Under the privilege system, the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners swelled from two or three hundred thousand to two million, of which the number of Manchus has surpassed the Mongols, because the Manchus mainly live in the cities, but the Mongols live in the steppe for grazing, the influence of sanitary conditions, medical conditions, and the belief in the lama temple allows a large number of men not to produce, the government supports these lamas through finance, so that a large number of Mongolian civilians restrict self-fertility, resulting in the rapid growth of the urban Manchus, but the steppe Mongols tend to be stable.

Although the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners are still an ethnic group politically, the Manchus live in the city, but they can be assigned to various military towns on the steppe to lead the Mongols by being the leader and commander, but their self-identity is still Manchu, the upper class of the Mongols is the same as the Manchus, they also live in the city, the upper class is integrated, and the lower class is divided.

The Manchu and Mongolian ethnic groups, together with the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty and the Eight Banners of the Hui Dynasty, brought the population of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to 50 million. Now let the Manchus mobilize two million troops, they can hardly even guarantee food supplies, because the Manchus, who have reverted to the era of intensive agriculture, can no longer feed two million full-time soldiers, and everyone has to work for their own livelihood, and basically can only make ends meet.

Poverty is relative, the poverty at the bottom and the wealth at the top have brought about huge social contradictions. Han Baqi is no longer a stabilizer of society, but has become the most unstable stratum of society.

A large number of Hui people were annexed, and in the era of yeoman farmers, the cultural stability brought by the material could also allow the Han Eight Banners to maintain the tradition of farming and reading heirlooms, but when the wealth began to diverge, a large number of Han Eight Banners people fell into abject poverty, the education level of the people at the bottom was low, and the concept of maintaining culture was weak, and even the Muslim faith began to spread at the bottom of the Han Eight Banners. Of course, there is an inherent tradition that they only see faith as a kind of protection, and they seek the protection of those religious organizations that develop secretly in the lower classes, rather than true piety.

Similarly, at the bottom of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty, there were also organizations with religious characteristics such as the White Lotus Sect and the Heaven and Earth Society. The power of the Green Gang, the Salt Gang and other gangs also began to become stronger.

The Han people are a nation with endurance, but at the same time they have a rebellious culture, and the Han Eight Banners are not pure Han people, and the culture is not pure, but they still have this characteristic, because the stories of historical records and Water Margin are also circulated among the upper and lower classes of the Han Eight Banners. Who doesn't know that the prince and general Xiangning have a kind of male voice, and who doesn't know the reason for killing people and setting fires to be edicted.

As an agrarian nation, the Han Eight Banners are still inhabited, and the cost of organizing the inhabited ethnic groups is lower, so in recent years, various riots have begun to appear in the Han Eight Banners, which are also transmitted from the Ferghana Basin to the Persian Plateau, and finally to the two river basins, most of these riots are scattered, so they cannot form a force to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty, but there have been signs, which makes the Manchu high-level very worried.

The measures taken were to curb the annexation and intensify the repression, the former basically played no role, because the most powerful ruling forces in society, from the magnates of the Eight Banners to the landlords and magnates, were all beneficiaries of the annexation, and the suppression suppressed the rebellion, but did not resolve the contradictions.

In recent years, Daoguang began to implement a new system, which was no longer born from the nomadic militarized Eight Banners system, but began to adopt an agrarian armor protection system. The two systems have something in common, both are highly organized at the bottom of the society, the difference is that one is through grass-roots military officials such as Niu Lu Zuoling, who quickly arm men to launch military operations at any time, and the other is through grass-roots agricultural officials such as card chiefs and security chiefs to check and hide the population, in order to prevent thieves. One is to quickly get the ding mouth moving, and the other is to fix the ding mouth.

The armor protection system played a large role, preventing the smallest signs of rebellion in settled agricultural areas.

Manchu society is a microcosm of China, Zhou Lang also implemented a very strict armor protection system, and also used modern management methods to strengthen the traditional armor protection system, traditional society, lack of digital management capabilities, the armor protection system has always been tight and loose, but Zhou Lang institutionalized and normalized.

However, Zhou Lang and Daoguang were fundamentally different in their purpose, Daoguang wanted to permanently limit the population to the land, and Zhou Lang wanted to prevent the collapse of social order caused by the impact of the industrial revolution on the countryside. His main purpose was to prevent civil strife and to allow the industrial forces to complete the transformation of society in a stable and orderly manner.

Due to the employment opportunities brought by the industrial revolution and the massive amount of overseas arable land grabbed, China did not have the phenomenon that the rural society could not be maintained because of the lack of land, so Zhou Lang combined the military with the armor protection system under the system of strict management of the countryside, and completed the township soldier armament that Wang Anshi hoped to achieve in the reform of the year, but for this was paid a large amount of financial subsidies to the countryside, and the massive wealth created by industrialization through military spending and industrialization entered the countryside.

Wang Anshi's Northern Song Dynasty did not have this kind of financial resources, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty did not have this kind of financial resources, so the Manchu Qing Dynasty could not restrict the flow of the agricultural population at the same time, and arm the agricultural population, because those peasants who were busy eating and drinking in their leisure time did not have the physical strength to train in addition to the busy farming, and it was an unbearable burden to provide rations for these people, not to mention providing them with weapons and equipment, and even sending military expenses like Zhou Lang.

These ills allowed the Manchus to maintain stability, and although they were able to maintain stability compared to the historical rule in the area, there were fewer wars, but they brought about a continuous decline in combat effectiveness, and the Manchus had only 300,000 standing troops at the most effective level, and the reserve military service system was not established at all. It has begun to weaken compared to the Ottoman Empire, whose population has been growing slowly, so the Manchu Qing Dynasty has even begun to maintain a defensive position against the Ottoman Empire.

With these ills, the Manchus, as Greece's allies against the Ottoman Empire, became increasingly incompetent, and even an alliance with Greece began as a policy of self-preservation for the Manchus. Because in recent years, the Ottoman Empire has repeatedly clashed with the Manchus in the border areas, whether it is the two river basins or the Armenian region.

In the end, it was the Greek king himself who mediated the dispute.

At this time, the Greek king visited the Manchu Qing and asked Daoguang to go to war in person.

Daoguang, who is suffering from internal and external troubles, really doesn't want to fight this war.

But the Greek king insisted: "Your Majesty, this is the last chance, and if you miss it, I am afraid you will have to wait for the Ottomans to counterattack." ”

What the Greek king said is also true, Daoguang was very hesitant, the Ottoman army of more than 700,000 was besieged by the Russians, and the country was extremely empty, before they came out of the empty country because of the alliance with the Austrian Prussia, at that time, unless the Manchus wanted to offend the Prussia and Austria, it was impossible to launch an attack on the Ottoman Empire without the support of the great powers.

But now that Prussia and Austria have withdrawn from the war, and now they are attacking the Ottoman Empire, they can still get the support of Russia, if they don't go to the Ottoman Empire, and miss this opportunity, the Qing Dynasty will have to survive under the pressure of the Ottomans who have eased up.

The performance of the Ottomans this time really shocked Daoguang, he knew the combat effectiveness of the Russian army, but he did not expect that the Ottoman army trained by the Prussians would be able to encircle and annihilate the Russian army many times, and they have been fighting without falling behind. Let such an Ottoman army return home safely, Daoguang felt that his Qing Dynasty was in danger.

Daoguang hesitated: "The war is about money and food, but money and food are in short supply." ”

Finance is the biggest problem in recent years, 10 years ago, Daoguang's treasury could still accumulate several million taels of silver, but now it often can't make ends meet, and before the end of the year when the deficit appears, it began to take temporary measures to balance the finances, or the traditional method of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, donating officials, through the way of donating officials, to get a sum of emergency inputs.

From Jiaqing to Daoguang, they all felt that the Son of Heaven was embarrassed to borrow money from the people, and in China, because of the idea that the whole world was not the king's land, the rich businessmen were unwilling to lend money to the government, and the rich lacked a sense of security under a good property protection system.

Under the protection of the monopoly system, a large number of privileged merchant groups emerged, such as the maritime merchant group composed of Armenians and the salt merchant group composed of the Han Eight Banners, which operated the grassland trade.

In the era of wealth differentiation, in fact, the total amount of wealth has not decreased, on the contrary, the poorer the people, the richer the rich, and the number of rich people is very small, so it is easier to accumulate wealth, which is why the primitive accumulation of capital is often accompanied by the phenomenon of wealth differentiation.

If the society of a commercial culture develops here, it should basically begin to form a commercial social system, such as the Netherlands in Europe. However, the Manchu Qing Dynasty was a conservative agricultural and cultural society, and the development of commerce made the society more unstable, and the growth of wealth formed an anti-official force, that is, a revolutionary force. The Manchu industrial and commercial class, however, was highly fragmented, relying more on officials than fighting.

Therefore, the Manchu society is not lacking in wealth, but lacks the culture and mechanism to raise wealth reasonably, rich businessmen do not trust the government, the government also feels that borrowing money is very degrading, one is not willing to rest assured and bold to lend, the other is not willing to ask for loans, and finally the government will only be short of money, forcibly apportionment of these privileged merchant groups attached to the government, this kind of apportionment, and unfair, with the official personal relationship is good, the apportionment is less, and the official private relationship is not good, the apportionment is more, the relationship is good or bad, Sometimes, depending on the amount of gifts given to officials, the result is that corruption is encouraged, and the state receives far less money than the personal wealth looted by officials, and the shortage of state finances becomes a reason for officials to loot.

In a word, the financial situation of the Manchu Qing was chaotic, inefficient, and moth-ridden.

The Greek kings naturally knew about the financial situation of the Manchus, and in fact, the Greek merchants were the ones who corrupted the Manchu finances the most.

Therefore, the Greek king was naturally prepared: "On the issue of money and grain, I don't know if Your Majesty is willing to cooperate with Chinese merchants." ”

Daoguang hesitated, the Manchus had always maintained good relations with the Chinese commercial forces, mainly because of the shadow left by the Jiaqing era, and they did not want to be enemies of China, and at the same time used the Chinese commercial power to squeeze out the Yi people they looked down on, so the Manchus had been cooperating with African companies and European companies in foreign trade, and these two companies had some trade privileges. At the same time, the two companies were closely supervised, and the privileged trade was quota-based, due to the instinct of vigilance brought on by fear.

Therefore, when working with Chinese businessmen, Daoguang is instinctively full of concerns.

At this time, there was no way, and he asked, "How to make a cooperation method?" ”