The Spring Festival is approaching, the whole winter has not had a snow in the capital, shrouded in the flying sand covering the sun in the bone-chilling wind, Huang Taiji personally led 60,000 Houjin army to defeat the Guanning army of 120,000 soldiers and besiege Jinzhou The bad news is that the capital and the entire Beizhili region are terrified, and the wind is loud.

"Has Zhao Huaiyi come back?" Emperor Chongzhen in the imperial study saw Wang Chengen coming quietly, and immediately threw down the brush in his hand and asked eagerly.

Wang Chengen looked at the haggard emperor sadly, and comforted him in a harmonious voice: "Don't worry, the holy lord has come back two waves quickly, and General Zhu, who is inspecting the sailors on Liugong Island to collect grain and grass, has also seen it, and there is no bad news......"

"It is estimated that Huaiyi has left Tongzhou at this moment and rushed back, either tonight or tomorrow morning, and he will definitely be able to present the details and General Zhu's self-defense."

Emperor Chongzhen stood up slowly, rubbing his cold hands while walking around the dragon case, his pale face full of anxiety and displeasure:

"Cheng'en, tell me, I issued three orders in a row urging Liaodong to send troops to rescue Jinzhou, but Zhu Daolin cowered motionless on the lonely island in Weihai on the grounds that the grain and grass had not arrived and there was a lack of ships, which is unprecedented!"

"Is it because he didn't get my praise for leading the Baoshan Water Division to defeat the Dutch who had been endangered for many years and occupy the entire Yingzhou Island, so he had a different heart for me?"

Wang Chengen's heart was shocked, and he hurriedly stepped forward to support the emperor, walked to the heating charcoal basin where the flames were slow, and whispered comfort.

"The saint must not blame General Zhu Daolin at this fateful time, in the eyes of the slave, General Zhu will never have a different heart, at least we haven't seen it now."

Otherwise, he would not have led nearly 10,000 sailors to fight in the south and north for several months, opening up territory for the Holy Lord and the Ming Dynasty. It occupied the entire Yingzhou, strongly supported the Fujian Navy Division to completely defeat the foreign enemy, completely exterminated the pirates and pirates along the southeast coast for many years, and also easily solved the problem of survival of tens of thousands of displaced people in southern Lunan and Huaibei, which were severely affected by drought. ”

"I think that the reason why General Zhu Daolin did not obey the call of the saint and immediately led troops to rescue Liaodong is estimated to be as he reported in his compromise. The months of continuous naval campaigns have exhausted the physical strength of the officers and men of the navy, and they have used up the hoarded grain, grass and military resources, otherwise General Zhu would never have shrunk on the tiny island of Liugong and done nothing. ”

Emperor Chongzhen quietly breathed a sigh of relief, but he still didn't give up: "Hmph! In his opinion, occupying the entire Yingzhou for me is undoubtedly a great cause to expand the territory, but because he has not been recognized by the Manchu Dynasty and the civil and military, he has not been rewarded by me. He couldn't add officials to himself and those subordinates, so he was not happy! ”

"This guy is okay with everything else, but his official addiction is too big, otherwise he wouldn't have begged me to promote him three times and twice, since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, I don't know if there is such a thick-skinned military general before, but I have never seen it."

Wang Chengen showed a knowing smile: "General Zhu is not short of money, but he is a little lustful." The official addiction is also a little bigger, hehe! ”

But in the eyes of the slave. General Zhu would not have disregarded the overall situation because the imperial court had slandered his merits and not been promoted, otherwise he would not have sent a detailed report to the Holy Lord every ten days and a half months to report in detail on what he had done and thoughts, and he would not have spent huge sums of money again and again to continuously purchase grain and materials from Jiangnan and transport them to Phi Dao, thousands of miles away. As a result, not a single of the 20,000 Dongjiang New Army troops stationed on Phi Dao and the east bank of the Yalu River has been starved or frozen. ”

"As far as the slave maid knows, General Zhu has quietly transferred the shares of Bofu Qianzhuang, and all the silver taels obtained will be used for the construction of warships and the purchase of food and materials, and for equipment and training of the 8,000 recruits recruited from the victims of Lunan in the past few months."

Perhaps, as General Zhu Daolin stated in the recital, it will take some days to train as a new soldier. Raise enough food and grass. ”

"Huh? Bofu Money is the first money in the world! He Zhu Daolin was willing to transfer lucrative shares? ”

Emperor Chongzhen was very surprised, the wealth of the Bofu Money Village, which had opened the semicolon all over the Ming Dynasty, had always been the object of his jealousy, and he knew that Wang Chengen, the favored minister in front of him, also had a stake in it, and he could get tens of thousands of taels of silver dividends every month.

The emperor's exclamation made Wang Chengen feel a little weak, he lowered his head, supported the emperor, and continued to pace: "General Zhu's transfer of Bofu Qianzhuang's shares is very secretive, if it weren't for the well-informed Master Cao telling the slave maid in the idle chat a few days ago, the slave and maid probably wouldn't have been able to know." ”

"Master Cao thinks that I'm afraid that General Zhu can't turn around, after all, continuous conquests are extremely costly, and water warfare is very different from land warfare, it costs at least 80,000 taels of silver to build a new warship of 2,000 materials, and if it is a new warship of 5,000 materials, it will have to be doubled."

"Over the years, in order to reorganize the Jiangnan Naval Division, General Zhu has been constantly expanding the shipyard and constantly building more than 5,000 large and small sea ships, but until now he has not reached 80 large and small sea ships, and the slave maid and Master Cao and several experts in the East Factory have carefully calculated that if General Zhu wants to reach the hundred large and small warships and fifty large cargo ships for sea transportation that he said to the saint, he still needs to throw in at least 10 million taels of silver."

Emperor Chongzhen gasped: "This ...... What a bottomless pit! ”

"Who's to say it isn't? General Zhu has continuously invested huge sums of money in the construction of sea ships, but the purpose is to open up shipping for the Holy Lord to open up shipping for our Ming Dynasty, so as to replace the Cao Yun that spends huge taxes every year and fattens countless moths but has no achievements, and it is inevitable to offend countless people in the government and the opposition. ”

"Of course, the saint has foreseen this, but General Zhu did not hesitate, exhausted his mental and financial resources, not to mention, and also attracted verbal criticism and conspiracy from all over the south of the Yangtze River, but he never saw him cry bitter, and the slaves and maids still admired him very much in this regard."

Even Master Cao and Zhang Yixian, who was most wary of General Zhu, admired this, and after drinking, he sighed and said: It would be nice if I had one more general like General Zhu in the Ming Dynasty."

Wang Chengen sighed after speaking, so much so that he subconsciously stopped.

Emperor Chongzhen nodded slightly, stood for a moment, and sighed faintly: "From this point of view, Zhu Daolin is still the lonely minister who was loyal to me!" ”

"However, the courtiers greatly depreciated his exploits in expanding the territory and occupying Yingzhou, believing that dispatching tens of thousands of sailors and soldiers and spending hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to occupy an overseas desert island would be of no benefit to my Ming Dynasty and would not be eligible for commendation."

"I think about it carefully, there is still some truth, although Yingzhou Island is about the size of two upper-class counties, but to continue to enrich immigrants and build the paradise and paradise that Zhu Aiqing said, it will never be possible in ten or eight years, so I didn't reward him after weighing it repeatedly."

"Alas, I guess he feels sad and sad in this way, so he will rarely shirk what I have given him to do." (To be continued.) )