The late Ming Dynasty in the living room

Chapter 152 The Emperor's Personal Letter
In Fang Yu's eyes, Emperor Chongzhen was actually just a tool.

According to his mind, the Jiannu were enemies, the bandits were enemies, the civil officials and gentry were enemies, the southern nobles were enemies (they had in fact already merged with the southern gentry and were extremely greedy; as for the northern nobles, they were not worth mentioning), the military generals who had their own troops and ruled local areas were enemies, and as for Emperor Chongzhen, he was of course an enemy as well.

The next era is the era of large-scale industrial production, where capital and trade are king. Feudal monarchs like him who are obsessed with "I am the state" should not join in the fun.

For him, the best outcome would be to listen to advice and become a Chihuahua who is a figurehead. Whenever there is a happy event, he would be pulled out for everyone to admire and read out a flourishing manuscript, and that's all.

Emperor Chongzhen would have been very unhappy if he knew about this outcome, but what could he do? He would have no worries about worldly affairs and could play hide-and-seek with Empress Zhou and Concubine Yuan. Isn't this good? It's much better than the original history where he was hanged on Coal Hill and his whole family died.

Of course, he should still play the role of a tool for now, and Fang Yu has never expressed his intentions to others.

The letter from Emperor Chongzhen arrived later than expected. Considering that he was so excited that he fainted when he heard that "the Son of God had descended to earth", it can be seen that he must have hesitated for many days before writing this letter.

What are you hesitating about?

He was probably thinking about how he, the lord of the mortal world, should deal with the son of God from heaven, how to gain his favor, how to maintain his dignity, how to express his enthusiasm appropriately... and so on.

Chongzhen's handwriting was excellent (Chongzhen's handwriting is attached below). Fang Yu flipped through a few pages of letter paper and found that not a single stroke in the letter had been changed, nor was there any dirty mark, which showed that he had written the letter somewhere else and then copied it carefully and meticulously.

In the letter, he first expressed his gratitude three times. He thanked Empress Pan for sending down the Milky Way in Baoding, which enabled the fields in dozens of counties along the coast to be irrigated and millions of people to survive; he thanked Fang Shen Zi for helping refugees along the way and generously donating money to strongly support the cause of suppressing bandits in the Central Plains; he also thanked Fang Shen Zi for telling him that Hong Chou (Hong Chengchou) had surrendered to the Qing army, which allowed him to retain the last bit of face in front of the people of the world.

(He had set up an altar for Hong Chengchou and was about to go there in person to pay tribute, but after seeing Sun Chuanting's urgent memorial, he was so angry that his brain almost burst.)
From Hong Chengchou's case, he mentioned the Minister of War Chen Xinjia, who had just been dismissed and imprisoned, causing much discussion in the court and rumors outside. Chongzhen explained in the letter that Chen Xinjia had met with the Jiannu envoys to negotiate peace without authorization and promised some conditions that were humiliating to the country. Chongzhen said, "Ministers have no right to make foreign diplomacy, and there is no one who does not report to the emperor and father and takes advantage of the situation. Moreover, he privately paid money to humiliate the country, and he should be punished for the loss of the city."

Fang Yu knew Chen Xinjia, and he should have been beheaded in September. However, Fang Yu had the impression that Chen Xinjia was instructed by Chongzhen to negotiate peace with the Jiannu. After the terms were agreed upon, he threw the document on the table. The servants at home thought it was a report from outside, so they sent it to the provincial offices in Beijing to be copied. The peace talks were exposed, and Emperor Chongzhen was furious, so he wanted to kill him...

Of course, thinking about it now, this statement seems a bit ridiculous.

Fang Yu didn't care who was real or fake. Chen Xinjia was originally a speculator (he was a juren, good at bribery, because no one wanted to be the Minister of War, so he was promoted). He had even written to Sun Chuanting to ask for money. Who cares if such a person lives or dies. Fang Yu cared about the latter - Chongzhen said that he was selecting a new governor of the river, who would be responsible for summoning the militia and river workers to dredge the lower reaches of the Juma River and the Baigou River. Fang Yu asked Teacher Pan to fill the Juma River with water. Irrigating the farmland along the river was just a side job. The main idea was to promote the water wheel to build weapons, and the second was to build a high-speed channel between Laishui County and the Central Plains, so that a large amount of food and supplies could be sent to the Central Plains.

The Central Plains region and Laishui County are different.

Giving away money for free in Laishui County would cause a surge in prices; bringing all the people in the county to the new city to eat and drink for free would make the fields barren, and handicrafts and commercial activities would come to a complete standstill. Fang Yu adopted a policy of assistance here, forcibly reducing rents in rural areas and curbing land annexation; in the county town, he set up a paper mill, a Mingtong Express, invested in Xinhua Bookstore, and even the dock project and shipyard that the county magistrate Min Wengong was presiding over received investment. Fang Yu also instructed Liu Ji and others to buy as many things as possible in the county (except for food), and the weapons manufacturing department distributed a large number of standard parts orders in the county... All measures were to expand production capacity and increase employment opportunities.

The Central Plains region had experienced years of war and was now a pure hell with no social order at all.

All the slow support policies are bullshit. Sending food and supplies to help the people is the only way to stabilize the Central Plains. Otherwise, after Sun Chuanting led 30 troops to wipe out Li Zicheng, Wang Zicheng and Zhang Zicheng would appear immediately... Those "bandits" will never be wiped out. (I don't agree with this statement. They have a faster solution)

In order to build such a high-speed channel, at least 200,000 militiamen would be needed, and officials of all ranks from the surrounding prefectures, states, and counties would have to work together. Neither Sun Chuanting nor Yang Wenyue could do this (the governor was in charge of military affairs), so Emperor Chongzhen had to take the lead.

Of course, Fang Yu would also provide him with a large amount of material support at that time, and Emperor Chongzhen was also aware of this (Zhang Yan had written to him about it), otherwise, he would not dare to launch such a large-scale construction project near Shuntian Prefecture.

Fang Yu read this section very carefully, and then took out a local map to study it carefully.

Then Chongzhen began to care for the guests from heaven as a host. He asked Fang Yu if he was used to eating earthly food and whether he felt comfortable living in Laishui County.

He also knew that Laishui County was a remote and small county, and was worried that it would affect Fang Yu's impression of the Ming Dynasty, so he spent some space introducing those prosperous cities, Beijing, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou... Well, he also mentioned the Qinhuai River in Nanjing.

Just a reminder, Nanjing's Qinhuai River is a very prosperous commercial area. We should not always think about those flower boats and those hardware and software projects. This is unhealthy.

(End of this chapter)