Thank you for the great rewards from book friends Tengfei Xiaozhe and Hu Baruiyi!

...................

Feng Yunshan saw that Wu Chongyao's face was also very calm, and he knew that his previous strong approach was the right one. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

For Wu Chongyao, a person who received Confucian education from his bones, but appeared as a comprador businessman since he was a child, he can only be controlled by suppressing it strongly first, and then giving some sweetness.

Feng Yunshan has a clear understanding of this famous figure in history. The reason why the Wu family donated so many silver taels to the Manchu Qing was nothing more than to spend money to eliminate the disaster, so as not to make the Manchu government too jealous. At the same time, they guaranteed their own business privileges, which was the early government and business.

At the same time, Wu Chongyao, like his ancestors, wanted to try his best to get rid of his status as a businessman and gain fame.

But it is obvious that the Manchu Qing Dynasty will not let a rich and powerful family appear, even if Wu Chongyao has taken the exam several times, he can't even win the promotion. In the end, I had to spend a huge amount of money to donate a platform, and I didn't have a real job.

Having mastered this, Feng Yunshan had the bottom in his heart.

At that moment, he smiled affectionately at Wu Chongyao: "Chongyao, come, come and sit next to this king, it is convenient to talk closer." ”

Wu Chongyao was depressed for a while, he kept asking me to kneel and reply just now, why didn't he feel inconvenient? But with a smile on his face, he ran over and sat next to Zuo Zongtang.

"Chongyao, Ji Gao told you, right?" Feng Yunshan smiled, "This king has an idea, he is going to use a lot of money to set up a foreign trade company, which you can understand as a foreign bank!" ”

"Holy King, Chongyao knows what the foreigners are talking about." Wu Chongyao said.

"Oh, yes. This king forgot that you have a good relationship with foreigners, and you know more about the Western set. Feng Yunshan smiled self-deprecatingly, and then said: "The name of the company is 'Nanyang Company', this king himself is the chairman, you are the general manager, and the daily business operation is taken care of, and this king will send a supervisor to the company to assist you." ”

"Don't underestimate this general manager! Let's put it this way, within the Holy Kingdom, this position is much higher than the original Qing Demon gave you a four-rank Daoist. Moreover, the king will have a deadline of six months with you, and if you do this job well, he may appoint you as an official official of the Holy Kingdom. ”

"Thank you, Holy King! Chongyao must do his best for the Holy King, and he will never give up! Hearing that he had the opportunity to become an official official, Wu Chongyao felt that his chest was beating hard, and he hurriedly knelt aside to thank him.

It seems that even if Wu Chongyao has more contact with foreigners, he still can't escape the influence of traditional concepts, and it is estimated that he dreams of getting rid of his identity as a businessman and becoming a real official, thinking that this is the matter of honoring his ancestors.

In fact, Wu Chongyao in history is like this. During the Second Opium War, even if the puppet government of the British was established by Bai Gui, the governor of Guangdong, Wu Chongyao also joined in it in order to become an official, but he still had no substantive official position until his death, and after his death, he was "lucky to have died a big traitor" by the local people.

Feng Yunshan couldn't help but laugh secretly. As long as you have this mind, you won't have to worry about not being able to control you.

Feng Yunshan asked Zuo Zongtang to find Xu Jiahe and the Pan family, who also said that they had defected to the Holy Kingdom.

Then, Feng Yunshan asked Wu Chongyao about their Wu family and the Thirteen Lines.

It turned out that Wu Chongyao's grandfather, Wu Guoying, was just a hawker selling sugarcane in the city of Guangzhou, and later worked as a partner for Pan Zhencheng Pan's family firm, who came from FJ together. After Pan Zhencheng founded Tongfu Commercial Bank and became one of the thirteen merchants in Guangzhou, Wu Guoying was only a bookkeeper in the commercial bank. He began to be involved in the management of assets, trade and investment.

At this time, it happened to encounter the famous foreign trade policy of "one port of trade" of Qianlong in the Manchu Dynasty, and the Thirteen Banks of Guangzhou became the only legal semi-official "special foreign trade zone" of the Manchu Qing Dynasty at that time, monopolizing the trade with foreigners at sea. All transactions with foreigners must be carried out through the thirteen lines.

At this time, the increase in the volume of foreign trade at the port of Guangzhou overwhelmed the merchants, and the Manchu court decided to absorb new merchants to join the Thirteen Merchants.

Wu Guoying seized this opportunity!

He used the wealth and connections he had accumulated in the Pan family and the Fu Trading Company, especially the personal friendship he had established with many foreigners, and with the strong support of the British East India Company, he founded Jardine Matheson, which directly acted as an agent for the business of foreign ships and collected customs duties on behalf of the customs.

After that, after two generations, after Wu Bingjian took the helm of Jardine Matheson, Jardine Matheson developed into the first of the thirteen lines represented by the four families of Pan, Wu, Lu and Ye. The Wu family has also become the richest family.

Later, Wu Bingjian, who not only has rich business experience, but also has advanced business philosophy, used business methods such as backdoor eggs to quickly accumulate huge wealth in trade with foreigners.

The Wu family not only made a fortune, but also had a close relationship with foreigners, and became good personal friends with a group of Western businessmen.

Wu Bingjian was also the largest creditor of the British East India Company, and even the East India Company sometimes had poor capital turnover, and even borrowed money from the Wu family. By the time Wu Chongyao arrived, he became the majority shareholder of the American company Qichang because of his close relationship with American businessmen.

At the same time, Wu Jia's enwei was used at the same time, controlling the other thirteen merchants and becoming a creditor of many merchants.

Feng Yunshan saw Wu Chongyao talking in generalities, and he also let himself know a lot. History will record a lot of this. However, what he is most concerned about is the rumored collusion between the Wu family and British and American opium dealers.

He asked implicitly, and Wu Chongyao said angrily: "Holy King, this is all slander from the Manchu Qing government, let the Wu family carry the black cauldron!" However, my father also overestimated the weight of our Wu family at that time, which led to mistakes again and again. ”

Under his slightly excited and angry narration, Feng Yunshan heard an unknowable scene of history.

It turned out that the Thirteen Lines was not a simple trading firm, it also shouldered the responsibility of customs.

However, the smuggling of opium by foreign businessmen in Guangzhou was rampant, and as the leaders of the Thirteen Lines, Wu Bingjian and Wu Chongyao were naturally inseparable. In fact, despite the huge profits that can be made from opium smuggling, the merchants of the Thirteen Lines are afraid of it.

The Wu family's Jardine has always been a serious business. However, in order to make huge profits, the foreign merchants guaranteed by the Wu family often carried 0 opium chips and engaged in opium trade with illegal traders outside the Lingding Ocean.

This includes the largest opium dealer, the British, and Wu Bingjian's godson, John, the owner of the American Qichang Foreign Company? Forbes.

According to the "merchant guarantee system" at that time, once it was verified that a foreign merchant had smuggled opium, the merchant who guaranteed it and the entire 13 banks would be held liable, and a fine of 50 times the value of the opium would generally be confiscated. For more than ten years, the Wu family was implicated by foreign businessmen who smuggled opium, and fined millions of taels of silver.

Lin Zexu, who served as the minister of the Imperial Mission, as soon as he arrived in Guangzhou, directly demanded that the opium dealers voluntarily hand over the opium. Unwillingly, Wu Bingjian personally came forward to persuade him, and in the end he was only willing to hand over 37 boxes of opium and 0 chips.

Helplessly, the Wu family paid for it again, and asked him to give another 1,000 boxes, and made up 1,037 boxes and handed them over to Lin Zexu.

However, Lin Zexu was very dissatisfied, thinking that the Wu family and foreigners had deceived Qincha, and directly ordered Wu Chongyao to be removed from his post and arrested and imprisoned.

He also took off Wu Bingjian and Pan Zhengwei, another merchant Maoguan, and put them on chains, escorted them to the Baoshun Foreign Pavilion, urged them to enter the city to be arraigned, and threatened that if they refused to go, Wu Bingjian and Pan Zhengwei would be executed.

However, completely ignoring the lives and deaths of these two old friends, he still refused to go.

In the face of the arrogance of the British, Lin Zexu was furious and deeply disappointed with Wu Bingjian and the Thirteen Elements, so he no longer negotiated with foreign merchants through the Wu family, and ordered to directly block the merchant house and cut off the supply of food and water.

The father and son of the Wu family, who were released from prison on bail, saw that many other foreigners who had nothing to do with opium had suffered unjustified disasters, and they sympathized with them, so they sent someone to secretly send food and water to the foreigners. As a result, although he won the gratitude of many foreigners, he was regarded as a traitor and a lackey by the Manchu government and the common people.

The British were forced to surrender 0 opium, and Lin Zexu presided over the Humen cigarette sale that shocked the world.

The following year, the Sino-British Opium War broke out. Wu Bingjian and his son led the merchants of the Thirteen Lines to actively raise funds to build fortresses, build warships, and make cannons. Even so, the Qing government was defeated on all fronts.

Curiously, the British army did not storm the city of Guangzhou.

Of course, this is not because the city of Guangzhou is impregnable. In the end, Wu Chongyao relied on the relationship between the Wu family and the British army, and the two sides signed an agreement, and the Thirteen Lines handed over 6 million yuan in compensation within a week instead of the Qing court, and the British army retreated beyond the Humen Fort.

But this time for the national compensation, the Manchu court and the common people were not grateful to the Wu family, but even more criticized, the Wu family's "traitor" hat has been nailed to the top of the head until today.

After the defeat of the Opium War, the Treaty of Nanjing stipulated that the Manchus compensated Britain with 21 million silver dollars, equivalent to 14.7 million taels of silver, while the Manchu state had less than 7 million taels of silver in its inventory at this time.

As a result, the Thirteen Banks of Guangzhou and the Wu family naturally became the targets of the Qing government, and the Wu family was forced to donate one million taels again. Moreover, the Thirteen Merchants lost their monopoly on foreign trade.

However, the scheming Wu Bingjian had already planned to transfer half of his assets overseas.

Hearing this, Feng Yunshan smiled.

The strength of the Wu family is far beyond his imagination. However, now that the entire Wu family is under his control, and Wu Chongyao is willing to cooperate with him, the stronger the Wu family, the more beneficial it will be to himself.

Feng Yunshan only said to Wu Chongyao: "Peace of mind with this king, in the future, maybe the position of the governor of Liangguang or the governor of Luzon will be yours." ”

Wu Chongyao was like thunder! The shock and longing in his heart made him wander into the world. It wasn't until a long time later that he remembered the meaning of the Holy King's words, and he was even more amazed by the Holy King's ambition: the Governor of Luzon.

If you are really successful, you will not only have the merit of being a dragon, but you are also afraid that you will be famous in history! Wu Chongyao, who was forty-two years old, couldn't help but have hot palms, and even his breathing became short.

Zuo Zongtang led the people in charge of the Xu family and the Pan family to come. The Xu family is Xu Xiangguang's brother Xu Xianggui, and the Pan family is Pan Wentao.

The two of them already knew what was going on, and they knew in their hearts that this was the opportunity that the Holy King had given their family. Jointly set up the Nanyang Company, naturally got on the warship of the Taiping Holy Kingdom, and if you want to come down, you can't do it.

However, they also have no capital to refuse. What's more, it may also be an opportunity to change the identity of the businessman.

At that moment, in the lobby of the prefect's yamen, the documents for the establishment of the company were drafted.

Feng Yunshan represented the Taiping Shengguo, Wu Chongyao represented the Wu family, Xu Xianggui represented the Xu family, and Pan Wentao represented the Pan family.