Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1046 Goal
Just talk and don't practice fake skills, just do what you say is highly pragmatic. When you return to Liaoyang, you start to read the files and send people to investigate some cases in horse markets in various places in recent years, especially economic disputes and cases arising from economic disputes. All kinds of cases are the top priority of high-level pragmatic and thorough investigation.

In fact, the governor himself is generally not very good at deciding cases in person, which is quite different from the performance in some film and television dramas.The judges in Ming Dynasty are usually mainly magistrates, supplemented by constitutional officials (led by the inspectors, supplemented by inspectors and military officials). Few "unruly people" can bring the lawsuit directly in front of the governor.

However, the governor, as the de facto highest official of a local administration, still has the power to participate in adjudicating cases and even retrials. Therefore, when a high-level and pragmatic new official takes office, it is not surprising that reviewing files is a routine operation, and it is not very eye-catching.

However, there is no need to elaborate on some specific economic dispute cases for the time being, but Gao Yushi discovered something very interesting from these files.

He found that the irreconcilable conflict between Ye He and Hada was not only caused by the imperial edict, but also by the issue of trade routes, and this issue also foreshadowed: no matter who Hada or Ye He could win in the end, the other The victors will inevitably go to war with the Jianzhou Jurchen.

War is usually the product of irreconcilable political contradictions, and political contradictions mostly originate from economic contradictions.

Gao’s pragmatic conclusion is that this is a ginseng trade war—not just a trade war, but a war caused by ginseng trade.

Because there are "three passes and three cities" in Kaiyuan, which is close to the Haixi Jurchen, and there are only one pass and one city in Fushun in the Jianzhou Jurchen, so the Haixi Jurchen has long hindered the trade of the Jianzhou Jurchen. Among them, the Hada tribe and the The Yehe tribe is the most powerful.Among such trade obstacles, the issue of ginseng is particularly prominent.

Ginseng in Liaodong is mainly produced in Changbai Mountain and Suzi River Basin.From the Tang to the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the main producing area of ​​ginseng was still around Liaoyang, especially the area east of Liaoyang and outside Fushun Pass. A large number of ginseng was mined every year, and there were many kinds of ginseng, which were mostly used as tributes to the imperial court.

Gao Wushi concluded from the dossiers that the main production areas of ginseng have expanded to Heilongjiang and central Jilin in later generations. Of course, on the whole, eastern Liaoning is still the main production area in later generations.

However, the dossier shows that although Jianzhou Jurchen occupies the main production area of ​​ginseng, the amount of ginseng sold in Mashi, Fushun is very small. Instead, the Hada tribe in the northeast of Kaiyuan City and the Yehe tribe in the north monopolize the ginseng trade.

This is interesting. Could it be that Jianzhou Jurchen doesn't go to Fushun to sell ginseng, but prefers to walk hundreds of miles to Kaiyuan instead?
No, it’s not that Jianzhou Jurchen are unwilling to go to Fushun to sell ginseng by themselves, but that they don’t have enough edicts——Wang Tai followed Li Chengliang and the earlier Liaodong General Soldier many times during the decades of ruling Hada. Jianzhou robbed many imperial edicts from Jianzhou.

Of course, it wasn't all robbery, many of them were obtained by Li Chengliang and rewarded to Hada.

The Jianzhou Jurchens have basically been attacked after Li Chengliang conquered the Liao Dynasty, especially the formerly strong right guard Wang Gao, Atai and his son, who were the focus of Li Chengliang's attack.

Relatively speaking, Jue Changan, Tu Keshi and his son's Jianzhou left guard were relatively weak in strength and honest in performance. Since Li Chengliang took over the Liao Dynasty, he was not hit hard, and he was even rewarded by Li Chengliang. imperial edict.

The edict represents the trade quota. As I said before, since the Hada Department has mastered most of the edicts, other Jurchen ministries want to sell what they have, so they have to go to Hada to find a way.

Due to the lack of strength of the Jianzhou Jurchen, the so-called way to find a way can only be exploited by the Hada Department.But the Yehe tribe refused to accept the continuous exploitation of the Hada tribe due to their soaring strength, so they chose to directly use war to snatch it.

This discovery made Gao Wushi suddenly enlightened: the core conflict between Jianzhou and Yehe in history was that Nurhachi controlled the Jurchen tribes in Changbai Mountain, cut off this trade route, and successfully obtained Yehe's right to control the ginseng trade ( Note: After Nurhachi conquered the various tribes in Changbai Mountain, it was equivalent to monopolizing most of the ginseng production area, which is regarded as an upstream monopoly), so Yehe had to launch the "Nine Ministries War" to fight Nurhachi to the death.

In the original history, after Nurhachi succeeded Takshi as the commander of Jianzhou Zuowei, he was not satisfied with the existing territory and planned to continue to expand his power. In order to develop his own strength and maintain his dominant position, he continued to rob Liaodong The right to control trade with the Jurchen is naturally reasonable.

Only by continuously suppressing the trade monopoly of Kaiyuan and Nanbeiguan can Nurhachi control the horse market trade in Liaodong and gain wealth.

In the first month of the 19th year of Wanli, after Nurhachi sent troops to occupy the Jurchen tribes in Changbai Mountain, Ye He was immediately dissatisfied—the supply of goods was controlled by Nurhachi, how could Ye He maintain his ginseng monopoly?So the conflict between Yehe and Jianzhou was on the verge of breaking out.

In this situation, as long as something happens, the powder keg will explode.

So, something went wrong?It's out, because in the 19th year of Wanli, Li Chengliang went to the field for the first time-a mountain that had been pressing on the head of the Jurchen for a long time actually collapsed by itself.

However, since Li Rusong and other brothers were still there and not busy, Ye He didn't dare to fight immediately, so he first tried to "overwhelm others with power" to see if he could force Nurhachi to spit out Changbai Mountain and other ministries.

As a result, in the 20th year of Wanli, the Battle of Ningxia and the first aid to the Korean War broke out successively. The main force of the Ming Dynasty, especially the Liaodong Army, was transferred, and the pressure on the Yehe tribe suddenly eased.

At the same time, Nurhachi also rejected the "unreasonable request" of the Yehe tribe, and the nine coalition forces' attack on Jianzhou could no longer be avoided.So in the 21st year of Wanli, the war finally broke out.

Gao Yushi wanted to understand this "bottom-level contradiction", and from this he also thought of Li Chengliang's handling of the Jurchen ministries when he was in the Liao Dynasty. It seems that Li Chengliang did not make any major strategic mistakes during this period.

After all, based on historical results, Ye He, who owns three passes and three cities in Kaiyuan, actually lost to Nurhachi, who only owns one pass and one city in Fushun. It can be seen that Li Chengliang's idea of ​​strengthening Haixi Jurchen and suppressing Jianzhou Jurchen seems to be right. of.

But Gao Yushi thought about it for a while, and found that this conclusion may not be true, because Li Chengliang's support for the Haixi Jurchen is mainly for the Hada tribe, and he has always held a suppressive attitude towards the Yehe tribe.

It's just that Meng Gebulu in history was subdued by Ye He later, and he actually took refuge in Ye He's great enemy. I'm afraid Li Chengliang didn't expect this.

In addition, Li Chengliang also misjudged Jianzhou's strength, because after Nurhachi took power, Li Chengliang suppressed him very little, and even condoned him to dominate Jianzhou.

This move was not well understood by the high-level pragmatists at first, but now it is understood at once: after the decline of the Hada tribe, Daming lacked an obedient and relatively strong Jurchen tribe as an agent to represent Daming to "conquer barbarians with barbarians".

At this time, Ye He was obviously not Li Chengliang's first consideration, because originally Ye He came up on the hada, and his image in Li Chengliang's mind was obviously not very good, but Nurhachi was extremely obedient during this period, so he was naturally accepted Li Chengliang took a fancy to it and began to "train".

Nurhachi made good use of this kind of training, and he also found a way to break the alliance between Yehe and Hada (Menggebulu had already defected to Yehe at this time), that is, to unify the state first, and then take down the Changbai Mountains. The Ministry completely controlled most of the production areas of ginseng, and controlled the output from the upstream, so that Yehe and Hadakong had imperial edicts, but they did not have enough goods to trade with Daming, and seized the initiative.

Now, Li Chengliang has a more reasonable explanation for his historical practice: he still insists on the idea of ​​"supporting the second strongest and attacking the strongest", but a serious misjudgment occurred in the actual operation-Nurhachi this time Qiang actually easily defeated Ye He's "Nine Allied Forces".

Coincidentally, at this time, Ming's internal troubles (Ningxia) and foreign troubles (Japan) broke out at the same time, but there was no time to rush to a "preventive war" to make up for it and beat Nurhachi back to his original form.

So... it's a tragedy.

Nurhachi completely replaced Hada and Yehe, firmly controlled the monopoly of ginseng trade, and took advantage of the powerless period of at least eight years before and after Ming Dynasty in Liaodong to grow rapidly—in fact, it was more than eight years, because the three major levies (actually, there were still more The Ming-Burmese War) emptied the treasury and internal funds that were not rich. After the fight, there was no energy left to fight Nurhachi again, and he had to spend time recuperating. At this time, Nurhachi was no longer a powerful Li family. The little flame was extinguished.

Gao Wushi looked at the pile of files in front of him and fell into thought: The root of Nurhachi's rise has been found, but it is not difficult, because he is different from Li Chengliang, and Li Chengliang doesn't know that the 20th year of Wanli will cause major incidents one after another, so he has nothing to do. He was on guard, and he knew these "accidents", so he had enough preparations. If Nurhachi wanted to take advantage of the weak period of Ming Dynasty and suddenly grow to the point where the Liaodong Ming army could not suppress it, as in the original history, it would be a dream.

But now how do I use this situation to beat Li Chengliang?

Simply pick out those cases in which Li Chengliang favored Hada in these files?This is not only meaningless, but also fails to achieve the purpose of beating, because in principle, this is just a difference in means, or he and Li Chengliang have different ideas on how to control the Jurchen tribes in Liaodong. It seems that it is nothing more than a political struggle.

Sometimes there is no right or wrong in political disputes, only standing in line.

However, because Gao Yushi needs to control the strength of the beating, it is not good to hit too hard at the beginning, and it is not bad to choose a lighter method.

Kaiyuan itself has its own particularity. For example, in terms of traffic location, Kaiyuan was not only the post road center in the northern Liaodong region in the early Ming Dynasty, but also a traffic landmark in Eastern Mongolia and Jurchen regions.The Jurchen tribute inspection must go through Kaiyuan, which is the only official channel to communicate with the Liaodong and Jurchen regions.

In the early Ming Dynasty, the Liaoyang Province of the Yuan Dynasty was divided into three, with the Daning Capital Division in the Northwest, the Liaodong Capital Division and the Nuergan Capital Division in the Northeast, all controlled by Liaodong, and the intersection point was Kaiyuan.In the early Ming Dynasty, Kaiyuan was used as a transfer station and distribution center for dispatching personnel to Nuergandusi, transferring food and salaries, and recruiting foreign barbarians.Because of this, Kaiyuan became the advance base for the Ming Dynasty to manage the Jurchen area, and it was also an important military town for Liaodong to defend against Mongolian invasion.

"The imperial court set up Shenyang, Liaoyang, Sanwan, and Tieling four guards, unified in Kaiyuan, in order to contain the impact of Beidi."

After the relocation of the Daning Capital Division and the abolition of the Nuergan Capital Division, Kaiyuan guards and generals performed the liaison and management duties for the guards outside the border.Until the Chenghua period, the officials of some guards of the Nuergandu Division were still concurrently held by Kaiyuan's guards and generals, and directly controlled the guards outside the border.

This allowed Kaiyuan to take charge of the responsibilities of the various ministries of Eastern Mongolia and Jurchen, such as tribute, mutual market, internal relocation, recruitment and relief.Through Kaiyuan, Ming Dynasty was able to effectively control the various ethnic groups in the Northeast and the Jumi Guards outside the border, and cut off the alliance between Mongolia and Jurchen.Therefore, "Quan Liao Zhi" and "Kaiyuan Tushuo" positioned Kaiyuan as "controlling barbarians".

The particularity of Kaiyuan is also reflected in the diversity of sources and composition of the troops and residents in the Kaiyuan Guards.As an important military town in Liaodong, Daming set up a large number of garrisons and residents in Kaiyuan.

Kaiyuan governs Tieling, Sanwan, Liaohai Sanwei, Wucheng and Twenty Border Forts, with more than [-] military houses and Yu Ding.If the family members of soldiers, villagers, civilians and guest residents are counted, the population should be no less than [-].Among them, ethnic minorities account for a considerable proportion, and they belong to different ethnic groups.

"Not long ago (referring to the beginning of Hongwu), Xigeng counties and counties were regarded as military guards. Chinese were [-], Goryeo, aboriginal, Guifu women, and savages were thirteen." On the one hand, the Kaiyuan area was a multi-ethnic mixed area in history, and on the other hand On the one hand, in the early Ming Dynasty, a large number of Mongols and Jurchens belonged to Liaodong, and most of them were included in the military guard system and granted the position of military officer, forming a special group in the Ming Dynasty military guard, called senior officials.

There are a large number of high-ranking officials in Kaiyuan military guards.In the early Ming Dynasty, Kaiyuan set up Anle, Zizai Erzhou, Sanwan, and Liaohai Erwei, and settled a large number of Mongols and Jurchens who belonged to them.

Until the current 11th year of Wanli, the proportion of this ethnic group has not changed.This complex ethnic relationship has brought different effects: on the one hand, it makes people worry, such as "Kaiyuan is half of the descendants of high-ranking officials, but it is too late to recruit strong captives who harbor evil intentions." On the one hand, Kaiyuan performed the important duties of contacting and managing Eastern Mongolia and the Jurchen with the help of the high-ranking officials of the Erzhou and Erwei, so as to realize the Ming court’s jurisdiction over the ethnic groups outside the border and the Jumi Guards.

So if he wants to hit Li Chengliang now, Gao Wushi doesn't plan to be ruthless all at once, he has to control the intensity, for example, let's say that Li Chengliang's buttocks are sitting crookedly first.
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