This year's summer in Beijing is exceptionally hot, and it has come to the time of the first watch in the evening, but the heat has not subsided. The gates of the city in Beijing have long been closed, and there are soldiers standing in the streets and alleys, always vigilant.

In the dark and dead alleys, the husband carried a lantern, knocked on the wooden pole, and shouted slowly and listlessly, "The weather is dry, watch out for the candles!" As the shadow slowly moved forward, the sound of bangzi gradually dissipated in the night sky.

There is also silence above the city of Beijing, with a lantern every short distance.

Although the Qing troops withdrew north in February after plundering Shandong, and withdrew from Daqingshan to Liaodong in early March, the Jingshi was finally safe and martial law was lifted. However, the impact of the Tatars' entry into the Kou Pass from last winter to the end of this spring is too great.

Houjin Tatar entered the customs for half a year, penetrated more than 2,000 miles, and captured one prefecture, three prefectures, fifty-five counties, and two passes. Killed the two governors of the Ming Dynasty, and more than 100 civil and military officials above the garrison.

It even captured more than 460,000 people, plundered more than 4,000 taels of gold and nearly a million taels of silver.

Unprecedented calamities and losses, after this statistic came out, shocked and stung everyone.

The Ming Dynasty has become the target of the Houjin Tartars who can be bullied at any time. Come if you want, grab if you want, and leave if you want to go.

Although it has been two months since the Tartars retreated to Liaodong after being plundered, the inside and outside of the Beijing division are still in shock. Since Chongzhen, the Tartars have often been in the gates, becoming more and more frequent, and the killings caused have become greater and greater. The people of Jingshi have also become frightened birds, and they don't know when the Tartars will come again, so they can only worry about it every day.

Since the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, in the past 12 years, the Qing soldiers have entered the customs four times, and three times they have approached the city of Beijing.

Therefore, even if the Tartars have withdrawn from the gates, the city is patrolled by soldiers and horses every day, and it is forbidden to travel at night.

The half-year-long entry of the Tartars has caused a large number of refugees to pour into Beijing, and a large number of refugees from the surrounding areas have poured in, as many as hundreds of thousands, and displaced refugees with their families can be seen everywhere.

At night, the twenty-eight-year-old Emperor Chongzhen stayed overnight in the palace of the most favored Tian Concubine.

"Ahh Chongzhen woke up with a scream.

"Your Majesty, what's wrong?" Concubine Tian was awakened and sat up in her cloak.

Under the lamp, the young emperor looked haggard and pale. Wrinkles are shown at the corners of the eyes, and even the eye sockets are darkened.

He hadn't slept a single night's sleep in months.

He was worried that he couldn't sleep when the Tartars were looting in the pass, and when the Tartars were gone, he couldn't sleep either.

Especially these days, he always has a dream, a strange dream.

He always dreamed that an old fairy wrote a word in the palm of his hand, and a word was there.

After waking up from the dream, he also asked the ministers of the DPRK and China to help them interpret the dream.

The Manchu civil and military forces all claimed praise, saying that this was a sign of peace for thieves. Chongzhen didn't know how they saw it, anyway, he himself didn't feel that this was a sign of thieves. It has only been less than two months since the Tartars withdrew from the Guanwai, and many of the thieves who had been defeated in the Central Plains here have revived in the blink of an eye.

Zhang Xianzhong Gucheng rebelled again, and the 'Cao Cao' Luo Rucai and others who were originally recruited also followed and reversed, and now Zhang Thief and Luo Thief are equal to the convergence of Huguang Junzhou, seeing that the spark is about to burn again.

"Xiong Wencan mistook the country and lost me!" Prosecutor General Zhu You sighed.

Unable to sleep that night, he simply got up in his clothes and began to review the recitals from all over the place. I work diligently every day, but I can't finish reading these twists and turns, either there is a shortage of pay here, or there are thieves there.

Before dawn, the five drums went up.

At the court meeting, Chongzhen issued several holy decrees in succession.

With the merit of arresting spies, the eunuchs Wang Zhixin, Cao Huachun, and Wang Chengen of Yindong Factory have hundreds of households. At the same time, Zhang Rong, the eunuch of the ceremonial eunuch, supervised the nine gates, and forbade the eunuchs of the noon gate and the end gate to approach the courtiers.

There are too many ministers like Yuan Chonghuan and Xiong Wencan who keep saying that they can destroy the thieves, and he also believes too much, and he is always let down in the end. In the end, he felt that the officials in the palace were more reliable.

The four eunuchs stepped forward to thank him.

All the ministers in the court only shook their heads secretly, and after taking the throne, they knocked down the eunuch Wei Zhongxian, and severely punished His Majesty the Emperor who attacked the eunuchs, and recently it seems that they have begun to reuse those eunuchs again. Nowadays, there are a lot of discussions in the court, saying that the children of eunuchs have been repeatedly sealed, and the eunuchs have been used to supervise the army, and the ministers have become famous and powerful.

Although the emperor said that eunuchs were forbidden to marry courtiers, could they be forbidden? If this continues, the eunuch party will sit big again.

Wang Huachun and others were overjoyed, although the eunuchs could not have children, they could still marry wives and take concubines, and even adopt their sons, so they also liked the hereditary grace of grace.

However, among the four people who had just been enshrined together, Wang Chengen suddenly cried on the Golden Palace, attracting a shocked gaze.

His crying stunned the emperor and his ministers, why?

Of the four eunuchs who were enshrined today, Wang Chengen's grade is actually not high, he is the current eunuch of Sili Bingbi, the governor of Dongchang, and the subordinate of Cao Huachun, the governor of Jingying Rongzheng. However, because Wang Chengen almost single-handedly brought up Emperor Chongzhen, he was also very trusted by the emperor in this dynasty, and he was only able to be awarded the title today.

Chongzhen also felt strange, what are you crying about.

"The old slave asks His Majesty to forgive the minister's capital crime before he dares to say it." Wang Chengen said.

"You are not guilty, but it is okay to say."

Wang Chengen then said, "Your Majesty, the old slave thought of the emperor's previous dream, it was a bad omen." ”

"How?"

"Your Majesty, that dream is a warning from the gods, saying that the Ming Dynasty will lose most of it. Because this word is half of the word "big" and half of the word "Ming", the gods want to tell the emperor that the Ming Dynasty will be flawed, and the thief will have an opportunity. ”

Chongzhen gasped and was startled. The dream had been haunting him before, and although the ministers said that it meant something good and a sign of peace, he always felt that the explanation was too far-fetched and the situation was too bad. Now Wang Chengen, who is his closest confidant, made him believe this explanation all of a sudden, which is very reasonable and in line with the current situation.

Could it be that Daming really wants to lose half of the country?

He remembered that since he ascended the throne, not only has the Jianyu not been weakened, but has become more and more powerful, and he thought of the situation that there are more and more thieves in various parts of the Central Plains, and his face has become more and more pale.

Chongzhen asked the important ministers of the palace, what are the countermeasures to resolve it?

The ministers discussed a lot, and finally Yang Sichang, a scholar of the Ministry of Rites and a scholar of the Eastern Pavilion, a ginseng machine, and an important minister of the court who was still in charge of the military affairs, and a minister close to the emperor who was in power for a while, proposed that the most powerful prime minister-type figure in the court today proposed to the emperor that the current situation should be attributed to the fact that although there are many soldiers but not fine, he put forward a proposal to train the border soldiers.

He suggested that the imperial court train the elite soldiers of each town.

"The three towns of Xuanfu, Datong and Shanxi have 178,800 soldiers; The three general soldiers each trained 10,000, the governor trained 30,000, 20,000 stationed in Huailai, 10,000 stationed in Yanghe, and the east and west responded to the training. ”

"The five towns of Yansui, Ningxia, Gansu, Guyuan and Lintao have 155,700 soldiers; Each of the five general soldiers trained 10,000, the governor trained 30,000, 20,000 were stationed in Guyuan, 10,000 were stationed in Yan'an, and the east and west were coordinated. ”

"Liaodong and Jizhen have 240,000 soldiers; The five general soldiers each trained 10,000, the governor trained 50,000, the outside from Jinzhou, the inside to Juyong, the east and the west responded, and the rest of the town, supervisor, governor and the following training. ”

"The governor of Tongzhou and Changping ruled the two servants, set up a governor of Baoding, and the soldiers of Hejifu, Shandong, and Hebei were 157,000 strange; The four general soldiers each trained 20,000, the governor trained 30,000, from Changping in the north to Hebei, and the police responded to the warning, and the governor was given the following training. ”

According to his plan, the total number of training exercises nationwide is more than 730,000. If, according to the plan, these more than 730,000 soldiers have been trained and become elite soldiers, even if only half of them have been trained, then there is nothing to be afraid of the thieves.

However, it is not so easy to train more than 700,000 soldiers and horses, first of all, you have to have money. The officials of the household department roughly calculated that to support this plan, at least ten million taels of silver would be needed. In the end, I bargained and cut the part.

"Levy an additional 7.3 million taels of training to the world." On average, one soldier is trained to support ten taels of silver.

Some ministers objected, saying that in the last year of Wanli, the imperial court Liaodong used troops, and had added nine cents of silver per mu, and the whole country had added 5.2 million taels, and in the third year of Chongzhen, three cents per mu were levied, and a total of one cent and two cents per mu were levied, collectively referred to as Liaoyu.

Then Chongzhen ten years, and Yang Sichang's proposal, the world according to the mu to increase grain **, each stone into eight dollars of silver, a total of more than 280,000 taels, called the salary.

Now, in the name of having no military spending, they are going to pay an additional 7.3 million taels of salaries, which has already increased by more than 16.7 million taels, more than double the annual income. If this continues, the people are afraid that they will not be able to bear it.

However, Yang Sichang retorted that the additional levy of three salaries is based on acres of land, those who have land are levied more, those who have no land are levied less, and the rich will pay more money, but it has little impact on ordinary people, and the three salaries and one mu of land are only levied more than one cent of silver, less than two silver silver, and one mu of land is only four liters of grain.

But except for the emperor, everyone knew that Yang Sichang was deceiving ghosts, and most of those levies were finally transferred from the landlords and rich gentry to the ordinary Shengdou Xiaomin. Even the officials from all over the country will take advantage of this opportunity to wantonly fish and meat in the village, all kinds of fire consumption, etc., and finally the people will have to bear a very heavy additional burden.

But the emperor wholeheartedly supported Yang Sichang, and Yang Sichang is now extremely favored, who vetoed this decision, and finally passed the decision to levy an additional 7.3 million training salary.

After passing this resolution, the emperor gave Yang Sichang Shangfang the sword and asked him to go to the Central Plains to supervise the thieves.

At this time, Yang Dezheng, the deputy commander-in-chief, made a statement and offered a strategy to pacify the thief. He believes that the reason why thieves are difficult to calm down is because they are haunting and moving. Therefore, if you want to eliminate the thieves, the key is to strengthen the local armed forces. Originally, there were garrisons in the local guards, and later they organized and trained local young and strong soldiers for the people, but the local guards were already rotten and unbearable, and the local machine soldiers could not be used earlier.

Therefore, he suggested that cultivation should be practiced in all parts of the world.

Specifically, it is the government to go to the general judgment and set up a training position, which is equivalent to the garrison of the official army.

The state cut the judges, the county cut the main book, and added the post of the general manager, which is equivalent to the general rank.

The training preparation and training general are subordinate to the prefect, prefecture, and county, and are specifically responsible for training the militia; The task of the militia is to defend the land and not to be transferred elsewhere. and set the amount of 1,000 militia for each province, 700 for the prefecture, and 500 for the county.

As a matter of fact, this plan is the original training of the machine troops in various localities, and this time it has been reorganized and trained, and in addition, it has also specially added training preparations and training generals, which can be regarded as a step up of attention.

Yang Sichang also agreed with this plan, and Chongzhen nodded and agreed, asking the various ministries to draw up specific strategies, and then let all localities implement them and train the township soldiers.

"As long as there are brave and resourceful people, regardless of their background, they can be appointed as the general manager of the state and county!" In order to quell the thieves as soon as possible, Chongzhen had to relax the conditions for the new selection of the general practitioner at this time.

There are more than 300 prefectures and more than 1,000 counties in the world, and if they are really organized, they will also be hundreds of thousands of militiamen.

"Each prefecture is prepared, and the grade is judged according to the original, which is the sixth grade. The general practice of each state, according to the grade of the original judge, is from the seventh grade. The county practice general, according to the original main book grade, added one level, from the eighth grade. ”