In Yangzhou, the war of Huaiyan has come to an end, and the stove households in the two Huaiyan districts have resumed their old lives, making brine, boiling salt, exchanging salt for grain for silver, and the peaceful days are as good as in the past. No, it should be said that it is better than in the past, the price of salt collected by the salt merchants under the jurisdiction of the Governor's Palace is higher than that of the salt merchants, and the income of the stove households is better than in the past.

The salt inspection divisions of the two Huaiyan districts have been reorganized, and the new battalions stationed in the two Huai Yan districts have also been withdrawn one after another, and the 10 battalion recruits will be sent to Huai'an, Suqian, Xuzhou, Mengcheng, Suzhou, Suzhou, the Yellow River and Huaihe to garrison them, and the two Huai will be arranged into a tight defensive line.

Now in the Ming Dynasty, Wuchang has Zuo Liangyu's hundreds of thousands of troops to defend the West Road, and confront the army of the thief Xiangyang Nanyang. Huang Degong was stationed in Luzhou to guard the middle road. The Jiangbei Governor's Office is responsible for the entire land of Fengyang, Yangzhou, Huai'an, and Xuzhou. Among them, the Governor's Mansion Standard Battalion was responsible for defending Yangzhou and defending the Yangtze River, while the newly formed recruit battalion was stationed on the front line of the Yellow River and the Huai River.

Such a vast area close to the 10th battalion of recruits could not be defended at all, even if there were other general troops such as Zhang Tianlu, Liu Zhaoji, Huang Fei, Fang Guoan and other general troops in these places, the combat effectiveness of the Ming army in these places was even worse, and it was impossible to count on it.

Therefore, for the Jiangbei Governor's Office, it is necessary to further recruit new soldiers and train more troops. Recruits recruited from various prefectures and counties went to Yangzhou one after another, and the War Training Department in charge of Yang Zhengping was extremely busy, training the newly recruited soldiers.

But it is not enough to have soldiers, it is also necessary to have all kinds of weapons, and it is also necessary to have armor, which is the basis for whether an army has combat effectiveness.

The armor needed by tens of thousands of troops is an astronomical amount, and it is a dream to rely on the allocation of the Nanjing Military Department, which has limited production capacity and has to equip the newly established Beijing battalion.

Therefore, the armor and the like can only be found by the Yangzhou Governor's Mansion itself, and the Ordnance Department is responsible for building it. So these days, Chen Yue has to go to the Ordnance Department almost every day, always paying attention to the production of the workshop.

"Master Hou, the workshops of the Ordnance Division have been working overtime day and night, but the number of craftsmen is still too small, and the number of weapons and armor can't be raised at all."

Li Xiong, the director of the Ordnance Department, said aggrievedly that Chen Yue attached so much importance to ordnance, which made him very stressed.

"Please also ask Hou Ye to recruit more craftsmen, I heard that there are tens of thousands of craftsmen in Nanjing, and I also ask Hou Ye to play the imperial court and recruit craftsmen to come over." Old Li Xiong suggested to Chen Yue.

"Requisition the craftsmen of Nanjing?" Chen Yue smiled bitterly, where is it so easy.

Although there are many craftsmen in Nanjing, most of them are ordinary craftsmen, but there are not too many who are really engaged in ordnance production. Guy was peaceful in the south for many years, the main enemies of the Ming Dynasty were in the north, and a large number of military craftsmen were concentrated in Beijing, and with the fall of Beijing, this large number of professional craftsmen also fell into the hands of the enemy.

And according to the Jinyi Wei report, Chongzhen is preparing to reorganize the three major battalions of the Beijing camp, planning to recruit 200,000 troops in Nanjing, and the craftsmen of Nanjing will inevitably produce weapons and armor for the Beijing camp, where can they take care of Yangzhou?

"Director Li, don't worry, I will send a document to the local government and recruit craftsmen from other places." Chen Yue promised.

Nanjing's craftsmen can't be counted on, but Daming still has the entire land south of the Yangtze River, and there is naturally no shortage of craftsmen. What the Governor's Mansion has to do is to recruit craftsmen from the people to make weapons and armor for the Pingnan Army.

......

When Chen Yue was worried about the production of ordnance, more than 100 miles away in Nanjing, there was a turbulent tide in the court, and all kinds of discussions were in the air.

In the past few months, the internal affairs of the Ming Dynasty have been extremely stable, and the entire north has been lost, as if a huge burden has been lost, and the blocks in Chongzhen's chest seem to have been removed.

There was no longer a large number of war reports to report the news of the loss of the city, the loss of the land, the loss of the army and the humiliation of the division, and the Manchurian Tartars also carried out the matter of moving the old nest to Beijing in the north, and there were thieves in Shaanxi to contain it, and there was no possibility of going south in a short time.

The thief had just experienced a big defeat, and his strength was seriously damaged, and he was hiding in Xi'an Mansion licking his wounds.

In the confrontation between the northern thieves and the Mantars, before the two sides decided the victory, the Ming Dynasty was very safe.

Of course, there is also a war in the Ming Dynasty now, that is, the thieves who entered Sichuan have conquered Chengdu. Zhu Zhishu, the king of Chengdu, and Zhu Zhilu, the king of Taiping, committed suicide, and the main officials of the Ming Dynasty, such as Long Wenguang, the governor of Sichuan, Liu Zhibo, the governor of the imperial history, and Zhang Jimeng, the deputy envoy of the inspection, were all executed by the thieves because they refused to surrender.

When the news of the defeat reached Nanjing, Chongzhen did not show much anger, but was much calmer than when he usually heard about the defeat.

After discussion with the imperial court, Chongzhen issued an edict to appoint He Tengjiao, the governor of Huguang, Sichuan and Henan, as the governor of Huguang, Sichuan and Henan provinces, and was fully responsible for the extermination of the thieves.

Sichuan is thousands of miles away from Nanjing, and the thief Zhang Xianzhong, who is as famous as the thief, is even more difficult to deal with, and Sichuan is a place with complex terrain and mixed living of Ming and natives, so it is impossible to exterminate it in a short time.

Compared with the suppression of bandits in Sichuan, the ministers in Nanjing were more concerned about other matters, such as the selection of the two Huai salt envoys.

Although the chaos in the Lianghuai Salt District had been calmed down, according to the Jiangbei Governor's Office, Liang Huanping, the Lianghuai Salt Transport Envoy, handled the incident properly, assisted the Governor's Office to quickly quell the riots in the Salt District, and levied a huge amount of salt tax to escort the imperial court.

But none of this can escape the eyes of the discerning man. Why the Lianghuai Salt District is in turmoil, and what role the salt transportation envoy Si Yamen participated in it, everyone in the imperial court knows it. In the eyes of the court officials, Liang Huanping was very derelict in his duties, and the reason why Chen Yue, the Marquis of Pingnan, tried to protect him was just to support a puppet in order to hold the two Huai salt administrations.

The benefit of the world is nothing more than salt and iron, and the three major salt farms of the Ming Dynasty have the most abundant output of Huai salt, and the interests involved are too great. Some time ago, Chen Yue, the Marquis of Pingnan, guarded the military strength and indiscriminately took down all the big salt merchants, and seized the right to monopolize salt in his hands in the name of the Four Seas Salt Company. This has already harmed the interests of too many people.

The benefits of Huai Yan are too great, and the various positions of the two Huai Salt Transport Envoys are even more fat, which has also attracted the eyes of countless officials.

Liang Huanping has completely surrendered to the Jiangbei Governor's Mansion, and all the salt merchants have been taken down, which has also made the interests of many people completely disappear, and they are naturally unwilling. Then he paid attention to Huaiyan again, although the position of Pingnan Hou Chen Yue in Chongzhen's heart is extremely important, although the strength of the Pingnan army is strong, but in the face of huge interests, this is nothing.

As a result, many officials acted in private, trying to wait for an opportunity to insert a foot in Huaiyan and get a piece of the pie.

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