It is indeed convenient to live in Shangshu Province, and the next morning, Chen Zhiting sent someone to invite him. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

After the meeting, Chen Zhiting first informed Bai Gui of several news.

"My Wang Shi has already been in Kening and Guangdezhou, and is heading towards Wuhu and Chizhou. Zhejiang's enemy is attached to the wind, and it is determined by the spread, and now it is a full map! ”

Bai Gui was quite surprised, before he came yesterday, the Ming army had only captured the three prefectures in southern Zhejiang, and it had not been long since Huizhou was defeated.

It is clear how difficult it is for those long hairs to beat him, Zeng Guofan has sighed many times that he has never encountered such an enemy, Anqing, Tianjing, that battle is not a mountain of dead people, those long hairs still charge non-stop.

Why did the Ming army go and they would be attached to the wind?

"Is the message true?"

Bai Gui's first reaction was not to believe it, how could it be impossible to conquer so many places in one day, unless it was really decided, as soon as the Ming army went, the other party surrendered immediately, even if the surrender didn't seem to be so fast, could it be that he could still take the initiative to surrender?

Chen Zhiting smiled: "The boss is too worried. ”

When Bai Gui was in office, Chen Zhiting had already become a petty official, so he could be regarded as having served under Bai Gui's account.

Bai Gui sighed: "It's just too unbelievable. ”

"It's just the general trend."

Chen Zhiting said it easily and calmly, but in fact, his heart was surging, and he never thought it would be so smooth.

I thought that the prince of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had already become corrupt and degenerate, and it shouldn't be too much trouble to attack them, but I didn't expect them to fall so quickly, and what they didn't expect was that those merchants were even more useful than the army.

The development of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in recent years has always given people a sense of tortuousness, it can be said that the economy is quite deformed, to say that the economic situation is not good, it is not, tea, silk two major goods are sought-after goods, handicrafts are also quite developed, after all, where the foundation is too good, craftsmen always have to eat, and where the people are extraordinarily ingenious, not to mention, the embroidery embroidered by the embroidery girls in Suzhou and Hangzhou, that is, it is good, and it is welcomed by the people of the Ming Dynasty.

But if you want to say that the economy is good, the common people are too poor, except for a group of powerful people, that is, some profiteers. What is unspeakable is that nine times out of ten, those profiteers actually went from Daming.

After several wars in the Jiangnan region, the rich were either killed or scattered, and later Li Xiucheng opened up Sufu Province to encourage commerce, but is it so easy to develop commerce, a group of men who farmed the land yesterday will go to the big hands in and out today, and do the things that freight the world will do, and most of them will pay for death. Therefore, under Li Xiucheng's rule, there were just some small traders who carried the burden. The real big businessman, that has to be the Ming businessman who went later.

As Shang Shuling, Chen Zhiting knew too well the behavior of those businessmen, but he had been very resistant to it all these years. Because what those businessmen are doing is just too much to accept. It can be said that in the tobacco houses opened by the Taiping Heavenly Kings, ninety percent of the tobacco was provided by merchants of the Ming Dynasty, and many of them were smuggled.

Those merchants colluded with the magnates of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to loot the people's fat and ointment in the local area, which was the worst act.

In the later period of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, Hong Xiuquan indiscriminately sealed the king, as many as 3,000 princes, let from the court to the locality, but if he is a character, he must be a prince, and the county order of each county, if there is no king on the head, it is really a shame.

It just so happened that most of the upper-class figures of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom came from Liangguang, and Hong Xiuquan's family was from Huaxian County, Guangdong, so the most powerful group of princes in the court at present were all from Guangdong. As for Li Xiucheng, most of those who relied on military exploits to become princes are from Guangxi.

The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is a prince from top to bottom, and the prince is from Liangguang, most of these princes are illiterate and do not know how to operate, which gives the Liangguang businessmen a too big room for operation, not to play the collusion between officials and businessmen, it is simply a waste, Jiangnan is a rich place, so these businessmen can't get rich if they don't want to.

The merchants of the Ming Dynasty brought all kinds of sought-after luxury goods to these princes, made a lot of money, and also colluded with these princes to do all kinds of evil in the local area, manipulating the market, speculating on prices, and lending usury, anyway, in Chen Zhiting's opinion, they have done all kinds of bad things.

The behavior of these merchants has been hateful, but the most hateful group of people, and the most ferocious group of people who accumulate wealth, are the relatives of these princes from the hometown of Liangguang, when the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom gained a firm foothold in Jiangnan and had a close relationship with the Ming Dynasty, these relatives Wuyang and Wuyang went to those princes. Those who have the ability can help these relatives of the prince, give usury, open casinos, tobacco houses and even courtyards, and if they are incapable, they collude with Ming businessmen to do these evil things.

The most hateful thing is those who rob the population in the local area, selling coolies is only a small amount of money, and the crackdown is too strong, and there are still few people who do it, but it is too common to take Jiangnan women out and sell them.

The Ming Emperor was very disgusted with human trafficking, as early as before he ascended the throne, when he gave the untouchable population, such as Xu officials and other people the power of the imperial examination, and in fact abolished the untouchable system, the official's family liberated their own servants within a time limit, and under the supervision of the household department, the deed of sale and other documents were confiscated, but the large families could not leave the servants, so they were replaced by the employment system, the emperor set an example, and the servants in the palace were the first to sign contracts to get paid helpers.

Later, when the coolie trade was cracked down, a strict ban on servitude was enacted, prohibiting any human trafficking, declaring all documents of sale invalid immediately, and encouraging large families to employ helpers, but legally, these servants were only long-term laborers, not lowly people.

Therefore, legally, it is illegal to sell the population of Jiangnan to the Ming Dynasty, but the benefits are great, Jiangnan women are promoted by strong Jiangnan literati, and they are the standard of beauties in this era.

Not only Yangzhou has the tradition of raising thin horses, but the whole Jiangnan is widespread, but Yangzhou's brand is the loudest. There are countless women who raise thin horses for a living, these people cannot die, but it is easier to find those helpless girls in the war, they will look at the face, eight years old to see the old, a little girl, they look at the face, touch the bones, they can basically judge what they will look like in the future.

Relying on this craft, after the Taiping army occupied Jiangnan, these Ya women resumed their livelihood again, cooperated with the local people, and continued to raise thin horses. These girls have been reading and reading under the tutelage of Ya Po since childhood, and when they grow up, they can write and write poems, and they know some practical skills, such as bookkeeping and accounting, which were originally cultivated according to concubines, and knowing how to run a family is a skill.

is such a thin horse, just ask any man with some money, who is not tempted.

As a result, these skinny horses have become the largest part of the human trafficking.

The merchants of the Ming Dynasty brought these thin horses or other people back to the Ming Dynasty in a scattered manner, and secretly sold them at a high price to make huge profits. But it is difficult to monitor, because many people bring girls back to Daming as their own goddaughters or simply as concubines and the like, and then the rich people buy them in the form of concubines, and the goddaughters marry directly, and the concubines can remarry with just a letter of resignation, and these behaviors have almost no loopholes in the legal process.

In recent years, with the development of the Ming economy, the emergence of new industrial and business models, the society is changing, which also means that social wealth is being reshuffled, and there are a large number of nouveau riche who dare to open up the atmosphere.

These fearless nouveau riche don't care about these at all, they are the main force in buying and selling thin horses, many people are not happy to buy one, and some people even buy a group of thin horses who can play the piano and sing music, and form a troupe in their own homes for themselves and their friends to entertain.

In the Ming Dynasty, it was quite restrained, the Ming profiteers sold the population of Jiangnan to the Manchu Dynasty, it was simply unscrupulous, anyway, the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not prohibit these, they even sold young and strong labor, and some of the people under the rule of the prince, but if they committed some crimes, they were arrested and put in prison, and soon they would be colluded with profiteers by the cell boss and sold to the territory of the Qing Dynasty.

Chen Zhiting has always known about these things, and various measures to crack down on them have also been introduced, but the results are not very good. After some nouveau riche who are not good for thin horses are found, sometimes those thin horses are fed up with abuse and dare to come forward to testify, but most of the thin horses are obedient, they have suffered since childhood, and they were sold as thin horses. Some skinny horses have obviously been tortured for a long time, and when the police came to the door, they also insisted that it was the concubine married by the master, which was voluntary, not trafficked.

Therefore, Chen Zhiting has always been disgusted with those Ming profiteers who did business in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

But he never thought that these profiteers would have such a strong influence on the local area of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and he thought that they were just a group of scum who were attached to the Taiping army and those princes who were looting the people's fat and ointment, but he didn't want many of them to be the masters of these princes.

The prince of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is not valuable, but no matter how worthless it is, it will not be blown by the wind, either he can fight and make meritorious contributions, just like Li Xiucheng, or he is born well, his surname is good, he is a relative of Hong Xiuquan, if he is not, if he still wants to be a prince, there is a way, that is, to buy. Selling officials is the biggest source of wealth in the hands of the prince surnamed Hong, and this business has been done very much, and there are quite transparent rules about who to contact, who to pay, and how much money to pay.

Some Taiping army officials want to climb up, just want to put a prince on their heads, which is the same as the Manchu officials to take office, need to be dotted, but what to do if there is no money, there is a group of Ming businessmen found such a way, they are optimistic about some officials who can be supported, borrow money to help them operate, let them become princes, let them go to local positions, and then they go to work together as the masters of these princely officials, and then loot a lot. Their behavior is the same as that of some masters with stomachs in Shaoxing.

Whether it is a businessman who is attached to the princes, or a master who is more powerful in front of the prince, these people are nothing more than for money, and when the situation is good, they are happy to search and enjoy themselves with the prince. But when things are bad, then we can't help each other.

The army of the Ming Dynasty is coming, and the Hunan army is also coming, these princes who have been looting for many years have long been fat, and they don't want to die.

So what to do, at this time, the Ming merchants also have a way. They came forward to contact the Ming army and agreed on various conditions, either surrendering or sacrificing the city in exchange for the promise of the Ming army to protect the safety and property of these princes.

As for whether these businessmen knocked on these princes who are about to lose their power and status, it depends on the relationship between the two parties in the past.