In the fifth year of Longqing's reign, on May 22nd, my tribute was a complete success. The border official reported back to the court that I had sworn an alliance on April 13th in front of the leaders of the right-wing Mongolian tribes and hundreds of thousands of tribesmen.
So the Great Ming Dynasty took the emperor's edict and made Anda the king of Shunyi. He changed the name of the city where he lived to Guihua. Kun Duli, Xin Ai and others were all awarded officials. He was named General Han Ji Zhaoyong and commanded the envoys as before.
I led all the ministries to receive the imperial edict very respectfully, sent envoys to pay tribute, and took charge of the rest of Zhao Quan's party to offer tribute to the Ming Dynasty. The emperor praised his sincerity and gave him gold coins. He also collected opinions from ancient officials and court ministers, and granted him the king's seal, food, and rewards. However, the tribute envoys did not listen and entered the capital.
Hetao Ji Neng also asked for his life as promised. Because the matter was in Shaanxi, the cabinet ordered Governor Wang Zhigao to discuss the matter. Wang Zhigao hoped to issue an edict to Ji Neng, requiring him to refrain from violating the border for one or two years before granting tribute.
Chonggu Fushu said: "I answer that Ji Neng is my uncle and nephew, and the first and last are corresponding. Now I accept his uncle and indulge his nephew, hold his head and relax his arms. I will definitely call Ji Neng's people to the city of Hedong to announce , big; the merchants can’t give it, and Ji Neng can harass me and disturb Shaanxi, so the worries of the four towns will be great."
Long Qing thought it was reasonable. If you can grant An Da, you can grant Ji Neng. Anyway, a sheep is being driven, and a group of sheep are also being driven. So he was also given the title of Governor Ji Neng.
After the matter was over, Wang Chonggu summoned merchants to follow orders for trade. Cloth, millet, and leather came from far away from Jianghuai and Huguang, and they were rewarded with taxes. The ministers, big and small, are all given gold pins as official posts, and each year has a number of market horses. Chonggu is still a year old, and he has given the fort to declare the power and virtue. All the tribes worshiped, and no one dared to make a fuss.
Since then, the border has been peaceful, starting from Yan and Yong in the east and reaching the seven towns of Jiayu in the west. The army and the people are working happily for thousands of miles without the need for military reform, and seven out of ten of the annual expenses are saved. The emperor issued an edict, and Wang Chonggu became the crown prince's Taibao.
Now that the tribute issue has been settled, the emperor is ready to reward all the ministers. From the center to the three towns of Xuanda, almost everyone who previously agreed to the tribute will have a share.
But at this time, Li Chunfang, the chief assistant of the cabinet, went to the hospital again and begged for leave due to illness. Longqing immediately sent an imperial physician to visit him. After diagnosis and treatment, the imperial physician reported back to the emperor and said: "Yuan Fu's qi is depressed and his heart is knotted, and he is coughing and wheezing uncontrollably. He really needs to be recuperated."
In fact, as early as February this year, Li Chunfang went to the hospital to "beg for rest", but the emperor did not agree and sent an imperial medical officer to examine her.
In April, the Nanjing official department reported to Wang Zhen and others that Li Chunfang "begged to leave because she was an elder, and she would stop sparing her as soon as possible. Because of fate, she changed her official position for her younger brother, taking advantage of the favor, and said that her father was not good at home, and Chunfang could not refuse to take responsibility." "
After seeing this, the emperor was "furious" and reprimanded: "Zhen and others have spoken rashly and slandered the ministers, which has damaged the state. Let's forgive him for his crime." Li Chunfang immediately went to the bookstore to plead for leave. This was the second time he begged for leave.
Judging from what Wang Zhen said, "Ask to leave with relatives, and stop sparing again", it means that in March of the third year, Chunfang asked to leave with Ershu. At this time, Gao Gong had not returned to the cabinet. That time was actually forced by Zhang Juzheng's words. Yes, it was later that Li Chunfang secretly made efforts to let Zhao Zhenji enter the cabinet to challenge Zhang Juzheng. However, Zhang Juzheng was not a good person, and soon brought Gao Gongqi back, causing Li Chunfang and Zhao Zhenji to lose in the end.
In fact, the reason why Li Chunfang asked to go was indeed forced by the situation. Firstly, because Zhao Zhenji committed suicide and Li Chunfang lost his ally. Secondly, although Gao Gong returned to power only for more than a year, he gained Li Chunfang. A major achievement that simply cannot be compared in a few years.
According to historical records: "The high-level decision-maker decided to combine seven towns into one, Dinggong City, and save more than one million yuan in border expenses. Zhaoan Guoheng came out to deal with it, and all the barbarians in Guangdong and Guangxi were pacified. He managed the strategy for a while, was generous and direct, and all achieved success. . However, he could not bear the pressure to promote prosperity, so he resigned from his position and took the top position."
In other words, Li Chunfang, who had lost all his allies, compared his and Gao Gong's political achievements and found that he could not continue to be the chief assistant shamelessly, so he had to resign. Therefore, this time he not only spoke sincerely, but also really put himself in the position. Feeling depressed and sick.
In this way, Long Qing will be able to handle it easily. Of course, Emperor Longqing still acted like he had no choice but to issue an edict on May 24th to agree to Li Chunfang's resignation, and temporarily gave Li Chunfang the title of Zhuguo - this is Nothing in history.
On May 25th, Li Chunfang left Beijing and returned to Xinghua. Gao Gong led a large number of officials from the cabinet and various ministries to send Li Chunfang back home.
On May 26th, Emperor Longqing officially issued an edict to reward all ministers:
A country with high arches and pillars, a young master of the Jin Dynasty and a bachelor of the Zhongji Palace;
Zhang Juzheng was still a young master, and concurrently served as the Grand Master of the Crown Prince of Jin Dynasty and the Grand Bachelor of Jianji Hall;
Yinshi Danjin Shaobao, Wuyingdian bachelor;
…
As for Gao Pragmatic, he is an exception. He has received the reward several days in advance, so this time there will be nothing wrong with him.
Therefore, he was taking advantage of the free time when everyone in the court was busy receiving rewards to deal with his own affairs.
For example, he met with Gao Guoyan, Gao Xiaozhuang, Gao Mo, Cao Gan, Wei Ximin and others who had come to the capital in advance and had been waiting to report to him on the progress of their work in the past six months.
However, these business matters are very complicated, so there is no need to elaborate on them one by one. In short, Gao Pragmatic first understood the situation in the past six months, and based on these situations and combined with the plans that had been made before, he re-determined new plans for them. Task.
Gao Guoyan didn't need to say anything more. He continued to do financial supervision, and by the way, he began to experiment with the "financial budget" method that Gao Pragmatic had mentioned to him.
After Gao Xiaozhuang was transferred to Kaiping, he has basically laid a good foundation in the past six months and started to make steel and iron on a small scale. However, due to the lack of private ordnance affairs, there is no place to sell fine steel products even if they are manufactured, so for the time being, he still uses Mainly smelting iron.
Gao Pragmatic gave him the task of prefabricating gun barrels in advance. As for the iron smelting products, they can be mainly used as agricultural tools first, so that the sales problem is easy to deal with - the number of agricultural tools that the Guangwei Station soldiers have to replace every year is an astronomical number, not to mention that there are also folk? Gao Pragmatic asked Gao Xiaozhuang to be responsible for the expansion of private business. As for the health center, he would wait until he communicated with the nobles.
Gao Mo is mainly in charge of the armed servants. According to Gao's pragmatic plan, the cavalry and infantry are now divided into several parts to prevent the number of people gathered together from being too overwhelming. At present, the total number of highly pragmatic cavalrymen exceeds 2,000, which is supposed to be a huge burden. Fortunately, these cavalrymen themselves also create profits - Cao Gan's Beijing caravan mainly relies on cavalry escorts for travel. .
Not only that, Gao Mo has even reached an agreement with some big merchants in the north in accordance with Gao Jingshi's instructions before leaving Beijing. When they need to transfer a large amount of materials, especially valuable materials, they can ask the cavalry of the Beijing Caravan to do so. Guard. As for the price... it's not cheap, but fortunately, the Gao family's riding dingwei is famous and is rampant on the grassland, so these big businessmen are willing to spend the money. As a result, Cavalry now not only does not become a burden, but also has a surplus.
The situation was different for Bu Ding. Gao Mo told Gao Pragmatic rather worriedly that at present, the Bu Ding under Gao Yude's command, except for the most elite, about two thousand people, were sometimes hired by big businessmen as escorts to travel with caravans. , the remaining five or six thousand people are in a state of "only losing money but not making money". At present, these people may spend 210,000 taels of silver a year!
Gao pragmatic was also stunned and asked: "Why are there so many people?"
