If I fail to overcome the tribulation, I can only return to the Ming Dynasty and become a prince.

Chapter 198 Wala goes south
The New Year of the [-]th year of Yongle arrived as scheduled, but Zhu Gaochi did not start touring Shandong after the new year.

This was certainly not because Zhu Di suddenly changed his mind, or because Zhu Zhanquan suddenly lost his magic power and failed to kill the Qufu Kong family member.

This man was struck to death by a thunderbolt the day after Zhu Zhanquan left the palace. It was a rare sunny day in winter. He was struck by a thunderbolt in broad daylight on the street and was instantly wiped out.

This incident naturally caused an uproar in Beijing. Not to mention that this person was a member of the Kong family, just that someone was struck to death by lightning in broad daylight. In ancient times when superstition was still very strong, this was something that had to be discussed at the court. Discuss whether there is a king who has lost his virtue and whether there is someone who has disobeyed heaven before God sends a warning.

Even in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, when the power of the civil servants was greater than the imperial power, if something like this happened, the civil servants would dare to force the emperor to issue a criminal edict.

That is to say, this was still the early Ming Dynasty, and the Yongle Emperor was so powerful that the civil servants were suppressed and did not dare to assassinate him, otherwise this matter would be a huge event.

But the strange thing is that this matter did not stir up any controversy in the court, and there was not even any turmoil in the capital. No one, whether it was the civil servants in the court or the Confucian scholars in the scholarly community, took this matter to task. Come out and speak out.

It's like the huge Ming Dynasty Imperial Capital didn't react at all to the fact that someone was struck to death by a thunderstorm.

Because at this time, there was only one thing being discussed in the Ming Dynasty Hall, and that was that the emperor was going to conquer the country himself again.

Logically speaking, the imperial court only carried out the Northern Expedition once in the eighth year of Yongle, which almost emptied the treasury; in the ninth year of Yongle, the imperial court conquered the Japanese. Although it was not the emperor's personal expedition, six vassal kings had more than [-] troops to fight, and the people were eaten by horses. It almost ate up the imperial court's fiscal year.

If Zhu Zhanqun had not obtained 100 million taels of silver, the fiscal year of Yongle's tenth year would have been in deficit.

But even with the 100 million taels of silver as a base, and the Ministry of Revenue issued another 200 million taels of money order, the financial situation at the beginning of the [-]th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty was still tight. The Ministry of Revenue was just living on its fingers, and suddenly it happened again Xia Yuanji of the Ministry of Revenue was really capable of hanging himself with his belt when he said that he wanted to go to war in person.

However, this time Xia Yuanji was not so anxious to get angry. Instead, he was calculating the household wealth bit by bit and calculating how much food he could provide to support the emperor's personal expedition.

The reason was not that Zhu Di was idle and wanted to fight again, but that the Walas invaded the border.

If it were the original historical trajectory, after Zhu Di defeated the Tatars in his first Northern Expedition, the Oara tribe took advantage of the situation and rose up. In the 11th year of Yongle's reign, they invaded the Luju River with the intention of spying on the Central Plains. Zhu Di spent nearly a year preparing and raising funds. With food, wages, soldiers and horses, he went on another expedition in person in the 12th year of Yongle, and launched a war with the Oara tribe in the southeast of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

In this battle, Zhu Di even personally led his cavalry to charge. A bloody battle severely damaged the Oara tribe, making them afraid to invade the border for many years.

However, under the influence of Zhu Zhanjun, the Ming Dynasty conquered the Japanese country in the ninth year of Yongle, which gave the Mongols an opportunity. They believed that the Ming Dynasty was empty of national power and it was a good time to go south.

So the Oara tribe still chose the Luju River and stationed their army here, intending to go south to spy on the Ming Dynasty.

Not only that, the Oara tribe also actively contacted the Tatar tribe, which had been defeated by the Ming army before, with the intention of combining the power of the two tribes to "recover the capital and rebuild the Yuan Dynasty."

Although the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty has been dead for decades, and even the Yuan Dynasty has been dispersed by the blue jade in the fishing sea, the sign erected by Genghis Khan still has great appeal to the Mongols. .

Therefore, the Mongols assembled a larger army than Zhu Di's second Northern Expedition in history, which undoubtedly made everyone in the Ming Dynasty feel like they were facing a formidable enemy.Are the Mongols scary?It’s not scary. It’s no longer the time when the Mongolian cavalry was rampaging across Europe and Asia and lashing out at the entire world. The Mongols who entered the Central Plains have long lost the toughness and wildness of the Genghis Khan era.

Although they can still ride horses, draw bows, and are sturdy Mongolian cavalry, the enemies they face are no longer the same enemies they faced back then.

Back then, the Ming Dynasty was able to overthrow its Mongolian and Yuan Dynasty, and now it is also able to suppress these Mongolian tribes.

It's just that suppressing the Mongolian tribes and sending out the imperial army requires money. The soldiers eat, drink, and have sex all with money and food. Every day when the army goes out on an expedition, it takes a huge amount of money to support it.

Don't look at how smoothly Zhu Zhanju and the others conquered Japan. They captured most of Japan's territory in a few months and the capital was almost destroyed. They brought back a million taels of silver from Japan in just a few months. Behind this was the Ministry of Household Affairs. The money and food for the ninth year of Yongle and even the tenth year of Yongle were partially overdrawn.

And now, although the Ministry of Revenue still has a little money in his pocket, if he really wants to be cruel and overissues part of the money order, he can still support a Northern Expedition.

But it is obvious that if you do this, the credit of the money order will go bankrupt, the fiscal reform that the court has just made some progress will be completely invalidated, and the credit of the court will even be affected. This is something that damages the country's foundation.

If it were in the past, you might have just done it, but now the fortune compass outside Fengtian Gate clearly deduces the possible consequences of every decision of the court. They all hesitated.

Just kidding, the Mongolian Yuan issue is just a temporary trouble. As long as the Great Wall is defended, the Mongols can be kept out. This problem can be solved after a year or two when the court's finances are slowed down.

But it is the century-old foundation of the Ming Dynasty that is ruining the hearts of the people of the world!If the people no longer trust the imperial court, then the Ming Dynasty is at an end.

Therefore, Xia Yuanji did not need to speak this time. The court rejected the issue of overpayment. All civil and military officials were racking their brains to think of how to raise money and food for the Northern Expedition without shaking the hearts of the people.

Zhu Di even had the idea of ​​selling the treasures in the palace. Although there were too many to collect, there should still be a few hundred thousand taels.

Zhu Zhanji, on the other hand, focused on the more than 200 million taels of silver in the treasury, and proposed the idea of ​​taking out the silver for use first, and then returning it when the court had money.

Of course, this method also destroys the foundation of the imperial court and the country, but compared to directly overissuing money orders, it can be regarded as a solution.

However, this method is tantamount to drinking poison to quench thirst. After all, for today's Ming Dynasty, the worst thing is to abandon the north of the Great Wall and use the Great Wall as a defensive line to temporarily avoid the edge. When the summer and autumn grains in the ten years of Yongle are harvested, the court will have money. The Northern Expedition.

One year is enough for Daming to lose?

"I can't afford to lose the imperial court! The people of the Ming Dynasty in the north can't afford to lose either!" In the court, Zhu Di rarely lost his temper at Zhu Zhanji: "I want to avoid his Wala's sharp edge? He Wala's calculations What is it? Even if I can only fight alone and you don’t go, I will still fight this battle!"

(End of this chapter)