Beijing City, Xiyuan, Yuxi Palace.
When the news that Huang Taiji was about to leave Yanshan three times after the autumn harvest reached Zhu Youjian's ears, he had already ended his hunting and summer vacation on the Jinlianchuan grassland and returned to the increasingly bleak city of Beijing where the emperor lived.
The desolation of Beijing is due to the continuous departure of people. Since the beginning of Yanshan's farming in the second year of Chongzhen, Beijing's population has experienced continuous negative growth. And the rate of negative growth is getting faster and faster!
In the autumn of the fourth year of Chongzhen, a large number of Beijing nobles and their family members went south to serve as officials. The city's population has fallen below 1 million, with less than 800,000 left... This number is still a bit too much compared to Zhu Youjian's plan!
His plan is to reduce Beijing's population to less than 300,000! That is to say, it will be reduced by more than half!
However, the reduced population will not all be diverted to the south, but a commercial port will be built in Tianjin, which is close to the sea. It is used to undertake the industrial and commercial functions of Beijing. Don't underestimate the more than 200 miles from Beijing to Tianjin. Even if there is water transportation to Tongzhou, the transportation cost is quite considerable.
Moreover, after replacing canals with sea, supplies from the south will be transported to North Zhili by sea... Those who come by sea are sea ships, not canals that can use canals. Therefore, after the materials arrived by sea, they had to be transported to Tongzhou by boat. Not to mention the trouble, the cost is not low!
Therefore, Zhu Youjian planned to turn Tianjin Wei into the economic center of the north and turn Beijing into a pure capital and military fortress.
However, he has no time to implement further policies to reduce Beijing's population for the time being, because something has happened in the northwest again!
It is natural for the situation in the northwest to occur, because the whole province of Shaanxi has not received a few drops of rain since the beginning of autumn! Four military towns, including Gansu, Yulin, Lintao, and Guyuan, have also encountered large-scale droughts. Only Ningxia Town is in a slightly better situation - the Ningxia Plain, like the Guanzhong Plain, has large rivers flowing through it and water conservancy and irrigation systems. It is very developed and can withstand drought to a certain extent. Shaanxi now mainly produces grain in the Guanzhong Plain, Ningxia Plain and the Hanzhong Basin in the south.
In other places, you can only live a hard life.
The one that couldn't survive this time was Gansu Town among the five towns in Shaanxi! It was not a peasant uprising, but a mutiny and military chaos.
This area of Gansu was originally under the jurisdiction of the Shaanxi Xingdu Commandery Division. In the early years when the Ming Dynasty was prosperous, the Shaanxi Xingdu Division had twelve palace guards and four guard posts for thousands of households. According to the calculation that one guard has 5,600 households under its jurisdiction and one station has 1,000 households, the Shaanxi Xingdu Division had a total of 71,200 military households at that time, and the population should be in the hundreds of thousands - this was the number in the early Ming Dynasty. Nowadays, there are many Several times the growth... at least there are more than one million people!
With so many people in Gansu Town, whose territory has been greatly reduced, and with no benefits from the Silk Road, they can only make a living by farming and serving as soldiers. Moreover, because Gansu Town is far away from the mainland and is surrounded by enemies on three sides, the military pressure is extremely high, so it is necessary to maintain a larger number of troops. And it is difficult for these troops to obtain food supplies from the Guanzhong Democratic Movement. Therefore, Gansu Town has always relied heavily on military grain. What was shipped from Shaanxi was cloth and silver (which was offset by the grain from the democratic movement).
If the weather goes well, relying on the agriculture in the Hexi Corridor and Huanghe River Valley, Gansu Town's military food needs can be maintained.
However, consecutive years of drought have left Gansu's military villages unable to feed the army in Gansu Town - the military households themselves are starving to death, so how can they pay for one acre, one dou and two liters of grain?
The inability to collect grain from the garrison resulted in the long-term arrears of grain and salary for the Gansu soldiers. The Ming Dynasty's border army's grain and salary were originally provided by the military garrison, democratic movement, Beijing transportation, salt transportation, etc. The two parts of the army and the democratic movement are very vulnerable to natural disasters. As for Beijing transportation, the transportation distance is restricted. There is no problem in picking up some money from the warehouse in Beijing and transporting it to Gansu...but the money cannot be used as food!
Moreover, due to long-term food shortage in Gansu, food prices are very high. Transporting money to Gansu will only cause food prices in Gansu to skyrocket further.
And Zhu Youjian had the idea of "transporting people out of Shaanxi", so of course he would not spend money to fill the gap in Gansu military camps - with this little money, if he still buys more rice in Huguang, he can save more people in the future. !
However, this also caused the Gansu Zhenjun's salary arrears to be unable to be replenished for a long time... Under such circumstances, mutiny and military chaos were inevitable. In the first year of Chongzhen, a Guyuan mutiny had already occurred, but fortunately it was not large in scale. In the original history, in the second year of Chongzhen's reign, King Qin's move to send troops to Beijing caused even more anger. As a result, great chaos broke out in Gansu. Mei Zhihuan worked hard for several months before suppressing it. Li Zicheng also In this mutiny, a low-level officer of the Ming Dynasty became the leader of the rebel army.
But this time Zhu Youjian learned his lesson and did not dare to let the Western Army Qinwang, so the Gansu mutiny did not happen as scheduled.
But what is supposed to come will still come!
The cause of this mutiny was actually related to Zhu Youjian's putting Hutu Dunhan's son Ezhe into the Loop...Although Ezhe was weak, after all, he had the support of Zhu Youjian's several Mongolian nobles, wasn't it? The Tumut troops retreating to the Hetao can contend.
Therefore, the Tumut tribe in Hetao chose to migrate to Qinghai (Qinghai already has a branch of the Tumut tribe), and the migration of the Tumut tribe had to pass through the ground in Gansu Town... As a result, the two sides They fought hard in Gansu and fought a lot of bad battles.
After the battle, naturally the rewards were insufficient and the unpaid wages were not paid, making it even more difficult to supply the army. As a result, the Gansu border soldiers were offended and launched the Hexi Mutiny in the autumn of the fourth year of Chongzhen. The rebels, led by the rebel Wang Jincai, beheaded Suzhou General Sun Huaizhong, looted Suzhou and headed east, and even threatened to defect to Gao Yingxiang, the king of Chuang!
Mei Zhihuan, the governor of Gansu, couldn't resist, so he had to rush 600 miles to Beijing for help.
...
"Yanshan...Monan Grassland...North Korea...Shaanxi..."
In the Yuxi Palace, Emperor Zhu Youjian of the Ming Dynasty was pacing around a map spread on the table and worrying.
I’m so busy!
Zhu Youjian looked at the four big circles on the map and couldn't help but miss his sons... If his sons were all here, this wouldn't be a problem at all!
The treacherous son went to Jiangnan to search, the third filial son went to Yanshan to defeat Huang Taiji, the fourth son went to Shaanxi, the fifth son went to North Korea, and the charterer Wang Neng went to Tianjin to open a commercial port...
But we can’t count on it now!
Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian sighed!
He had just finished sighing when a coercive voice sounded from behind: "Why do you sigh, father?"
The villain has arrived!
Although he is only three years old, Zhu Youjian is already feeling stressed.
When he looked back, he saw that the former Queen Zhou's son had entered the Yuxi Palace at some unknown time - and the two of them were walking silently, too!
But Zhu Youjian couldn't say anything about Zhou Hou - the "Loan King"'s third filial son was pregnant with him!
Zhu Youjian looked at the rebellious son who was still a little kid, frowned and said: "There is a military rebellion in Gansu, and Guyuan and Lintao are also unsafe... There is a severe drought in Shaanxi again, and the people are in dire straits! I will personally go to comfort him, but Huang Taiji has no choice but to come again If the soldiers invade Yanshan, the Monan Grassland may also be attacked and plundered by them... I am only one person, and I can't be separated!"
"Father, there are sons and ministers!" The little kid patted his chest, looking very confident...
"You..." Zhu Youjian squinted his eyes and looked at his son - this is the traitor who rebuilt the Ming Dynasty! And he always said that he was the reincarnation of Emperor Taizu Gao... Now it seems that it may be true!
"Okay!" Zhu Youjian actually nodded seriously, "Fortunately, I have you...then my father will lead troops to Shaanxi, and you will stay in Beijing to supervise the country!"
"What?" Zhou Hou couldn't believe her ears, "Long live Lord, he is only three years old!"
Three-year-old prisoner...isn't this a joke?
"Three years old..." Zhu Youjian looked at his son seriously, "Boss, are you okay?"
"Okay!" Zhu Cixi said in a sweet voice, "Brother Chun has grown up and is a big brother!"
"Okay!" Zhu Youjian is still very confident in his son, "It's settled... After I go to war, the prince will supervise the country!"
(End of chapter)
