Chapter 349: The Great Disaster

At the end of the 16th year of Jiajing, Jiang Feng's first son was born. Although the survival rate of young children was not high in this era, the living environment and various conditions of superiors like Jiang Feng were far superior to that of civilians. Naturally, there was no need to worry. Jiang Feng, who had determined his maritime overlord status, seemed to have been immersed in the joy of having a child and no longer had any ambitions.

Someone has made a judgment on Jiang Feng's actions, believing that Jiang Feng is at best a pirate, not much better than the two pirate leaders who are interested in peace in Liuheng Island and Shuangyu, which means that there are more people and larger territory.

At this time, people must not know that there was a Chinese Republic of Lanfang in Java hundreds of years later, and that country was soon wiped out by the whites and natives.

More and more people in North Korea know about Huazhou. In the hearts of various Japanese names and white colonists in Southeast Asia, this Huazhou is already similar to the vassals of Japan or the principality of Europe. The Huazhou Prefecture and the Huazhou Governor's Office have complete teams.

However, whether it is the inland or sea merchants in the Ming Dynasty, they generally regard Huazhou as a ridiculous thing. The official system of Huazhou is a mixture, and the official titles from the Han and Tang Dynasties all appeared. Although they called themselves Huazhou, they were still on the land of the vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, which was very inappropriate.

It can only be used as a big pirate to satisfy his desire to be an official, but few people have noticed that the complete civil affairs and financial system of Huazhou, and the extremely elite private army in Jiang Feng's hands, although the name is a private army, it is far superior to the regular army.

Yizhou sugar is already a great source of wealth. There is a rumor along the coast of Fujian, called "One year on land, one month on sea, one day on Yizhou!" It means that farming in Fujian for a year is better than going to sea to gain life. However, one month on sea may not be able to trade sugar in Yizhou. Taiwan has now completely relaxed. As long as you come to farm, pay silver or sign documents, you can be granted fields and plant grain and sugarcane. Yizhou has a very strange rule. If you plant sugarcane, you must plant the same area of ​​grain, otherwise it is not allowed to plant it.

The reason why grain and sugarcane must be planted in parallel is that the profits of sugarcane are quite high. Farmers often buy sugarcane and buy grains more than grains. No matter what aspects of Taiwan Island, self-sufficiency is necessary. Sugar farmers don’t have to worry about sales of sugar sugar. Large sugar merchants wait here every year to purchase them.

After the drought passed, the autumn of the 16th year of Jiajing began, and the rain in Zhili, Shandong, Henan and Zhejiang has been falling. There is a brief description of this matter in history:

"In the autumn of the 16th year, the two capitals, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi and Zhejiang were flooded, especially in Huguang."

"In the sixteenth year, the capital was raining, and it continued from summer to autumn. Houses fell, and many soldiers and civilians crushed them to death."

The houses that were dumped would naturally not be the luxury houses of high-ranking officials and nobles. Ordinary people and soldiers naturally complained. The situation in the capital was still relatively good. The situation in Zhili, north and south, Shandong and Henan can be described as corruption. If this situation occurs, the political situation and the people are unstable, the court must provide relief.

In history, although the relief of major disasters made the court's finances and reserves difficult, it was barely completed. However, after the drought in Shandong and Hebei, the rebellion of Chen Shizi and Liu Shisan, the great chaos in southern Shandong was triggered by the knife.

The north and south Zhili were shocked, and the guards of the four provinces mobilized and surrounded each other. The border troops in the two towns went south, and the grain transportation was interrupted for several months, losing a large amount of people. The court basically had no money left, not to mention that the money that should be spent on the nine sides every year was still a lot of money left, and there was still money left in the court.

Nowadays, the merchant groups and chambers of commerce in Jiangnan and Jiangbei are all rich. Everyone has huge amounts of supplies and money in their hands, but they belong to the tax-free class, or they are tax collectors and will not use money to provide disaster relief at all. No matter what, Emperor Jiajing always forced the Ministry of Revenue to take out silver to help the victims.

It’s not that they have the heart of a Bodhisattva, but that there will be major civil unrest after major disasters, and then the emperor’s position may not be able to sit firmly.

The remaining method at present is to open up new sources of wealth and find new tax collection objects. There are two ways to put it in front of Emperor Jiajing. One is to lift the maritime ban, and the other is to collect taxes on those estates that are not under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty.

The information placed in front of Jiang Feng was all rumors between the court and the country, and it was no longer a secret. After Jiajing proposed to open the maritime ban in the court, civil and military officials and nobles, regardless of whether they gained benefits in maritime trade, all opposed it in unison.

The Qingliu people's opinions are quite convincing. In addition to the historical arguments such as the eunuchs of Sanbao who went to the West, which was exhausted and damaged the people and made money, the people were living in poverty, and the opening of maritime trade attracted a large number of Japanese pirates who harmed the people. The Japanese plague in recent years has subsided because of the contribution of the maritime ban. If the maritime ban is abolished, it may be rekindled.

These civil servants who never go out and don’t know the world’s affairs naturally don’t know who is the one who has the right to speak at sea now, and who has killed the Japanese pirates.

As for those officials who made a fortune in the maritime ban, if the maritime ban is lifted, the huge profits of smuggling will definitely shrink a lot, and there will be many competitors out of thin air, and they are even more unwilling to do so. As for the reasons, Qingliu has already said it quite well, as long as you have to agree with it with all your strength.

Emperor Jiajing had no choice but to take back this method. He was not self-sufficiency in this matter, because the forbidden sea was originally a major policy after he ascended the throne, and he did not want to slap himself in the mouth.

The second plan is to check the land outside the customs, set up government offices on those reclaimed manors to manage them, and collect taxes...

This method really touched the interests of many people in the court. As long as the officials of the court can speak and report to the court, they all expressed their opinions, saying that the emperor would not compete with the common people for profit, or that the emperor would be foolish in public opinion with small matters such as money.

Emperor Jiajing originally thought that after the big gift case and court service case and the saint case, the officials and ministers in the court disobeyed their power and had been purged. The court was completely his own people, and he never expected that he would encounter such resistance in implementing these policies.

I was just willing to investigate the reclamation manors outside the pass. After a few days of debate in the court, some officials from the south suddenly turned around and strongly agreed to the court to investigate the land of reclamation manors outside the pass, to reclaim these lands and establish a policy of government management. This statement suddenly broke the tacit understanding in the court, that is, whether it is the southern officials or the northern officials, they do not mention the reclamation manors outside the pass and the Nanyang plantations. Now that one side does not abide by it, the powerful and nobles behind the Beijing Merchants Group will not be polite.

The memorials and documents that broke up suddenly, and the quarrels in the court suddenly began to break out. Emperor Jiajing was surprised to find that the officials under his command had so many territory outside the Ming Dynasty. From ancient times to the present, it was a great achievement to expand territory, but it was obviously not suitable for the current situation.

Inexplicably, the focus of the matter shifted from tax collection to the struggle between the two factions of the north and the south. The quarrel between civil and military officials has always been a pattern, which is to start with one thing and then involves various mistakes that the other party has made. Various stains were dug out as a warning to ammunition for attack.

Emperor Jiajing had no idea about the current situation, but the current situation was impossible to take action. Both sides were officials of the court, involved all kinds of forces, were promoted by themselves, and some were mixed noble forces. These people were the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty. If there was any rash change, the world would be in turmoil.

In private, Emperor Jiajing said this with a wry smile in front of the Empress Dowager:

"When I was studying in Hubei, I didn't understand the words "Yingchuan, Hongnong can ask, Henan, Nanyang can't ask" by the officials around me when I was prosecuting the territory of Han Guang. I don't understand it very much. Today I understand it."

The quarrels in the court have no effect on the continuous autumn rain. The disasters in various places are constantly deteriorating. The reserves of the imperial court and the places often settled. Shandong, which had just been pacified for not too long, was once again robbers. However, no one was behind the scenes, so the scale was very small, but it was even worse for the victims.

No surprises, large-scale refugees appeared for granted, but this time they did not flow spontaneously to the surrounding provinces. In fact, the situation in various places was not much better, and the provinces around the disaster area were just less affected.

The refugees migrated to the north under the leadership of some "leaders". Some people made all kinds of tempting promises to them. On the way of wandering, some people provided food that could barely survive, and had nowhere to go, and walked towards the north without hesitation.

The number of refugees was extremely large, but the more than 100,000 soldiers and horses in northern Zhili were only on high alert and raised their vigilance. They did not like they used to block and suppress refugees. They just watched them pass through Tongzhou, pass the capital, exit the imperial road, and then be divided by various reclaimed manors.

This migration is dozens of times, or even hundreds of times the number of slaves purchased by the reclamation estate outside the pass.
Chapter completed!