Zhu Cijiong knew that the peasant uprising was the biggest problem in the late Ming Dynasty, whether it was caused by natural disasters or man-made disasters, anyway, the final result was that Li Zicheng attacked the capital, and Emperor Chongzhen was forced to commit suicide. He didn't want to be the king of a ruined country, so how did he deal with the never-ending peasant uprisings?

Do you use silver to help the disaster? This is obviously unrealistic, and in the first year of Chongzheng, five million taels were paid out in Sichuan and Shaanxi alone, and this is still a drop in the bucket, and it cannot solve the problem of starving people at all. Later, Henan, Hebei, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces are all in drought year after year, and 10 million taels a year is not enough!

There are now 30 million taels of silver left in the treasury, and there is no need to count on the annual tax revenue at all. Therefore, it will definitely not work to use silver for disaster relief, and the Ming Dynasty will go bankrupt after three years of relief!

Some people may think that it is enough to go directly to suppress it, and Daming has an army. This method is also unrealistic, the Ming Dynasty has an army, as long as there is money, it is not a problem to recruit two million troops. But the key is that there is no money, the military expenditure of 300,000 troops in Liaodong is 9 million taels a year, how many troops do you need to suppress thieves in the four provinces?

Each province sent 10,000 or 20,000 guards to die, and the rebel army was hundreds of thousands at every turn, although they were all peasants, but the guards were basically peasants who put down their hoes, but they were just a little fully equipped. Therefore, if you want to send a garrison, a province must send at least 100,000 troops, and the annual military expenditure of 400,000 troops is 12 million.

Of course, you can also transfer the elite of the border army to suppress it, Zhu Youzhen mobilized the elite of the border army at that time, but the peasant uprising was not extinguished, but let the Houjin Iron Cavalry rush into the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty, fighting on both sides, and both sides collapsed!

There is no money for disaster relief, and there is no money for conscription, so what should I do?

Zhu Cijiong had no choice but to ask others, he directly announced the situation in Shaanxi at the court meeting, and asked all the officials to use their brains to write a fold, and he looked for it again to see if there was a good solution.

The officials of the Ming Dynasty were all born in the imperial examination, and they couldn't do anything else, so they all came by hand, so Zhu Cijiong received thousands of copies of the fold the next day!

Naturally, one person can't see so many twists and turns, and Sun Chengzong is not there, so he has to call the other three Zaifu and Xinwang Zhu Youzhen to the imperial study, and everyone looks for it together, and sees if they can find something useful.

In the end, everyone found it, but the opinions were not unanimous.

Han Kuang, a scholar of Wuyingdian University and a scholar of the Ministry of Officials, prefers to use silver to relieve disasters, and all he is looking for is a twist in this regard, and Zhu Cijiong naturally disagrees with this method. Just kidding, it's okay for a year or two, but it's been like this for more than ten years, where did you get so much silver.

Wenyuan Pavilion University Scholar and Hubu Shangshu came to the Taoist Sect to transfer troops to encircle and suppress, and this also does not need to be considered.

The letter king Zhu Youzhen is more strange, he took a fancy to a letter, which was written by Yang He, the right attendant of the former military department, which probably means that the rise of "thieves", "always because of the extreme famine, the people are not happy", and it is advisable to "appease first, chase and suppress as a supplement".

Xu Guangqi was even more desperate, and he didn't even pay attention to it, because he also had an idea: what he meant was to produce flintlock pistols with all his might! Why? Because the rebels have no armor and no cavalry, this flintlock pistol with a range of two hundred paces is invincible in front of those peasants, as long as there is enough ammunition, it is only a matter of a quarter of an hour or two for 10,000 people to kill 100,000 people!

Zhu Cijiong is depressed, Xu Guangqi's suggestion is good, a province is enough to send 10,000 musketeers, he can't afford hundreds of thousands of troops, tens of thousands of troops can still afford to raise, but the main problem is that he didn't plan to mass-produce this kind of first-generation flintlock pistol at all!

There is a more advanced new flintlock pistol in the back, with a range of 500 meters, and fighting cavalry is like cutting wheat. A flintlock pistol like this with a range of 300 meters can penetrate the armor within 100 meters, and the golden cavalry can also deal one or two waves of damage when it encounters it, so what can it be used for!

Now that Xu Guangqi said this, he was a little moved. It's not good to fight cavalry, but it's an artifact to fight the rebels, besides, Houjin will eventually attack the city, and the siege can only use infantry, this kind of flintlock pistol to attack the siege infantry is also very ferocious, and the big deal is that the Praetorian Guards will all use new flintlock muskets, and these old ones will be used by the border army to defend the city.

Thinking of this, Zhu Cijiong no longer hesitated, and he announced on the spot that he would adopt Xu Guangqi's opinion and go all out to produce flintlock pistols. Of course, it takes time to produce flintlock pistols, so Yang He's suggestion is to delay time, which is quite appropriate, and he also adopted it.

In the end, the result of the discussion was to appoint Yang He as the governor of Shaanxi, give him one million taels of silver, and let him drag down the rebel army in Shaanxi. At the same time, the Ministry of Labor was ordered to produce flintlock pistols with all its might, and at least 30,000 of them should be made in a year!

............

There is a saying that the ideal is plump, and the reality is skinny, this method seems to be good, but as soon as the implementation comes the problem.

Yang He didn't have any problems there, he took the money and went to Shaanxi to take office, and swore that he would definitely be able to appease those peasants.

The problem lies with the Ministry of Industry, they simply can't make so many flintlock pistols in a short period of time!

Why? The new military factory is about to be completed, and the place is definitely big enough; There is no shortage of materials such as pig iron, charcoal, and coal. There is no shortage of space and materials, why can't so many flintlock pistols be made?

The problem is simple: there is a shortage of people.

Bi Maokang calculated that a flintlock pistol has about 50 large and small parts, of which the barrel, medicine room, screws, etc. need to be processed on the machine tool, so that the annual output of 30,000 will need 60 simple lathes and 20 simple drilling machines. A machine tool has three shifts a day, two people in one shift, and nearly 500 machine tool operators are needed.

In addition, 500 people are needed for sand casting, about 1,000 people are needed for manual processing, and about 100 people are needed for final assembly and commissioning, so that the new military factory must recruit at least 2,000 people to ensure an annual output of 30,000 flintlock pistols.

Someone wants to ask, is there still a shortage of people in Daming, there are millions of people in the capital alone!

If it is modern, it is naturally no problem, not to mention millions of people, more than 2,000 people can be found out of 10,000 people. But this is the Ming Dynasty, and few people in the Ming Dynasty have studied modern mathematics and physics. If you let people drive machine tools and process parts, you always have to read and understand the drawings, how to process if you can't understand the drawings?

So, don't say a few thousand, even in the Ministry of Industry, there are less than ten people who can read and understand the drawings of flintlock pistols!

This problem is not difficult for Zhu Cijiong, there is no suitable talent, so he can cultivate it himself. He had long wanted to promote Western learning, and this time was just an opportunity, so he simply ordered Xu Guangqi to set up four schools in the southeast, northwest, and northwest of the capital, each of which recruited 1,000 students, and after training the basic knowledge for a few months, he selected 2,000 people from them, and recruited them to the military factory to teach on the spot, so that the personnel would be complete in about three months.

It doesn't seem to be very difficult to open the school, the place is ready-made, when the eunuchs were cleaned up, the mansions of a group of corrupt officials did not know how many were seized, and it was enough to take a few out casually; As for this teacher, let Xu Guangqi and Bi Maokang work hard for a while.

But is it really that easy to promote Western studies? This time, Zhu Cijiong seemed to be thinking wrong again.