Chongzhen's domineering

Chapter 204 Unpredictable Turbulent Times: The Three Kings' Power (Part 2)

While the soldiers of the Beijing garrison were building a new canal wharf in the freezing cold, Zhang Xianzhong was also frantically conscripting men in the same conditions.

His territory expanded from Runing Prefecture to the east of Nanyang Prefecture and the south of Kaifeng Prefecture, and his forces quickly swelled to three or four hundred thousand.

Gao Yingxiang and Zhang Xianzhong both seemed to be conserving their energy, preparing for a major undertaking.

Pan Yunteng was not idle either. After receiving Zhu Jue's secret decree, he began to frantically recruit troops again. He planned to expand his forces to a staggering 900,000 during the period when the north was frozen!

Besides the three main rebel kings, the other rebel kings also seemed to have sensed the crisis and were frantically expanding their strength, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands, which added up to seven or eight hundred thousand.

Suddenly, it seemed that rebels were everywhere in the Northwest and even the Central Plains. Local officials and princes and members of the royal family were terrified and lived in constant fear.

However, strangely enough, none of the rebels have made a move yet.

They neither attacked cities nor vassal states, nor did they wage war against each other or launch a major annexation campaign.

These guys seem to be waiting for an opportunity, but I don't know what opportunity they're waiting for.

If it were Emperor Chongzhen in history, and the rebels had developed to this extent, he would definitely have worked tirelessly, day and night, to quickly mobilize troops to suppress them.

Zhu Jue acted as if he knew nothing about it and didn't care at all!

He had already entrusted the matter of the rebels to Pan Guozhong and Pan Yunteng, so let those two brothers figure out a solution. What solution was he supposed to come up with?
The most important ability of a leader is to recognize and use people. He thought the Pan brothers, Guozhong and Yunteng, were good, and after trying them out, they were indeed quite good. That was fine. He could leave the matter of the rebels to the two brothers to handle for now, and he didn't need to get involved.

Right now, he's busy helping the soldiers of the Beijing garrison increase their income. This is also a very important aspect of personnel management. When superiors manage people, they don't just yell and order them around. Instead, they create favorable conditions so that people can give full play to their initiative and work proactively for them.

There is no doubt how important the soldiers of the Beijing Garrison were to him.

These days, whoever has the biggest fist is the one who knows the truth.

The Beijing Garrison was his most important military force, so naturally he wanted to keep it under control.

The day was the day the irrigation canal was dug and they were preparing to breach the moat to let water flow through. Early in the morning, around 7 a.m., before he had even finished reviewing the memorials, he hurriedly led Wang Chengen, Fang Zhenghua, and others to the moat outside the North Gate.

By this time, the more than two hundred irrigation canals had been dug to a length of nearly forty zhang (approximately 33 meters), and they were laid out outside the North Gate like two combs.

He also specially ordered Yuan You to gather craftsmen to build a row of wooden houses at the end of each canal, and installed more than twenty ordinary boilers outside the wooden houses to provide heating for all the wooden houses.

This way, after the soldiers finished fetching water and making ice, they wouldn't have to stand in the freezing cold. They could sit in the wooden hut, drink tea, chat, or even take a hot bath, which would be very comfortable.

What was originally a tiring and cold task of fetching water and making ice has become quite pleasant after this process.

However, at this moment, the nearly 200,000 soldiers of the Beijing garrison had not yet crowded into the wooden huts to keep warm. They were all standing around more than 200 irrigation ditches, waiting for the breach to be made.

For them, that's money. Even if a wooden frame of ice only sells for a few coins, hundreds of thousands of wooden frames can make a round of ice worth hundreds or even thousands of taels of silver. Moreover, these wooden frames are made very shallow, so the ice freezes very quickly.

They had all tried it, and a wooden frame of water could freeze into ice in less than 15 minutes. That meant that at least several thousand taels of ice could be made in an hour, and at least tens of thousands of taels of ice in a day of twelve hours!
They were naturally incredibly excited about such a lucrative job.

When Lu Xiang-sheng and Yuan You saw Zhu Jue arrive, they quickly came forward, cupped their hands, and bowed in greeting.

Zhu Juena nodded hastily, then dismounted and waved his hand, saying, "Let's begin."

Upon hearing this, Lu Xiang-sheng immediately announced in a loud voice, "Give the order to begin breaching the defenses."

The messenger pulled out a command flag and waved it, and a series of chaotic digging sounds immediately came from the densely packed irrigation ditches.

The breach wasn't dug from top to bottom; instead, a hole was simply carved out from below.

If you dig from top to bottom, water will start flowing into the ditch after digging about three feet. Not only will it make digging harder below, but the water will also flow very slowly, and it's unknown how long it will take to fill the ditch.

And the water might stop flowing, in which case we'd have to break through the ice above and dig the opening deeper.

Digging a hole from below is different. Once it's opened up, water will gush out quickly and continuously until the water in the moat dries up. There's no need to dig anymore; it's a one-time solution.

Of course, such a breach also carries certain dangers. The moment the breach is opened, anyone below could be swept away by the gushing water.

This was nothing to the soldiers of the Beijing Garrison.

There are so many of them! All the people below just need to tie a rope around their waists, and a whole bunch of people above are holding onto the ropes, ready to pull them up. No matter how much water there is, it won't wash them away; at most, they'll just get soaked.

Zhu Jue peered closer at the breach and saw more than a dozen burly men below, their cotton-padded coats pulled off, frantically digging around like rats making a hole. The soil was piling up behind them, and the men behind were quickly filling bamboo baskets with it. The men above would then swiftly pull the baskets up, their speed astounding.

The water level in the moat was not high to begin with, and the pressure was not great, so they left only about half a meter of soil. After more than ten strong men dug for a while, water began to seep out from below.

They measured it again with the wooden stick, then lifted the thick log and, as if ramming a city wall, rammed it into the hole they had carved out.

With a muffled thud, the log seemed to have pierced through the remaining soil in the cave. A dozen strong men then pulled the log back, and the river water gushed out.

"Let go quickly, start pulling."

At someone's shout, the soldiers of the Beijing garrison holding the ropes immediately ran to both sides, and the dozen or so strong men were pulled up in a flash, many of them without even getting wet from the gushing river water.

As for the log, don't worry about it; it's just a log and will naturally float to the surface.

The breach happened incredibly fast; all two hundred-plus irrigation canals were broken in less than 15 minutes.

Next, the soldiers of the Beijing garrison began to apply salt water and smear snow on the surface.

Those junior and senior officers carried buckets of salt water and large brushes, smearing snow all the way, while their subordinates followed behind, grabbing handfuls of snow and smearing it, their speed was incredibly fast.

The nearly 200,000 soldiers of the Beijing garrison had finished cleaning and smearing the 500,000 wooden troughs they had been working day and night with salt water and snow, but the irrigation canals weren't even full yet.

Zhu Jue looked at the slightly murky muddy water in the canal, and then at the uneven soil along the edge of the canal, and pondered, "Jian Dou, if they stand by the canal to draw water, they might easily step on the edge and fall in."

"Quickly send men to the shipyard to bring over several thousand planks, each two or three zhang long, to lay on the irrigation canal. They can then use the planks to draw water without any danger."

Upon hearing this, Lu Xiang-sheng immediately ordered his men to hurry to the shipyard to retrieve the ship planks.

The capital city was no ordinary place at this time; the shipyard was more than 20 miles away.

They waited for almost an hour before hundreds of horse-drawn carriages finally arrived with the deck.

However, by this time the water in the ditch had become completely clear.

Lu Xiang-sheng ordered his men to set up the boat planks on the canal, and then squads of soldiers began to carry buckets of water and pour them into the wooden troughs.

This process was rather time-consuming, because it took two or three buckets of water to fill one wooden trough. In other words, on average, each soldier had to carry five or six buckets of water to fill fifty wooden troughs.

Zhu Jue looked at it for a while, then pondered and said, "Jian Dou, find a steelyard and a clean bamboo basket."

That's simple. Many ordinary households in New Taipei City have steelyards, and they have an abundance of bamboo baskets. Just find a new one and wash it clean.

Before long, the steelyard and bamboo baskets were ready.

The group waited in the freezing cold for nearly 15 minutes until the water in the trough finally froze.

The soldiers of the Beijing garrison were overjoyed as they poured out the ice blocks and began loading them onto horse-drawn carts to haul them into the ice cellar.

Zhu Jue ordered someone to fetch a block of ice, smash it into several pieces, put them in a bamboo basket, and weigh them.

As a result, a wooden trough of ice weighed approximately fifty to sixty pounds.

He nodded slightly, then said solemnly, "This batch of ice will be sold for five coins, or one coin for ten catties of ice if sold individually."

This basket of ice can be sold for five coins?

That batch of 500,000 tanks would cost 2,500 taels!
Four batches in one hour is 10,000 taels, and twelve hours in a day is 120,000 taels!
The soldiers will likely have to work day and night to make ice.

Upon hearing this, Lu Xiang-sheng thought for a moment and then cautiously said, "Your Majesty, if we can really sell it for that price, the soldiers will probably work day and night to make ice. I estimate they will need to dig more ice cellars to store so much ice."

"Your humble servant dares to ask, can they sell all this ice in the summer? At least 100,000 taels of ice a day, that's over two million taels in twenty days!"

You have no idea how many people will be unable to live without this ice once it becomes popular in the summer.

Zhu Jue smiled slightly, then explained carefully: "Jian Dou, do you think people would be reluctant to spend a penny to buy ten catties of ice to cool off when it's unbearably hot in the summer?"
People who are penniless might be reluctant to spend money. Are there still penniless people in the capital now? Obviously not. Many families can earn several taels of silver a month. Do you think they would be reluctant to spend a few coins every day to buy ice to cool off?
Even if only one million people in the capital contribute five coins a day, that's still five thousand taels. In ten days, that's fifty thousand taels, and in a month, that's one hundred and fifty thousand taels.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Those who are wealthy and can afford air conditioning fans will use at least a hundred coins' worth of ice a day. There's also ice for refrigerating food, vegetables, meat, fresh produce, fruit, and so on. Once ice becomes popular, two million taels of ice will definitely not be enough to meet demand.

That's great! Now the soldiers of the Beijing garrison will have something to make. Every winter, a full ice cellar can be sold for at least ten taels of silver. If they are willing to put in the effort to dig ice cellars, they can store dozens or even hundreds of taels of ice in a winter!
(End of this chapter)