Chapter 2370

Chen Yixin drank two sips of hot tea, and his sleepiness, which was not much in the first place, was quickly driven away. He immediately asked Ma Yuling to go back to her room to rest, and planned to take a look at some official documents that had yet to be processed recently.

The population and area of ​​the area under Jinzhou's jurisdiction are relatively limited. There are not too many civil affairs matters that require Chen Yixin's personal intervention. When he is busy, he directly leaves them to his subordinates such as Liu Shang and Jin Ping to handle them. But when he has time,

When visiting, he will still personally take a look at the recent data and various reports compiled by various departments, as well as some information forwarded from other regions.

Chen Yixin will devote his time to paying special attention to information about Shandong in particular. He is still in charge of the control areas of Zhifu Island and Fushan County, and when winter came last year, there was news that the local government in Dengzhou was eyeing the Fushan Copper Mine.

Although nothing happened this winter, Chen Yixin did not dare to be too careless and kept following up on the local situation.

Zhifu Island and Fushan Copper Mine have always been directly managed by the Haihan military. However, a considerable part of Fushan County's local civil affairs, commerce, transportation and other affairs, including errands to deal with the government on its behalf, have been handed over to

Let the Ma family take charge.

Strictly speaking, this approach is of course suspected of being used for private purposes. After all, after mastering the resources given by Haihan, the Ma family turned them into a large amount of wealth with a little use, and quickly became a powerful force in the Dengzhou area.

It is an objective fact that no one can refute that the country is second to none.

Nowadays, Majiazhuang has developed into Majia Town and has become a well-known trade center in the Shandong Peninsula. There are even many businessmen transporting goods from Hebei, Henan and other places. The Majia takes advantage of the home field and adds a variety of exclusive services provided by Haihan.

With the right to operate, you can already make a lot of money by just doing a simple operation of entering with your left hand and taking out the right hand.

After the Ma family gained momentum, its local influence also increased, even surpassing the Fushan County government office. Although Ma Dongqiang has no official status, he has actually become the invisible magistrate of Fushan County. Many times, the person in the county government office speaks.

It hasn't worked for him yet.

Chen Yixin's support for the Ma family may seem unruly, but in fact it is a practice tacitly approved by the Executive Committee. The areas controlled by Haihan in the Ming Dynasty not only need the help of some local people who are familiar with the situation and have relevant interests.

, but also to make Ming people aware of the various privileges and benefits that can be obtained by working for Haihan. And Chen Yixin’s father-in-law, Ma Dongqiang, whose family interests have been firmly bound to Haihan, is undoubtedly extremely suitable.

The object of support.

In other words, the Ma family is the "role model" that Haihan intends to launch. The Ma family's rapid success is to make people in Ming Dynasty realize the benefits of cooperation with Haihan.

In turn, for the sake of their own family interests and long-term development, the Ma family will take the initiative to maintain the cooperative relationship with Haihan and work hard to complete various tasks assigned by Haihan, including some tasks that should be handled by the Fushan County Government.

Affairs - Supporting local powerful people and evading local officials is one of Haihan's usual methods in the process of external expansion.

Of course, Chen Yixin did not completely abandon Shandong. He required the Ma family to submit written reports on a regular basis, truthfully report various local situations in Fushan County, and at the same time implement various instructions issued by him. To a certain extent

, the Ma family is actually equivalent to the grassroots administrative department under the jurisdiction of Haihan, but it has not yet been given a formal establishment.

Chen Yixin quickly found the report sent from Shandong from the documents on the desk. It was a large envelope stamped with Ma Dongqiang's personal seal and seal. There was no other writing on the cover, only a military postmark, indicating that the report was

It was sent to Jinzhou through the military's postal channel. This can be regarded as one of the small privileges that the Ma family can enjoy.

Chen Yixin had the impression that this report should have been delivered the day before yesterday, but in the past two or three days, he has been busy dealing with the Qing Dynasty's request for a truce and peace, so he has not had time to open it and review it.

Chen Yixin used the paper knife on the table to scrape off the paint seal on the envelope and took out the letter paper inside. Chen Yixin could recognize the familiar handwriting on the paper as Jiang Sheng's handwriting at a glance. Usually written reports sent from Fushan County,

They are all written by Jiang Sheng. After all, he is Ma Dongqiang's brother-in-law. He is also half of the Ma family. He has always been steady and reliable in doing things. Of course, the most important thing is that the person with the highest degree of contextualization in the Ma family is Jiang Sheng. This kind of writing requires a certain amount of writing skills.

He is the only one who is most qualified for errands.

Jiang Sheng obviously also knew what issues Chen Yixin was most concerned about at the moment, so he started by reporting to him the recent developments in the Dengzhou government.

The Dengzhou government has not mobilized troops to Fushan County recently, but there have been other new developments. The Fushan County government received an order from Chen Zhongsheng, the prefect of Dengzhou, asking him to try his best to organize civilians and veterans in the county to go to Dengzhou as soon as possible.

check in.

Naturally, this abnormal phenomenon could not be hidden from the eyes and ears of the Ma family. After investigation, they learned some shocking news.

After the Qing army broke through the Great Wall in two groups from east to west last winter, they fought all the way to the south. Among them, the troops led by Dorgon even conquered forty-three cities in the Gyeonggi area. But this time the Qing army did not

As in previous years, after they succeeded, they stopped and retreated to the north. Instead, they seized the gap when the Ming army did not dare to go out of the city to fight in the field, bypassed the capital, entered Hebei, and headed straight for Shandong.

Yang Sichang, the newly appointed Secretary of the Ministry of War, believed that Dezhou was the only place the Qing army would pass through when marching south, so he sent a message to Yan Jizu, the governor of Shandong, and asked him to concentrate his forces in Dezhou to stop the Qing army.

Mr. Yan's predecessors, Zhu Dadian and Li Maofang, both had bad endings in the position of governor of Shandong. One suffered from the Dengzhou Rebellion during his tenure, and the other was impeached for embezzling military pay. They both left in disgrace. He

I didn’t want to continue the bad luck of my predecessor, so I wanted to try my best to achieve some results while in office. I had already followed Yang Sichang’s request and mobilized the troops in Shandong to Dezhou to gather in an attempt to achieve some results on the battlefield to demonstrate my abilities.

.

As one of the main combat forces in Shandong, the Dengzhou garrison was naturally on the list of people who were ordered to be mobilized. Therefore, after the Dengzhou government announced its stance on the Fushan Copper Mine last year, nothing happened. This is one of the main reasons. The garrison was all transferred.

After leaving, naturally there will be no way to continue to deal with the Fushan Copper Mine issue with a tough attitude.

However, Yang Sichang, Minister of the Ministry of War, was originally a peace advocate. After taking office, he persuaded Chongzhen to negotiate peace with the Manchus. However, he was impeached by the official in the court, and Chongzhen did not dare to express his support clearly, so he failed. Such a person failed

To organize and direct the blocking war against the Qing army, the effect can be imagined.

Yang Sichang determined that the Qing army must attack Dezhou when going south, but he did not take into account that Dezhou was covered with plains for hundreds of miles. Not only was there no danger to defend, but the cavalry could advance extremely quickly on this terrain, and it was not a situation that could be solved by defending the city.

.

The actual situation was exactly like this. The Qing army detected signs of the Ming army's mobilization, so they asked the main force to bypass Dezhou without fighting, and directly continued south towards Jinan City.

By the time the Ma family inquired about the news, it was said that the forward battalion of the Qing army had arrived outside Jinan City, and it seemed that they were planning to raise troops to attack Jinan City. It is said that a considerable part of the garrison in Jinan City had been transferred to Dezhou for garrison, so other

The city defense is already in danger.

The transfer order received by Fushan County was not to send these county-level armed personnel to Jinan City, eight hundred miles away, for reinforcements, but to have them go to Dengzhou City to temporarily replace the local garrison, because almost all the remaining Ming troops in Dengzhou were

They have been transferred to Jinan to fight the fire, and now they can only mobilize manpower from subordinate counties for emergency response.

Jiang Sheng spent a lot of time explaining the connection between this series of events, but after reading it, Chen Yixin still did not fully believe the information he provided. After all, for such a big matter, as long as the Ministry of Security and Military Intelligence are not deaf or blind,

, must have noticed these situations, but they need more time to verify their authenticity. If the situation is true, it is estimated that a more detailed report will be sent to Jinzhou later.

But Chen Yixin believed that the actual situation was probably not much different from Jiang Sheng's description. He sat upright for a while, then walked to the bookshelf, took out a box from the bottom floor, unlocked the box with the key, and took out a booklet from inside.

, returned to the desk and sat down.

There was no writing on the cover of this booklet. When Chen Yixin opened it, the contents inside were all small characters the size of mung beans, which was obviously not of the fineness that the printing technology of this era could produce.

The booklet Chen Yixin was looking at was an extremely important reference material. The content was a chronicle of major events in the late Ming Dynasty. It was all information compiled by professionals before the time travel. It was printed and bound into a volume and given to those traveling to the overseas colonies in the direction of the Ming Dynasty.

They carry it.

The importance of this thing is self-evident. If the content is spread, it will cause big troubles. Therefore, time travelers usually keep it and only take it out to read when they are alone in private.

Of course, the same information is stored in the personal computers carried by the travelers, but computers are inconvenient to use in overseas colonies, and it is obviously much more convenient to read the brochures.

The content Chen Yixin looked through was the records of major events in the eleventh and twelfth years of Chongzhen, that is, 1638-1639. He spent about twenty minutes slowly digesting these contents, and combined with the information provided by Jiang Sheng, he already had a complete picture of the events in his mind.

We have a general idea of ​​the current situation in Shandong.

The winter of 1638 was originally a good situation for the Ming Dynasty. Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting planned to ambush Li Zicheng in the Tongguan Nanyuan and annihilated almost all his armed forces. Only seven cavalry including Li Zicheng broke out, causing extreme damage to the Central Plains peasant army.

A heavy blow.

But the battle had just ended, and before Ming Dynasty had time to enjoy the respite it had finally won, the Qing army moved south to Kenguan, easily breaking through the border defenses and entering the Gyeonggi region. Although the capital city was difficult to break, the surrounding small towns could not withstand it.

The battle situation of the Qing cavalry led by Dorgon and Yue Tuo was just as Jiang Sheng said in his letter. The Ming army barely put up much decent resistance and had already lost Hebei.

What is worth mentioning is that Lu Xiangsheng, the minister of the Ministry of War, led his army to meet the enemy. He was surrounded by the Qing army in Julu, Hebei, and finally died on the battlefield. At that time, the eunuch Gao Qiqian, who was the leader of the peace faction together with Yang Sichang, the minister of the Ministry of War, commanded several

Wan Guanning's cavalry, located less than fifty miles away from where Lu Xiangsheng was surrounded, sat back and did nothing to save him, killing Lu Xiangsheng and more than 10,000 soldiers and horses he led.

For the Ming Dynasty, Lu Xiangsheng's death in battle was not only the loss of a famous general who resisted the Qing Dynasty, but also a heavy loss to the war-fighting officials in the court.

However, in this time and space where Haihan has intervened, there is still some uncertainty as to whether Lu Xiangsheng died in Julu as in history. This is because some of the weapons Haihan sold to Ming Dynasty were sold to Lu Xiangsheng.

His subordinates Yang Guozhu, Hu Dawei, Yang Tinglin and others ensured that these weapons could be used in the anti-Qing war.

If Lu Xiangsheng's troops can make good use of these Haihan-made weapons, they will definitely be able to fight even against the main force of the Qing army. However, in the report sent by Jiang Sheng, there was no mention of Lu Xiangsheng's battle at the beginning of the year.

Death, perhaps this has changed the original history, and this official who advocated the resistance to the Qing Dynasty can still escape this life and death disaster.

But Lu Xiangsheng's life and death was not the real focus of Chen Yixin's concern. What he cared about was the historical outcome of this war.

According to historical records, the Qing army directly attacked the city of Jinan. The German king Zhu Youshu, the Fengguo general Zhu Enshang and others were captured and massacred by the Qing army.

The Qing army's invasion lasted for half a year, and it was not until the ninth day of March that they returned to Liaodong from Qingshankou. In this campaign, the Qing army invaded the Ming Dynasty to a depth of 2,000 miles, captured 460,000 people, and took away more than 4,000 taels of gold.

, nearly one million taels of silver. As for how many people lost their families and scattered their wives and children because of this, there is no more specific data in history.

After reading this period of history, Chen Yixin felt quite heavy. Although he was a decisive general, he was still inevitably touched when he saw the huge disasters the war brought to civilians. But he also knew that his own

With limited abilities, it is unlikely to change the real historical trend. We can only try to make the most of Haihan's benefit in troubled times, and if we have spare power, we can help the Ming Dynasty to slow down its overthrow.

Chen Yixin put the pamphlet back into the box and took out another pamphlet. This one was also a chronicle, but the content was limited to Shandong. After flipping through it, Chen Yixin discovered something worth noting.

Shandong will usher in a severe drought in 1639, that is, this year. Due to the serious damage caused by the invasion of the Qing army and the slow recovery of agricultural production after the war, large-scale droughts will inevitably occur this year.

Famine. Then in the following year, a large-scale locust plague occurred in Yizhou, Shandong. Hundreds of trees were leafless and the ground was bare. In the spring of 1641, another plague broke out, and countless people died of the disease. In other words, in the next three years, Shandong's

There will be a large refugee population in the local area, and its scale may far exceed that of the Denglai Rebellion.
Chapter completed!