In the eyes of many people, it is very likely that Kangxi was worried that after seeing the battle between Anhui officials and the two Huai salt merchants, Kangxi was worried that Ma De would gather the party and reduce the arms and assistance of the governor of Ma De. However, Ma De knew very well that although these transferred officials were all his subordinates on the surface, most of them were people with their own "ideas" and would not be easily manipulated by others. For example, Shi Shilun, if you give Ma De 10,000 confidence, he is not confident that he can make this old man listen to him honestly; and Yuheng, although he also has some friendships, but the former Shuntianfu Yin has never been with anyone since Suo Etu finished playing, and will only be truly loyal to Kangxi; Lu Longqi don't talk about it, this is a Qing official, and as long as he is a Qing official these years, there is no need to say anything else!

In addition to these three high-status people, Liu Yingxia is the more obedient kind, and he may also become Ma De's loyal subordinate, but he was transferred to Guizhou; Although Zhang Kai and Li Liang also have the possibility of forming a party with him, but one of these two was transferred to be the imperial envoy of Jiangnan Province, and the other was the political envoy of Jiangsu.

And so many close officials were transferred away at once, while people suspected that Kangxi was cutting Ma De's arms, some people naturally thought that this was Kangxi paving the way for Ma De's future promotion to the governor of Jiangnan. However, these people had little interest in staring at Mader for a while. Because for more than a year in the next year, Ma De was still in charge of his Anhui governor, and there was no change. It's just that many local officials have more strength to work under him. Because, the examples of Zhang Kai, Li Scale, Liu Yingxia and others have fully illustrated one thing, that is, following Ma De to be promoted quickly, and he was promoted high.

This situation lasted until the forty-second year of Kangxi. There was a rule in the Qing Dynasty that local officials were generally not allowed to serve too long in the local area, so as not to become entrenched and become a force, and the term of office was generally six years, that is, when Kangxi was forty-two years old, there was only one year left before Ma De's term in Anhui was about to expire. At this time, when most people had not yet begun to think about how to deal with Ma De's imminent transfer or promotion, Kangxi finally ordered Ma De to be appointed as the governor of Jiangnan.

Without waiting for people to react to this, Kangxi issued a series of personnel appointments, and completed various personnel adjustments before everyone reacted.

First of all, there was no change in the four ministers of the upper study, Tong Guowei also served as the secretary of the military department, Ma Qi replaced him as the head of the internal affairs office, Gao Shiqi and Zhang Tingyu were the same scholars of Wenyuan Pavilion and the minister of the guard, Gao Shiqi was also the secretary of the Ministry of Rites, and Zhang Tingyu was the servant of the Ministry of Officials and was in charge of the daily affairs of the south study; In addition to these four giants, Li Guangdi's original position remained unchanged, and he still served as the governor of Zhili, the secretary of the ministry and the scholar; Chen Ting, the head of the household department, told the old man that Kangxi unexpectedly did not appoint a person from the court, but found an old minister Wu Jiamo, which greatly chilled the heart of Chen Xijia, the head of the household department, but this is not counted, Kangxi also reappointed a right attendant of the household You Mingtang, which further shrank Chen Xijia's power in the household department; In addition to these appointments, Alinga was promoted to the post of Minister of the Interior and Minister of the Parliament, and at the same time, he was reinstated to the post of Manchurian Commander with the Yellow Banner; In addition, the Shangshu of the Criminal Department is still Wang Yuyang, but in addition to the golden seal, there is another Shi Shilun by his side; The Ministry of Industry is still the secretary of Wang Hongxu; …… After completing the task of canonizing the crown prince of Joseon, he was appointed as the right deputy imperial envoy of the Metropolitan Procuratorate.

These appointments caused another round of excitement within the Qing court. However, the central government was in trouble, but there was not much fluctuation in the local area, and the matter of Chen Huang's appointment as the governor of the river was covered by the news of Ma De's promotion to the governor of Jiangnan, which did not attract too many people's attention.

In the past two years, the Northeast has also undergone a lot of changes.

Bai Jin is worthy of being a priest, completely different from those guys who sell dog meat on the head of a sheep in later generations. He was very "kind", and most of the people he found for Old Man Fei were indeed refugees. However, in front of Old Man Fei, these Westerners were still squeezed out of a lot of surplus value.

And the most useful of these is a kind of maroon fire.

Maroon, as the name suggests, is that the color of the fire yao is no longer black, but maroon. This kind of fire yao was made by the chemistry teacher Turner and several craftsmen under Old Man Fei. At that time, in order to increase the range of the artillery, Old Man Fei asked them to develop a slower fire Yao. So, after more than a year of hard work, they made brown charcoal instead of black charcoal by reducing the roasting temperature of the wood used to make Huoyao, and at the same time, reduced the proportion of sulfur in the Huoyao formula, and then, under the inducement of Fei Laotou, they used a simple hydraulic press made of the principle of connecting pipe to press Huoyao into high-density, single-hole or porous lotus-shaped Huoyao cakes, and then dried them at low temperature to make Huoyao. This kind of fire yao made Old Man Fei's hope of making a large long-range cannon a reality.

In addition to these, in the forty-second year of Kangxi, Old Man Fei's conspiracy against some potential enemies also began to take effect.

First of all, in North Korea.

Although the king of North Korea Li Zhuo asked the Qing court to canonize the son of the concubine as the crown prince, this time his seal was not just a formality in the Qing court as before, and Kangxi did not do what he wanted, but pointed out that "the old and young are orderly, and the etiquette cannot be abolished", did not agree to his request, and at the same time, without his consent, directly ordered to canonize Li Yun, the son of Zhang Xifei, as the crown prince of Joseon, which caused a lot of chaos in North Korea.

While the Korean monarchs and ministers were paying attention to the Qing court and the crown prince, Fei Laotou found some merchants in Korea as agents, dumped Mukden grain at the Korean grain merchants at a low price, and at the same time, bought the self-produced grain of the Korean people at a price a little higher than the parity. In this way, although he has lost money on the surface, he is eating away at the North Korean grain market step by step, and when the time comes, as long as he says a word, the whole country will be hungry.

The same conspiracy is underway in Japan.

However, in comparison, the "investment" made in Japan is much larger.

Because it's not just Old Man Fei who has the idea of playing Japan.

Old man Fei played with food, and Mo Jing played with textiles and other goods. After establishing his own textile factory, Mo Jing did not rush to open up the market in Kannai, but first set his sights on Japan. Moreover, while dumping all kinds of woolen textile supplies, she also pulled Jin merchants and old man Fei to sell luxury goods and daily necessities to Japan, and at the same time frantically looted all kinds of precious metals in Japan, gold, silver, and copper.

And her actions are also not her own, but also to find agents in Japan, and a few of them are still some privileged businessmen, who have a high status in Osaka. At this time, the situation in Japan is also greatly conducive to these actions of Mo Jing.

After so many years after the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate, and after the Shimabara Rebellion led by Amakusa Shiro decades ago, the shogunate's finances were extremely difficult, and the desertion of the samurai ronin was also very serious. A few years ago, during the reign of the four generations of shogun Iezuna, in order to solve these situations, under the pretext of rectifying the discipline of the feudal lords and banners, he sentenced 26 people to "change the situation", reduce the seal, and confiscate the money, saving 800,000 koku of grain. After Ietsuna went, the five generations of shogun Tsunayoshi who took over the throne was even more ruthless, confiscating the daimyo and Qimoto and other nobles 46 times, saving 1.61 million Shilu rice for the shogunate.

However, under their "arbitrary policy", many of the vassals who lost their lords had no means of living and had to be reduced to displaced ronins. Not only did Edo, where the shogunate was located, have had several successive anti-shoku incidents led by ronin, but also the troubles of the "rangers" (Hajimoto and Machino) in various parts of Edo Castle have also become a major headache for the shogunate.

In addition to dismissing officials and demoting them to save money and food, the fifth-generation general Tsunayoshi also adopted other policies. He dismissed the corrupt and autocratic elder Sakai Tadashi, cracked down on the power of the gate lords, successively appointed his close attendants Makino Narisada and Yanagisawa Yoshiho as side employees, rectified the shogunate institutions, formulated etiquette laws, and implemented the centralized power and autocracy of the shogun. In addition, because of his respect for Confucianism, Tsunayoshi also appointed Confucianists such as Kinoshita Shunan and Shengfu Zhu to praise local filial sons and women, and to recruit people from famous families since the Muromachi period to inherit the position of "high family", in an attempt to use Confucianism and red tape to correct the political shortcomings of the samurai. However, his reliance on the teachings, rituals, and ornaments of the Three Principles and Five Constants did not solve these political and economic problems, but on the contrary, the huge cost of formalized rituals made the shogunate's finances more difficult. In addition, Tsunayoshi was not only enthusiastic about Zhu Zixue, but also superstitious Buddhism and listened to the fools of monks. Since the monk said that his lack of children was the retribution for killing many people in his previous life, he must abstain from killing, especially because Tsunayoshi was born in the year of Xu, so he should take special care of the dog. As a result, Tsunayoshi issued the "Decree on the Protection of Animals", and the people were sentenced to death and exiled for killing and injuring dogs and other animals, and finally everyone did not dare to raise dogs. Not to mention, Tsunayoshi also taxed the common people and built a large number of kennels to house wild dogs, so that the number of kennels on the outskirts of Edo actually reached more than 40,000. So angry that the people drove Gangji as the "dog general" (dog general) at the bottom.

With so many problems, coupled with the corruption and extravagance of the shogunate, and the further serious financial imbalance, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had no choice but to appoint the "Kanjo Shogun" (official position) to reform the finances of Shigehide Hara, but this Shigehide was not a great talent, and he used his power and listened to the advice of privileged merchants to reduce the quality of the currency when it was minted, although the shogunate made a profit of 5 million taels, and had to make up for the finances for the time being. However, this led to a sharp drop in the price of the currency, causing prices to rise, causing the people to suffer and the finances of the shogunate to become even more difficult. As a result, Tsunayoshi had to raise taxes again and even reduce the amount of samurai in the name of "leviion". However, this practice was also limited, and the shogunate had to use tribute rice as a countervail, borrowing money from the merchants of Kyoto and Han. The retainers and samurai were more difficult, and the samurai relied more and more on side jobs to make a living.

In this way, from top to bottom, through the pressure of nobles and merchants at all levels, they were heavily pressed on the heads of peasants and urban commoners all over Japan. The lives of these people are becoming more and more difficult.

In Japan, this serious polarization between the upper and lower poles has made Mo Jing's cheap wool textiles also very popular, and various smuggling activities are also in full swing with the private support of many daimyo who have lost their incomes.

However, these are only "minor issues". The real big problem in Japan is in the north, Hokkaido.

Hokkaido was the center of Japan's agriculture and a major food production base in later generations. Since Matsumae Tsunesuke had a strong backer, according to Yu Zhong's instructions, he began to send people from other parts of Japan to recruit people to Hokkaido to open up wasteland, and also recruited samurai to serve in the Matsumae Domain. Because of his condition of providing a year's worth of food and seeds, as well as the corresponding land, as well as low taxes, a large number of poor Japanese people began to migrate north, ignoring the legend of the desolation of Ezo. At the same time, ronin, who had lost their status as samurai, or samurai who had no means to live in poverty, began to move towards Hokkaido. A year after this kind of thing was going on, Tsunesuke Matsumae sent some people or samurai from Honshu and other places back to the original place, and the Hokkaido incident was revealed, which made the "northward migration" more and more enthusiastic.

And after some time after the beginning of this matter, it was already noticed by the shogunate and local nobles. However, although it is doubtful why the Matsumae Domain suddenly had this capital, however, because at the beginning this situation was only a few, dozens of people moved north, which was not very serious, and it was able to slightly reduce the pressure on their own jurisdiction, so the shogunate and the daimyo in various places did not "make a big fuss", and although the situation was a little more serious, because the bribery was in place, it still did not arouse too many people's attention. However, by the forty-second year of Kangxi, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had already had to pay attention to this Matsumae domain.

When Tokugawa Ieyasu unified Japan, in order to limit the power of the daimyo outside the central government, he forced many daimyo to move to Edo, and paid tribute every year, and often transferred or deposed some daimyo for some reasons, just like the Asano family in the previous years, because of an unsuccessful child was uprooted. However, since the Matsumae Domain had always been a small remote domain and did not have much power, it did not carry out this order. However, in just over two years, a small feudal domain with less than 20,000 people under its jurisdiction turned into a large feudal domain with more than 100,000 people and more than 2,500 samurai and ronin, and the shogunate had to ask Tsunesuke Matsumae to "fulfill" this prohibition.

If it had been placed in the past, if Matsumae Hengsuke heard this order from the shogunate, he would definitely feel honored and grateful at the same time, but now it is different, and Matsumae Hengsuke's confidence at this time has been very hard.

In the face of Yanagisawa Yoshiho, a side employee sent by Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, the head of the Matsumae clan not only rejected the shogun's order, but also blasted out Hokkaido with the arrogant and arrogant Chincha who pointed at him as soon as he arrived on the ground and demanded it.

As a result, when the news reached Edo, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi was furious and ordered the elder Sakai Tadashiyo, who had been dismissed by him, to lead 5,000 troops, and at the same time ordered the Anto and Tsugaru domains near the Matsumae domain to send 10,000 troops each to suppress the rebellion in Hokkaido.

However, when Sakai Tadashi's army reached the territory of the Tsugaru Domain, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi received another order, which did not urge Sakai Tadashi, but halted his advance.

The reason is that Tokugawa Tsunayoshi received two letters.

Of these two letters, one is from the Lifan Yuan, which they called the Qing Kingdom. On the national letter, Ferdinand, the secretary of the Qing Imperial Domain, on the one hand, expressed his "long-standing admiration" for the shogun Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, and at the same time, he also expressed his desire to deepen his understanding with the Japanese shogunate and the people and establish a deeper level of exchanges; On the other hand, there is a subtle question about Japan's relationship with North Korea. In the letter, Ferdinand claimed that the Qing Dynasty, as the suzerain, found that Korea had been hostile to China for many years and had bad intentions, and that he had learned that Korea had tried to invade the Central Plains with Japanese forces in the past. Isn't the two countries a feud? …… And with this letter came an extremely rich and gorgeous gift, as well as a sharp sword.

The other letter was also from the Qing Dynasty and was written by Yu Zhong, the commander of the Manchurian Navy. The Admiral first expressed his "friendship" and then made it clear to Tokugawa Tsunayoshi that he had purchased a "small" piece of land within the Matsumae Domain's domain as a resting place for his army, and that, at Matsumae Tsunesuke's request, he asked the Qing court to grant Matsumae Tsunesuke the post of Hokkaido garrison. Although he did not seek Tokugawa Tsunyoshi's consent in advance, as a shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi had the stomach to "tolerate Honshu Island", and he must not mind this "trivial matter". In the same way, the letter was accompanied by a generous gift and a weapon of some symbolic significance.

It was these two letters that forced Tokugawa Tsunayoshi and his subordinates to urgently stop Sakai Tadashi's rebellious actions.

The entire upper echelons of the shogunate were nervous.

At the same time, the 5,000 troops of the Manchurian Naval Division stationed in Ishikari Bay also began to prepare to welcome the main force of the naval division from Vladivostok.

……