The Yan family sadly completed Yan Keng's funeral, and on the day of his burial, not to mention the prefect of Ningbo Prefecture, even the three top officials of the three divisions in Hangzhou came to participate.

Although Yan Keng is dead, the Yan family has not decayed, not to mention anything else, just the severity of entering the cabinet is worthy of them to burn incense.

However, when they came, they rode quickly, and when they went, they were escorted by soldiers from nearby guards before they dared to set off.

No one expected that in the same month that Yan Keng died, there was the biggest chaos in Jiangnan since the end of the Yuan Dynasty.

The reason is that the imperial court is short of money.

In the past two years, there was a drought in Shaanxi, and there was a flood in the two Gyeonggi and Central Plains areas, and it has not stopped since then.

In the four years of orthodoxy, there was a great drought in Zhili, Shaanxi, Henan, and Shanxi.

In the past five years, the floods in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Jiangnan, which has been giving blood to the world, have become the object of needing to be fed, "revitalizing Zhejiang's hunger" and "exempting Su, Song, Chang, Zhen, Jia, and Hu from taxes and grain".

In six years, there was a famine in Huguang, and at the same time, there was a locust plague in Zhili and a drought in Shaanxi.

In seven years, there was a famine in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, and Shandong provinces, resulting in hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

In nine years, Huguang, Guizhou, Henan, and Shaanxi famine again.

The Ming Dynasty seems to have been cursed, and after the end of the Ming Dynasty, natural disasters continued, and the orthodox year was just a portrayal of the entire Ming Dynasty.

And every catastrophe is followed by famine and displacement.

Fortunately when Yan Keng was there before, he sent capable officials, sorted out responsibilities, quickly distributed relief food, and pacified the people and resettled the displaced people, so that although there were hundreds of thousands of displaced people, there was no chaos like the end of the Ming Dynasty.

But there is a price to do so, the deficit in the treasury is not a joke, although Yan Keng purged the officials and encouraged production, but no matter how much money you have, you can't stand such a consumption, and when there is another famine in the ninth year, Zhu Qizhen plans to learn from his teacher to provide disaster relief, and as soon as he gives an order, the household officials will open the treasury -

There was no silver left, and the emperor's treasury was basically exhausted.

I can't help it, I want to increase my income.

Zhu Qizhen set his sights on the mine, which was the main source of domestic money after the cessation of going to the West.

This mine mainly refers to silver mines, and at that time, in addition to a few government-run mines controlled by the imperial court, there were many private mines among the people.

In October of the ninth year of orthodoxy, the imperial court officially ordered the acceptance of private mines as official ownership, and those who opened mines privately were sentenced to death and their families were exiled.

Mine, since the Han Wu Emperor salt and iron official camp, all dynasties have basically collected these things for national use, and developed them by the imperial court.

However, it does not mean that all mines are not allowed to be developed by the private sector, such as coal mines and the like, which are allowed, and the Yan family has two on hand, but silver mines, logically speaking, must be monopolized by the imperial court.

The problem is that before Zhu Qizhen officially gave the order, the Ming Dynasty really didn't care much about this, although Zhu Yuanzhang forbade such behavior, but Hong Wu, he understands everything, and later as long as you pay taxes, you don't care about opening a mine privately.

Until Zhu Qizhen.

The severe punishment for opening mines without permission has also led many people to the road of no return.

After all, it's all death anyway, so it's better to give it a go!

In the area of Xianxialing and Tongtang Mountain at the junction of Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, Ye Zongliu, who privately opened Baofengchang and Shaotingkeng silver mines, led the miners to formally rebel, and received the help of many miners!

And unlike other miners who were forced to raise troops, the area around Xianxialing was originally a forbidden area forbidden by the government, and the miners took advantage of the dangerous terrain here to fight against the government for two years while mining and accumulated rich experience.

Ye Zongliu led the rebels to kill Fujian Senator Zhu Yuan, broke the Ming army of 1,000 people, gathered thousands of miners, crisscrossed the junction of the three provinces, broke several cities, and was invincible!

The Ming Dynasty dispatched troops to suppress it several times, but because Ye Zongliu and his people wandered around and lived in no fixed place, it was in vain!

The time lasted until the thirteenth year of orthodoxy, and more than three years have passed, the Ming army still has few gains, and Ye Zongliu is getting stronger and stronger, he broke through several government-run mines, gathered tens of thousands of people, and made a mess of the three southeastern provinces!

The already well-off imperial court was even worse.

The only good thing is that due to Yan Keng's new policy a few years ago, the peasants generally live and work in peace and contentment, coupled with the timely disaster relief, the displaced people were also settled in time, and they were not coerced by Ye Zongliu to cause a catastrophe.

But even so, the Ming Dynasty couldn't stand it anymore, the southeast used troops for several years, spent countless money and food, and the border gates have begun to be in arrears!

And in the twelfth year of orthodoxy, Ye Zongliu broke through the political peace and established himself as the "king"! This is already completely beyond the tolerance limit of the Ming Dynasty!

They must be eradicated completely!

Zhu Qizhen raised his eyes and looked around, and selected a person-

Exactly grim!

At this time, his three-year filial piety period had also expired.

Poor Chen Guogong had just set off to return to Beijing, and he was forced to embark on the road to the south.

In May of the thirteenth year of orthodoxy, in the capacity of Chen Guogong, the cabinet group assistant and the secretary of the military department, he commanded the soldiers of Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces to encircle and suppress Ye Zongliu.

The grim action was swift, and he immediately returned to Ningbo, and used it as a base camp to gather many generals from the three provinces.

During this time, he began to look through the files of the Ming army's battles with the rebels to understand the miners' army.

But this dossier made him frown.

The rebels don't have much to say, in fact, they are just a set of rogues, fight and run, and their own combat effectiveness is like that.

The real problem is that the hearts of the Ming generals are not aligned.

At this time, the combat effectiveness of the Ming army of the Southern Guard had declined seriously, but it had not completely become a peasant, and its combat effectiveness was at least stronger than that of the miners.

The real reason for repeated suppression is that the generals of the Ming army generally hold the idea of getting by, and it is really difficult for them to run around, so they simply drove the rebels out of the area to which they belonged and no longer cared about them, so that the rebels wandered everywhere, and the more people fought, the stronger the combat effectiveness, and finally a catastrophe.

But among these people, he still found a clear stream.

Shaxian County, Fujian Province once reported a great victory, and the rebels ambushed thousands of corpses and fled north in embarrassment, and never dared to enter Shaxian County again.

But there are only some county governors or something in the merit book, and there is no general who commands the army.

It's very clear that this is robbed of credit.

After the arrival of the generals in Fujian, he called the generals of Yanping Prefecture, which belonged to Shaxian County, for interrogation. And in the face of Chen Guogong, that person naturally did not dare to hide it.

"What's his name?"

"Deng Maoqi."

An eagle flapped its wings on the long river of history and set off a monstrous wave.

Bulldozing King Deng Maoqi and King Ye Zongliu, two famous leaders of the rebel army in the middle of the Ming Dynasty who once subverted the southeast, embarked on different paths after Yan Ling came to this world.

(End of chapter)