Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 588 Epilogue: Chenghua
"Dong dong dong..."

On October 24, the 21st year of the Jingtai reign, Zhu Qiyue, who was born in the 3rd year of the Hongxi reign, died not far from the city of Talas. His body was sent to the Jiyan Hall in Beijing for burial. He was 78 years old.

On the 15th day of the twelfth lunar month, Zhu Qiyue was buried in Zhaoling Mausoleum under the auspices of Zhu Jianshen after his body had been kept for 54 days.

After the state funeral, Zhu Jianshen and other officials including Li Dongyang, Wang Qiong and Wang Shouren named Zhu Qiyue as Xianzong, and posthumously named him Xiantian Longyun Zhicheng Xianjue Tiyuan Liji Fenwu Qinming Xiaorui Emperor.

"bye!"

"Long live the Emperor..."

On the 25th day of the 12th lunar month in the 21st year of the Jingtai reign, accompanied by the sound of singing of rituals coming from the Fengtian Gate Square, the former Crown Prince Zhu Jianshen also ascended the throne at the Fengtian Gate in the Forbidden City in Beijing, the second day after Zhu Qiyue was buried.

Zhu Jianshen was born in the second year of Xuande (1447), so he had never met Taizong and Shizong, but he was the crown prince who was brought up by Zhu Qiyue since he was a child and served as regent since the third year of Jingtai.

As such, at fifty-one, he is no political novice.

He had been in charge of government for more than eighteen years, and now he finally began to control the government as emperor.

On that day, Zhu Jianshen changed the next year's reign title to Chenghua, and at the same time appointed the 21-year-old Zhu Youtang as the Crown Prince.

Zhu Jianshen was fond of Cuju, so after he ascended the throne, he allocated 20,000 strings of cash from the treasury to build twelve large and small Cuju fields in the capital, and brought envoys from various countries who came to pay tribute to visit the twelve Cuju teams he had formed.

Of course, he was not a pleasure-seeking person. On the contrary, he had some insights of his own on governing the country.

In March of the first year of Chenghua, he implemented the new policy with Li Dongyang, Yang Yiqing and Wang Qiong as the main leaders.

As the territory of the Ming Dynasty grew, it had actually entered a state of bloated territory.

Persia, Xihai, Shannan and other places conquered during the Xuande period were not easily conquered, and now with the addition of the territory of Qibei and the millions of ethnic minorities living there, the Ming Dynasty had to face the problem of insufficient central government control over the local areas.

Although the Ming Dynasty had been guarding against the outflow of technology and teaching materials since Yongle, this kind of thing could not be completely prevented.

By the Jingtai period, countries such as Japan, Korea, and Siam had understood the principles of the steam engine and began to experiment with manufacturing it.

It was only a matter of time for the Three Kingdoms to develop steam engines, locomotives and ships, but the Ming Dynasty found it difficult to continue expanding its territory because its territory was too bloated and bloated.

Faced with this situation, Zhu Jianshen decided after careful consideration to open orders for trains, ships, etc. to the vassal states of the Ming Dynasty, and at the same time make economic and construction investments in some of the Ming Dynasty's overseas territories.

Getting envoys and rulers of vassal states to go to the Cuju field to watch Cuju was just a cover-up; in reality, it was intended to improve the productivity and transportation capabilities of various countries.

In the face of Zhu Jianshen's grace, the 72 vassal states all submitted and placed large orders.

Among these orders, Japan, Korea and Siam are undoubtedly the main forces. After all, they own a large amount of land in Kunlun Continent. If they have a railway that crosses Kunlun Continent one day, they will be able to better deal with the Western Continent colonists in northern Kunlun.

Under Zhu Jianshen's partial technological opening-up policy, many countries were no longer willing to continue investing in independent research and development of steam locomotives, ships, machinery and other technologies, and instead switched to purchasing finished products directly from the Ming Dynasty.

History is a circle. Eighty years ago, the Ming Dynasty used silk, porcelain and other difficult-to-replicate commodities to conquer the world, and today, the Ming Dynasty still uses various industrial commodities to conquer the world.

With such relaxation, Ming Tongbao paper money began to be issued continuously along with trade.

The Ming Dynasty did not recognize the currencies of other countries, so if one wanted to trade, one could only exchange precious metals such as gold and silver for Ming Tongbao, and then conduct trade.

Behind the large number of trade orders are boxes of gold and silver, as well as cheap resources from these countries.

Private merchants were not fools. By the Chenghua period, whether they were merchants from the north or the south, or government-run merchants, they were all paying for the resources produced at high prices.

Because of the workers' wages, the price of coal in the Ming Dynasty was 700 wen per ton, of which 400 wen was the labor cost. The remaining 300 wen was deducted by taxes, transportation and other costs, leaving only 100 wen for the merchants.

In the past they did not dare to complain, but with the passage of time and the influx of cheap resources from the vassal states, many merchants began to buy the cheap resources from the vassal states and rejected the high prices of resources from the north.

As for the workers, their life was not comfortable either.

Although the daily wage is over a hundred coins, their working life is not long.

As an industrial country that accounts for 50% of the world's population, it is difficult to solve the growing employment problem no matter how it reforms under the current circumstances.

Although more than three million high school students graduated every year in the Ming Dynasty, they only had two options after graduation.

One is to go to the West and overseas, apply to open up wasteland and become a farmer.

The second is to compete for employment opportunities in cities and towns and become clerks or workers.

Under such circumstances, Zhu Jianshen chose two ways to solve the problem.

Set up five-year universities so that people can spend more time on studying and reduce employment pressure.

But this problem is only a temporary solution and does not address the root cause, because it means that the students' families will have an additional five years of "burden".

For this reason, Zhu Jianshen allocated 70 million strings of cash to develop infrastructure in the west and overseas, creating a large number of temporary jobs. At the same time, he also began to encourage a large number of graduates to leave the two capitals and 13 provincial governments in the Central Plains and go to the southwest, northeast, west and overseas.

Driven by the various policies of the New Deal, a large number of unemployed people flocked to the North Continent, East Continent, and West Continent...

"Will this land belong to us from now on?"

"You will be exempt from taxes for seven years, but the court will not be responsible for your food rations."

On a grassland in Cangwu Prefecture, Nanzhou, more than a dozen people were staring in amazement at the vast grassland in front of them.

Next to them stood a government official wearing a yisa and riding a horse, and behind them were three horse-drawn carriages that they had brought south with them after selling their properties in the Central Plains.

On the horse-drawn carriage were all kinds of furniture purchased from Cangwu County (Canberra), Cangwu Prefecture, as well as various farm tools and medicinal materials used for land reclamation.

"Is there anything else you don't understand? If not, I'll leave."

The clerk turned his horse around, and a fifty-year-old man in charge of leading the team south hurried forward and handed over a stack of banknotes.

"I wonder if there are any wild animals here that might attack us?"

"Don't worry, there is only one kind of wolf that looks like a fox in Nanzhou. We can deal with it with a bow and arrow."

As the clerk spoke, he still reached out his hand, pulled out a shiny black object from his horse's back and handed it to the man.

"This is an old, obsolete piece of shit, but it's all you can buy with your money."

The man looked over when he heard the sound, and only then did he see clearly that it was a four-foot-long flintlock carbine.

This is indeed an old product that has been eliminated by the Ming army for more than 40 years, but it is enough for a person to become the top of the food chain.

"The ammunition here is enough for you to shoot more than thirty times. If you run out, you can come to the county government to find me. My name is Ji Zhen."

As soon as Ji Zhen finished speaking, he threw the flintlock rifle and the ammunition bag to the man, shook the reins and rode away to the east.

This place is more than 160 miles away from Cangwu County. It will take him at least two days to get back, so he can't waste time here.

Looking at his receding back, the fifty-year-old man took a deep breath, held the flintlock in his hand and said, "From today on, this is our home!"

After sighing, they began to build their new home.

Put up tents, mow the grass, plow the fields...

The solid ground was plowed and broken up, and the gravel and stones in the ground were collected and piled aside.

The man and his three sons dug the foundation. They tied a large stone weighing dozens of kilograms with a rope, set up a simple wooden frame, and used a wooden pulley to pull the rope to pull the flat stone into the air and drop it to form a solid foundation.

The Han people are best at transforming the environment, and this is vividly demonstrated in this family of more than ten people.

In just two months, the former tent was transformed into a yard surrounded by rammed earth walls.

Both the front yard and the back yard have a main house and two side rooms. The difference is that there is also a stable in the front yard.

The rainfall in Nanzhou is not heavy, so we just build a shed and use it as a place to cook.

Outside the yard, more than two acres of arable land have been reclaimed from the once vast grassland and vegetables have been planted.

There are gullies between the cultivated fields, and in the center of the gullies is a well.

Use a press-type water pump to pump well water into the gully to irrigate the vegetable field, and then buy some fertilizer to make compost. Next year, these two acres of vegetable field will become excellent farmland.

Their days have just begun. As long as the seven-year tax exemption promised by the government is true, they will have a firm foothold on this land in seven years.

There are many people like them. Since their families are not wealthy, they still use animal power to engage in small-scale farming.

However, compared to them, the powerful people who control large amounts of land have already used the cutting-edge technology of this era.

"Woo-"

A shrill whistle sounded on the grassland not far northwest of Cangwu County, Cangwu Prefecture, Nanzhou. Streams of steam continued to float into the air and finally fell.

"Be careful, everyone. If this tractor breaks down, you won't be able to pay for it even if you have a hundred of them!"

"It will be dark in two hours. We must finish planting this field before dark!"

On a cement road, some supervisors with their hands behind their backs were shouting and yelling, while on both sides of the cement road were steam tractors working.

These tractors look like small locomotives, with a person sitting on top and a two-meter-wide frame hanging behind them, with ten plowshares fixed on it.

The heavy tractors moved forward slowly with the sound of whistles, even faster than a human walking, but with every step they took, they plowed out a large area of ​​land behind them.

When they turn over the wasteland, the tractor behind will pull the stone-clearing machinery into the site. While moving, it will leave the stones in the soil and sift out the fluffy soil.

Ten people operating two such tractors can reclaim more than 20 acres of wasteland and turn it into arable land in a day.

Here outside Cangwu County, dozens of tractors and hundreds of people were working hard, with supervisors shouting and yelling on the cement road. Not far from the supervisors, two thirty-year-old men in round-necked shirts were sitting in a four-wheeled carriage.

They sat facing each other on the sofa inside the carriage, with cakes and tea sets on the table in front of them.

"Within a year, I'm afraid Brother Huaizhong will become the largest landlord in Cangwu County."

"Exaggerated..."

The man in white sighed, and the man in green was humble.

The two of them talked while making tea. After the man in green poured the tea, he looked out the window and said:
"If the land in Northeast China had not been clearly distributed among my fellow countrymen, I would not have come here to beg for food."

The man laughed at himself for begging for food. The man in white laughed when he heard this:

"Forty tractors are worth a hundred thousand strings of cash. They can reclaim hundreds of acres of land every day, which means fourteen or fifteen thousand acres a year, and millions of acres in ten years..."

"If we sell it ten years later, these one million acres of farmland will be worth at least two or three million guan, right?"

"According to my understanding, there are more than 2,400 counties in the Ming Dynasty, and 70% of them are county towns, with annual taxes of only tens of thousands of strings of cash."

"I'm afraid there aren't many families in the Ming Dynasty that can come up with such wealth as Brother Huaizhong..."

"Haha, you underestimate the Ming Dynasty!" The man in green laughed heartily:
"My Li family is only an earl, and we have survived to this day thanks to the grace of Emperor Shizong Wu."

"There are probably more people with wealth like my Li family than this handful of melon seeds!"

The man in blue grabbed a handful of melon seeds and scattered them on the table. There were probably no less than a hundred of them.

The man in white laughed dumbly at this: "If I rely on my salary, it will probably take me five years to buy a machine to work for me..."

"Haha, Magistrate Zhang is so young, and he will be promoted step by step in the future. Why should we care about this?"

"I heard that the imperial court is going to set up three offices in Nanzhou in a few days. By then, with Prefect Zhang's achievements, it will not be a problem for him to be appointed to the Provincial Administration Office."

"My little fortune still depends on the respect of Prefect Zhang to maintain it..."

As the man surnamed Li spoke, he took out a land deed from his sleeve and pushed it over.

Magistrate Zhang wanted to remain reserved when he saw this, but he couldn't help but take a second look when he saw the name of his hometown on the land deed.

Just with this one look, he couldn't take his eyes away.

[Lingshi County East Water Field 2420...]

More than 2,400 acres of paddy fields, this amount made Magistrate Zhang breathe heavily.

He naturally knew the price of land in his hometown. This land deed alone was worth no less than 7,000 strings of cash.

With his salary, he would have to go without food and drink for at least 30 years to save up that much money.

"Please ask the prefect to keep this thing for me. It is much safer than keeping it with me."

After the man surnamed Li finished speaking, he said to the outside world without waiting for the prefect Zhang to refuse: "Return to the city!"

Finally, the carriage was driven back to the city by the coachman, and these scenes in Nanzhou were just a microcosm of the various class gaps in the great era.

A large number of people flocked to overseas, which promoted the development of agricultural economy in South Europe, North Europe and East Europe.

From the first year of Chenghua to the tenth year of Chenghua, the number of people migrating from the Ming Dynasty reached more than 16 million, and the growth of overseas cultivated land also increased from more than 2 million mu per year to more than 7 million mu.

The internal conflicts of the Ming Dynasty were eased during this period, and the rate of land growth far exceeded the rate of population growth of the Ming Dynasty.

In addition, Zhu Jianshen also took seriously the memorial submitted by Wang Shouren, the Grand Secretary of the Palace, suggesting that attention should be paid to agriculture in the north.

Cotton from the Western Regions was widely planted during this period, but labor costs in the Ming Dynasty became a big problem.

In March of the 12th year of Chenghua, Wang Shouren submitted a memorial suggesting that some low-end factories be moved to Nanzhou, Beizhou and Dongzhou to increase profits by taking advantage of the local low labor prices.

This suggestion was approved by Zhu Jianshen. A large number of low-end factories in Central China were moved overseas, and a large number of people became unemployed.

However, before the people could complain, a large number of light industrial factories were established in the local area under the organization of Wang Shouren, Li Dongyang, Yang Yiqing, Yang Tinghe, Zhang Cong and others.

During this process, Wang Shouren advocated that the north should focus on agriculture and industry, while the south should focus on agriculture and light industry, but his suggestion was rejected by others.

It was not that people thought there was something wrong with his proposal, but because Bohai, Liaodong and other places were the birthplace of Emperor Shizong after all, and many of his meritorious officials were very powerful, no one dared to easily change the economic policies of Northeast Bohai and Liaodong.

Sure enough, when Wang Shouren's proposal was announced, memorials impeaching him came in like snowflakes, making people dizzy.

Zhu Jianshen ignored the opposition of many people and not only did not demote Wang Shouren, but instead transferred him from the palace to the Ministry of War to serve as the Minister of War.

In the 13th year of Chenghua, except for Rumi (Ottoman Empire), all other forces in the Arabian Peninsula basically joined the Ming Dynasty's vassal system.

In the 14th year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianshen enfeoffed several of his sons and sent them to Beizhou and Dongzhou.

Although the technology of the Ming Dynasty at this time was much more advanced than that during the Hongxi period, it was this advancement that led to a huge increase in the strength of places such as Dongzhou and Beizhou.

In the same year, the number of Ming Dynasty citizens in Dongzhou and Beizhou reached 26 million. The territories of Dongzhou and Beizhou basically did not increase, and even domestic affairs were basically handed over to officials sent by Ming Dynasty.

In April of the 15th year, small countries such as Borneo, Sulu, Sumatra, Malacca, and Dani were squeezed out of the Kunlun Continental Trade Zone by five countries, mainly Siam, Champa, Ganbozhi, Korea, and Japan.

Starting from the following year, many small countries in Southeast Asia, under the instruction of Zhu Jianshen's hint at the Ministry of Rites, began to request to submit to the Ming Dynasty one after another.

Over a period of three years, Zhu Jianshen conquered seven small countries in Southeast Asia without using a single soldier or starting any war.

Zhu Jianshen conferred titles of marquis on the kings of these small countries, which attracted many small countries without resource advantages.

Many small countries and city-states that split from Rakhine, Bangla and Delhi in northwestern India submitted petitions to submit to the Ming Dynasty.

In June of the 17th year of Chenghua, of the original 16 kingdoms of India, only seven major countries in the central and southern parts remained, while in the Indochina Peninsula, only Siam, Kampot and Champa remained.

The number of vassal states of the Ming Dynasty also dropped from seventy-two to twenty-two.

In September of the 17th year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianshen established the extreme north as Lingbei Dusi, and the vast territory north of Mobei was nominally taken over by the Ming Dynasty.

On the fifth day of the twelfth lunar month in the seventeenth year of Chenghua, the Ryukyu Kingdom annexed the Ming Dynasty, and its ruler was granted the title of Marquis of Ryukyu.

In March of the 18th year of Chenghua, France, France and other countries formed an alliance and fought with Japan in the Dakar Sea area of ​​​​West Kunlun.

In this battle, Japan had 7,600 soldiers and 52 steam-powered wooden warships, while France and other countries had 24,000 soldiers and 124 sailing ships.

On the second day of April, Japan defeated the Allied Forces, captured more than 2,400 Western barbarians, killed more than 1,800 people, sank 48 warships, and suffered only 724 casualties and 7 warships.

This battle expanded Japan's ambitions and once again gave rise to the idea of ​​researching ironclad ships.

After the Battle of Dakar, Diablo was the first to develop a steamship. Although its speed was only five miles per hour, it still gave Diablo hope.

In August, Japanese Kunlun General General Yoshihide Kamiyama secretly met with the Dark Eliya envoys, and the two sides reached many mutually beneficial terms.

In April of the 19th year of Chenghua, the Ming army had a border conflict with Lithuania, and 400 Ming soldiers defeated more than 3,000 Lithuanian troops who had crossed the border.

When Lithuania learned the news, it immediately sent envoys to apologize and handed over the officers who had violated the border.

Although they claimed it was a misunderstanding, all countries knew it was a test, and the results were shocking.

Upon hearing the news, Japan suspended its cooperation with Diaoeliya. At the same time, the Japanese King Ashikaga Yoshimoto paid tribute to the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Jianshen beat Ashikaga Yoshimoto in the Huagai Palace, and this scene was recorded by the Korean envoys and even published on the front page of the Chosun Ilbo.

In May, Zhu Jianshen was in poor health, so he ordered the Crown Prince Zhu Youtang to act as regent and appointed the nine-year-old Zhu Houzhao as the Crown Prince.

On the second day of August, Zhu Jianshen took Zhu Houzhao to Jiaozhi. During the inspection of the people's conditions, Zhu Houzhao was deeply moved by the fact that the common people used animal power and the meritorious officials used machines.

In April of the 20th year of Chenghua, Wu Han, a soldier in Huagao County, Dongzhou, claimed that he was a descendant of You, the ruler of the Southern Kingdom (Inca), and distributed guns from the county's military office to some rioters who believed in the Southern Kingdom.

They failed to seize Huagao County and instead fled in panic into the rain forest.

In September, Wu Han gathered more than 6,000 natives in the rainforest and began to plunder towns near the rainforest.

On September 24, Wang Gao, the Dongzhou envoy, led 3,000 troops to encircle and suppress Wu Han. More than 6,000 rebels were wiped out, and only Wu Han and a dozen others managed to break through.

In early February of the following year, the Ottoman Empire fought against Hungary and other countries.

In June, Maben Mohammed, a miner in the Boskelden mine, led more than 7,000 miners in rebellion and killed more than 400 supervisors and clerks.

This disturbance did not occur suddenly, but was the result of long-suppressed public grievances in the Persian region.

Because of this, the rebellion quickly grew from more than 7,000 people to more than 100,000 people.

The Ming Dynasty had only 24,000 garrisons and military forces in Persia, and miners' rebellions broke out in many places.

In the twelfth month, the Persians in Shannan launched a rebellion, but it was quickly suppressed.

In the following three months, there were constant wars in Hezhong, Shannan, Persia, and Qibei, and news was constantly transmitted back to Beijing. Zhu Jianshen calmly formulated policies to quell the rebellion and post-war policies, and his condition worsened.

After entering the second half of the 22nd year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianshen's condition continued to worsen, even to the point where he had difficulty getting up.

On the fifth day of the first lunar month in the twenty-third year of Chenghua, Zhu Jianshen felt that his time was running out, so he specially summoned Yang Tinghe, Wang Shouren, Zhang Cong and others into the palace to draft a will, passing the throne to the Crown Prince Zhu Youtang.

At night, Zhu Jianshen died in the Hall of Mental Cultivation of the Qianqing Palace in Beijing at the age of seventy-three...

(End of this chapter)