Chapter 349: The Great Calamity

At the end of the sixteenth year of Jiajing, Jiang Feng's first son was born, although in this era, the survival rate of young children is not high, but the living environment and various conditions of a superior person like Jiang Feng are far better than that of civilians, naturally there is no need to worry, Jiang Feng, who has determined the supremacy of the sea, seems to have been immersed in the happiness of having a son, and no longer has any ambitions.

Jiang Feng's behavior has already been judged by someone, thinking that Jiang Feng is just a pirate at best, not much stronger than the two pirate leaders who are in peace and happiness on Liuhengdao and Shuangyu, that is, there are more people and the territory is larger.

At this time, people must not have known that hundreds of years later, there was a Chinese Republic of Lanfang in Java, and that country was quickly wiped out by the combination of whites and natives.

More and more people in Hwasju in Korea know that in the hearts of the various daimyo of Japan and the white colonists of Nanyang, this Hwashu is already similar to the princes of Japan or the principalities of Europe, and the Hwashu Taishou Mansion and the Hwashu Governor's Office have a complete team.

However, whether it is the inland or maritime merchants of the Ming Dynasty, they generally regard Huazhou as a very ridiculous thing, the official system of Huazhou is a mixture, and the official names of the Han and Tang dynasties to this dynasty have appeared, although they call themselves Huazhou, but they are still in the land of the Ming Dynasty's vassal state of Korea, which is very nondescript.

It can only be regarded as a big pirate in order to satisfy his desire to be an official, but few people have noticed that Huazhou's complete civil and financial system, Jiang Feng's elite private army, although the name is a private army, but it is far more than the regular army.

Yizhou sugar is already a huge source of wealth, and now there is such a slip along the coast of Fujian, called "one year on land, one month at sea, one day in Yizhou!" "It is said that Fujian farms for a year, it is better to go to the sea to make a life, but a month at sea, may not be able to catch up with the sugar in Yizhou, Taiwan is now completely liberalized, as long as you come to farm, pay silver taels or sign a document, you can be granted a field, grow grain and sugarcane, Yizhou has a seemingly strange rule, if you plant sugarcane, you must plant the same area of grain, otherwise you are not allowed to plant.

The reason why grain and sugarcane must be planted in parallel is because the profits of sugarcane are quite high, and often farmers planting sugarcane to buy grain will be more cost-effective than growing grain, and it is necessary to ensure self-sufficiency in grain on Taiwan Island in any respect, and sugarcane farmers do not have to worry about the problem of selling their grain and sugar, and large sugar merchants are waiting here every year to buy it.

After the drought passed, starting in the autumn of the sixteenth year of Jiajing, the rain has been falling in the north and south of Zhili, Shandong, Henan, and Zhejiang.

"In the autumn of the sixteenth year, Lianggi, Shandong, Henan, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang were each flooded, especially in Huguang."

"In the sixteenth year, it rained in Beijing, from summer to autumn, houses toppled down, and soldiers and civilians were crushed to death."

The toppled houses will naturally not be the mansions of the dignitaries, the ordinary people and soldiers are naturally full of complaints, the situation of the Beijing division is still relatively good, the situation in the north and south and Shandong and Henan can be described as corrupt, in this case, the political situation and the people's will is unstable, and the imperial court must give relief.

Historically, although the relief of the catastrophe was stretched thin on the finances and reserves of the imperial court, it was barely completed, but after the drought in Shandong and Hebei, the rebellion of Chen Deaf, and Liu Shisan, the chaos in Lunan that was stirred up by the knife, was in the chaos.

The north and south of the Zhili shook, the four provincial guards moved one after another to encircle, the border army of the two towns went south, the transportation was interrupted for a few months, a large number of people were lost, and the imperial court basically had no money left, not to mention that the money that should be spent on the nine sides every year was still a lot of money, and there was still money left in the imperial court.

Now the merchant groups and chambers of commerce in Jiangnan and Jiangbei are all rich and flowing, and everyone has a huge amount of materials and money in their hands, but they belong to the tax-exempt class, or they themselves are tax collectors, and they will not take money out for disaster relief at all, and Emperor Jiajing will always pressure the household department to take out silver to relieve the victims no matter what.

It's not that they don't have any bodhisattva hearts, it's just that there will always be a big civil upheaval after the catastrophe, and I'm afraid the emperor's seat will not be stable at that time.

At present, the only way left is to open up new sources of revenue and find new tax collectors, and there are two ways in front of Emperor Jiajing, one is to lift the sea ban, and the other is to collect taxes from those estates that are not under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty.

The information in front of Jiang Feng is all rumors between the government and the opposition, which is no secret for a long time, after Jiajing put forward the idea of opening the sea ban in the court, the civil and military officials and nobles, whether they have reaped benefits in the sea trade or not, are all unanimously opposed.

The opinions of the Qingliu people are quite convincing, in addition to the historical argument that the eunuchs of the Three Treasures went to the West, worked the people and lost their money, and the people did not have a good livelihood, as well as because of the opening of sea trade, which attracted a large number of scourge to the people.

These civil officials, who have never gone out and don't know what is going on in the world, naturally don't know who has the right to speak at sea now, and who has killed the pirates.

As for those officials who have made a fortune in the sea ban, if the sea ban is lifted, the huge profits of smuggling will definitely shrink a lot, and there will be many more competitors out of thin air, and they are even more unwilling.

Emperor Jiajing had no choice but to withdraw this method, and he was not resolute in this matter, because the ban on the sea was a major policy after he ascended the throne, and he didn't want to slap himself in the mouth.

The second plan was to take stock of the land outside the customs, set up a government office on the cultivated estates to administer it, and collect taxes......

This method really touched the interests of many people in the court, and as long as the officials of the court could speak and play in the court, they expressed their opinions one after another, saying that the emperor did not compete with the common people for profit, or that the emperor who focused on such a trivial matter as money would inevitably be mediocre.

Emperor Jiajing originally thought that after several incidents of the Great Rite Case, the Imperial Uniform Case, and the Sage Case, the hundreds of officials and ministers in the court who did not obey their own forces had been purged, and the court was completely his own people, and he did not expect that he would encounter such resistance in implementing these policies.

It's just that they are willing to check the reclamation manor outside the Guan, after a few days of debate in the court, some officials in the south suddenly turned around, and vigorously agreed with the imperial court's policy of clearing the land of the reclamation manor outside the Guan, returning these lands to the king, and setting up the government to manage the policy, this statement suddenly broke a tacit understanding in the court, that is, whether it is the officials in the south or the officials in the north, they do not mention the reclamation manors outside the customs and the plantations in the Nanyang, and now since one party does not comply, the magnates behind the Jingshi merchant group will not be polite.

Emperor Jiajing was surprised to find that the officials under his command actually had so many territories outside the Ming Dynasty, from ancient times to the present, it is a great achievement to expand the territory, but it is obviously not suitable for the current situation.

Inexplicably, the focus of the matter shifted from tax collection to the struggle between the north and the south, and the quarrels between civil and military officials have always been a pattern, that is, starting with one thing, and then pulling on the various mistakes that the other party had made, and all kinds of stains were dug up and used as ammunition for attacks.

Emperor Jiajing did not expect the current situation at all, but the current scene is impossible to start at all, both sides are members of the imperial court, involving all kinds of forces, all of them are people who have been promoted by themselves, and some are intertwined noble forces, these people are the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty, if there is any change rashly, the world will be turbulent at that time.

In private, Emperor Jiajing smiled bitterly in front of the Empress Dowager and said such words:

"When I was studying in Hubei, I didn't understand the sentence 'Yingchuan and Hongnong can be asked, but Henan and Nanyang can't be asked' when I was studying in Hubei, but I understand it today."

The quarrel in the court has no effect on the continuous autumn rain, the disaster situation in various places continues to deteriorate, the reserves of the imperial court and the local Chang Ping have no effect at all, and Shandong, which has just been pacified for not too long, is a swarm of bandits, but this time no one is behind it, so the scale is very small, but it is even worse for the victims.

There is no surprise that a large number of displaced people naturally appeared, but this time it was not spontaneous to the surrounding provinces, in fact, the situation in various places is not much better, and the provinces around the disaster area are only less affected.

The displaced people migrated to the north under the leadership of some 'leaders', some made all kinds of tempting promises to them, and on the way to the wandering, others provided barely enough food to survive, and there was nowhere else to go, and they walked towards the north without hesitation.

The number of displaced people is extremely huge, but the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses in Beizhili are just waiting for the battle and raising their vigilance, but they are not like before to besiege and suppress the displaced people, but they just watched them pass through Tongzhou, pass under the city of Jingshi, go out of the customs along the official road, and then be divided by various reclamation manors.

This migration is dozens of times, or even hundreds of times, the number of slaves purchased by the reclamation estates outside the Guanwai.

In the Beijing Division, in order to provide disaster relief, Emperor Jiajing was worried, and for the sake of the displaced people this time, the Jingshi merchant group almost fell into a carnival......