Zhu Cijing knew that peasant uprisings were the biggest problem in the late Ming Dynasty. Whether it was caused by natural disasters or man-made disasters, the final result was that Li Zicheng attacked the capital and Emperor Chongzhen was forced to commit suicide. He did not want to be the king of the country, so how should he deal with the endless peasant uprisings after endless peasant uprisings?

Is it obvious that using silver to provide disaster relief? This is obviously unrealistic. In the first year of Chongzheng, the severe drought in Sichuan alone in Shaanxi was 5 million taels. This is still a drop in the bucket and cannot solve the problem of hungry people. Later, Henan, Shanxi, Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces have severe droughts year after year, and 10 million taels a year is not enough!

The treasury now has only 30 million taels of silver left, so there is no need to rely on annual tax revenue. The salaries of officials and the food and wages of Liaodong have to be paid in every year! Therefore, it is definitely not feasible to use silver to provide disaster relief. If you have three years of relief, the Ming Dynasty will go bankrupt!

Perhaps some people think it’s enough to just go to suppress the enemy directly. The Ming Dynasty had an army. This method is also unrealistic. The Ming Dynasty had an army, and as long as it had money, it would not be a problem to recruit two million troops. But the key is that it was not money. The military expenditure of the 300,000 troops in Liaodong was 9 million taels a year. How many troops did the four provinces need to suppress the bandits?

Each province sends 10,000 to 20,000 to die. The rebels often go hundreds of thousands. Although they are all farmers, the treasury are basically farmers who put down their hoes, but they are just a little more equipped. So if you want to send a treasury, a province will send at least 100,000 troops, and the annual military expenditure of a 400,000 army is 12 million. It would be better to use silver to provide disaster relief directly.

Of course, the elite border troops could also be mobilized to suppress them. Zhu Youjian mobilized elite border troops at that time. As a result, the peasant uprising did not eliminate them, but instead allowed the cavalry of the Later Jin rushed into the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty. He fought on both sides, and both sides collapsed!

What should I do if there is no money for disaster relief and no money for military recruitment?

Zhu Cijiu had no choice but to ask for advice. He directly announced the situation in Shaanxi at the court meeting, and asked all officials to use their brains to write memorials. He then looked for it to see if there was a good solution.

The officials of the Ming Dynasty were all from the imperial examinations, so they couldn’t do anything else, so they could write memorials at will. So the next day, Zhu Cijing received thousands of memorials!

Of course, one person could not stand the memorials. Sun Chengzong was not here, so he had to call the other three prime ministers of the cabinet and Zhu Youjian, the king of Xin, to the imperial study room. Let's look for them together to see if they could find some useful memorials.

In the end, everyone found it, but their opinions were not unified.

Han Kuang, the Grand Secretary of Wuying Palace and Minister of Personnel, prefers to use silver to provide disaster relief. He has found memorials in this regard. Zhu Cijiu naturally disagrees with this method. Just kidding, it is OK for one year or two, but it has been like this for the next ten years. Where did so much money come from?

The Grand Secretary of Wenyuan Pavilion and the Minister of Revenue, Daozong, tended to mobilize troops to encircle and suppress, so there was no need to consider this.

King Zhu Youjian was quite strange, so he took a fancy to a memorial, which was written by Yang He, the former right assistant minister of the Ministry of War. The general meaning was that the rise of "thieves" "is always due to the extreme of famine, and the people were living in poverty." It is advisable to "recruit and pacify as the main and pursue and suppress the people as the auxiliary."

Xu Guangqi was even more amazing and didn't like a memorial because he had an idea: he meant to produce flintlock rifles with all his strength! Why? Because the rebel army had no armor or cavalry, this flintlock rifle with a range of 200 steps was invincible in front of those farmers. As long as there was sufficient ammunition, it would only take ten thousand people to kill 10,000 people for a quarter or two!

Zhu Cijiu is so depressed. Xu Guangqi’s suggestion is good. A province sends 10,000 musketeers is enough. He can’t afford to support hundreds of thousands of troops, but tens of thousands of troops can still afford to support him. But the main problem is that he has no plans to mass produce this kind of first-generation flintlock rifle at all!

There is a more advanced new flintlock rifle behind it, with a range of 500 meters. Killing cavalry is like cutting wheat. A flintlock rifle with a range of 300 meters will take less than 100 meters to penetrate the armor. If it encounters the Later Jin cavalry, it can cause one or two waves of damage. What's the use?

Now after Xu Guangqi said this, he was a little nervous. It is not enough to fight cavalry, but fighting the rebel army is a magical tool. Besides, does the Later Jin Dynasty still have to attack the city in the end? If you can only use infantry to attack the city, this kind of flintlock rifle to attack the infantry that attack the city is also very cruel. At worst, the imperial guards will all use new flintlock rifles, and these old ones will be used for the border troops to defend the city.

Thinking of this, Zhu Cijing no longer hesitated. He announced on the spot that he would use Xu Guangqi's opinion to produce flintlock rifles with all his strength. Of course, it also takes time to produce flintlock rifles. Yang He's suggestion was to delay time, which was quite appropriate, and he adopted it together.

The final result of the discussion was to appoint Yang He as the governor of Shaanxi, give him one million taels of silver, and let him hold the rebels in Shaanxi. At the same time, the Ministry of Works ordered the Ministry of Works to produce flintlock rifles with a minimum of 30,000 in a year!

............

There is a saying that ideals are full and reality is skinny. This method seems good, but the problem arises as soon as it is implemented.

There was no problem with Yang He. He took the money and went to Shaanxi to take office. He promised to be able to comfort the farmers.

The problem lies with the Ministry of Works, and they can't build so many flintlock rifles in a short period of time!

Why? The Xinjun factory is about to be completed, and the place is definitely big enough; there is no shortage of pig iron, charcoal, and coal. This is not short of the site or materials. Why can't we make so many flintlock guns?

The problem is simple: lack of people.

Bi Maokang calculated that a flintlock rifle had about fifty parts of size and size, of which the barrels, medicine chambers, screws, etc. all need to be processed on the machine tool. In this way, it takes 30,000 per year to produce 60 simple lathes and 20 simple drilling machines. A machine tool has three shifts a day, two people in one shift, and the machine tool operators alone require nearly five hundred people.

In addition, sand casting requires 500 people, manual processing requires about 1,000 people, and final assembly and commissioning requires about 100 people. In this way, the Xinjun factory will have to recruit at least 2,000 people to ensure an annual output of 30,000 flintlock rifles.

Someone wants to ask, is the Ming Dynasty still short of people? There are millions of people in the capital alone!

If it is modern, it will be fine. Not to mention millions of people, more than two thousand people can be found in ten thousand. But this was the Ming Dynasty. Few people from the Ming Dynasty learned modern mathematics and physics. If you ask someone to open the machine tool and process parts, you must understand the drawings. If you can’t even understand the drawings, how to process the drawings?

So, let alone thousands of people, even in the Ministry of Works, less than ten people can understand the drawings of flintlock rifles!

This problem is not difficult for Zhu Cijiu. If there are no suitable talents, you can train yourself. He has long wanted to promote Western learning. This time it was an opportunity. He simply asked Xu Guangqi to set up four schools in the southeast, northwest and north of the capital. Each school recruited 1,000 students, and then selected the best candidates after training for a few months of basic knowledge. He selected two thousand people from them and recruited military factories to teach on-site. In this way, the staff would be fully equipped in about three months.

It seems that opening a school is not very difficult. The place is ready-made. When the eunuch party was dealt with, I don’t know how many of the mansions and courtyards of corrupt officials were sealed. Just a few were enough to take out. As for this teacher, just let Xu Guangqi and Bi Maokang work hard for a while.
Chapter completed!