Jinghua Mining is a very important department within Jinghua Group. It was established separately a few years ago. Its headquarters is located in Kaiping, but it manages and guides all mining exploration and production of Jinghua.
After Tumut completely surrendered, Jinghua Mining's development in the Ming Dynasty began to expand from focusing on North China, Central China, and Liaodong. The first group was the northwest region.
The reason why the northwest region is the first batch of key development areas is politics, because the real school or Gao Party’s basic base still favors the northern region. Especially after Zhang Siwei came to power, the Jin Party was almost integrated into the Gao Party. In this way, in addition to Shanxi, the power of the Ma Ziqiang family in Shaanxi, which was originally Zhang Siwei's main ally, was also used by Gao Pragmatic, which opened up the world for Jinghua Mining. The northwest created the necessary conditions.
There is another key factor here, which is that Tumote's surrender made the northwest region, which was originally in the unfavorable situation of "all the captives", suddenly become stable and have the basis for large-scale development.
At that time, Jinghua Mining’s focus was on the coal mines in northern Shaanxi—the Shenmu and Yulin areas in later generations. The coal mines in this area, together with the Tumut Iron Mine (later Baotou, the mine was opened by Jinghua and employed some Mongolians) and Ordos Glauber's Salt (same as Baotou), formed the basis for Jinghua to build a new weapons factory in Shaanxi. Therefore, Jinghua opened the Yansui Arsenal in Jiazhou, the residence of Governor Yansui, which mainly produced muskets and a small amount of light artillery to supply the northwest military supplies.
There is no problem until this period, the problem lies in the next step. After the Yansui Arsenal was completed and successfully put into operation, Jinghua began the second step of its western expansion. It happened that Jinghua Trading Co., Ltd. heard local rumors in Gansu during their business operations at this time - the rumors were an important source of mineral discoveries during this period - that copper mines were often discovered by military households in Yongchangwei, Gansu.
This news attracted the attention of Jinghua Mining, and they quickly sent people to investigate and explore near Yongchangwei. As a result, a large copper mine was actually discovered.
The news quickly reached Gao Pangshi, but he didn't know much about Gansu and couldn't make up his mind, so he wrote to Liu Xin to inquire. Liu Xin wrote back shortly after, believing that the copper mine discovered by Jinghua Mining was probably the Baijiazuizi copper mine in Jinchang in later generations, and its reserves were very large.
This boosted Gao's pragmatic spirit, because the Ming Dynasty was suffering from a severe copper shortage, and he now needed copper mines to build cannons and supply the fleet. Therefore, as soon as he heard about the large copper mines, he immediately approved the development plan in Yongchangwei - although The place is remote, but no matter how remote it is, it is still on the only route of the Silk Road, and horse racing can be done here. Could it be more difficult to transport than Yunnan? Nowadays, most of Ming Dynasty’s copper mines are located in Yunnan.
Yongchangwei is the Jinchang of later generations, located not far to the northwest of Wuwei. Of course, Wuwei today is generally called Liangzhou. The situation that the Ming Dynasty faced here in Gansu was just like the "all around Gansu are captives", with Tumut to the north and Turpan and Qinghai Tumut to the west and south.
Turpan is a little better. Due to its limited strength, it has always been more deferential to the Ming Dynasty. But Qinghai Tumote was not the same. They were relatively honest at first, especially during Anda's reign. Because they were afraid of Anda's prestige, Qinghai Tumote always followed Anda's advice: if Anda attacked the Ming Dynasty, they would follow. Harassing Gansu; if I accept the title, they will do business honestly.
After Anda's death, the Monan War broke out. The Ming Dynasty and Tumut teamed up to defeat Tumen and Xin'ai. Huang Taiji, the leader of the Ordos tribe, led Huo Luochi and surrendered to Han Naji. This was the last period of peace.
After Han Naji was granted the title of King of Shunyi, the status of Qie Jin, Huo Luochi and others did not change much. It is entirely because the Ordos tribe is a Mongolian farmer, so its status is only slightly lower than that of Han Naji. The same cannot be said for Huo Luochi and others. Including his brother Zhulitu, everyone is just a commanding officer - —Not as good as a commander.
This certainly did not satisfy Huo Luochi, who had been one of Tumen's "five rulers". Even Julitu was very dissatisfied, thinking that he should at least be given a commanding officer.
When two brothers put their heads together, how busy are they? In the end, it turned out to be much worse than that "hairy boy" Han Naji, and it was simply embarrassing to tell it!
So the two began to separate Han Naji, and gradually became disobedient to control. Han Naji then contacted Huang Taiji as usual and prepared to send troops to teach the brothers a lesson. However, he did not want to see the Mongols continue to kill each other, so he expressed his willingness to mediate.
Qie Jin is An Da's nephew. He has been favored by An Da in his early years and is quite prestigious in the Mongolian left wing. After he came forward, Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu stayed together for almost two years.
However, the good times did not last long. Last year, Qie Jin suddenly fell ill. The illness came like a mountain, and he soon became extinct. He even summoned the leaders of his subordinates to explain his funeral arrangements.
At this moment, Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu's thoughts came to life. From their point of view, Qie Qian's face is important, but it doesn't matter if he kills Han Naji. This kid is of low generation and has no outstanding ability. The Monan War seems to be his great contribution, but it is not.
When it comes to strategy, it's a highly pragmatic work; when it comes to combat, it's a personal show - what's going on with Hannaji?
As a result, the old ways of the two sprouted, and they began to become unstable again. They began to harass the Gansu border, and were "removed from the market rewards" by the Ming Dynasty, which meant that trade was prohibited.
However, eliminating market rewards would not only be detrimental to Huo Luochi and Zhuli Rabbit, but also harmful to the Ming Dynasty itself. The specific manifestation is that it has become difficult for Jinghua Trading Co., Ltd. to do business in the northwest. Not only is it missing the business of Qinghai Tumote, but also doing business with Turpan must prevent the robberies of Huo Luochi and Jilitu.
Under this situation, in order to make up for this "loss", Jinghua had no choice but to increase the development of the Yongchangwei Copper Mine, so it made an important decision: to reduce the employment of labor and use gunpowder blasting to mine copper.
Under this idea, Jinghua Mining began to transport gunpowder to the northwest, and a large amount of gunpowder was sent to the Yongchangwei copper mine for use.
Huo Luochi and Zhulitu didn't have any interest in this because they didn't have guns or artillery, but a guest happened to come and help them come up with an idea.
This guest is really an old acquaintance, it is Xin Ai's son Burihatu.
Burihatu traveled all the way from Mobei to Qinghai. Of course, he had something important to do. This important thing was to mobilize Huo Luochi and force the rabbit brothers to resist Han Naji's "reverse behavior."
It doesn't matter whether Han Naji acted rebelliously or not. What is important is that Burihatu brought Tumen's edict. Tumen consecrated Huo Luochi and Jili Tu to rule the Great Mongolia. At the same time, he also expressed that as long as they could manage in the future, In conjunction with the Tumen annihilation of Hannaji, although the left and right wings of Mongolia must be unified, the Tumen will only have the Tumote headquarters, and the positions of farmers in the Great Mongolia State retained by the Ordos tribe will be given to Qinghai Tumote.
This canonization basically impressed brothers Huo Luochi and Zhulitu, but the two brothers also had requirements, that is, Qinghai is not complete now, and the most important Xining area is in the hands of Ming Dynasty.
The two brothers proposed that if the Great Khan could help them recapture Xining and collect a complete Qinghai, not only could they immediately declare their separation from the jurisdiction of Han Naji and start harassing Mingbian, but they would also be willing to make an alliance with blood. In the future, Tumen When launching a unification war against Bhannaji, their two tribes must "serve for the Great Khan regardless of age or age."
In this way, the problem turned to Burihatu.
Tumen was thousands of miles away, with Tumote's headquarters in the middle. Of course, he was unable to send troops to help. Burihatu could only find a way to help the two of them capture the important town of Xining on his own.
This level of difficulty does not sound much lower than when Wang Xuance of the Tang Dynasty conquered India.
But Burihatu was Burihatu after all, and he was a mastermind who could be loved by the Tumen. While gathering intelligence in Songshan, he thought carefully about the plan, and actually came up with an idea. Bibi e-book
Soon, Huo Luochi began to send people to contact Yongchang Guards. On the surface, he continued to request the Ming Dynasty to reopen the market for rewards, but secretly contacted Yongchang Guards and said that he would trade with them privately.
As we all know, the Ming Dynasty's border troops could not care about the ban when they were poor, or the effect of the ban would be greatly reduced. Border troops like Xiang Yongchangwei, who were far away in Gansu, certainly did not mind the private market.
But usually, the border troops will also use the ban to tilt the prices in the private market very much. Mongolians are usually not willing to be "exploited" in this way, so generally speaking, the scale of this private market is not large. big.
However, this time it was different. Huo Luochi said that he and the two brothers Zhulitu were going to launch a war against Wala and completely establish their status as the "Heroes of the Western Regions", so they needed a lot of supplies - in other words, this transaction The scale is much larger than the usual private market.
Of course, a health station in Yongchang Guard District will not have such a high level of strategic thinking to pay attention to the issue of "Hero of the Western Regions". For them, the fact that the Mongols are willing to be taken advantage of is the best news. They are really not afraid of you in such matters as transactions. If your business is big, I'm afraid your business will be small.
The big one violated the ban, and the small one also violated the ban. The court law does not punish everyone, and it is impossible to behead all the Yongchang guards, so why not do something big?
So the matter was quickly discussed, and Huo Luochi and Yongchang Wei conducted a private market at the foot of the city wall somewhere inaccessible.
Things like the private market are unspoken rules, and reputation is more important than anything else, so over the past many years, neither party will break this tacit understanding. However, something unexpected happened this time. In the middle of the transaction, Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu suddenly appeared and killed and captured all the Yongchang guards who were conducting the private trade. Then they found some people who could speak Chinese and speak English. People who look like Han people wear their clothes and hold their tokens to check the customs...
At that time, the Yongchang Guards were attacked and broke through the border gates, and they retreated to various forts. This was nothing new. In addition to the border wall, the border army also had a lot of forts on the border, just in case one side of the wall was breached. You can also retreat to Wubao and wait for the army to rescue you.
But unexpectedly, Huo Luochi and Zhulitu's large forces did not go to attack the impregnable Wubao, but went directly to the Yongchang Copper Mine in Beijing - they were not going to grab the ore. Although this thing was good, they almost They couldn't process it and couldn't produce any copper, so they went to the mine's warehouse.
Jinghua did have a mine protection team in the copper mine, but because Yongchang Guards did not warn them in advance that there was a foreign invasion, they did not react at all at the time and were still working in the mine.
When they picked up their weapons and organized their teams to defend the copper mine, they discovered that the other party was not coming for the copper mine, or even for the smelted copper ingots. These Mongols roared to loot the warehouse. Every pack of gunpowder used to blast mountains and quarry was snatched away by the Mongols.
After Huo Luochi and Zhu Litu stole the gunpowder, Yongchang Wei concealed the situation while arguing with Jinghua Yongchang Copper Mine, and even alerted Cao Gan, the boss of Jinghua Trading Co., who was far away in Xi'an. After Cao Gan learned the news, he was also very puzzled. What was the point of the Mongols in Qinghai grabbing gunpowder? They don't have firearms, and they don't know how to blow up mountains and mine. Are they going to sell them to other forces in the Western Region?
However, since so much gunpowder was robbed from his house, Cao Gan had to take care of it, so he rushed to Liangzhou in person to understand the situation, and even prepared to wait for an opportunity to retaliate.
As a result, when he went there, he received news that surprised him: Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu did not go to the Western Regions at all after getting the gunpowder, but went directly south, heading all the way to Xining.
Cao Gan was so frightened that he sent a fast horse to notify Xining, and at the same time personally led the team, leading a cavalry of more than 3,000 people to pursue south.
But it was definitely too late. He came all the way from Xi'an and was delayed for half a day in Liangzhou. How could he catch up with Huo Luochi and Zhulitu, the two main forces of the Mongolian tribe?
He had just crossed the Qilian Mountains when he received news that Xining had been captured!
What shocked him even more was that the reason why Xining fell was because Huo Luochi and Zhulitu's men rushed to the foot of Xining City to confront the Xining Guards. That night, the Mongols dug tunnels and "dug half of them" on the wall of Xining City. He buried a large amount of gunpowder and blew up the west gate of Xining City in one fell swoop!
How could the Mongols do this?
Cao Gan didn't care much and used all the means at his disposal. He spent thousands of taels of silver before he found out an inside message: Tumen Khan's military advisor Burihatu had been stationed in the Huoluo Red Army for more than a month. , this method was his idea from beginning to end, and he even came up with the idea of blowing up the city with gunpowder.
Shopkeeper Cao Da was shocked, but he didn't care how Buri Hatu knew this. He quickly sent a horse and rushed eight hundred miles to deliver a letter to Gao pragmatically to report the situation.
According to his opinion, the responsibility for the initial problem of this matter lay with Yongchang Guard, but the large amount of gunpowder lost by Jinghua was actually the main reason for the fall of Xining City. Without this batch of gunpowder, even if Burihatu had all his abilities, he would not be able to pry open the solid city of Xining. Therefore, he believed that the imperial court might hold Beijing responsible, so the master must prepare in advance and cannot wait until the news of Xining's fall reached the capital before urgently putting out the fire.
Gao Pragmatic was not afraid of how much trouble this incident would cause Jinghua to get into. After all, Jinghua himself was also a victim, and he was the "non-fault party." Even if someone in the court wanted to cause trouble, he could handle it.
He was anxious about the whole situation!
Because the current situation is so in line with Burihatu's plan, this situation must be reversed, otherwise the Ming Dynasty will not have completed the "opening of the vassal ban" by then, and Burihatu has successfully planned to siege Tumote.
If Tumut can't stand it, will all his plans for more than ten years be in vain?
It is tolerable, but what is unbearable!
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Also, the first of the "Three Major Marches of the New Wanli" will be written soon.
