Zhu Jinglun attaches great importance to this economic crisis, because in his memory, some people call this economic crisis a great depression that can only be encountered once in a lifetime, in the discussion of economists, there have been a total of four such depressions in history, namely 1837, 1873, 1929 and 2008, the Great Depression of 1929 Zhu Jinglun did not personally experience, but he was deeply touched by the depression of 08. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Therefore, Zhu Jinglun immediately instructed the Bank of Guangzhou to quietly sell all kinds of bonds, mainly government bonds and railway bonds, to raise hard currency from the market. They also asked them to raise 50 million taels in the London and New York markets in the name of building new railways.

After the American Civil War, the domestic economy ushered in an explosive growth, especially the railroad industry was crazy expansion, and various railroad bonds were extremely popular in the New York market. In addition, in recent years, Daming's economic indicators have been very good, and the $30 million bonds issued by Guangfu Bank in the United States were quickly sold out after being underwritten by Jay Cook Bank, a major bond underwriter in New York, and Drexel Bank, the largest bond underwriter in Philadelphia. This amount of money is nothing to the crazy US financial market, and Jay Cook is a bank that is underwriting $100 million in bonds for the operation of the Northern Pacific Railroad.

The £10 million bond issued in London, also underwritten by the Rothschild and Bahrain family banks in London, quickly sold out. In this era, Britain has completed the industrial revolution, a large amount of surplus capital has appeared in their industry, many industrialists, new aristocrats have begun to turn to investment development, similar to the Dutch a hundred years ago, Britain has also produced a large number of rentier class who rely on investment dividends for a living. With such surplus capital, even the railway bonds of the United States are mainly digested by the British, the railway bonds issued by the Ming Dynasty are not a problem at all.

Seeing that the release went so smoothly, Zhu Jinglun was unexpected. He underestimated that there was often an irrational exuberance in the markets that preceded the economic crisis, when credit expansion was completely unrealistic.

Fortunately, Zhu Jinglun asked the Bank of Guangzhou to issue the second bond, and at the same time threw out the railway line from Guangzhou to Guangxi and Fujian to Shanghai as the banner, and successfully issued 50 million taels of bonds again, raising 100 million taels of hard currency in the British and American markets one after the other.

Unexpectedly, the impact of the international economic crisis was not ushered in, but a huge incident broke out from within China first.

Li Xiucheng mobilized an army of 300,000, crossed the Yangtze River, and began the Northern Expedition.

The Northern Expedition of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom this time was different from Lin Fengxiang's Northern Expedition last time, this time it was well prepared and prepared.

First of all, economically, after five years of steady operation, they have already stockpiled enough grain and grass materials.

Militarily, the Taiping army was armed with as many as 300,000 rifled rifles, as well as 30,000 cannons of various calibers.

Since the most important thing, they were armed with two ironclad ships.

Two years ago they ordered two ironclad ships from Daming, which were delivered to them only at the end of last year.

These two ironclad ships, is Elkeson's latest design, completely abandoned the design of the mast, using two three-expansion reciprocating steam engines and 8 boiler power drive, even if one of the steam engines is turned off, it can maintain power, the total horsepower reached 5000 horsepower, and the Ming Navy a few years ago Guangdong ironclad power is the same, and Guangdong is a 6000-ton ironclad ship, but the tonnage of the two ironclad ships delivered to the Taiping Army is only 5000 tons, obviously these two ships are relatively more powerful and faster.

In order to persuade the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to accept this kind of small ironclad ship, the engineers of the Ming Dynasty took great pains to tell them that the coastal defense of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was mainly on the Yangtze River, and if the tonnage was too large, it would not be possible to sail all the way from the sea to Tianjing, so they accepted this tonnage warship.

But the real reason, mainly is that the Ming Navy wants to make technical reserves for its next generation of second-class warships, and the Ming Navy has decided to complete the ironclad of all warships within five years, on the one hand, to install ironclad on the old wooden warships, and on the other hand, it intends to build a new batch of all-iron ironclad ships.

Although they have other purposes, the performance of these two ironclad ships is beyond doubt, not to mention that they can reach a speed of more than 12 knots, and the maximum speed can reach the level of 14 knots, which is comparable to the most advanced British Inflae White, and in terms of firepower, it greatly meets the requirements of the Taiping Army.

In the front and center, a total of three batteries were installed, a total of 6 imitation Krupp 180 caliber heavy guns were installed, and there were as many as 40 guns on both sides, all of which were 70 to 105 caliber Krupp rifled guns.

The result was indeed the case, the officers and men of the Taiping Army's naval division, who had just received these two warships last year and had trained in the Ming Navy, took these two ironclad ships as the main force and cooperated with the mobilization of more than 100 large and small warships to launch an attack on the Pukou Water Battalion of the Qing Dynasty, which was pierced in front of Tianjing.

The two ironclad ships were in front, bearing most of the firepower, and even braved the bombardment of local shore defense artillery to forcefully wipe out the Qing army's Yangtze River Naval Division, which had been unable to defeat in the past, in the harbor. After that, the Taiping army swept hundreds of water villages of all sizes along the Yangtze River, and completely controlled the control of the Yangtze River.

At this time, they began to launch the offensive of the Northern Expedition with peace of mind.

Wang Haiyang's 200,000 miscellaneous soldiers and horses, commanding more than a dozen princes, crossed the river from Taicang, first swept away the Qing army camp in Chongming County, then crossed the Yangtze River, landed at Tongzhou and Haimen at the same time, and successfully completed the landing task under the cover of naval guns, and then built a water camp and opened up a position to cross the river.

On the other hand, Yang Fuqing also led more than a dozen princes, led an army of 100,000 to cross the river from Wuhu and Tongling, entered the boundary of Wuwei Prefecture, and marched to Sanhe Town, where Bao Chao was seated.

The news of the Taiping Army's big move shocked the outside world, but it did not surprise Zhu Jinglun, because he had already known the movements of the Taiping Army, and he knew very well that the Taiping Army was going to go on a northern expedition sooner or later. Zhu Jinglun was concerned about how Zeng Guofan would deal with it at this time.

Zhu Jinglun has no doubt that Zeng Guofan, who has returned to Anqing for two years, must have firmly controlled the Hunan army again at this time, and he does not doubt Zeng Guofan's ability, and no one is qualified to doubt it. As long as Zeng Guofan is willing to use the power scheme, Zeng Guoquan's ability is completely insufficient.

Zhu Jinglun used to be strange, he remembered that Zeng Guofan died shortly after the Tianjin teaching case, but according to the current news, Zeng Guofan not only did not die, but his health was surprisingly good. I have to say that this person's fate has also been changed by himself.

Historically, Zeng Guofan, who was in charge of the Tianjin Teaching Case, was already the first hero in the world who had achieved fame in pacifying the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. After the Tianjin teaching case, he went to Jiangnan with a bad reputation to deal with the stabbing horse case, and the biggest suspect in the stabbing horse case was the Hunan Army Group. It can be said that under the double blow of the Tianjin teaching case and the stabbing horse case, Zeng Guofan died with regret.

But in this era, the Tianjin teaching case still happened, but there was no shadow of the stabbing horse case, and the party Ma Xinyi still honestly cooperated with Yuan Jiasan, the secretary of the Ministry of War, in Anhui to suppress the Twisted Army. As for the Taiping Army, not only was it not exterminated, but it also revived, and its momentum was flourishing.

The root is in the Taiping Army, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is not removed, Zeng Guofan has a cause in his heart that cannot be let go, and people's spiritual strength is often huge, especially for people like Zeng Guofan, he still has unfulfilled vows, which has affected his body and mind to a certain extent, so that he can recover from the blow of the Tianjin teaching case and devote himself to the cause of suppressing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Zeng Guofan did not die, which in itself was the biggest benefit of the Hunan army, and at this time, the Taiping army was on an all-out northern expedition, and Zhu Jinglun was not very optimistic about them.

"What do you think?"

He asked his dog-headed military advisor Fang Shan.

Fang Shan has been the Zhongshu Order of Zhongshu Province in recent years, and his main job is to give advice to Zhu Jinglun, which is regarded as the emperor's personal staff, and the emperor's orders are generally drafted by Zhongshu Province, and then reviewed by the Ministry of Disciples, and finally signed by Zhu Jinglun, and the Shangshu Province is responsible for implementation.

Since Zhu Jinglun is a rather assertive emperor, it is a bit arbitrary to say that it is not good, so Fang Shan's work is very easy, he basically does not have to give the emperor any ideas, the emperor's ideas are more correct than anyone else. So he was reduced to a staff member who offered personal advice.

But he's so happy, it's not good to be able to enjoy wealth without doing anything, he and Hurd, who likes to have nothing to do, are two people, and when it comes to being a man, this fortune teller is very open-minded.

"I think that Li Xiucheng is a little full, and if it is too full, it will overflow!"

Fang Shan's angle of looking at the problem made Zhu Jinglun couldn't help but be surprised, this fortune teller's perspective on the problem is sometimes really unique.

He did not analyze the strength of the Taiping Army and the Hunan Army, but started from the inside of the Taiping Army, he did not rely on any definite information, just relying on Li Xiucheng's way of doing things, he felt that there was a problem.

"I think there's some truth to what you say."

From the perspective of Westerners, they must think that Li Xiucheng's political methods this time can be called perfect, because Li Xiucheng transferred his two major political opponents, Wang Haiyang and Yang Fuqing, through this Northern Expedition, and completed the integration of Li Xiucheng's forces within the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which is even more important than the victory or defeat of the Northern Expedition.

But Li Xiucheng did it too perfectly, solved all the troubles at once, and from the perspective of Chinese wisdom, he did not leave the slightest way back, but would have problems.

If it was Zhu Jinglun in the past, he would never think so, but now Zhu Jinglun understands that Li Xiucheng seems to have solved all his political opponents at one time, but in fact, he has stimulated all the rebound forces at one time, and I am afraid that the backlash he encounters will be unprecedentedly large.