Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 616 Strong, does not mean invincible

The procuratorate in Liuzhou City has been heavily guarded for the past few days, and there are two groups of guards. The outer layer is the guards brought from Guilin, and the inner layer is the Gao family.Regardless of the soldiers of the guard, the members of the Gao family here are all northern men brought from Gyeonggi, all of them are tall and powerful, and everyone speaks northern mandarin, so it is impossible to fake it. As for the news, no matter how anyone inquires, there are not many people who have seen it with their own eyes.

Any news that the outside world can get is spread from the few bigwigs who met Gao Pragmatic that day-in fact, it is not spread, and the people who can get a piece of news are limited, almost all of them are from Guangxi. The leading figures who can be named in the land are mainly the chieftains of Zuojiang and Zuojiang in the west of Guangxi.

Few people knew about the meeting between Master Cen Qi and Miss Huang. It can even be said that the news that they came to Jinghu Bieyuan, Longtan Town, south of Liuzhou City, was limited to a very small area, and the outside world could not hear it at all. Know.

The high-level information in Liuzhou City is actually very closed, but there is no way to do it. Originally, he did not expect that he would come to Guangxi to do a patrol one day, and his intelligence agency was not set up too early. Mainly in Gyeonggi, Xuanda, and Jizhen, and also in Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong, and Nanzhili is gradually strengthening. Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangzhou are gradually developing relying on the three major ports of Ningbo, Quanzhou, and Guangzhou. , but overall it is still in its infancy, and it is too late to expand in this province. How can Guangxi be taken into account?

And he went south this time because he was on patrol, usually only for one year, so he didn't bring Gao Mo with him. There were only Gao Zhang and Cao Ke by his side. Gao Zhang could only lead troops, and he didn't understand intelligence of.Cao Ke is the person he cultivated, but he is still young, and temporarily helps him with Guangxi intelligence affairs, and because Guangxi has no foundation, the progress is very small.

"My lord, we still have no one to use in Guangxi now, and the main reason why no one is available is that we don't have a point of support." Cao Ke analyzed: "Why do we know everything in Gyeonggi? Not only because Cheng Guogong ( The support of Zhu Yingzhen, who has already conquered the title, as mentioned above) and others is due to the fact that Jinghua has a huge industry in Gyeonggi, and countless people are directly or indirectly serving the master, so it is not only easy to select suitable people to do intelligence, but also If you ask someone for news, they have to give face."

"But in Guangxi, we don't have this advantage, because Jinghua doesn't have any industry in Guangxi itself. So far, Jinghua has no direct partners in Guangxi. Even if it sells some cement, it is only a small amount of transshipment from Huguang. , is a resale transaction made by Huguang merchants, and has nothing to do with Jinghua itself."

Gao Wushi nodded, but immediately said: "What you said is correct, but the question is, is it necessary for Jinghua to invest in Guangxi? We don't have any strong support in the whole of the south. At present, we can only rely on the three Hong Kong is developing slowly, and Guangzhou Port, which is the closest to Guangxi, has only been in hand for about a year, and it is still in the stable stage, how much support can it be expected to give Guangxi?"

"Maybe we can consider letting the Jinghua Trading Company open up the Southwest Commercial Road?" Cao Ke is worthy of being Cao Gan's son. Since the Guangzhou Port could not provide support, he immediately thought of the Jinghua Trading Company that his father was in charge of.

"The Southwest commercial road can be opened up, there is no doubt about it." Gao Wushi nodded, but said again: "The problem is time, I can stay in Guangxi for about one year, is one year enough to open up the Southwest commercial road? I It’s hard to see, and it can even be said that even if your father can do this within a year, but I will return to Beijing to return to my life after a year. This business route is at most an additional source of income for Jinghua, It doesn't help us with what we're doing right now."

Cao Ke scratched his head, hesitantly said: "Then... directly invest in mining or building factories?"

"What mine to open? What factory to build? What market to rely on to make a profit?" Gao Wushi rolled his eyes: "The capital is densely populated, with many rich people and relatively affluent people, so I was able to rely on soap and briquette to start a business. And because the capital is near the nine border towns, I can open coal mines and iron factories in Kaiping nearby, and build guns and artillery factories to seize the military industry market... But what about Guangxi?"

Gao Wushi sighed: "Even if I dug mines, smelted iron, and even made firearms, who would I sell them to? The refits of Jiubian and Jingying have not yet been completed. It is impossible for the imperial court to be interested in changing Guangxi officials and soldiers." Pretend, I can’t sell it to those chieftains, can I? Guangxi wolf soldiers are brave and fearless, and I will replace them with firearms. If Guangxi is reversed in the future, shall I go to see the emperor?”

This principle is very obvious. Cao Ke can understand Gao Wushi once he said it. Those chieftains are not Jinghua's servants.

However, Cao Ke didn't know that Gao Pragmatism was not really worried that if he gave the chieftains firearms, the chieftains would really be invincible, because firearms are not like cold weapons, and they can't be used all the time when they get them.

Jinghua’s firearms must match the ammunition produced by Jinghua, such as the Longqing Type II musket. Supporting the production of gunpowder and custom-packed paper shells.

In a word, if you buy the Jinghua Longqing Type 4 musket, you will have to buy the supporting combat parts such as gunpowder, projectiles, and custom-packed paper casings from Jinghua in the future—this is like the car [-]S shops of later generations who sometimes don’t rely on selling cars to make money. , but relying on maintenance and repairs to make money, as long as selling a car does not lose money, it is considered a profit.

So in other words, even if the chieftains really bought Jinghua's firearms, whether they have the ability to use these firearms to rebel, in fact, Jinghua will know from the delivery list-you didn't buy enough ammunition, just use those fire sticks Can you rebel?Then you might as well use the big swords and spears from before!
In fact, the main focus of high pragmatism is that there is no profit in doing so. These chieftains may not be bad in terms of strength, but their strength is not in how much gold and silver they have, but in the natives under their rule.These natives are large in number and obedient, but they are not afraid of death when they start a war. That's why the chieftains have their current status and influence.

Without gold and silver, there is no attraction for Gao Yushi. No matter how good the local people are, he doesn't plan to come to Guangxi to play as a chieftain. What's the use?

Of course, there is no gold and silver, if there are good goods of equivalent value, it is fine, but it seems that these chieftains do not have any particularly advantageous goods to exchange, so it does not seem like a good idea to do business with them.

Only in this way, Gao Yushi's most effective control method will be unable to be used. The great method of interest alliance that he relied on in the capital can't be used in Guangxi, which really makes Boss Gao a bit of a headache.

For these chieftains, if they don’t suppress them, they will probably not be honest and obedient, but if they are suppressed hard, accidents are easy to happen, and the most important thing is that once an accident occurs, Guangxi’s own military strength may not be able to handle it... This is really a trick and a dilemma. .

The "internal strength" is not sufficient, and the benefits cannot be obtained. After thinking about it highly pragmatically, it seems that there is only one way to go, and that is to use the internal conflicts among the chieftains to make things happen... No, let's make a fuss.

In fact, he has not been idle for the past few days. He has been learning about the information of the chieftains in Guangxi through various channels. Directly expanding the intelligence business is only one aspect. Let's make some understanding of the historical origin and current situation between them.

Through these materials, he discovered an interesting phenomenon: Although the Cen and Huang families are strong, they are not invulnerable. They also have internal interest factions, and they are not all monolithic. The joint confrontation of the chieftain...

This may also be an opportunity.

(End of this chapter)