1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 2435
Tao Donglai is not too unfamiliar with the name Yang Sichang, because in the report sent back from Shandong not long ago, both the military and the intelligence department mentioned this name repeatedly, thinking that this person was the one who responded to the ineffective command. This led to the fact that the Qing army was able to go all the way south and cross the Yellow River. Yang Sichang should bear the inescapable responsibility for the war that occurred in Shandong this time.

According to the historical data obtained by the people who travel through, Yang Sichang's military talent can only be regarded as mediocre, but because of the current situation, Chongzhen was placed in the position of Minister of the Ministry of War to coordinate and command the combat operations against the Qing army. , its performance is naturally not ideal.However, although Yang Sichang is not capable enough in military affairs, his loyalty to the imperial power and court should be beyond doubt. It stands to reason that in this period, his attention is all on the evil neighbors in the north. How could he still be thinking about a prefect in the south of the Yangtze River post.

Besides, the rank of the magistrate is not low, and it is a place like Ningbo Prefecture that is regarded as fat and vacancies. I don’t know how many people are watching overtly and secretly. This Yang Sichang is the Minister of the Ministry of War, not the Minister of the Ministry of Officials. The transfer is not something he can intervene in to decide, which makes Qu Yutong's statement sound a little unreasonable.

"Master Qu means that the current minister of the Ministry of War wants to pry your prefect position?" Tao Donglai deliberately emphasized the word "Ministry of War" to see if Qu Yutong realizes this is unreasonable.

Qu Yutong replied: "The appointment of local officials should not be intervened by the Minister of the Ministry of War, but Yang Sichang is a man of writing and eloquence, and now he has won the trust of the emperor. His advice is very important to the emperor, and he will obey what he says. Not too much."

Tao Donglai said: "I still don't quite understand what angle he has to attack in order to remove you from the prefect position."

"It's still related to the Ping Liao plan." Qu Yutong continued to explain: "Lord Tao doesn't know something, this Yang Sichang worked in the Ministry of Households in his early years, and he once served in Fubian Town, so he is quite familiar with the Qianliang Army. Among the court officials, he is one of the few people who can formulate military strategies and can speak well. The emperor is naturally willing to listen to his ideas. According to Yang Sichang, if the Ming Dynasty wants to resist foreign invaders, first, it must quell internal strife, and second, it must prepare enough Weapons, money and food. How to get enough military pay to support the battle, he is naturally eyeing a rich area like Ningbo."

"It's not a secret that my official cooperates with your country, so this Yang Sichang believes that if someone else can manage Ningbo Prefecture, then he can control the trade with your country and put all the local income into the treasury as Liao's salary. He He used to work in the Ministry of Household Affairs, if he claims to the emperor that this operation can solve the Liao payment problem, the emperor will easily accept his opinion."

Tao Donglai nodded thoughtfully and said: "But in this way, it is only his one-sided opinion. The emperor of your country will not be so easily agitated?"

Qu Yutong said: "That's why recently someone secretly submitted a memorial to the imperial court, trying to sue this official for the crime of using public equipment for private use and enriching private pockets. With this effort from top to bottom, even if this official submits a letter to defend himself, it will be difficult to prove himself Innocent. As long as the emperor becomes suspicious of me, their goal will be achieved."

After Tao Donglai heard the explanation, he felt that the causal relationship was a little more straightened out.Yang Sichang made a very serious command error in the past winter, but now that the Qing army has retreated, he can only use other directions to make up for his mistakes.Trying to raise military expenditures from the people seems to be a good way out. As long as the long-term military expenditure dilemma faced by Ming Dynasty can be solved to a certain extent, then the crime of command errors that caused the Qing army to invade the country will not be liquidated.

It is not new for the Ming Dynasty to increase taxes in the country on the grounds of military pay in Liaodong. Since the 46th year of Wanli, that is, in 1618 AD when Nurhachi established the post-gold regime in Liaodong, the Ming Dynasty has paid an additional three cents and five cents of silver per mu of land. According to the standard, more than 200 million taels of Liao pay were collected from the people.The three-year levy raised a total of 520 million taels of Liao pay for the Ming treasury.

In the reign of Tianqi, the scope of taxation was expanded from cultivated land to the customs, salt and other fields.In the fourth year of Chongzhen, the Liao salary standard was further raised, but it was still beyond the means.In Shanhaiguan alone, the annual expenditure is as high as 400 million taels of silver.

So much money, of course, not all of it was sent to the frontline soldiers, or used to increase armaments and build city defenses.Bureaucrats and generals at all levels will actually take advantage of the Liao pay.Although the imperial court also thought of many ways, such as sending officials to supervise the entire process from collection to distribution of Liao's salary, but after all, there were too many links, and it was impossible to stop the massive loss of Liao's salary from various channels.

The Liao pay to support the Liaodong border, the pay to suppress the peasant army, and the training pay to form local armed forces, the amount of these three pay increases far exceeded the orthodox tax, so that farmers in many places went bankrupt and could not pay After clearing these messy and exorbitant taxes, they eventually lost their land and became tenants, slaves, and even refugees and bandits.At the same time, the northern frontier defense did not get significantly strengthened because of the increase in military expenditure, but became more and more vulnerable under the attacks of the Manchu and Qing armed forces year after year.Only God knows how much money has been collected and distributed to strengthen the frontier defense.

Of course, the members of the Ming court were not all fools. They were not unaware of the consequences of such an unlimited increase in taxes on the common people, and the consequences caused by it were showing up year by year, and they were developing out of control.But in order to maintain the rule, military pay must not be stopped, and the imperial court has no way to expand the scope of tax collection to the powerful class, so it can only find ways to increase revenue from other places.And the easiest way, of course, is to see where the wealthiest and fastest money comes from in the country.

Of course, it is not difficult to find the answer to this question. Nowadays, many places in the Ming Dynasty are caught in civil strife, especially the area centered on the Central Plains. It has hardly stopped in recent years, and the social economy has long been on the verge of collapse.The better economic conditions are naturally those areas that have not been affected by the war, especially the coastal areas in the southeast, such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, Fujian, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou, Guangdong, Guangxi and the Pearl River Basin, etc., relying on relatively developed maritime trade, It has become the most prosperous area in Ming Dynasty.

But the Fuguang area is now beyond the reach of the imperial court.Since Guangdong and Guangxi are adjacent to Hainan Island, which was occupied by Haihan, they have been infiltrated the most thoroughly. If the appointment and dismissal of local officials by the imperial court is not approved by Haihan, it will be difficult to complete their term in a stable manner. Moreover, if they want to directly intervene in local trade affairs, It is also likely to anger Haihan and even trigger a war, so the Guangdong and Guangxi areas were not considered from the very beginning.

The Fujian area already has Xu Xinsu, the local emperor, who manages the local area like a country within a country. Xu Xinsu's influence in Fujian is no less than that of the vassal king who divided the territory. It is no more difficult for the court to intervene in local affairs than in the Guangdong and Guangxi regions. How much worse, if one is not careful, it may create an excuse for Xu Xinsu to rebel, and there will be no way to clean up the situation at that point.So even if they knew that the Xu family was as rich as an enemy country and operated many industries that could make a lot of money, the imperial court could only be envious, but they couldn't make the Xu family honestly spit out these benefits.

The Fuguang area cannot be moved, so only Jiangsu and Zhejiang are left.But the problem is that although the local area is rich, most of the wealth is also concentrated in the hands of a few upper-class people, and these powerful people have never been the main force to bear taxes. It is actually quite difficult for the imperial court to directly increase taxes for these people.Based on the information he had, Yang Sichang came up with a solution, which was to take the maritime trade in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, especially the international trade, into the hands of the government for management, and then take part of the profits into the national treasury for payment.

Of course, the part of taxation is definitely not collected from their own people, but foreigners who come to this area to do business—for example, the Haihan people who occupied Zhoushan Island are excellent targets.In the past, the Department of Shipbuilding, which was in name only, may become a government office with great power in the future, bringing all cross-border trade into the scope of supervision.

Ningbo Mansion is the closest to Zhoushan, so it naturally became Yang Sichang's first target.It is no secret that Qu Yutong, the prefect, has a close relationship with the Zhoushan authorities. If Yang Sichang wants to carry out his own new policy, he must not let Qu Yutong continue to be in charge of Ningbo.Although doing so may offend some people, the astonishing profits that Ningbo generates through international trade each year are enough to make Yang Sichang ignore the hidden contradictions and crises, and start planning and arranging plans to replace Qu Yutong.

And since Qu Yutong has the guts to cooperate with Haihan, he is naturally not an honest person. The money he has earned in his pockets over the years has also been given away a lot, and the places that should be offered incense have not been pulled down. Of course, he also has his contacts in the capital. relation.His money was indeed not in vain. At the critical moment, someone finally sent a message, warning him in advance to prevent the crisis.Qu Yu judged the situation at the same time, knowing that he was unable to defuse the offensive from the court, so he could only ask Hai Han for help, hoping to use Hai Han's support to keep his official position.

Of course, the goal Yang Sichang wants to achieve is huge, but it is not so easy to do it. A small move will affect the whole body. This is the same place, so it will take a long time to act, and Qu Yutong still has a chance to change the direction of the situation.

After Tao Donglai listened to the ins and outs, he quickly discovered a very fatal problem in Qu Yutong's coping strategy: "Master Qu, you and General Shi hope to hold a joint military exercise to show that Ningbo Prefecture is monolithic and will not easily Being swayed by external forces, but have you ever thought about whether the commanders you are currently contacting, Qianhu, do they have enough courage to fight against the Shangshu of the Ministry of War? Or do they even know who they are going to deal with? When things come to an end, can they withstand the pressure from the imperial court and the Ministry of War?"

"This……"

Qu Yutong failed to respond smoothly to Tao Donglai's question, which made Tao Donglai more sure of his guess.Qu Yutong and Shi Diwen didn't have a comprehensive idea of ​​the joint military exercise. They wanted to show the court the difficulty and risk of intervening in the affairs of the Ningbo Mansion. All the chips are on Haihan's side, participating in the military exercise is not a big problem, but going against the court may be another matter.

Shi Diwen took the initiative to take over the conversation at this time: "It is true that there are still some inside stories that have not been revealed to these people, because if we tell them all, some people may retreat. Our idea is to first pull these people on board and get them on board as soon as possible." After finishing the matter, they will wake up to what happened later, and they will not regret taking the medicine, so they can only stand on the same side with us from now on."

"So you mean to cook the uncooked rice first?" Tao Donglai shook his head slightly and said, "It's very risky, if someone finds out about Yang Sichang's plan, they might sell you off first! When the time comes, Yang Sichang first asks Master Qu to resign immediately, and you may not even have a chance to fight back!"

"So the military exercise needs to be done quickly!" Shi Diwen argued: "As long as we can get ahead, we can hope to take the initiative. If Yang Sichang wants to take action here, he still has to worry about local reactions after all. He You can’t replace all the civil and military officials in Ningbo at once, can you?”

Tao Donglai still shook his head and said, "It's still not right. What you're doing is just betting that Yang Sichang will be afraid of the situation in Ningbo, but what if he decides to attack Ningbo after the military exercise? But taking advantage of his position, it won't be too difficult to find a reason to replace the guard generals who participated in the military exercise, and it will definitely have a big impact on our normal trade. We have kept Mr. Qu, but Losing control of the guard, even if this is a victory, it will only be a miserable victory."

Nowadays, many guards in Ningbo and the surrounding prefectures are involved in international trade to varying degrees. While making money, they also provide escort for Haihan's goods in and out of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.It took Haihan a few years to manage the current situation. If Yang Sichang realized that the generals in the guards in Ningbo were unreliable, then in order to achieve his goal of controlling trade channels, he would have to replace them. It will be bad for Haihan.

Although the plan discussed by Shi Diwen and Qu Yutong is feasible, it is too risky in Tao Dong's view. Negative effects affect Haihan's trade in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.So despite the two persuading in every possible way, Tao Donglai still insisted on opposing opinions.

"If this doesn't work, wouldn't we just have to wash my neck and wait to be stabbed?" Seeing that he couldn't persuade Tao Donglai, Shi Diwen couldn't help but feel a little frustrated at the moment.

(End of this chapter)