Autumn of the 17th year of Chongzhen

Chapter 180

After Wang Yan inspected the Qiongzhou mansion, he gradually felt relieved about the resettlement of the people.

With the opening of the sea route, the material resources from Guangdong are continuously transported to Qiongdao. He believes that as long as another year passes, the people will be self-sufficient, and there is no need for him to carry out blood transfusions. After the period, Qiongzhou will develop into a high-class state capital in Guangdong, second only to Canton.

During Wang Yan's trip, he also reached an agreement with Feng Yingchang and other Yangzhou scholars to support the people of Yangzhou in business with 50 taels of silver as the basis, and he will hold [-]% of the shares.

Of course, these things cannot be done by him, so he asked Xu Yanyan to help him deal with them, and before and after excluding the 50 taels of silver and the silver for resettling the guests, in addition to the 100 million taels of tax money that was not released from the court, he had , there is only more than [-] taels of silver left.

After Wang Yan visited Qiongzhou for a few days, he crossed the Qiongzhou Strait by boat, landed from Leizhou Mansion, passed through Gaozhou, Zhaoqing, and returned to Guangzhou.

At the beginning of October, all parts of Guangnan have already completed the autumn harvest and entered the slack time for farming. In the past, at this time, people in the village were mostly idle. After preparing and training the government soldiers first, the entire Guangnan villagers took action.

After Wang Yan entered Gaozhou, he could often see that on the threshing grounds of every village, there were a group of men doing drills, and outside their training grounds, a large group of children and women were playing and laughing. .

The difference between the Fubing system and the Weisuo system is that it gives real benefits to the soldiers. As long as one person is selected, the whole family will be exempted from taxes. For the common people, those who do not pay taxes are naturally superior to those who pay taxes. Soldiers and their families have a sense of honor, and the common people naturally participate enthusiastically.

Wang Yan looked at the soldiers in training, but he began to worry about the finances of Guangdong. He originally planned to train one hundred thousand soldiers, but now he found that it was basically impossible. Apart from some land obtained by the Hakka people in Guangnan, other state capitals have no land at all to train the soldiers. With the tax exemption for the families of the soldiers, the land tax in Guangdong will definitely shrink next year. These are all headaches for Wang Yan The problem.

At this time, although Wang Yan felt huge financial pressure, he also saw the achievements since he entered Guangdong. In addition to relocating the people of Yangzhou properly, his military strength has also been greatly improved.

This time, Luoding Prefecture trained 5000 soldiers, Gaozhou Prefecture in the Lower Fourth Prefecture trained 1 soldiers, Zhaoqing in the Upper Sixth Prefecture trained 5000 soldiers, and Guangfu Prefecture trained 2 soldiers. With the newly recruited 2 recruits and the original [-] horses, he already has [-] troops.

Of course, among the [-] troops, only his [-] veterans were able to go to the battlefield and kill the enemy.

In mid-November, after Wang Yan toured the whole of Guangdong, the officials and local people in various provinces in Guangdong basically recognized him as the general town of Guangdong.

After returning to Guangzhou, Wang Yan began to reorganize his [-] recruits so that the new recruits could quickly form combat power.

First of all, the establishment of the Zhongzhen Battalion was taken back from the navy, and later the navy was organized into the Guangdong Navy, with Shi Lang as the commander-in-chief and Yu Fangqi as the general, with a temporary number of 5000 troops.

Secondly, elites were drawn from the three battalions of Zhongwu, Zhongyong, and Zhongzhi to form a 1-horse supervising and pro-military army. There are 500 people in the battalion, led by Liu Shun and Dai Zhifan respectively, and the establishment of Zhongzhen and Zhongzhi will not be used for the time being.

After the reorganization, it is natural to carry out drills and adjustments, and it has to be said that after the reorganization and training, the benefits of the military academy in the military will be reflected.

Wang Yan was originally worried that after the expansion of the army, the newly promoted military academies would not be competent, but he quickly dispelled his doubts. Facts have proved that the military academies trained by the martial arts academy will soon only deal with general affairs in an orderly manner, while the army's There is no need for Wang Yan to worry too much about the practice.

At this time, as everything in Guangdong was settled, Wang Yan took advantage of the fact that the main force of the Qing army was still in the south of the Yangtze River. Within December, he led the army out of Guangdong and went north to Hunan. The first big thing in action.

At the end of November, after he released 100 million taels of tax silver to Fujing, he only had 30 taels of silver left in his hands, but it was really difficult to maintain the operation of Guangdong.

After the suppression of the four pirates, because Ma Xuansheng and Shibi surrendered, the Guangdong Navy quickly found the pirates' lair, and Xu Guixiang was forced to flee to the Luzon area with the remaining pirates.

The accumulation of the four pirates in recent years has all fallen into Wang Yan's hands, but the four pirates are not big pirates. After supporting thousands of subordinates and family members, there is basically nothing left, only silver. Only 5 taels.

Once the money is in hand, it is just enough for Wang Yan to distribute the reward for breaking the pirates last time.

Regarding the financial problem, Wang Yan originally thought that after he eliminated the pirates and opened up the Guangdong Sea, the tax revenue of the Shibo Department would suddenly increase, but it turned out to be doubled, reaching 10 taels per month, and then no longer. increase upwards.This made his idea of ​​relying on sea trade to obtain tax money to support the war suddenly come to nothing.

The Zheng family can earn nearly [-] million yuan a year, but his Cantonese land is less than [-]% of the Zheng family’s income. This made Wang Yan unable to understand. It was not until a few Cantonese businessmen came to see him the day before yesterday that he understood what the problem was. .

It turned out that the territory of the Ming Dynasty was only left in the southwestern provinces and the southeastern coastal area. The economy was hit hard, and many places were caught in the flames of war. For example, Jingdezhen, which is rich in porcelain, has completely fallen into the hands of the Qing court. Without supply, naturally there is no need to sell things to Xiyi, or to the countries in Southeast Asia.

Wang Yan had no choice but to send people to Guilin to communicate with Ding Kuichu, asking Cantonese businessmen to purchase tea and other materials from Guilin, and then sell them to Nanyang.

When Wang Yan returned to the mansion that day, Xu Yanyan saw that he was preoccupied, so she asked him. After learning that he was worried about money, she couldn't help dragging him to the backyard.

Wang Yan didn't know what she was going to do, but he followed her. When he entered the courtyard, he saw several guards guarding ten boxes.

At this time, Xu Yanyan smiled and asked the guards to open them all, and Wang Yan saw that ten boxes were full of silver.

Seeing Wang Yan's surprised face, Xu Yanyan explained to him that she, Li Xiangjun and Su Kunsheng compiled "The Song of Mulan" and then performed it in Guangzhou, unexpectedly causing a sensation.

There are huge crowds of theatergoers every day. Seeing this, Li Zhenli and Xu Yanyan together, simply bought a restaurant, turned it into a theater, and charged ticket money, but even so, every show was still popular, and there were even people who went to the theater. When they are happy, there are not a few people who directly throw broken silver, silver ingots, and gold leaves on the stage.

In the past month, they have earned quite a lot, compared with what they had by the Qinhuai River back then, so they decided to give 1 taels of silver to Wang Yan, the person who gave the idea.

(End of this chapter)