Crazy at the end of the Ming Dynasty

From the beginning of the second year of Chongzhen until the autumn harvest, Wu Shigong seemed to be blessed by the goddess of luck, and everything he did seemed to come true.

First of all, of course, his three pregnant wives gave birth to three children, two girls and one boy.First, Zhu Yun gave birth to Wu Shigong's eldest daughter, and then Zhao Ruya gave birth to her second daughter.The last is Li Xinsheng's second son.

However, regarding the surnames of these children, everyone, including the mothers of these children, kept silent, waiting for Wu Shigong's decision.Wu Shigong showed strength at this time, he decided without hesitation that these children were all surnamed Wu.

Regarding Wu Shigong's decision, no one dared to, and no one unwittingly raised objections.On the contrary, Li Xin who gave birth to a son was very happy. When she was alone with Wu Shigong, she was very intimate with Wu Shigong.

And Xiu Zhu was finally pregnant, looking forward to the stars and the moon.Now in the whole inner house, although there are the cries of children, it seems particularly lively.Wu Shigong also never got tired of teasing these children.

However, Wu Shigong still often thinks of his eldest son Xue Chenglin who is now in the capital.Sometimes I still take out Xue Chenglin's small footprints to have a look.I haven't seen that sleepy kid for more than two years.

Thanks to sufficient manpower, the fortress of Qianhusuo was finally built according to Wu Shigong's vision.And because these people basically do not need to pay labor costs, the cost of building the Qianhusuo Fortress has also been greatly saved.

And Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop finally produced a three-pound cannon after two failures.However, it cost Wu Shigong more than 300 taels of silver to make this cannon.However, after careful calculation, it will only cost 700 taels of silver to manufacture the same type of artillery in the future.

However, although the artillery was manufactured, according to Yang Goudan's introduction, the range and power of this artillery are not satisfactory, but the manufacturing cost is still too expensive.Not to mention going to Macao to find the same type of artillery from the Frang machine, it only costs more than 400 taels of silver, even if the same type of artillery is manufactured in a workshop in Tianjin, it only costs a little over 500 taels of silver.

Wu Shigong was also very helpless about this.There are still too few skilled blacksmiths.But this kind of thing can't be rushed, take your time.At least you can make it yourself.A little more expensive is a little more expensive.Wu Shigong arranged for Yang Goudan to make another one, no matter how many more, Wu Shigong now has no extra financial resources to make it.

In addition, Yang Goudan's blacksmith workshop also produced a large number of firecrackers.Now Wu Shigong already has 150 medium-sized firecrackers and 250 heavy-duty firecrackers.

After completing the manufacture of these firecrackers, these firecrackers basically meet Wu Shigong's current needs.Therefore, Wu Shigong asked Yang Goudan to slow down the production of firecrackers.

Now, there are more manpower in the blacksmith workshop.Through the relationship between Yao Yuanwai and Lu Yunhuan, the local gentry, the blacksmith workshop received a large number of jobs for making ironware for civilian use, which also increased a lot of income.

And all of Wu Shigong's businesses have also entered an upward trajectory.Especially the sale of salt goods in the mountainous area in the north of Runing Mansion made Wu Shigong's income grow explosively.Now Wu Shigong has not only reached a balance of payments, but also has a profit of 500 taels of silver every month.

What is even more gratifying is that this year can be called a good weather. Both the land bought by Wu Shigong and the land owned by the military households of the Qianhusuo have achieved a bumper harvest.

The only fly in the ointment is that the bumper harvest has caused the price of food to plummet, and there is no need for Wu Shigong's food stamps to be issued for the time being.

After Wu Shigong took down Li Yaozi's cottage, he never recruited a hundred bandits in other villages controlled by Lei Ying.Therefore, these three hundred bandits who were recruited could not be issued food stamps, and could only be given half a stone of food every month as military pay.

However, after last year's drought, especially after the drought, the food played a huge role in recruiting and exterminating those bandits, Wu Shigong's sense of crisis became stronger.Taking advantage of the sharp drop in food prices, Wu Shigong spent a large sum of money to buy food.Everyone was no stranger to Wu Shigong's behavior.

But none of them thought that it was Wu Shigong's somewhat pathological behavior that played a huge role in the future.Because starting from the third year of Chongzhen, Henan will suffer four consecutive years of severe drought.

Although life seemed to be going smoothly, Wu Shigong did not relax his training of soldiers at all.It even strengthened a lot on the original basis.

Now Wu Shigong, in addition to the [-] bandit vassals and the [-] militia led by Zhou Xun, he himself has [-] cavalry (the current cavalry has been expanded to [-] cavalry in each squadron) and a Thousands of infantry.Plus fifty or so people from the artillery team.

Wu Shigong no longer has the financial and material resources to expand the army.But even if he had financial and material resources, he would not dare to expand the army.After all, Wu Shigong is only an agent of a thousand households, and his current military strength is already greater than the quota of a thousand soldiers he should have.

Since it is impossible to expand the army, the only way is to strengthen training and improve the combat capabilities of our soldiers.But even so, on the nearby ground, the strength of Wu Shigong's army is second to none.

Different from Wu Shigong's smooth sailing, in the court hall, there were sudden disturbances.Because they thought that the external environment was calm, and because of the bad nature of the officials of the Ming Dynasty, these officials soon became very happy to fight.

The first is the thorough finalization of the Wei party by Emperor Chongzhen.As expected, Emperor Chongzhen's actions to eliminate the remnants of the Wei party really expanded.Because of the principle that Emperor Tianqi agrees, I will oppose it, and Emperor Tianqi opposes it, and I will agree with it. Emperor Chongzhen quickly replaced most of the bachelors.

At this moment, the members of the Donglin party, who were most suppressed by the Wei party, turned over.And now the bachelors in the cabinet are all members of the Donglin Party or those who sympathize with the Donglin Party.As soon as these great scholars stood up, they naturally launched a counterattack against the Wei party.

In the political structure of the late Ming Dynasty, the Donglin Party members were the most powerful political group.The pros and cons of the members of the Donglin Party and the history of the rise and fall of the Donglin Party will not be discussed here, because this is a historical research topic.Just to say here, the biggest feature of the Donglin Party group is that when the Donglin Party gained power, the Donglin Party members controlled the appointment and removal of officials from the Ministry of Officials, and appointed some key official positions in the Ming Dynasty to the Donglin Party. Lin Party members.

From this characteristic, it can be seen that this practice of the Donglin Party not only harmed the interests of non-Donglin Party officials, but also greatly threatened the power of the emperor.Therefore, since the later period of Emperor Wanli's reign, the emperor has been attacking the Donglin Party members either explicitly or secretly.

Therefore, it can be said that Emperor Tianqi and Wei Zhongxian are completely on the same side when it comes to cracking down on Donglin Party officials.In order to eliminate the threat of Donglin Party members, Wei Zhongxian even did not hesitate to use the unspoken rule of imperial prison to arrest Donglin Party officials into imperial prison and eliminate them from the ground.

Of course, Wei Zhongxian's approach also stepped on the red line in the political struggle, so that in the end, Wei Zhongxian also lost his life because of it.But in any case, the strength of the Donglin Party can be seen.

Since Emperor Chongzhen was not a crown prince, he had not received any training for a prince to govern the country, so at this time, he was not aware of the threat to his throne from this characteristic of the Donglin Party.

Now let’s talk about the composition of the Wei Party.Except for some ministers who flatter Wei Zhongxian, the other members of the Wei Party have complicated backgrounds.Some were squeezed out by the Donglin Party and turned to Wei Zhongxian, and some were like Xue Lian, they were only loyal to the emperor, because Wei Zhongxian was very loyal to Emperor Tianqi, so listening to Wei Zhongxian was tantamount to listening to Emperor Tianqi.Of course, many members of the Wei Party even have some of the above situations.

But now Emperor Chongzhen wants to sweep away these ministers, which creates such a problem: a large number of experienced civil servants have been dismissed from office.Emperor Chongzhen lost some support on the arm of civil servants.This caused Emperor Chongzhen to have a strange phenomenon that no one could use.

In addition, because of the removal of Wei Zhongxian's official position as the governor of the East Factory, the spy organizations such as the Factory Guard were completely paralyzed.You must know that although the factory guards have a bad reputation, they play a huge role in understanding the dynamics of officials and the local situation.Even any civilized country in modern times has its own secret service agency.And in this way, Emperor Chongzhen blocked his ears and eyes again.

What's even more regrettable is that in Liaodong and Northwest, a large number of civil servants who led troops were removed from office because of their status as the Wei party.To be honest, because they wanted to get military pay from Wei Zhongxian, who was in the sky at that time, those civil servants who led the soldiers didn't want to be the Wei Party, but they wanted to be the Wei Party.There is simply no second choice.

But now that these civil servants were dismissed, it immediately caused a fierce backlash from their soldiers.Of course, these soldiers don't know, and they don't care about the struggle in the court. They are only worried about one thing: after these civil servants are dismissed, will the military pay, which has been procrastinated, not be paid in the future!

So during this period of time, there were many large-scale mutinies of soldiers begging for pay throughout Liaodong and Northwest China.The frequency of these mutinies for payment was even far greater than the density of mutinies after the imperial court was completely bankrupt in the last years of Chongzhen and no military payment could be issued.

In Liaodong, because Yuan Chonghuan arrived in time after the platform summoned, relying on his prestige, the mutiny was quickly quelled.Of course, after the mutiny subsided, Yuan Chonghuan also removed several officials who were not military attaches.Among the dismissed military officers, there is one that needs special attention, and he is Zuo Liangyu.

In the northwest, however, the situation got out of control, and there were many incidents in which soldiers killed Shangguan and defected to the peasant rebel army.There is one person to pay special attention to here, and that is——Li Zicheng.