As a 65-year-old Xu Guangqi, he is already a long life expectant in this era. Xu Guangqi himself also knows that he will not have too much time, but he is really unwilling, although he has made great achievements in military science, agriculture, and Western science, and has won the praise of the world, but since he entered the office, he wants to change the ideal of the Ming Dynasty's maladministration, but there has been no progress.

Xu Guangqi fell into deep thought, and at this time, Zhu Youzhen was very calm. He silently played with the teacup in his hand and waited, without the slightest hint of urging and hurrying.

Xu Guangqi has always been an elite among traditional scholars, and the political concept of taking the world as his own responsibility is a dream that every Confucian elite cannot give up.

Chongzhen's blueprint for the transformation of the Ming Dynasty finally moved him, and after half a ring, he said with a solemn expression: "Since Your Majesty has the heart to save the Ming Dynasty, the old minister should be driven by Your Majesty." This matter of changing the country into a university, the old minister will live up to His Majesty's trust.

However, please Your Majesty also listen to the words of the old minister, whether Your Majesty's three-year compulsory education policy can be postponed, although this policy is beneficial to the people at the bottom of my Ming Dynasty, but now I have the trouble of the East Prisoner outside the Ming Dynasty, and there is a rebellion of luxury and peace inside, under the continuous war, the treasury is extremely scarce, where does Your Majesty want to raise money for this compulsory education?

Your Majesty needs to know that since the Liaodong uprising, and after the rebellion in the southwest, the people of our Ming Dynasty have been paying more than 10 years, and these years have been full of natural disasters, and there are no local grains every year.

Secondly, as Your Majesty said, if every village in my Ming Dynasty has to set up a village school, and all school-age children have to go to school for free, these millions of students will at least be matched with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of gentlemen, how does Your Majesty plan to solve it? ”

Since Xu Guangqi is willing to take the lead in reforming education for himself, Zhu Youzhen will naturally not hide it. He roughly introduced the education reform plan he had been thinking about since the Xinwang Mansion, trying to dispel the last doubts in Xu Guangqi's heart.

Zhu Youzhen explained quietly: "According to my survey of the population in and out of Beijing, about 20% of the population is under the age of 16. Although the number of people registered in my Ming household registration is only 60 million, which is not much different from the beginning of the country, according to my survey of the consumption of rice and grain in the Beijing market in the past 10 years, the population of Beijing is almost four times the number of registrations. Considering the difference between the capital and the locality, the number of hidden households in my Ming Dynasty is at least twice that of the registered number, so the population of the entire Ming Dynasty is about 150 million, so it is estimated that there are about 30 million people under the age of 16 in the Ming Dynasty.

According to the quota of one teacher for every 100 people, about 300,000 people are needed, and there are millions of people in my Ming Dynasty according to statistics, and there are more than 500,000 Xiucai in each county alone, and there are millions of children.

Most of these people are unable to enter the official career, and they spend their whole lives on the imperial examination, which can be said to be no contribution to the country, and for themselves, it is a waste of their entire life. I hope that these people can come out and do something, first, to solve the problem of teachers, and second, to prevent these people from wasting their lives and to do something that is beneficial to the country and their own cause.

In terms of implementation, I plan to allow children who have reached the age of 20 and have not yet obtained the status of Xiucai to automatically obtain the status of Xiucai after serving as a teacher for three years. Xiucai who has reached the age of 25 and has not obtained the status of a lifter must obey the arrangements of the local teaching and serve as a teacher in a designated school. In this way, the problem of the source of teachers is solved.

Recruit 300,000 teachers, calculated according to the salary of 20 taels per person per year, totaling 6 million taels. If you add the pen, ink, paper, inkstone and other miscellaneous items used to run the school, it will cost about 3 million taels, and you will need to spend 9 million taels per year. In order to meet this expenditure, one is to make an armistice with Donglu and end the rebellion of Hao'an, which can save millions of taels in military spending every year. Second, it is necessary to vigorously develop overseas trade and subsidize the insufficient compulsory education expenses with tariffs. ”

For the grand plan described by Chongzhen and the optimism in his words, Xu Guangqi had to stand up and pour some cold water on him.

"Your Majesty's idea is not bad, but Your Majesty, it has been almost 9 years since the East was in turmoil, and today the momentum of the East Captives in Liaodong has been considerable, Your Majesty wants to stop the war, but the East Captives may not be willing to stop.

And after the rebellion in the east, the people of Liaodong in the Ming Dynasty fell into the hands of the east, and those who wailed and wept bitterly were all waiting for the king. Your Majesty wants to make peace with the East today, so where will the people of Liaodong be? How will the name of His Majesty be recorded in the history books? For the sake of His Majesty, it is not too late to set up a university, build Western artillery, sweep away the eastern captives and rescue the people of Liaodong, sort out and popularize the art of agricultural improvement and cultivation, and wait for the national treasury to be abundant, and then slowly implement this law of compulsory education. ”

Xu Guangqi was finally struck by Chongzhen's description of the grand blueprint for reform, which he saw as highly likely. And this reform plan is not Zhang Jiangling's time-saving reform plan, if Daming can really go on according to what Chongzhen said, then maybe Daming's current maladministration has really found a solution.

It is precisely because of the high feasibility of the implementation of this reform plan that Xu Guangqi is more cautious, for fear that the step is too big and will attract the opposition of the officials in the court.

As long as the university is established and survives the first 2 or 3 years, the people trained in the university can start to do things, and Chongzhen's reform plan to change the Ming Dynasty will have a reliable executor.

Xu Guangqi's earnest exhortation made Zhu Youzhen hesitate for a while. In fact, he did think about these issues, but what he considered was not whether making peace with Dongyu would affect his reputation, but whether Huang Taiji would negotiate peace with Da Ming according to his plan.

As a person of later generations, Su Changqing certainly knew that Huang Taiji was an outlier among the Jurchen savages. EQ and IQ are unusually high, although Huang Taiji pulls his neck every day and shouts that he wants to make peace with Daming. But only Zhu Youzhen knew that Huang Taiji never thought of making peace with Daming.

The reason why Huang Taiji shouted the slogan of peace was actually to politically win over those Jurchen nobles who did not want to continue to fight with the Ming Dynasty. He made a posture of wanting to demand peace politically, but he never missed any opportunity to strike at the Ming Dynasty in military action. Huang Taiji is called in the name of fighting to promote peace.

The Jurchen aristocrats who did not want to continue to fight with the Ming Dynasty naturally supported Huang Taiji's plan to promote peace. And the other three Baylors who are tied to Huang Taiji either have no ideas of their own, or blindly adhere to the proposition that the old slave chief and the Ming oath will not be incompatible.

However, for a semi-fishing, hunting, and semi-farming nation with a population of less than one million, it has maintained a standing army of more than 100,000 all year round and fought a war for more than nine years, and the people's strength has withered to the point of no return, and the price of rice in Liaodong has reached 80 taels and one stone at its peak. If it weren't for the fact that the official army of the Ming Dynasty was too weak, plus there were Han slaves to exploit, and finally the rice grain of the Jin merchants and Yuan Chonghuan's enemies, the Jurchens would have been divided by internal strife.

However, the civil officials and emperors of the Ming Dynasty regarded Huang Taiji's political slogans as an appearance that the Jurchens were about to be unable to hold on. The ministers of the DPRK and China insisted on not negotiating peace with the East, but the front-line generals were confused by Huang Taiji's slogan, and the Ming military attachés in Liaodong, who had been defeated repeatedly, really did not want to fight anymore, so Huang Taiji relied on a political slogan, not only appeased the unstable mood within the Jurchens, but also disturbed the morale of the Ming Liaodong army, which can really be described as killing two birds with one stone.

When the old slave Nurhachi died in August last year, the Jurchen tribes were also turbulent, and Huang Taiji first buried the concubine Wulanala clan and seized the military power of the two white flags. Then he won over the lord of the two red flags, the Great Bel Daishan, and ascended to the throne of Khan.

Even though Huang Taiji had mastered six of the Eight Banners, he still did not relax his vigilance, but threw out a co-rule of the four major Baylors to appease the Jurchen forces of the two Blue Banners, such as Dai Shan and Mang Gurtai.

With Huang Taiji's shrewdness, he knew from the beginning that it was impossible for Daming and Nuzhen to coexist. On the one hand, the Jurchens needed the hostile pressure of the huge empire of the Ming Dynasty to force the Jurchen nobles to unite and glue the many savage tribes originally scattered in the mountains and forests of Liaodong into a real nation.

On the other hand, the Jurchens are small and wide, and most of the area is undeveloped primeval forest. The Ming Dynasty is a dynasty built by an agrarian people that has lasted for thousands of years, with a population dozens of times that of the Jurchens, and the Ming Dynasty is densely populated, and most of the land has been developed into fertile land.

If the two sides really cease fighting and let the Ming Dynasty recover its energy for a few years, it is estimated that the Jurchen clan will not even have the opportunity to drill the mountains and forests. Therefore, Huang Taiji's strategy against Daming is to fight and pull, pull and fight, but not give Daming a chance to breathe.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen knew from the beginning that Huang Taiji's request for peace with the Ming Dynasty was a political lie. But the current Huang Taiji has only ascended to the throne for a year, and his internal control over the Jurchens has not yet reached the level of autocracy.

If someone was sent to negotiate peace with the Jurchens at this time, there was a great chance that Huang Taiji would have to fulfill his promise to the Jurchens. Even if Huang Taiji changed his tune and drove back the envoy sent by Zhu Youzhen, at least he could make those Liaodong officers and soldiers who had illusions recognize the reality.

However, in order to maintain the situation of Liaodong's defense, it was necessary to interrupt the compulsory education system he envisioned. As a descendant, Zhu Youzhen knew that the implementation of compulsory education was the key to the revival of the Ming Dynasty.

Only through compulsory education can the Ming people know the relationship between the individual, the nation, and the state. Only the Ming Dynasty, which established the concept of the country, will not fall into the darkest age.