The morning sun is rising, and the shadow of the palace wall of the Forbidden City is stretched very long.

Zhu Houzhao walked behind his back with his hands accompanied by Liu Jin, walking in this angular screen, he couldn't help but look at the blue sky, and also looked at Liu Jin beside him.

The national power of the Ming Dynasty is now thriving, and it has officially begun to participate in the Age of Discovery, and the empire is transforming from an agrarian society to a capitalist and commercial society.

But when such a change is put on specific people and things, it shows that the fate of the characters has changed.

Liu Jin was not executed by himself in the fifth year of Zhengde as in the original history.

In the original history, because the king of Anhua rebelled in the name of punishing Liu Jin, and was even deliberately exaggerated by the civil officials The momentum of the rebellion of the king of Anhua was made, which made the simple Emperor Zhengde think that the world was really forced by Liu Jin to lose the support of the people, so that when Liu Jin was jointly falsely accused of rebellion by Zhang Yong and Yang Yiqing, he had to agree to kill Liu Jin to resolve the people's grievances.

In this life, although the rebellion of King Anhua was still deliberately exaggerated by the civil official group, Zhu Houzhao, who was familiar with the trend of history, was no longer as easily frightened by these civil officials as in the original history, and even used the psychology of the civil officials to make Yang Yiqing take the initiative to admit his guilt, and at the same time, he did not let the civil officials achieve the goal of killing reformist officials by taking advantage of the rebellion of King Anhua.

The rebellion of King Anhua was still quickly quelled, and King Anhua himself was beheaded, and even the entire clan with King Anhua was demoted to commoners.

The Ming Dynasty has one less vassal king's rice expenses, but there are many more ordinary people who can pay for food and errands, no matter what, this is a good thing.

And Liu Jin did not die, and Ma Wensheng, Jiao Fang, Xu Jin and other reformist ministers who were hated by civil officials also died well.

But what Zhu Houzhao has to admit is that even if Liu Jin, who offended civil officials, did not die, great changes have also taken place.

In the case of Liu Jin.

Because now that the emperor has not delegated power to the celebrant and the cabinet, Liu Jin, the celebrant and the ministers of the cabinet, is actually not as powerful as in history.

On the contrary, Zhu Houzhao had to admit that because he was an emperor who gave people more and more of a shrewd impression, of course, it was probably because Zhu Houzhao himself was not shrewd but only shrewd because he knew the trend of history.

In particular, after witnessing himself, the emperor, executing the eunuchs who betrayed the emperor, such as Wang Yue and Zhang Yong, Zhu Houzhao found that even Liu Jin became silent in front of him, as long as he didn't ask, even if he walked for another half an hour, Liu Jin would not make the slightest sound, as if he disappeared out of thin air, and as long as he shouted, he could always appear in time, and he seemed to have figured out his own thoughts, as long as he said something, he could only give a satisfactory answer, But it became increasingly difficult for Zhu Houzhao to see what he really thought when he answered himself.

It's not just that Liu Jin seems to have changed a lot from the original historical figures, but the other Eight Tigers are far from being as true as Zhu Houzhao when they first met, they all put on masks, and they are all more afraid of Zhu Houzhao than before on the surface, but Zhu Houzhao doesn't know what they really think of themselves as the emperor in their hearts.

The same is true of other civil and military officials, Zhu Houzhao found that the more military power he held and the imperial power was dictatorial, the more people around him did not dare to get close to him.

Sure enough, the people at the top of the pyramid will not have friends.

Pulling back the words, Liu Jin is still alive, which means that the eunuch group has not been completely suppressed by civilian officials, and the balance of the empire is still there, and it is precisely because of this balance that Zhu Houzhao was able to establish the Ming military industrial system, in order to solve the threat of the little prince, and to let the empire start to re-set foot in the maritime industry.

Zhu Houzhao didn't know what kind of point he would take Da Ming to next, but he had to admit that even if he was an emperor, he couldn't fully control the development direction of the entire empire now, and sometimes what he did was the best choice.

For example, under the deliberate arrangement of the emperor, the new Ming hand-cranked vertical spindle spinning machine and the flying shuttle loom made by imitating Jenny spinning machine have now appeared.

Zhu Houzhao's purpose is naturally to let the Ming Dynasty enter the era of the industrial revolution in advance, so that the agricultural production and industrial production of the Ming Dynasty will gradually achieve semi-mechanization and even mechanization.

From the perspective of macro history, this is undoubtedly a new thing that is conducive to the progress of the Ming Dynasty.

But because of this efficient semi-mechanized production, the handicraftsmen who spin and weave at home have gone bankrupt, and the income of the people has plummeted.

What's more, the empire now implements a strict examination law, which has led to the collection of taxes becoming very strict, so that tax resistance often occurs, especially in the Jiangnan region, where the handicraft industry is launched.

In addition, some officials and gentry with ulterior motives instigated it, and as for the phenomenon of tax resistance, the phenomenon of tax resistance became more and more intense, so that various conflicts between the government and the people, which only appeared in the late Ming Dynasty, began to appear in large numbers at this time.

Zhu Houzhao can be ruthless to the civil officials, but he can't be ruthless to the people, because the common people are the largest group in the empire, and once they can't get the support of the people, even if they are the emperor, they will be easily pulled off the throne.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao now found that even if he knew that the steam engine could change the Ming Dynasty, and oil could change the Ming Dynasty, he really didn't dare to start the steam industrial revolution directly.

How to make ordinary people really benefit from the process of industrialization and capitalization of the Ming Dynasty is a problem that Zhu Houzhao has been thinking about, and the only way he can think of now is to plunder and trade with foreign countries, turn a large number of people into workers, and at the same time expand the scale of production, increase the income of workers, and then sell a large number of products produced to make a profit.

Because the emergence of new spinning machines and looms led to the bankruptcy of a large number of handicraftsmen, Zhu Houzhao directly issued an order to exempt handicraftsmen from taxes, and the local government should no longer levy taxes on bankrupt handicraftsmen, so as to avoid intensifying contradictions and depriving the gentry with ulterior motives of the opportunity to provoke civil revolt.

At the same time, Zhu Houzhao asked the government-run Weaving Bureau to expand the scale of production, recruit more handicraftsmen into the workshops of the Weaving Bureau, and even directly sell new spinning machines and looms to the people, so that private weavers would not go bankrupt because of backward production technology.

Because of the employment problem caused by the improvement of the production level of the entire weaving industry after the bankruptcy of a large number of migrant workers, Zhu Houzhao threw a lot of money into infrastructure construction, because the new technology had the greatest impact on the handicraft industry in the Jiangnan area, resulting in more and more unemployed people in the Jiangnan area, Zhu Houzhao successively allocated more than 2 million yuan in silver to Yan Song, the governor of Nanzhili, and ordered him to organize migrant workers to repair the sea pond, dredge the river after the sea pond, and build bridges and dry roads after dredging the river.

Although the large profits made by the government-run weaving bureau in the early stage because of technological improvements were almost all invested in this way, although the technical improvements did not cause a large number of ordinary people to lose their jobs and reduce their incomes, but the empire had a lot more cloth because of the progress of productivity, causing the price of cloth to plummet and the supply of more demand.

In this way, the profit margins of the government-run weaving bureau and even the private weavers are greatly reduced, in this case, the Ming also needs to trade, and need to sell cheap cloth at a high price in large quantities, so as to avoid damage to the domestic weaving industry, and thus earn more profits.

Therefore, unconsciously, Daming has become a capital empire, and he urgently needs to open the international market.

Because of this, when Zhu Houzhao opened border trade and allowed the two Guangxi to open the sea, the voice of domestic resistance was not so loud.

A large number of cheap cloth was sold to the Mongol tribes in exchange for scarce horses, cattle and sheep in the Central Plains, so that the empire was able to form a more elite and larger cavalry, and at the same time, because a large number of cattle and sheep entered the interior of the Central Plains, the supply of meat to the people in the Guannai was increased, so that by the ninth year of Zhengde, the physical health of the Ming people was generally improved.

Now the Dongchang Statistics Bureau, which specializes in part-time surveys of various statistical data, has done a survey, compared with the four years of Zhengde, the height of the Ming people in the nine years of Zhengde is half an inch taller than the four years of Zhengde.

After the opening of the two Guangzhous, the sale of a large number of cheap fabrics also made the weavers of the two Guangxi become rich for a while, so that the Liangguang Bank also appeared, and the tariff income brought by the Liangguang City Shipping Division also made the household more than two million taels of silver income every year, which has far exceeded the salt tax income in the past.

The Ming Emperor began to build a large number of public facilities, so that a large amount of treasury income returned to the hands of the people at a high speed, especially the income of the urban people increased significantly, coupled with the decline in the price of cloth and meat, so that the people of the Ming Dynasty could come up with enough money to buy better cloth to make clothes and better meat food to nourish the body, so that domestic demand also increased.

However, the increase in domestic demand only brought back the cheap products produced by the Ming people to the people, and the entire empire still had to rely on foreign trade and expansion if it wanted to truly increase and accumulate wealth.

It is precisely because of this that Zhu Houzhao will first establish the Daming Sea Trade Company and let Zhang Yanling be responsible for the shipping of the Daming Sea Trade Company with the respect of his uncle, which is not only to exercise Zhang Yanling's navigation level, but also to show the world the royal background of the Daming Sea Trade Company.

The Daming Maritime Trade Company followed Pires to the Francophone this time, bringing with it twenty armed merchant ships loaded with cheap and exquisite cloth of the Ming Dynasty, the purpose of which was to sell them along the South and Indian Oceans all the way to the Atlantic, and at the same time establish a base to take back control of the route to the Atlantic, which was controlled by the Ming himself.

And the first key control point of this route is Manraka, and Manraka was directly captured by the Ming Liangguang Naval Division.

In order to meet the purpose of foreign trade and expansion, Zhu Houzhao also forced Manraka to agree to borrow 20 million taels of silver from the Ming Dynasty to pay for the military expenses of the Ming Dynasty, half of which plus interest could be compensated by Manraka's tariff income for 50 years, while the other half plus interest needed to be collected by the future king of Manraka from his own people.

Moreover, Zhu Houzhao also said that if Manraka is unwilling to pay this military expense, the Ming Empire will not send troops for it, and even if it does, it will only regard Manraka as a seizure, and will be included in the Ming Dynasty's own rule from then on, and if the ruler of Manraka still wants to have the right to rule over Manraka, he must agree to pay the military expenses of the Ming Dynasty.

The rulers of Manraka did not refuse in the end, there is no way, the rulers are selfish, in order for them to continue to have the power to enslave their own people, they can sell anything, let alone pay tens of millions of taels of military expenses, after all, it will only be the people of Manraka who will repay this military expenditure.

Zhu Houzhao also knew that this method of plundering was the best way, because it could not only get a lot of benefits from the hands of Manraka, but also avoid the resentment and large-scale revolt of the local people of Manraka because of direct plunder, and the people of Manraka would only blame the rulers of Manraka for their hatred of exploitation.

The Ming Dynasty could even express his sympathy for the people of Manraka and his insatiable criticism of the greed of the rulers of Manraka like a white lotus, so as to gain the favor of the ordinary people of Manraka towards the Ming Dynasty.

And if the Manraka increases the burden on the Manraka people because the Manraka ruler pays for the military expenses of the Ming Dynasty, so that there is a war, the Ming can also take this opportunity to split the Manraka and make the Manraka war continue, and the weapons of the Ming Dynasty can also get a wider sales market.

Not only for Manraka, but also for the people of the Daming Sea Trade Company who followed Pires to the west, they were also looking for the heroes of the Min 0 clan who were fighting against the Franc Colonists, and looking for an opportunity to sell some weapons to these fighters who resisted the colonial invasion of the Franc Machine, so as to destroy the colonial base of the Franc Machine, so as to return control of the route to the hands of the Ming Dynasty.

"Emperor! Cining Palace has arrived! ”

Zhu Houzhao was thinking about whether it was time to cancel the road guidance system that existed in name only, let more rural people enter the city, and whether it was time to fully open the sea to make the Ming marine strategy go further, when Liu Jin suddenly reminded Zhu Houzhao back to reality.

"I know, you go back to the celebrant eunuch", Zhu Houzhao said and entered Cining Palace.

At this time, Liu Jin was also busy retiring and retreated respectfully.

Because the Ming country was rich, Zhu Houzhao did not need to improve his royal quality of life, so he ordered a group of palace maids to enter the palace and serve as royal servants in the form of a mercenary system.

Therefore, there are many palace maids near the Cining Palace who are superior in both bearing and posture, when Zhu Houzhao appeared here, there were countless colorful embroidered clouds to salute him, Zhu Houzhao had to be exempted one by one, and then he saw the Empress Dowager Zhang and the Empress Xia and the concubine Liu Su and others who were more than 20 years old, and of course the four little princes.

Zhu Houzhao still lets his royal family eat at the same table with him, which can be regarded as maintaining a close relationship, and he has always been serious outside, as soon as he came to Cining Palace, he was like returning home in his previous life, only smiled and touched the little face of the little prince Zhu Zailei, began to sit in the center, and said with a smile: "What is the delicious food in the imperial dining room today?" ”