, and it must not be leaked.

Chen Yuanyuan breathed a sigh of relief, and explained to them the promotion of the New Deal.

Although Zhu Cilang asked them to promote agricultural policies such as sharing the income of the people into the mu, and the integration of officials and gentry.

But after everyone listened, they opened their mouths in shock just like Chen Yuanyuan at that time.

"Your Majesty is truly the Holy King through the ages!"

"Your Majesty has great courage. Once such a new policy is successfully implemented, it will be difficult for Ming Dynasty not to rejuvenate."

In the past, these famous prostitutes often talked about their family, country and world with scholars and literati. Almost all of them developed a heart of worrying about the country and the people.

For a moment, everyone was filled with emotion.

"Sisters, His Majesty only gave us one month, we must not disappoint His Majesty, everyone, how should we arrange it?"

Chen Yuanyuan looked at the crowd and asked.

In terms of ability and talent, Chen Yuanyuan is not outstanding among the girls, and she is even a bit weak-tempered, so she is not suitable to be a leader.

However, only Chen Yuanyuan has a relationship with the imperial concubine, His Majesty, and they can talk. This is more important than ability and talent, and everyone understands this.

There are not a few of the women who are talented and knowledgeable, but they have never had the opportunity to show their performance before. Now they are talking all over the place, and they quickly finalized their plans, and each of them summoned their hands to go to work.

At the same time, Zhu Cihong also came to the barracks outside the city to review the training of the new army.

The original 8 army was drawn by the red lady to Huguang with [-] old soldiers, and another [-] were taken away. Yancheng and Yangzhou each stationed [-], leaving more than [-].

After more than half a year of training, they are already well-trained. In addition, the food is good, the military salary is not lacking, and they are all farm children recruited from the west of Zhejiang Province, so their morale is very high. After one or two battles, they will definitely become a strong team. military.

The area of ​​Southern Zhili may not be the largest among the provinces of Ming Dynasty, but it has the most state capitals under its jurisdiction, governing a total of [-] prefectures and four Zhili states.

They are Yingtian Mansion, Huai'an Mansion, Fengyang Mansion, Anqing Mansion, Luzhou Mansion, Chizhou Mansion, Huizhou Mansion, Ningguo Mansion, Taiping Mansion, Zhenjiang Mansion, Yangzhou Mansion, Changzhou Mansion, Suzhou Mansion and Songjiang Mansion.

The four states are Xuzhou, Chuzhou, Hezhou, and Guangdezhou.

Some of these state capitals are huge, some are very small, and many of them are not divided according to the geography of mountains and rivers, which can be said to be extremely unreasonable.

Similarly, the division of state capitals in other provinces of Ming Dynasty is also very unreasonable, but Zhu Cihong has no energy to rectify it for the time being, and all he needs to do now is to distribute the troops.

There are fourteen prefectures and four prefectures, with a total of 110 counties and prefectures under their jurisdiction. Zhu Cihong can only set up 110 hundred households according to this administrative division.

There are 100 troops stationed in the county and 150 troops stationed in the states, totaling more than 15 people.

There are 18 thousand-household offices in China, including 14 troops in Fengyang, Huai'an, Yangzhou, and Luzhou, 000 troops in the other nine small towns and Xuzhou, and [-] troops in the remaining three Zhili prefectures. , a total of more than [-] people, Ying Tianfu does not need to garrison additional troops.

Yangzhou and Yancheng in Huai'an Prefecture already have 7000 troops each, so it is only necessary to draw another [-] people, but the size of the garrison in this way is only normal.

Now that drastic reforms are needed, there may not be enough troops, so Zhu Cihong doubled the number of people, and sent a total of 54 people to the prefectures and counties.

In this way, the troops stationed in each prefecture and county have doubled, and after the reform is completed, half of the troops will be transferred back.

The remaining 3 people continued to practice outside Nanjing.

And considering that after the completion of the reform in Southern Zhili, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi will also implement new policies, and all prefectures and counties will also garrison troops, so Zhu Cihong asked Li Dakai to send people to the south of Jiangxi, and the west of Hunan to continue to recruit troops , Another [-] troops were recruited to Nanjing for training.

These newly recruited soldiers and horses, as well as the soldiers and horses sent to garrison in various places in southern Zhili, will be included in the standing army in the future.

The next day, more than 5 troops, under the leadership of their respective hundreds of households, set off for their respective garrisons one after another.

With such a large-scale mobilization of soldiers and horses, all the gentry, landowners and literati around Nanjing knew that His Majesty must have a big move in the making.

However, for three days in a row, Zhu Cihong did not go to court, and Zhang Yan was like squeezing toothpaste, only revealing a little bit every day.

This made all the civil servants go crazy.

Zhu Cilang would not waste all his time arguing with civil officials. After the dispatch of the army was arranged, he began to work on the salt industry and the imperial store.

The imperial store is very simple. More than 100 court lady shopkeepers went directly to the prefectures and counties with the troops to buy shops and recruit people.

Similarly, the salt industry was not difficult. Hundreds of eunuchs and maids in charge were directly sent to Yancheng to take over the saltworks and recruit people to pack the salt.

As for the oil paper bags needed for salt, we directly order and cooperate with the paper mills and printing factories in Jiangnan.

The papermaking and printing industries in the south of the Yangtze River are so developed that even Zhu Cihong couldn't believe it.

The inland river shipping industry is also very developed, and it is completely possible to cooperate with them to help transport, so for the time being, it is only necessary to set up a salt sub-bureau in Wuchang, Nanchang, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and Hangzhou, which reduces a lot of trouble.

"Auntie, why are there so many memorials?"

After the arrangement of the matter, Zhu Cihong also had some free time, thinking that the Chinese New Year was coming soon, and planned to take Zhang Yan and the imperial sister to Xuanwu Lake for a visit, but when he came to the Imperial Study Room and saw Zhang Yan was busy processing the memorials, he was shocked In a flash, there were at least a hundred copies piled up on the desk.

"Honey, are you done with everything?"

"Come on, these are all the memorials submitted by the southern provinces. Even if you are free, my aunt can't do it for you anymore..."

As soon as Zhang Yan said that, she got up and gave up her seat.

"This, auntie, why don't you continue to do it for me, the child seems to have something to do..."

Zhu Cihong was about to turn around as he said that, but was held back by Zhang Yan, "Xiao'er, after the world is settled, you have to deal with it yourself. Could it be that you still want your aunt and your mother to do it for you?"

"All right!"

Zhu Cihong had no choice but to sit down, picked up a book and began to read.

Looking at the long and twisted classical Chinese essay, after reading it patiently, I found that it was written by a small county magistrate in Guangdong.

"What's all this writing about? It's pure nonsense. There's nothing serious about it. It's just looking for something to improve your presence. How can this kind of memorial be sent here?"

"Nanjing doesn't have a general administration department or a cabinet, and the memorials are sent directly to the supervisor of rites." Zhang Yan explained.

Zhu Cihong picked up the copy she had reviewed, looked at it, and found that it was also a county magistrate in Yunnan who was brushing up on her feelings.

But Zhang Yan even wrote a serious reply with a Chinese ink pen, "I have read it, and Ai Qing has a heart."

"Auntie, don't tell me you have to read these nonsense memorials, and reply to them one by one?"

Zhu Cihong contacted and read a few more books, and seeing that the replies were almost the same, he also understood what Zhang Yan was doing in the imperial study these days from morning to night.

"Although the contents of these memorials are all insignificant flattery, they reflect the officials' loyalty to the emperor. If they do not reply, the officials will think that the emperor does not value themselves. As the saying goes, the emperor is far away. It is inevitable that the officials will not be slack, not to mention that there are still some important things to do."

Zhang Yan said slowly.

In the past year or so, so many major events have happened, the southern provinces have always been very stable, and there has been no major disturbance. It is of course important for the red lady to hold a heavy army and be in Nanjing.

But it also has a lot to do with Zhang Yan's patient reply to the memorials played by civil officials from all over the country.

"Having said that, but the child really can't do this job, so Auntie should stop doing it, or she will be exhausted."

"That's all right, my boy appointed Ma Shiying as the second assistant to the cabinet, and Lu Jiude as the eunuch who was in charge of the ceremony. Let Ma Shiying read the memorial first, let him draft it, and then send it to the supervisor of ceremonies. For these nonsense memorials, let Lu Jiu De directly approved the award and sent it to the original place, and the important memorials were sent to the imperial study room, and Auntie took care of it."

Zhu Cihong thought for a while and said that he would have to go crazy if he had to read these long speeches in classical Chinese all day long. Although Zhang Yan was patient, she didn't want to make her too tired. Besides, there was no need to reply to these nonsense memorabilia in person.

"This is good, but it's not right to miss six subjects."

Zhang Yan didn't say anything, but nodded and said, these innocuous memorials should have been dealt with directly by the cabinet, and there are specific rules for how to reply.

"Then appoint six more Nanjing Sixth Divisions to the matter. As for the selection of Auntie, it's up to you. The child has something to do, let's go first..."

"Wait, Hong'er, more than [-] Jinshi in the new department have not yet passed the imperial examination, and you have time now, it is best to choose a date, don't delay any longer."

"Well, Auntie has made arrangements, and it's fine for the child to show up at that time."

Zhu Cihong waved his hands as he walked, he didn't care about these new Jinshi at all, he was looking at the Jinshi after the reform of the imperial examination.

Looking at the back of Zhu Cihong leaving in a hurry, Zhang Yan also smiled bitterly, feeling quite emotional in her heart.

The fifth younger brother is such a diligent emperor who does almost everything by himself, but the country's power is getting worse day by day.

Hong'er is so lazy, not only does he not want to go to court, but he also wants to leave everything to other people to do, but instead the country is flourishing and the country is getting richer and stronger.

(End of this chapter)