prosperous age

The talks in Huitong Hall went very smoothly. European countries were small and closely connected with each other, especially the intermarriage between royal families and nobles of various countries, which also promoted business connections.

The function of a passport is that although it has aristocratic emblems to represent identity, there are still merchants traveling back and forth, and trade disputes will occur from time to time.

Of course, privateering at sea is not a normal trade dispute. It is the poor countries robbing the rich to help the poor.

In the cabinet, after Feng Bao expressed his meaning, Zhang Juzheng and Wei Guangde looked a little ugly.

"I have no problem with the palace being responsible for making passports, but the price paid to the lower levels is too high. We..."

Zhang Juzheng said.

Feng Baodu had already set the price for each passport at five taels of silver.

This is equivalent to three or four months' wages for an adult male in the city, which is not a small amount.

Zhang Juzheng and Wei Guangde had asked before that the price of each passport would not exceed one or two taels.

Then when the local government distributes it, they will charge a few cents of silver as a handling fee.

They never thought about making money from this.

"My two ministers, the price you offered is too low.

Who are the people going out now? They are all wealthy businessmen and their men.

As far as I know, those who follow the group will be provided with food and lodging, and can get 40 to 50 taels of silver per trip."

Nowadays, most people living along the coast want to go out on a ship. Although the risk is high, the pay is really high. The income from one trip is equivalent to several years of work.

Of course, it is also possible that he will never come back after leaving, and the only thing left at home is the ten taels of silver given by the employer before he left.

Feng Bao was counting on his fingers, and then he counted the more than 200 boat licenses that had been issued, and threw out everything he knew.

You can see that he put his heart into it.

"Brother Shuanglin, how about this, each of us gives in a little, and two plus one equals five, what do you think?"

Wei Guangde finally spoke.

Feng Bao has already set his eyes on this source of income and cannot be stopped.

Moreover, he had a reason to get it. The inner court had a group of anti-counterfeiting technology experts, and it would be a waste if they were not used.

"How to divide it?"

Feng Bao looked at Wei Guangde and asked.

"The wages won't be more than one or two taels. My uncle and I have already asked about it.

If each share is five taels of silver, then there will be four taels of silver in profit."

As soon as Wei Guangde said this, Feng Bao said impatiently: "The inner court wants two taels of silver, which means it will be handed over to the court. Each portion will be counted as three taels. The rest is up to you. The inner court will not be responsible for it.

There are so many people in the palace, and I don’t have any income, so it’s hard to give out red envelopes during festivals.”

At the end, Feng Bao even made a self-deprecating remark.

Feng Bao, the chief steward of the inner court, not only managed the eunuchs and palace maids inside and outside the palace, but also the craftsmen who worked for the palace.

These people's salaries and the money they receive during festivals all pass through his hands.

It's a good job, but also a tiring one.

In fact, even the officials in the Cabinet and the Six Ministries are not like this.

Take the cabinet for example. You might think that once the imperial salaries are paid by the Ministry of Revenue, that's it. But the cabinet's secretaries and clerks, a large group of people, also need income during the holidays.

Each of the six ministries has its own private treasury, where kickbacks or embezzlement from various expenses are kept. When the time comes, the money will be divided according to the number of people and their rank.

Why is it said that corruption in the Ming Dynasty was a collective crime? In fact, the entire government was profiting from it.

Of course, the big share will still be taken away by some people, but the soup and water will be left behind.

Although the Cabinet did not directly handle money and grain, the tributes from local areas were divided into two parts: one part was sent directly to the Prime Minister's residence, and the other part went to the Cabinet.

This amount of silver was small, but it was enough to distribute to the secretaries and clerks in the cabinet, not to mention that they received many tributes from other places.

Who can blame them for being in a special position, being well-informed, and being able to pass on the message?

Can this institutional flaw be corrected?
It cannot be changed. If anyone changes it, he will offend all officials and be cut off from the officialdom.

Unless you can increase their salaries to make up for their losses.

Well, Feng Bao’s purpose was to seek benefits for the people in the inner court, so it was hard for the cabinet to say anything.

Zhang Juzheng did not want to make the relationship awkward, so he immediately said, "Then let's do this. The Ministry of Revenue and the local governments will each receive one tael of silver. This will always be more than the income, and we can do a lot of things."

Speaking of which, issuing passports seems to be able to increase the association's income by over a thousand taels of silver every year. This is a lot of silver, which is equivalent to the income of a gate.

After that, it took another ten days for the Ministry of Rites to finally finalize the agreement with the three European countries. The first draft was sent directly to the cabinet, waiting for the cabinet's review and then reported to the palace for final approval.

In fact, the content of the agreement had been finalized long ago, and it mainly involved Chinese and Latin translation. In order to ensure that there would be no omissions, the Siyi Hall arranged several people to review it separately.

These days, the Ming Dynasty has too little contact with the West.

If it is Portuguese, it would be much more convenient.

But in Europe, Portuguese is really just a minor language, far less popular than Spanish. As for the so-called English, it is only used by country bumpkins.

At this time, Britain really had no status among European countries.

If it weren't for its French relatives, I'm afraid that mainland countries would consider kicking Britain out of the ranks of European countries.

Of course the cabinet would not read the Latin text, but directly read the Chinese text.

Each of the four ministers had a copy of the first draft and reviewed it separately.

Wei Guangde just took a general look at it and thought it was fine as long as it was roughly correct.

During this period, the envoys of various countries had already purchased the materials they wanted to purchase in the capital and shipped them to Tianjin. They were just waiting to bid farewell to the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Then they could take the purchased Ming goods back to their countries and make a fortune.

So, time quickly came to the first full month after Emperor Wanli's wedding.

The emperor once again hosted a banquet for envoys from various countries in the Wuying Hall of the palace, and then arranged for the Ministry of Rites to see the guests off.

The Ministry of Rites was welcoming and seeing off guests, while the Ministry of Revenue was using the abacus to calculate the expenses of the emperor's wedding.

"Lord, the wedding cost more than 580,000 taels of silver, which is more than 100,000 taels of silver.

In addition, because of the wedding, the palace and other places were repaired, and there were rewards from various places, totaling more than 300,000 taels. The Ministry of War has not reported the figures yet, so the rewards from the Ministry of War have not been counted."

Zhang Xueyan took the account book to the cabinet. These were the numbers that had been verified with the inner court and should be relatively accurate.

"Shandai, how much reward will the Ministry of War give to the people below?"

Zhang Juzheng twitched his lips and asked Wei Guangde.

"About five or six hundred thousand taels. Your Majesty's wedding is a time for celebration throughout the nation, and it's customary to give congratulatory money to the soldiers," Wei Guangde replied.

"One million and a half taels."

Zhang Juzheng muttered softly.

There were relatively strict class distinctions in the royal weddings of the Ming Dynasty.

The most extravagant wedding was naturally the one of Zhu Zhanji, which was said to have cost 2.7 million taels of silver.

Silver was very strong in the early Ming Dynasty, but the Ming Baochao was still useful at that time, and the Ming Dynasty's tax revenue was also the most abundant period, and the court was very rich.

If you want banknotes, we can give you as much as you want. If you want physical goods, such as grain and cloth, we can also satisfy you.

Of course, these more than two million taels of silver actually also include the wedding money given to the Five Military Commanders' Office.

At that time, Zhu Di was really willing to spend money on the Crown Prince just for the sake of face.

Later, as the court's finances became increasingly difficult, expenditures decreased, usually to around 400,000 taels of silver.

This is direct expenditure, and rewards from various places are not included.

All in all, it is around one million taels.

However, at this point, the treasure notes are no longer valuable, as it is all real money that is spent, and the actual expenditure seems to be not much less than that of Zhu Zhanji.

However, this figure far exceeds the cost of the weddings of Emperor Zhengde and Emperor Jiajing, not to mention Emperor Longqing.

At that time, the total cost of the weddings that Emperor Jiajing spent on his two sons did not exceed 300,000 taels of silver.

"How much is the value of what Lord Yin and his companions brought back?"

Wei Guangde asked.

"According to estimates, it should be about 1.3 million taels."

The Ministry of Revenue had already estimated the value of the goods, so Zhang Xueyan said, "After deducting the value of the goods in the imperial treasury, the profit is about 700,000 taels."

"The money spent on your majesty's wedding has basically been earned back, and it should have been paid for by the Ministry of Revenue."

Wei Guangde smiled.

With all the money in and out, even under normal circumstances, 400,000 taels of silver would have to be allocated for the wedding. The excess would be for the cost of repairing the palace and the city walls, and the wedding was indeed overspent.

However, the imperial court had no choice but to issue an edict to rebuild various utensils for the Qianqing Palace and Kunning Palace.

Neither Zhang Juzheng nor Wei Guangde could directly reject the empress dowager's decree, and they had to accept many of the requests reluctantly.

"Shandai, please tell the Ministry of War to limit the amount of wedding money to less than 500,000 taels.

With an extra 100,000 taels, the court will have a hard time at the end of the year and will have to borrow money from Changyingku to celebrate the New Year."

Zhang Juzheng thought about it and finally said.

After Zhang Xueyan left, Zhang Juzheng said to Wei Guangde helplessly: "Those people in the palace are too cruel."

In fact, the overspending at Emperor Wanli's wedding was mostly the result of the eunuchs working together.

But even if they knew, they could only pretend not to see it.

Fortunately, the things sent by the delegation and the rewards given by the palace were not recorded in the Ministry of Revenue, but were borne by the palace. Otherwise, the Ministry of Revenue would have to pay an additional 200,000 or 300,000 taels of expenses.

"Do you think the people Liu Shouyou sent over there can achieve their goal?"

Zhang Juzheng sighed for a long time and thought about state affairs again.

The Spanish mission was returning to the Philippines, after which the agreement would be sent to Mexico before crossing the ocean back to Europe.

As for Portugal, the agreement was sent back to Goa and then to its homeland. Only the British delegation returned directly to Europe.

Therefore, the Ministry of Rites took the lead in contacting the British delegation, and the imperial court would send more than a dozen people to Europe to accompany them, mainly to confirm the situation of the Ming people who were stranded in Europe.

This matter has been made public, and both Spain and Portugal have admitted that there are indeed Ming people in their country.

Most of the Ming people in Portugal were still slaves, and only the Chinese in Spain found ways to free themselves from the shackles of slavery.

Spain didn't care about the Ming Dynasty sending people to Europe. Although Portugal was somewhat dissatisfied, it was alone at this time.

Britain and Spain did not enslave the Ming people. In fact, there were Han people in the Spanish part of the Philippines, but most of them had fled overseas since the previous dynasty.

Relatively speaking, although they are Han people, they prefer to say that they are descendants of the Song people rather than the Ming people, so naturally they are not within the scope of protection that the Ming Dynasty needs.

Even though they are very close to the Chinese, they fled overseas at the end of the Song Dynasty after all. So in the eyes of Daimao City, they are no different from foreigners.

The people sent by the Ministry of Rites nominally went to Europe to register the information of Ming subjects who were stranded overseas, but in fact their main purpose was to develop them into spies of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, whose mission was to spy on Europe's social, economic and technological intelligence.

Espionage is one of the oldest and best-documented fields in the political and military arts, believed to have originated as early as 6000 years ago in Mesopotamia, with the purpose of maintaining the security and continuity of ruling regimes.

Egyptian hieroglyphics reveal the existence of palace spies, and papyri describing ancient Egypt's extensive military and slave trade operations also mention spies.

Early Egyptian pharaohs employed spies to uncover disloyal subjects and to seek out tribes that could be conquered and enslaved.

From 1000 B.C. onwards, Egyptian espionage focused on gathering political and military intelligence on the two rival powers, Greece and Rome.

Between 1500 and 1200 BC, Greece's numerous wars with regional rivals prompted the development of new military and intelligence strategies.

The early Greeks relied on deception as their primary means of launching surprise attacks on their enemies, and the Greeks were so famous for their use of deceptive tactics that ancient Greek literature celebrated their achievements in intelligence and espionage.

The legendary event of the Trojan Horse, a wooden structure given as a gift to the city of Troy but containing hundreds of Greek soldiers trying to gain safe passage into the heavily fortified hostile city, became a symbol of Greek intelligence capabilities.

In the Middle East, the vast government bureaucracy of what became the Byzantine Empire established the earliest civilian intelligence agencies.

Civilian spies gathered information about foreign military and economic practices from merchants, traders, sailors, and other businessmen.

After the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe, espionage and intelligence activities were limited to wartime or local service, where warring factions under barbarian lords might use strategic espionage to gauge their opponents' strength or learn about enemy defenses.

In the Middle Ages, the emergence of large nation-states, such as France and England in the ninth and tenth centuries, fostered the need for intelligence in diplomatic settings, with a system of couriers, translators, and royal messengers carrying diplomatic messages between monarchs or feudal lords.

However, most of these espionage activities in Europe are still to carry out specific missions and have not given rise to specialized agencies for collecting intelligence.

Most of them were sent by a powerful noble to gather intelligence on their opponents.

A specially established, organized and premeditated intelligence agency like the Ming Dynasty does not exist in the West.

Modern espionage actually began to emerge after the 18th century, with espionage activities gaining their greatest development during the many conflicts and wars that took place in Europe during that period, as well as between colonial rivals both at home and abroad.

Industrialization, economic and territorial expansion, diversification of political philosophies and regimes, and immigration have all transformed the world’s intelligence community.

Because of Wei Guangde's existence, the Jinyiwei was no longer limited to tracking down traitors and collecting military intelligence, but gradually developed into a mature and comprehensive intelligence department.

"Let's give it a try. They claim to be the people of the Ming Dynasty, but we still need to test whether they are sincere."

Wei Guangde said. (End of this chapter)