I traveled with them to the Northern Song Dynasty

Chapter 353 Startup in Progress, Budget Exhausted Midway

...

As early as the beginning of Zhao Yu's reign, he understood that although all land under heaven belonged to the king and all people within the realm were his subjects, the emperor's personal money and the nation's money were not the same thing at all.

This is not a minor difference, but the fundamental principle of how the emperor conducts his affairs.

Historically, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were often trapped by the problem of "both the imperial treasury and the national treasury being short of money": Although the Hongwu Emperor established the Imperial Treasury to store the emperor's private money, it was often misappropriated under the pretext of "insufficient national expenditures". When the Wanli Emperor wanted to collect mining taxes to replenish the imperial treasury, it instead triggered a popular uprising; the Chongzhen Emperor asked his ministers to donate money to pay for military expenses, but as a result, "both the imperial treasury and the national treasury were empty", and in the end, the country perished.

This is all because the emperor did not have fixed private property. Whenever he had personal expenses or an emergency, he had to rely on the Ministry of Revenue for funding. He was constrained by the ministers' advice to "save money and be considerate of the people," and it was difficult for him to handle things flexibly.

Looking at the Qing Dynasty in history, after the Manchus entered the Central Plains, they established the "Imperial Household Department" to manage the emperor's private property. Its sources were very diverse: the annual income from royal estates in the suburbs of Beijing, tributes from the salt administration, surpluses from customs duties, and even the money from the sale of foreign goods purchased by the Guangdong Customs, did not go to the Ministry of Revenue, but went directly to the palace.

Therefore, although Emperor Qianlong spent a lot of money building the Yuanmingyuan and the Chengde Imperial Palace, he did not have to touch the Ministry of Revenue's regular funds; when Empress Dowager Cixi built the Summer Palace, although she also diverted naval funds, the pawnshops and businesses under the Imperial Household Department had income all year round, which was enough for her large daily expenses.

Because they had private funds as a foundation, Qing emperors were less constrained by the formality of "using the national treasury" when doing things. They could handle private matters such as sacrifices and rewards with ease, and could also use their private funds to supplement national expenses in emergencies.

For example, when Emperor Kangxi quelled the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories, he allocated three million taels of silver from the Imperial Household Department to fund the army. This demonstrated the emperor's attitude of sharing weal and woe with the country, and it also prevented the Ministry of Revenue from imposing additional taxes, so the people had no objections.

Zhao Yu was familiar with this history, so he naturally understood the key point here.

Before Zhao Yu, although the Song Dynasty had an "Inner Treasury" to store surplus money, most of it was allocated by the Three Departments and was actually part of the national treasury, not the emperor's own fixed assets.

Therefore, not long after Zhao Yu ascended the throne, he began preparing his own private treasury.

No.

It should be said that Zhao Yu had already begun to establish his own slush fund before he ascended the throne.

Initially, Zhao Yu amassed a considerable fortune before ascending the throne by selling glass and soap.

After Zhao Yu ascended the throne, he built his own ships and sent people to conduct maritime trade, becoming the largest maritime merchant in the Song Dynasty. He traded porcelain, glass, soap, silk, cotton cloth, textiles, tea, clocks, bicycles, canned goods, matches, white sugar, white wine, vinegar, refined salt, etc. When they returned, they brought back gold, silver, spices, ivory, rhinoceros horn, pearls, jade, coral, agate, glass, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell, and the like from overseas. Every year, Zhao Yu could earn tens of millions of strings of cash just from maritime trade.

At the same time, Zhao Yu launched a large-scale anti-corruption campaign, confiscating property.

Just like in the Qing Dynasty, all the proceeds from the confiscation of his property went directly into Zhao Yu's private treasury.

In addition, Zhao Yu obtained a great deal of wealth when the Song Dynasty destroyed Qinghai, Western Xia, and Liao.

Furthermore, when Zhao Yu sent Song Jiang to kill the gentry, he was also frantically accumulating wealth.

Crucially, in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, Zhao Yu had Ye Shiyun, Huang Jingchen, and others build numerous factories, including large shipyards, machinery bureaus, ironworks, textile mills, bearing factories, flour mills, canneries, match factories, soap factories, bicycle factories, rickshaw factories, watch factories, and countless others. These factories also brought Zhao Yu a great deal of wealth.

Most importantly, with the invention of the train, Zhao Yu built the first railway in the Song Dynasty, which ran from Jiangnan to Yanjing and then to Yundi. He also established a railway bureau, which is now starting to generate profits for Zhao Yu.

Furthermore, Zhao Yu sent people to build a large number of coal mines in Yundi and began to sell coal to Yanyun region, Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other places by train.

Why is firewood listed first in the "firewood, rice, oil, and salt" slang?

Firewood was a true "strategic resource" in ancient times. Government offices used firewood to pay salaries, ordinary people used it for cooking, and it was essential for iron smelting and weapon making.

Du Fu wrote, "Behind the red gates, wine and meat go to waste; on the road, frozen corpses lie." This is because in that era, winter was more unbearable than hunger, and the frozen corpses reflected the reality that the poor couldn't even get firewood for warmth.

In this era, forests were mostly monopolized by the powerful and wealthy. Ordinary people could easily break their legs or even lose their lives if they cut down a tree.

In this era, firewood was not only used for heating and cooking; it was also related to weapons manufacturing and shipbuilding, making it an important strategic resource.

Taking the Tang Dynasty as an example, the imperial court had to import "auspicious charcoal" from Xiliang, each piece of which was extremely valuable; while ordinary people could only burn straw, thatch, or even dismantle doors for fuel.

Even more cruelly, most people didn't even have firewood for heating. A heavy snowfall could freeze hundreds or thousands of people to death in a region, and people had to dismantle their houses to get firewood.

Moreover, the concept of "sustainability" doesn't even exist in this era; the demand for firewood has fueled predatory development.

The so-called "green mountains and clear waters" are merely the imagination of literati—the bare mountain ridges in ancient paintings of Mount Tai are the true reflection of the mountains and forests of this era.

To put it simply, in this era, it's not that "there are more trees than people," but rather that "people are competing with trees to survive."

In winter, the poor cannot survive, and the end result is death.

Before Zhao Yu ascended the throne, cloth was considered a form of hard currency. For ordinary people, owning a piece of clothing was a real possession. In some poor families, a single garment could be passed down for three generations. Once you wore it and went out, no one else could leave. The lower classes had almost no cotton-padded clothes or quilts, and some didn't even know what cotton looked like.

It wasn't until Zhao Yu ascended the throne and heavily relied on Yuan Qingcheng that grain production was greatly increased, which freed up a large amount of land. Then, under Zhao Yu's semi-guidance and semi-coercion, cotton was planted on a large scale throughout the country, and cotton gradually became available to ordinary people. People finally had cotton clothes and quilts, and the number of people who froze to death was greatly reduced.

However, even with cotton-padded clothes and quilts, people still could not escape suffering or even death during the cold winter without sufficient heating.

The principle behind the warmth provided by cotton clothing and quilts lies in the air stored between their fibers or wadding. Air is a poor conductor of heat, which reduces the loss of body heat to the outside world, essentially adding a "heat insulation barrier" to the body.

However, cotton clothes and quilts cannot generate heat themselves. If the outside temperature drops to a certain level, the heat generated by the human body will be continuously taken away, and the insulation effect of cotton clothes and quilts alone will be insufficient.

If the temperature drops to minus ten degrees Celsius, even if you are wearing cotton clothes and wrapped in thick quilts, if there is no heating in the room, you will soon be chilled by the cold air. As the body heat continues to be lost, your hands and feet will first become frozen, and after a while, you will feel cold all over, and there is even a risk of frostbite.

This is why even with cotton-padded clothes and quilts, people still struggle to survive the winter when they lack firewood, coal, and other heating supplies—cotton-padded clothes and quilts are for "protection," while heating supplies are for "supplementation," and neither can be lacking.

Zhao Yu mined coal in Yundi and then transported it by train to Yanyun, Hebei, Shandong, Hedong, Henan and other places for sale, precisely because he had grasped this key point.

The Yundi coal mine has abundant reserves and shallow coal seams that are easy to mine. With the help of existing machinery and equipment in the Song Dynasty, the coal mine's output is very considerable. Its cost is far lower than logging in the mountains. After all, logging requires going deep into the mountains and has to be wary of wild animals and deal with government bans, while coal mining only requires digging pits on the ground, reducing manpower consumption by 80% to 90%.

Trains were even more labor-saving; the coal carried by one train was equivalent to that of dozens of cargo ships and hundreds of oxcarts. Moreover, they could travel day and night and were not affected by frozen rivers in winter. The cost of transporting coal to various places was more than half that of traditional firewood transport.

Previously, firewood was monopolized by the powerful and wealthy, and a pound of charcoal could sell for tens of coins, while ordinary people could only buy some scrap firewood. Now, the price of coal is only about 30% of that of charcoal, and it burns with a stronger flame. One piece of coal can burn as long as two pieces of charcoal, so people naturally prefer to buy coal.

Furthermore, the biogas digesters previously promoted by Emperor Zhao Yu also solved part of the firewood problem. With firewood prices forced to fall, it became extremely difficult for powerful families to profit from monopolizing firewood.

On Zhao Yu's side, although the price was low, the sales volume was astonishingly large—in Hebei province alone, tens of thousands of shi of coal could be sold every day during the winter. Calculated at ten coins per shi of coal, nearly a million strings of cash could be earned in three or four months of winter. The same was true in Yanyun, Shandong, Henan and other places. All of this added up to a huge income, which was all deposited into the imperial treasury and became the source of Zhao Yu's confidence in his actions.

Moreover, Zhao Yu's move was actually a win-win-win situation: the common people got cheap heating supplies and were less likely to freeze to death in the cold winter; the price of firewood fell, weakening the power of the powerful clans; and the imperial treasury received a steady stream of income from coal sales, so it no longer needed to rely on the Ministry of Revenue for funding.

Zhao Yu's decision to mine and transport coal was not only driven by the desire to develop the industrial revolution, but also by his keen insight into the connection between "people's livelihood" and "private property."

Only when the people live in peace and stability can one's own private savings be firmly established.

This principle is exactly the same as Zhao Yu's approach of engaging in maritime trade and establishing factories, both of which fundamentally solidify the foundation for the emperor's actions.

Zhao Yu had many similar ways of making money.

For example, Yuan Qingcheng's agricultural base could bring Zhao Yu an income of one or two million strings of cash every year.

For example, the lottery franchise that Ye Shiyun arranged for Zhao Yu brought him a stable income of two to three million strings of cash every year.

For example, the restaurants, brothels, and gambling dens in various overseas strongholds could also bring Zhao Yu huge income.

These matters were conducted without going through the Secretariat and the Three Departments, quietly establishing a "private source of wealth for the emperor" independent of the national treasury.

Zhao Yu knew that only by having money that was not subject to the constraints of the outer court could he have room to maneuver in court struggles, border deployments, and even in implementing new policies.

Some people might ask, if Zhao Yu took away so many profitable projects, what would happen to the court's revenue?
easy to do.

First of all, it should be made clear that none of the money that Zhao Yu took came from the imperial court, nor did he collect any extra taxes from the people; it was all wealth he created himself.

Furthermore, Zhao Yu not only sought personal gain, but also made significant contributions to the court's finances.

His first contribution was that Zhao Yu took back the land tax from the gentry group, which solved a large part of the financial problem.

Zhao Yu's second contribution was his vigorous promotion of commerce and commercial taxes. Most importantly, he led by example in adhering to commercial tax regulations. All projects under his jurisdiction paid full commercial taxes to the court, making him the largest taxpayer. In fact, it could be said that Zhao Yu paid approximately 30-40% of the court's commercial taxes.

This is one of the reasons why few people dare to publicly condemn Zhao Yu for competing with the people for profit.

The third contribution was that Zhao Yu vigorously developed maritime trade and expanded the country's maritime territory, which made the Song Dynasty's international trade extremely frequent, and consequently caused the Song Dynasty's customs revenue to soar.

These three sources of fiscal revenue alone were more than enough to keep the Song Dynasty's finances running high.

Moreover, Cai Jing's policies on salt, iron, tea, wine, vinegar, as well as the sale of ordination certificates for monks and Taoists and the reform of currency, have accumulated a large amount of fiscal revenue for the Song Dynasty.

This made the Song Dynasty's treasury richer than ever before, even though Zhao Yu spent most of his time at war after ascending the throne.

Of course, this is also because, after the war begins, Zhao Yu will also take some money from his own treasury to pay the army, demonstrating his attitude of standing with the country through thick and thin.

In short, after seventeen or eighteen years of Zhao Yu's rule, both he and the court were richer than ever before.

It was precisely because of this that Zhao Yu dared to wage war against the Jin Dynasty and Goryeo while simultaneously launching the Industrial Revolution and initiating the Age of Exploration.

Unexpectedly, even someone as wealthy as Zhao Yu was told one day that he was running out of money.

When Zhao Yu first heard Ye Shiyun say that she had "run out of budget halfway through her business venture," he thought he had misheard. He asked incredulously, "You've almost spent all my money?!"

Upon hearing this, Ye Shiyun calmly and deliberately began to calculate the score for Zhao Yu:
duty free.

fight.

To raise concubines.

Raising a son.

To establish a railway bureau and build railways.

The construction of Beijing and the Forbidden City.

Explore Southeast Asia and discover new continents.

And now he strongly supports his sons to go to Southeast Asia and the mainland to expand their territory.

Wait, wait, wait...

It's surprising how accurate it was; even Zhao Yu himself was secretly astonished when he calculated it.

Putting everything else aside, the cost of just one treasure ship was as high as 100,000 strings of cash.

Zhao Yu sent one of his sons to assemble a fleet, which cost several million strings of cash. Add to that the cost of personnel and supplies, and the money just flowed away like water.

No wonder Ye Shiyun came to Zhao Yu to remind him to repeatedly use the fleets under his sons' control and to try to plunder some resources from their "fiefdoms," otherwise, even someone as wealthy as himself could not withstand such consumption.

Zhao Yu was someone who listened to advice.

He immediately announced the suspension of sending his sons to the South Seas and the Prince's Continent, and sent people to the South Seas and the Prince's Continent to issue an edict that Zhao Xiu and others should each leave some ships for use, and the rest of the ships should be loaded with local supplies and sent back to the Great Song Dynasty. After their fleet returned, they would continue to send their sons to the South Seas and the Prince's Continent.

After issuing the decree, Zhao Yu pulled Ye Shiyun into his arms and placed her on his lap. He then kissed her and asked, "My beloved concubine, do you see any other ways to make money? I feel like we don't have enough..."

……

(End of this chapter)