Chapter 1407: The Shadow of Civil War over the Great Ming! (Please Subscribe)

The time is now the eleventh month of the twenty-third year of Hongxing in the Great Ming. By the Western calendar, it is already December of 1670. Truly, time flies like an arrow, and the days and months pass like a shuttle!

These days, quite a few major events have taken place.

First, the English East India Company's South Continent expedition discovered the west coast of the South Continent and established a colonial outpost named Goose City (in English, Swan Castle, that is, Swan Fortress). They also found a sea route from the Indian Ocean to the west coast of the South Continent — setting out from Java, passing through the Sunda Strait, following the South Equatorial Current westward, turning south near Madagascar, then finding the West Wind Drift and sailing east, and finally turning north along the West Australian Current near the west coast of the Southern Continent, thus reaching the Goose City colony.

Returning from the Goose City colony to Java is much easier: right outside the door is the West Australian Current, and with a favorable wind all the way north, one can reach Java in under ten days.

That English rear admiral, Worcester, left Goose City in June of the twenty-second year aboard the Oliver Cromwell. In late June he reached Temasek. Then, taking advantage of the southeast monsoon before it turned, he sailed north and reached Guangdong by mid-July, after which it took another two months to get to Shanghai. He not only brought the good news of the discovery of the South Continent's west coast to Shanghai, that great world capital of the East, but also brought rare beasts from the South Continent — the motherly beast and the black swan.

The motherly beast is what was originally called the snack monster, the kangaroo. During the Goose Water expedition commanded by Yang Yandi, they gained a deeper understanding of the kangaroo — they learned that kangaroo meat is unpalatable no matter how it is cooked, and they also learned that the kangaroo's pouch is not for carrying snacks but for carrying its young. So the name "snack beast" was changed to "motherly beast." That counts as a major scientific discovery, doesn't it?

The second major event was that Luo Zhichen brought back from the Kingdom of India the draft of the Great Ming–Timur Treaty. According to this treaty, the Great Ming Empire and the Timurid Empire of India would form an alliance, open their markets to each other, establish embassies in each other's territory, and set up an agreed tariff system.

Of course, all the above are minor matters. The most important clause of the Great Ming–Timur Treaty is that the Great Ming Empire will specially permit the Timurid Empire to purchase slave child soldiers within its vassal states of the Dzungar Khanate, the Khoshut Khanate, and the Dai Kingdom.

Do not underestimate this slave child soldier trade. According to the tradition of Islamic states that "foreign slaves make good officials," these Central Asian slave soldiers will inevitably become the pillars of the Timurid Empire of India in the future. They are the core competitive strength of the Timurid Empire!

And the Great Ming, through the Dzungar Khanate, the Khoshut Khanate, and the Dai Kingdom, controls the supply chain of the Timurid Empire's military slaves — which is equivalent to seizing the Timurid Empire by its vital point!

The third major event was that Li Shaoyou, the Great Ming ambassador to France, sent back word that the roving bandits' foreign affairs mission, led by Song Xiance, was visiting Europe!

This is a matter of tremendous importance!

The roving bandits are going to conduct foreign affairs! Moreover, Li Shaoyou also reported in his memorial that Huang Zhisheng, assistant manager of the Divine Europe Bank, had colluded with the bandits — this treacherous merchant from an imperial merchant family, heedless of the Son of Heaven's grace and favor, went over to the roving bandits, and even revealed the true essence of foreign affairs to them.

Now the roving bandits have learned the true essence of "building is not as good as buying, and buying is not as good as seizing," and they have ordered a large batch of advanced arms from the Dutch as tools for their robbery. Once these tools arrive in Burma, another large-scale invasion of India by the roving bandits should begin.

And the fourth matter is a tremendous headache. The Great Ming, which had appeared to be in an age of peace and prosperity, has suddenly been shrouded once more by a vast cloud of civil war!

A true civil war! And it has come at just the right time!

Just as a struggle for the world is about to begin, the interior of the Great Ming is at odds again. It is truly a headache!

One side of the impending civil war consists of Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu, who have submitted to the Great Ming. Their armies now basically control U-Tsang, Ngari, and part of the Do Kham region.

The other side consists of Wu Yingxiong, Military Governor of Anxi; Wu Guogui, Military Governor of Hexi; Pengsuke, son of the former Military Governor of U-Tsang, Dayan Ochir; and Galdan, Military Governor of the Chu River in the Dzungar Khanate.

It is that group of Wu Sangui's followers and soldiers colluding with the believers of the Great Lama, clashing with the three feudatories of U-Tsang, Ngari, and Do Kham, who came over from the roving bandits. Both sides have old grudges and new enmities, and each regards the other as a mortal enemy!

This is truly thorny in the extreme!

"Imperial Father, this is a memorial from His Highness the Prince of Dai. It impeaches the three feudatories of U-Tsang, Ngari, and Do Kham."

Ding Yuying held a memorial in both hands, seated in a corner of the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, her delicate brows knitted, her face full of difficulty.

She had only returned home last month together with the Crown Prince, Zhu Hexing — the reason for their return being that their assignment in Tianhe Prefecture had "gone badly"!

Actually, it was not too badly botched. It was just that three or four million had been spent on resettling roving-bandit military households, fostering industries, and incidentally developing the economy of Tianhe Prefecture, and in the end it all turned into a complete mess.

The military households who were allotted land to farm worked from spring to autumn and basically all farmed at a loss! Quite a few of them even mortgaged or sold off the land the court had distributed to them.

And the military households who took subsidies to open handicraft workshops also struggled to operate, unable to secure any orders from the Ministry of War at all. Even the Crown Prince's personal intervention was of no use! By the time the couple, Zhu Hexing and Ding Yuying, dejectedly left Tianhe Prefecture, most of the workshops had already closed down, and only a small number managed to barely hold on by producing farm tools and horse tack.

In other words, of the three or four million invested, all that remained in the end were thirty or forty thousand poorly run family farms and a few hundred barely surviving handicraft workshops.

Yet Zhu Cilang had no intention of blaming Ding Yuying. On the contrary, he appreciated this Crown Princess even more — because he knew very well that the assignment of Zhu Hexing and Ding Yuying in Tianhe Prefecture could never have been done well. Most of those military households were simply not suited to running businesses; whether farms or handicraft workshops, they could not do any of it well.

So the vast majority of them would fail in their ventures and then spend the rest of their lives in poverty and destitution. If their relatives in the United Provinces could dig up gold and send some money back, they might still live a bit more comfortably; otherwise, they would have to rely on relief from the Great Ming court.

This was also the reason Zhu Cilang had placed them in Tianhe Prefecture: because Tianhe Prefecture was the port for exporting Liao grain, where food prices were relatively cheap and the cost of relief was relatively low. Moreover, in recent years quite a few large private farms had appeared in the Liao River basin (the small farms of the military households had been squeezed out by them), and during the busy farming season they needed to hire some short-term laborers, with relatively low skill requirements — which could also serve as a livelihood for those Shun military households.

There was another reason as well: Liaoyang Province was a key stronghold of the Great Ming's Andong Protectorate and Heilongjiang Protectorate for intimidating the Jurchens, and a large army was stationed there long-term.

If the Shun military households in Tianhe Prefecture dared to rebel, the great army in Liaoyang could come at any time to suppress them!

And thanks to Ding Yuying's diligent efforts, although those Shun military households had not lived any particularly good life, every one of them was quite grateful to the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess. When the two of them left, there were well over a hundred thousand people at the docks to see them off!

From this it can be seen that those three or four million taels were all spent where they mattered most. And they also bought the people's hearts. This Ding Yuying has indeed done a fine job!

So Ding Yuying, now pregnant again, resumed from mid-November her busy life of attending court and participating in governance in the morning, attending classes and remedial lessons in the afternoon, and in the evening having to deal with an energetic soldier Crown Prince (the Crown Prince had also returned to the Military Academy to study; Zhu Cilang no longer held any hope for him).

Today, while Ding Yuying was attending court in the Hall of Imperial Supremacy, the Zhu Emperor had someone bring her the memorial submitted by the Prince of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, to read, and also asked for her opinion — not to test her, but because he genuinely wanted to hear the opinion of this daughter-in-law of the Zhu family.

"Imperial Father," Ding Yuying closed the memorial and said thoughtfully, "Whatever the intentions of the Third Imperial Uncle may be, his memorial carries considerable weight. It seems that great turmoil is coming to the lands of U-Tsang, Ngari, and Do Kham!"

(End of Chapter)