bookbashuk Chapter 115
Chapter 115
"Um, break their bones, kill their corrupt hearts, and make them afraid when they see money in the future!"
Ugh!
Li Yan sighed in his heart.
Your Majesty takes it for granted!
However, in today's situation, he could no longer persuade her.
Li Yan suppressed his impulse, and the wine suddenly became tasteless.
……
Li Zicheng was a little drunk, and kept talking nonstop. When he got excited, he yelled and yelled, and the table was slapped.
Wang Dehua was frightened when he heard this, and he wished he could become deaf and dumb as soon as possible.
Half an hour later, a eunuch stood at the door and kept waving to Wang Dehua.
Wang Dehua rushed to the door and asked, and Shao Qing came back:
"Your Majesty, the boys just sent news that Military Advisor Song is here."
Song Xiance is here?
Li Zicheng was stunned. Didn't he just leave?
As he was thinking in his mind, he called Wang Dehua to invite Song Xiance in.
Song Xiance was not tall and was known as Song Dwarf.
He was proficient in Qimen Dunjia and Tucheng (chen). In the 14th year of Chongzhen, he was recommended by Niu Jinxing and arrived at Chuangying.
The first thing he said to Li Zicheng was:
"There is always a verse in the market: 'It flows into the main stream of the river and sinks into the eighteen beaches. If you want to go up to the sky, start from Yanmen Pass.'
The first half of this statement has been verified by the fact that the general started the uprising and is now called King Chuang. Now according to the phrase "starting from Yanmen Pass", this is the moment when the general goes straight into the sky! "
Li Zicheng was overjoyed when he heard this and worshiped him as his military advisor on the spot.
Song Xiance took apart "Li" and made up the prophecy that "Eighteen children will be the masters of the artifact", which in one fell swoop established the hearts of the people within the army and created the conditions for Li Zicheng to ascend the throne and proclaim himself emperor.
……
Song Xiance saluted Li Zicheng, then bowed his hand to Li Yangong, then took out a letter and said:
"Your Majesty, there is a businessman named Wang Ji who asked someone to find me. He said that he had written a petition for war and asked me to hand it over to Your Majesty. The man has already brought it."
Wang Dehua forwarded the letter, and Li Zicheng opened it and was immediately happy.
He couldn't help but read aloud: "Now the south of the Yangtze River is undecided, the people are in good mood, and the grassroots people are originally from Huizhou, so they wrote a few words and decided to take the Jiangnan policy.
But I ask your Majesty to appoint one, and the common people are willing to be the vanguard, lead the troops forward, and serve as the vanguard for your Majesty to pacify the south of the Yangtze River, so as to do the hard work of dogs and horses..."
Song Xiance was stunned for a moment.
He did not open this letter, so he had no idea what Wang Ji wrote.
At this time, hearing His Majesty read this, he only felt that there was something strange in it.
Li Zicheng looked at Wang Dehua:
"Wang Governor, you are the former director of Mingdong Factory. Do you know where Wang Ji came from?"
Wang Dehua sneered: "Your Majesty, this Wang Ji is nothing. He is just the person in charge of the Huizhou Wang family in the capital."
"Huizhou Wang family?"
Song Xiance raised his eyebrows.
Li Yan also exclaimed.
"He's actually a member of the Wang family?"
Li Zicheng turned to look at the two of them: "Why, the Wang family is so famous?"
Li Yan and Song Xiance shook their heads and smiled bitterly.
My emperor was from Shaanxi and knew a lot about merchants from Shanxi and Shaanxi, but he didn't know much about Huizhou merchants like the Wang family.
……
The Huizhou merchant gang is the largest merchant in the world, much more powerful than the Shanshan and Shaanxi salt merchants who started out as Kai Zhongfa.
Since the abolition of the Kaizhong Law in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Shanshan merchants have gradually declined. In recent years, they have only made a slight improvement by going back and forth between the bandits and the Qing Dynasty.
……
Exchanging grain and grass shipped to the border for salt is a way to open the country.
In the early years, the court's salt supply was almost monopolized by merchants from Shanxi and Shaanxi who had convenient geographical advantages.
After Kai Zhongfa was deposed, Huizhou businessmen stole more than half of the Yanyin votes.
Even, in order to fight against the traditional merchants in the south of the Yangtze River - Zhejiang merchants and Jiangxi merchants in Jiangyou, Huizhou merchants helped Yangzhou, the place of fireworks that surpassed Suzhou.
Businessmen are profit-seeking, especially businessmen groups that are both businessmen and Confucians.
Since the Southern Song Dynasty, Jiangnan has been the richest place in the world, and the richest families in the world!
If you have money, you will have more scholars. If you have more scholars, you will have more officials. If you have more officials, you will have more power. If you have more power, you will have more money... There are endless matryoshka dolls like this.
Driven by capital, within a few years of the Ming Dynasty's founding of the Ding Dynasty, not only was the Kaizhong Law abolished, but even the Salt Yin System was on the verge of collapse.
Make money to support Confucians, Confucians become officials, and officials protect businessmen...
Due to this endless and unrestrained greed, the amount of private salt sold today is actually dozens of times that of the official salt from the imperial court!
Holding the pork in your hands and moving it back and forth will leave a meaty smell on your hands.
Holding the imperial policies in his hands, countless powerful families emerged.
And the Wang family is one of the best!
……
Song Xiance smiled and said: "Has your Majesty ever heard the saying 'No town can be built without emblems'?"
Li Zicheng nodded. There are Huizhou guild halls all over the country, basically in every county. There are even Huizhou guild halls in some larger township markets.
Li Yan also spoke: "There is also a saying, 'No emblem, no pawn shop' (pawn shop), has your Majesty ever heard of it?"
Wang Dehua also said a proverb: "There is still this saying among the people in the market - most of the masters in the yamen are from Shaoxing... many of the pawnbrokers are from Huizhou... most of the paper ingots and ashes are collected from Shaoxing, and most of the dead mothers are from Huizhou (burning) Paper money and ashes given to the dead, meaning curse)..."
(The above sentence comes from the Qing Dynasty novelist Wu Jianren's "Hundreds of Talks in Shanghai")
Li Zicheng was stunned.
What do you mean?
This Wang Ji just wrote him a letter of challenge. What did they mean by saying that?
Song Xiance smiled: "Your Majesty, I have heard about this man. He has a fortune of millions, dozens of pawnshops, and countless slaves. How can he take his family to fight? It's just a trick to escape."
"How dare that old dog play tricks on you!"
Li Zicheng's expression changed and he ordered:
"Li Yan, you and others will confiscate Wang Ji's property. Song's military advisor will hand Wang Ji over to Liu Zongmin, put sticks on his arms and legs, and iron hoops on his head, and then put them on the fire to roast. I want to take a look. How much money can he extract?"
……
Wang Ji was waiting nervously outside the Meridian Gate of the palace.
Something is very wrong in the city now!
Since five days ago, Emperor Yongchang ordered the former chief minister Wei Master to be imprisoned, nearly a hundred more officials have been arrested!
Forget it, a few days ago, there was an order for five households to support one soldier.
These soldiers are all damned. They usually live a life of licking blood from the edge of a knife. How can there be any reason to talk about it?
If a female member of the family is bullied, there is no room for reasoning.
He immediately spent money to save his family from danger.
However, the situation is getting worse and worse.
This morning, a senior official supported by his Wang family secretly sent him a letter, saying that Emperor Ming severely defeated Dashun's army in Baoding.
Right now, he is leading people towards the capital!
With this attack from both inside and outside, Wang Ji immediately decided to take the family property and run back to his hometown.