Li Xiucheng lacks this ruthlessness. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info

At the beginning, he excluded Yang Fuqing's ministry and Wang Haiyang's ministry to Jiangbei, no matter how you look at it, it is a clever political strategy, if it is replaced by a figure like Yuan Shikai, he will basically control the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, because Yuan Shikai's next second step must be to completely eliminate the opposition forces in Jiangnan, and when all the military forces are in his own hands, he will definitely cut off the forces of the prince surnamed Hong who are pressing on his head.

But Li Xiucheng didn't, he simply squeezed out the military forces that were not his descendants, that's all.

Political indecision made him completely lose the opportunity, but it was not too late to make amends, if Li Xiucheng was ruthless enough, he could sit back and watch the nearly 200,000 miscellaneous Taiping troops fend for themselves north of the Yangtze River, and blockade the Yangtze River with the sailors under his control, then he could still rule the river with the Manchus.

But if he puts these 200,000 people into the territory of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, these people will not be grateful to Li Xiucheng for saving his life, but will hate Li Xiucheng's forces to the core. Because it was Li Xiucheng who gave him the Northern Expedition at the beginning, and now that the Northern Expedition has failed, they have returned to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and lost their territory and wealth in Jiangbei, and Li Xiucheng cannot give them to them, so they will hate Li Xiucheng.

It's a pity that Li Xiucheng is not ruthless enough, he can't do it under the pressure of the prince surnamed Hong, and even Hong Xiuquan, and let the 200,000 Taiping army fend for themselves, he sent a sailor, not to blockade the Yangtze River, but to take all these people back to Jiangnan, during this period, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang did not attack them.

Li Xiucheng finally placed 100,000 people of Yang Fuqing's troops in the Wuhu area south of the Yangtze River, while Wang Haiyang's troops were placed in the Zhenjiang area.

Seeing Li Xiucheng's approach, Zhu Jinglun immediately understood that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom would not be peaceful in the future, and would not only go downhill, but their expansion period would end.

From then on, instead of expanding, they threatened to break out into civil war.

Because Yang Fuqing and Wang Haiyang will never go on another Northern Expedition in the future, and if the Taiping Army wants to go on a Northern Expedition, it can only be Li Xiucheng's descendants to go to the Northern Expedition, but under the constraints of Yang Fuqing and Wang Haiyang, Li Xiucheng cannot rest assured and boldly send his troops to the north.

Li Xiucheng made this mistake politically, not only buried the future of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, but also planted a bomb destined to explode in the fate of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

But one thing is certain, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime has no hope.

Based on this thinking, Zhu Jinglun decided to expand the interests of the Ming Dynasty in the Jiangnan region as soon as possible, and while the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom regime could still resist the pressure of foreigners, the interests of the Ming Dynasty would penetrate into the corners of the country. After creating a fait accompli, even if the Manchu Qing recovered these areas in the future, they must acquiesce in the interests of the Ming here.

Of course, this is only one of the preparations, and the military preparations are also underway, that is, to be ready to go north at any time to annex the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom before the Manchu Qing Dynasty, or at least to carve up the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

Under normal circumstances, this kind of plan is highly secretive and will not go through the government, because through the government, it is difficult to guarantee that it will not be known by Hurd, and if Hurd knows, it is difficult to ensure that the British government knows about it.

To do this kind of thing, Zhu Jinglun directly consulted with Wu Chongyao and directly used the Wu family's commercial power to carry it out.

According to Zhu Jinglun's requirements, Wu Chongyao really has a suitable candidate.

It just so happens to be the power of his foreign affairs department, the Xu Rongcun family.

The Xu family is a comprador family, but they are also business giants.

Under the management of Xu Run, the second-generation leader of the Xu family, they acquired the bankrupt Jardine Silk Factory and relocated the Jardine Silk Factory to Shengze Town in Suzhou and named it Rongji Silk Factory.

But then they encountered a big problem, and Xu Run opened the Rong Ji Silk Factory in Shengze Town, with the aim of expanding the production of Jili Lake silk here.

Jilihu silk is the top silk raw material in this era, and even in later generations, because the luster and toughness of this raw silk are the best in raw silk, even if it is a handmade product, you can get a gold medal when you send it to the expo.

In this era, Western breeding pursues yield, so Western silkworm seeds develop in the direction of hypertrophy, silkworm babies are large, silkworm cocoons are naturally large, and the output of reeled raw silk is correspondingly large. However, the breeding concept of Jili Lake Silk is highly pursued in quality, and a Jili Lake Silk can lift seven copper coins, which is very amazing. To sum up, Jili Lake Silk has the eight characteristics of "fine, round, even, firm, white, clean, flexible and tough", and these eight qualities are first-class.

However, God is fair, the color and toughness of Jili Lake silk are first-class, but the yield is much inferior to other raw silks.

Because the silkworm seed that bred Jili Lake silk is a silkworm seed called lotus heart seed, as the name suggests, the cocoon of this silkworm seed is only the size of a lotus seed, not to mention compared with the big white silkworm cultivated in the West, it is also much inferior to the silkworm species in other places in the south of the Yangtze River.

Therefore, the output of Jilihu silk has always been small, the output is small, and the quality is high, which is very in line with the definition of luxury, so the various silk products woven from Jilihu silk are also the high-end clothing that Western aristocrats are most keen on.

Xu Rongcun's Rong Kee Silk Shop, which used to use Jili Lake silk to win a gold medal at the London Exposition, thus opening up its fame, and with Xu Rongcun's work in the Daming Foreign Affairs Division, it greatly expanded Rong Kee's international network, and they opened offices in London and Paris to provide raw materials to Maxwell in the United Kingdom and Lyon in France.

However, the output of this raw material was too low, which greatly restricted the development of Rong Ji, so Xu Runcai bought the bankrupt Jardine Silk Factory, intending to use machine production to expand the output of Jilihu silk.

But Xu Run's unfamiliarity with technology made him suffer heavy losses. He finally found that the silk reeling machine that spent a huge amount of money to relocate to Shengze Town could not use the lotus heart to plant this kind of silkworm cocoon, this kind of small silkworm cocoon, it is difficult to deal with it with the machine, Xu Run is a bold young man, he can later become one of the four major compradors in China, naturally has his own excellent quality, and he is not willing to give up easily is one of this quality.

Anyway, a huge amount of money has been invested, he gritted his teeth and continued to insist, hired professional engineers from Italy and France, and invited them to China to test the lotus heart, adjust the machine, study the new production process, it took three years, and purchased a large number of more sophisticated machines, before finally the trial production was successful, to create a special machine specially used to reel the lotus heart, at the beginning of last year, Rong Ji silk factory really began normal production, but it only took one year, the output was doubled, and the quality of manual production was also greatly improvedIn terms of uniformity, it is far superior to handmade products.

As a result, Rong Ji's profits have greatly increased, not only recovering the cost at once, but also opening two factories in Nanxun Town and Zhenze Town in Huzhou, monopolizing the source of lotus heart cocoons for this generation.

It also makes the Xu family the most successful Daming capital in the Taihu Lake Basin.

After learning about these circumstances, Wu Chongyao thought that the Xu family was the best person to implement Zhu Jinglun's policy of expanding the interests of Daming capital in Jiangnan, and he asked his subordinate Xu Rongcun to whisper, and after learning that this was the emperor's intention, Xu Rongcun did not say a word, and immediately his nephew Xu Run invested heavily in Yixing, Wuxi and Changxing around Taihu Lake, respectively, to invest in ten factories, and directly monopolize the high-quality silkworm cocoon resources in this area.

With a suitable candidate like the Xu family, the expansion of Daming's interests in the Jiangnan raw silk industry is smooth and easy, but the Jiangnan area is not only a benefit of raw silk.

The Jiangnan region ruled by the Taiping Army, has always been a rich area of China in history, in the agricultural era, here is the best land of fish and rice, there is the title of Suhu Lake ripe world, as long as Suzhou, Huzhou and the area of the harvest, there is no hunger in the world, after the Age of Discovery, Jiangnan integrated into the international economic system began to transition from grain production to cash crop production, and the Suhu area became the best silkworm center.

But Jiangnan is also the best high-quality tea producing area in China, and West Lake Longjing has always been the representative of China's famous tea. But in the era of globalization, it is obvious that the Western market is more important, and Westerners do not like Longjing this kind of green tea, so Jiangnan tea merchants slowly introduced the southern black tea production method, and successfully trial-produced Qi Hong, a high-fragrance black tea in the Qimen area, in terms of quality, it immediately ranked with Fujian Dahongpao, Jiangxi Ninghong, and Guangdong Yinghong as China's four major high-fragrance black teas.

Among the four major black teas, Daming has now controlled three of them, that is, Qi Hong, which has just been cultivated, has not yet been controlled, as a monopoly on the world's tea production country, black tea production has long been regarded as a strategic industry, just this year Huizhou businessman Hu Yuanlong successfully trial-produced Qi Hong, immediately in the Shanghai market by the foreigners sought after, obviously Ming can not let this situation continue.

Wu Chongyao himself is the world's first-class tea giant, but he really does not have the ability to penetrate into the tea producing areas of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. After using the power of the government, Wu Chongyao chose a partner to work with, that is, a tea merchant surnamed Jiang in Fuliang Prefecture, the capital of Raozhou, Jiangxi.

Fuliang is located in the northeast of Jiangxi, in addition to having Jingdezhen, the center of Chinese porcelain, here is also a famous tea producing area in history, the Tang Dynasty Bai Juyi has a poem "businessmen value profit and light parting, the month before Fuliang buys tea to go" verses, as early as the Tang Dynasty, the industrial production here has been very famous.

Another major specialty of Fuliang is porcelain, and Jingdezhen, the porcelain capital of China, is located in Fuliang. There is a saying in Nanxun Town, the capital of Huzhou, which produces silk, that a Huzhou capital is not as good as half of Nanxun Town. This sentence in Fuliang is not an exaggeration, and a Raozhou Mansion may really not be as good as half of Fuliang City. The general county orders are all seven-grade, and the grades of the Fuliang county orders are different, and they are special five-grade officials.

Jiang opened a Tianxiang tea house in Fuliang, and ran a tea business for generations, not only opening up a large area of tea plantations themselves, but also doing business in Qimen and Wuyuan counties in Huizhou Prefecture, which was controlled by the Taiping Army, and more importantly, Jiang also opened a tea house in Shanghai, and tea was exported overseas through foreigners.

What the Wu family values is the Jiang family's business chain, but it's not just that, because the Wu family has no shortage of channels. What he values most is actually the geographical location where the Jiang family is located, that is, the geographical location of Fuliang.

Immediately to the east of Fuliang are Wuyuan County and Qimen County in Huizhou Prefecture, which are controlled by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, both of which are high-quality black tea producing areas in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's ruling area.

The capital of the Wu family, coupled with the geographical advantage of the Jiang family, Wu Chongyao is confident that through the Jiang family's Tianxiang, he will monopolize the tea resources in Huizhou in a short period of time.

His approach was very domineering, and after agreeing with Jiang, he invested 3 million, mobilized a large number of technical forces, entered Huizhou, and opened 30 machine-made tea factories in a short period of time. With these 30 machine-made tea factories, I dare not say anything else, at least they can monopolize the high-quality black tea resources in the two producing areas of Qimen and Wuyuan. Then infiltrate the entire Huizhou, getting twice the result with half the effort.

Monopolizing the high-quality silkworm cocoon raw materials in the Jiangnan region has commercial giants like the Xu family, monopolizing the high-quality black tea raw materials in the Huizhou region, and having such a geographical advantage as Wuyuan, Jiangxi, but for the cotton textile industry, another major economic commodity in the south of the Yangtze River, Daming has no choice, because Daming's cotton textile industry is really not competitive.