At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Jin merchants were a great political and economic force, which had a heavy impact on the rise and fall of the country, and the Zhang family in Puzhou was the head of the Jin merchants!

Zhang Siwei, the secretary of the Ministry of Rites and a scholar of Wuyingdian University who succeeded Zhang Juzheng in the Wanli Dynasty, was from the Zhang family in Puzhou! And Zhang Siwei's maternal uncle was the head of another Jin merchant family, Wang Chonggu, who was the secretary of the military department and the governor of Xuanda at that time!

Zhang and Wang are both big families that are also officials and businessmen, although Zhang Siwei and Wang Chonggu are long gone, but the family has been passed down for decades, and the protégés and former officials are all over the court and the opposition, and the background is really extraordinary.

What's especially fatal is that the political spokesperson of the Jin merchants in the court is the Donglin Party! Judging from the fact that the entire Donglin Party of the Chongzhen Dynasty has been hysterically opposing the taxation of merchants and giving the emperor the big hat of "competing with the people for profit" at every turn, it is clear that their close relationship with the Jin merchants is not questioned.

And Wu Wei came from later generations, he clearly knew what the so-called Jin merchants were at this time, they were the economic backing of the Later Jin regime, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, no matter how the front line fought and died, the trade between them and Jianlu never stopped, including several great famines in Jianlu, which relied on Jin merchants to transport grain to tide over the difficulties. Huang Taiji led the army into the customs several times to plunder, and most of the gold and silver treasures he stole were handed over to Jin merchants to sell the stolen goods.

It is precisely because of the existence of the Jin merchants that the economic blockade of Jianyu by the Ming Dynasty has become a virtual reality, invisibly like cutting off an arm, and the Jin merchants have made a lot of money in the process.

The first thing the Manchus did when they entered the customs was to summon the eight merchants of Shanxi to enter Beijing and give them the status of imperial merchants. In the change of dynasty, the interests of the Jin merchants were not only not harmed in the slightest, but they became more and more prosperous because of their dependence on the new regime!

If the border trade dominated by the Jin merchants played a role in appeasing Mongolia and stabilizing the frontier before the rise of Jianyu, then at this time in the late Ming Dynasty, the Jin merchants had completely transformed into a monster who disregarded the interests of the country and the nation for the sake of profit!

Even if the merchant is a profit-seeking animal, the behavior of the Jin merchant is too bottomless.

Wu Wei was very aware of the danger of the Jin merchants, and a very important reason for him to establish "Rishengchang" was to deal with them!

Although the status of this steward in front of him is not high, he is indeed a member of the Jinshang Group, and he is now standing in front of Wu Wei like this!

I know who the owner of the grain is. Wu Wei calmed down instead. At this time, he is fledgling, and he still needs to continue to cultivate obscurity, and it is definitely not the time to openly confront the Jin Shang interest group. It really aroused their vigilance and went all out to deal with themselves. I'm afraid that Yang He is also helpless!

It's a long story. At that time, in Wu Wei's mind, it was a flash of lightning. He immediately became excited, with a smile on his face, and bowed his hand to the steward, "It's rude." It turns out that this brother Tai is a member of the Zhang family in Puzhou, and the peaches and plums of the Zhangjia family in Puzhou are all over the world, and he has been admired for a long time. ”

This steward is obviously a first-class Hakka slave from a wealthy family, of course he can't claim to be a subordinate official in front of him, but it is not easy to hold up, so Wu Wei had to use the ordinary tone of the people. Moreover, although the Zhang family is also an official and a businessman, after all, the people mostly regard businessmen as cheap business, and Wu Wei does not mention anything such as "wealth and power" so as not to commit taboos, only saying that its peach and plum are all over the world, which is a metaphor for its scholarly family and a deep officialdom background.

Sure enough, when the steward saw that Wu Wei was so polite, and saw that Wang Baihu was familiar with him, he looked a little kinder at the moment, but made a gesture to Wu Wei, and said: "So that the official can know that it is not that the villain is anxious, but because the villain is ordered by the head of the family this time to transport grain to the border of the north, and the military situation is heavy, and there is no difference between cuò!" ”

Since the abolition of the opening of the Sino-French Customs, the military grain reserves at the border passes have been greatly reduced, and it is common for businessmen to transport grain from other places to the border gates, but this remark has another meaning in Wu Wei's ears.

Wu Wei had a close relationship with the Shaanxi generals under Yang He some time ago, and he was almost regarded as his own person, and he didn't hide anything from him after he was drunk, so he knew all kinds of shortcomings in the border army at this time. Since the opening of the Chinese method changed to the folding method, the Shangtun was abolished, and part of the military rations were solved by the local military tun on the spot, and part of the garrison was purchased by themselves with the discounted silver. If it was before the Wanli Dynasty, it was indeed profitable to undertake the army's food supply and transportation, and if it wasn't for a wealthy businessman with a background like the Zhang family, it would never be in his hands.

However, with the deterioration of the financial situation of the imperial court, the corruption of the army has become deeper, and arrears of wages have become a common thing. Under these circumstances, most of the border troops relied on military cantonments or private trade for self-sufficiency, and supplying the army with food became a matter of loss and no profit.

With the Zhang family's power background, how could they do such a thankless thing?

Moreover, now the Mongols and Jianguo in the north have suffered more disasters than in the interior, and the Mongols are also poor, and the only valuable cattle, sheep and horses have suffered heavy losses in the white plague.

The Jianyu is different, although the drought suffered from Jianyu from last year to this year is heavier than that in the interior, almost thousands of miles of red land, there is no harvest, and it has reached the point of cannibalism, but unlike the Mongols, Jianyu has money!

In the Nurhachi era, Jianlu began to brutally kill and plunder millions of Liaodong Han people, and accumulated a lot of wealth from it, and they could buy grain with silver!

At this time, the price of grain in Shengjing City has reached eight taels of silver!

There are more than ten times the windfall profits that are not earned to supply food to the border army, and the Zhang family in Puzhou is not a benevolent person!

Combined with modern people's understanding of the behavior of Jin merchants, it is no longer known how this batch of grain went!

In fact, at the beginning of the second year of Chongzhen, Jianyu was about to be unable to hold on, and there were even many incidents of defection of Later Jin generals to the Ming Dynasty.

In this situation, if someone adds a fire to Jianyu, even if he can't plow the court and sweep the holes, at least there is no problem in recapturing Liaodong.

Helplessly, the Jin merchant group in the Ming Dynasty ate inside and outside, and transfused blood for Jianyu, which not only relieved it, but also had the spare strength to hold the Eastern Mongolian tribes hostage and invade the south together, and finally caused a catastrophe of their own changes, not only the lives around the Beijing Division, but also caused the evil consequences of the loss of the elite soldiers and strong generals in Liaodong of the Ming Dynasty, and lost the strategic advantages accumulated by Sun Chengzong and Yuan Chonghuan since the apocalypse years!

Of course, the Jinshang Group has made money, but this money is stained with the blood of the Ming army and civilians!

Wu Wei finally understood where the faint uneasiness came from when he began to hear that the owner of the goods was a Jin merchant!

The destination of this batch of grain is definitely not the Daming border pass, its destination is Liaodong, which is the life-saving food for Jianyu! (To be continued......)