These cabinet ministers, seeing Ji Qingwen coming in from a distance, all stood up and beckoned Ji Qingwen, a five-grade miscellaneous official, to come to the household hall and sit down.

Because Ji Qingwen didn't bring Li Yan with him, no one taught him some officialdom rules, so he forgot his identity and grade for a while, and he overcame the household department with a big grin, and sat down with several cabinet ministers.

If other officials sat down in this order, it would inevitably lead to an uproar, and perhaps someone would have stepped forward to scold them.

But most of these officials took Ji Qingwen's gold, and when they saw such a situation, even if they couldn't look past it, they could only swallow their anger in their stomachs.

After greeting each other like this for a while, Ji Qingwen asked suspiciously: "Ladies and gentlemen, I see that the officials are almost there, why don't they weigh the gold and silver?" ”

University scholar Wen Tiren replied first: "Lord Ji, you don't know yet, do you?" Officials in Beijing are happy to lose gold and silver to help pay, which is an unprecedented prosperous era since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and the emperor will also visit the household yamen in person. Before the arrival of the Long Live Lord, how dare we open the scales without authorization? ”

While he was talking, outside the gate of the Yamen of the Ministry of Households, there was a shout: "The emperor has arrived, and hundreds of civil and military officials kneel to greet him!" ”

When the officials heard this, they immediately knelt down on the spot, prostrate on the ground, and did not dare to say a word.

After a while, I saw countless brocade guards enter the yamen, carefully inspect the yamen, and confirm that there is no danger and ambush, and then welcome Emperor Chongzhen in.

Emperor Chongzhen's face was full of red light, and before the officials made three bows and nine bows, he let the civil and military officials be flat, walked towards the household hall, and said loudly: "You love the Qing Gong and are loyal to the country, can follow the way of the sage, understand the difficulties of the court, and donate more than 2 million taels of silver in one day, which is very comforting and comforting!" ”

Saying that, Chongzhen sat down on the seat given by Han Kuang, the first minister, and said: "Okay, right now, the Jurchen Emperor Taiji is still outside the city and has not retreated, don't waste time, let's start donating silver taels!" ”

So these officials were ordered, according to their grades and qualifications, one by one to donate silver taels.

There are so many officials, and they can be roughly divided into two types:

One was that they did not receive the notice, so they did not take Ji Qingwen's gold, most of these officials only donated a few dozen taels or one or two hundred taels of silver, and most of them had a constipated expression on their faces, which was really painful.

The other is to donate the gold given by Ji Qingwen, and their faces are a lot more joyful, the so-called "don't feel sorry for spending other people's money", I'm afraid that's what I'm talking about.

And the officials who took Ji Qingwen's money are roughly divided into the following types-

One is a more rigid one, how much gold was taken from Ji Qingwen, and then it was re-handed over as it was.

One is that his brain is slightly more flexible, knowing that everyone takes exactly the same gold bar, which is a little unreasonable, so he privately exchanged gold for the equivalent of silver and donated it to the imperial court.

There is also a desire for profit, who took one hundred taels of gold from Ji Qingwen and handed it over to Emperor Chongzhen, but only fifty taels were left, and the other fifty taels were taken away by himself.

Although it was inconvenient for Ji Qingwen to expose these officials on the spot for making money and earning their own heads, he also memorized the appearance, names, and official positions of these people in his heart, and waited for the Eight Banners of Manchuria to be driven away before settling accounts with them.

Originally, according to Emperor Chongzhen's IQ and EQ, he could see the strangeness in this, but after all, the young emperor was inexperienced, and there was no official counselor by his side to remind him, so he didn't find anything abnormal.

In this way, the 270,000 taels of gold accumulated by Wei Zhongxian before his death passed through the hands of Ji Qingwen and the hands of hundreds of civil and military officials, and finally handed over to Emperor Chongzhen.

Emperor Chongzhen got so much gold and silver, and the anger and depression of the previous two days had already disappeared, and he strictly ordered the Jinyi guard to keep the household treasury tightly guarded, so he happily returned to the palace.

Under such a situation of ups and downs, the annual rings of the years finally slowly slipped past November 17 of the second year of Chongzhen......

After all, Emperor Chongzhen was young and vigorous, and he had obtained so many silver taels in his hands, and his energy was even more energetic.

As soon as the first rays of sunlight on November 18 woke up the sleeping Forbidden City, he sent a decree to summon the cabinet ministers, the six ministries and nine secretaries, and the governor of Jingying to the Qianqing Palace to discuss matters, and Ji Qingwen was naturally among the ranks of the summons.

The topic of the court meeting was nothing more than how to spend the military salary, which was equivalent to 2.7 million taels of silver, efficiently.

First of all, Emperor Chongzhen first allocated 500,000 taels of silver and distributed two taels of silver to each general inside and outside the Beijing division to boost morale.

Secondly, a total of 300,000 taels of gold and silver were issued to purchase grain and grass from wealthy households in Beijing to supply military supplies.

Ji Qingwen did this when he went to Xi'an, Shaanxi Province for disaster relief at the beginning of the year, so he reminded Emperor Chongzhen to prevent profiteers from taking the opportunity to raise prices and steal the wool of the imperial court.

Emperor Chongzhen immediately adopted Ji Qingwen's opinion, passed Luo Yang into the palace, and asked him to order the guards to cooperate with the household department to handle the matter.

The third is to let Xu Guangqi and Sun Yuanhua, who are proficient in firearms, temporarily take charge of the military department, and repair all the artillery on the city wall of the Beijing Division, and all the manpower and silver required will be reimbursed and supplied, just to give full play to the power of the fine firearms of the Ming army and form an advantage over the Manchurian Eight Banners cavalry under the city.

…………

Under the advice of the counselor of the old superintendent Sun Chengzong, Emperor Chongzhen issued military orders in an orderly manner, and used Jinyiwei, Dongchang, and Xichang to supervise the implementation of military orders.

And the driving force behind the restart of this machine was the 2.7 million taels of silver provided by Ji Qingwen.

With cash as a military salary, the morale of the sergeants inside and outside the city was naturally high, and they had food and grass to fill their stomachs, and the fatigue and pain accumulated when they fought with the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners outside the city before also subsided a lot.

Seeing this, Yuan Chonghuan and Man Gui, who led the troops outside the Guangqu Gate and Desheng Gate of the Beijing Division, ordered the sergeants to stop resting in place and began to train in formation.

Huang Taiji's side.

Originally, after a gallop from November 14 to 16, Huang Taiji spared the two cities of Jizhou and Tongzhou through flexible maneuvering positions, and the troops approached the Beijing Division, and by the way, his fierce opponent - more than 20,000 Liaodong iron cavalry under the command of Yuan Chonghuan - was exhausted, which directly weakened their combat effectiveness.

According to the news from the spies placed by Huang Taiji in the Jingshi and in the Liaodong army, Emperor Chongzhen seemed to be a little suspicious of Yuan Chonghuan and did not allow his troops to enter the city for temporary refuge, so the Liaodong army was quite complaining, and could not get effective supplies and rest.

Although this kind of news is a little unbelievable, it corroborates each other with his own observations, and Huang Taiji can't help but believe it.

Therefore, Huang Taiji discussed with the Manchurian brothers and his advisers for a while, and felt that there was no need to rush to attack, and he could wait for the combat effectiveness of the Ming army to be further weakened, and then calmly launch an attack.

In this way, Huang Taiji arranged for the army to take turns to rest and recuperate, observed the movements of the enemy army, and sent troops to plunder everywhere, and finally wasted a whole day.

On November 17, the battle-hardened Huang Taiji finally keenly sniffed out the change in the situation.

I saw that countless cooking smoke rose from the originally lifeless Jingshi City, and the soldiers defending the city on the city wall and outside the city gate seemed to be full of energy, and there was no sick twilight of "living a day, counting a day" as the previous day.

And the news from the Beijing division said that the hundred officials of the imperial court donated 2.7 million taels of silver to the emperor as military salaries. There is also news that so much silver was not donated by hundreds of officials of the imperial court, but taken out by a five-grade petty official named Ji Qingwen.