My Daming New Empire

There are also some ministers who are not real power, but only in name, and they also regard this position as a supreme honor.

Today's chief minister of the cabinet is Li Xian, who has been a second-class Jinshi for 12 years.He has served in various ministries of the imperial court for many years, and he is quite familiar with the situation of various ministries in the capital.

In the 32nd year of orthodoxy, Zhu Zhanji noticed him, because he was honest and upright, promoted talents and appointed talents, cherished talents and opened up the way of speech as a top priority, and most famous officials praised him.

In less than two years after entering the cabinet, Zhu Zhanji admired his talent and impartiality, and promoted him to the chief assistant over many famous officials.

Now when he and his second assistant Peng Shi, Shang Ren is Zhu Zhanji's most trusted three cabinet scholars.

Shang Ren is upright, generous, tolerant, and decisive when dealing with matters, a bit like Yang Rong 40 years ago.

And Peng Shi was the orthodox number one scholar for 24 years. This person has a good character and great knowledge, but he is a bit pedantic.

And Zhu Zhanji's personality is a bit strong, and he also needs such a person like Xie Jin to open up from time to time.

The youngest in the cabinet is Xie Jin's grandnephew and Xie Zhenqi's son Xie Yun.

Xie Yun was born in Luzon in the second year of Zhengtong, and went to Nanzhou with his father in the eighth year of Zhengtong. It was not until the 14th year of Zhengtong, when he was 12 years old, that he returned to Daming to settle down.

Although he grew up overseas since he was a child, Xie Zhenqi, the number one scholar, has been hand in hand with his education since he was a child. Not only is his Chinese studies not weak, but also because of his rich knowledge, he is the most open-minded among the officials.

He is only 38 years old this year. In Zhu Zhanji's heart, he is one of the candidates who can succeed Prime Minister Yu Qian and Speaker Xie Zhenqi more than ten years later.

Now the three first-rank ministers in the imperial court, in addition to the Secretary-General of the Court of Justice, Yu Shiyue, who is already 76 years old, is a Jinshi in Yongle for 13 years.

The prime minister Yu Qian and the speaker Xie Zhenqi were both Yongle 19-year Jinshi in the same discipline, and they were the number one scholar and the second place respectively, which is also a good story in the court.

As usual, Xie Yun, who was still the youngest, began to read official documents to Zhu Zhanji.

Official documents read emergencies first, followed by military incidents, followed by diplomatic incidents, followed by civil affairs, and finally some typical cases.

Every matter, unless Zhu Zhanji is arbitrarily arbitrary, general affairs will go through some discussions, they will give their opinions, and then Zhu Zhanji will make the decision.

As for domestic civil affairs and diplomatic affairs, basically the opinions of the State Council have already been obtained. Zhu Zhanji only needs to review here.

Among them, the most troublesome thing is often the affairs of the parliament, because almost all the affairs they report involve legislation, law reform, and law popularization.

Even though Zhu Zhanji has the experience of later generations, many issues must be considered whether it can be consistent with the current world situation.

What he is most concerned about now is the situation in the Western Regions. After hearing Xie Yunnian, Zheng Hong, the governor of Samarkand, noticed that the white people began to gather again in winter, and thought that the white coalition forces might go to war in the early spring. When he asked the Ministry of Defense for help, he pondered .

Shang Ren made more suggestions on the military. Seeing that Zhu Zhanji hadn't spoken, he said: "Samarkand's current military strength is only 20, and the three cities of Tanglin in the north are only 25. As a base, more than 50 troops can be dispatched each time. The minister believes that now our Ming Dynasty should no longer allow him to repeatedly violate the frontier, and should be severely punished."

Zhu Zhanji said: "Although they have a large number of people, our Ming soldiers are not alone and helpless. Yili is not weaker than the other party even if he adds up all the troops. Is there any new news from Osman?"

"They fought fiercely with Ulugh Beg in Bulgaria. Huang Shenzhi, the consort's captain, did not achieve much results."

Zhu Zhanji originally deliberately drove the Ulugh Beg forces to Ukraine. Later, Ming occupied Ukraine and drove them to the south.

Although Ulugh Beg couldn't beat Ming, his cavalry was still very crude in bullying Europeans.

But I never thought that because of the appearance of muskets, the Europeans with a large number of people are not afraid of Ulugh Beg's light cavalry at all.

Although Ulugh Beg also got the manufacturing technology of muskets later, the number of people was not as large as that of Europeans, so they could only retreat to the plains between the two mountain ranges between Romania and Bulgaria in later generations, which is roughly around the Romanian capital Bucharest. .

Ulugh Beg snatched this territory from Osman.

Bulgaria had been destroyed by the Ottomans at this time. They did not dare to go east, so they expanded west and north.

The butterfly effect caused by the appearance of muskets prevented Ottoman from becoming a powerful empire in the original history.Their original advantage in facing the Europeans became a disadvantage after the proliferation of muskets.

Now the Ottomans dare not march westward. People of their faith don't care about fighting the Europeans, and they are enjoying themselves.

However, Zhu Zhanji suspected that they were playing fake games, and the purpose was to avoid becoming pawns in Daming's hands to deal with Europeans.

He sent his son-in-law Huang Ting to Ottoman to put pressure on the other party and find out the situation.

Zhu Zhanji was still thinking about it, and Li Xian said: "Your Majesty, all the ethnic groups in Yilibali need to help each other diligently now, and it is impossible to fight. Although they have a large number, they lack muskets. This time, with one mouth, they want to aid [-] muskets." , five thousand barrels of gunpowder."

Zhu Zhanji looked at Xu Youzhen, a cabinet scholar who had been silent all the time, and said: "I have been hesitating, it seems that it is imperative to change the army's clothes."

Xu Youzhen has been in charge of the affairs of the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Hearing this, she said, "Shangshu Bai has already debugged the machine and put it into full production. It can produce 200 million bullets and [-] new muskets a month."

After returning from the Western Regions in September, Zhu Zhanji summoned Bai Gui, Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry, and asked him to arrange for craftsmen to produce two bullet production lines and two new musket production lines.

In the 18th year of Yongle, Zhu Zhanji developed a new type of musket with separated bullets, but now 42 years have passed, and the new type of musket has not been popularized.

The main reason is that it is unnecessary, because Daming's reloading musket was already invincible.

But now, the gap is narrowed by the Europeans. If you want to gain an advantage in some regional places, you have to rely on population to fill it.

These 40 years have passed, and the population of the entire Ming Dynasty has grown to nearly [-] million, but compared to the vast land of Ming Dynasty, [-] million people are far from enough.

In Nanzhou and Dongzhou, there are still large tracts of land that are uncultivated.

In the Hezhong area, although Zheng Heng, Zheng Neng, and Zheng Hong's ancestors and grandchildren are all loyal and loyal, it is because there are strong enemies around them that they dare not stand on their own.

Moreover, in order to prevent the Zheng family from growing bigger, the number of local troops has been controlled at [-].

The original 30 soldiers, plus their families, amounted to almost [-] Han Chinese.

40 years have passed, and due to the bad climate and fewer products there, their population development is not as good as that of the central and southern regions.

In the past 40 years in the central and southern regions of the Ming Dynasty, the population has nearly tripled, Dongzhou has similarly increased, and the population of Nanzhou has more than doubled.

But in the northern and mid-river regions, the population has only more than doubled.Today, there are only more than 60 Han Chinese in the Hezhong area. Even if the people are recruited, there will be a maximum of 20 soldiers.

If troops are transferred from the mainland, it will cost a lot.

Those white coalition forces seemed powerful, but in fact they didn't dare to attack Samarkand directly, they only dared to occupy some pastures and fertile land.

Their lack of gunpowder is one aspect, which angered Da Ming. Da Ming's 160 million navy and 100 million army are not vegetarians.

To Daming, they are just a skin condition, not worth going to war with.

It would be costly to send people, so the time is just right to take out the combo gun that has been matured for a long time.

Although the new muskets have not been produced in recent years, the technology for producing muskets has not been put on hold, and there is also a dedicated research team that has been researching and improving them.

In Xiamaqiao Farm, there has always been a production line. In small-scale production and debugging, Zhu Zhanji's guards use new-style muskets.

So if you want to produce a new type of musket, you only need to rush out a few production lines.

Only the production of pistols was really sealed up. The only two new pistols in the world were all returned to Zhu Di Zhengtong three years after his death.

Zhu Di lived two years longer than the original history. In the first year after the abdication, he went to Nanzhou with the fleet before changing the yuan.

When he went to Nanzhou, he took all his concubines away and lived on the Yongle.