In the Forbidden City of Nanjing, the Fengtian Palace, and the Warm Pavilion, Shen Tingyang, the governor of Beiyang, was telling Emperor Zhu and the important ministers of the two prefectures what he knew and saw in the north.

“...... Henan, Hebei, Shanxi, and the northwest of Shandong and the area of Shuntianfu are really poor! The cities are ruined, the fields are barren, the rivers are silted, the roads are blocked, and all industries are withered. Most of the people in the north are hungry and have no clothes, the weak sell their sons and daughters, beg for a living, and the strong gather in the mountains and forests and are lawless. All prefectures and counties, in the face of this situation, are all at a loss! ”

What Shen Tingyang said is basically true!

The battle of the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains of the Ming Dynasty was actually not fierce, and in most places, the war was carried out in the form of a rapid takeover of the Ming army that the Qing army contracted on its own initiative, and only a few areas took place in fierce battles.

However, the southern profiteers who followed the Ming Dynasty into the northern theater of war (in fact, most of them were northern merchants who went south) seriously destroyed the economy of small farmers in the north, causing a large number of small farmers in the north to go bankrupt, and even if they were not bankrupt, their living standards were not as good as when they were ruled by the Qing Dynasty earlier!

It sounds incredible, but if you know a little bit of economic history, you know that it is inevitable.

Because there is no place where the small-scale peasant economy can resist the flood of capitalism with its doors completely open!

Now the southeast of the Ming Dynasty has entered the primary stage of capitalism, with developed commerce and early finance, and the production of handicrafts has reached the level of the late stage of the handicraft industry, especially the competitiveness of the textile industry, which is closely related to people's livelihood, is also one of the best in the world. Cotton, silk, porcelain, and ironware from the southeast entered the north with Wang Shi and the Southern Shang, and it was very easy to destroy the weak private handicraft industry in the north.

In fact, the main body of the private handicraft industry in the north is not the craftsmen who live in the cities, but the "female weavers" who occupy an important position in the small peasant economy. It was the male cultivation and the female weaving that formed the basis of the economy of the Northern Qing Dynasty. The taxation of the Northern Qing Dynasty was also a corresponding rent adjustment, in which the adjustment was to collect cloth (cotton cloth or linen). Cloth played a role as currency in the economy of the Northern Qing Dynasty, which was extremely short of silver, inferior copper coins, and excessive.

In other words, the monetary income of the small farmers in the Northern Qing Dynasty was the inferior cloth produced by the female weavers! The wealthy peasants in the Northern Qing Dynasty collected a large number of inferior fabrics, which were the capital for their commercial activities - although the Northern Qing Dynasty suppressed commerce, it was not without commerce, and there were also rich and poor among the small peasants in the Northern Qing Dynasty.

In the case that inferior cloth has a monetary function, its price is of course inflated, so in the face of cheap and high-quality Songjiang cloth that comes like a flood of beasts, the inferior cotton and linen cloth in the north completely lost the market overnight!

This meant not only that the weaving women, who were an important component of the smallholder peasant economy in the north, could not be sustained, but also that the merchants who had stockpiled large quantities of inferior cloth went bankrupt overnight.

With the loss of these small merchants, the northern trade network, which had taken more than a decade to build under Qing rule, also collapsed. Merchants from the south, with strong capital and the backing of Wang Shi, quickly established their own sales networks, and the handicrafts they sold were all from the southeast......

Without the "monetary" income provided by the tiny handicrafts, the economy of the North would naturally wither!

In addition, the three-year offensive also had an extremely negative impact on agricultural production and social order, with barren land, rampant banditry, destruction of cities, lack of maintenance of water conservancy facilities, and large-scale paralysis of the water transportation system.

In short, the current situation in the north can be summed up in one word, that is, poverty!

They are all dying of poverty!

"The court is also poor!" Zheng Zhilong also began to cry poor, Lao Zheng's face drooped, looking like he was about to go bankrupt, "Hundreds of thousands of troops have not yet returned, military expenditures are amazing, several feudal towns in the north still have to spend money to move or set up, seeing that they still have to send troops to the grassland, Beijing City and Tianjin City will spend a lot of money to repair, and the Tianshou Mountain Imperial Mausoleum will also be repaired...... By the way, there are still the Yellow River, the canal, the Daqing River, the Yongding River, and the Wei River all have to be repaired.

All the money is added together, and hundreds of millions of silver are not enough! If the imperial court still wants to return the capital to Beijing, then, that...... I can't do this household book! ”

After the rich Zheng Zhilong cried poor, it was the turn of Zhu Cihong, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, to cry poor!

Emperor Zhu was also unhappy - how could he be happy when he was so poor?

He sighed first, and then said, "I can't afford to pay it back...... If we want to restore the capital, we have to restore the Grand Canal, and if we want to restore the canal, we have to spoil the Huai River, we have spent so much money on the Huanghuai transportation project, and finally turned both sides of the Huai River into a granary rice sea, do we want to restore it to the original two or three years of a big flood? Now Jiangnan Province does not grow grain anymore, cotton fields and mulberry trees are everywhere, and rice and flour are supplied by Lianghuai and Lianghu. If the two Huai are destroyed, how can they be supplied by relying on one and two lakes? Without the supply of rice and grain, the cash cow in Jiangnan will be gone, how will the imperial court live at that time? What do the hundreds of thousands of soldiers in the north eat? And what will the rogue in the west take to suppress it? ”

Before the Yellow River flows south, there is no problem of ensuring transportation or protecting the Huai River, because the sediment of the Yellow River will never flow into the Huai River. However, after the Yellow River flows south, there are two difficult problems: whether to let the Yellow River take over the Huai River or to open a new river channel into the sea.

If you choose the Yellow River to seize the Huai, then the sediment of the Yellow River will accumulate in the lower reaches of the Huai River, so that the water of the Huai River can not be smoothly discharged into the sea. If you don't have an estuary, can it not overflow?

If you choose to open a new way for the Yellow River to enter the sea, then the lower reaches of the Yellow River and the canal will form an intersection, and the lower reaches of the Yellow River will flow gently and the sediment will accumulate quickly. This is also an unsolvable problem, and there is no way to solve it by digging a new canal, because the rising bed of the Yellow River is a high wall in front of the Grand Canal, which cannot be crossed by the engineering capabilities of the 17th century!

So the canal and the Huai River are two choices!

And the supply of hundreds of thousands or even millions of people in the capital of Daming must be guaranteed, and there can be no problems!

So you can't rely on shipping alone - this year, shipping depends on the wind to eat, and if there are a few more typhoons in the summer, it may cause supply disruptions in Beijing!

Therefore, the capital is in Beijing, and the imperial court must protect and abandon Huai...... Between one guarantee and one abandonment, it is an average annual grain production of tens of millions of stones!

For Daming, with a population of nearly 150 million, it is a fatal choice!

"Your Majesty," Shoufu Wei Zaode reminded in a low voice, "Now the people's hearts are returned......

Zhu Cihong glanced at the famous face of "Zhibi Zhuge ", the famous face was bitter, and he was at a loss.

Emperor Zhu sighed and said, "It's still not good, but the northerners who are willing to go home, we should still help them...... But now that the north is ruined and the people's livelihood is withering, let them go back like this, I'm afraid they will starve to death! So I wondered, should I invest a little money in the north first, build water conservancy, build roads, open ports, build cities, and wait for the north to prosper, and then organize the people to return to their hometowns. ”

"It's good, but isn't the court out of money?" Wei Zaode glanced at the rich Zheng Zhilong pitifully, and Zheng Zhilong sighed - poor! They are all dying of poverty!

"Then borrow money!" Zhu Cihong, the richest man in the Ming Dynasty, said.

"Borrow money?" Wei Zaode thought for a moment, "Who do you want to borrow?" Didn't you say that the Northern Expedition public debt was not issued enough? ”

Zhu Cihong looked at Wei Zaode and said, "Wei Xiang, do you have any money?" Can the court borrow money from you? ”

"Me?" Wei Zaode was trembling when he heard this-this is a matter of bribery? No, how much is confiscated! It's less than 500,000 taels, why did it happen?