There is a large house in Baohe Square in the south city of Lin'an. This is the residence of Zheng Tongquan, the prince of Hejian County. Zheng Tongquan is Zheng Ping's father. His official identity is the brother of Empress Dowager Zheng and the uncle of the country. In fact, Empress Dowager Zheng is completely quarrelsome.
However, Empress Dowager Wei had converted to Buddhism and was in a semi-monastic state, so no one took Zheng Tongquan's status as the uncle of the state seriously.
But Zheng Tongquan is a well-known medicinal material merchant in Lin'an. The various medicinal materials provided by his family occupy 80% of the Lin'an market. The other is restaurants. The Zheng family has more than a dozen restaurants in Lin'an, but this is nothing. Another big business
They are maritime merchants. It is said that the Zheng family has hundreds of sea-going ships. They go to Southeast Asia every year and bring back countless spices and materials. You can imagine the huge profits.
No one knows exactly how much money the Zheng family has, but last year the imperial court was financially strained and asked major businessmen for help. Zheng Tongquan immediately pledged a million dollars. The government and the public were shocked, and Long Yan was delighted. Zheng Tongquan's title was immediately promoted from county prince to county prince.
.
At night, Zheng Tongquan sat in his study and read today's "Beijing News". He was really shocked. He did not expect that Chen Qing would welcome the second emperor back and rescue tens of thousands of Bianliang people who had been kidnapped to Liaodong.
He also thought about his son Zheng Ping, who was named the military commander of the Yongxing Army and commanded an army of fifty thousand to guard Sichuan. He was already promising, which meant that his son had the right vision and was with the right person.
At this time, the butler outside the door reported: "Master, there is a messenger outside the house, saying that it was sent by Saburo to deliver the letter."
Zheng Tongquan was slightly startled. He had just received a letter from his son Zheng Ping not long ago. Why did he come to deliver the letter again?
But strange as it was, Zheng Tongquan immediately ordered: "Let him come in quickly and wait in the distinguished guest room. I will be here soon."
Zheng Tongquan put on a coat and suddenly realized that it must be because of what he explained in his last letter. The prince asked him to stop all ships going out to sea today. Although he didn't know what it meant, Zheng Tongquan still complied and stopped.
Sea-going ships in Mingzhou Port and Quanzhou Port have canceled their plans to go to sea this year.
Zheng Tongquan came to the guest hall and saw a middle-aged man sitting in the guest hall, drinking tea calmly. Zheng Tongquan became more and more alarmed. The people sent by his son to deliver the letter were all his personal soldiers, and he knew them. Why?
This time a middle-aged man came who I had never seen before?
Zheng Tongquan coughed heavily and walked into the guest room. The middle-aged man quickly stood up and saluted: "See Uncle Zheng Guo!"
"you know me?"
The middle-aged man smiled and nodded, "I have been in Lin'an for two years and have met Uncle Zheng Guo many times!"
"Who are you? I seem to have seen you somewhere."
Zheng Tongquan suddenly felt that this middle-aged man looked familiar between his features.
The middle-aged man tore off the fake beard on his lips and chin. Zheng Tongquan said, "Ah!" "Shopkeeper Guo, how can you be you?"
Zheng Tongquan recognized the person in front of him as Guo Da, the shopkeeper of Qingfeng Tea House. Although he was not very familiar with him, he had indeed interacted with him before.
Shopkeeper Guo took out a silver medal, put it on the table, and said with a slight smile: "My actual identity is the General Manager of the Western Army Intelligence Department in Lin'an. This is my military medal."
It’s actually a silver waistband, your status is quite high!
"It turns out to be Manager Guo. I'm sorry. Please take a seat!"
The two sat down separately. Shopkeeper Guo took out two letters and put them on the table and pushed them to Zheng Tongquan. The first one was from Zheng Ping. Zheng Tongquan recognized it at a glance. He opened it and looked carefully. There was a sentence in it, asking his father to strictly enforce the county's regulations.
The king's military orders are of great importance and must be obeyed.
Zheng Tongquan was shocked. Could it be that the second letter was from Chen Qing? He quickly picked up the letter and found that it was indeed Chen Qing's personal letter. Zheng Tongquan quickly opened the letter. Chen Qing's tone in the letter was very polite, thanking him for his many years of support.
The support of the Western Army was also grateful to him for lending him money to solve the problem of pensions for the soldiers killed in Jianxiao Pass.
Chen Qing still remembers this, it’s not easy!
Zheng Tongquan was secretly proud of himself. After all, he had helped Chen Qing when he was in the most difficult time, and Chen Qing had never forgotten it.
He continued to read, and sure enough, he mentioned sea-going ships. Chen Qing hoped that he would berth hundreds of thousands-stone sea-going ships at the Jiangling City Yangtze River Wharf within two months, which would be of great use. The time would start from the day he read the letter.
rise.
It turned out that he wanted to transfer his ships to Jiangling. Zheng Tongquan secretly calculated in his mind that he should be able to send pigeon letters to Mingzhou and Quanzhou in time. He should send a few more pigeon letters to prevent the two chief stewards from not receiving them.
In fact, half of these hundreds of large ships belonged to the trading firm that Chen Qing and Zheng Ping jointly established back then, and were handed over to the Zheng family for unified management. In the trading firm, Chen Qing and Zheng Ping each accounted for half. In other words, one hundred ships
Twenty-five of the sea-going ships are privately owned by Chen Qing.
As for the money earned in these years, 25% belonged to Chen Qing. Zheng Tongquan put more than half of it in Baoji Cabinet Shop in Chengdu and rented a large warehouse. As for how much wealth he had, Zheng Tongquan once gave Zheng Quan an envelope in an envelope.
It was handed over to Chen Qing, and finally to Chen Qing's wife Lu Xiu. After reading the list of wealth in the envelope, Lu Xiu was so shocked that the tea cup in his hand fell to the ground and broke.
Of course, Zheng Tongquan would not ask what he was doing with a sea ship. He probably didn't know the man in front of him either. He nodded and said, "Please tell the prince, I will definitely do it!"
In mid-March, the war for Jianghuai broke out again. Wanyan Wushu sent 200,000 troops to attack Jianghuai. He divided his troops into two groups, with Wang Bolong as the main general and Li Cheng and Li Qiong as deputy generals. He led an army of 100,000 troops to attack Shouchun.
One line.
The other group was led by Wanyan Wushu himself and led 50,000 Jurchen troops, 30,000 Donghu troops and 20,000 Xie soldiers to attack Guangzhou.
The leader of the Song Army, Yue Fei, led a main force of 80,000 to face Wanyan Wushu's army, while Zhang Jun was responsible for the defense on the Shouchun road. Zhang Jun also mobilized an army of 150,000 to prepare for a decisive battle with the signing army on the Shouchun front line.
This time, Zhang Jun took the initiative to apply to go north to the center line. He had already discovered a pattern. Every time the Jin soldiers invaded south, the center line was handed over to the puppet Qi army. The puppet Qi army was now renamed the signature army. Zhang Jun was afraid of the Jurchens, but he could
Don't be afraid to sign for the army.
Both sides were mobilizing troops and generals. The war broke out first in Xiacai County on the north bank of the Huaihe River. Li Qiong, the commander of both sides, led 30,000 troops to Xiacai County and launched a fierce attack on Xiacai County, which had 5,000 defenders.
Spring comes relatively late in the Hexi Corridor. March in Guanzhong is already mid-spring, but in the Hexi Corridor, it is still early spring. The ice and snow begin to melt, the twigs have just sprouted, flocks of birds are flying and singing in the sky, the river is gurgling, and the water is ice-cold.
Penetrating to the bone.
A Song Army scout cavalry team appeared near Liangzhou City. There were about a hundred people in this scout cavalry team. The leader was Tang Qian, who led 300 people to Liangzhou ten days ago. He then dispersed his troops.
, some were sent to Ganzhou to monitor.
At present, the situation around Liangzhou has been figured out. Tang Qian is only concerned about the situation inside the city, the enemy's strength, equipment, and defenses. But what makes it difficult for Tang Qian is that no one enters or leaves Liangzhou City. Although Liangzhou City has no
The city was closed, but the inspections were extremely strict, and the Han people would definitely not be able to enter the city.
Tang Qian could only send people to patrol around the city to see if they could encounter caravans leaving the city.
At noon, the soldiers were having lunch in the woods. Several cavalrymen came flying over with a Qiang man. They finally waited for the insider.
This Qiang was a merchant brought specially from Lanzhou by Tang Qian, named Sai Ge. He often went to Xizhou to do business and had friendships with some high-ranking Uighur officials in Xizhou, so his caravan entered the city easily.
After staying in the city for two days, I left the city and prepared to go north.
Tang Qian politely asked Sege to sit down. Sege smiled and said: "There are about five thousand defenders in the city. The massacre by the Han people you were worried about has not happened. The other side also needs farmers for farming, but the taxes borne by the Han people are relatively high. As for the
The equipment is basically leather armor, a spear and a small square shield."
"How is military discipline?"
Tang Qian couldn't see combat effectiveness, so he looked at military discipline. Generally speaking, armies with good military discipline have strong combat effectiveness. Saige nodded, "Military discipline is generally pretty good. Of course, it cannot be compared with the Song Army, where they committed murder, arson, and raped women."
No, but there are many cases of forced buying and selling, and surreptitious behavior."
Tang Qian asked some other questions, and Brother Sai answered them one by one. At this time, Tang Qian initially grasped the information about Liangzhou City.
