Nanjing City, the current royal capital of the Ming Dynasty, is the residence of the six central ministers and Emperor Chongzhen.

Just finished a top-secret meeting of important ministers in the court, Emperor Chongzhen looked at this palace that had been brought for more than a year, but still felt strange and uncomfortable with a contradictory look of some unwillingness and some satisfaction.

The previous secret meeting included the most high-level princes and ministers of the entire Ming Dynasty, as well as a team from all the way from Nanyang.

This meeting, in fact, is not the first meeting of the cabinet ministers, Hongmen, a powerful group hidden under the nose of the Ming Dynasty, suddenly launched a killing machine, in the Northeast Ming rivals with real results to tell the whole world, their ability, has attracted the attention of various opponents in the East.

Previously, Emperor Chongzhen thought that he had saved face, and wrote several handwritten letters to Li Tianyang of Hongmen, and made countless promises and rewards in the letters, but he never got Li Tianyang's promise. Even Emperor Chongzhen wanted to give Li Tianyang a 'one-word side by side king' prince of the opposite sex, in order to impress Li Tianyang, a powerful faction, so that he could return to his heart and use it for his own use, but he was unanimously vetoed by the cabinet ministers.

Now that it is good, Hongmen suddenly sent a team, under the banner of Qixintang business, to contact Li Jiantai, the current head of the Ming Cabinet, who contacted Emperor Chongzhen and informed them of the origin of this trip.

The arrival of the Hongmen people shocked the Ming court, and at the same time, they also secretly spied on the future of their relationship with the Ming Dynasty.

When Li Tianyang, his representative, proposed trade conditions to the Ming court, and all kinds of new firearms and fine iron and steel that Hongmen was famous for in the contemporary era as a negotiation condition, in exchange for the Ming Dynasty to sit back and watch the current situation of Hongmen's trade in Nanyang.

Of course, the negotiators led by Dong Haoran have always maintained the respect of the Ming court and Emperor Chongzhen, and when Li Tianyang has not completely made up his mind to fight the homeland of China, they and the Ming Dynasty can actually be an unreliable ally.

Looking at the basis for Hongmen and the Ming Dynasty to become allies, it is actually not a few, first of all, Li Tianyang, the leader of the Hongmen, has never shown any hostility to the Ming Dynasty from beginning to end. Over the years, Li Tianyang ostensibly served as the admiral of the Fujian Navy Division, in addition to fighting the Haikou invaders, he also made a lot of contributions to the Ming Dynasty, sending troops to help the Ming Dynasty strangle the peasant army, and sending troops back to the Northeast Pass to restrain the Qing Dynasty.

And the second point, which is also extremely important, is that up to now, there is no obvious entanglement of interests between Hongmen and Daming, but there is a lot of mutual benefit.

Where is Hongmen's territory? According to the meaning of the cultural people of the Ming Dynasty, it is a wild area where some birds do not, and only the prisoners who have made mistakes in the officialdom will be exiled to these places.

Although Qixintang also traded in the Ming Dynasty, Qixintang's trade behavior on the territory of the Ming Dynasty, except for the secret foreign security bureau to install spies, which trade behavior respected the business code of conduct of the Ming Dynasty and never damaged the interests of the Ming Dynasty itself.

Of course, during this period, Qixintang must have dealt with many commercial opponents for the sake of economic interests, but most of those opponents did not have a deep background, and at the same time, they were only normal and other commercial behaviors, and they could not be promoted to the national level, so naturally they could not be said to be aimed at Daming.

Not to mention, the achievements of Qixintang and Hongmen in maritime trade have created countless opportunities for the gentry, landlords and aristocrats in the middle and high-level of the Ming Dynasty.

In this way, Hongmen and the gentry and aristocracy, which were the backbone of the Ming Dynasty, not only did not contradict each other, but actually maintained a good cooperative relationship.

Third, Hongmen's current strength on the sea, even the Ming Dynasty, which was arrogant enough to think that it was a central country, had to admit its maritime dominance.

The trade activities in the south of the Yangtze River became more and more prosperous, but the background was from the frequent maritime trade, and various specialties created by the Ming Dynasty were transported to all parts of the world through the sea trade channel, in exchange for countless gold and silver treasures.

If the Ming Dynasty broke with Hongmen, thus cutting off the Ming Dynasty's foreign trade channel, it would inevitably bring a heavy blow to the prosperous Jiangnan commerce, and at least half of the goods would become useless things piled up in the warehouses of various firms.

This is not nonsense, now in the Chinese territory, the southwest is centered on the Chengdu Plain, which is the territory of Zhang Xianzhong of the Great Western Dynasty; The northwest area north of the Yangtze River, with Chang'an as the center, is the territory of Li Zicheng of the Dashun Dynasty; The area of Shuntianfu, which originally belonged to the capital of the Ming Dynasty, became the world of the Jurchen barbarians of the Qing Dynasty.

The world was torn apart, which made Emperor Chongzhen's face gloomy, but it also made him have to work hard, and secretly vowed to regain the lost land in his hands during his lifetime.

And to regain the homeland and reunify the Ming Dynasty, it is not only a strong army that is needed, but also a rich financial system and economic resources.

Before in Shuntianfu, the Ming Dynasty had enough of the financial shortage, and the Ming Dynasty had millions of troops in vain, but because of the lack of food and salary, coupled with several battles, it finally fell to this.

But it was precisely because of the relocation of the capital to Yingtianfu that the Ming Dynasty got rid of several burdens that hindered the Ming Dynasty at the beginning.

Without the refugees from the north who have been suffering from natural and man-made disasters for many years, and without the powerful opponent of the Qing Dynasty outside the Northeast Pass, the Ming Dynasty only needs to guard the Yangtze River, and the Ming Dynasty can sit in the rich area south of the Yangtze River, watching the battle between the Great Western Dynasty, the Great Shun Dynasty and the Qing people north of the Yangtze River, but they can seize the time to rearm themselves and strengthen the army.

And because he had enough of the hard life of not having money, and because he had seen the wealth of the proprietors of the merchants in Jinzhong, after Emperor Chongzhen gained a foothold in Jiangnan, he forcibly signed the first holy edict with the emperor's authority, but he began to collect commercial taxes in the Ming Dynasty.

Although countless officials and gentry jumped up to refute Chongzhen's so-called chaotic fate, in the reorganization of the emperor, he took out a few important officials' heads to sacrifice to the sky, and finally made the collection of taxes by the business community a common practice.

Chongzhen's tough attitude, in exchange for the unprecedented financial easing of the Ming household, in just one year, through the commercial tax brought by the household income, has almost exceeded the agricultural tax in the south of the Yangtze River, this is the Chongzhen Emperor has the confidence to fight back to the north, the reason for recovering the country.

The above points are the real reason why the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty has not seen the real reason for the anger of the Ming Dynasty officialdom, even though Emperor He Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty has contacted and persuaded Li Tianyang to enter Beijing several times in private letters, but has been rejected by him.

At the same time, this is also Li Tianyang's confidence in reaching a unified consensus with the Ming Dynasty and believing that a short-term alliance can be established.

(End of chapter)