Crazy at the end of the Ming Dynasty

In the early stage, the people Wu Shigong sent to the front station of Runing Prefecture came back and told Wu Shigong: In the Runing Prefecture, Wu Shigong's garrison office has been arranged.

However, because in the past, the Runing Mansion did not set up any defenses, so this garrison office was built by requisitioning some real estate in the city.Of course, the imperial court would not spend much money for this yamen, so it simply built a facade, opened up a few walls, and made the yamen roughly look like it.Therefore, if Wu Shigong wants to live in the garrison yamen, he still needs to spend his own money to decorate it.

Anyway, it was stipulated that he could take office before the end of the year, Wu Shigong was not in a hurry, so he arranged for people to bring money to Runing Mansion to renovate the yamen, especially the inner house behind the yamen, because this time, Wu Shigong's family The old and the young all have to move there.

It wasn't until after the autumn harvest that Wu Shigong's grain had been collected in the warehouse of Qianhusuo Fortress that Wu Shigong decided to leave and take up his post in Runing Mansion.

At this time, Tang Liu had already delivered all of Wu Shigong's food to Wu Shigong.But when it was delivered, Tang Liu complained to Wu Shigong: Because of the severe drought in Henan, the local grain in Henan has risen to about one tael to two taels of silver per stone.

Although Tang Liu is in the grain-producing area of ​​Huguang, the price of purchasing grain is still four or five yuan per shi, but the tax customs along the way know that the grain merchants will transport the grain to Henan for sale, so they put the tax and the usual It has improved a lot.Even if Tang Liu was acquainted with these customs officials, the grain delivered to Wu Shigong this time reached about eight renminbi per shi.According to the agreement with Wu Shigong, Tang Liu basically won't make any money from this business.

Tang Liu didn't intend to raise the price to Wu Shigong. Although the businessmen at that time also had the nature of profit-seeking, they were basically very trustworthy for the business that had been promised.Unless the status of the two parties doing business is very unequal, just like Wang Mi of Qi's family viewed Wu Shigong's status.In that case, those with low status will inevitably be cheated.Of course, this happens very rarely.That's why Wu Shigong was so angry at Qi's actions.

The main purpose of Tang Liu telling Wu Shigong is to let Wu Shigong understand that if Wu Shigong buys grain through Tang Liu in the future, the price of grain should be raised appropriately.

What Tang Liu did made Wu Shigong feel a little sorry.Taking advantage of oneself and Tang Liu's disadvantage, this is not the way to be a friend.Therefore, Wu Shigong wanted to make up some money to Tang Liu from the very beginning, but Tang Liu of course declined.So Wu Shigong simply took out [-] taels of silver, at a price of nine qian per shi, and asked Tang Liu to still buy grain for him.

However, this time the food will not need to be sent to Qianhusuo Fortress, the food will be sent directly to Runing Mansion.For Wu Shigong, there is actually not much difference between having food and money in his hands.And in this era of frequent disasters, the value of food may be higher.

For Tang Liu, the waterway distance from Huguang to Runing Mansion is actually much shorter, and the tax customs along the way are also much less.Tang Liu's business can also make a small fortune this time.

Seeing this, we may have a question in our minds. The price difference between Henan and Huguang, that is, the two adjacent areas, is more than double. Why are there no merchants who traffic a large amount of grain to Henan to earn high profits? profit, and suppress the price of this grain?

This is mainly because of three reasons:

The first reason is that because the transportation in the Ming Dynasty was very underdeveloped at that time, the prices of commodities between the two regions were very different.And often the difference is far more than double, so the price difference of this grain is doubled, which is not the most disparity.Moreover, as grain is a heavy item, it is not convenient to transport, so merchants are not very interested in doing grain business.

Take salt for example.The cost price of the salt products produced by the Yangzhou salt merchants' salt farms is only a little over two renminbi per stone, and some larger salt farms can even lower the cost price of salt products to below two renminbi per stone.But as long as these Yangzhou salt merchants ship the salt to Henan, even the lowest wholesale price is one or two silver per stone, and the profit will be more than five times.

The second reason is that during the transportation of grain, knowing that the grain can be profitable, the disaster victims and bandits want to grab it, and the government can find some reason to confiscate it. The risk of transportation is very high.Only the Cao Gang like Tang Liu, who have a certain force on the water and have a lot of connections with the government, dare to transport food.

The final reason is that although the price of grain in Henan is very high, there is no shortage of grain in Henan.Those grains are in the hands of big landlords and big grain merchants.And the people who need food most, they don't have much purchasing power.So if there are any merchants from other places who transport grain to Henan, if they don't cooperate with the local grain merchants in Henan, those merchants will not even be able to sell the grain.

After putting the grain transported by Tang Liu into the warehouse, Wu Shigong felt more confident.Because with the severe drought in Henan, the food stamp system was stopped for a period and started to be implemented again.And vaguely, these food stamps have become valuable tickets, converted into silver taels, and have been semi-circulated among the common people and shops nearby.

Before leaving Guide Mansion, Wu Shigong confessed that He Fei, who had been promoted to general manager, asked him to bring some military officers to Yu Ji's place to help with training.Of course, when training Yu Ji's military households, Wu Shigong also greeted Zhao Ming and other military officers of Guidewei and gave them a generous gift.

Originally, Wu Shigong thought that Zhao Ming would definitely be dissatisfied with his poaching behavior, and would cause some stumbling blocks.Unexpectedly, after Zhao Ming received the gift, he immediately agreed with a smile on his face.

From the point of view of Zhao Ming, the military officers of Guidewei, there are benefits to be gained from someone who helps them train military households, and those well-trained military households are nominally under their own command, so what's the joy of such a good thing? Why not?

Of course, military officers like Zhao Ming are not stupid, they also know that after receiving Wu Shigong's military salary, those military households will definitely only obey Wu Shigong's orders in the future.However, military officers like Zhao Ming are hereditary, and no one can deprive them of their official positions. Of course, they have no chance to be promoted, and they have no enterprising spirit at all.

Military officers like Zhao Ming also enjoyed a peaceful and wealthy life for a long time, their only purpose was to provide for the elderly, and if they had time, they would marry a concubine a year.As long as Wu Shigong doesn't rebel, as long as the income of Zhao Ming's military officers doesn't decrease, even if Wu Shigong poached all their military households, so what?

In mid-October, Wu Shigong took his family members and all the servants in the inner house, under the guard of [-] soldiers, to Runing Mansion to take office.The other people Wu Shigong recruited in Beizhili and their families; Yang Goudan’s blacksmith workshop, as well as Wu Shigong’s staff and other soldiers, will be gradually recruited after Wu Shigong determines the location of the Runing Camp. Moved to Runing Mansion.

Among the people in the fortress of Qianhusuo, Wu Shigong only brought along Deng Qifan, Zhizhi, Zhang Xuebin and his apprentice Tao Xin.Regarding Zhizhi, Wu Shigong had a detailed discussion with him after he came back, and asked Zhizhi to bring more soldiers so that they could learn some basic rescue knowledge on the battlefield.Of course, regarding the requirement of intelligence, Wu Shigong also readily agreed to the requirement of bringing more than a dozen apprentices to learn Buddhism and medicine from him.Therefore, beside Zhi Zhi now, there are more than a dozen little bald heads.

And Deng Qifan has now become Wu Shigong's chief aide, of course Wu Shigong has to take it with him.However, Deng Qifan has also written a letter to his family, and will move his family to Runing Mansion.

Of course, Zhang Xuebin's role was to let Zhang Xuebin handle some official affairs after Wu Shigong took office.As for the apprentice Tao Xin, although the relationship between Tao Xin and Wu Shigong is very close.But Tao Xin was underage after all, and after Wu Shigong left the Qianhusuo fortress, Tao Xin should be the Qianhu of this Qianhusuo in name.

Wu Shigong was afraid that Tao Xin would fall into the hands of people with ulterior motives, who would use Tao Xin's identity to rob his own foundation of Qianhusuo Fortress.Although the possibility of this happening is relatively small, Wu Shigong still has to be on guard.

In addition, Wu Shigong also hired Foreman Jiang from the county with a high salary.Oh Se-gong and Foreman Kang had a great time working together while building the fortress of the Thousand Households.Therefore, to build the big camp of Runing Camp this time, Wu Shigong also needs the experience and ability of Foreman Jiang.

Under the guidance of several old bandits sent by Lei Ying, Wu Shigong's troops passed through Li Yaozi's activity area smoothly, left the mountainous area in the north of Runing Mansion, and entered the hinterland of Runing Mansion.

But as the team walked, the atmosphere became dull. The farmland on both sides of the road was dry and cracked. It seemed that there was no harvest this year.And there were always twos and threes of fleeing people appearing in front of Wu Shigong and the others.

These fleeing people saw Wu Shigong and the others, and they were not afraid because Wu Shigong and the others were in the army.These escaped people followed Wu Shigong and the others from afar.I hope Wu Shigong and the others will give me something to eat.

Seeing this situation, Wu Shigong also donated food several times, but his actions made those refugees gather more and more.In desperation, Wu Shigong could only let it go, and let the soldiers disperse those refugees who dared to approach Wu Shigong's convoy.Seeing that they could no longer get any benefits from Wu Shigong, those refugees gradually dispersed over time.

And when they arrived at Runing Prefecture, the refugees outside the city had already gathered.Even the city gate of Runing Prefecture was half-opened and half-closed because of the fear of a large influx of refugees.

Knowing that Wu Shigong is the new guard of Runing Mansion, a group of soldiers rushed out from the city gate of Runing Mansion, dispersed the refugees near the gate, and let Wu Shigong and his party go in.

Wu Shigong left most of the guards outside the city and set up camp on the spot, while the rest of the guards guarded himself and his family and went directly to the prepared garrison office of Runing Mansion.