Daming pirates

In addition, after more than half a year of preliminary construction, the port infrastructure in Hong Kong has met the conditions for preliminary use, and Yu Xiaotian has also begun to implement a set of methods he developed in Fujian in Guangdong and Guangxi to treat all

Merchant ships that went out to sea began to charge fees.

And including the fees in Fujian, all prices have been raised to 3,000 taels of silver per year. If you pay, you can go to sea. If you don't pay, hey, then after your ship goes to sea, the possibility of going back is very low.

Although the price of such fees is not low, it is still affordable for maritime merchants. The wool comes from the sheep. After paying the money, naturally you have to find a way to make it back, and these things have to be sold.

It's for Europeans or people from Southeast Asia, so just sell it at a higher price.

In addition, in the past, due to the large number of pirates in Guangdong and Guangxi, the probability of a ship being robbed was very high after it went to sea. However, now the coasts of Guangdong and Guangxi have been controlled by Yu Xiaotian's sea wolves. On the sea surface of Guangdong and Guangxi alone, Yu Xiaotian has invested a lot of money.

There are hundreds of small anti-smuggling boats, with more than 10,000 personnel invested. As long as you pay the money, you can basically guarantee safety on the southern sea.

In this way, even if the maritime merchants are reluctant, they can only pay money to buy the way. In fact, it is still beneficial to them.

But for some of the big business owners who have backers, Yu Xiaotian's approach obviously offends their interests. They often never even pay the taxes of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty has always collected very low taxes on business.

For big businessmen like them, their interests are rarely touched.

Now Yu Xiaotian suddenly asked to pay to go to sea. If they don't pay the fees, they can't go to sea. They often have a lot of ships on hand. One ship costs 3,000 taels of silver, and ten ships are 30,000 taels of silver. They feel that this money is wasted.

, so there are people who really don’t pay.

But Yu Xiaotian's men don't care how big your backing is or how strong your foundation is. As long as you don't pay and don't get the command flag to open the sea, then I'm sorry, I will ignore you near the shore and follow you until you go far away.

, these big businessmen who engaged in sea trade only realized the problem after a while when they discovered that their ship was missing, including the people, goods and ship.

They are determined to file a complaint, but now they don’t know where their ship happened or why they disappeared. In addition, the Ming Dynasty has never officially opened up to trade. Going out to sea to do business is itself a smuggling and illegal matter. There is no place to file a complaint. The government

Let alone blame Yu Xiaotian because of this matter.

By doing this, Yu Xiaotian really offended a lot of people with good hands and eyes, and many people began to move around and stabbed all the way to the capital.

By the end of the ninth year of Chongzhen's reign, the government and the public had increasingly impeached and criticized Yu Xiaotian. Yu Xiaotian originally brought peace to the coastal areas of Guangdong and Guangxi. At the beginning of the ninth year, Chongzhen still reluctantly gave Yu Xiaotian some praises.

He was promoted to Tongzhi of the Governor in Xiaotian, and was promoted to the first-grade official title.

However, after the end of 1999, there were a lot of voices of impeachment against Xiaotian from both the government and the public. There were also many officials in the government who pointed the finger at Yu Xiaotian. Many people complained that Yu Xiaotian had been domineering in the past year or two.

Abnormally, in addition to occupying Taiyuan Island as his private property, he also plundered people everywhere to enrich the population of Taiyuan Island.

In addition, Yu Xiaotian respects the sea and charges high fees for ships to go out to sea, thus making countless money. In addition to the Fujian Navy and Fujian Army, he also raised tens of thousands of private troops with the intention of rebelling.

There is also someone who started reporting that the Sea Wolves under Yu Xiaotian are currently engaging in provocations at sea. At the end of last year, they captured Jeju Island of the Joseon Dynasty. In the middle of this year, they even sent their troops south to Vietnam.

The Li Dynasty has captured a large area. If this continues, tigers will breed and cause trouble. It is better to ask the court to cut them off as soon as possible to avoid causing trouble in the future!

The ninth year of Chongzhen was another sad year for the imperial court. Although in the eighth year of Chongzhen, Lu Xiang was promoted to governor of the southeast, and Hong Chengchou was promoted to governor of the northwest. Several provincial capitals suppressed the refugee militia, and some results were seen. However, in the ninth year of Chongzhen, some results were achieved.

During this period, Shanxi suffered another severe drought.

Not only Shanxi, but also Henan and other places were also suffering from severe drought. In the Nanyang area of ​​Henan, it was very common to trade seeds for food. All the bark, grass and roots were eaten by hungry people. Countless people died of starvation, and there were starvation deaths everywhere on the roads.

After hearing the memorial, Chongzhen issued an order to allocate money for relief. However, the entire Shanxi and Henan disaster areas only allocated 3,500 taels of relief silver. These 3,500 taels of silver faced the millions of people waiting for relief.

The people are so pitifully small that they are just a drop in the bucket.

In April, the Jiannu slave chief Huang Taiji sat outside the pass and faced south, ascended the throne and proclaimed himself emperor. At the end of May, he sent troops to plunder south again, and invaded the pass from Xifengkou and other places. In July, the Jiannu army invaded the Gyeonggi area, and even

It broke through Changping, Shunyi, Baodi (now part of Tianjin), Dingxing, Ansu (now Xushui, Hebei), Dacheng, Xiongxian, Anzhou and other Kinki prefecture counties.

The entire capital was in emergency again. In August, after hearing the news, Zhu Yujian, the king of the Tang Dynasty, resolutely raised troops to go to the capital for rescue. However, when he reached Kaifeng, he was stopped by officials because his move was a taboo for the Ming royal family. The Ming emperor was afraid that these princes would take over the military power and rebel.

, so Chongzhen issued an order to depose the Tang king Zhu Yujian to a commoner.

This time the Jiannu entered the pass, which dealt a heavy blow to the Ming Dynasty. Since the last time the Jiannu broke through the pass, the Jiannu had seen the weakness of the Ming Dynasty and thought that the Ming Dynasty was mediocre. They had never dared to think of facing the south before.

They turned their backs to the north and proclaimed themselves emperor, but now that the Ming Dynasty was weak, they became more and more emboldened.

In Jiannu's mind, the last trace of awe for the Ming Dynasty had long since disappeared. By this time, Jiannu had already aroused the idea of ​​​​conquering the Central Plains.

And this time the Jiannu army entered the pass, it was to some extent another test of the Ming Dynasty. However, the result of their test this time was quite ideal. After the Jiannu army broke through the pass, they entered the Gyeonggi area and defeated more than ten people in a row.

In the prefectures and counties surrounding the capital, the Ming army suffered repeated defeats, unable to stop the Jiannu forces at all.

The entry of slaves this time had a heavy blow to the foundation of the Ming Dynasty, and even more shaken the edifice of the Ming Dynasty. At this time, people with some vision in the world have already seen that the Ming Dynasty has reached a state of turbulence.

If you don't do it right, you may not be able to save it.

However, it is still unknown by whose hands the Ming Dynasty will die. However, some people think that the Ming Dynasty will not be so miserable. After all, the Ming Dynasty's 300-year foundation is here, and although the damage caused by the entry of slaves this time was serious, but

Under the leadership of Hong Chengchou, Lu Xiangsheng and others, the militia's suppression of several provincial capitals had achieved initial results. The leader of the bandits, Gao Yingxiang, was ambushed by Sun Chuanting, then governor of Shaanxi, and was defeated in Heishui Valley. Gao Yingxiang was captured alive.

Delivered to the capital.

Yu Xiaotian has been paying attention to these news. He originally thought that his appearance had already had a certain impact on the current situation and might affect the fate of many people. But now it seems that his influence is not as good as the current situation.

It is still limited to the south for the time being, and its influence on the Central Plains and the north is not that great yet.

At least Gao Yingxiang's fate did not change because of his appearance. Gao Yingxiang still died in the hands of the Ming court and officials.

Regarding the entry of slaves into the customs this time, Yu Xiaotian knew that he might be involved to some extent, and it could even be said that he had some responsibility.

Because after he returned to Fujian from Denglai to quell the rebellion, his subordinates who stayed in Denglai quickly opened up trade routes with Jiannu, began to import large amounts of salt tea to outside the customs, and began to fight with Jiannu.

Buy and sell.

The Jiannu slaves were actually very poor at this time. Even though they had plundered the Ming Dynasty's property over the years, on the surface they seemed to have made a fortune.

But in fact, for Jiannu, the impact of the Little Ice Age on the Northeast was beyond many people's imagination. In the Liaodong area controlled by Jiannu, the shortest frost-free period every year was only three months, and the longest

It does not last more than five months, so it is no exaggeration to say that Liaodong is an absolutely bitter and cold place.

Such a short frost-free period makes it impossible for agriculture in Liaodong to develop. It can only grow one season of grain every year, and it depends on whether God is willing or not. The harvest of grain is often very small, and agriculture is in an extremely shrinking state, which cannot meet the requirements of the construction plan.

slave's needs.

This is why the wild boar Pinurhaci massacred the Han people in Liaodong outside the Pass, and even showed no mercy to the Han people who surrendered to them. It was because they were extremely short of food and had not enough to eat, so they came up with the idea of ​​killing all the Han people to reduce the number of people.

An immoral way to feed people.

So the Jiannu slaves could only solve their food problem by spending money. As long as they have money, there will be people willing to do this business, especially some wealthy merchants in Shanxi. Over the years, they have exported a lot of grain to outside the customs and made a lot of money.

When they became prosperous, the Jiannu slaves often plundered a large amount of wealth from within the pass, and soon after they returned, it was returned to the hands of Shanxi merchants.

Therefore, if these traitorous Shanxi merchants had not exported large quantities of grain outside the customs in order to make shady money, more than half of the Jiannu slaves would have starved to death due to famine alone.

To a certain extent, these damn Shanxi merchants played a big role in the eventual fall of the Ming Dynasty. After Jiannu entered the customs, he was really kind to the Shanxi merchants, which was considered as repaying the kindness that the Shanxi merchants had shown them back then.

Now that the Sea Wolf Group has opened up the trade route with Jiannu, although Yu Xiaotian is jealous of the money Jiannu has, he still has principles. Even though he now has a mountain of various grains on hand, he is on the trade list

, and directly crossed out the item of grain export completely.

(Brothers, please help! Let me make a breakthrough this month! Thank you!)