The Spring Festival of Chongzhen's fourth year passed in this bland but full of fireworks.

During the Spring Festival in the first two years, the events that brought countless sensational topics to the people of Beijing, such as the Lantern Festival Magpie Bridge meeting in the Forbidden City on the night of the Lantern Festival, although it was held on the square in front of the Huangji Gate as always, it did not attract much attention among the people of Beijing.

Because of today's Daming Jingshi, the people are seeing more and more new things every year.

In previous years, the appearance of a glass mirror more than one person high on the market in Beijing, or tableware such as household glass cups, would cause many onlookers to watch, and it has long been a thing of the past.

Glassware from Jingdong River Xiwu, although still expensive, is no longer rare and rare.

After the canal was frozen in winter, the grain flowing directly to Tianjin by sea had never been interrupted.

In the autumn and winter, the price of rice, which continued to rise inside and outside Beijing, did not last long, and then fell again, returning to the level before the price increase.

At the same time, a caravan from Saibei also brought back a large number of sheep to the people of Jingshi in the Ming Dynasty, and the price of meat in Jingshi remained rare and stable.

Although ordinary people still can't taste meat a few times a year, when it comes to the Chinese New Year, even the poorest Shengdou Xiaomin still have to spend a little money, buy three or two catties of mutton from the grassland, and eat a meal of white-flour dumplings.

As for the corpses of beggars who died of hunger and froze to death on the streets of Jingshi a few years ago, they have never been seen again around the Spring Festival of the fourth year of Chongzhen.

Yan Yingyuan, who has now been promoted to deputy commander-in-chief of the Five Cities Terracotta Division inside and outside the Beijing Division, with the support of Liu Wenbing, the commander-in-chief of the Five Cities Terracotta Division, has popularized the set of practices he had explored and established in the command of the Nancheng Terracotta Division in the inner and outer cities of the Beijing Division.

It was built on the basis of the original Terracotta Division, and continued to be subordinate to the patrol battalions of the Terracotta Division in various urban districts, and a total of ten were built up.

A patrol battalion is organized into three to five patrol teams according to the size of the district and the number of non-commissioned officers.

Each patrol unit is divided into three to five patrol houses according to the size of the district, the number of soldiers, and the prosperity of the market and the population of the neighborhood in the district.

In this way, by the Spring Festival of the fourth year of Chongzhen, in the entire inner and outer cities of the Beijing Division, according to the original system of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses, a total of ten patrol battalions were built, with a total of 48 patrol teams and 200 patrol houses.

Among them, the larger patrol battalion has more than 1,200 men, while the smaller patrol battalion has only 7 or 800 people.

The number of people in each patrol team also varies, from about 300 people in the larger ones to only 180 in the smaller ones.

As for each patrol room, of course, the number of people is even smaller, a larger one hundred and ten people, and a smaller one only twenty or thirty people.

However, they are not many in number, but there are many things.

In addition to the affairs arranged by the Five Cities Terracotta Division, according to the arrangements of the Shuntian Mansion and the Imperial History of the City Patrol, almost all the chores in the Jingshi City had to be managed by these people.

In the past, the functions of maintaining order, fighting patrols, preventing and extinguishing fires, and flood prevention and drainage naturally had to be taken on in addition to the functions they had assumed.

In addition, the traffic of vehicles and horses at the intersection of the main roads in the city, the removal of garbage in the market, and the handling of various disputes between neighbors are also supervised by the patrol team under the patrol battalion and the patrol house.

At the same time, Yan Yingyuan, with the support of Emperor Chongzhen, also applied the detective team he had pulled up in the Nancheng Soldiers and Horses Division to other urban areas.

At present, under the division of soldiers and horses of the five cities of the Beijing Division, in addition to the ten patrol battalions and 48 patrol teams that have been built in different divisions, there is also a police department that is in charge of the five detective teams in the east, west, south, north and middle of the inner and outer cities of the Beijing Division.

These detective teams selected from the patrol team of the Patrol Battalion of the Soldiers and Horses Division and the Shuntian Prefecture Arrest and Rapid Guards, all of them wore civilian clothes and had no official uniforms or uniforms, and they were specially used to solve all kinds of difficult cases that occurred in the capital city.

Since Yan Yingyuan put him under the guidance of Emperor Chongzhen, after the pilot verification of the Nancheng Terracotta Division, proved to be a feasible practice, and popularized it in the whole city of Beijing, in just over half a year, the streets of Beijing City, which are becoming more and more prosperous day by day, have been kept in good order.

Not to mention the dead people who died on the streets of Jingshi, it is now that a dead mouse has appeared on the flat cement road of Chaoyangmen, and the patrol house set up by the Dongcheng Terracotta Division in Chaoyangmen will find someone to clean it up as soon as possible.

Because Dong Da, the commander of the Dongcheng Terracotta Division, is a hardcore promoted by Yan Yingyuan from Tongzhou, he is the most resolute and ruthless in implementing his own Yan Boss's orders.

It is precisely because of this that for many years in the past, the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division, which has been unknown and unwatched, suddenly became a force that no one in the capital dared to underestimate when the fourth year of Chongzhen came.

Whether it is the people of Jinyiwei or the people of Dongchang, in the face of the quietly rising Wucheng Soldiers and Horses, especially the police department and its detective team under it, everyone is afraid.

A year ago, they dared to ride their horses and whip into the market in Jingshi City, and even whip the commander of the patrol battalion, but now they don't dare to do that anymore.

Especially when passing through Chaoyangmen Inner Street, I was doubly cautious.

Emperor Chongzhen supported Yan Yingyuan in establishing a preliminary police system in Beijing, but of course he did not deliberately target Jinyiwei and Dongchang.

However, if the police department under the Five Cities Terracotta Division can play a role in balancing Jinyiwei and Dongchang, then for Emperor Chongzhen, of course, it is a happy thing to see.

Of course, Emperor Chongzhen trusted Gong Yonggu and Fang Zhenghua very much, but he still had to restrain the good and bad people under Jinyiwei and Dongchang.

The same is true for the Five Cities Terracotta Division, and the patrol rooms of the patrol battalion and patrol team under it are also mixed.

Even the Police Department, which Yan Yingyuan is personally in charge of as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Five Cities Soldiers and Horses Division, and the Five Cities Detective Team under its jurisdiction, are also mixed.

This is a common problem of this era, or a common problem of any era, and it is not a problem that can be solved by one or two responsible Qing officials.

How can we build on their strengths and avoid their weaknesses?

Now the best way that Emperor Chongzhen can find is the mutual checks and balances between personnel, especially between institutions.

Gong Yonggu, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, was born as a lieutenant of the horses, and was the husband of Emperor Chongzhen's half-sister Princess Le'an, that is, Emperor Chongzhen's brother-in-law, and was a member of the emperor's relatives.

And Fang Zhenghua, the eunuch of Dongchang, was born as a minister and belonged to another force other than the emperor's relatives.

As for Yan Yingyuan, who actually presided over the affairs of the Wucheng Terracotta Division as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Wucheng Terracotta Division, he was born in Wujin Shi and Jiangwutang, and completely belonged to another force other than the emperor's relatives and eunuchs.

Is it possible that these people will come together for selfish gain?

I can't say that there is no at all, but it is very little.

Besides, although Yan Yingyuan is still young, his background as a small official in Tongzhou County makes him very proficient in human affairs.

There was no need for the emperor to say anything more, he could taste the emperor's meaning from the things assigned by the emperor.

Not to mention that Yan Yingyuan now has a powerful backer like Emperor Chongzhen, but without such a strong backer, with his historical performance, to this point, he is destined not to easily take refuge in Jinyiwei's imperial relatives or Dongchang's admirals and ministers.

This is also the reason why Emperor Chongzhen let him establish a junior police system in the capital division of Sijiu City.

Moreover, it is indeed unreasonable for a city with more than 30,000 household registrations and a total population of up to 1 million inside and outside the country to not have a police system dedicated to public security.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the plague was prevalent, especially the plague that was prevalent in the north after the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, and there were many reasons for its occurrence, such as the land of Xuanda for many years of war and famine, the dead and wounded, and starvation everywhere, a large number of corpses decomposed and no one buried, and the grassland wild rats outside the border of Xuanda multiplied in large numbers by eating the corpses of people and animals, and spread a violent virus to humans, and finally spread to the city of Beijing.

However, there is also a very important reason, that is, the large population and poor management of the city, which makes the health and environmental conditions in the city of Beijing extremely dirty and poor.

The Forbidden City is like an isolated island, surrounded by garbage, countless cross-streams, and sewage everywhere with human and animal feces.

Even a large number of dead bodies of people and animals who died of disease and starvation were not dealt with in time, and they were left to rot and stink in the city.

Under such circumstances, even if the plague did not begin to break out from outside the northern Jin Dynasty and the Xuanda border and spread throughout the north, over time, the plague would have broken out in the Jingshi City itself.