Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty

Chapter 457
Zhu Youjian issued the order of the Northern Expedition in front of millions of people in Nanjing.

He even directly declared war on the Qing Dynasty.

In addition, the envoys of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties died because of the civil unrest.

It is a foregone conclusion that the Ming Dynasty will make the Northern Expedition in October next year.

No one dares to criticize it any more.

Otherwise, it would be disobedience to the imperial decree and disobedience to public opinion!
The political situation in Ming Dynasty was quietly reversed.

Since then.

It will be the imperial edict of the Ming emperor that represents public opinion rather than civil servants.

Regarding whether Zhu Youjian's determination of the time limit for the Northern Expedition would be detrimental to the strategy of the Northern Expedition, the Manchu Qing was able to prepare in advance.

This is of course nothing to worry about.

First of all, no matter how stupid the Manchu Qing Dynasty is, it would not have made some preparations to resist the Northern Expedition of the Ming Dynasty when it did not know whether the Northern Expedition of the Ming Dynasty was in progress.

The only thing is the comparison of the national power of the Ming Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty.

No matter whether the Manchu Qing knew or didn't know the deadline of the Great Ming's Northern Expedition, they couldn't compete with the Great Ming.

Daming is already a semi-industrialized country.

At this time, the Qing Dynasty was a regime that had just transformed from serf civilization to farming civilization.

No matter how wise and talented Dorgon is, even if he is a Zhuge Liang-level figure, it will be difficult to turn the tide.

The Northern Expedition of the Great Ming Dynasty was the same as the Northern Expedition of the Southern Song Dynasty. The key to success or failure was whether the domestic ruling forces could be twisted together.

In other words, it is still an internal problem.

Today, Zhu Youjian mobilized the people at the bottom to forcibly oppress the civil servants to compromise, and even forced the price of death and resignation to make the Northern Expedition a conclusion of the world!

And because of this, the cabinet and even the local government had to continue to cooperate with the military work of the Generalissimo's Mansion.

On the one hand, Gao Hongtu, the chief assistant of the cabinet, presided over the salt tax reform.

On the one hand, Ruan Dayue, the second assistant to the cabinet and minister of the Ministry of War, temporarily dispatched and coordinated the money and grain of the world, and began to increase the capital investment in the Daming Armory Institute.

Gao Hongtu first ordered the Ministry of Officials to ban the Salt Transport Envoy and the Patrol of the Salt Censor Office, and these subordinate officials were quickly transferred to other places according to the Ministry of Officials' plan and assessment.

Then, all the major salt farms were contracted to the major salt merchants selected by Gao Hongtu in advance, and a state-owned salt company was established.

Gao Hongtu knew that he had made a big mistake in negotiating peace and did not understand what he meant to His Majesty Zhu Youjian, so he did not do his best in this commercial and tax reform.

In order to balance the interests, he also took the initiative to give up the benefits, allowing major salt merchants to buy shares in the state-owned salt industry branch, which made the salt merchants' opposition to the salt tax reform much smaller.

At the same time, Gao Hongtu also summoned more than ten salt merchants. After March 70.00, the national salt price dropped by [-]% within one month!

Then it continued to fall to be equal to the price of rice.

But also because of this, Gao Hongtu's actions were bombarded by a large number of princes, nobles and bureaucrats. After all, what he did was to cause these large smugglers to suffer huge losses in their smuggled salt profits.

Of course, these dignitaries who can only sell private salt secretly can only instruct the officials to find other reasons to accuse Gao Hongtu.

Therefore, the speech officer is the most annoying, no matter at any time will be used as a gun by a certain power group, and sometimes some speech officers even have contradictory views in the last two memorials.

This time.

Naturally, Zhu Youjian blatantly helped Gao Hongtu, and directly demoted these nonsense officials to remote areas, and even directly demoted them to common people and exiled them for three thousand miles, in an effort to increase the number of self-cultivating farmers.

Originally, the biggest taboo of speech officials is not whether their ideas are right or wrong, but whether they are used as guns.

Naturally, there is no need for these speech officials who have made guns for the powerful to stay.

In addition, Zhu Youjian also agreed with Gao Hongtu to reorganize the salt soldiers with the joint military department, and transfer a large number of guards to the salt administration department and the salt administration sub-bureaus in various theaters to serve as salt soldiers, responsible for maintaining the order of the salt industry.

These demobilized officers and soldiers of the Guards were all from the regular army, and they made great efforts to reform the salt soldiers. After that, they also increased their efforts to crack down on private salt, further rectifying the salt industry in Daming.

After the sharp drop in salt prices, the most obvious benefit is that the quality of life of the common people has improved. At the same time, it also curbed political corruption caused by the huge profits of the salt industry, and made good political preparations for the Northern Expedition.

And this time.

After Ruan Dayue was also in charge of the household department, he led the household department’s left servant, Qu Shixu, to change Liu Wanchun’s style of only making money and not throwing money away when he was in charge of the household department. The project funds have reached the level of tens of millions of silver dollars!

Even for this reason, Ruan Dayue set up a special treasury for the Northern Expedition, and began boldly borrowing from the Central Bank of the Ming Dynasty to use large sums of money to collect grain before the autumn grain collection. He began to transport grain to various grain depots in Jiangbei half a year in advance, and also distributed military expenditures in advance. All kinds of equipment procurement fees are also allocated to the Grand Marshal's Mansion, and they go directly to the Daming Armory for additional orders.

After receiving a large number of orders and expansion funds, the Daming Ordnance Institute continued to expand the number of migrant workers it recruited, and even raised the starting salary to stimulate the enthusiasm of craftsmen.

Stimulated by a large amount of funds, all kinds of scientific research and weapon research and development in Ming Dynasty once again entered the fast lane era.

In the first half of the 22nd year of Chongzhen before the Northern Expedition began.

The economy of the entire Ming Dynasty suddenly ran like crazy, and the money in the treasury flowed out like water, and flowed in from the Central Bank of Ming Dynasty like water.

The central bank of Ming Dynasty had to continue to print silver dollars, which directly gave birth to large-denomination steel-stamped banknotes.

Because Huangzhuang occupies a large amount of land, and the land has been highly concentrated in the hands of most gentry after hundreds of years, and the price of salt has dropped, the common people can only spend their hard-earned money on other things , to promote the rapid development of various industries in Ming Dynasty, and tax and bank revenues rose like geometric figures.

But because of the crazy printing of money by the Central Bank of Ming Dynasty, and the people's desire to pursue life after their quality of life has improved, the people feel that money is still not enough to spend, even though they have already earned a lot of money.

Coupled with the comparison psychology brought about by social development, the common people work harder to make money.

In metropolises like Nanjing and Songjiang, more and more foreigners come here to work hard, and major newspapers and periodicals especially like to spread some success stories of getting rich overnight, which further stimulates young people to leave their hometowns and gather in these places.

The central government spent a lot of money and liberated productivity to stimulate business prosperity, which also directly led to the emergence of predatory business groups.

The most representative ones here are Huangzhuang and Zheng Group.

Huangzhuang organized armed forces to maintain production order at home through the occupation of a large amount of land and minerals in China, and contracted the Northern Expedition project abroad, and even caravans began to develop wasteland to produce food and sell it back to China.

The Zheng Group also used its own armed forces to develop production in Dongfan Island, plunder overseas raw materials, transport them back to China for sale, and obtain huge profits.

Of course, there are not only two business groups, Huangzhuang and Zheng's Group.

The preparations for the Northern Expedition, the demand for food and industrial raw materials brought about by the previous wars, and the economic demand brought about by the improvement of people's lives all prompted the emergence of various business groups of various sizes.

Of course, it is also related to the opening of the sea ban in Ming Dynasty, the establishment of commercial ports, and the encouragement of going to sea, so that these merchants have the opportunity to form business groups to plunder overseas production materials to meet the needs of the domestic market.

(End of this chapter)