"gone?"
"gone!"
In the Forbidden City, when Zhu Yunwen was on his way to the morning court, Li Quan, the eunuch in charge of the East Palace, also brought him good news that made him happy. Zhu Gaoxu finally left Nanjing.
"It's good to go..." Zhu Yunwen had a smile on his face, but he didn't care about Zhu Gaoxu in his heart.
Now that he has an additional mine map, it is easier to pick out the local squires.
As long as the gold and silver mines on the two mine maps can be mined smoothly, then I can continue to use money to deduct taxes to gain the support of wealthy squire families, but my third uncle has no chips to fight with me. .
As for Zhu Gaoxu...
"Haha..." Zhu Yunwen didn't think he could cause any trouble in Jilin. I'm afraid that when he arrived in Jilin, he would have to deal with Xiyang Ha's robbery in a hurry.
Thinking of this, Zhu Yunwen touched the jade pendant around his waist, and the smile on his lips became even wider.
That was the jade pendant given to him by Zhu Yuanzhang yesterday. Although the value of the jade pendant was not high, Zhu Yunwen remembered that it was given to his grandfather by his grandmother.
Therefore, the significance of this jade pendant needs no words.
With the joy and joy in his heart, Zhu Yunwen's stepmother continued to move towards Wuying Palace.
Only a quarter of an hour later, he got off the bus and arrived in front of Wuying Hall.
"Great grandson..."
He walked in as usual and saw the empty seat of Zhu Gaochi, as well as Zhu Jixi and Zhu Shangbing who stood up and bowed to him one after another.
Looking at the two of them, although Zhu Yunwen responded with a smile on his face as always, his heart always stayed on Zhu Jixi.
This Prince Jin has really looked haggard recently...
"Where's Gao Chi?"
Zhu Yunwen asked knowingly, and the eunuch on duty in the palace also bowed his head and replied: "The Prince of Yan has sent King Bohai to the vassal state, and will return to Wuying Palace to manage politics after noon."
"Yes" responded, Zhu Yunwen returned to his seat and dealt with the memorial in a comfortable mood.
A quarter of an hour later, Zhu Yuanzhang also walked into Wuying Hall. Zhu Yunwen and the other two stood up one after another to bow, to which Zhu Yuanzhang just nodded.
He walked back to his seat and sat down without asking anything about Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Gaoxu.
At this time, Zhu Yunwen picked up two memorials and walked up to him and said: "Grandpa, the commander of Guangdong Province reported that there were nine Japanese ships in Jitou Ao, Chaozhou, with about 500 people docked. On the twelfth lunar month of last month, On the 22nd, they looted Nanzha and other villages."
Hearing that it was about Japanese pirates again, Zhu Yuanzhang frowned and took the memorial at the top. After reading it roughly, he said:
"Guangdong and Guangxi are close to the sea, and the prefectures and counties are often harmed by Japanese pirates. The governors of Guangdong and Guangxi should always order the garrison officers and soldiers to patrol."
"Now that Chaozhou is being invaded by Japanese pirates, it must be caused by the lax patrols of the guarding officers and soldiers..." He said, he thought for a moment and then ordered:
"I ordered Cao Guogong to transfer Yang Wen to lead the navy south to Guangdong and Guangxi, and control the coastal navy of the two capitals to quell the Japanese."
"Order the Longjiang Shipyard to build fifty warships with two thousand materials for use by the garrison troops of Guangxi and Guangdong after the Japanese are suppressed. The two capital divisions of Guangxi and Guangdong will also build hundreds of small boats with more than two hundred materials each. Once the boats are completed, they will be used by the divisions. Officers and soldiers patrol the offshore waters every day to look for traces of Japanese pirates."
Lao Zhu gave his own plan, which was to pacify the Japanese pirates first, and then strengthen the combat power and warships of the Guangdong and Guangxi naval forces so that they could patrol the sea to prevent Japanese pirates from coming from other places to harm the people.
Faced with such an order, Zhu Yunwen had no objection. He just responded and motioned with his eyes to the eunuch and eunuch to take care of it.
Then, he handed over the second memorial: "General Pingyi Ning Zhengshangshu said that the Taozhou Fan people were rebelling, and requested that troops be sent to quell the rebellion."
"That's right..." Zhu Yuanzhang nodded, but frowned after taking the memorial and reading it. The scale of this rebellion was larger than he thought, with more than ten thousand Xifan people participating in the rebellion.
"Let the King of Qin lead his bodyguard to restrain the Pingqiang General Ning Zheng and go to quell the rebellion."
Zhu Yuanzhang changed his tone, which made Zhu Yunwen frown after hearing this.
Although Zhu Xi is the direct eldest son of the current kings, his military achievements are not high, so he does not have much military power. He is far inferior to Zhu Di, let alone Zhu Fan.
If Zhu Ping is allowed to control Ning Zheng this time and thus gain the military power of Shaanxi and Shaanxi Xingdusi, then things will be a bit bad.
Zhu Yunwen remembered that Qi Tai had said that Shanshan and Shaanxi were the most important areas in the north of the imperial court, and they could easily be separatist and sweep across the Central Plains, Hebei and other places.
Thinking of this, Zhu Yunwen also asked cautiously: "Grandpa, Taozhou is bad. Isn't it a good idea to send my second uncle there?"
"It's okay, let him exercise." Zhu Yuanzhang did not care about Zhu Yunwen's opinion, but insisted on letting Zhu Ping lead the army.
Seeing Lao Zhu's insistence, Zhu Yunwen had no choice but to ask the eunuch in charge of rites to do as he was told.
But after he stood up, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly said: "By the way, I have written to Lao Wu and asked him to send the Henan capital to command more than 34,000 horse infantry officers and soldiers from the subordinate guards to go to the north of the Great Wall and choose a place to build a city and farm. Let it be his pasture."
"Yes..." After hearing Zhu Yuanzhang's words, Zhu Yunwen breathed a sigh of relief.
Currently, Zhu Fan is managing the Saibei Pasture in the Hetao area. Now that his grandfather has spoken, he is presumably preparing to divide the Saibei Pasture in the Hetao area, further weakening the influence of the Jin Mansion.
Zhu Yunwen agreed, turned around and returned to his position. During this period, he took a careful look at Zhu Jixi, only to find that his teeth were clenched. It seemed that he could guess what Lao Zhu's purpose was, but he knew it, but he couldn't change it.
After the performance ended, the four people in the palace returned to the state of governing. This continued until after noon, and everyone dispersed after Zhu Yuanzhang got up and left.
At the same time, Zhu Gaoxu, who had been boating down the river for two hours, also arrived at Yangzhou Shuiyi by ferry before noon.
Yangzhou Shuiyi is the starting point of the North-South Canal. Although the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal has not yet been fully completed at this time, the canal's transportation capacity has been developed, so there are countless merchant ships traveling here.
Zhu Gaoxu is very curious about Yangzhou in this era.
Unfortunately, it was cold in the early Ming Dynasty and the winter snow had not yet melted in early spring. Therefore, when Zhu Gaoxu and others arrived in Yangzhou, they did not see a scenery that was completely different from Nanjing.
"Xu..."
On the pier, Zhu Gaoxu personally led Chi Huan off the ferry, and then walked out of the ferry under the guidance of Lin Wuliu. Outside Jiangpu Town, he met the two hundred guardsmen who had been resting for a long time.
Each of them leads a Qin horse, and this Qin horse is the war horse of the cavalry in the early Ming Dynasty, and is related to the Hequ horse of later generations.
"Are the beans and water ready?"
Zhu Gaoxu glanced at Lin Wuliu, who was helping him feed Chi Huan. Lin Wuliu also laughed after hearing this:
"Everything is ready, and the water stations on both sides of the canal have also said hello."
"Okay!" After hearing Lin Wuliu's words, Zhu Gaoxu nodded and looked to the west.
Over there, groups of buildings and dense rivers attracted everyone's attention. However, it is worth noting that such a commercially developed city does not have a city wall, or its city wall is under construction.
Zhu Gaoxu, Lin Wuliu, Yi Shiha and others were not surprised by this situation.
After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, the walls of many important military locations were demolished, including the Lianghuai area.
In this catastrophe, except for a small part of the city walls that escaped damage, the walls in other places were destroyed.
Although the Yuan Dynasty ordered the city wall to be rebuilt to defend against the Red Turban Army during the late Yuan War, due to time constraints, the city walls built at that time were all rammed earth structures.
When Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, the infrastructure plan he formulated included the construction of the Tianxia City Wall. He also demolished the former rammed earth city wall and built a large-scale brick and stone city wall.
However, considering the current productivity of the Ming Dynasty, it would be too expensive to build city walls in more than a thousand counties in the world into masonry structures. Therefore, building city walls in the mainland is done slowly.
For example, Zhu Gaoxu only took a brief look at the city wall in Yangzhou. Although it was far away, it was not difficult to see that the entire city wall only had foundations, and there were not many workers working on it.
At their speed, it may take more than ten years to build the Yangzhou City Wall.
For Zhu Gaoxu, the Lianghuai area without city walls was like a woman taking off her clothes, which was very suitable for cavalry to march straight into it.
"Let's go."
After just a few glances, Zhu Gaoxu greeted everyone to set off.
Soon, they transferred to three ten-foot-long cargo ships and sailed towards the north at a slow speed.
In the early Ming Dynasty, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was not as wide as in the middle and late Ming Dynasty. The narrow river channel limited the speed of ships. Zhu Gaoxu asked the water postmen of the official ship. They all said that it would take almost dusk to reach the Baoying County water post, which was almost He looks like he is in his early twenties every hour.
They will arrive in Huai'an County almost early tomorrow morning, and then take the land route to Dengzhou Prefecture.
Calculating the distance, they had to cover 1,200 miles of land for this trip. At the speed of horseback riding and walking, it would take almost ten days to reach Dengzhou.
When you get to Dengzhou, you still have to take a sea boat for a day and a night before you can reach Lushun in Jinzhouwei.
If they catch the early spring in Liaodong, they can even take a boat all the way to Kaiyuan in northern Liaodong. Then they only need to walk five hundred miles to reach Jilinwei.
Thinking of the long journey, Zhu Gaoxu did not continue to stay on the deck, but returned to the cabin to rest.
He was busy traveling last night and didn't sleep all night, but now he was able to have a good sleep.
Although there was some noise on the canal, compared to Nanjing where firecrackers were blasting all day long in the past few days, this was the most comfortable sleep Zhu Gaoxu had ever had recently.
Perhaps it was because he was away from Nanjing City and Lao Zhu's side that Zhu Gaoxu finally didn't have to worry. In short, he slept from noon to early morning.
He washed up and went to the deck. Even though it was early in the morning, there were still groups of escort brothers on the deck.
Zhu Gaoxu chatted with them. Most of them joined the Jilin Guard after being recommended by friends in the Zhi Twelve Guards.
On their faces, Zhu Gaoxu could see their confusion about going to Jilin, their desire for military success, and their yearning to get ahead.
Zhu Gaoxu had nothing to say. He just blew the cold wind on the dark deck and then returned to the cabin.
After about two hours, they arrived at Huai'an Water Station in Huai'an Prefecture.
Once here, Zhu Gaoxu and the others had to get off the boat.
This is not because the waterway cannot continue to move forward, but if they continue to move forward and disembark from Jining or Teng County to Laizhou, they will have to face the problem of damaged roads.
During the Ming Dynasty, there was only one water post and two land posts that connected each other with Shandong in southern Zhili.
One goes from Huai'an to Muyang, Ganyu, Gaomi, Pingdu to Laizhou, and the other goes from Jining to Beiping.
If you want to go from Jining to Laizhou, you can go there, but the road is not as easy as the post road from Huai'an to Laizhou.
Therefore, after the ship arrived in Huai'an, Zhu Gaoxu and others spent half an hour unloading things from the ship, and then a group of more than 200 people began to take the land route to Laizhou.
In just a blink of an eye, Zhu Gaoxu and the others arrived at the boundary of Ganyu County after three days of journey.
What is worth mentioning is that along the way, not only the city walls in the Huaihe River area were bulldozed and rebuilt, but also the Shandong area suffered from this.
However, Lao Zhu's strategic vision is indeed the first in history. He early allowed the people of Shandong to build complete masonry city walls in key points such as Jinan, Jining, Dongping, and Tengxian.
From this point of view, it is not surprising that Zhu Di was beaten to death in the Jinan and Dongping areas. After all, it was the defense line supervised by his own father.
Thinking of this, Zhu Gaoxu also felt relieved and enjoyed returning to the north immersively.
On the way, Zhu Gaoxu saw many abandoned fields, and there were a group of people busy cultivating them next to them.
In addition, he could also see many people grazing herds.
Some eight or nine-year-old children were herding a dozen sheep with a few hounds. When they saw Zhu Gaoxu and his group of people riding tall horses, these children would stand by the roadside and look at them with envy.
"There are actually more herdsmen than farmers..."
Lin Wuliu on horseback looked at the herdsmen team that was more numerous than farmers in surprise, but Zhu Gaoxu said calmly:
"Although Kublai Khan himself was good at governing the country and paid attention to farming, the group of nobles under him didn't care about these at all."
"After Kublai Khan's death, those ignorant nobles abandoned large tracts of cultivated land in the north and the Huaihe River region and converted the cultivated land into pastures. After decades of this, many people in the north and the two Huaihe River areas did not know how to farm and could only Make a living by herding cattle.”
"Coupled with the flooding of rivers, farmers who were not supported in the first place naturally turned into herders."
Zhu Gaoxu didn't have much ill feelings toward the Yuan Dynasty. After all, the Ming Dynasty had already avenged its vengeance on behalf of the Han people.
Therefore, he did not ignore the good aspects of the Yuan Dynasty like many people did.
It is true that the Yuan Dynasty caused massacres in the north and the Huaihe and Sichuan areas, but Kublai Khan himself still paid great attention to farming.
Judging from the entire historical process, the Yuan Dynasty during the Kublai Khan period made a very obvious contribution to the promotion of agriculture in the Central Plains.
This can be seen from three agricultural books of the Yuan Dynasty: "Nongsang Collection", "Nongshu" and "Nongsang Clothing and Food Summary".
Not only agriculture, the Yuan Dynasty during Kublai Khan's period had its own unique features in terms of business, economy, culture and religion. In many aspects, it was actually more advantageous than the Song Dynasty.
It's a pity that Kublai Khan was an outlier among the Mongols after all. Since his death, the agriculture of the Yuan Dynasty began to be crazily destroyed by the Mongolian nobles.
A large amount of cultivated land was abandoned and turned into pasture, causing the nearly 700 million acres of cultivated land in the Jin and Song Dynasties to plummet to more than 300 million acres in the early Hongwu period.
However, Zhu Gaoxu believes that with the overhaul of water conservancy projects carried out by Lao Zhu in recent years, more and more people will switch from pastoralism to agriculture, and more and more land will be re-cultivated.
But the only thing that worries him is who owns the re-cultivated land...
Thinking of this, Zhu Gaoxu looked at the people who were reclaiming wasteland in the distance.
While they were clearing the wasteland shirtless, a coarse cloth awning was erected on the trail behind.
Several men who looked like servants brought the chairs, and a squire in silk clothes sat on the chair, and then a flag was also put up.
【hole】
"The Yanshenggong family is hiring people to open up wasteland, but they can actually open up wasteland from Qufu to Ganyu. Their hands are quite long."
Yishiha looked at the flag on his face with surprise on his face.
From Qufu to Ganyu, it is more than 400 miles. It is worth pondering that the Confucius Mansion can stretch its hand so far and open up wasteland.
Zhu Gaoxu's face gradually turned bad after listening to Yi Shiha's words.
He didn't have a good impression of Beikong at all. Now Beikong actually started annexing land during the Hongwu period. If they continue to indulge, he doesn't know how many fields they will annex.
It's just that he is a soft-spoken person now and can't punish the Confucius family, otherwise he will definitely have to report it.
"Let's go." Zhu Gaoxu did not stay long, but continued on his way.
An hour later, they arrived in Ganyu County as scheduled and checked into the inn in Ganyu County.
Ganyu County is a small county near the sea. Zhu Gaoxu remembers that in his previous life, it was just a district of Lianyungang, but in this life... Lianyungang is still soaking in water.
"Your Highness, do you want to go out for a walk? Brothers want to go see the sea."
After driving for three days in a row, Lin Wuliu was on the road the rest of the time except for wandering around Muyang County, so he was very interested in coming to Ganyu County, a coastal city.
He and many of the brothers in the guard had not seen the sea yet and wanted to take advantage of their break to see the sea.
Since he was staying at an inn outside the city, Zhu Gaoxu was not worried about the curfew, so he opened the door and put the hem of his round-neck robe into his belt: "Let's go and take a look!"
Zhu Gaoxu took Lin Wuliu to the beach, and met Yi Shiha during the process. However, Yi Shiha was not interested in the sea, so in the end only Zhu Gaoxu, Lin Wuliu and more than a hundred people came to the beach.
It has to be said that even in this era, the sea from Qingdao to Lianyungang in later generations was not particularly clean, at least not as clean as the sea Zhu Gaoxu saw in Hainan and abroad in his previous life. This is a problem of latitude and river courses, and it is difficult to change.
However, compared to Qingdao where Zhu Gaoxu went in his previous life, the sea in Ganyu County in this era is somewhat clearer than in later generations.
On the beach, Zhu Gaoxu played wrestling with Lin Wuliu and others.
For the sake of fairness, Zhu Gaoxu divided the two sides into fifty people and eighty-nine people.
There were eighty-nine people on Lin Wuliu's side and fifty on his side.
After deciding on the person, Zhu Gaoxu stood in front of the team.
Many soldiers who didn't know Zhu Gaoxu's strength cautiously stepped forward to test him, but Zhu Gaoxu grabbed his collar and lifted him up, kicking his feet in the air.
Zhu Gaoxu's strength became stronger. He tried to lift the soldier into the air, and then boldly let go of one hand.
In this way, he lifted a man weighing more than 100 kilograms with only one hand.
His actions made people who were not familiar with him stunned and opened their mouths.
When he put the soldier down, the soldier landed steadily under his control.
"Your Highness, we won't be able to play with you like this..."
Lin Wuliu smiled bitterly. Zhu Gaoxu wanted to speak when he saw this, but he didn't want to be interrupted by a group of people in the distance:
"Over there, don't you know that this beach belongs to me?"
Zhu Gaoxu and others turned around and saw a middle-aged man riding a pony with seven or eight guards standing on the road by the beach questioning them.
"This beach belongs to the imperial court. When did it become your home?"
Lin Wuliu didn't like this man, so he scolded him back. When the man saw this, he wanted to argue again, but he didn't expect someone to run up from behind in a panic.
The man was wearing a natural robe and ran faster after seeing Zhu Gaoxu and others.
I don’t know what he said in the ear of the middle-aged man after that. The middle-aged man quickly bowed and said: "You are right, this beach does belong to the imperial court. I just wanted to make a joke with you." That’s all, I’m really sorry…”
After that, the middle-aged man hurriedly said: "It's almost curfew, I'll leave first."
As soon as he finished speaking, he took the people away, and Lin Wuliu also turned around and said indignantly:
"Your Highness, that little old man must be a wealthy local squire, otherwise there is no way he would dare to say that this beach belongs to him when there are more than a hundred of us here."
"I think it was because the person who came later knew our identity, that's why the squire escaped."
"Hmm...I know." Zhu Gaoxu nodded. He could naturally think of things that Lin Wuliu could think of.
But more than these things, he was more curious about which family the little old man came from.
"No more playing. I'm going back first. Don't play too late."
Looking at the sky, Zhu Gaoxu lost interest in the fight. After giving an explanation, he turned around and returned to the inn.
When Lin Wuliu saw this, he greeted the remaining brothers and then escorted Zhu Gaoxu back to the inn with his five brothers.
After returning to the inn, Zhu Gaoxu found the clerk at the inn and asked them about the beach.
Just in the face of his inquiry, the postmen and clerks at the post station also hesitated.
"Even if you tell me, I won't get involved. I just want to know."
Zhu Gaoxu comforted the young official and the two postmen. Upon seeing this, the young official told the truth:
"That is a branch of the Confucius family. It has become a household name in Ganyu County since the Yuan Dynasty. Not to mention the beach, at least 30% of the entire Ganyu County belongs to his family."
"I heard from some servants in his house that 20% of the rent for these lands has to be handed over to Qufu, so the county dare not take care of it."
He told them clearly what he knew. Zhu Gaoxu frowned slightly after hearing this, but in the end he didn't say anything. He just told them to prepare dinner and bring it to the house, then got up and left.
After he left, the clerk and the postman also breathed a sigh of relief and continued to work. After all, they had to prepare meals for more than 200 people, which was still a bit difficult for them.
Fortunately, Yishiha took care of things and called a dozen helpers in advance to help with the cooking, otherwise the inn would not be able to provide meals for more than 200 people.
But while they were busy, Zhu Gaoxu, who was on the second floor of the inn looking at the sea, frowned.
The influence of the Confucius family in Shandong was probably greater than he thought. It was no wonder that people like Lao Zhu, who dared to criticize Mencius, would continue to confer the title of Yansheng Duke to Beikong.
"If I have a chance in the future, I have to start solving this matter."
Zhu Gaoxu remembered that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the farmland reported by Yanshenggong Mansion alone amounted to more than one million acres, and the amount concealed was even more difficult to calculate.
Originally, he thought that the documents from the late Ming Dynasty were exaggerating, but from what he heard and saw during the day today, perhaps the truth of the matter was even more exaggerated than the records.
"Sure enough, some things cannot be named."
"Once it's weighed, I'm afraid it won't even be able to tell how much it weighs..."
After leaving these words, Zhu Gaoxu closed the window and became more determined about his return to the north.
"This world will become better only if I am in charge!"
(End of chapter)
