Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 148 Donglin wants to reform

"These mud legs have gone to buy coarse salt from the Imperial Store, so what should we do?"

"That's right, the market price of seven Wen, but the Imperial Store only sells five Wen. What's the reason?"

"What does the imperial court want?"

"This is not the intention of the court. It is obviously the intention of King Qi and Long Live. The treasury is not abundant, so it will not compete with the people for profit, right?!"

In a mansion in Beizhili and Tongzhou counties, there are sixteen powerful businessmen sitting here at this moment. They are discussing, and the reason they are discussing is the sale of coarse salt in the imperial store.

It can be said that in the late Ming Dynasty, it was not surprising that feudal princes and princes smuggled salt, but the problem was that there was no such thing as Zhu Youjian.

Others have seven pennies and six pennies, and others have six pennies and five pennies. They are against everyone, which makes most salt traders feel very uncomfortable.

But they couldn't deal with King Qi explicitly, or dared not do it.

Everyone knows that His Royal Highness King Qi currently holds the Sixteenth Guards Army and the Twelve Arch Guards Battalion, and is still recruiting soldiers and horses recently.

All this is not without the impeachment of the officials and censors. The problem is that the emperor ignores them. He often only responds to these memorials once he knows it, and then no longer responds.

It is already July [-]th, and the imperial stores of the Yumajian are still opening in a continuous stream, from North Zhili to Shanxi, and then spread to Shandong, Henan, and Shaanxi. The speed is jaw-dropping.

At this time, I have to lament the role of the tooth shop in the imperial shop of Yumajian.

Because the imperial store is not specialized in one category, it is divided into teahouses, restaurants, tooth shops, warehouses, flower and wine shops, gold and silver shops, tax shops, etc., and the rapid expansion of the imperial shop this time is due to borrowing from the tooth shop. potential.

With the identity of the Huangdian dental firm, when everyone was looking at the battle of Shenyang, they bought buildings in various places in the north. After the incident, Huangdians sprung up like mushrooms after rain.

Right now, Huangdian has spread all over the north, as far as Xi'an in the west, Xiangyang in the south, and the whole of Shandong and Huaibei.

In this way, Huangdian can be said to cover more than half of the north, and for these places, the interests of salt merchants are decreasing day by day.

In desperation, they gathered in Tongzhou, preparing to use the old method to make the imperial store of Yumajian retract.

"My Fan family in Shanxi is willing to give [-] taels of silver. Please the ministers and nobles in the court to be fair, so that the imperial store will stop competing with the people for profit!"

Suddenly, a young merchant in his thirties stood up and bowed to everyone.

When everyone saw it, they knew why he wanted to get up.

The Fan family in Shanxi mainly did business in Zhangjiakou and Mongolia. After seven generations, Fan Yongdou became a rich businessman in Zhangjiakou.

Among them, what the Fan family likes to do most is to sell private iron, salt, grain and other materials to Tumed's northern captives.

His family had a close relationship with the Hedong Salt Fields. The official salt from the Hedong Salt Fields was only ten cents a catty, but the northern captives who sold the Tumed tribe paid fifty cents a catty. Five times the profit fattened them up.

Therefore, the northern captives of Tumed's department often suffer losses when doing business with the Fan family. I heard that they are thinking about doing business with Karaqin recently, but they don't want to be destroyed by King Qi's opening of the Baimaguan City.

The Harqin section has a scale of hundreds of thousands of people. Every year, only one item of salt can sell [-] to [-] catties.

This seems to be only a profit of [-] taels of silver, but the Mongols can't get any silver, so they can only exchange it with cattle and sheep.

In this way, three to four hundred thousand catties are thousands of cattle and sheep, and after being transported to the south for sale, it will be a profit of hundreds of thousands of taels.

Hundreds of thousands of taels, most of the people sitting here, this is the income of selling illegal salt for a year.

Therefore, they were not surprised that the Shanxi Fan family was the first to stand up, and after the Shanxi Fan family, several people stood up one after another.

"The Shanxi Jin family is willing to pay [-] taels of silver!"

"Shanxi Wang's family is willing to pay [-] taels of silver!"

"The Li family in Shaanxi is willing to pay [-] taels of silver!"

"Henan Liu Family..."

I saw one family standing up and one family sitting down. After a while, when everyone got up and finished, the silver taels raised had reached [-] taels.

This is just the strength of the salt merchants in the north. If you add Lianghuai, Jiangnan, Huguang, and Sichuan, then it is estimated that you can get nearly a million taels by simply raising money, which shows the benefits of private salt.

"The money has been collected, now we have to find someone..."

Suddenly, one of the mansion masters spoke, and as soon as he opened his mouth, someone suggested:

"Why don't you go and invite Duke Cheng to go to school?"

"Xungui is dying right now, even King Qi can't control the abolition of troops and horses. In my opinion, why don't you find Donglin?"

"Donglin? Isn't that Qingliu?"

"Sometimes the water is clear and some are muddy. Donglin is in a great situation right now. If you do your best, you can always find some."

"Why don't you find another party?"

"You can also..."

Under the communication of everyone, these salt merchants soon abandoned Xungui just because of their political weakness.

Soon, under the temptation of nearly [-] taels of silver, in the name of embellishing the pen, the censors from all over the country, the procuratorate of the imperial court, and the Yanguan received a lot of embellishment fees.

Among them, whether it is Donglin or Qi Chu Zhe Xuan Kun and other parties, there are always some officials who are blind to money because of salary issues.

So, after a few days of silence, with the arrival of the first day of September, many impeachment memorials appeared on Zhu Youxiao's desk.

Zhu Youxiao sat in front of the case in the Hall of Mental Cultivation, glanced at one of the memorials, and said to Wei Zhongxian at the door:

"Remove all the memorials to impeach the emperor."

"Your maidservant takes orders..." Wei Zhongxian immediately ordered people to remove all the memorials when he heard the words, and at the same time he bowed to the emperor:
"Long live, this year's Liao pay collection matters have come out. Li Ruhua, Minister of the Household Department, resigned from office before last month. The new Minister of Household Department, Wang Yingjiao, is in charge. Please divide the land tax into miscellaneous items."

"Huh?" Hearing Wei Zhongxian's words, Zhu Youxiao frowned slightly, and then got the memorial of Wang Yingjiao, Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, from the memorial.

"The Four Episodes of Big Soldiers and the New Salary Are Not Enough"

Looking at the memorial written by Wang Yingjiao in front of him, Zhu Youxiao frowned and opened the memorial:
[Currently, the officials in Taiwan Province are afraid of loyalty, such as salt class, such as drum casting, such as Dianpu, such as deed tax, such as warehouse fold, such as case, such as garrison, etc...]

[The minister has not yet arrived, and the Minister of the Department, Zang Erquan, etc. will discuss and reply separately. If there are those who obey the order, and those who have not fulfilled the order, and then discuss the confirmation, the minister will now return to Chen Erquan, Chen Dewan and the subordinates. Chen Tong checked the terms of the previous and subsequent meetings again and again, and discussed them one by one, so as to make sure that the law is feasible, and if there are no obstacles, the estimated amount that can be done will be divided into an additional [-] million taels, and the levy will still be distributed. 】

"Finally did something real..."

Looking at the memorial of Wang Yingjiao, a member of the Donglin party, Zhu Youxiao breathed a sigh of relief, because this was the first meaningful memorial from the Donglin party member after the great famine in Huaibei this year.

In this memorandum, Wang Yingjiao mentioned fourteen miscellaneous collections other than the land increase and salt tax, all of which belonged to the category of commercial taxes, which could relieve the urgent need of the national treasury.

Zoushuzhong and Wang Yingjiao thought of many ways to collect commercial taxes and miscellaneous items in addition to the field salt class, and solve financial problems. Zhu Youxiao was very comfortable watching.

However, he can't make good decisions about finances alone, so he said to Wei Zhongxian:

"Go and tell that King Qi is here to discuss matters in the Hall of Mental Cultivation."

"The servants lead the order..." Seeing this, Wei Zhongxian obediently withdrew, leaving Zhu Youxiao alone to handle the memorial.

"Go to Xuqin Palace and find His Royal Highness King Qi."

When he came to the gate of Qianqing Palace, Wei Zhongxian explained to the eunuch who had given the order, and the eunuch bowed and retreated when he heard the words.

He took the two of them to Xuqin Palace, and finally arrived after a quarter of an hour, but only saw Cao Huachun, and only then did he know that Zhu Youjian had gone to the armor factory.

Reluctantly, the eunuch ordered Cao Huachun to tell Cao Huachun, and then went back to report, but Cao Huachun left the palace in person and went to the armor factory in Mingshifang.

After finally waiting for him to arrive, half an hour had passed since Zhu Youxiao gave the oral order. Fortunately, Zhu Youjian did not wander around. When Cao Huachun arrived, he was inspecting the armor factory with Sun Liang.

"Your Highness, Long Live I announce that you will go to the Hall of Mental Cultivation to discuss matters."

Cao Huachun hurried to the armor factory, and he bowed to Zhu Youjian who was in front of the armor department.

Zhu Youjian nodded slightly when he heard the words, and then said to Sun Liang:

"You have just been promoted to the eunuch in charge of the Military Bureau, so you should pay more attention to the armor factory."

"Currently, there are more than [-] people in the Sixteenth Guards and the Twelfth Battalion who are not equipped with chain armor, so we need to make more preparations."

After all, Zhu Youjian looked at Cao Huachun and said, "Transfer [-] taels of silver to buy iron and charcoal, and then transfer [-] taels to the armor factory to make craftsman's silver."

"The maidservant takes the order..." Cao Huachun and Sun Liang bowed to each other to accept the order, but Zhu Youjian was still worried and confessed:
"It's not a problem to put the Wanggong factory in the inner city. It's better to put it in the area near the city wall of Chong'anfang. In addition, don't accumulate too much gunpowder in stock, preferably not more than [-] catties."

"This... but the Ministry of War stipulates a stock of two million catties..." Sun Liang was a little embarrassed. After Cao Huachun saw this awkward appearance, he immediately scolded:

"Are you listening to His Highness or the Ministry of War?"

"Yes, yes, that servant sent the extra [-] million catties to the Yanshan camp?" Sun Liang reacted after being scolded by Cao Huachun. He was the king of Qi, so he didn't care what his grandma's military department was doing.

"Send [-] catties to Shenyang, Liaoyang, and Zhenjiang prefectures. Send the remaining gunpowder and the armor you have accumulated to the Yanshan Camp together. In addition, go to the Ordnance Institute and ship the qualified armor made by the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of War."

Zhu Youjian remembered Qi Jin's embarrassment of insufficient gunpowder in Liaodong, so he confessed, and then left the armor factory under Sun Liang's bow.

After getting into the carriage of the Armor Factory, Zhu Youjian said to Cao Huachun, "How many soldiers are recruited by the Yanshan Camp?"

"Returning to Your Highness, according to His Highness's request, a total of [-] soldiers were recruited in the past three months, of which [-] were sent to Daning Sanwei, and there are still [-] soldiers left. Seventeen people, plus the three guards of the navy, there is still a shortage of more than [-] people."

Cao Huachun replied while saying:

"With the meals of the [-]th Guards and the [-]th Arch Guards, the officialdom of the Royal Horse Supervisor can no longer afford it. Except for eggs, there is a shortage of meat such as pigs, sheep, chickens and ducks."

"Let's reduce the food of the Sixteenth Guards Camp outside to one meal of meat a day, or one tael per meal." Zhu Youjian knew that it was impossible for all the soldiers and horses of Daming to use the Sixteenth Guards and Shangzhi Ten. The food of the Ergongwei camp is the standard.

The Shangzhi Sixteenth Guard Army and the Shangzhi Twelve Gongwei Battalion belonged to Waizheng and Gongwei Beizhili. It can be said that the emperor selected the strikers. It is not surprising that such strikers are well-fed.

But if he wants to downsize his army in the future and set up outer guard camps in various provinces, it will be impossible to follow such standards.

What Zhu Youjian thought was relatively simple. The arch guard camp was divided into the upper straight arch guard camp and the outer arch guard camp.

The Shangzhi Gongwei Camp guards the North Zhili, and the Outer Gongwei Camp is in charge of the Southern Zhili and the Thirteen Provinces, as well as the future Liaodong and the newly opened land.

Daming currently has 1427 counties and 37 Zhili prefectures, with a total of 1464 basic local administrations.

According to the battalion sentry system, five people make up a team, the second five is a team, the third team is a team, the third team is a sentry, the fifth team is a general, and the five generals are a battalion. The corresponding numbers are 6 people, 13 people, 40 people, 121 people, 606 people, 3031 people.

If you want to control the place, then there are [-] local administrations here, and at least each place must have a total force, which means that the whole world needs at least nearly [-] soldiers and horses to garrison.

This amount is obviously too much, even if it is based on the annual military salary of ten taels of silver per person, it needs to spend [-] million taels, which is almost [-]% of the Ming Dynasty's finances.

If armor is added, then the expenditure will be even more.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian must come up with a compromise method that can not only deter the local governments, but also ensure that the central government's finances will not be affected.

If that is the case, simply station a general army in the seat of a prefecture, while the prefectures and state-level units of Daming have 163 prefectures and 37 Zhili prefectures.

According to the compromise method, [-] people and nearly [-] outer guard camps are needed.

The two capitals and thirteen provinces of the Ming Dynasty, except for the two capitals, on average, nearly three battalions were stationed in each province.

Using three battalions of arch guard battalions, together with the lower salary of the city's soldiers and horses, can basically maintain the stability of the two capitals and thirteen provinces, and ensure the adaptability of future financial reforms.

But this is not safe, and a battalion of soldiers and horses needs to be stationed in the wild to facilitate the rescue of various prefectures and counties.

Therefore, if you calculate it, you will need about [-] battalions and [-] soldiers and horses.

Under the increasingly inflationary price situation, the general's salary is set at fifteen taels, including food and fodder, and the annual expenditure is about three million taels.

[-] soldiers and horses may not seem like many, but it is enough to stabilize the basic market, and how to expand outward requires re-activating the guard system.

The Weisuo system is actually just a disguised form of the farmland system. The farmland system is still used in later generations, and it is a relatively cheap method of stabilization for external provinces.

What Zhu Youjian wants to do is very simple. First of all, the [-]th Guards of the Shangzhi Army will inevitably need to be expanded in the future, and the treatment must be better than that of the Gongwei Battalion.

Because what they have to do is to be stationed outside, like the army of the Protectorate of the Tang Dynasty, to fight outside.

And if they are transferred away, what about the emperor's military power?This depends on the Zhitwelve Arch Guard Battalion.

If the Beijing camp is abolished, then the Shangzhi Twelve Gongwei Battalion can also be expanded to the Sixteenth Battalion, or even the Twenty-sixth Battalion.

The treatment of the Shangzhi Gongwei camp is higher than that of the Waigongwei camp. From this point of view, it means that the outside uses the Shangzhiwei army to fight + the guards immigrate to farm and rule.

The interior is stabilized by the outer arch guard battalion + soldiers and horses, and the center is guarded by the upper straight arch guard battalion, so that the local outer arch guard battalion dare not rebel.

As for how to relocate the people, Zhu Youjian had already thought about it.

Since the military households do not have farmland now, it is enough to move them to a place with farmland.

It is hard to leave the homeland, but seven years after the apocalypse, the two capitals and the thirteen provinces are facing drought conditions.

It is impossible for this group of people to starve to death locally because it is difficult to leave their homeland, right?

Thinking this way, Zhu Youjian probably formulated the internal and external levels of the army. If we want to use the concept of later generations, then the Shangzhi Guards are the field army, the Waigong Guards are the local left-behind troops, and the soldiers and horses are the police force.

In this era, there is no need to make it as complicated as the later generations, because the productivity cannot keep up, and the ignorant requirements and benchmarks of later generations will only lead to the collapse of the imperial court's finances.

When thinking of this, the carriage also entered the imperial city, and Zhu Youjian also changed into the chariot, and then drove to the Hall of Mental Cultivation.

His chariot passed by in front of the Wenhua Hall, causing the passing civic officials to look sideways, not knowing what they were thinking.

After a quarter of an hour, he arrived at Qianqing Palace, and then swaggered into the Hall of Mental Cultivation, and said to Zhu Youxiao who lowered his head and frowned while processing the memorial:
"Brother, I'm here."

"Huh?" Hearing Zhu Youjian's voice, Zhu Youxiao raised his head and asked in doubt: "Why is there no sound when my brother walks?"

"It's brother, you paid too much attention to the memorial, and you don't know why you asked me to come here?" Zhu Youjian was not polite at all, and sat down on the couch in the Hall of Mental Cultivation with a smile.

Zhu Youxiao was not angry when he saw this, he got up with Wang Yingjiao's memorial, sat next to Zhu Youjian, handed it out and said:
"This is the memorial of Wang Yingjiao, the new Minister of the Household Department, Wang Yingjiao of the Donglin Party. You can see if it is feasible."

"Huh?" Hearing this, Zhu Youjian took the memorial and read it, then slowly frowned, and finally raised his head and said to his royal brother:

"The opinion of this memorial is good. If my Ming officials are obedient, then there is no problem with such a collection, but the question now is, if this memorial is approved, can it be implemented among the people?"

Zhu Youjian's question revealed the impracticality of Wang Yingjiao's memorial.

As far as the process of the memorial is concerned, as far as the taxation project is concerned, Wang Yingjiao's proposals are good, but the only thing he miscalculated is the obstruction of local forces.

According to Wang Yingjiao's memorial, it is perfectly in line with the Donglin Party's policy of reducing land taxes and transferring land taxes to miscellaneous and commercial taxes.

But in history, Donglin did not play with this thing because of the lack of grassroots support.

A group of Donglin Party, only Liu Yixiu, Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou and others do practical things, others are either talking about it, or they are reluctant to bear the "moisturizing pen" silver of businessmen and disagree.

With this group of laggards, it's really hell if this policy can continue.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian never thought that before the students of Yanshan Institute left, he could collect large taxes other than land taxes in the local area.

To put it bluntly, without the support of the grassroots, it is impossible for him to let the army under his command collect taxes, and they can't play it.

That's why in the face of his imperial brother's inquiry, Zhu Youjian did not hesitate to expose Donglin's impossible policy.

"According to the younger brother, this new law cannot be implemented?" Zhu Youxiao asked, and saw his younger brother's slight jaw answering movement.

Such an answer made Zhu Youxiao frown, just because Daming's finances gave him a headache.

As far as the present is concerned, thanks to the abolition of Jizhen, Liaodong's vacancies, and some soldiers and horses in Beizhili, otherwise the Ming Dynasty this year would still owe a huge amount of seven or eight million taels of salary.

At present, only the Northwest and the Seven Towns of Shanxi still owe the military pay for the second half of the year, which is only about [-] million.

If the vacancies in the three towns of Shanxi can be abolished, it can be reduced to [-] million taels.

This situation has been restored to the situation in the thirty-sixth year of Wanli.

"My brother's soldiers and horses, how long will it take to abolish the battalions of Shanxi and Beizhili guards?"

After a while, he asked his younger brother again, and Zhu Youjian also said:

"As far as the current situation is concerned, it will take at least three months. At that time, Xiaoqi, Tiance, and Habayashi's three guards from the capital, along with Jin Wu and Baotao's two guards, will be sent to the three towns of Shanxi to control the situation."

"Send the [-]th Battalion to go there, and the guards can be directly dismantled and the fields can be measured."

"in addition……"

Zhu Youjian paused, then looked at his royal brother with a strange expression and said:

"Brother Huang, the soldiers and horses of the three guards of the navy are about to be recruited, your big ship..."

"Ahem! The wood was delayed for a month due to the rainy season, and it was only shipped to Tianjin at the beginning of last month. It still needs to be dried in the shade for a year." Zhu Youxiao coughed, and then felt embarrassed and said:

"Let the three guards of the Navy use the lucky boat to practice first. After a year of practice, they will be able to patrol the sea on the big ship I made."

"But why do you want so many warships? Do you want to follow Zheng He's example?"

"Nature is useful." Zhu Youjian explained helplessly.

It is impossible for him to tell his elder brother that if there is a huge fleet and they get stuck in Malacca, they will be able to get hundreds of thousands of taels, or even millions of taels of tax each year.

Because of this, for my brother, I can't believe it.

Although Daming benefits from maritime trade, its domestic demand can be said to occupy one-third of the current world market.

Not to mention foreign conquests, as long as Ming clarifies its own internal taxation issues, it can beat Spain, Ottomans, Mughals and other countries in terms of taxation alone.

Not to mention anything else, just a simple issue of land tax, on the surface it is [-] million yuan, according to the [-] million mu of arable land in the Ming Dynasty, at least [-] to [-] million shi grains can be received, but those who really collect this tax, It was the first year of Hongxi.

That is, during the reign of Ming Renzong Zhu Gaochi, the land tax reached [-] million shi, while the national farmland at that time was less than [-] million mu.

In Zhu Youjian's view, Ming Dynasty did not need to collect poll tax and miscellaneous items from farmers.

It is even said that the Ming Dynasty can completely abolish all kinds of miscellaneous taxes and corvees for farmers, as long as the number of acres of land is clarified, and then divided into acres, as long as each mu is honestly paid according to the thirty Fu, it is enough to feed half of the soldiers in the Ming Dynasty Horses and officials.

The embarrassing problem now is that a large number of vassals use the privileges granted by the court to protect the land from paying taxes, scholars and scholars protect tenants from corvee, and big businessmen and landlords put fixed taxes on ordinary farmers. The taxes borne are much higher than one in thirty, and even reach the level of three in ten.

The solution to this is very simple, that is to abolish the land privileges of scholars, juren, and officials, and then send a large number of new interest group officials to clarify the acres of land, divide them into acres, and collect taxes reasonably.

Reasonable tax collection can reduce the burden on farmers, and farmers can earn enough money in the following natural disasters when they have food.

It is a disaster for the court to keep these silver coins in your hands without going out.

Then the solution came. While Yantiejiu was state-run by the imperial court and a large amount of silver was poured in from abroad, the price of Yantiejiu was raised to collect money from the common people.

What will the people do if they have no money?That's even simpler. The imperial court acts as a transfer point, buying grain from rich places, transporting it to disaster-stricken places, and selling grain at a low price.

This is a salvageable point in the late Ming Dynasty, because except for the three years of [-], April [-], and April [-], when more than [-]% of the country suffered from disasters, most of the time, the most widely affected areas were the five northern provinces. Ganan Zhili north.

As long as the grain is purchased reasonably and the transportation of grain is arranged in advance, so that the price of grain will not rise to an exaggerated level of two or three taels per stone, the people will be able to survive.

Thinking of this, Zhu Youjian also said to Zhu Youxiao:

"Yantian is already expanding to [-] miles of Long Beach. If you want to come to civil servants from various parties, you should impeach me, right?"

"Hehe..." Hearing this, Zhu Youxiao said with a smile:

"Of course it's impeachment, but I've asked Zhongxian to keep those memorabilia. In winter, I'll take them to Earth Dragon and burn them as waste paper."

"I'm the one to deal with the affairs of the court, brother, don't worry!"

Zhu Youjian's comfort made Zhu Youjian heave a sigh of relief, and then he got up and bowed to Zhu Youxiao:
"In this case, my brother will return to Yanshan camp tomorrow. The soldiers and horses of Yanshan camp are only Sun Yingyuan, and I'm afraid they won't be able to practice."

"So fast?" Zhu Youxiao got up, worried and said:

"It hasn't been three months since you returned to the capital, and you are going out again. I don't know when we will meet next time."

"Brother, don't worry, the next time we meet, the matter of coming to Shanxi Sanzhen has been resolved." Zhu Youjian responded with a smile.

Hearing the truth, Zhu Youxiao also put a smile on his face and said:

"Okay, then I'll wait for the good news from my brother!"

"The younger brother resigns, brother doesn't need to send it off..."

Zhu Youjian wanted to leave and signaled that he didn't need to see him off, but inevitably, Zhu Youxiao followed and sent him out of the Qianqing Palace without saying a word.

Zhu Youxiao watched his leaving back until he disappeared, and then returned to Qianqing Palace with a smile.

But when he returned to Qianqing Palace, Wang Tiqian secretly handed Wei Zhongxian a handwritten letter.

"Eunuch, Kebaba asked me to send this."

"Huh?" Hearing this, Wei Zhongxian looked down at the handwriting in his hand, and then slowly opened it.

When he saw the content inside, he was overjoyed immediately, but later became panicked...

　A chapter of seven thousand characters
　　
　
(End of this chapter)