Ma Jiyuan looked at Zhu Hai, who was already as tall as himself, and his heart was mixed. According to what Ma Jiyuan learned in his life, it was his life creed to support the prince and establish a successor, but his daughter, son, and some subordinates and staff all hoped that Zhu Jiang would come out to fight for the position of the prince in order to obtain greater benefits. Although Ma Jiyuan was opposed, the power to push Zhu Jiang to the throne was too great, and Ma Jiyuan was very dissatisfied with his younger brother Ma Mingyuan's occupation of the cabinet seat, so Ma Jiyuan also turned a blind eye to the small actions of his subordinates.

But after all, Ma Jiyuan is still a decent gentleman, and there is still an essential difference between him and Zhu Hongsan, Ma Mingyuan, and Tong Yangjia.

Ma Jiyuan hurriedly stepped forward to stop Zhu Hai and said: "Your Highness, don't be polite, Your Highness is the prince after all, and the minister can receive a great gift from His Highness!" ”

Zhu Hongsan saw the two of them entangled here, and said with a smile: "Big brother doesn't need to push, although he is the prince, but after all, he is your nephew, and it is reasonable to accept his gift!" ”

Ma Jiyuan reluctantly accepted Zhu Hai's bow when he heard the emperor say this, and then Ma Jiyuan returned Zhu Hai's half salute, which was regarded as respect for the prince.

After the salute, Zhu Hongsan asked, "Mr. Ma has received the holy decree?" ”

Ma Jiyuan replied respectfully: "Back to Your Majesty, the minister went to the military aircraft yesterday afternoon to the Holy Decree and the Sword of the Son of Heaven, so when he came to the palace today, he will rush to Zhenjiang in the afternoon!" Cooperate with the navy to unload the cannon and rush to Yangzhou! ”

Zhu Hongsan nodded and said: "Mr. Ma, Yangzhou is too important, in history there is a saying that defending the river must defend Huai, now the Manchu army is being beaten by us, now is the best time to seize Yangzhou, so Mr. Ma must urge the army and navy to attack the city together this time, and must take Yangzhou before the fifteenth day of the first month!" ”

"Please rest assured, Your Majesty, this expedition will definitely be able to take Yangzhou before the fifteenth day of the first month, and the minister is willing to make a military order!"

"I'm very satisfied with what you say, there is no need to set up a military order, you just need to work hard!"

Zhu Hongsan thought about it after speaking, and then said: "There is another point, after occupying Yangzhou, Mr. Ma should not go north, but occupy Liuhe and Chuzhou to the west, as long as the safety of Nanjing is guaranteed!" ”

Ma Jiyuan was completely confused when he heard Zhu Hongsan say this, guarding the river and guarding Huai does not refer to Yangzhou, Huaidi refers to the vast area south of the Yellow River to the north of the Yangtze River, including Yangzhou, Huai'an, Xuzhou, and Fengyang. If you only occupy one Yangzhou city, there is no strategic depth at all, so it is better to rely on the Yangtze River to resist the Qing army, after all, your own navy is still very strong.

"Your Majesty, the minister doesn't understand, why only occupy the surroundings of Yangzhou, Yangzhou is less than two hundred miles away from the Beijing Division, and the Manchu cavalry can reach the riverside in one day, if we don't go out of Huai'an Mansion, we won't have enough time to warn!"

Of course, Zhu Hongsan knew what was going on, but war was for politics, and now the country's treasury was empty, and the armies had been on the march for more than a year, so they also needed time to recuperate and recuperate. There is really no way to fight Yangzhou, Yangzhou is on the north bank of Nanjing, if you don't occupy this place, you will completely lose your strategic initiative, so Yangzhou here will be beaten down even if you are pants. But the army that occupied Yangzhou Zhu Hongsan became the end of the strong crossbow, and there was really no money and no energy to fight, and it took too much time to repair.

In addition to the main reason of lack of money, there is another unspeakable secondary reason, and that is the threat from the Yongli Emperor. In the past year, Zhu Hongsan in Guangdong has developed rapidly, and now he has occupied a large area of territory, completely changing the division of power in the whole of China.

In the past, Zhu Youlang of Guangxi was the main force to resist the Qing Dynasty, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty was basically chasing him to fight again. However, after Zhu Hongsan occupied Nanzhili, Jiangxi, and Wuchang Mansions, the situation changed, and the entire confrontation with the Manchus became Zhu Hongsan. However, Zhu Youlang only occupied Yunnan-Guizhou, Guangxi, Hunan, and Huguang, and only Sichuan bordered the Manchu Dynasty, and Zhu Youlang's Sichuan Governor Wang Yingxiong, Sichuan Governor Ma Gan, and others were suppressed by the Qing army in several prefectures in southern Sichuan, relying on the mountains and mountains and the limited support of Yungui to support them.

So after Zhu Hongsan occupied Nanjing, he looked back and found that he had become a single person who had to face the attack of millions of Qing troops in the north, and Zhu Youlang only had contact with the Qing army in Sichuan, but the shit terrain in Sichuan could not become the main battlefield at all, so as long as Dolgon was not stupid, the next step would be to gather all his strength to destroy himself. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Hongsan is ready to negotiate with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, it is really not okay to give up Wuchang, he must draw the attention of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to Zhu Youlang again, it is best to destroy Zhu Youlang in one go, Zhu Hongsan thought viciously.

Because of this, Zhu Hongsan ordered Ma Jiyuan not to attack any further, just occupy Yangzhou and set aside a buffer zone in the six-in-one belt, and the rest will be solved by politics.

"Mr. Ma, you are not in the cabinet and don't know the problems that are happening to us now, the most important point is that there is no money, and there are less than 100,000 silver dollars in the treasury now, which is not enough to pay the officials. The war in Yangzhou is already the end of our strong crossbow, if we want to fight again, don't come over the Manchus, I will hang myself directly! ”

Ma Jiyuan didn't expect the country's financial problems to be so big, you must know that he was the governor of Luzon for several years, and every year the new colony of Luzon sent a large amount of rice and minerals that did not cost money, why is there an unsustainable situation now?

"Your Majesty, the minister saw the report last year, the country's annual income is tens of millions of silver dollars, why is it still unsustainable?"

Zhu Hongsan couldn't help but scold in his heart when he heard Ma Jiyuan ask: It's not you stinky old nine, Lao Tzu gave you a lot of policies in order to win the hearts and minds of Zhu Youlang and that bastard, the factory is free of charge for you, and you don't charge commercial tax and land tax, and even the promotion of silver dollars gives you preferential treatment, so that Lao Tzu still has money in his hands, which is still the blessing of the great development of commerce in recent years, if it weren't for the good trade with Nanyang, plus the iron ore and coal mines that were robbed don't need money, how could Lao Tzu beat the Manchu Dynasty.

Although Zhu Hongsan slandered the Shiren Group, he really couldn't say that, and the Ma boss in front of him was an outstanding representative of the Shiren Group. Ma Jiyuan can be said to be a staunch supporter of Confucian supremacy, and no slight change can be passed by him, and Zhu Hongsan sent him to take charge of Nanzhili because of his rapport with the Shiren group.

"Mr. Ma, you don't know, the army is too expensive now, and it costs nearly three million silver dollars for a division of soldiers to equip 10,000 yuan, not counting the later supplies, soldiers' salaries, and equipment maintenance, and the navy is even more expensive, a thousand-ton warship costs 500,000 silver dollars, and 1.2 million silver dollars for artillery personnel, Mr. Ma has been a feudal territory for a long time, so he won't know these things!"

Of course, Ma Jiyuan knew that the army cost money, not to mention anything else, even those soldiers ate too well, and they had meat every day. When he was in Luzon, Ma Jiyuan made suggestions on the way to raise troops of the New Army, but the New Army was not under his control, and his suggestions were also regarded as a fart by Zhu Hongsan.

Now Ma Jiyuan heard Zhu Hongsan talk about the reason for not having money, and thought to himself: How can these Qiu Ba be so pampered? The old man has already told His Majesty, now he knows the bitter fruit! But Ma Jiyuan won't say these things now, the new army has now formed a system, and he is not the stunned young man he was back then, and now he wants to say that the issue of reducing the treatment of the new army will immediately offend all the generals of the new army, and the gang of killers will not be able to shoot themselves in the back.

Ma Jiyuan thought for a while and said to Zhu Hongsan: "Your Majesty, if you can't do it, you can learn from the army of the Ming Dynasty, the combat effectiveness of the army with all firearms is strong, but the requirements for logistics and supply are too high, and you can't use firearms and cold weapons!" ”

Zhu Hongsan was the director of the township demolition and relocation office in his previous life, where he knew the difficulty of industrialization, and when he first formed the army, he thought that they were all equipped with firearms, just like those who lined up to be shot in the movie. However, there is a gap between reality and ideals, and in this era, according to the productive forces of the Ming Dynasty, it is absolutely impossible to achieve the full range of firearms and equipment of the whole army. If Zhu Hongsan occupied the whole of China, he would be able to support more than 100,000 modern troops with the strength of the whole country, but Zhu Hongsan only occupied one Guangdong Province. If it weren't for the fact that Zhu Hongsan had used simple industries to produce industrial products such as sugar and salt in recent years, which had been transported to the north and south of Zhili for dumping, and the occupation of Luzon and the robbery of Spain's savings for hundreds of years, such a large army would have been able to be formed there.

Now that Zhu Hongsan occupies Nanzhili, Zhejiang, and Jiangxi, the richest provinces in southern China, his territory is quite large, but he can no longer engage in dumping industrial products as before. In the past, the dumping of industrial products caused the bankruptcy of a large number of handicraftsmen in Nanzhili and Zhejiang, and the cheap salt caused the production cost of the Huaiyang salt field to increase, because the salt transported from Hainan was still more than twice as cheap as the Huaiyang salt in Nanzhili, and this kind of price war could not be fought at all, and the direct consequence was that the big salt merchants in Yangzhou, who had been in the limelight for hundreds of years, went bankrupt. The turmoil at the bottom of the society directly caused the turmoil of the Manchu rule, ordinary people don't care about you, although the Ming Dynasty emperor was in the past, although the taxes were high, but they could still get by, but you Manchu Qing came and we had no way to live, plus the Manchu Qing Dynasty implemented a stupid head shaving order, it is not surprising that the entire Nanzhili and Zhejiang made such a big fuss.

In the past, the Manchu Qing Dynasty managed Nanzhili, Zhu Hongsan could not worry, and he could also sell industrial products to engage in shearing and sheep shearing, but now that Zhu Hongsan has taken over this burden, he must do a good job in social stability, in addition to a large number of displaced people who want to eat, the most important thing is to stabilize the bottom of society, those ordinary textile workers, ordinary silk farmers, and ordinary salt farm workers. And it takes money to do this, so Zhu Hongsan really has no choice but to stop the war in Yangzhou now, and first do a good job of his own internal affairs. However, although it is very difficult now, Zhu Hongsan is still very optimistic about the prospects, because the area he occupies has a population of 40 or 50 million, and as long as there are people, he will have everything, Zhu Hongsan thinks that as long as he gives himself five years, no, maybe three years, with the 50 million population in his hands, he will definitely be able to crush the Manchu Qing and Zhu Youlang.