Chapter 9 Current Affairs

The ninth year of Chongzhen was still an eventful year for the imperial court and local government, and Shanxi was also one of the most serious places. Although Xing Tianjun fought with the officers and soldiers in Yangcheng after defeating the officers and soldiers, he only robbed a grain convoy of King Fu on the Yellow River, and did not rise again in the future. The big wind and waves seemed to suddenly fall down, guarding the counties under control, and seemed to be content with the status quo.

However, for Wu Yong, the governor of Shanxi, he could not be happy about this. After the year of Chongzhen, he ordered him to eliminate the Xing Tianjun in his jurisdiction within half a year, which was simply a joke for him. Nine years after entering Chongzhen, Shanxi has fallen into a great famine.

The hungry people had to eat tree bark and grass roots to live without food. Later, they once again developed to the point of eating each other, which made Wu Ng, as the governor of a province, worried about this.

Wu Yu is not a faint official. This person is a clean official, and he is not a corrupt official. However, on the whole, his ability is very limited. In the face of such a hunger, Wu Yu can't cope with it at all. Although he also wants to help the disaster victims, the government at hand can't afford food, which makes such a disaster. The relationship is getting stronger and stronger.

Wu Yong had no choice but to make a statement to the court many times, hoping that the court would allocate food to comfort him, but at present, the court is also seriously short of salary. He has long wanted to spend a penny into two halves. How can he have money to relieve Shanxi's hunger? On the contrary, it was once again paid to the provinces after the Spring Festival. In the end, Wu Jing's request for help was only to eliminate the matter of Shanxi's payment, and 3,000 taels of money was allocated from the emperor's internal treasury for disaster relief. However, this 3,000 taels of money was not all used in a province of Shanxi, and some of them were to be used for Jinanyang. Even so, this is the case. After the more than 3,000 taels of silver were transferred from the inner treasury, they were sent to the place all the way, and more than half of them had already been stuck by the officials who were good at pulling hairs halfway. In this way, such a little bit of money is simply a drop in the bucket for such a large-scale disaster, and it has no effect.

The roads in all parts of Shanxi are full of the bodies of starving people. The scene of drought in Shaanxi in the early years that caused people to eat each other was staged again in all parts of Shanxi. The government could not even accept it, but this is not the worst. What's worse, after the famine, a large number of people became a new group of people in order to escape the famine. People, in order to survive, many refugees chose to rebel. They were summoned by some people to rob caravans, beat farmers, rob rich rich households, kill and sell goods, and even more than 10,000 emigrants besieged the county in the north of the mountain, which made Wu Yong and other Shanxi officials We have no time to look south, and we are busy dispatching troops to deal with such a situation all day long.

What shocked the government and the opposition was that on April 11 of the ninth year of Chongzhen, Huang Taiji called himself emperor outside the customs and changed it to Chongde, taking this year as the first year of Chongde; changing the name of the country to "Daqing"; changing the name of the clan to "Manzhou"; and set the capital Shenyang. In this way, it is equivalent to openly challenge the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty and be on an equal footing with the Ming Dynasty.

This is not the worst. After May, Huang Taiji, who had just ascended the throne, once again mobilized 100,000 troops of Jiannu to go south to the bandit. First, on May 30th, he sent 100,000 soldiers of the Eight Banners to attack the Ming Dynasty. On June 27, Azige's soldiers entered Xifengkou (now in Qianxi County, Hebei Province) and Dushikou (now north of Chicheng County, Hebei Province) in three directions.

On May 5, the Qing soldiers will enter Yongguan in Yanqing, Gyeonggi Province. On the 17th, the Qing soldiers suddenly appeared under the city of Changping from Tianshou Mountain and attacked Changping City. The surrendered, and the Qing soldiers fell into Changping, forcing the capital to be under martial law. He urgently ordered his inner minister Li Guofu to guard the Zijing Pass, Xu Jinzhong to guard the inverted horse pass, Zhang Yuanheng to guard the Longquan Pass, and Cui Liang to guard the pass. A few days later, Duke Zhu Chunchen was ordered to inspect the border.

In July, the Qing soldiers entered Beijing. After capturing Changping, they successively captured Liangxiang (now Fangshan, Beijing), besieged Shunyi (now Beijing), and captured Baodi (now Tianjin), Dingxing, Ansu (now Xushui, Hebei), Dacheng, Xiong County, Anzhou and other Jinjizhou counties.

At the same time, Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and other road volunteers also plundered all directions in Shaanxi at the same time. On May 13 of the ninth year of Chongzhen, Yu Chongxiao, the general of Yansui, fought with Li Zicheng in Anding, and lost more than 3,000 people in the ambush.

Then Li Zicheng's crowd was about thirty or forty thousand, Zhang Tianlin and Man Tianxing's crowd was about twenty or thirty thousand, and the mixed king's crowd was about 20,000. All the times were dispersed, and the mixed king of the sky fled to the border, and he was alone and broke into the generals. To Zhang Tianlin, Man Tianxing, etc., now they go to Yansui, Anding and Ansai, and they can still supervise and clean up; breaking into the sky, breaking into the king, scorpion blocks, etc. are all out of Yun and Xiang. They have gone to Xing'an and Hanzhong. If they enter, they will enter the Three Qin Dynasty, and retreat can violate Chu Yu.

For a while, the whole northwest and the Beijing Normal University fell into extreme tension again. There was a scene of beacon fire everywhere, and the government governments all over the country were tired and busy for this.

However, in this large area in the southeast corner of Shanxi, there is another scene. After entering May, the first heavy rain of the year fell in the south of Shanxi, which finally eased the originally severe drought. By the time of July, the food in the Xing Tianjun's jurisdiction was already depressed. Onion, all kinds of summer grains have begun to bear fruit, and the ground is full of heavy ears, which makes people like it.

Since the robbery of King Fu's grain ship, the food problem of Xing Tianjun has been alleviated to a certain extent, so that the people under the jurisdiction of Xing Tianjun can finally get the lowest survival guarantee. In addition, several battalions of Xing Tianjun's of soldiers continue to send small-scale troops to plunder those large households in the surrounding states and counties. The grain of large families has been continuously transported back to their jurisdiction, so that the first half of the spring famine can finally survive under relatively stable conditions.

Unlike other places in Shanxi, it is that within the jurisdiction of Xing Tianjun, although the people can only eat very little food every day and have dishes on all sides, there is basically no large number of people starving to death, which is already valuable in Shanxi and even the whole north.

Moreover, in the areas under the jurisdiction of several counties of the Xing Tianjun, there was no large number of ordinary people fleeing because of the spring famine. The ordinary people were basically settled in their own homes, serving their newly divided fields, guarding their grain fields with full of time, waiting for the harvest this year.

Due to the strong appeasement of Xing Tianjun, the people do not have to worry about being starved to death, so no one ran outside. In this way, in the past few months under the jurisdiction of Xing Tianjun, the situation has been extremely stable.

Through the efforts of Fu Deming and other civil officials and local security officers, the people of all townships and villages have been summoned and survived in the form of labor for relief. At the same time, they have dug crissscrossed irrigation channels for their fields, introducing rivers and streams into the fields, so that the year of drought has not appeared. A disaster.

Xing Tianjun treats the people in the jurisdiction like this. What else do these people have to say? Even a few rich families under the jurisdiction of the Xingtian Army have also benefited a lot from the overhaul of water conservancy facilities. The harvest that was not expected this year was not only not caused by the drought, but also introduced the canal water that had been unable to be connected for many years into their own fields, making their own fields. Not only was it not abetter harvest, but the growth was better, so they also had to admit that under the control of Xing Tianjun, their life was better than that under the control of the government before, so the idea of thinking about change gradually faded.

At the same time, in the jurisdiction of Xingtianjun, because of the influx of exiles, the labor force in their jurisdiction has been completely abundant. They can often recruit enough labor to work for Xingtian Army at a very low cost. This is not only reflected in the abundant source of soldiers, but also greatly developed in various handicraft production. .

Yangcheng is an important iron production area in Shanxi in this era. After absorbing a large number of craftsmen and labor, the iron production in Dongye Town, Yangcheng is almost geometrically increasing. In addition to the emergence of coking workshops, new iron furnaces will be put into production almost every few days, and the construction The iron furnace is also larger and larger, and the output is higher than the other. The continuous production of iron has greatly enhanced the armament of the Xing Tianjun, and also greatly improved the agricultural tools, so that the productivity has been greatly increased.

While satisfying self-use, these irons have also become an important economic pillar industry of Xing Tianjun, which can be continuously transported out in exchange for other needed materials. In this way, it also balances the expenditure of Xing Tianjun, so that Xing Tianjun gradually begins to gradually get rid of the dilemma that it can only rely on plunder to obtain resources. It began to enter a virtuous circle of self-sufficiency.

Of course, the beneficiary is not only Xing Tianjun himself, but also the Taiyuan Fan family has made a lot of profits, which makes the Fan family become the largest iron supplier in Shanxi after entering May of the ninth year of Chongzhen.

While taking iron as the pillar industry, Xing Tianjun also greatly promoted the development of the handicraft industry in the jurisdiction. Among the large influx of exiles, there are quite a large number of craftsmen. After entering the jurisdiction of Xingtianjun, these craftsmen were concentrated and placed in the former site of Yangcheng County and Dongye Town, with the support of Xiao Tianjian. Under the planting, dozens of large-scale factories have been opened in the form of public, including iron factories and wood factories, and even paper mills in Yuanqu County. In addition to supply for self-use, the products in the jurisdiction also began to be resold to earn money for Xing Tianjun and maintain the operation of Xing Tianjun.

In a word, after the war at the beginning of the ninth year of Chongzhen, Xing Tianjun's affairs developed very rapidly with the support of an abundant labor force. Whether it was industry, agriculture or even animal husbandry, they have developed rapidly, and a gradual balance of self-sufficiency has begun to form.