Chapter 105
Song Xiance did not ask Mrs. Cheng Shiji where the Xiang family was or where the eldest son was. In his mind, since Cheng Shijie didn't tell him, it meant that Cheng Shijie's trust in him was limited, at least the secret was not told to him.
It may also be that Cheng Shijie cares too much about his wife and children and does not want others to catch his weak spots, so he hides his wife, son and daughter tightly.
"Lord, there is one more question!"
"what is the problem?"
"It's time for the lady to show up!"
"Show up?"
Cheng Shijie smiled bitterly: "Now is not the best time!"
"My lord, what I mean is..."
"The world is dark and dark. Without military power, anyone can kill you with a single blow. We have too few people and too little strength now, so we can do too little. We can only watch and try to take care of many unfair things. Well... But it’s because we are powerless, not only us, but even Mr. Sun Futai and Mr. Sun are actually just trying to save face!"
Cheng Shijie smiled bitterly and said: "As the governor of Denglai, he seems to have a high position and power, but in the eyes of the court, what does it mean? Governor Sun is like this, let alone little people like us? So we must hold on to the soldiers in our hands. This is strength, and it is also what we rely on to protect ourselves. With soldiers in our hands, no one can do anything to us. Therefore, we must not only secure the military power, but also gradually make this army stronger and stronger, and lead it bigger and bigger."
Song Xiance knew that Cheng Shijie had misunderstood what he meant, so he explained again: "My lord, what I want to say is that although it is inconvenient for the madam and the eldest son to show up, in the eyes of outsiders, the lord is a single widower. Why don't the lord find someone to temporarily pretend to be the madam and the eldest son?" Where is the young master?"
"Fake, yes, just find a charlatan, someone who is good at disguise, and disguise himself according to Madam's portrait!"
Song Xiance said slowly: "This has three advantages. It can not only make those who try to control the lord's marriage retreat, but also fish out those who try to do harm to the wife... In the future, when the lord is strong, he will no longer have any scruples. , Madam can also soothe people’s hearts!”
It has to be said that Song Xiance's suggestion touched Cheng Shijie's heart.
Cheng Shijie even immediately thought of a candidate, Yang Yuniang.
When Song Xiance told Yang Yunniang this plan, Yang Yuniang refused without thinking: "No!"
"Why?"
"I am an unmarried lady pretending to have given birth to a son and a daughter. How can I hide this from the eyes of interested people?"
"this……"
There is a clear difference between women who have not given birth to children and women who have given birth to children. In this era, there are too many professionals who are proficient in this field, such as madams in brothels, brokers in the people's market, and people from wealthy families. A female gentleman, a nanny who is an expert in tutoring children's growth.
They don't need to observe closely, they can judge whether this woman is perfect just by looking at her appearance.
Regardless of the fact that Yang Yuniang was born in the Jianghu Yan Clan, in fact, she is mainly responsible for accounting. The so-called "records" are either her hearsay, or the real records of her senior sisters. If she is really good at fraud, or she If the senior sister takes action, Cheng Shijie may not be able to escape. Yang Yunniang's senior sister has a kind of incense that can disturb people's consciousness. Once caught, the person will be at the mercy of others within three hours.
As the saying goes, there are mountains across the world. Although Song Xiance was also a charlatan, he really didn't know much about the secrets of the Yan Clan: "Do you have anyone you know well?"
"This matter is not easy to handle!"
Yang Yunniang sighed and said: "The only way is to ask my master to take action!"
"Your master?"
"The age difference between my master and my wife is not big, but they are a little thinner and lower in stature. This can be easily solved. However, my master has already prayed to the Buddha, regardless of political affairs. I wonder if she is willing to help!"
Yang Yuniang actually had selfish motives. Her master Feng Sanniang met the scumbag Zhou Shichen. Not only was she defrauded of all the money she had accumulated over the years, but the key point was that Feng Sanniang was devastated and lost her fighting spirit. Now Feng Sanniang lights up a green lantern, eats fast and chants Buddha's name. If possible, she hoped that Master could live a good life.
While pretending to be Mrs. Cheng Shijie, Feng Sanniang finally found a place to eat. From a fundamental point of view, her master is not actually a bad person. They defraud people who are rich and unkind, and most of the money defrauded by the master, except for the part taken away by Zhou Shichen, is used to adopt disabled children. .
Now this important task falls on Yang Yunniang. She follows Cheng Shijie and gets food, shelter, clothing, and ten taels of silver every month. According to her life, she should be living a good life, but in fact, Yang Yuniang is now As a pauper, any money she earns will be sent to Shandong by others.
Song Xiance said: "You, the commander-in-chief can be trusted, your master, if he leaks this secret, it will ruin the commander-in-chief's important affairs!"
Yang Yunniang shook her head and said: "I tricked my master into coming here. As long as she comes to Liaonan, can she still go to heaven?"
"Your master is a veteran, how could you lie to her? Don't make it self-defeating."
"No, my master's biggest concern is Zhou Shichen. As long as I tell her that Zhou Shichen is suspected of appearing in Liaonan, she will definitely come and kill him immediately!"
"So good!"
…
On Xiaonan Island, under the leadership of Peng's internal agent, the Ning Haijun navy found Meng Xianhan's bank account and tested Ning Haijun; the moment for the naval officers and soldiers' hearts has arrived.
As the water in the pond in the backyard was drained, a smooth gentle slope was revealed. A road was dug out of the gentle slope, leading directly to the cave. After entering the cave, as the torches were lit, Li Zhixiang, Li Fang, Chen Shiyou, and Shen Shikui The naval general of Dingning Navy was dumbfounded.
Boxes upon boxes of gold and silver. A stone room is filled with gorgeous, exquisite and sparkling gold wine sets, silver winter melons weighing several hundred kilograms each, copper pillars made of several thousand kilograms of brass, boxes upon boxes of jewelry...
It took Li Zhixiang a long time to recover from his dizzy state. He stroked a giant silver winter melon and sighed with emotion: "It's unimaginable that so much treasure has been plundered just by pirates!"
Peng shook her head and said: "This is not the treasure that Meng Xianhan got when he was a pirate. Most of it was accumulated by Xu Hongru for several generations, and all of it was taken advantage of by Meng Xianhan..."
At this point, Peng felt he had made a mistake, because now all these treasures fell into the hands of Ning Haijun.
"Very good!"
Li Zhixiang smiled and said: "Our commander-in-chief has always wanted to eliminate our 400-fuel gunboats, but building new large warships requires a lot of money. With this money, we can build dozens of types of 3,400-fuel guns!" "
A large ship with four thousand materials, excluding artillery, costs about seven thousand seven hundred taels. This is free construction by craftsmen, only the cost of wood and matching canvas, ropes, tung oil and other materials. If according to Cheng Shijie Calculating the wages offered to craftsmen, a large ship with four thousand materials would cost at least tens of thousands of taels of silver.
If according to the standards of the Europa battleship, a large ship with more than 4,000 materials is equipped with forty-eight or fifty-six cannons, and its firepower reaches the standard of the Europa third-level battleship, then although the manufacturing cost of a third-level battleship is 50,000 to 60,000 taels of silver about.
In fact, although the Ming Dynasty's finances were tight and prosperous every year, it was not short of money. Over the past two to three hundred years, the Ming Dynasty earned immeasurable wealth from maritime trade, with as much as 400 million taels of silver flowing into the Ming Dynasty. In just one city of Beijing, Li Zicheng copied tens of millions of taels of silver. Who said that the imperial court was poor?
The financial crisis of the Ming Dynasty was due to the fact that rich people did not have to pay taxes. All taxes fell on the common people. Even this tax source was robbed by many people from the court, such as vassal princes, officials, and gentry. According to the laws of the Ming Dynasty, scholars with meritorious status are exempt from tax. Therefore, whenever a scholar reaches high school, many people will come to donate their land and properties to the fields in their name, so naturally they do not have to pay taxes. .
The feudal princes and officials also do not pay taxes. Both of them are confident. Who dares to collect taxes from them? As a result, the court's tax sources dropped sharply, and it could only increase taxes on fewer and fewer fields. It was difficult to think of anything wrong.
In particular, there was no industry in the Ming Dynasty, let alone financial products such as securities and stocks. In addition, the Chinese people have been willing to save since ancient times. The money they earned could not be spent all, and they were afraid of thieves, so they naturally hid it in the cellar. . Melt the silver into a silver winter melon weighing several hundred kilograms. Even a few big men can't move it, so naturally no one can steal it.
This silver disappeared from the market and ceased to exist. Until a crisis comes and the whole country falls into panic, this silver will flow out of the cellar and flood into the market to desperately purchase food, cloth and other daily necessities, causing prices to skyrocket. Ultimately accelerating the collapse of the entire country... There is no way. A country's money will always be several times more than its supplies. If all this money flows into the market to purchase goods, out-of-control prices will become inevitable.
Cheng Shijie used the seized money to buy grain in Dengzhou, which has caused a crazy increase in grain. Now he no longer dares to buy grain in Dengzhou. Instead, he puts the work of buying grain in Jiangnan. The grain in Jiangnan is far better than that in Dengzhou. It is cheap in Dengzhou, and the best rice only costs four coins per stone, which is almost half of the price of grain in Dengzhou.
After a day and night of counting, the final results of the seizures in Xiaonan Island were calculated. There were a total of 2.5 million taels of silver, 6,300 taels of gold, 190,000 jins of brass, and more than 1,600 pearls. , In addition, there are countless valuable items such as silk, jade, porcelain, and mahogany furniture.
As for the weapons seized, they are not too many, but more. Sun Yuanhua alone spent a lot of money to make more than 200 muskets, and more than 100 large and small artillery pieces...
As for food, Meng Xianhan was also a talented person. A mere two thousand pirates actually stored more than fifty-eight thousand stones of food. The entire South Island, including the old, weak, women and children, was enough to feed these people for more than two years. .
Li Zhixiang said: "Prepare to transport these things to Jinzhou Guard..."
Before Li Zhixiang could finish speaking, Chen Youyou stepped forward and said, "General Li, don't be too busy with your luck. Have you forgotten the most important thing?"
"What?"
"Divide the dirt!"
Li Zhixiang and Li Fang were startled: "Separate the dirt? Have you forgotten the military regulations of our Ning Navy?"
"Everything seized must be returned to the public, but rules are dead and people are alive!"
Shen Shikui looked at the soldiers around him and said with a smile: "Brothers, since we surrendered to Marshal Cheng, our life following Marshal Cheng has indeed been much better than before. But the problem is, the brothers have been busy for more than a month, and we can't let us seven Eight thousand brothers are working in vain, right? Even if Shen agrees, the brothers will not agree!"
Chen sometimes echoed hurriedly: "That's right, Vice General Shen's words are reasonable, brothers will not agree!"
The dozens of Ning Haijun soldiers around were all confidants of Chen Shiyou, Shen Shikui, Li Zhixiang and others, including Li Fang's cronies, and their eyes also showed gleams.
Li Zhixiang was startled: "What do you want to do?"
"The old rule is that Marshal Cheng will take the big share. After all, the brothers still need to eat with Marshal Cheng. We will only take a part, a very small part!"
Shen Shikui said confidently: "This is what Shen thinks. We don't want jade, porcelain, antiques, calligraphy and painting, pearls, gold and silver jewelry, furniture and other miscellaneous things. We will leave them all to Marshal Cheng. The silver ingots are divided into two categories, five. Ten taels and ten taels, these silvers total more than 537,000 taels. Our four families will share them equally. General Li will get 200,000 taels, Shen and Brother Chen will get 150,000 taels, and the remaining 37,000 taels The remaining two taels of silver go to Brother Li Fang..."
Shen Shikui talked eloquently, and it was obvious at first glance that he had experience in dividing stolen goods. Could it be that he often did this kind of thing?
Chen You was overjoyed when he heard this. He had less than 2,000 men and 150,000 taels of silver under his command. He could get 100,000 taels for himself, and then the 50,000 taels of silver could be divided equally among the generals below. Each of them could also get twenty or thirty. Two taels of silver is equivalent to two years of their military pay. Navy officers and soldiers' pay is slightly higher than that of infantry soldiers. Ordinary soldiers receive one, two, and five taels of silver per month.
Li Zhixiang's little heart was beating wildly, like a deer bumping inside. He looked at the mountains of gold and silver jewelry, his mouth was dry, and he swallowed hard: "Vice General Shen, do this. Isn’t it appropriate?”
"What's wrong?"
Shen Shikui smiled disapprovingly and said: "If the water is clear, there will be no fish. Commander Cheng is a good commander. Shen obeys him, but he obeys. Brothers also have to support their families, don't you think so?"
"That's right, Vice General Shen is right, brothers also have to support their families!"
"Let's take our heads off the belt and eat this food with blood licked from the knife's edge, isn't it just for a few taels of silver?"
"We killed the cooks at Ning Haijun. They are all fucking fat. How much meat did they eat from us? Didn't the commander-in-chief also ignore them?"
"If I can get dozens of taels of silver, my brother will ask Guo Laokou for advice when he gets back, and smash the money directly into his face to see that he still looks down on me..."
Seeing Li Zhixiang hesitate, Shen Mingkui added more information: "Brother Li, we captured so much this time. You forgot about those five large Western ships. We didn't touch the ivory, sulfur, gunpowder and artillery inside." , all handsome!"
Li Fang was a little anxious and reached out to hold the Qi family knife at his waist. At this moment, Peng held Li Fang's hand. As soon as Li Fang broke away, he hugged Peng.
The surrounding soldiers noticed Li Fang's abnormality and burst into laughter.
"Li Fang, can you fucking wait a moment!"
"You are going to die in front of us widowers!"
Peng Shi pretended to be shy and punched Li Fang's chest while secretly winking at Li Fang. Li Fang understood, picked up Peng Shi and walked towards a room not far away.
When they were farther away, Peng lowered his voice and said, "Li Lang, don't act rashly..."
"They are betraying the commander!"
"You can't object now. Once you dare to object, they will kill you!"
"They dare..."
"How dare they!"
Peng and Li Fang entered the room. Li Fang opened the window paper and quietly looked at several naval generals from the Dongjiang Army outside. At this time, at Shen Shikui's suggestion, the former Dengzhou Navy and the Dongjiang Army Navy brought the generals together. Officers of the above rank were summoned to discuss the matter of division of dirt.
Mrs. Peng suddenly screamed: "Li Fang, don't..."
Li Fang looked back at Peng in surprise, very puzzled.
Peng pointed out the window.
Sure enough, a group of generals burst into laughter.
Li Fang gritted his teeth and said: "A group of beasts that eat everything inside and outside..."
"This is human nature!"
Li Fang said solemnly: "Shuai Cheng has shown me the kindness of knowing me and promoting me. I can't betray him for money..."
"You can't object now. Once you object, they will kill you and leave you dead or missing."
"Then what should I do now?"
"Pretend to agree, participate in the division of dirt, and report the matter to the commander-in-chief!"
Li Fang looked embarrassed: "I can't read!"
"This slave is literate, please write this letter!"
"So good!"
As more officers participated in the sorting, there was not much left for more than half a million taels of silver. Everyone's eyes began to fall on the five Western ships. Don't look at them as just five armed merchant ships. These were all Five of the large armed transport ships with a class of over 1,000 tons have more than a hundred small naval guns, and they are also Folang machine primary and secondary cannons.
The naval generals of Zhongning Navy began to divide artillery, muskets, and armor. They even directly melted 60,000 kilograms of copper to divide these copper pillars.
Copper had almost monetary value in the Ming Dynasty.
The Ninghai Navy Navy is divided into three capital command divisions, which means that the Ninghai Navy Navy has three capital supervisors, but the number of supervisors in the Ninghai Navy Navy is far smaller than that of the infantry. There is no way, Cheng Shijie's His rise was too fast and his background was slightly lacking.
At this time, the eyes of the three Ning Navy naval commanders met in the air, and they looked at Chen Dayong in unison.
Chen Dayong was originally an ordinary military household in Ganquan Baihu Station. He was one of the first batch of servants to join Cheng Shijie, and he was one of his own people with roots in Miaohong. When Chen Dayong formed the army in Ning Haijun, he became the Chief Si Bai, and now he has been directly promoted to the Du Superintendent, which is the level of the Du Commander, which is the same level as Shen Mingyu and Zhang Yu. He was originally the most senior. The best candidate to be the suitable commander of the former capital of Ning Haijun.
However, when Cheng Shijie annexed the Dengzhou Navy and the Dongjiang Navy, Chen Dayong was sent to Li Zhixiang as the naval commander of the Ning Navy.
Chen Dayong did not immediately order the military law enforcement team to dispatch. Once the military law enforcement team was dispatched, they could indeed take down Shen Shikui, Chen Shi and other generals who provoked trouble by surprise. But the problem was that a civil war would be inevitable. Besides, violation of Regarding military discipline, the issue of embezzlement of seized materials should be handled by Cheng Shijie or Chen Guodong. He, the governor, does not have the power to directly deal with generals of the same level.
Chen Dayong winked at the other supervisors and directors: "Write it down first, let's settle the score later!"
"General Li, we discovered a new situation!"
"what happened?"
"We found a group of Westerners in the dungeon!"
Although the Ming Dynasty was very poor and its national power was weak, the attitude of the people of the Ming Dynasty towards Western devils was really unlike that of later generations. Even an ordinary Ning Navy soldier had no politeness in his eyes.
"Kill him!"
"do not!"
Li Zhixiang said hurriedly: "We need people from everywhere in southern Liaoning, send them to Liaodong and let them go mining!"
On December 24, the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Ning Navy Navy transported five captured Western ships, 17 pirate ships, more than 1,400 pirate family members, as well as captured grain, silver, gold and silver treasures to Liaonan.
Almost at the same time, in the cabin of a flat-bottomed boat, there were more than a hundred Westerners in ragged clothes and exuding a strong smell. Enter the tiger's den.
Their Western fleet was not the Dutch, Spanish, or Portuguese who often traveled to the Ming Dynasty, but the combined fleet of the Venetian City-State Republic. Their arrival in the Ming Dynasty was a complete accident.
Because they originally set out from the port of Venice, loaded with supplies, most of which were sulfur, saltpeter, and finished gunpowder and cannonballs, ready to support the struggling Crete.
Crete is the symbol of the Venetian Republic as a maritime country and its largest and last stronghold in the Mediterranean; after the Venetian city-state Republic obtained the island from Byzantium through the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Venetians poured countless money into it. and painstaking efforts to build and protect this important base.
Now, the Ottomans judged that the European countries trapped in the Thirty Years' War could not support the Venetians. The Venetians were unable to support themselves, and they would easily capture Crete. As a result, the Ottoman Empire's navy totaled more than 20,000 men, and with the cooperation of more than 600 warships, attacked Crete.
It is a pity that the Ottomans made a misjudgment, and this war lasted for twenty-five years, until the Thirty Years War in Europe came to an end, and European countries began to gain energy and began to send reinforcements. The fighting in Venice won praise from various European countries, and young nobles and knights began to regard it as an honor to go to Venice to join the army; many mercenaries from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and other countries went to Crete to fight, and even as far away as Sweden .
As a result, with the help of almost all European countries, the Ottoman Empire fought the Battle of Crete for twenty-five years and gained nothing except nearly 300,000 corpses.
But it's different now. The Thirty Years' War in the European countries was so fierce that it knocked the dog's brains out. What's more, the Venetians did not realize the Ottomans' attack, and the war was fought very passively. Therefore, from the Republic of Venice The consul selected a group of noble children to support Crete.
However, as soon as they set off, they were targeted by an Ottoman fleet. The Ottoman navy knew that this small fleet wanted to support Crete, so it waited for work. This fleet originally had a total of eleven warships and armed forces. The combined fleet of merchant ships was ambushed, four battleships were sunk, and they retreated in desperation.
The Ottoman Empire had never achieved such an amazing result at sea. In order to completely annihilate the Venetian fleet, the two sides chased and escaped, slowly escaping the Mediterranean and entering the Atlantic Ocean. Coincidentally, they were commanded by a French drunkard. , as the Spanish fleet.
This is not considered an accidental collision, but because the Venetian United Fleet is trying to pull the flag. The result can be imagined. Spain is a powerful country in Europe and its strength is also strong. But the problem is that Spain is now the enemy of Europe. The French beat them, the Dutch beat them, even the Portuguese beat them.
They had no choice but to flee all the way, which lasted more than ten months, from Venice to Dengzhou. They heard that the "Governor" of Dengzhou was actually the governor Sun Yuanhua, who was very friendly to the church members. They hoped to get Sun Yuanhua's help, but they happened to meet him. Meng Xianhan.
At that time, in order to eliminate Sun Yuanhua's hostility, they put away the naval guns and were unprepared for the small fishing boats that came over. They were afraid of arousing the hostility of the Dengzhou Navy. They had the idea of having many friends and many friends, but they were punched by Meng Xianhan. After killing the master, their five warships, together with more than a hundred surviving sailors and officers, all became prisoners of Meng Xianhan.
They heard the sound of cannons, and the sound of the most advanced rapid-fire naval cannons, and thought they could be rescued. However, the problem was that they thought too much. The only difference was that the food given to them by Ning Navy soldiers was a little better.
Because in the eyes of Ning Haijun's navy soldiers, they were just fifteen acres of land. If you die, you can only get ten acres. This is the difference.
Just as Ning Haijun was on his way to Jinzhou Guard, Cheng Shijie received nineteen pieces of intelligence from Chen Guodong. These nineteen pieces of intelligence came from Li Fang, Li Zhixiang, Shen Shikui, Chen Shiyou, and the governor. The contents of the intelligence given by Chen Dayong and others are similar to Li Fang's.
It is said that Shen Shikui and Chen sometimes proposed to secretly divide the seized money and persuaded the soldiers to put pressure on Li Zhixiang. For the sake of the overall situation, Li Fang could only make false concessions and was forced to agree.
Li Fang will be assigned 37,000 taels of dirty silver, one tael of which is untouched, and then escorted to Jinzhou Guard. As for Shen Shikui's defense, he knew that many generals of the Dongjiang Army had unclean hands and feet, so he set up After a game, all the generals of the Dongjiang Army were put in, and he said that except Shen Shikui himself, no one else could be trusted, especially Li Zhixiang, who was deeply trusted by Cheng Shijie. He was not a thing. He ate from the bowl and looked at the pot. of.
When Cheng Shijie saw this, he couldn't laugh or cry.
Among the admirals of Ning Navy, they all wanted to get higher positions and cheat their teammates, but in the end, they actually thought of going together, a bunch of old guys.
PS: I'm very sorry last night. When I was writing this at about ten o'clock, I received a call from a friend. I was lying on the bed to answer the call, and actually fell asleep again. Routinely asking for votes.
(End of chapter)
