Wu Zheng's face was strange, "What does this king think, Lao Ma, are you boasting?" ”

Ma Shiying awkwardly defended: "Lord Wang, Ma is indeed not a person with them. ”

Wu Zheng nodded slowly, he knew that Ma Shiying was telling the truth, whether it was the Ming Dynasty or the Qing Dynasty, whether it was Qingliu or the eunuchs, few people treated Ma Shiying as their own.

As Ma Shiying himself said, he is not a person all the way.

Cooperation but distrust, which makes it impossible for Ma Shiying to truly integrate into the circle of Shuntianfu, naturally, no one will be "bewitched" by Ma Shiying.

In other words, Ma Shiying's willingness to be a "traitor" has actually failed.

However, failure is failure, the northern sales of firearms are very terrifying, in one year, the muskets from the two major ports reached 50,000, and the new army formed by the Qing court only has 30,000 people under Shen Zhiyuan, and it has already been prepared, so the whereabouts of these muskets are actually self-evident.

The performance of new firearms on the battlefield was greatly reflected in the two battles before and after Jiangbei, with the Han Banner Army privately buying firearms to the south for equipping the trend prevailing, those Manchu generals in power, for their own interests, hoarsely prevented the formation of a new army, in the name of "protecting the ancestors' family law and glory", but in private, but in private, they were unwilling to spend a higher price, secretly buy back the musket, strengthen themselves, in a sentence of later generations, that is, "the mouth says no, but the body is very honest", more appropriate, that is"It smells so good!"

Wu Zheng originally agreed with Ma Shiying's suggestion to use Ma Shiying's "traitorous behavior" to promote the leakage of firearms in the military workshop to fight an "arms war" with the Qing court, but unfortunately, Ma Shiying is really not "gregarious", and he was stunned to turn a good "leak" into an "arms purchase", although Ma Shiying has repeatedly lowered the "leak price" of various types of firearms manufacturing drawings, but people don't want to, they would rather buy spot at a high price than spend a huge amount of money to produce it themselves, so what?

However, what was unintentionally inserted into Liu Chengmeng was that this year's military purchase made the second outfit of the Northern Expeditionary Army very smooth, and there was almost no additional expenditure, because the price of the replaced old-fashioned musket was higher than the cost of the preparation of the new musket, that is to say, the Northern Expeditionary Army's outfit this year not only did not cost money, but also made a lot of money.

From this point of view, Ma Shiying is still meritorious, which is also the sentence that Ma Shiying can "proudly" say in front of Wu Zheng, "Ma is indeed not a person with them".

Similarly, Li Hao is not wrong, being controlled by others at the source of raw materials is indeed a big problem, who can guarantee that there will be no second time with this time.

Moreover, reality did not allow Wu Zheng to make concessions, and the alliance with Li Dingguo was related to the Northern Expedition strategy, and the "peace talks" between the Jianxin (Yixing) Dynasty and the Qing court were only tactics, and there was no reason to change the strategy because of tactics.

But the reality also makes Wu Zheng difficult, the General's Mansion until today, only thirteen prefectures under its jurisdiction, plus the fifteen prefectures of the new dynasty, can not meet the huge demand for firearms raw materials, compared to the north, Jiangnan in industrial raw materials, is indeed controlled by others.

As Chen Mingxia said, the Qing court has issued an "ultimatum", that is, if Wu Zheng does not agree to help the Qing army in Fujian and Guangdong to fight against the Great Western Army, then the Qing court will block the raw material trade route to the south, which will lead to the military industry in the next two or three years, due to the lack of raw materials to cut production, which will lead to the postponement of the Northern Expedition and cause tens of thousands of employees to lose their jobs, which will cause great damage to the industrial revolution that has just sprouted in Jiangnan at this time.

The most important thing is that, according to Chen Mingxia, this policy is not the meaning of Xiao Fulin, but the Han ministers of the Qing Dynasty led by Hong and Fan in the north are strongly promoted, which makes Wu Zheng even more headache.

The law does not blame the public, even if one thing is known to be wrong, and there are many wrong people, it will become right.

Just like "traitors", if more than sixty percent of the people in the north are "traitors", then traitors are no longer traitors.

At that time, the Northern Expeditionary Army had no other way to choose except to kill all these people, but this was definitely not what Wu Zheng wanted, because in this way, not only would the difficulty of the Northern Expedition be greatly increased, but at the same time, because of the "high degree of unity" of the northern forces, the Northern Expeditionary Army would pay unimaginable casualties, which was not what Wu Zheng wanted to see.

Wu Zheng delayed the Northern Expedition, not only because the strength of the Great General's Mansion was still insufficient.

In the past three years, Wu Zheng has established a strategy of using the economy to "win over" and "lure down" the majority of those who are in an unstable position, to "drag down" the enemy's finances with armaments, to delay the enemy's economic recovery with a war of controlled scale, and to prevent the Qing court from having time to breathe by attacking friendly forces in the northwest and southwest.

The latter three methods have been achieved, but the first one, "fighting" and "inducing" most of the people with unstable positions, has gone wrong.

Looking at Wu Zheng's long silence, Li Hao said loudly: "The prince raised troops from Shaoxing Mansion, recovered the lost land all the way, and established immortal achievements, I think there were only three or five thousand people at the beginning, but now there are 200,000 tigers, as long as the prince gives an order, he can attack ...... north." ”

"Why don't you attack?" Wu Zheng said coldly.

Li Hao was stunned for a moment, and then his blood swelled up, and he said angrily: "As long as the prince orders, he is willing to be a pawn of the horse!" ”

"Can you attack hungry?" Wu Zheng said lightly, and then raised his hand to stop Li Hao and retorted, "Even if the soldiers can go on a northern expedition hungry, the projectiles in the musket and the cannonballs in the chamber can fall from the sky...... Zhongfu, Lone just asked you to learn from the old horse to be steady, so you should be a deaf ear? ”

Li Hao's enthusiasm was extinguished by Wu Zheng's words.

Ma Shiying said at the right time: "I have an idea, but it's just ...... Not necessarily proper. ”

Wu Zheng frowned and said, "It's not okay to be too steady...... It's verbose. ”

"Yes, yes." Ma Shiying wiped the non-existent sweat on his forehead and said respectfully, "Chen Mingxia...... Not credible. ”

"What do you mean?"

"If the north is really as he said, Hanchen unanimously promoted the Qing court to force the prince to send troops this time, then Chen Mingxia is naturally one of them."

Wu Zheng's brows gradually tightened.

"Chen Mingxia is already above the Qing Dynasty, even if he has the heart to abandon the dark and turn to the light, how can he say that he will let go of the power and status that he has in his hands?" Ma Shiying said cautiously.

"Lone had already promised him that he could be reused." Wu argued.

"The prince can also give him the position of Shangshu?" Ma Shiying scolded Wu Zheng "without knowing whether he was alive or dead", "Even if the prince gives him the title of Shangshu, it has already reached the top, right?" But if Chen Mingxia does this, the Qing court may have a heavy reward...... In such a comparison, how to choose, I'm afraid it is self-evident, right? ”

Wu Zheng said in a stunned voice: "In the eyes of this king, it is better to be a county magistrate with your head held high than to be a prime minister by stooping to be a thief." ”

Ma Shiying smiled bitterly: "That's why the prince has today's power in the world!" ”