Chapter 187: Section Four: Silver Coins

Huang Shi and the others had only been watching the rain for a short while when Wu Mu came over, beaming with delight. Originally, this sort of rain-praying task should have been the work of the local civil officials, but since Changsheng Island had no civil officials, they had no choice but to let Eunuch Wu do the honors.

"Eunuch Wu, you have worked hard. This rain is entirely your achievement." Huang Shi led a large group of military officers in exchanging a few polite words with Wu Mu, while eagerly suggesting that he go take a hot bath: "Eunuch Wu, your body is worth a thousand pieces of gold. You must be careful. Our Changsheng Island has many affairs, and we still rely heavily on you, Eunuch."

Eunuchs' bodies had always been somewhat weaker than ordinary people's, and certainly could not compare to military men. By now, Wu Mu was already thoroughly soaked from head to toe, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, his lips frozen purple. But seeing the rain fall, he was inwardly very happy, and he held himself up to exchange a few more words with Huang Shi before hurrying away, still humming a cheerful little tune through his shivers.

But after Wu Mu left, Yang Zhiyuan gave another soft sigh: "It seems a petty man has appeared by His Majesty's side." Huang Shi swept an impassive glance over the people around him and saw that all his subordinate officers, including Jin Qiude and Zhao Manxiong, wore expressions of more or less agreement.

Ever since the Wanli Emperor doted on Imperial Consort Zheng, northern China had suffered drought year after year. From the moment the Wanli Son of Heaven attempted to establish the Imperial Third Son as Crown Prince, the drought in northern China had grown worse by the day. The civil official faction (including the Donglin, Qi, Zhe, Chu, and other parties) had been attacking the Wanli Son of Heaven over this for decades. Imperial Consort Zheng, as the chief culprit, was naturally a seductive fox-spirit.

By the time of the great disasters of the Taichang reign, the person lacking in virtue had changed to Li Xuan. This seductive, bone-charming, wanton woman who brought chaos to the rear palace had already been driven out of the palace by the righteous Donglin Party, but the natural disasters continued. This proved that there were still treacherous villains within the palace or the imperial court. The righteous Donglin Party, of course, could not be the petty men, so the Tianqi Emperor's wet nurse, Lady Ke, gloriously assumed this heavy responsibility. The Donglin Party said she was "by nature bizarrely licentious, unspeakably filthy." But as for specific deeds and evidence... the Donglin Party also said: "Palace secrets. Outsiders cannot know."

In the tenth month of the fourth year of Tianqi, Wei Zhongxian launched a great purge and attacked the Donglin Party. That winter, the capital and the northern provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi saw no snowfall. Regarding this, a rumor circulated privately among the common people: that the current Emperor was deceived by petty men, and those the court struck down were all upright gentlemen. By the fifth year of Tianqi, there was still no snowfall. Then the Eunuch Party resolved to fight revolutionary rumors with counter-revolutionary rumors. Their explanation for this was that the lingering poison of the Donglin faction had not yet been purged, and therefore the Old Lord of Heaven was still very unhappy. So they absolutely must intensify the attack on the Donglin Party to please Heaven above.

Unfortunately, at least on Changsheng Island, this rumor clearly held little persuasive power. Although Huang Shi's subordinates dared not say it openly, it was evident that they all believed the Emperor was suspected of ingratitude. The Donglin Party had set policy to establish the late Emperor as Crown Prince, pursued the murderers who poisoned the late Emperor, and even drove out Li Xuan and her father, who had attempted to usurp the throne. (Li Xuan's father was a minor military officer. This great achievement of the Donglin Party in supporting the throne and safeguarding the realm was turned by them into a storytelling performance, and in Huang Shi's previous life, it was eventually adapted into a Beijing opera.) That the Tianqi Son of Heaven showed so little consideration for loyal ministers had clearly drawn the wrath of Heaven above.

As for Huang Shi himself, aside from a handful of individuals, he held no good opinion whatsoever of the civil officials of the late Ming. The Eunuch Party and the Donglin Party each had their own distinctive talents in corruption and harming the state. The Eunuch Party's grand charge in attacking the Donglin in the fifth year of Tianqi was corruption and embezzlement, but once the Eunuch Party came to power, they were no better. In Huang Shi's personal impression, the difference lay in one being a whore who was very good at and very attentive to erecting a chastity arch, while the other was a creature that neither cared about face nor was very skilled at applying rouge and powder. So it could be said that the Great Ming was already sick, and gravely so.

In any case, this rain brought a greater flow of water to Changsheng Island and the West and Central Islands. A dozen or so days later, the skilled craftsmen on Changsheng Island finished building a new set of forging press molds. Liu Qingyang and Yang Zhiyuan immediately came running to have Huang Shi go inspect it.

The waterwheel drove the screw forging press. The hard cast-iron mold pressed down upon the raw material, producing a screeching sound of deforming metal. After the mold rose, Liu Qingyang personally removed the tray from the forging press and carefully held it up for Huang Shi to examine.

Inside the dark cast-iron tray was a full tray of silver coins. The scraps trimmed from the edges would be re-melted and cast into silver plates, then forged into coins in this press.

Huang Shi picked up one silver coin and examined it carefully in the daylight. The mold had been carved with great care. The characters on this silver coin were clearly visible. On the front, at the top, were the three sharply angular Chinese characters "Military Note." Below these three characters was written "Worth Five Mace." At the very bottom was an Arabic numeral "5." Huang Shi flipped the coin over. On the back, from top to bottom, were three lines of characters: "Great Ming," "Dongjiang Zhen," "Left Association."

Since the founding of Dongjiang Zhen, Mao Wenlong had come up with all sorts of "cunning little schemes" to squeeze out those lost at sea, and issuing military notes was one of them. Mao Wenlong's wishful thinking was that he could give military notes to the various battalions in Dongjiang, then the battalion officers and soldiers would use his manufactured Dongjiang military notes to trade with merchants for goods, and finally these merchants would go to Caizhou to exchange the military notes for silver.

This policy sounded good in theory. The Dongjiang army could thereby avoid dealing directly with the grain officials of Dengzhou. Moreover, Huang Shi, measuring the intentions of Grand Commander Mao with his own petty mind, always felt there was a hint of conspiracy in it. As long as grain could be obtained from merchants using military notes, whether the silver could actually be collected was no longer Grand Commander Mao's problem. Furthermore, Grand Commander Mao could take the opportunity to issue extra military notes and gain a little advantage — historically, when Mao Wenlong was beheaded by Yuan Chonghuan, Dongjiang Zhen still owed merchants two million taels of silver, roughly equivalent to nine years of military pay for Dongjiang Zhen! Yuan Chonghuan had once denounced Mao Wenlong for "personally acting as a bandit, plundering traveling merchants." Since Mao Wenlong, that scoundrel, took the blame, this debt was repudiated by Yuan Chonghuan and the later chief officials of Liaodong. The unlucky ones were still those merchants who had supported the Great Ming army.

In Huang Shi's personal feeling, many things were indeed the prevailing ethos of the Great Ming, but being understandable did not mean they were right.

As for the result... of course it was very bad. The Dongjiang officers whom Mao Wenlong relied on as his pillars, sent to Shandong, collaborated with local officials to counterfeit vast quantities of military notes. This not only caused Mao Wenlong's credibility to plummet, but many honest merchants were bankrupted by it.

In the recent Dongjiang gazettes, Mao Wenlong shifted all the blame onto the civil officials of Shandong. He even filed a complaint against those civil officials to the Tianqi Emperor over this. After his appeal to the Son of Heaven failed, Mao Wenlong simply resorted to personal attacks by name against the Shandong civil officials in his gazettes, practically cursing them outright.

Yet Huang Shi believed that in this matter, Mao Wenlong was not as innocent as he claimed. In any case, those who counterfeited the military notes were all officers of Dongjiang Zhen, and the military notes the merchants received were all Mao Wenlong's. Huang Shi personally held that Mao Wenlong had no right to throw up his hands and kick those unlucky merchants back to Shandong.

But that was exactly what Mao Wenlong did. Huang Shi felt that many of the bankrupted merchants could be called patriots. They braved the possible losses of sea voyages and personal risk to transport supplies to Liaodong. They were also willing to accept worthless military notes before seeing any silver and to supply Dongjiang Zhen, which was utterly incapable of self-sufficiency.

Now many merchants sat waiting for months, even over a dozen months, without receiving a single cent. This was extremely unjust to them and to their patriotic sentiments. For the Great Ming, harming these people was tantamount to suppressing the patriotic spirit of the entire merchant class. It was also cutting the flesh of the Great Ming Empire. And for Dongjiang Zhen itself, which relied so heavily on Shandong's grain and cloth, harming the interests of honest merchants was, in truth, slow suicide.

Huang Shi picked up another silver coin. He held the two coins up side by side, frowning as he compared them back and forth. The forging molds employed a method similar to movable-type printing — Huang Shi had no idea how to make molds with higher efficiency. But this batch of molds was done quite well; the two silver coins were almost indistinguishable.

Yang Zhiyuan and Liu Qingyang watched Huang Shi's expression nervously. Their superior had kept his mouth tightly shut, expressing no opinion whatsoever, which made them somewhat uneasy.

"Good. From now on, my Dongjiang Left Association will use this kind of military note." Huang Shi flicked his left thumb twice in succession. The two silver coins traced bright arcs through the air one after another. Yang Zhiyuan and Liu Qingyang both hurriedly caught the coins tossed their way.

"Our Dongjiang Zhen Left Association has an authorized strength of eight thousand men. Each soldier's monthly pay is ten mace, making an annual payroll of sixty thousand taels of silver." The fixed pay of the frontier army was originally one tael and four mace, but since the beginning of the Tianqi reign, the She-An, Jianzhou, and White Lotus rebellions had consumed enormous resources. In particular, the She-An rebellion had mobilized over a hundred thousand troops over three years. Several prolonged offensives had cost nearly twenty million taels in military expenditures. The reserves of the inner and outer treasuries were already stretched to the limit. The military garrisons of the interior and those without active warfare had had their pay suspended for years. Dongjiang Zhen, as a frontline garrison, though receiving only a few hundred thousand, was better than those below though not as good as those above; all things considered, it was at a middling level.

Because of the great victory at Nanguan this year, the Tianqi Emperor used inner treasury funds to make up the missing half. Thus, after submitting ten thousand taels to the Dongjiang headquarters, the Left Association, together with various miscellaneous reward payments, had a total of one hundred fifty thousand taels of silver. Once Huang Shi's request for additional local surcharges reached Shandong, there would be another thirty thousand taels of income. Therefore, Huang Shi planned to cover this entire shortfall and give all units of the Left Association full pay: "Every soldier on our Changsheng Island gets four silver coins. In Jinzhou, we from Changsheng Island will send people to distribute pay, also four coins per soldier. I don't care about the men in Jinzhou and the Vanguard Battalion, but if anyone on our Changsheng Island embezzles, or colludes with the officers of the Vanguard Battalion to embezzle, they will be dealt with by military law without exception."

"As ordered, my lord." Yang Zhiyuan agreed crisply. In his mind, he was already calculating several candidates for pay distribution and supervision. Besides this, he also knew that Huang Shi would send people from the Internal Guard and the Loyal Patriotic Catholic Church to supervise.

"As for Zhang Pan, Mao Keyi, Mao Kexi, and the others, we will pay them according to the Ministry of War's audit results. We need not send people to supervise them." Huang Shi reached out and scooped up some silver coins from the tray, pouring them back and forth between his hands. The brand-new coins produced a pleasing sound, and the burrs from forging were still somewhat sharp to the touch.

The treasury-standard official silver shipped from Shandong was all white silver of over 99% purity, whereas the silver coins in Huang Shi's hand were not of such high purity, being roughly a ratio of seven parts silver to three parts tin. Thus, minting this kind of silver coin already brought a seigniorage profit of thirty percent. However, Huang Shi could not yet lay his hands on this seigniorage, because these silver coins were theoretically only a kind of military note. Huang Shi also stipulated that a five-mace silver coin could be exchanged for five mace of white silver at the Changsheng Island main camp.

Even if all the merchants came to exchange the silver coins for pure silver, Huang Shi would not lose out. But this silver coin, whether in terms of portability or intuitive value, was a better currency than silver ingots. Therefore, Huang Shi believed that as time passed, once the credibility of the Changsheng Island silver coin was established, this seigniorage would be his for the taking. Besides Changsheng Island unconditionally providing exchange services, Huang Shi also ordered that all products of Changsheng Island accept transactions from merchants using silver coins.

Apart from silver coins, Huang Shi also planned to forge some copper coins as subsidiary currency, which would of course also be nominally military notes of Changsheng Island. By the time the Great Ming reached the Tianqi reign, the credibility of the Great Ming court had fallen to a very low level. In this era, many money shops had already begun privately minting coins. The Great Ming Empire was utterly powerless to stop this. Within the small areas where these privately minted coins circulated, the Great Ming's copper cash could no longer compete with them. Officials of the Great Ming, from the central government to the localities, adopted a laissez-faire attitude toward these private coins, seemingly completely unaware of the enormous harm this would cause the state.

The extremely low monetary credibility of the Great Ming government at this time had created a phenomenon: apart from privately minted coins, what circulated nationwide were all kinds of silver ingots. Although silver ingots possessed a higher degree of credit, there were still significant differences in the fineness of official silver and private silver. Private silver ingots also varied from region to region, which brought great trouble to commercial transactions. Huang Shi had ample reason to believe that once a generally accepted equivalent that could be mass-produced and possessed considerable credibility appeared, it would ultimately circulate in the commercial sphere.

The misfortune of the Great Ming was the fortune of Changsheng Island. The ultimate goal of a credit currency was, of course, to abolish the tael and adopt the dollar, but Huang Shi did not intend to bite off more than he could chew at this moment. The focus of his and Liu Qingyang's attention at this stage was still the credibility, convenience, and difficulty of counterfeiting of this "military note."

This silver coin also had many additional benefits. Two that Huang Shi could think of now were: first, it could bind the Dongjiang Left Association more tightly together; second, it would create greater difficulty for the Later Jin in buying spies — it was very hard for Huang Shi to monitor exactly how much silver merchants brought to Liaonan, but he could relatively easily track the flow of silver coins. If a merchant attempted to use large quantities of silver coins to bribe Huang Shi's soldiers, the intelligence department would also find it easier to detect such behavior.

At the end of the fourth month of the fifth year of Tianqi, the waterwheels and forging presses on Changsheng Island were still working overtime to produce "military notes." Several waterwheels on Central Island had also been repaired, and a large furnace was built right behind the reservoir, looking as if it would soon be completed.

Having made this windfall, Huang Shi steeled his heart and threw several thousand taels of white silver into it, also expending a great deal of manpower and material to build a new, large steelmaking furnace.

Previously, the pig iron had stubbornly refused to melt into molten steel, no matter how many men Huang Shi mobilized to work the bellows. This time, Huang Shi had over half the blacksmiths and carpenters on the island work together, and they finally managed to build a large hydraulic blower. The blower, controlled by screws and gears, could provide continuous, stable wind power driven by the waterwheel.

This new steelmaking furnace also adopted a completely new design. Previously, the blower had always blown cold air directly into the furnace chamber. So no matter how much of Huang Shi's coal was burned, the temperature inside the furnace stubbornly refused to rise (remaining below roughly 1,300 degrees). Now, the chimney of this furnace was no longer a single iron pipe leading straight out, but instead twisted and turned in several large loops after exiting the furnace chamber.

Huang Shi struggled to recall the shallow physics he had once studied, designing the outlet pipe to run parallel to the inlet pipe. The icy cold air, upon entering the inlet, would be heated by the chimney of the outlet, then pass through the inlet into a heat storage chamber. The outlet chimney pipe coiling through there would heat this fresh air until it was scalding hot (five to six hundred degrees). Finally, this hot air would be blown into the furnace to make steel.

Building such a large furnace and its matching powerful blower once again caused Huang Shi's subordinates to complain bitterly. Everyone clamored that the money spent could almost match refining gold. However, under Huang Shi's firm will, these buzzing fly-like voices were suppressed. Moreover, Huang Shi explicitly told several of his subordinates that if they still could not melt the iron this time, then he would build an even larger furnace and an even more powerful blower.

The envoy from Jinzhou delivered a request-for-instructions letter from the Vanguard Battalion. In the fifth year of Tianqi, refugees were surging toward Liaonan in torrents.

As early as the first month of this year, Nurhaci had foreseen that this year would be a great disaster year. He believed that allowing large numbers of Han people to continue living would seriously affect the right to survival of the Manchu compatriots. Therefore, the Later Jin regime in Liaoyang ordered the search and execution of all Han merchants, landlords, and Licentiates.

Although the military operations of the second month interrupted Nurhaci's purge process, they swiftly resumed action afterward, slaughtering all the wealthy Han households in Liaodong. The Later Jin regime planned to secretly use their property to purchase grain and cloth from the Shanxi merchants.

At the end of the third month of the fifth year of Tianqi, Nurhaci once again ordered the arrest of Han paupers in Liaodong. All beggars and impoverished peasants fell within the scope of this massacre, and this slaughter order was issued two months earlier than in Huang Shi's previous life. The wives and daughters of these impoverished Han people were also seized by the Later Jin people; they would be sold to some Mongol tribes in exchange for cattle, sheep, and furs. To facilitate this trade, the Later Jin regime even opened a horse market in Hexi. Large numbers of Han women were led by ropes like livestock, stripped naked, as they listened to the Later Jin bandits and Mongol buyers haggle over prices.

At the beginning of the fourth month, Nurhaci issued the infamous indiscriminate slaughter order of the fifth year of Tianqi — this was also well-known in Huang Shi's previous life. In this order, Nurhaci commanded the Later Jin officers and soldiers to systematically inspect every village within their territory. All Han people who did not possess five dou of rice were to be regarded as "enemies." These Han people were to be killed immediately and their pitifully meager property seized. Han people who did possess five dou of rice were to be "registered and placed into estates," becoming slaves of the Eight Banner households.

When Li Yongfang heard of this utterly inhuman slaughter plan, he attempted to dissuade Nurhaci and was immediately thrown into prison.

The Vanguard Battalion reported to Huang Shi: after the fourth month, Han soldiers had come in droves requesting to surrender. Among them, many did not even wait to receive a reply from the Dongjiang army before fleeing south with their families. There were even instances of Han soldiers killing Later Jin officials and defecting to Dongjiang in formed units. The Jinzhou side, while detaining all these Han soldiers, sent a fast boat to request instructions from Changsheng Island.