The Ming Dynasty did not revolutionize

Chapter 100 The hall is full of loyal ministers!

The founding fathers of the United States, who were also local leaders in the United States, accepted Zhu Jianxuan's basic requirements.

The American founding fathers felt that it was a safe bet and that the conditions proposed by Zhu Jianxuan were reasonable.

But as the saying goes, less trouble is worse than more trouble, and Paine, who caused all these troubles, was once again hated by everyone.

After Zhu Jianxuan finished speaking to the American founding fathers, he turned to Li Anbang and Qin Nanxing:

“Two generals, please arrange for someone to help the immigrants on board disembark.

"Let everyone have a place to stay and settle down to rest for a few days, and I will divide the land among you."

Li Anbang immediately bowed and agreed:

"Understood. Your Majesty, please go to the temporary palace and rest first."

Zhu Jianxuan was somewhat surprised:
"Are you talking about the European churches? I don't live in European churches. I live in the soldiers' camps."

Li Anbang smiled and explained:
"Your Majesty, we are not talking about a European church. The so-called temporary palace was newly built together with the houses for the immigrants, right in the middle of the courtyard where the soldiers lived.

"Because there were no specialized palace craftsmen, the building was built rather roughly and will need further repairs in the future, but it is now habitable.

"At least it's better than a tent. It's the same as the courtyard where the soldiers live now, only bigger and more spacious."

Zhu Jianxuan was even more surprised:

"Oh? In that case, I'd like to go and have a look."

Li Anbang agreed:

"Please follow me, my king."

Zhu Jianxuan boarded the carriage specially prepared by Li Anbang and drove to the northeast under the guidance of the ceremonial cavalry of the Ming Expeditionary Force.

Instead of entering the original European city of New York City, they went directly to the newly built Daming city area by the expeditionary force.

Zhu Jianxuan seems to be very popular, but it is impossible for him to be popular with everyone.

Paine is a very typical representative.

The Ming Expeditionary Force can now prohibit people with guns from approaching the dock, but it has no way to confiscate guns from houses in the urban area.

So Zhu Jianxuan would not ride in a carriage through the streets of the old city.

Zhu Jianxuan's carriage started moving, and other Ming Dynasty officers and American founding fathers also got on their respective carriages and followed.

Before the arrival of the Ming people, the original urban area of ​​New York City was only the front end of Manhattan Island, and it developed around the fortress originally built by the Dutch.

(The city limits of New York in 1776).

After the British army occupied New York during the Revolutionary War, they built a number of military camps outside the city to station troops.

After the Ming-French-American Allied Forces conquered New York, the Ming expeditionary force, sailors, North American militia, and British prisoners began to build more houses around the military camp.

The most readily available large-scale building material in North America at this time was trees.

From the east coast of the United States to both sides of the Mississippi River, including half of the Great Plains in the middle reaches of the Missouri River, and most of Canada, most of the North American continent is covered with virgin forests.

The people of the Ming Dynasty were best at building houses with wood. Many of the craftsmen accompanying the army had carpentry skills and could command prisoners and soldiers to work as laborers to build houses.

Among the typical house structures of the Ming Dynasty folk, brick and stone base walls plus wooden beams, doors and windows are the most practical.

However, the highest grade is the house with a brick and stone base and pure wood.

In the Ming Dynasty before the Chongzhen period, if you added enough money, you could get enough bricks, but you couldn't get enough large pieces of wood.

The local area has been continuously developed for thousands of years, and the original forests have long been cut down.

Only the truly wealthy and powerful could afford a house with a stone foundation and pure wood. Poor families could only use rammed earth to build walls and a small amount of wood as beams.

After the Chongzhen Dynasty, the Nanyang region was opened up. With the supply of timber from Nanyang, wooden houses began to increase again.

The North American Expeditionary Force could build kilns and burn bricks, but there was plenty of good wood in North America, so why use bricks?

Li Anbang directed craftsmen, soldiers, and prisoners to work for two years and built a complex that was larger than the original New York City.

Most of the buildings are of the size of ordinary houses, and each comes with an independent courtyard, which is intended for immigrants to live in.

In the middle of this building complex, there are two houses, front and back, that are obviously much larger.

South of the bend at the front of Manhattan Island, in the middle of a plot of land that faces almost due south, stand two oriental wooden palaces.

The shape is similar to the Fengtian Hall and Qianqing Palace in the Forbidden City, but it does not have the complex decoration of carved railings and painted buildings in the Forbidden City. It is made of the simplest solid wood and pure color.

Zhu Jianxuan got off the car at the square in front of a palace and observed the layout of the palace again.

The main hall is seven bays wide, with the main hall's main bay more than twelve meters wide, the secondary bay nearly ten meters wide, and the height over twenty meters.

It should have been built according to the upper limit of the standard of a vassal prince's palace, and is actually larger than most vassal princes' palaces.

The sign above the door of the palace is still blank, which means it has not been officially named yet.

However, the main hall of the Ming Dynasty prince's palace is called Chengyun Hall by default.

Corresponding to the emperor's Fengtian Hall.

Zhu Jianxuan turned around and glanced at Li Anbang who had followed him:

"Governor Li, I am really shocked by you. The expeditionary army built two palaces of this size in just two years."

Li Anbang confessed with a smile:
"Your Majesty, the main reason is that there is too much wood here. There is no need to transport wood from other places. There are towering trees everywhere around.

"And now the palace is just a figurative form, but it has not been decorated in any way. It is just the original wood painted with oil to prevent insects from eating and corroding."

Zhu Jianxuan also understood that the most time-consuming part of building a wooden royal palace was finding the wood and decorating it.

These two items were saved directly, so it is not surprising that it took only two years to complete:
"That's already pretty quick, and decoration doesn't affect living, so it's right to build the house first."

Seeing that Zhu Jianxuan had no objection, Li Anbang explained and suggested to Zhu Jianxuan:

“Your Majesty, after the main construction of these two palaces was completed, they were tidied up to be habitable.

"Now that the king is here, we can make a decision as to whether to make these two palaces part of the royal palace.

"Then start the comprehensive renovation and build the palace wall around it?"

Zhu Jianxuan originally planned to build the palace on Long Island instead of Manhattan Island.

I don’t really like living in a pure wooden house. The biggest problem is that the fire hazard is too high. Reinforced concrete structures are safer.

However, North America does not have the conditions to produce reinforced concrete at present, so the solution that adapts to local conditions is to use as much wood as possible.

This is not the 21st century, and the biggest difficulty in land reclamation in North America is the forest.

The forests in southeastern North America cannot be preserved, just as it is impossible to turn the North China Plain and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Plain into large forests.

To gain access to land, farmers must cut down and burn trees.

These trees would have been wasted, but now they are being utilized to build houses.

Zhu Jianxuan replied to Li Anbang without any objection:

“Since it’s almost finished, let’s just use it as it is. It will be perfect as the kingdom’s future meeting hall.

"Just take good care of the corrosion and insect prevention, and don't do any decoration like carvings or patterns for now.

"If the craftsmen have time, they can build enough ordinary houses for the people to live in..."

Li Anbang immediately agreed:

"As ordered."

While Zhu Jianxuan and Li Anbang were talking, the American founding fathers next to them also got out of the car one after another.

They were also looking at the two palaces and talking about it.

"When did the Ming expeditionary army build two such large buildings?"

"It's been less than two and a half years since the Ming expeditionary army recaptured New York. How could they have built such a large building?"

"I, a local in New York, watched with my own eyes as the two skyscrapers were built by the Ming expeditionary army. In fact, it took them less than two years."

“Because it’s not made of stone or bricks, but all made of wood, it can be built very quickly.”

"It took them less than two years to build a residential area larger than the old city of New York,"

"How is this possible? How can such a big house be built with wood?"

"The people of the Ming Dynasty are best at wooden buildings. The palace in the capital of the Ming Dynasty is even larger than this one, and it is also built entirely of wood."

"Wooden buildings are also the most suitable for human habitation. We should also use wood to build houses in the future."

"According to the cultural traditions of the Ming Dynasty, wooden houses are where the living live, and the cold stone castles can only be used as cemeteries."

"We already have a lot of wooden houses, but they are very simple and small."

"Those simple wooden houses cannot be compared with the wooden palaces of the Ming Dynasty. They are not of the same nature at all." "I have decided to build a Ming-style pure solid wood building in my manor."

"Does this palace have a name? What should we call it?"

"Your Majesty has just arrived, so it doesn't have an official name yet. But because it hasn't been painted yet and the front looks quite white from a distance, New Yorkers call it the Big White House."

When Zhu Jianxuan heard these discussions, he suddenly couldn't hold it in anymore.

In the past life, I saw many people on the Internet criticizing wooden buildings, criticizing the people of Shenzhou for not having geometric and mathematical skills and being unable to build stone houses.

Looking at this group of American founding fathers’ passion for wooden buildings now, one feels a sense of time and space distortion.

In the core area of ​​Manhattan, New York, a Ming Dynasty prince's palace similar to the Fengtian Hall was built. New Yorkers call it the White House.

Zhu Jianxuan shook his head to himself and walked into the brand new hall first.

The hall does look white from a distance, but when you look closer you can see that it is not true white, but a lighter tone of wood.

The whole house is made of wood, and the floors are also paved with pure wood.

There is no painted decoration, but the wood is polished smooth and flat, so it will not be uncomfortable to use normally.

In the middle of the main hall of the palace, there is a desk facing north and south, with two rows of armchairs on each side in front, arranged like an oriental meeting room.

The tables and chairs on site are all made of the simplest solid wood in original color, giving them an inexplicable modern and minimalist style.

Zhu Jianxuan felt that this place was large enough to hold various kingdom ceremonies.

When Zhu Jianxuan was looking around the palace, his uncle Zhu Bohai took the initiative to speak:

"A country cannot be without a ruler for a day. Now that we have a palace that is still usable, and the main local leaders of America are all here.

“Why not announce the imperial decree now and determine your status as monarch and subject with them?

"Then we will find an auspicious day to hold a formal coronation ceremony and announce it to the world."

This is also a very normal plan. Just like when the old emperor dies, the new emperor will perform a simple ceremony in front of the old emperor's coffin and take over the emperor's basic power.

Then he would announce a date for the coronation ceremony, and wait until the New Year to officially change the era name, starting the era of the new emperor.

But Zhu Jianxuan thought about the current situation:
“Uncle, today is not appropriate. Not all the American leaders present here will support the king.

"There will definitely be opposition forces causing trouble, and if we directly punish the opposition, it may cause the Americans to unite against the enemy.

"We need to let them clear out the opposition first before asking us to announce the decree.

"At best we can encourage this practice, but we can't do it ourselves."

Although Zhu Bohai did not have much political wisdom, he was born in the Ming Dynasty as an idle prince, so he understood this truth:

"Then you can do whatever you want, Jian Xuan. Just let me know when you think it's appropriate to announce the decree."

Zhu Jianxuan nodded:
"Uncle, you can take out the box containing the imperial edict and place it on the desk in this hall for everyone to see. And assign someone to guard it."

Zhu Bohai could vaguely guess Zhu Jianxuan's purpose, and simply placed the imperial edict box according to Zhu Jianxuan's request.

Then Zhu Jianxuan walked to the back of the desk and looked up at the American founding fathers in the hall:

“My father’s imperial decree is ready, and I can obtain the title of King of America at any time.

“Now that everyone is gathered here today, let’s get straight to business.

“Including how to establish our country, how to hold the coronation ceremony of the kingdom and the ceremony of enthroning the nobility.

"Are you interested in this matter? Sit down and listen to the plans of the officials of the Ming Dynasty's Ministry of Rites."

When Zhu Jianxuan brought up this topic, all the American founding fathers present immediately became excited.

Several of them almost subconsciously blurted out answers that they had thought of many times before:

"Your will, Your Majesty."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

Of course, more people were able to hold their nerve and responded to Zhu Jianxuan relatively calmly:
"Your Majesty, please speak."

But there were also some mavericks, such as Paine, who, after seeing this situation, directly sneered loudly:

"When the prince of the Ming Dynasty made an empty promise, some puppies ran over with their tails wagging and licked his toes, hoping that the prince would give them a gorgeous collar."

Paine's voice was so loud that almost all the American representatives present heard it.

Some people feel a little ashamed and think that what Paine said is basically true. Americans today are like licking the toes of the emperor or prince of the Ming Dynasty.

But more people were simply furious and glared at Paine. If it weren't for his reputation, they would have wanted to throw this unsightly guy out.

Franklin shook his head helplessly and said to himself:

"This guy will offend everyone sooner or later and be kicked out of the American Kingdom's officialdom."

Zhu Jianxuan saw the situation at the scene and heard what Paine said, but he did not intervene or pay any attention to it. Instead, he continued to talk about his own arrangements:
“First, I would like to repeat the agreement between Ming Dynasty and the Thirteen Colonies in North America, and Ming Dynasty’s commitment to the Thirteen Colonies.

“Of the original thirteen colonies in North America, New York and New Jersey were established as dominions of the kingdom, and the other colonies were established as free states of the kingdom.

“The Free State has a high degree of autonomy and can handle all affairs within its own borders without paying taxes to the Kingdom.

“The King will not interfere in the affairs of the Free State, but the Free State must abide by the two points agreed upon on the dock today.

"Beyond this, the most important relationship between the King and the people of the Free State is the conferment of titles of nobility and honors on them in recognition of their services to the country.

"Now, based on the contributions made by all of you here to the founding of the United States, I plan to grant you the following titles and honors after I become the King of America:
“If General Qin Nanxing and General Li Anbang join the Kingdom of America, they can both be granted the title of Type A County Marquis and be granted 500 square kilometers of land in the Great Plains.

"General George Washington may be made Earl of the A-State.

“General Horatio Gates is the Earl of the Type A State.

“John Adams was a Type B state earl.

“John Hancock is a Type B state earl.

“Samuel Adams is a Type B state earl.

"George Clinton is a Type B Viscount of a state, and is granted 50 square kilometers of land in the Dominion of New York.

“Thomas Jefferson was Viscount Type B.

"Benjamin Franklin was a Type B County Baron.

“This is not all, it is just the first list of titles that I drew up based on what I learned about North America during the Ming Dynasty.

“In the next period of time, I will learn more about the Ming Dynasty’s North American Expeditionary Force, the Ming Dynasty’s North American Fleet, the American Continental Army, and the various free states of the United States.

“Please cooperate with me and submit detailed information about the meritorious personnel as a basis for me to continue to reward them.

“All meritorious personnel of the kingdom who decide to settle in the provinces of the kingdom can directly obtain land in the Great Plains.

“Those whose registered residence is in the autonomous territory can choose to obtain half of the granted land in the autonomous territory, or choose to obtain the full granted land in the Great Plains.

“Those who have been knighted in the provinces and dominions of the kingdom shall pay taxes on their assets in accordance with their actual circumstances.

“Meritorious persons in the Free State were granted no land by default, and only had to pay one percent of their gross income in tax each year.

"You can choose to obtain land in the Great Plains, but you will need to pay taxes according to the standards of the kingdom's provinces."

After Zhu Jianxuan finished speaking, everyone who heard his name was overjoyed. Even if they tried to appear calm, they couldn't help but curl up the corners of their mouths.

Those who didn't hear their names are now itching to go back and collect information, write down their contributions, and send them to Zhu Jianxuan.

Hancock tried to hold it in for a while, but finally couldn't help but ask directly:

"Your Majesty, we sincerely invite you to become the King of America. When would you like the coronation ceremony to take place?"

Zhu Jianxuan said quite seriously:
"I feel that I should be recognized by all the people in the Continental Congress, or rather by all the representatives of the free states and dominions.

“Then, presided over by the Emperor’s great uncle and officials from the Ministry of Rites, and witnessed by all the representatives, he was crowned the King of America.

“Only then can we officially confer titles and honors on all of you present here and other meritorious personnel.”

Hancock immediately understood that the king did not want anyone on the scene who opposed him, otherwise it might turn the coronation ceremony into a farce.

Hancock subconsciously looked at Paine and several other similar radicals, who were clearly opposed to the monarchy.

Those who cannot accept the king at all are now an absolute minority, so it should not be difficult to deal with them.

As long as the representatives of each free state bring back the king's invitation and conditions, and let all free states submit their own lists of meritorious persons, which is actually a list of those who are granted nobility.

The free states would immediately expel the opposition.

At the next meeting, or rather the imperial court meeting, this hall will be filled with loyal ministers.

I didn’t sleep well last night, and I couldn’t sleep this morning either. I was in a daze all day and couldn’t write anything. This is the only chapter I’ve written today. There will be no more tonight. However, this chapter has 5,000 words, and including the one in the early morning, there are 8,000 words in total today.

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(End of this chapter)