Chapter 741 Technology is the primary productive force
Shanghai County.
The place has long been prepared to welcome the Holy Driver.
Officials of all sizes stood in rows on the pier waiting respectfully. Even though half a day had passed, they did not dare to slack off at all.
This is Your Majesty, your grandson is here in person.
Let alone half a day, even if you stand for a whole day, you still have to wait.
"Everyone, cheer up. Send a message from the front. His Majesty's grandson will be arriving soon."
The one who spoke first among these dozens of officials was the prefect of Songjiang Prefecture.
After hearing the news two days ago, he rushed over to see the saint.
And organized a large number of officials.
Although this is Shanghai County, we know that the county can only be regarded as the lowest among these officials.
Basically, all the nearby officials of higher rank came.
About two more sticks of incense time passed.
I only saw a ship in the distance, shining with metallic light and emitting thick black smoke, traveling at a speed far exceeding that of a normal ship.
"The iron boat is your Majesty's grandson."
"It really is an iron ship, a rare sight in this life!"
"No ship in the world can match such speed."
"He's covered in armor. How can any ship dare to fight with him on the sea?"
Songjiang Prefecture has a lot of water.
Therefore, the officials here are all knowledgeable about ships.
A large part of the tax itself comes from water transportation, shipyards, etc., which are basically related to water transportation.
So we all know the significance of this iron ship.
On the river, when we could see clearly, the speed of the Dinghai ship gradually slowed down.
Many sailors began to pull the sails.
This is to turn off the steam engine and use the power of the sail to steer and dock.
"I will see you, Your Majesty, Your Highness the Grand Sun."
"Long live your Majesty, long live your Majesty, and may your Majesty live a thousand lives!"
After Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Ying got off the ship, many officials immediately knelt down and worshiped.
"No courtesy, stay on your own terms." Zhu Yuanzhang said loudly.
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
After the process was completed, other officials were naturally not qualified to come forward to talk. Only the prefect of Songjiang Prefecture walked forward in small steps, waiting for His Majesty's order.
"I'm a little tired, let's go take a rest first."
Zhu Yuanzhang ordered.
When he first boarded the ship, Zhu Yuanzhang felt it was very strange.
However, as nearly three hours passed, no matter how fresh it was, I no longer had the energy.
The Dinghai ship is fast, but can be bumpy like other ships.
Zhu Yuanzhang is now older, and he still felt a little floaty after getting off the boat.
Zhu Ying looked at it carefully and quickly took two steps over to help him.
"Your Majesty, the carriage is ready ahead." The prefect of Songjiang Prefecture said respectfully.
Zhu Yuanzhang waved his hand: "Let's take a few steps first."
He had been jolted all the way by the boat, and now he got on the carriage and continued to be jolted. Zhu Yuanzhang felt that his bones were about to fall apart.
After all, he is already seventy-two years old this year. His body is strong and strong, but his resilience is much worse.
With Zhu Ying's support, it was just a walk.
Outside the officials were a large number of soldiers.
The nearby Songjiang left and right guards have already been waiting in advance to accompany His Majesty and ensure that His Majesty is safe.
There was only one Dinghai ship coming from the capital, so it was impossible to say that a large number of palace guards were accompanying it.
Firstly, there is no room for so many people, and secondly, even if we take a boat, we cannot catch up.
The commanders of Songjiang's left and right guards came over to pay their respects.
Zhu Yuanzhang just waved his hand.
Zhu Ying said: "Your Majesty is a little tired, so you can accompany him to protect him."
"Follow orders."
The two commander-in-chiefs are first-rate officials in the Songjiang Mansion, but to His Majesty and the Grand Sun, they are just minions.
After walking for a while, Zhu Yuanzhang basically recovered.
In fact, when the emperor travels, he basically doesn’t see any public sentiment.
The road Zhu Yuanzhang took has been blocked by officers and soldiers, and ordinary people can only watch from a distance.
As for private visits via incognito servers, they are basically extremely rare.
Later generations of Kangxi's private visit in disguise was completely nonsense. Historically, there was no possibility of a private visit in disguise by the Manchu emperors.
After all, from the establishment of the Manchu Qing Dynasty to its fall, civil uprisings never stopped.
But Zhu Yuanzhang liked private visits incognito.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born as a peasant, and it was extremely easy for him to blend into the common people. It was not an act, he just appeared in his true colors.
However, a private visit by the emperor incognito is a very dangerous thing.
Zhu Yuanzhang would not do this easily.
The situation has improved a lot in recent years. In the early Ming Dynasty, there were still many people loyal to the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.
Looking at all the dynasties in the past and present, when the country was in ruins, the number of literati who committed suicide and martyred their country was the highest in the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.
During the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties, as many as 60% of the Han Jinshi died for the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.
There are also a group of people who choose to live in seclusion in the countryside and never work for the Ming Dynasty for the rest of their lives.
You must know that when the Ming Dynasty was established in the early days, officials at all levels were reorganized. Zhu Yuanzhang did not have many talents in his hands and was in urgent need of assistance from scholars or Yuan Dynasty officials with management experience.
They can transform themselves from Mongolian and Yuan officials into officials of Ming Dynasty.
But many people refused and even quit their official careers.
For example, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang saw that Zhang Chang, the Minister of Household Affairs, was a talented person and wanted to stay with him.
But although Zhang Chang received Zhu Yuanzhang's attention, importance, and many rewards, he was not happy in his heart.
He originally came to recruit Zhu Yuanzhang to surrender, but now he is working for him.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang captured Hangzhou and captured a group of Mongolian officials.
In order to show his magnanimity, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered them to give them some money and food to find Bei Yuan.
Zhang Chang first entrusted these officials to investigate whether his son in the desert was still alive. Second, he wrote a memorial and asked them to help pass it on to the Northern Yuan Emperor.
Zhu Yuanzhang never relaxed his surveillance of these Meng Yuan officials. Although there were no Jin Yiwei at that time, the prototype of the original team was already in place.
The memorial was naturally intercepted.
In the memorial, there is a sentence that really hurt Zhu Yuanzhang's heart.
That is what is written: I am in the south of the Yangtze River, but my mind is in the north.
This is Zhang Chang claiming to be Guan Yu who is in Cao's camp and his heart is in Han, expressing his loyalty to Bei Yuan.
However, Zhang Chang is not Guan Yu, and Zhu Yuanzhang is not Cao Cao.
After intercepting the memorial, Zhu Yuanzhang immediately ordered his corpse to be cut into thousands of pieces and then thrown into the water to feed the fish.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! In addition to Zhang Chang, there are many such talents who committed suicide one after another after the Central Plains changed hands and the Ming Dynasty was established to maintain loyalty.
This seems a little strange.
What about the promised expulsion of the Tartars and restoration of China?
In fact, it is not surprising, because the joys and sorrows of people are not the same.
For many literati and aristocratic families, they have no concept of Han nationality, but only care about their own class.
In their view, being loyal to the emperor means being loyal to the monarch who gives his class.
If there is no monarch, the country will naturally be destroyed and the family will be destroyed.
During the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, a small number of Mongolians ruled over the majority of the Han people. The Mongols themselves were a nomadic people. After occupying the huge Central Plains, they did not form a very complete system, so management was loose.
This gave the lower class landlords and gentry a great deal of independent power.
For many county magistrates and landowners, they are the local emperors. No matter how they prey on the common people, the higher authorities will not investigate their corruption problems.
In the past hundred years of the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty, many tied interest groups have emerged. From top to bottom, they have become accustomed to freedom without any restrictions.
This is a sense of superiority that no aristocratic family, landlord, gentry, or any dynasty in history has ever had, as well as that coveted power.
It is truly a matter of life and death, and there is absolutely no way for the people at the bottom to redress their grievances.
As long as you complete the most basic tax arrangements arranged by the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasty, you can do whatever you want locally, and the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasty will not care at all.
This was an era when the landlords were in charge.
It can be imagined that originally everyone followed the Mongolian nobles to bully the market, prey on the common people, and dominate without any scruples.
At this time, a man named Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly appeared, and he was a beggar.
Leading a group of refugees to stage an uprising, they wanted to overthrow the Mongolian court and break this rare period of tranquility.
How can any landlord be willing to do this? This must be suppressed, severely suppressed.
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, in fact, it was not the Mongolian court that dealt the most violent and bloody blows to the various rebel armies, but rather the landlords, gentry and Han officials from various places.
These people spontaneously organized money, food, and troops to fight against the rebels. They were much more attentive than those Mongolian masters.
This kind of behavior is similar to that of later generations after the Manchu and Qing Dynasties entered the customs.
Those who supported the unification of the Central Plains by the nomadic people, whether in the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties or the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, were the so-called scholars, landlords and gentry.
In fact, this has a lot to do with Confucianism.
Because in Confucianism, there is only small loyalty, but no great justice.
There is no such thing as national justice and self-interest.
The scholar-bureaucrats of any dynasty never cared about how the monarch treated the people, good or bad. What they cared about was only how much power the monarch had over them.
Song Lian drafted the "Edict to the Central Plains" for Zhu Yuanzhang.
The article says: “An ancient saying goes: ‘The barbarians have no luck for a hundred years.’ But if we test it today, it is true!
However, historically, the period of the Ming and Qing Dynasties was basically 276 years. Even if there are some calculation differences, it is only a deviation of about ten years.
In fact, when the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, it never considered itself an invader like the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty.
They never believed that they destroyed the Ming Dynasty.
Because the Ming Dynasty was overthrown by Li Zicheng, they went to the Central Plains to obey public opinion and bring order to chaos.
This is a bit nonsense, but it was able to rule the Central Plains for such a long time because the system of the Qing Dynasty almost completely inherited the system of the Ming Dynasty.
Be it Qianlong or Kangxi, what they did as monarchs was completely opposite to the characteristics of the nomadic people. Instead, they actively integrated into the Han culture and learned to cherish their people like the Han emperors of the past dynasties.
For example, dividing people into acres, punishing corruption, building rivers, etc.
After the Mongols took over the Central Plains, they treated the people as cattle and sheep and made themselves the masters.
After the Manchus took over, they regarded themselves as Han people.
In fact, from the perspective of the feudal dynasty, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty basically did the same things as the emperors of other dynasties.
Especially in terms of system, it can be seen as a continuation of the Ming Dynasty.
The corruption at the end of the Manchu Qing Dynasty and the corruption at the end of the Ming Dynasty were roughly equal to each other.
Of course, starting from Zhu Ying, the Ming Dynasty would undergo great changes.
The matter of the nomadic people will be completely ended in Zhu Ying's hands.
On the way, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had basically recovered, said to Zhu Ying: "This navy ship is fast, but it is too restrictive."
"If there is no coal, the steam engine will not be able to move, and it will not be much different from other ships."
"The cabin can only hold enough coal for a few days, so it can't go to sea."
Thinking of what he said before about expanding the territory, Zhu Yuanzhang sighed.
What he lamented was not that steam ironclad ships would not be able to reach this level in the future, but that they would probably be difficult to see in his lifetime.
After all, things like steam engine reform cannot be improved in three to five years.
He asked his eldest grandson that even if the expeditionary force returned and brought the weeping tree, it would not be able to cause major changes in the steam engine in a short period of time.
When Zhu Ying heard this, she felt the sigh in the old man's tone.
After thinking for a while, Zhu Ying replied: "Actually, there are supplementary methods."
"First of all, on the Daming Waterway, a large number of transfer stations can be set up like inns to reserve a large amount of coal. When the coal in the steam ironclad ships is almost used up, it can be replenished at these transfer stations."
Upon hearing this, Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes flashed and he added: "Not only domestic waterways, but also overseas, as long as the coal loaded by steam iron-clad ships can reach places, the navy can be set up in advance to transfer stations.
"
"This time all the way is set up, it is also possible for the steam iron-clad ship to reach the ocean more quickly."
"Seconds, seconds!"
Zhu Ying smiled slightly.
He only needs a little guidance, and the old man will naturally know.
When this was said from the old man's mouth, the old man naturally felt much happier.
In fact, speaking of it, this is similar to the gas stations of later generations.
In this way, the shortcomings of steam ironclad ships can be avoided to the greatest extent.
"Now if we want to complete this transfer station, the biggest problem is the collection of coal. From now on, we will vigorously exploit the coal deposits."
"This steam engine can't just be used on ships. It has more uses in other places."
"It is foreseeable that coal and steel will be in urgent need of our Ming Dynasty in the future."
Zhu Ying analyzed and said.
This is the inevitable result of industrial reform. The demand for steel and coal will far exceed imagination.
For example, in the case of coal, if we only rely on the government, the collection efforts will inevitably be reduced.
As for steel, today it is even more necessary to mobilize the entire Ming Dynasty to manufacture it.
Zhu Yuanzhang nodded: "Since it concerns Zuo, the country of the Ming Dynasty, it is worth paying no matter how high the price is."
"After we go back, we, my grandfather and my grandson, will have a good time thinking about how we can make more coal and steel."
Zhu Ying echoed.
From now on, Ming Dynasty has truly entered the first industrial revolution.
The foundation laid in the past few years will now help Daming climb to a higher level.
This is far ahead of Europe by more than 300 years.
It will truly determine the changes in the pattern of the Ming Dynasty leading the world.
In addition to industrial reform, ideological reform is also very important.
After all, technology is the primary productive force.