I want to be emperor

Chapter 277 Pseudo-Chu is cruel and unscrupulous
Adding personnel and mules and horses together, it will cost more than 860 million to eat, drink and chew in a year. It is possible to break through [-] million if the combat time is longer and the loss is greater.

And Chengshun's regular military budget for the second year was only 500 million taels in total.

The 1000 million has already been occupied by personnel and mules.

The remaining 500 million taels of silver are used for the purchase of equipment and ammunition.

Don't think that 500 million taels of silver is too much.

Because of the sound of the cannon, ten thousand taels of gold!

If you want to hit the shells on the enemy's position, the price is not cheap!

Every time a shot is fired, not to mention the iron lumps of the solid shell, the propellant alone is not cheap.

If it is a grenade fired from a mortar, then there is a charge in the grenade.

And the gunpowder of the Great Chu Empire is very expensive!
No way, core raw materials such as saltpeter and sulfur have to rely on outsourcing, and in order to maintain outsourcing channels, they must spend high prices.

Therefore, the cost of ammunition in the Great Chu Empire has always been relatively expensive, which is more expensive than that of the Ming Army, and it is much more expensive.

That is to say, the Great Chu Empire has a lot of money now, otherwise it might not be able to use a large number of guns.

The military of the Great Chu Empire is expected to purchase a total of about 500 million taels of various equipment, ammunition and other military supplies this year, and the orders for these military supplies will eventually flow to various military supply factories represented by Hantian Arsenal and Xiangyang Arsenal inside.

As far as this is concerned, the military is still too small, and the Ministry of Industry also feels that the military is a bit stingy... When the Daye Industrial Base is fully rolled out, that is, when most factories reach the designed production capacity by the end of this year, the 500 million Two silver, it is estimated that it can only maintain the full speed of the Daye industrial base.

As for the Xiangyang Industrial Base, I'm afraid they will take the initiative to reduce production...

To this end, Yuan Gaofeng of the Ministry of Industry has held several meetings with senior military officials to discuss increasing military orders.

But now the military doesn't have any extra budget, and they can't add orders if they want to, so they can only draw big cakes for Yuan Gaofeng:

"After we win Chu Nan, we will increase the order as appropriate!"

After taking down Chu Nan first, you can add more orders when you have money. Right now, you haven't even placed an order yet...

In other words, when the monarchs and ministers of the Great Chu Empire felt that 500 million taels of silver was not enough, the military felt that money was scarce, and the Ministry of Industry felt that there were not enough purchase orders.

Chongzhen of the Ming court couldn't even get a few 10 taels of silver...

Chen Biqian wrote to the imperial court twice in three days to ask for money. Naturally, the household department had no money, and there was not much internal treasury.

Even throwing away the face of the emperor, he announced that he would wear clothes every two days.

That is to say, a set of clothes is worn twice and then thrown away...

As soon as this remark came out, the government and the public were shocked. Many ministers hurriedly wrote a letter, crying bitterly, saying that your majesty had been wronged, and someone wrote a letter praising Chongzhen.

Throwing away a piece of clothing after wearing it twice becomes thrifty?
Well, don't be surprised, it really is!

We cannot use the thinking of ordinary people to evaluate the daily life of an emperor.

Because there are not at least thousands of us ordinary people, but there are thousands of people who do nothing all year round, and only sew embroidered clothes for us...

The emperor's storeroom has hundreds of thousands of commonly used clothes, not to mention throwing away clothes a day, some emperors who like to be clean and pay attention to some things throw away several sets a day...

Not to mention the ancient emperors, many of the high-end dresses worn by the rich and famous in later generations are also worn once and thrown away.

If you want to wash it before wearing it, other designers will be dumbfounded...because they didn't think about washing it when they designed it...

And the ancient emperors, especially the emperors in the traditional feudal dynasty of China, who gathered power in one body, lived [-] times more luxurious than the rich people of later generations...

It's far away, let's say that Chongzhen once again reduced the expenditure in the palace, especially the expenditure of individuals and concubines, and embezzled a lot of money from other directions.

In the end, we pieced things together and got 50 taels of silver to Chen Biqian.

What's interesting is that according to the tradition of the Ming Dynasty, [-]% of the money was lost before leaving the capital, and was used to distribute the money to the officials.

From the elders of the pavilion to the ordinary officials in the six ministries, they can all get more or less money from it...

The officials who dealt with it were not intentionally corrupt and embezzled, they were just drifting away according to the routine. Even if Chongzhen himself came to ask for accountability, they dared to say that this was the tradition of the country!
Is this not true, you let so many officials in the economy drink the northwest wind... Could it be possible to rely on that little salary?That little salary is not even enough to match the teeth.

As for being greedy for ink, not all officials have the opportunity to be greedy for ink. Many officials in the Qingshui Yamen and low-level officials actually have no chance of being greedy for ink, but they still have to support their families.

How did this money come from?
It can only be lost by various names.

After so many years, the Ming court has formed management here, no matter what the money is, let's drift first.

This is still military expenditure, so only [-]% of the drift is lost. If it is replaced by other funds, the drift of [-]% is a routine operation.

After being wiped out by 50%, Chongzhen frugally squeezed out 35 taels of silver, and only [-] taels of silver were left.

Most of the money was converted into guns, guns, food and other supplies.

After conversion, the final batch of gold and silver materials became 10 taels of cash, grain and grass, guns, armor, and swords with a market value of about 20 taels of silver.

Among them, 5 taels of silver went there, nonsense, a large group of people are working hard, but they can't pay others for their hard work, and there are so many materials that can't be shipped.

As for why you said that the materials are all directly transported from Henan, it doesn’t cost so much freight at all, you’re talking nonsense, we obviously transported the materials from the capital...

These materials were transported all the way south to avoid loss.

Well, it's normal to turn over a car on the road and meet a bandit or something!
So when it was delivered to Chen Biqian, only 5 taels of cash and grain and supplies worth 15 taels of silver were left in this batch of supplies.

Among these grains, there are all old moldy grains that have been soaked in sand.

When Chen Biqian received the imperial decree, saying that His Majesty squeezed out 50 taels of silver for himself, he looked at the pile of cash and supplies with a total value of 20 taels of silver, but he was not surprised or angry. .

As a member of the officialdom, especially an official who had served in Gyeonggi before, and had received numerous shares after drifting away, Chen Biqian knew very well why 50 taels of silver would become 20 taels.

But he couldn't say, couldn't even accuse.

Because this is a tradition, the unified will of countless officials from top to bottom of the country.

Everyone has to support their families, isn't it... You Chen Biqian jumped out to do bad things, who do you want to disgust.

Chen Biqian not only didn't get angry or blamed, he was even a little thankful that most of the court chiefs and those who dealt with them along the way still knew the tense situation and the importance of this batch of money and food, and at the same time, it was considered to give Chen Biqian face.

A total of [-]% was lost and deducted!

If this is replaced by money and food sent to Liaodong and other places, it is impossible for the frontline troops to get [-]% of it. At most, they will give you some silver dross for you to smell...

This batch of money and food can still leave 20% to Chen Biqian, [-] taels of silver, which is already a good result.

It's just that, looking at this, there is not as much silver as there is in the silver vault in his own cellar... Chen Biqian has a headache, such a small amount of money is not enough.

At this time, he thought of a rumor he heard some time ago. It is said that the Chu bandits in the south spend tens of millions of dollars a year on military expenditure, which is both enviable and angry.

Envious, how much money can be spent on tens of millions of military expenses this year... Oh, no, how many troops can be supported!
And the anger is that the Chu thieves only rely on such a small place as Chubei and Wuchang Mansion, but they search for tens of millions of treasures to support their army.

The ruthlessness of the search shows the brutality of the Puppet Chu's tyranny. No wonder many local gentry and people in Huguang generally say that the Puppet Chu's tax collectors are as fierce as tigers, and their tyranny is even more tyrannical than Qin.

Not to mention that Chen Biqian was envious and terrified, when other people heard that Chu thief's annual expenditure reached tens of millions, their reactions were also very exaggerated.

Yang Sichang, who was in Changsha, heard that the Puppet Chu’s annual military expenditure exceeded ten million taels, and he sighed and said: "If I have tens of millions in hand, how difficult is it to compile 20 new standard troops? With 20 new standard troops in hand , How difficult is it to put down the Chu bandits!"

"such a pity!"

Shi Kefa, the governor of Anlu in the east, heard the news, and blocked a group of subordinates from yelling: "The fake Chuluo thief is cruel and unscrupulous, and he seeks the people's fat and anointment for his own selfish desires, and the fake Chu tax collector Chen thief, tens of millions of taels, he This is the blood and flesh of how many people have been squeezed dry!"

"Wuchang in the northern part of Chu, I'm afraid the people are living in dire straits and starving to death!"

If Chen Xingkai, Minister of the Taxation Department of the Great Chu Empire heard this, he would definitely roll his eyes at him: You can slander my character, but you must not slander my IQ.

How stupid do you think I have to be to let a group of gentry and big households not collect taxes and find a group of bitter people to collect taxes.

As for the three or five copper coins of ordinary people, I, Mr. Chen, don't look down on them... I am paralyzed. If I ask them to collect taxes, I can't even collect the tax costs.

Do you really think that the tax patrols and armed tax patrols in my tax department don't need money, don't you... It's expensive to keep these people.

Tax collection also requires costs!

Really looking for a group of bitter people to collect taxes, and squeezed them all out. The money collected may not even be able to cover the operating costs of the tax department itself...

Therefore, the main target of the Taxation Department of the Great Chu Empire, that is, the target of taxation, has never been the ordinary people, but the gentry and big households. Regardless of whether they are big landlords or the owners of big commercial firms, they are all their key monitoring targets. .

In this process, it is inevitable that some big gentry families will have their homes ransacked because of armed resistance to taxes, and some people will be arrested for tax evasion or ransacked, so there are not a few big gentry families who were killed or injured.

But no matter how you say it, you can't reach the point where you're starving to death.

Even if all the big gentry families are arrested and starved to death, they won’t starve to death... It’s not for other reasons, it’s just that the number of big gentry families is not enough. There may be starvation, but it is absolutely impossible to fill the ground...

Compared with the ordinary people, the big gentry belonged to an absolute minority.

After all, generally speaking, if a rebellion wants to succeed, it must stand on the side of the majority and represent the interests of the majority!
Well, that's just theory.

In actual operation, Luo Zhixue does not represent the interests of any group, he only represents his own interests!
He rebelled just because he wanted to be emperor!
And the reason why his rebellion can reach the present level is purely because the rural protection army under his command is better than the Ming army.

That's it!

(End of this chapter)