Begging for food together?
Zhu Yiming didn't know what to say after hearing this?
He is the highly respected "uncle king", Zhu Yiming, the king of Ming Dynasty! He is a noble son born with wealth in his mouth. Since he was a child, he has only been able to reach out for clothes and open his mouth for food. How can he beg for food? Not to mention begging for food, I don’t even know how to cook!
"Long live my Lord, I don't know how to beg for food!"
Zhu Youjian sighed, another one who doesn't know how to beg... Grandpa is also true, why doesn't he pass on the true ability of begging to future generations?
"Uncle, don't worry," Zhu Youjian said, "You can learn if you don't know how!"
study?
What’s not good about learning? Learn to beg? Zhu Yi said to himself: I was once a prince, but when I got older, I became a beggar leader. This life was too hard.
Zhu Youjian said slowly: "The art of begging was of little use in the peaceful and prosperous times, but now it is a year of great disaster... Shaanxi and Henan provinces have been experiencing heavy rains since autumn, and northern Shaanxi is not Flash floods have occurred in a few places, and a good harvest year has been ruined.
And Henan is even more difficult! The floods of the Yellow River have almost completely flooded the prefectures and counties in eastern Henan and north of the Huaihe River... The people are in dire straits! "
The five years of Chongzhen were happy for most of the year, with good weather and peace, and the autumn harvest was in sight. As a result, a flood swept through Shaanxi, Henan, and Huaibei in southern Zhili... As a result, the harvest of Chongzhen's five years was not as good as Chongzhen four years.
First of all, the disasters in Shaanxi have worsened. Flash floods in northern Shaanxi are as terrible as droughts!
Due to long years of drought, lack of rain and over-development, the land in northern Shaanxi has suffered serious water and soil erosion. There is exposed loess everywhere and cannot store rainwater at all. Moreover, the landform is full of ravines and ravines, making it very easy to form flash floods.
In addition, because water easily accumulates at the bottom of the ditch, evaporation is also low. Therefore, most of the farmland in northern Shaanxi is located in ravines, and the population is also concentrated at the bottom of the ravines (farmers cannot leave their fields too far). Once a flash flood occurs, it will not only submerge the farmland, but also houses, The cave dwellings and the warehouses with grain storage were all washed away.
Now it was not that the poor and lower-middle peasants had nothing to eat, but that even the landlords and rich peasants who had some surplus grain had nothing to eat.
Therefore, after the flood in northern Shaanxi, the famine in Shaanxi will definitely become more serious!
Fortunately, Bi Ziyan used the work-for-relief method to strengthen various flood control dams in the Guanzhong Plain when he was governor of Shaanxi Province, so that the Guanzhong Plain suffered little damage from the flood at the time. The floods in the Ningxia Plain and the Hexi Corridor were not serious, and there was finally some harvest.
And an even bigger disaster happened in Henan! Days of rain caused the Yellow River to overflow in autumn, with floods overflowing for hundreds of miles. Xuchang, Yanling, Fugou, Xihua, Huaiyang, Luyi, Zhecheng, Shenqiu, Shangqiu, Yucheng and other places north of the Huaihe River were flooded. For Zeguo, the autumn grain harvest has failed in large areas, and the Huaihe River is also in danger, with many embankments overflowing!
These states and counties submerged by the Yellow River are all grain-producing areas! Once flooded, the grain production in Henan and South Zhili will be greatly reduced!
What's even more frightening is that the water in the Yellow River recedes very slowly, and it will flood for many years, forming a large area of yellow flood area... For example, Xuzhou, which was flooded by floods in the early years, took many years to recede. The entire city was buried in sand, so a new city had to be built.
Now, before Xincheng recovers early, it is flooded again!
In Zhu Youjian's memory of his previous life, the fifth year of Chongzhen was when the Great Famine began... Despite the drought in Shaanxi in those previous years, it was not really a great famine. It started with the flood in the fifth year of Chongzhen!
Then the locust plague began in the sixth year of Chongzhen, and the plague began to appear in northern Shanxi in the same year... In the subsequent seventh, eighth, and ninth years of Chongzhen, there were also disasters and famines every year! But compared with Chongzhen ten years later, the famine was still relatively mild. At least there was still somewhere to beg for food!
Ten years after arriving in Chongzhen, the drought even affected the water towns in the south of the Yangtze River. Only Sichuan, Huguang, Guangdong, Annan, Siam, and Myanmar were left to beg for food...
"Uncle," Zhu Youjian looked at the old prince, "Don't think it's too much when you think there are millions of people eating here in Xinye. When the spring famine comes next year, there may be tens of millions of hungry people begging for food... ...If we cannot lead them to beg for food, we will have to fight these hungry people. This is an enemy that we cannot defeat!"
In the previous life, if Chongzhen's army could not defeat the Hou Jin Army, it was because of its inferior combat effectiveness. However, if it could not defeat the peasant army, it was not a matter of combat effectiveness, but a matter of God's lack of reward.
In fact, in the late Ming Dynasty, the official army's ability to suppress internal affairs was still very strong, and the government was not "rotten to the core."
Including Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and Luo Rucai, almost all the big bandit leaders were killed by the army and were defeated! The leaders who were the first to rebel were all eliminated one by one by the army. By the time Li Zicheng came to power, there had been three or four major leaders.
And such a record was achieved due to the extreme lack of food and pay for the Ming Dynasty's officers and soldiers and a series of blind commands by Zhu Youjian. If the Ming Dynasty was really rotten to the core... it would have blown out the lamp and pulled out the wax. Can you survive until the 17th year of Chongzhen?
In this process, there were too many civil servants and generals of the Ming Dynasty who dedicated their lives to the country, and not all of them were corrupt officials. If you take into account the amount of military pay issued by Emperor Chongzhen, these officials could not be said to be very greedy with such a small amount of money to support them until the end... Later, the Qing Dynasty, which "brought its own halo", made a fortune If Xiandu spent 200 million, then he would really be promoted and make a fortune!
The reason why the bandits that Chongzhen encountered were able to rise again and again was because too many people had nothing to eat. If the Central Plains could have a few bumper harvests during the low ebb of the peasant uprising, they would not be able to get up.
"Your Majesty," the old prince Zhu Yiming also knew about the Huanghuai Flood, "will there really be 10 million hungry people? What should we do?"
Zhu Youjian sighed: "Uncle, we have to make the people of Huguang pay more food and more taxes! If they don't come out with food now, the hungry people will rebel and march into Huguang, but they are not begging for food! Zhang Xianzhong, what do you think? Is this true?"
Zhang Xianzhong, who was following Zhu Youjian, didn't know what was going on. He was actually thinking about 10 million hungry people rebelling and overthrowing the Ming Dynasty... Although this was a treasonous thing, Zhang Xianzhong felt a sense of joy when he thought about it. Ambition and ambition!
When he was thinking wildly, Zhu Youjian asked this question, and he was suddenly frightened and sweated. He said quickly: "No, no... These hungry people are all hungry people. They would rather starve to death than... Will not rebel..."
Zhu Youjian glared at this nonsense leader and said with a smile: "I will not let them rebel, nor will I let them starve to death... I will take them to beg for food, to Huguang, Sichuan and Jiangnan are begging for food! Whoever refuses to give is a rebel! I will let the hungry people form an army and kill all the rebels!"
An army of 10 million beggars?
Is this asking for food or life?
Zhu Yiming trembled for a while and said repeatedly: "I'll give it, I'll give it...Long live the Lord, I will use all the money and food in the house for disaster relief!"
Zhu Youjian nodded: "That's right. You are a senior member of the clan, with high moral standards and respected by everyone in Huguang. You have to take the lead and bring together the gentry and wealthy people in Huguang to discuss how to help the court relieve the victims! You have 200 million acres of farmland in Huguang. , of which at least tens of millions of acres are paddy fields. In the past, we only received one pound of grain a year... It is too little, so we need to increase grain!"
"How much?"
"Add it to a fight!" Zhu Youjian held out a finger, "We can't just let the small farmers go out, the gentry officials and princes in Huguang can also do it...Uncle, you have to take the lead!"
"One fight..." Zhu Yiming shook his head, "Too many!"
Zhu Youjian sneered: "Don't say too much now. When the 1 million hungry people here go to Xiangyang, there won't be even a stone left!"
The average annual output of the fields in Huguang is more than one stone and five buckets. The rent for better fields is nine buckets, and one bucket of grain is not much at all. If millions of hungry people really crowded into Xiangyang Mansion to eat, not to mention one bucket, one stone would be worth it!
"But, but..." Zhu Yiming still shook his head, "The veteran can take the lead, but the people below will not shed tears until they see the coffin..."
Zhu Youjian thought for a while and said with a smile: "Well, let me do it for the bad guys and let them see the coffin. You are a respected man, so just be a good person who asks for your life!"
