Imperial Master of the Ming Dynasty

PS: [Important reminder (there is no charge for this content)] Chapters 316 to 356 are about the rectification of officialdom and the suppression of rebellions in Jiangnan. They do not contain any theoretical knowledge. They are all practical content. If you are not interested, you can jump directly to Chapter 366. "Class" will contain theoretical knowledge content from now on.

Imperial Palace, Fengtian Hall.

Along the way, Jiang Xinghuo clearly felt that the continuous heavy rains had made the already low-lying Miyagi City even more embarrassed in terms of drainage problems.

Worst of all, groundwater keeps leaking out.

The drainage pipes had completely failed. The palace maids and eunuchs carried buckets and braved the heavy rain to clean up the smelly water, but their efforts were in vain.

The Miyagi Castle was built on the filled-in Yanque Lake. Although methods such as driving wooden piles, paving boulders, and tamping lime soil were used to strengthen the foundation, more than thirty years have passed and the foundation is still sinking over time. , and now it has been raining heavily for several days, causing waterlogging in the palace.

Ever since, the three main halls that were padded up seemed to have become isolated islands in the ocean.

Several eunuchs and young eunuchs from the inner court were standing under the eaves, waiting for the emperor's summons. They didn't know what was going to happen this time.

"Master Imperial Master!"

"Um."

Jiang Xinghuo took the lead indifferently and walked through the corridor directly to the main hall with steady steps.

Just arrived at the entrance of Fengtian Hall.

"Drag that bitch out and behead her!"

The high-pitched voice of the eunuch sounded, causing several senior officials standing in the corridor to shrink their necks in fear, thinking to themselves, who has provoked the emperor again?

The heads of Jing Qing and Mei Yin were still carried on long poles and hung on the top of Hongwumen City. They had been soaked by the rain in the past few days.

"Okay, get out of here!"

The panicked palace maids came out, and the eunuch serving Emperor Yongle in the palace gently closed the door. The senior eunuchs in the corridor were notified, and they knew that the interview plan was cancelled, and they also walked away backwards.

After a while.

"Squeak~" The palace door was slowly pushed open, and a man in a red dragon robe walked out. His brows were furrowed and there was a heavy cloud of sadness on his face. It was Zhu Di.

"National Division?"

Zhu Di was seeing Jiang Xinghuo with his hands in his sleeves, waiting for him.

"What's wrong with your majesty? You're so angry." Jiang Xinghuo asked, looking down at the tips of his boots. The roads were so wet these days that he couldn't wear the cloth shoes made by his aunt.

"It's not a matter of the Songjiang Prefectures!"

Zhu Di rubbed his left molar, also raised his hands, and looked at the heavy rain outside with Jiang Xinghuo, and said while watching.

"Control floods, provide disaster relief, and quell chaos. They can't do anything well. They're a bunch of insects!"

After that, Zhu Di handed Jiang Xinghuo several memorials, which were disaster reports from Changzhou Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, Songjiang Prefecture, Jiaxing Prefecture, Huzhou Prefecture and other prefectures along the Taihu Lake Circle.

Jiang Xinghuo browsed through it hurriedly.

In general, Jiaxing Prefecture and Huzhou Prefecture, the two prefectures south of Taihu Lake, suffered relatively little damage, while Changzhou Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, and Songjiang Prefecture, which are sandwiched between the Yangtze River and Taihu Lake, were more serious. Especially Songjiang Mansion was the hardest hit.

This is easy to understand. Heavy rains have caused the water level of the Yangtze River to skyrocket, and the lack of dredging of the tributaries has caused flooding and submerged farmland. It has also caused the expansion and overflow of many marshes in Taihu Lake and Jiangnan, and the surrounding farmland has suffered.

Jiang Xinghuo smiled and said, "I'm afraid it's not that I can't do it well, but that I don't want to do it."

Zhu Di glanced at Jiang Xinghuo out of the corner of his eye without missing a trace. His anger just now was all fake, and he was just waiting for Jiang Xinghuo's words.

Zhu Di's principle of employing people has always been this, use them to death if they are useful.

A few days ago, when the Imperial Preceptor successfully prayed for rain, public opinion suddenly changed, and the courtiers were severely slapped in the face. At that time, some people used the Northern Song Dynasty Imperial Preceptor Lin Lingsu's rain prayer case to make harsh remarks. As a result, the next day, "Di Bao" The principle of hot air balloons and silver iodide was also announced in the Internet, which can be described as a double slap in the face.

Zhu Di was very happy, and his body and mind had never been more joyful and comfortable.

Since Jingnan raised his army, he had been scolded by civil servants for five years. Finally, one day, he was able to talk back.

But this time, he not only wanted to talk back, but he also wanted to kill people openly.

Zhu Di asked knowingly: "What is the meaning of this statement?"

Jiang Xinghuo turned his head and said simply: "I believe that civil unrest would happen in a place like Yunnan and Guizhou with complex terrain and many local officials, but in the heart of Jiangnan, civil unrest would not happen so easily. ?”

"Jiangnan is not a good place for rebellion. There are not even decent mountains around it. The terrain is flat. How can we rely on river networks and lakes to cause rebellion?"

"Furthermore, the government, or the gentry, has deep-rooted power in Jiangnan. It has absolute control over everything from population to land, culture and education. The gentry has not been affected on a large scale. How come in just a few days, the people below A civil riot broke out? Don’t you even have enough food for a few days?”

Zhu Di was very satisfied with Jiang Xinghuo's answer. Yao Guangxiao had already given him an idea, an opportunity to do something big by taking advantage of the flood. He didn't expect the opportunity to come so suddenly. Civil unrest was the perfect excuse to cause trouble. If there is chaos, the court will send troops.

"What the Imperial Master means is that someone is deliberately tempting the people below to cause trouble? Do they want to express their dissatisfaction with me or the reform? How should we deal with it?"

Jiang Xinghuo responded sincerely: "Controlling floods, providing disaster relief, and quelling chaos are actually all the same thing."

"Oh? The Imperial Master might as well tell you in detail." Zhu Di raised his eyebrows.

"The reason for the civil unrest is the lack of maintenance of water conservancy facilities and lack of dredging of rivers. Therefore, whenever there is heavy rain, the paddy fields will suffer, and the people will rise up and cause trouble if they are incited. Your Majesty can just send a few guards there, but the people cannot afford to cause trouble. There is chaos, so the root of the problem is not to quell the chaos, but how to control floods and provide disaster relief."

"Let's talk about water control first."

Since Jiang Xinghuo had warned Zhu Di before, naturally he had recently collected a lot of relevant information from Huikong or Yao Guangxiao's channels.

"Among the prefectures in the south of the Yangtze River, Suzhou Prefecture and Songjiang Prefecture are located at the lowermost reaches of the Yangtze River. The fields in Changzhou Prefecture, Jiaxing Prefecture and Huzhou Prefecture are much higher than low. They all surround Taihu Lake."

"Taihu Lake is the core of water control. Taihu Lake stretches for 500 miles. It receives water from the mountains in Hangzhou, Huzhou, Xuanzhou and She County, and then pours it into various lakes in Dianshan and into the upper, middle and lower Mao Lakes. .”

"From the perspective of Songjiang Prefecture, which is the most severely affected, Taihu Lake extends to tributaries in various places in Songjiang Prefecture. Because the ports in various places are blocked by sediment, the water flowing from various places is blocked and naturally rises and overflows. The way is to dredge the tributaries in various places in Wusong. Pugang allows the blocked floodwaters to flow out and flow into the sea."

Zhu Di made a slight estimate and frowned: "As I know, the Songjiang River in Wu is more than two hundred miles long from north to south and more than fifty feet wide from east to west. It connects to Taihu Lake in the west and leads to the sea in the east. I'm afraid it's not easy to dredge, right? That's right. It’s a project capacity of hundreds of thousands of people.”

"yes."

Jiang Xinghuo said frankly: "It is indeed difficult to dredge. Moreover, we have tried it in Song and Yuan Dynasties, and it is still blocked until now."

"The root cause is that the Songjiang River is a typical retidal river in the south of the Yangtze River. The Songjiang River mouth is facing the incoming tide. It is full of silt. It is blocked immediately after dredging. There are about 20 kilometers from Wujiang Changqiao to Hajiepo. Although a little dredging can pass the flowing water, it is shallow and narrow in many places. It is about 130 miles from Hajiepo to the mouth of Namchangpo. Due to the tide, this section of the river has been seriously blocked, and there are weeds in the river. The clumps have even turned into continents.”

"Then how to solve it? Does the National Master have a solution?"

"have."

Jiang Xinghuo gave his solution.

"Song Li, the right minister of the Ministry of Rites, is good at water conservancy. The minister Song and I deduced for many days and found the method from the river map files of the past dynasties."

Taking out a marked map from his sleeve, Jiang Xinghuo obviously came prepared. In fact, while waiting for Liu Sheng in the military academy office, he took out the prepared map from the bookshelf.

"There are two river channels that can be used."

Jiang Xinghuo spread out the map, pointed and said: "The Liujia River in Jiading, which was the Lou River in ancient times, flows directly into the sea; the Baimao River in Changshu flows directly into the Yangtze River. They are both wide and smooth rivers, so since now It is really difficult to dredge the Songjiang River. We might as well dredge the Pugang ports on the north and south sides of the Wujiang River, divert the water from various outlets of Taihu Lake into Liujia and Baimao Ports, and then use them to help the Songjiang River divert and flow into the sea."

"It doesn't mean that Songjiang will be completely ignored. The current problem of Songjiang is that the resurgence of tide is serious in the lower reaches. However, Songjiang has a tributary that can be used, that is, the section from Fanjiabang to Nanchangpukou (later Huangpu River), which can be directly connected to the sea and can be dredged. Let it be deepened and widened and connected to Dahuangpu. After these river sections are dredged, stone gates will be set up everywhere according to the terrain and opened and closed on time. When the river dries up every year, embankments will be built and reinforced."

Zhu Di looked at the map, studied it for a while and concluded.

"In other words, the water in the upper reaches of the Songjiang River can be diverted into the Yangtze River estuary through the Liujia River and the Baimao River. There is no problem with this. What I am considering is that the water in the middle and lower reaches of the Songjiang River should be widened from Fanjiabang to Nancangpukou. , merged into Dahuangpu? But this is equivalent to replacing branches with branches, is it feasible?"

"It works." Jiang Xinghuo said, "This section of the tributary was called Huangputang in the Southern Song Dynasty. In the Yuan Dynasty, the river gradually widened, so it was called Dahuangpu. After careful research by Song Shilang and I, this section can be diverted. It can even replace Songjiang’s flood discharge function.”

Zhu Difu asked again: "Now that we've talked about quelling chaos and controlling floods, what about disaster relief?"

Jiang Xinghuo said seriously: "The first is to divert the Liujia River and Baimao River, and the second is to dredge out the Huangpu River. These two projects require more than 100,000 people. The heavy rain has just started to fall, and we don't know when it will happen in the future. Don’t worry about the grain harvests of these wealthy and wealthy governments this year. The focus is on how to repair water conservancy so that it won’t affect next year or the year after.”

"But that's not necessarily a good thing."

After Jiang Xinghuo paused, he continued: "Songjiang Prefecture is a key area for the reform. This is because it is very suitable for the development of the textile industry, especially the development of the cotton textile industry. However, at present, it is not enough for men to farm and women to weave. The cotton textile industry The key to the establishment of large-scale handicraft factories is to free the population from the land. Normally, there is no such good opportunity."

Starting from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, cotton cultivation gradually spread from Lingnan to the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Songjiang's climate and soil were suitable for cotton growth, so cotton cultivation quickly became popular. However, due to the backward cotton textile technology at that time, cotton seeds had to be peeled by hand, and Without machines to loosen cotton, spinning cotton into cotton cloth was time-consuming and laborious, and the spun cotton cloth was also very loose and rough.

It was not until Huang Daopo learned a complete set of cotton textile techniques from the Li people and brought them back to Songjiang that Songjiang's cotton textile industry began to develop greatly. By the early Ming Dynasty, Songjiang cloth has become a best-selling cloth with excellent texture, beautiful floral decorations and is famous far and near. The number of people engaged in the cotton textile industry has also increased, but after all, it is not large-scale.

Only by establishing factory areas, large tracts of handicraft workshops, and tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cotton textile industry practitioners working collectively to divide labor, can we truly form the trump card for making wealth in the first industrial revolution - high quality and low price textile.

And this dawn of opportunity was precisely conceived in the midst of crisis.

"Disaster relief must be done through work. Among the victims, men can work to build rivers, while women and children can work in the cotton textile industry. If you find a wasteland with good transportation conditions in Songjiang, you can build a large-scale cotton textile industry handicraft factory."

Zhu Di asked the last question.

"What should I do if there are obstacles?"

This is a very real problem, because since there is something fishy about this civil uprising, it means that all Jiang Xinghuo's actions are in danger.

This kind of danger not only comes from personal safety threats caused by the possibility of jumping over the wall, but also from various uncertainties... Sometimes people who seem to be friends are not necessarily friends.

Zhu Di had deeply felt this in the process of promoting the clearing of land.

Of course, the most important thing is that Zhu Di has doubts about Jiang Xinghuo's heart.

Taiping Street and the Great Sacrifice Altar were handled very well, but in the end they were a bit on the merciful side.

A hint of coolness flashed in Jiang Xinghuo's eyes.

"Didn't Your Majesty give me the Shangfang sword?"