Ming Dynasty, Nanjing.
This emperor's residence on the bank of the Yangtze River has a joyful atmosphere. Ever since the wise and powerful Emperor Hongxing came to the throne, the Ming Dynasty's bad luck seemed to be completely over.
From January when Emperor Hongxing came to the throne to now, for most of the year, the Ming Dynasty has been filled with happy events!
First of all, the weather is smooth and everything is safe. At least in the eight provinces of Jiangnan, Jiangbei, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Fujian under the direct jurisdiction of the imperial court, no major disasters have been reported in the past six months. Seeing that the autumn harvest is approaching, it seems that we will have a long-lost good harvest.
Moreover, in the past half year, there have been no major disturbances in the eight southeastern provinces - of course there are small disturbances. There are at least 100 million people in the eight provinces, most of them are paupers, and at least half of the people are often hungry. There are also many people who died of cold and starvation (the food supply in the southeast is generally not sufficient, but can barely cope with it, and it cannot be distributed fairly, so there are many people who are hungry and cold). How could there not be a little trouble? ?
Small-scale civil uprisings can be said to occur every month. Especially after Zhu Cixiang issued an edict to abolish slavery, slave uprisings in various places became extremely frequent.
What? Slavery has been abolished, so why change?
In fact, the slave rebellions that frequently occur in the Southeast these days are not for freedom, but for food!
For example, the hordes of slaves in Zheng Zhilong's house won't cause trouble - they are all popular, drink spicy food, and have money to earn, making a fuss? Even though Zhu Cihong issued an edict to abolish slavery, his slaves were still the same, doing whatever they were supposed to do.
However, due to various reasons, many southeastern scholar-officials had their families in decline and lost their privileges and property, which also affected their slaves. Some of the corrupt scholar-officials wanted to take advantage of their slaves, which intensified the conflict.
Because of the frequent slave changes in various places, Zhu Cihong simply issued an edict to abolish slavery. As a result, more radical changes were triggered due to the issue of the division of property between slaves and the master's family (slaves do not mean no property) and the issue of the slaves' source of livelihood after they were freed...
However, these slave rebels were not a problem at all to the Hongxing Emperor who was very capable of suppressing them. They basically just whirled around and disappeared, and could not create any climate. However, many slave rebels were captured and thrown to Zheng Zhilong for development. Taiwan.
The next happy thing is that good news came from Yunnan and Guangxi provinces - with the efforts of Zhang Yong and Qiu Lei, Sha Dingzhou's little strength could not resist beating him, and he soon abandoned Kunming and ran back to Mengzi. . Although the chaos in Yunnan is not over (perhaps it is getting worse), the palace of the King of Yunnan (Zhu Cizhao was renamed the King of Yunnan from Pingxi King after entering Kunming) and the Yunnan Governor's Yamen have taken root. In the future, Yunnan will be dominated by the prince's palace, the government's palace, the governor's office and a bunch of chieftains.
On the Guangxi side, Jin Shenghuan led his troops to settle in forcefully - Jin Shenghuan's official worship was the commander-in-chief of Guangxi, but he was not the lord of Guangxi. However, Zhu Cihong authorized him to work with the Guangxi governor's office to reorganize the guards and chieftains in Guangxi, and also allowed Jin Shenghuan to occupy the official fields in Guangxi as military fields to support the expenses of the headquarters.
The reason why he is allowed to do this in Guangxi is of course to rectify Guangxi's military strength in order to deter Annan... Otherwise, with Guangxi's current military strength, not to mention Lord Zheng and Lord Ruan, they will retreat to Gaoping to survive. Even Lord Mo can’t deal with it!
Now Zheng Sen is preparing for his trip to Annam, Champa and Shuizhenla. Of course the Zheng family would send out warships to go with him, but they couldn't expect just a few warships to scare people away.
The third happy event is that Emperor Hongxing has added another princess... these are three daughters! But it doesn't matter, Emperor Hongxing is still young and has plenty of opportunities to have a son!
The fourth happy event was that the "old girl" Princess Kunxing married Xiamen Bo Zheng Jiangong - Xiamen Island belongs to Quanzhou Prefecture. After Zhu Cihong granted Zheng Jiangong a marriage, Zheng Zhilong took out Xiamen Island and asked Zhu Cihong to entrust it to his second son Zheng Make meritorious deeds.
Of course Zhu Cixiang happily agreed, but he would not let Mr. Zheng return to Xiamen to farm... because the navy of the Ming Dynasty pointed him to build it!
"Jiangong... you are the consort now. According to the rules of this dynasty, the consort cannot leave the capital too far, so don't go back to Fujian."
In the Xuanhu Palace, today the Supreme Emperor Chongzhen came forward to give a banquet to the consort Zheng Jiangong and Princess Kunxing. Emperor Hongxing also came to eat eggs together...Xuanhu Gong's boiled eggs are delicious. They are all "golden eggs". They are white and tender when you peel them off. You can tell at a glance whether they are good or not. Poisoned.
While eating eggs, Zhu Cixiang was talking to Zheng Jiangong, who had turned a lot whiter.
Emperor Chongzhen was also happy when he saw his son-in-law. He was such a good son-in-law! The first purchase was a bank note of 300,000 taels from Maritime Bank... It seems that Zheng Zhilong is very good at teaching his son, much better than that bad old man Wu Xiang!
After listening to Zhu Cixiang's words, Chongzhen smiled and interjected: "Don't go back to Fujian, just stay in Nanjing forever!"
"Father," Zhu Cixiang smiled, "I can't live in Nanjing forever, because I have important responsibilities entrusted to my consort."
"Important responsibility? How heavy is it?" Chongzhen asked.
Zhu Cixi smiled and said: "Father, didn't I just say that last time? I want my consort to preside over the Shanghai Naval Academy... Now that the hall of the Naval Academy has been built, the consort can take up his post. ”
Zheng Jiangong's cheeks turned red again, he lowered his head and said in an inaudible voice: "My lord, I have little talent and little knowledge. I don't know much about naval warfare. I can't be a naval academy commander."
In fact, Zheng Jiangong is not completely ignorant. He is just a dabbler. He understands a little, but he is not proficient (Japan is locked up, and he cannot go to sea). But even with this half-assedness, Zhu Cixiang can be considered a "wizard" among his core group, while others are not even half-assed!
To put it bluntly, Emperor Hongxing's Beifu Group was a feudal warrior group, with a group of armed landowners at its core. Who knew about navigation and naval warfare?
Even Zheng Sen didn't understand... Zhu Cixiang originally thought he was very powerful, but after getting in touch with him for a while, he discovered that he was basically a scholar-bureaucrat!
After Zheng Zhilong brought him back from Japan, he trained him as a Confucian scholar. In contrast, Tagawa Nanzaemon, who stayed in Japan, received training as a maritime merchant and samurai, although he never went to sea much. But I still have a very good understanding of Chinese and Western ship types and ship performance.
In addition, Zheng Jiangong must know who is knowledgeable...this is very important!
These days, you don't just find a talent in the navy. If the person in charge of running the navy is a stick, then the tuition fees will be endless.
Moreover, Emperor Zhu couldn't leave this matter to the Portuguese, as the Portuguese would still kill people.
Zhu Cixiang smiled and said to Zheng Jiangong: "Prince-in-law, the Naval Academy is a blank slate now. There is no one else but you... I only believe in you, so go ahead and do it!"
In fact, no one else can use Zhu Cixi! And he also knew that Zheng Jiangong was more serious and responsible, and would not be greedy for three melons and two dates. The red envelope he presented to the Supreme Emperor Chongzhen today contained 300,000 taels of silver notes! This is the amount of funding that the Naval Academy will have for a few years... If he wants to get greedy for these small sums, he will really lose his father's face.
But Zheng Jiangong didn't know what Emperor Zhu was thinking. He thought Zhu Cihong trusted him so much!
Zheng Jiangong was so moved! He has met his master, he is an earl (Xiamen is worth one hundred thousand shi), he is married to a girl (she is a member of the same family), and he still trusts her so much!
Thinking of this, he quickly stood up and walked to Zhu Cihong's side, bowed his head and said, "Your Majesty's kindness is unforgettable. I will be loyal to you for seven lifetimes and repay it with a hundred deaths!"
Zhu Cixiang stood up with a smile and helped Zheng Jiangong up with his own hands. Just as he was about to say a few more words of encouragement, Huang Xiaobao, the director of etiquette Bingbi, trotted in from outside. Then he picked up his feet, leaned into Zhu Cixiang's ear, and whispered: " Your Majesty, Zhu Weishuai from Jin Yiwei asked to see you, saying that he has something great to report... related to Wu Sangui!"
Is it related to Wu Sangui? Zhu Cixiang's face suddenly showed an expression of surprise - the good news came one after another! It’s good if the Ming Dynasty is in power!
