Since March, there have been streams of displaced people from Shaanxi, Henan and other places into Zhili, gathering near the capital, hoping to survive at the feet of the sky.

Especially after the rumors spread that His Royal Highness the Crown Prince was ordered to open a porridge factory in the capital and that he could survive if he went, in May, there was a group of nearly 10,000 hungry people who came to the capital.

In the early days of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang set up almshouses in various places to shelter the victims, support the orphaned, poor, disabled and helpless, and set up a righteous mound to bury the bones.

In the Yongle period, Zhu Di set up canteens in various places to help the displaced people, and also set up candles and two temples in Beijing to accommodate the victims. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty set up porridge factories all over the country to help the victims.

The establishment of the porridge factory was originally to reflect the benevolent government, but in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial treasury was in difficulty, and even the soldiers did not pay their salaries for several months, or even years, and they were unable to provide relief to the homeless.

Most of the officials and wealthy families in various places are cold-blooded, and there are too few people who come out to give soup porridge, resulting in the starvation of displaced people everywhere, and many women, girls and children have been abducted and trafficked.

Since the continuous influx of displaced people into the capital, many merchants in the capital have collectively raised the price of rice and taken the opportunity to make huge profits. Originally, one stone of rice cost five taels of silver, but now one stone costs eight taels of silver, which is simply robbed.

When the middle of the Ming Dynasty was rich, one tael of silver could buy two stones of rice, even in ordinary years, one stone of rice was only one tael of silver.

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were disasters and famines in various places, and there were robberies by rogues, and the north was also robbed by Jiannu every once in a while, and the price of rice was outrageous to several times higher than before.

When Zhu Cihong heard this, he immediately passed down the order, and compared with the price of rice in April, if the price of rice rose by more than 10%, he directly asked people to move the porridge factory to the door of their shop to see if they wanted money or death.

The most lacking thing for the homeless is to eat, the rice in the rice shop, in the eyes of the homeless is better than gold, in the rice shop at the door of the soup porridge, the result can be imagined.

At this time, Zhu Cihong thought of Zhu Chunchen, since he knocked him a sum of money last time, this old thing still dared to be dishonest, and he only donated fifty taels of silver for this fundraiser, which was too bad for him to give him the face of the crown prince.

"Since you don't give me face, then I don't have to give you face, it's time to get some more silver to use." Zhu Cihong couldn't hide the smile on his face, and then wrote a letter with a pen, signed by 'Brother Haonan'.

The letter probably means that this capital is carrying the handle, and he was originally going to live a chic life with 100,000 taels of silver from Grandpa Guo, but he didn't expect that Providence would make people, and the silver ticket on his body was inadvertently taken away by the homeless people, so he once again 'requested' Grandpa Guo to reward another 100,000 silver.

Zhu Cihong didn't know what Zhu Chunchen looked like when he received the letter, but after he changed his routine, he took Zhu Chunchen's 100,000 taels of silver for nothing. At present, there are many people in the capital, and it is not easy for Zhu Chunchen to arrest people.

Seeing that the security in the capital was getting worse and worse, the people from the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division and the Shuntian Mansion came to the gate of the Duanwang Mansion every day to ask for a meeting, but Zhu Cihong had no choice but to settle all the displaced people outside the city first.

So he sent people to find a barren land that was uninhabited and cultivated ten miles southeast of Beijing, and set up 50 porridge factories.

After the change in Chongzhen's second year, there was no one there, although some land was still in the hands of some big landlords, but Zhu Cihong quickly settled them and let Shuntianfu reclaim those lands at a low price.

Shuntianfu learned that the crown prince planned to use that piece of land to settle the displaced people in the capital, and the money for the purchase of the land was all funded by the East Palace, so he was very cooperative, and all the procedures were completed within one day, and all the large pieces of land were directly zoned in the crown prince's imperial village.

Zhu Cihong was a little speechless, this is powerful and powerful, and he is really good at doing things, no wonder there are royal relatives in various dynasties who have encroached on thousands of acres of land.

The next day, at the original soup kitchen in the outer city, the people of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division began to shout when the soup was given, and the city no longer gave porridge, but changed to outside the city, and let the displaced people go to the porridge factory outside the city for the next meal, and the officials led the way.

Ten miles away, the walk is only an hour's time, and the displaced people can rush to Beijing from hundreds of miles or even thousands of miles away, and it is natural to walk ten miles.

Zhu Cihong then mobilized half of the personnel of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division to go to the new soup kitchen outside the city to maintain law and order, and the remaining half of the personnel cleared the streets in the city, and martial law was imposed at night, no one was allowed on the streets of the city, and all the displaced people were rushed outside the city.

After three days of renovation, the city of Beijing has finally returned to its usual cleanliness, and is even cleaner than before.

Zhu Cihong was worried that the porridge factory outside the city would not have enough manpower and that the security would not be able to keep up and cause accidents, so he sent the 5,000 Yongwei Battalion there to set up camp, and after training, he maintained law and order with the soldiers and horses of the five cities.

Ten miles southeast of Beijing, on a vast piece of land, there are 50 large porridge factories, each of which is larger than the previous one in the city, and can accommodate 4,000 people eating porridge at the same time.

"Everyone line up, don't crowd, come one by one, everyone has a share!"

In front of the various porridge factories, thousands of homeless people lined up, and in front of them there were dozens of cauldrons with the smell of porridge, and some officials who served porridge.

Looking at the steaming rice porridge in the pot, the homeless people in the front row took their bowls and stepped forward to receive the porridge one by one, and many people couldn't help but swallow a few bites.

Many homeless people, especially some who have just arrived here, are grateful and grateful after receiving the porridge.

Around the porridge factory, a team of officials of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division patrolled, and under the sticks of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses, more than 100,000 homeless people were in good order in front of the porridge factory.

On this day, Zhu Cihong came here in person under the protection of hundreds of plainclothes guards of the East Palace.

On the flat land around the porridge factory are patches of haphazard shacks, which are the residences of the homeless people. Between the countless shacks, there is garbage and excrement everywhere, and the stench is overwhelming.

In the shacks, many people were dressed in shabby and dirty clothes, their faces were yellow, their limbs were thin, and their eyes were wandering.

Outside the shack, some orphans who had lost their parents walked around with dull eyes, and some sat on the ground hungry, watching others drinking porridge on the side, and they didn't even have a broken bowl to hold porridge.

There are so many displaced people here, there are tens of thousands of shacks, and all kinds of things happen every day. Some people bully the weak, rob property, and even rape widows and orphans in public.

Looking at the various scenes in front of me, everything is so shocking.

Zhu Cihong ordered on the spot that the soldiers of the Yongwei Battalion would directly tie up those bullying ruffians and hooligans, and then send them together and behead them on the spot in front of many homeless people to set an example.

Subsequently, Zhu Cihong ordered the people of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division to build latrines and forbid everyone to defecate in the open to prevent the plague. He also sent the scribes of Shuntianfu to count the population and gather some young orphans who had lost their parents into a porridge factory.

At the same time, the Yongwei battalion was ordered to suspend training, and several people in groups increased the frequency of patrols, strengthened patrols, and killed on the spot without asking for orders when encountering lawbreakers.