Jinghua Mining is a very important department within Jinghua Group. It was established separately a few years ago. Its headquarters is located in Kaiping, but it manages and guides all mining exploration and production of Jinghua.
After Tumut completely surrendered, Jinghua Mining's development in the Ming Dynasty began to expand from focusing on North China, Central China and Liaodong. The first group was the northwest region.
The reason why the northwest region is the first batch of key development areas is politics. This is because the real school or the Gao Party's basic base still favors the northern region. Especially after Zhang Siwei came to power, the Jin Party was almost integrated into the Gao Party. In this way,
In addition to Shanxi, the power of the Ma Ziqiang family in Shaanxi, formerly Zhang Siwei's main ally, was also used by Gao Pragmatic, which created the necessary conditions for Jinghua Mining to expand into the northwest.
There is another key factor here, which is that Tumut's surrender made the northwest region, which was originally in the unfavorable situation of "surrounding Gansu and Gansu all captives," suddenly become peaceful and laid the foundation for large-scale development.
At that time, the focus of Jinghua Mining was on the coal mines in northern Shaanxi - later known as the Shenmu and Yulin areas. The coal mines in this area plus the Tumut Iron Mine (later Baotou, the mine was opened by Jinghua, which employed some Mongolians) and
Ordos Glauber's Salt (same as Baotou) formed the basis for Jinghua to build a new weapons factory in Shaanxi. Therefore, Jinghua opened the Yansui Arsenal in Jiazhou, the residence of the Yansui Governor. It mainly produces muskets and a small amount of light artillery to supply the northwest.
quartermaster.
There are no problems until this period, the problem lies in the next step. After the Yansui Arsenal was completed and successfully put into operation, Jinghua began the second step of expanding to the west. It happened that Jinghua Trading Company heard local rumors in Gansu during their business trip - listen to the rumors
It was an important source of minerals discovered during this period - it is said that copper mines were often discovered by military households in Yongchangwei, Gansu Province.
This news attracted the attention of Jinghua Mining, and they quickly sent people to investigate and explore near Yongchangwei. As a result, a large copper mine was actually discovered.
The news quickly reached Gao Pangshi, but he didn't know much about Gansu and couldn't make up his mind, so he wrote to Liu Xin for inquiries. Liu Xin replied shortly after, believing that the copper mine discovered by Jinghua Mining was probably the Baijiazuizi of Jinchang in later generations.
Copper ore reserves are very large.
This boosted Gao's pragmatism, because the Ming Dynasty was suffering from a severe copper shortage, and he now needed copper mines to build cannons and supply the fleet. Therefore, as soon as he heard about the large copper mines, he immediately approved the development plan in Yongchangwei - although
The place is remote, but no matter how remote it is, it is still on the only route of the Silk Road, and horse racing can be done here. How can it be more difficult to transport than Yunnan? Nowadays, most of the copper mines in Daming are located in Yunnan.
Yongchangwei is the Jinchang of later generations, located not far to the northwest of Wuwei. Of course, Wuwei today is generally called Liangzhou. The situation faced by the Ming Dynasty here in Gansu is just like the "all around Gansu are captives". To the north is
To the west and south of Tumut are Turpan and Qinghai Tumut.
Turpan is a little better. Due to its limited strength, it has always been more deferential to the Ming Dynasty. However, the Qinghai Tumote was not the same. They were relatively honest at the beginning, especially during An Da's reign. Because they were afraid of An Da's prestige, the Qinghai Tumuts
Mert has always followed An Da's advice: if I conquer the Ming Dynasty, they will harass Gansu; if I accept the title, they will do business honestly.
After Anda's death, the Monan War broke out. The Ming Dynasty and Tumote teamed up to defeat Tumen and Xin'ai. Huang Taiji, the leader of the Ordos tribe, led Huo Luochi and surrendered to Hannaji. This was the last period of peace.
After Han Naji was granted the title of King of Shunyi, the status of Huo Luochi and others did not change much. Because the Ordos tribe was a Mongolian farmer, their status was only slightly lower than that of Han Naji, while Huo Luochi and others did not change much. The same cannot be said for Luo Chi and others. Including his brother Zhuli Tu, all of them are just commanders - not as good as commanders.
This certainly did not satisfy Huo Luochi, who had once served as one of the "Five Consuls" under Tumen. Even Julitu was very dissatisfied, thinking that he should at least be given a commander.
How busy are the two brothers together? In the end, they were much worse than the "hairy boy" Han Naji, and it was simply embarrassing to tell them!
So the two began to separate Han Naji, and gradually became disobedient. Han Naji contacted Huang Taiji as usual, and prepared to send troops to teach the brothers a lesson, but they did not want to see the Mongols continue to commit suicide. They were fighting each other, so they expressed their willingness to mediate.
Chi Jin was An Da's nephew. He had been favored by An Da in his early years and was quite prestigious in the Mongolian left wing. After he came forward, Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu stayed together for almost two years.
However, the good times did not last long. Last year, Qie Jin suddenly fell ill, and the illness came like a mountain, and he soon lost his health. He even summoned the leaders of his subordinates to explain his funeral.
At this time, Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu's thoughts came to life. In their opinion, all face must be seen, but it didn't matter if they took Han Naji. This kid was of low generation, not outstanding in ability, and indifferent. The Southern War seems to be his great contribution, but in fact it is not.
When it comes to strategy, it's a highly pragmatic work; when it comes to combat, it's a personal show - what's going on with Hannaji?
As a result, the old ways of the two sprouted, and they began to become unstable again. They began to harass the Gansu border, and were "removed from the market reward" by the Ming Dynasty, which meant that trade was prohibited.
However, the elimination of market rewards would not only be detrimental to Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu, but also harmful to the Ming Dynasty itself. The specific manifestation is that it has become difficult for Jinghua Trading Co., Ltd. to do business in the northwest, not only without Qinghai Tumo This is a special business, and when doing business with Turpan, we must also prevent Huo Luochi and focus on the robbery of rabbits.
Under this situation, in order to make up for this "loss", Jinghua had no choice but to increase the development of the Yongchangwei copper mine, so it made an important decision: to reduce the employment of labor and use gunpowder blasting to mine copper.
Under this idea, Jinghua Mining began to transport gunpowder to the northwest, and a large amount of gunpowder was sent to the Yongchangwei copper mine for use.
Huo Luochi and Zhulitu didn't have any interest in this because they didn't have guns or artillery, but a guest happened to come and help them come up with an idea.
This guest is really an old acquaintance, it is Xin Ai's son Burihatu.
Burihatu traveled all the way from Mobei to Qinghai, of course, for an important matter. This important matter was to stir up fire and Luochi, and to force the rabbit brothers to resist Han Naji's "reverse behavior".
It is not important whether Han Naji acted rebelliously or not. What is important is that Burihatu brought Tumen's edict. Tumen consecrated Huoluochi and focused on the two men to govern the Great Mongolia. At the same time, he also stated that as long as they can in the future, In conjunction with the Tumen annihilation of Hannaji, although the left and right wings of Mongolia must be unified, the Tumen will only need the Tumote headquarters, and the positions of farmers in the Great Mongolia State reserved by the Ordos tribe will be given to the Qinghai Tumote.
This canonization basically impressed Huo Luochi and Brother Jilitu, but the two brothers also had requirements, that is, Qinghai is not complete now, and the most important Xining area is in the hands of the Ming Dynasty.
The two brothers proposed that if the Great Khan could help them recapture Xining and collect a complete Qinghai, not only could they immediately declare their separation from the jurisdiction of Han Naji and start harassing Mingbian, but they would also be willing to make a bloody alliance. In the future, Tumen When the war of unification was launched against Bhannaji, the two tribes must "serve for the Great Khan regardless of age or age."
In this case, the problem turned to Burihatu.
Tumen was thousands of miles away, with Tumote's headquarters in the middle. Of course, he was unable to send troops to help. Burihatu could only rely on his own efforts to find a way to help the two of them capture the important town of Xining.
This level of difficulty does not sound much lower than when Wang Xuance of the Tang Dynasty conquered India.
But Burihatu is Burihatu after all, and he is a mastermind who can be loved by all the people. While gathering intelligence in Songshan, he thought carefully about the plan, and actually came up with an idea.
Soon, Huo Luochi began to send people to contact Yongchang Guards. On the surface, he continued to request the Ming Dynasty to reopen the market for rewards, but secretly contacted Yongchang Guards and said that he would trade with them privately.
As we all know, the Ming Dynasty's border troops could not care about the ban when they were poor, or the effect of the ban would be greatly reduced. Of course, border troops like Xiang Yongchangwei, who were far away in Gansu, did not mind the private market.
But usually, the border troops will also use the ban to tilt the prices in the private market very much. Mongolians are usually not willing to suffer this kind of "exploitation", so generally speaking, the scale of this kind of private market is not large. big.
However, this time it was different. Huo Luochi said that he and the two brothers Zhulitu were going to launch a war against Wala and completely establish their status as the "Heroes of the Western Regions", so they needed a lot of supplies - in other words, this transaction The scale is much larger than the usual private market.
Of course, a health station in Yongchang Guard District will not have such a high level of strategic thinking to pay attention to the issue of "Hero of the Western Regions". For them, the fact that the Mongols are willing to be taken advantage of is the best news. They are really not afraid of you in transactions like this. If your business is big, I'm afraid your business will be small.
The big one violated the ban, and the small one also violated the ban. The court law does not punish everyone, and it is impossible to behead all the Yongchang guards, so why not do something big?
So the matter was quickly discussed, and Huo Luochi and Yongchang Wei conducted a private sale at the foot of the city wall somewhere inaccessible.
Things like the private market are unspoken rules, and reputation is more important than anything else. Therefore, in the past many years, neither party will break this tacit understanding. However, something unexpected happened this time. Halfway through the transaction, Huo Luochi , Jilitu's large group of troops suddenly appeared, killing and capturing the Yongchang guards who were conducting private trading, and then found some people who could speak Chinese and looked like Han people, wore their clothes, and carried their tokens. Knock off...
At that time, the Yongchang Guards were attacked and broke through the border gates, and they retreated to various forts. This was nothing new. In addition to the border wall, the border army also had a lot of forts on the border, just in case one side of the wall was breached. You can also retreat to Wubao and wait for the army to rescue you.
But unexpectedly, Huo Luochi and Zhu Litu's large forces did not go to attack the impregnable Wubao, but went directly to the Yongchang Copper Mine in Beijing - they were not going to grab the ore. Although this thing was good, they almost They couldn't process it and couldn't produce any copper, so they went to the mine's warehouse.
Jinghua did have a mine protection team in the copper mine, but because Yongchang Guards did not warn them in advance that there was a foreign invasion, they did not react at all at the time and were still working in the mine.
When they picked up their weapons and organized their teams to defend the copper mine, they discovered that the other party was not coming for the copper mine, or even for the smelted copper ingots. These Mongols roared to loot the warehouse. Every pack was empty, especially the gunpowder used for blasting mountains and quarrying rocks. Every pack was snatched away by the Mongols.
After Huo Luochi and Zhu Litu stole the gunpowder, Yongchang Wei concealed the situation while arguing with Jinghua Yongchang Copper Mine, and even alerted Cao Gan, the big boss of Jinghua Trading Co., who was far away in Xi'an. Cao Gan was also puzzled after learning the news. What's the point of the Mongols in Qinghai grabbing gunpowder? They don't have firearms, and they don't know how to blow up mountains and mine. Are they going to sell it to other forces in the Western Regions?
However, since so much gunpowder was robbed from his house, Cao Gan had to take care of it, so he rushed to Liangzhou personally to understand the situation, and even prepared to wait for an opportunity to retaliate.
As a result, when he went there, he received news that surprised him: Huo Luochi and Zhuli Tu did not go to the Western Regions at all after getting the gunpowder, but went directly south, heading all the way to Xining.
Cao Gan was so frightened that he sent a fast horse to notify Xining, and at the same time personally led the team, leading a cavalry of more than 3,000 people to pursue south.
But it was definitely too late. He came all the way from Xi'an and was delayed for half a day in Liangzhou. How could he catch up with Huo Luochi and Zhulitu, the two main forces of the Mongolian tribe?
He had just crossed the Qilian Mountains when he received news that Xining had been lost!
What shocked him even more was that the reason why Xining fell was because Huo Luochi and Zhulitu's men rushed to the foot of Xining City to confront the Xining Guards. And that night, the Mongols dug tunnels and "dug half" the walls of Xining City. He buried a large amount of gunpowder and blew up the west gate of Xining City in one fell swoop!
How could the Mongols do this?
Cao Gan didn't care much and used all the means at his disposal. He spent thousands of taels of silver before he found out an inside message: Tumen Khan's military advisor Burihatu had been stationed in the Huoluo Red Army for more than a month. , this method was his idea from beginning to end, and he even came up with the idea of using gunpowder to blow up the city.
Shopkeeper Cao Da was shocked, but he didn't care how Buri Hatu knew this, so he quickly sent a horse and rushed 800 miles to deliver a letter to Gao pragmatically to report the situation.
According to his idea, the responsibility for the initial problem of this matter lies with Yongchang Guard, but the large amount of gunpowder lost by Jinghua was actually the main reason for the fall of Xining City. Without this batch of gunpowder, Burihatu would have had all the abilities , he could not pry open the solid city of Xining. Therefore, he thought that the imperial court might hold Beijing responsible, so the master must prepare in advance and cannot wait until the news of Xining's fall reached the capital before urgently putting out the fire.
Gao Pragmatic is not afraid of how much trouble this incident will cause Jinghua to get into. After all, Jinghua himself is also a victim and is the "non-fault party". Even if someone in the court wants to cause trouble, he can handle it.
He was anxious about the whole situation!
Because the current situation is so in line with Burihatu's plan, this situation must be reversed, otherwise the Ming Dynasty will not have completed the "opening of the vassal ban" by then, and Burihatu has successfully planned to siege Tumote.
If Tumut can't stand it, will all his plans of more than ten years be in vain?
It is tolerable, but what is intolerable!
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