NOVEL NEXT Page 57
Among the crowd, Li Yan and his wife also praised the court's decision to release grain, and it seemed that the Ming Dynasty was about to take off.
The capital is releasing food to help the people, and many major events have occurred in areas outside the capital. The most surprising thing is the base camp of the rogues.
In some places they occupied, there have been many secret assassinations in the past few days. Leaders of bandits in Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui and other places were assassinated first and then later.
The leader who had just been elected was soon killed again. Now the rogues everywhere are in panic. No matter how prepared they are, their heads will be cut off in a short time.
These killers are all masked in black and are used to appearing at night. They can often kill the leader of the bandit without knowing it. Their physical skills and martial arts are extremely terrifying.
They never fight alone, they are all in small teams, with about 30 people in a small team, and they move very quickly.
Before the army of rogue bandits formed an encirclement circle, they broke out of the encirclement and escaped as quickly as possible.
There are also some killers who are in the bandit army, and whenever they have the opportunity, they will launch crazy assassinations on the newly appointed leaders, with a high success rate.
The killers who caused great shock to the rogues were of course the Jinyiwei elites under Zhu Youjian's command, and some were Dongchang Cao Zhengchun and his subordinates.
These people are all masters of the rivers and lakes. If the two armies fight against each other, their effect will not be great, and they are far less fierce than the regular army.
But for some assassination activities, they are definitely very qualified killers, which is why Zhu Youjian sent them to assassinate the bandit leader.
After Li Zicheng's death, the rogue army's morale had long since been slackened, and now it has begun to split again. Although it occupies a lot of territory, it actually has no fighting power at all.
After the gold, silver and grain of the rich merchants and nobles who robbed the rich merchants in the early stage were consumed, they began to loot the local people.
People's hearts are useless to them at this time, the common people are more miserable than under the rule of the Ming Dynasty, and many common people and bandits are drifting away.
Eight Royal Merchants
At the end of Ming Dynasty, the Eastern Captives rose up, and the wars continued, and the people in Hebei, Shandong and other places suffered from the wars.
Only the shrewd Shanxi merchants not only did not suffer losses, but instead made great fortunes for the country and grabbed more wealth.
At that time, the Ming government was struggling to cope with the iron cavalry of Nurhachi and his son, and there was a great demand for war necessities such as arms and horses.
Shanxi is located on a high loess slope and does not produce horses or arms, but has rich coal resources.
Occasionally, Jinci rice and Qinzhou millet are produced, and the ground is as big as a palm, barely enough to be a tribute to the emperor.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty was in financial difficulties, and the officials were helpless. Doing business with the government could only make a little money, so they set their sights on Nurhachi.Fastest update../ ../
At that time, the Northeast was in a mess. In Indian mythology, there were three main gods, the God of Creation, the God of Destruction and the God of Harmony.
The God of Creation is in charge of creation, the God of Destruction is in charge of destroying the fruits of labor of the former, and the God of Harmony is in the middle to coordinate.
Nurhachi, on the other hand, is a pure god of destruction. He only engages in destruction in the land of Liaodong, and does not engage in construction.
There were no rats in Liaodong at that time.
Of course, it's not that Nurhachi doesn't want to engage in construction, but that his men know nothing about farming and iron except for fighting and hunting.
What's worse is that local natural disasters have continued year after year, and food and clothing have become the biggest problem.
According to records, since the "Little Ice Age" that began in the Wanli period, it began to soar.
Although there were only 70 people in the Dongyao ruled area at that time, the people had to change their sons for food. The price of rice was as high as 80 taels a stone, and the cloth cost 20 taels a head.
Shanxi merchants took a fancy to this point, based in Zhangjiakou, collected goods from all over the country, and then went back and forth between inside and outside the pass to engage in trading activities.
Chapter 52
The eight imperial merchants delivered a large amount of basic living materials such as food, clothing, and cooking utensils to the Eastern Captive regime.
Nurhachi did not treat them badly, and exchanged valuables such as ginseng, deer antler, and animal skins with the other party, which made these profiteers very happy.
Gradually, the two sides established a deep interest relationship. Nurhachi, who attached great importance to espionage warfare, expanded the content of the trade between the two sides from food and clothing to intelligence.
According to the "Records of the Qing Dynasty", in the third year of Tianming (1618), there were 16 traders in Fushun from Shandong, Shanxi, Hedong, Hexi, Suzhou and Hangzhou.
Nurhachi "all paid fees generously, wrote seven hateful words, and paid them back."
In the third year of Chongde in the East (1637), Huang Taiji ordered the nobles of the East to lead 100 Han merchants from the inland to carry goods to Guihua City for trade.
The captives entered the customs, military expenditures soared, and finances were very difficult.
In this regard, Zu Kefa and Zhang Cunren, who participated in politics in the Metropolitan Procuratorate, once suggested:
"Shandong is the way of grain transportation, and Shanxi is the way of merchants. It is urgent to recruit. If the soldiers and people of the two provinces belong to our territory, there will be wealth and wealth, and the country will not be short of it."
It can be seen from this that the Eastern captivity regime attaches great importance to Shanxi merchants.
All the gunpowder, [-]% of the food and more than [-]% of the metal needed by Huang Taiji's war machine came from Shanxi merchants who were "integrity".
For both parties, this is a win-win deal.
It was through the Shanxi merchants that the Eastern captives could turn the looted property, antiques, gold and silver into food to feed their population of several 10.
The price of rice in Liaodong finally fell to one or two or four shi, and the population increased several times, but the price of grain fell to a few hundredths of the peak.
On the other hand, the Jinshang Group, which was on the other side of the transaction, had hoarded tens of millions of taels of silver in Chongzhen's 15 years alone.
These achievements were further improved after the Dongbao entered the pass, and he was granted the status of an imperial merchant by the emperor.
The Shanxi merchants, who received special care from Dongkuo, monopolized the trade and capital allocation in northern China, and got involved in the entire Asian region.
It even extends its tentacles to the European market, from Hong Kong and Calcutta in the south to Irkutsk, Siberia, Moscow and Petersburg in the north.first launch.. ..
From Osaka, Kobe, Nagasaki, and Incheon in the east to Taerbahatai, Ili, and Kashgar in the west, they all left footprints of Shanxi merchants.
They can even use Mongolian, Kazakh, Uighur, and Russian to communicate with the northern minorities and Russians fluently.
It can be said that from the camel caravans on the Mongolian grasslands to the merchant ships going to sea at Wusongkou, there are Shanxi people who are calculating the prices.
From the vinegar flavor of Hulun Buir to the wine aroma of Kweichow Moutai, they are brewing and selling.
The ruins of the places where Jin merchants were active can still be seen everywhere.
The Old West Temple in Gansu, the ancient city pagoda in Xinjiang, the bronze tripod in the Golden Temple in Kunming, the Kangyuan in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, and the Flower Theater in Bozhou, Anhui, were mostly built by merchants from Shanxi.
The famous Kweichow Moutai was created in 1704 by Shanxi salt merchants who hired workers from the Fen Distillery in Xinghua Village and local brewers.
Rishengchang Lane in Zhangjiakou, Fusheng West Lane in Baotou, Dashengkui Street in Khobdo, Outer Mongolia, Dingxiang Lane and Ningwu Lane in Hohhot, etc., are all related to them.
No wonder there is a saying in the Northeast that "there is Caojiahao first, and then there is Chaoyang County", and in Inner Mongolia, "there is Fushengxi first, and then there is Baotou City".
In the northwest, there is a proverb that "there is Jin Yilao first, and then Xining City".
If Shanxi Merchants are a miracle in Chinese history, then behind this miracle are ugly traitorous faces.