For the brocade guards of the Ming Dynasty, there are many misunderstandings about both modern and ancient people. [No pop-ups]

Most people regard Jinyiwei as a powerful member of the secret service. But in fact, except for some high-level Jinyi guards in the north and south of the capital, who are really performing spy work such as monitoring ministers, whether it is the Jinyi Wei Thousand Households stationed in the local big cities, or most of the ordinary Jinyi guards in the north and south of the capital, they are doing very ordinary work.

As far as most of the Jinyi guards in Beijing are concerned, in fact, most of them, like the patrols of the soldiers and horses of the five cities and the officials in the yamen, perform public security tasks. To say that they are spies is better to say that they are a combination of the police and the chengguan of the Ming Dynasty.

In May 1630 in the city of Beijing, Liu Changsheng, a hundred-household in the Qianhu Office of Jinyi Weinan City, had just finished drinking a bowl of gruel for breakfast, and one of his subordinates who was responsible for liaison with the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division hurriedly ran to his house to find him.

Although he was very unhappy with having to deal with business in the morning, Liu Changsheng, who was more kind and even a little weak, did not anger his subordinates, but listened to his report very patiently.

It turned out that the famous "Labra" Song Gouzi, who lived at the entrance of Dongjiekou, had committed trouble again. He ran to the front of a grain store on East Street and threw four or five bricks on his head, trying to blackmail the grain store, and was sued by the grain store's shopkeeper to the Wucheng Terracotta Division.

The people of the Five Cities Terracotta Division are all veterans of dealing with the affairs on the streets of Jingshi. They naturally knew that behind this grain store in Nancheng was Empress Zhou's father, Jiading Bo Zhou Kui. Under normal circumstances, a "bluff" like Song Gouzi, who didn't want to be blind to the eyes of a dog, dared to blackmail the emperor's relatives, and the people of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division had already arrested him in order to curry favor with the emperor.

However, it was precisely because the people of the Five Cities Terracotta Division were extremely familiar with the things on the streets of Jingshi that they would not easily offend Song Gouzi in order to please the imperial family.

After all, this Song dog is not an ordinary person.

Song Gouzi is in his Chinese New Year's Eve this year, there is no one else outside the house, and his parents and brothers are dead. Like most of the people in the slums of Beijing's southern city, he was a bachelor who fed his family without starving.

But don't look at this Song Gouzi as a complete bachelor, he has no relatives left, but he has a lot of friends in Nancheng. As a military surplus from a military household in Beijing, Song Gouzi relied on his two arms and horizontal meat to help the military families in Nancheng pack up their grievances. In addition to some of the food and supplies he obtained from the merchants by blackmail, he was also keen to help the poor families who were also from military families.

For more than ten years, although Song Gouzi's "elite" is a hooligan bluff with a headache for the government in his identity, but among the military households in Nancheng and even the military households in the entire Beijing city, the nickname of "Song Gongming" and his huge prestige among the military households and the people in the military households are firmly shrouded in Song Gouzi's head.

At the beginning, Song Gouzi committed an accident and would be cleaned up by the people of the Five Cities Terracotta Division. But when Song Gouzi became "Song Gongming in Timely Rain", and with a wave of his hand, there were hundreds of military households and young and strong people, not to mention the ordinary soldiers of the Five Cities Terracotta Division, even the deputy commander of the Nancheng Terracotta Division, a high-ranking official who had a grade in the eyes of the people, had to be polite to Song Gouzi.

You must know that in terms of strength, the Nancheng Soldiers and Horses Division, who annoyed Song Gouzi and Song Gouzi's brothers, only had dozens of formal soldiers, and they were really not necessarily the young opponents of those hundreds or thousands of military households with martial arts and strength.

Therefore, even if Song Gouzi blackmailed Emperor Chongzhen's father-in-law, Empress Zhou, as the property of Jiading Bo Zhou Kui, who was a serious relative of the Eight Hundred Emperors, the people of the Nancheng Terracotta Division did not dare to dispose of Song Gouzi casually.

After all, if things really get into trouble, the first ones who will be unlucky will be the gang of soldiers and horses in Nancheng.

Therefore, with the support of the famous dog-headed military master Kong Yimu of the Nancheng Terracotta Division, this tricky matter was transferred to the Jinyi Wei Nancheng Thousand Households. And the unlucky Liu Changsheng was designated by his boss to deal with this matter.

Hearing what was going on, Liu Changsheng's irritability even hurt his head.

Speaking of which, the relationship between Song Gouzi and Liu Changsheng is not ordinary. Don't look at Liu Changsheng as a hundred households of Jinyi Wei, it seems that his identity is very bright. However, Liu Changsheng, who is kind and weak by nature, is not as good at using his power to run his family business as other Jinyi Wei officials.

Liu Changsheng, who is poor and can't even marry his wife, lives next door to Song Gouzi's house. The two of them grew up together since childhood. When Liu Changsheng's wife died, Liu Changsheng, who had no money, still completed the funeral with the help of Song Gouzi.

In this case, not to mention that Song Gouzi offended the emperor's relatives, that is, Song Gouzi openly rebelled, and Liu Changsheng only had the reason to help cover up, not the reason to help outsiders bully his brothers.

Looking at the dilapidated house where the wind was blowing in from all sides, and thinking about the grain tank that had bottomed out, Liu Changsheng sighed.

He thought in his heart: "Anyway, this bullshit brocade cloth guard has nothing to do." It's a big deal, it's not bad, and I'll be dismissed from my official position by my boss. ”

But after thinking about it again, Liu Changsheng still felt that this matter could not be dealt with so negatively. After all, even if you don't deal with this problem, there will be other brocade guards to pick up, and in the end, it is your own brother who is unlucky.

Thinking of this, Liu Changsheng got up and walked towards Song Gouzi's house next door.

The people living here in Nancheng are basically military households in Beijing. In fact, by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Beijing camp, which claimed to be hundreds of thousands of people, was an empty shelf.

Because of the "occupation of the army" spearheaded by the emperor, most of the soldiers in the Beijing camp worked in the homes of the noble officials in the city of Beijing, as well as working in various projects.

As the object of empty salary, these hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were originally the garrison of the ruling center of the Ming Dynasty naturally had no food to take. They either make some leftovers from the homes of the noble officials they serve to make a living, or they work in the capital as free laborers to make a living.

Under such circumstances, the southern city of Beijing, which is a gathering area for military families in Beijing, has become the most thorough gathering area for the poor. In later words, in China, this is the shantytown of the city of Beijing. In foreign countries, it is the slum of the city.

What shanty towns and slums look like, everyone can imagine.

Narrow streets, squalid sanitation, and dilapidated buildings make up the image of the southern city of the center of the Ming Dynasty's rule.

Song Gouzi's family is even worse than Liu Changsheng's family. Song Gouzi's house next door to Liu Changsheng's house doesn't even have a door. Standing on the street, Liu Changsheng could see from the open door of the cave a few young men dressed in tattered clothes similar to beggars, but with relatively strong bodies, who were sitting around Song Gouzi who was sitting on a stone with a rag wrapped around his head and saying something.

These people are all Liu Changsheng's neighbors, one of them has a particularly loud voice, and Liu Changsheng still knows him. He is nominally a soldier in the Shenji Battalion, but in fact he is a baked cake seller.

At this time, Shen Linzi, who was in the courtyard with his back to the door and didn't see Liu Changsheng on the street outside the door, was still arguing with a loud voice:

"I am guarding the backyard of the grain store every day, and I have already figured out the road of the grain store. At dawn, a boat passes through the water gate from outside the city and is loaded into a truck and transported to the backyard of the grain store. There were four or five people in the grain cart, who were our brothers from the Shenji Battalion. They all told me the truth. Three truckloads of grain every five days, all of them are real white grain, this time Boss Song also figured out the manpower of the grain store, let's rob him tomorrow."

Song Gouzi's eyes are very good. He had already seen Liu Changsheng outside the door. Although everyone knows Liu Changsheng's personality, Liu Changsheng's identity as a brocade guard is still quite fearful. kicked Shen Linzi hard, Song Gouzi strode out of the courtyard gate, and pulled Liu Changsheng in from outside the door.

Song Gouzi's big hands were like iron tongs, and Liu Changsheng's arms hurt when he pinched them.

Only then did Shen Linzi see Liu Changsheng. Thinking of Liu Changsheng's identity, Shen Linzi, who had also had a few lives in his hands and had seen a lot of blood, suddenly became fierce in his eyes. However, seeing that Song Gouzi shook his head, Shen Linzi did not immediately make a move.

After all, Liu Changsheng is a person from Jinyiwei. He was keenly aware of the mood changes of several young people in the courtyard. It's just that Liu Changsheng didn't think of his own safety at this time, he grabbed Song Gouzi and said to Song Gouzi in an anxious tone:

"My brother Song, you are all crazy and mixed up on the street, don't you know that the grain store is the property of Zhou Guozhang's family?"

"You are making trouble at the gate of the grain store, and you have already registered with the Nancheng Terracotta Division and the Nancheng Thousand Households, and the Terracotta Division has pushed the matter on the head of our Jinyi Guard, and now the top is asking me to clean you up."

"I'm still thinking about how to help you fool things over, I feel that you guys are crazy, and you guys are still here to rob other people's food and you don't want to die."

Unlike the few young people who had become more nervous with expressions on their faces after listening to Liu Changsheng's words, Song Gouzi, who was the meat of the hob, sighed, and first silently pulled Liu Changsheng to sit down on the stone in the courtyard. Then he said to Liu Changsheng:

"Brother Liu is also a person who lives in Nancheng. Although you are one of the hundred households in the brocade guard, your life is similar to ours. Let me ask you, in this green season, do you still have food in Lao Liu's house? How much is a pound of food on the market today, do you know? ”

Liu Changsheng listened to Song Gouzi's question, and his originally anxious expression suddenly fell, and a frustrated expression appeared on his face.

Even if he wasn't Jinyiwei, as a citizen of Beijing, how could he not know how high the current price of food was?

The market price of unhulled millet per stone in Jingshi is now 25 taels to 30 taels of silver. That is to say, if you calculate carefully, this catty of white rice will definitely exceed the price of 70 to 80 yuan.

Not to mention others, even Liu Changsheng himself can't afford to buy such food at all. The bowl of gruel he had just eaten this morning was the last bit of food he had borrowed from his colleagues in the Thousand Households.

Seeing the change in Liu Changsheng's expression, both Song Gouzi and the few young people who were planning to rob the big thing with Song Gouzi were relieved.

Obviously, Liu Changsheng, who was also from a poor family like everyone else, figured out the problem. Unlike singles like Liu Changsheng and Song Gouzi, most of the military families in Nancheng are dragged with their families. In this green and yellow month of April and May, it is common imagination that every family is hungry and has no food.

In the past, when food prices were not so outrageous, most families could still find ways to borrow some food from other places. Now there is no food at all.

Because of the increasingly serious natural disasters, the agricultural production in the south of the Yangtze River has been completely turned into cash crops, especially the fact that the Baath Party, which did not exist in this time and space, has occupied the grain-producing areas of the Hanjiang Plain in the central part of Huguang and Guangzhou, and has implemented a thorough grain control policy of "only entering but not leaving." The grain supply in the areas north of the Yangtze River that was already relatively backward in agricultural production and had a relatively large population was seriously insufficient.

Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Zhili, Shandong, and northeastern Liaoning, which had been occupied by the Later Jin Jurchens, and southwestern Liaoning, which was occupied by warlords, were all plunged into a serious food crisis.

The huge plunder obtained by the Later Jin Jurchens in the first entry into the customs could not even buy enough grain from the Shanxi traitor merchant families. The price of grain in eastern Liaoning has broken through the 5021 stone mark. In Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, and other areas that are currently under the rule of the peasant rebels, there is no longer any grain circulating in the market. And even in Shandong and Zhili, even if they rely on the Grand Canal, the average grain price is more than 3021 stone.

Because the city of Beijing was the capital of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court used a certain amount of administrative power to suppress grain prices. However, even under the price of 25 taels to 30 taels of stone, the major grain banks with deep backgrounds in Beijing still maintain a state of "reluctance to sell". There is no food in the market at all.

After all, according to the current situation, it is a person who knows that the price of food will definitely continue to rise.

Some historians in later generations believe that the economy of the Ming Dynasty after Zhang Juzheng's reform was in a state of thorough marketization. They believe that the main reason for the extinction of the Ming Dynasty was that the Ming Dynasty government lost control of grain under the conditions of this market economy, which led to the extinction of the dynasty.

To a certain extent, there is still a certain degree of rationality in the view that the superstructure of feudalism could not adapt to the capitalist social relations of production, and that the conservative and rigid Ming Dynasty government, which was kidnapped by interest groups, lost control of the market-oriented national economy and eventually perished.

It's just that these researchers have forgotten a question, that is, in the process of the demise of the Ming Dynasty, what kind of tragic process the Ming people who could not adapt to this market-oriented situation went through.

Does Song Gouzi care about the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division and Jinyiwei?

As an ordinary urban commoner, Song Gouzi actually cares.

However, as a "rogue" proletarian who had to take care of the hundreds of brothers and their families around him, and as a civilian leader who clearly understood the current existential crisis of all the small people, Song Gouzi did not care about the state apparatus of the Ming Dynasty, which seemed to be very powerful and powerful.

"Brother Liu, it's not that I want to rob the grain of Zhou Guozhang's family, but the brothers' families have been hungry for several days, and the brothers of several families have already died. When our business was done, the brothers had food in their homes. I'll go with you to the brocade guard to receive the sin."

"Brother Liu, you and I grew up together, you can believe me once"

Looking at Song Gouzi's determined eyes, Liu Changsheng of the Jinyi Guard had to nod with difficulty.

What Liu Changsheng didn't know was that what he did was about to change history