When the people of Beijing were concerned about the price of gold, the Central Bank, the Bank of Shanxi, and the Bank of Communications each sent representatives to Yangzhou together with Zhang Guoji.

These delegates were obviously not there to admire the Fengyue and the thin horses of Yangzhou, and on August 30 their boat arrived at the pier under the Tianning Temple in Yangzhou. This wharf is the largest civil wharf in the southeast outside the city of Yangzhou, and the waterway leading from Gaoyou Lake in the northeast is connected to the Grand Canal to the south.

Although Yangzhou City is not a real Jiangnan area, it is full of rivers and lakes, but it is almost the same as the scenery of Jiangnan. After Zhang Guoji and the others got on the dock, a group of people greeted them.

Zhang Jinquan, Wang Xianwen, Wang Xiansheng's brothers, and the manager of the local bank branch got the news a few days ago and waited at the dock early in the morning.

With the support of the inner government, Zhang Jinquan, who has shown his strength in the salt industry this year, and is second only to the eight major general merchants in Yangzhou salt merchants, is well-behaved like a schoolboy in front of this line. The representative of the central bank's trip was Wang Fengyuan's eldest son, Wang Chunyuan, who had lent money to Zhang Jinquan several times in the past year because of the request of the internal government, so he was quite familiar with Zhang Jinquan.

Although he did not know that Zhang Jinquan had the identity of the social investigation office, he knew that Zhang Jinquan was his own person and a representative of the local salt merchants who cooperated with them on this trip. The two greeted each other for a while, then beckoned the group to sit in the sedan chair prepared by Zhang Jinquan, and went towards the Zhangfu Courtyard in the west of Tianning Temple.

Although the three banks sent their own representatives, Wang Chunyun was the one in charge of this time. Wang Chunyun, who has been working under his father, is not the first time that he has come out to take charge alone. However, compared with his own business in the past, the task of his trip this time decided the life and death of most Yangzhou salt merchants, and this feeling of power made him particularly excited.

After arriving at Zhang's Courtyard, Wang Chunyun hurriedly washed up and asked his subordinates to bring in representatives of various banks and other relevant personnel.

In a flower hall in the courtyard, without waiting for the owner to speak, Wang Chunyun sent out irrelevant personnel, but his noisy momentum did not cause any reaction from Zhang Jinquan.

After Wang Chunyun glanced at the seven or eight people present, he casually clasped his fists and saluted and said, "I won't say polite words, everyone should know what we are doing in Yangzhou." Now let Brother Jinquan talk about what is the attitude of Yangzhou salt merchants now, and what is the statement of the eight major merchants. ”

After seeing Wang Chunyun make a gesture of invitation to himself, Zhang Jinquan, who was sitting at the end of the crowd, quickly got up and said: "Since we got the notice from Beijing, I and the two Wang brothers have been running around, and we have been in contact with the eight major merchants and the small and medium-sized salt merchants living in Yangzhou.

At the beginning, under the agreement of Huang Zongshang, all the salt merchants promised to consider paper money on behalf of silver to buy and sell salt, but the Zheng family in Jiangdu jumped out and slandered that paper money is just a piece of paper like treasure money, and if the imperial court issues paper money indiscriminately in the future, they will not lose all their money, so many salt merchants will not admit it.

At present, only three of the eight major merchants are willing to support our proposal, and the other five are all opposed, and I am afraid that it will be difficult to succeed in the trade of the two Huai salt industries in exchange for silver. ”

Wang Chunyun asked with a calm face: "What is the origin of the Zheng family in this Jiangdu?" Is there someone manipulating them behind their backs? ”

Zhang Jinquan immediately replied: "Zheng Ziyan, the current head of the Zheng family in Jiangdu, is one of the eight general merchants, he has four sons, the eldest son Zheng Yuanxun has always been good friends with scholars, in April and May this year, Zhang Pu and Zhang Cai held a meeting in Yinshan, Guoxiang, Wujiang to form a society, it is said that the Zheng family has contributed a lot.

Most of the scholars who participated in the conference were famous people from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui, and it is said that the number of people present at the end of the meeting reached almost 700. The imperial court has long been determined about the Donglin Party, and these literati have formed an association to declare that they want to inherit the will of Donglin, which is not clearly against the imperial court.

From a certain point of view, the Zheng family's instigation of salt merchants to oppose the proposal of paper money instead of silver may not be unrelated to these literati. ”

After hearing Zhang Pu, Zhang Cai, and several well-known literati in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Wang Chunyun immediately stopped Zhang Jinquan and said: "I am waiting to come here, only to do the business of salt merchants, and this matter of the literati association has nothing to do with my trip, so you don't want to make extraneous branches." In this case, you can arrange that from tomorrow we will go separately to meet with the general merchants, and in 3 days we will convene all the salt merchants to discuss the matter of paper money and salt affairs. Do you have anything to add? ”

The representatives of the other two banks had no objection to Wang Chunyun's statement, and the representative of the Bank of Communications also echoed and said: "What Wang Gongzi said is very true, we should handle the things that should be handled as soon as possible, lest the literati who are good friends with the Zheng family question it loudly, and then not only will the scene not look good, but also fear that there will be more incidents." ”

In the following days, Wang Chunyun and others visited the eight major salt merchants non-stop. The salt merchants, also known as the salt ceremonial wine, were the leaders of the salt merchants who were elected by the salt merchants to deal with the government, and they were also a channel for the imperial court to manage the salt merchants.

If you want to serve as a salt ceremonial wine, first, you must have a close relationship with the government; The second is to have strong financial resources. Because the salt tax of the two Huai is not collected from a single salt merchant, but through the eight major salt merchants. Lianghuai Salt Industry handed over 600,000 taels of silver to Taicang a year, which was distributed to these eight general merchants, that is, nearly 80,000 taels per person.

And this does not include the money that was paid to the officials of the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Division, who managed the salt administration, and the Salt Division who managed the salt works. Therefore, in Lianghuai, the eight major salt merchants are the masters who control the salt industry in Lianghuai. Without their support, there would have been no change in the salt industry.

Although the Lianghuai salt industry is located on the ground of Nanzhili, and the two main institutions that manage the salt administration are in Yangzhou, there are not many well-known local salt merchants. Even the positions of the eight major salt merchants are mostly held by salt merchants from other places. Since modern times, the people of Huizhou, the eight major salt merchants, have always been able to occupy half of the positions.

The shareholders of the central bank and the Bank of Communications are mostly Huizhou people, and they should have had some common language with these Huizhou salt merchants. However, most of the shareholders of these banks started out in the pawnbroking business, and they belong to the rising stars of Huizhou merchants. In that case, most of the Huizhou salt merchants have been operating in Yangzhou for two or three generations, and they belong to the wealthy Huizhou merchants who made a fortune earlier.

The Huizhou shareholders of the Central Bank and the Bank of Communications have not lost their entrepreneurial spirit, and they are still thinking of further expanding the scale of the bank and establishing a banking network throughout Daming. However, these Huizhou salt merchants no longer have the adventurous spirit they had when they started their business, they just want to be able to safely hand over the industry to future generations, and have the dream of maintaining the status quo.

Due to the development of the salt industry in Lianghuai, the reputation of Yangzhou salt merchants for their extravagant and lustful life has also reached the ears of ordinary people in the Ming Dynasty. In the developed cultural industry of the Ming Dynasty, stories of Yangzhou salt merchants as villains abound. In the writings of these literati, the image of Yangzhou salt merchants is that of profiteers who are greedy for money and profit.

Wang Chunyun didn't believe in these stories before, after all, he was also a Huizhou merchant, and he thought that this was just a means for some down-and-out literati to be jealous of Huizhou merchants doing business. However, after visiting the eight major merchants and the more famous Huizhou salt merchants in Yangzhou, he finally realized that there is only the wrong name, not the wrong nickname.

These Huizhou salt merchants were not only bad but also stupid, and he went to visit them in the name of a fellow Huizhou descendant, but these salt merchants were only willing to deposit a few hundred taels of silver with the central bank as if they were calling flowers, so as to refuse to support the substitution of paper money for silver in the salt trade.

After everyone returned to Zhang's Courtyard, they were all a little worried about this southward mission. However, Wang Chunyun looked as usual, chatted with everyone for a few words, and then went back to his room to rest.

In the next few days, Wang Chunyun and others did not go out to visit again, but a big storm was set off in Yangzhou City. Before the Henan civil unrest incident was finalized, Han Yiliang, the chief of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, was assigned to Yangzhou in the name of patrolling the salt imperial history to conduct routine inspections of the yamen of the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Division.

In May of the second year, Xu Xianchun, who was angry and resentful in Henan, and other Jinyi guards, with more than 4,000 Shaanxi New Army, who were hated by the Henan gentry, were transferred to the Fengyang Imperial Mausoleum for flood control. In early August, this unit was transferred to Shanghai and reorganized as the Second Shanghai Garrison Division. However, on August 25, Xu Xianchun and others stayed in Yizhen County and did not move.

Coincidentally, the army, which was originally eliminated from Beijing and organized as the First Division of the Shanghai Garrison, did not go directly to Shanghai after leaving Tianjin by sea. Instead, he went ashore from Lianyungang and marched slowly all the way to the south, stopping near Gaoyou at this time.

The two armies, one south and one north, just encircled Yangzhou in the middle. For Xu Xianchun with an army stationed in Yizhen County, not far from Nanjing, the first thing that feels strange is Nanjing's Caojiang Imperial History, Caojiang Imperial History manages the defense of the Yangtze River, although there are 30,000 troops under his command, but they are just some rabble that can only scare ordinary people.

This army was probably somewhat useful against the bandits on the Yangtze River, but when they encountered smugglers, they would flee in the wilderness. And the Shaanxi New Army brought by Xu Xianchun is not only the main force of the old army in the Shaanxi border army, but also really seen blood in Henan. Not to mention the 30,000 rabble scattered in various ports of the Yangtze River under the hands of Cao Jiang Yushi. Even if the 100,000 Beijing troops in Nanjing City are pulled out, they may not be the opponents of these thousands of Shaanxi new troops.

Regarding Xu Xianchun's strange stay, the current Caojiang Yushi sent someone to question him, and quickly made a report to the Nanjing Military Department. Xu Xianchun's reply to the imperial history of Caojiang was that these Shaanxi people did not adapt to the climate in the south of the Yangtze River, and many of them were sick, so the army took a break here.

And the Nanjing Military Department's reply to the imperial history of Caojiang is also very strange, let this imperial history of Caojiang guard the river defense, and don't care about the affairs of the north bank of the Yangtze River.

Just when Xu Xianchun replied to the exchange with Cao Jiang Yushi, Han Yiliang, who had been idle in Yangzhou City for more than two months, suddenly ordered the arrest of a deputy envoy of the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Division, which shocked the officials of the Salt Transportation Division, and they all asked to see the new salt transportation envoy Chen Xin, wanting to know the reason for the arrest of this deputy envoy by the Salt Imperial History.

Since taking office, Chen Xinhaosheng, who has been not doing his job, has comforted these officials of the Salt Transportation Department such as Yuntong, Yuntong, Yunju, Yunju, and Tiju, and asked them to go back first and wait for news.