"Taihang Mountain...... Guguan ......"

Zhu Cihong held a candle and looked at the newly hung map in the study on the second floor of Yongchun Pavilion. This is a picture of the situation of Shanxi plus North Zhili. Two huge arrowheads, extending from Beijing and Taiyuan, are about to collide at the critical point in the middle of the Taihang Mountains.

Wu Sanmei, who had been pregnant for a few months, also held a candle and stood behind Zhu Cihong with a smile, as if she wanted to light it up for him.

On the second floor of Yongchun Pavilion, there is a bedroom of Zhu Cihong in Dagongfang. If you are busy with official business and sleep late on this day, you will not go to the inner courtyard, but call Wu Sanmei, the waiter, to sleep. That's right, Zhu Cihong only sleeps with Wu Sanmei now, and Ning Xiangyu and Fei Zhen'e, the two servants, are still in name only.

The reason for this is that Zhu Cihong really likes this silly and sweet girl; Second, it is also a political need - his eldest son is best born by Wu Sanmei!

After a while, Zhu Cihong put down the candle in his hand, clapped his hands and said, "Li Zicheng's situation looks good!" Although it is not enough to defeat the Tartars, it is no problem to hold on to the fortified pass and fight a protracted battle...... It's winter now, and it shouldn't be very suitable for attacking the city, and it seems that Li Zicheng can always delay it until next spring. ”

"Chitose Lord, listen to your words, Li Zicheng will still be defeated?" Wu Sanmei was born in Jiangmen, and she has heard and witnessed it since she was a child, so she certainly knows something about military affairs. In her opinion, Li Zicheng occupies a dangerous position and has a large number of troops, so he should be invincible.

Zhu Cihong smiled faintly, and a helpless wry smile appeared on the young face: Third sister, third sister, don't you know that Tartar is now open!

Li Zicheng's plate looks very stable on the surface, but he will still lose when he encounters an open tartar.

As soon as he fails, it will be Daming's turn...... So the Ming Dynasty has to hurry up and hang up!

"Maybe there's still a year," Zhu Cihong sighed, "I should be able to do a lot of things......"

After entering Nanjing, the Ming court under the leadership of Zhu Cihong was brewing a new round of reform. The purpose of this reform was to improve the administrative efficiency of the Ming court and strengthen the power of the six Shangshu and the ministers. Zhu Cihong was ready to officially cancel the six departments in the matter, and turned the six departments into a Shangshu responsibility system.

Through this reform, the responsibilities of the six ministries will also be clearer.

The Ministry of Officials is in charge of civil and personnel personnel, not only in charge of promotion, evaluation, appointment and dismissal. Everything related to civil and official personnel is the business of the ministry. The personnel of all the civil servants who served in the ministries of the imperial court were also under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Officials.

Of course, the management of personnel by officials does not mean that they have full authority over the appointment and dismissal of personnel, but mainly according to Zhu Cihong's orders or the writing of officials at all levels.

The Ministry of Rites will become a department in charge of education and education, and the Ministry of Rites and Rites at all levels will be in charge. In addition, the Sangha Division and the Daolu Division were also placed under the Ministry of Rites, and the affairs of minority religions such as Christianity and Tianfang Religion were also under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Rites.

In addition to these, Zhu Cihong also ordered the Ministry of Rites to prepare for the establishment of the "Tongwen Museum" and the "Shuwen Museum", the former is a translation agency, in charge of training generals, translating books and canons from various countries.

And the latter is a yamen in charge of publishing - the management of book publishing in the late Ming Dynasty was too lax, almost no one was in charge, and there was complete freedom of speech!

It's not that Zhu Cihong is against freedom of speech, but that he is currently in wartime. Where can there be so much freedom in wartime? What should be strictly controlled must be strictly controlled! What should be wooed, of course, must be wooed.

The Ministry of War is still a quiet yamen, and many of its functions and powers have been encroached upon by the Generalissimo's Office. However, Zhu Cihong is also brewing a major reform, preparing to turn the military department into a yamen in charge of military affairs, and the military and political department of the Generalissimo's Office will be included in the military department.

Reform of the household sector is in the pipeline. The reform will mainly involve three aspects, one is the management of the household warehouse - the most important treasury (including money) management, will be changed to Yanshang Bank and Haishang Bank! The Household Department is only in charge of accounts and income and expenditure, and does not directly manage cash.

The second is the issuance of coins - in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, "treasure banknotes", that is, paper money, were issued, but they were not successful. Later, it issued money and small money, but it was also not good. So now the currency of the Ming Dynasty is very chaotic, and silver, money, and small money are mixed. When you go to the streets, you have to bring scissors to cut the silver, a weighing scale and a tool to melt the silver! The whole one is an alchemist......

Of course, Zhu Cihong, a "financial expert," cannot allow the currency to be so chaotic, and it must be sorted out in a big way. Issuing coins that are easy to circulate!

In addition, there was a disconnect between the exchange rate of gold and silver in the Ming Dynasty and the international market - this was because in the Ming Dynasty, the monetary properties of gold were insufficient. Therefore, there is also a need to mint gold coins for large payments to increase the price of gold.

Third, the taxation of the household department must also be greatly improved, and in particular, the privilege of exempting scholars from commercial taxes (customs duties) must be abolished - this is the deep water area of reform! But it doesn't work if it doesn't involve it, otherwise the court under the leadership of Prince Zhu will not be able to make ends meet, and sooner or later it will follow in the footsteps of his father, Emperor Chongzhen.

At the same time as the tax reform, the reform of spending money is also underway - in Zhu Cihong's view, the Ming Dynasty was not only inefficient in collecting money, but also very inefficient in spending money!

The first step to improve the efficiency of spending money is to drastically reduce Zonglu's expenditure, and at the same time increase the actual income of officials at all levels, and abolish the "discounted color" and in-kind money, and replace them with silver. At the same time, it was necessary to study the establishment of vocational fields, that is, to use part of the land obtained from the Qingtun survey as vocational fields and distribute them to civil and military officials, so that they could obtain a considerable amount of land rent income.

Although the increase may not be able to stop corruption, the previous practice of adding various folds to the already low level of income is a bit of a black-hearted boss deducting wages. It doesn't matter to officials whose hometowns are in the southeast and can profit from trickery and tax exemptions, but not for the "bureaucratic proletariat" who followed Zhu Cihong south.

Prince Zhu won't let others suffer!

As for the reduction of Zonglu's expenditure, to a certain extent, it is thanks to Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. Now most of the places where the Ming Dynasty's clans are located have been broken by these two. The children of the Zhu family either died or lost contact. The number of clans who fled to Nanjing by luck was not large, and the proportion of deaths and disappearances of vassal kings and county kings was even higher! Even if he runs to Nanjing, he is also a prince who has "lost his domain", and he is guilty according to the ancestral system.

Zhu Cihong was able to reward them with a palace in Nanjing, give a prince who surrendered on his behalf, and give them a discounted fortune, and they were already grateful.

At the same time as reducing Zonglu's expenditures, Zhu Cihong also decided to suspend the two systems of "Zongban" and "Eternal Imperial Family", which caused a great burden on the Ming Dynasty's finances.

As an important spending department, the reform of the Ministry of Industry is also urgent. The Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty had jurisdiction over the four Qing Officials Divisions of Yingxi, Yuheng, Dushui and Tuntian, as well as the Camp Repair Office, Wensi Academy, Leather Bureau, Saddle Bun Bureau, Baoyuan Bureau, Pigment Bureau, Ordnance Bureau, Jieshen Warehouse, Weaving and Dyeing Institute, Miscellaneous Manufacturing Bureau, Bamboo and Wood Bureau, Firewood and Charcoal Bureau, etc.

This configuration was good in the early Ming Dynasty, after all, in the early Ming Dynasty, after many years of war and the destruction of the Mongols, the vitality of industry and commerce did not recover. Therefore, the method of the "artisan household" to serve in the last service and the government-run handicraft industry is appropriate.

And now, the artisan household system has long existed in name only. In a place like Gangnam, where industry and commerce are very prosperous, the situation is even more prominent. Without artisans, there would be no cheap labor in the government-run handicraft industry, and the civilian officials lacked the ability to manage the handicraft industry, so the government-run workshops under the Ministry of Industry were extremely inefficient - those rifles and rifles were produced by them!

This must change!

The idea of reforming the Ministry of Industry is, of course, marketization with no other choice -- Zhu Cihong now has neither officials capable of managing the handicraft industry, nor many skilled craftsmen, so it is simply impossible to comprehensively revitalize the government-run handicraft industry. Although there are some "righteous craftsmen" who followed Tianjin, these craftsmanship is not very good, and the explosive rifles used by the Ming army are not their masterpieces? And they are "righteous and obedient", they are meritorious, and the Ministry of Industry has to pay them a high salary!

Relying on them, the Ministry of Industry has set up a fire gun workshop, an armor workshop, a sword and shield workshop, a cannon casting workshop, and an bow and arrow workshop. The raw materials used in these workshops had to be procured, and the output was simply not enough to meet the demand – in this day and age, it took twenty days to a month to make a barrel with a rudimentary drilling machine, and months, if not longer, to produce a good composite bow! Here in Nanjing, there are only one or two hundred drilling machines that can be put into use in the short term. There are even fewer good craftsmen who can be hired, after all, Jiangnan can't make many usable firecrackers, so there are no craftsmen. And there is no way to open gold fingers for handicraft work, so in the early days of the factory, it is certain that the output is not high, and the yield rate is definitely very low.

Therefore, the large-scale supply of weapons has to rely on the market, especially to attract blacksmiths from Foshan to start a business in the north.

As for the criminal department, there is no need to change it for the time being, although there are many unreasonable places in the criminal law and criminal department of the Ming Dynasty, but it is not a top priority after all.

And this large number of reform projects are all about offending people...... Although Prince Zhu is not afraid of offending people, he can't always be a villain!