Chapter 2435
Tao Donglai was 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, believing that this person was responsible for the incompetent command and failure. This allowed the Qing army to march all the way south and fight across the Yellow River. Yang Sichang should bear the unshirkable responsibility for the war that occurred in Shandong.
According to the historical data available to the public, Yang Sichang's military talents can only be considered mediocre, but due to the current situation, he was placed in the position of Minister of War by Chongzhen to coordinate and direct the combat operations against the Qing army. , its performance will naturally not be ideal. However, although Yang Sichang lacked military capabilities, there should be no doubt about his loyalty to the imperial power and the court. It stands to reason that at this time, his attention should be focused on his evil neighbors in the north. How could he still care about a prefect in Jiangnan? position.
Moreover, the level of the prefect is not low, and it is a place like Ningbo Prefecture, which is regarded as a fertile vacancy. I don’t know how many people are watching overtly or covertly. This Yang Sichang is the Minister of the Ministry of War, not the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel. Ordinarily, the appointment of local officials Transfer is not something he can intervene in, which makes Qu Yutong's statement sound a bit unreasonable.
"Lord Qu, what you mean is that the current Minister of the Ministry of War wants to steal your position as prefect?" Tao Donglai deliberately emphasized the word "Ministry of War" to see if Qu Yutong realized that this was unreasonable.
Qu Yutong responded: "The appointment of local officials should not be interfered by the Minister of the Ministry of War, but Yang Sichang is skilled in writing and eloquent. Now he has won the trust of the emperor. The emperor values his advice very much, and he is said to obey his words. Not too much.”
Tao Donglai said: "I still don't quite understand what angle he has to take to remove you from the position of prefect."
"It still has something to do with the Ping Liao plan." Qu Yutong continued to explain: "Master Tao doesn't know something. Yang Sichang served in the Ministry of Household Affairs in his early years and once controlled Fubian Town. He is quite familiar with the Qianliang Army Formation. Among the officials of the imperial court, he was one of the few people who could formulate military strategies, and he was also eloquent, so the emperor was naturally willing to listen to his ideas. According to Yang Sichang, in order for Ming Dynasty to resist foreign invaders, it must first put down internal strife, and secondly, prepare sufficient preparations. How to obtain enough weapons, money and food to support the battle, he naturally focused on wealthy areas like Ningbo."
"My cooperation with your country is not a secret, so Yang Sichang believes that if someone can manage Ningbo Prefecture, he can control the trade with your country and put all local profits into the national treasury as payment. He He once served in the Ministry of Household Affairs. If he claims to the emperor that this operation can solve the problem of Liao's salary, the emperor will easily accept his opinion. ”
Tao Donglai nodded thoughtfully and said: "But in this way, it is only his unilateral view. The emperor of your country will not be so easily incited, right?"
Qu Yutong said: "That's why someone has secretly submitted a memorial to the court recently, trying to accuse me of using public weapons for personal use and enriching my own pockets. With the combined efforts of everyone, it will be difficult for me to prove myself even if I write a letter to defend myself. Innocence. As long as the emperor is suspicious of me, their goal will be achieved."
After hearing this explanation, Tao Donglai felt that the relationship between cause and effect was somewhat straightened out. Yang Sichang made extremely serious command errors this past winter, but now that the Qing army has withdrawn, he could only make efforts in other directions if he wanted to make up for his mistakes. Trying to raise military expenditures from the private sector seems to be a good way out. As long as the long-term military expenditure dilemma faced by the Ming Dynasty can be solved to a certain extent, then the sins of command errors that led to the Qing army's invasion of the country will not be liquidated.
It is not new for the Ming Dynasty to increase domestic taxes on the grounds of military pay in Liaodong. Since the 46th year of Wanli, that is, in 1618 AD, when Nurhachi established the Later Jin regime in Liaodong, the Ming Dynasty has increased taxes by 3.5 cents per mu of land. Silver was used as the standard, and more than two million taels of Liao wages were levied on the people. The three-year additional levy raised a total of 5.2 million taels of Liao pay for the Ming Dynasty treasury.
During the Tianqi period, the scope of increased taxes expanded from cultivated land to Guanguan, salt production and other areas. In the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign, Liao's salary standards were further raised, but they were still unable to make ends meet. In Shanhaiguan alone, the annual expenditure is as high as 4 million taels of silver.
Of course, not all of this amount of money was distributed to the frontline soldiers, or used to increase military equipment and build city defenses. Bureaucrats and generals at all levels will actually take advantage of Liao's salary when handling it. 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 pay, there were ultimately too many links to prevent the massive loss of Liao's pay from various channels.
The Liao rates to support the Liaodong border, the suppression rates for suppressing the peasant army, and the training rates for forming and training local armed forces. The amount of these three additional payments far exceeded the orthodox taxes, so much so that farmers in many places were unable to pay even if they lost all their money. After clearing away these messy exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes, they eventually lost their land and became tenants, slaves, or even refugees and bandits. At the same time, the northern border defense has not been significantly strengthened due to the increase in military spending. Instead, it has become increasingly vulnerable to attacks by the Manchu armed forces year after year. Only God knows how much effect the collection and distribution of so much money will have on strengthening border defense.
Of course, not all the Ming Dynasty officials were ignorant. They were not unaware of the consequences of such an unlimited increase in taxes on the common people. The consequences were becoming apparent year by year, and were developing out of control. However, in order to maintain rule, military pay must not be stopped, and the court could not expand the scope of tax collection to the elite class, so it could only find ways to increase revenue from other places. The easiest way, of course, is to look at where the country is richest and where money comes in the fastest.
Of course, it is not difficult to find an answer to this question. Nowadays, many places in the Ming Dynasty have fallen into civil strife, especially the area centered on the Central Plains. It has almost never stopped in recent years, and the social economy has long been on the verge of collapse. The areas with better economic conditions are naturally those areas that have not been affected by the war, especially the southeastern coastal areas, such as the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian, the Pearl River Basin of Guangdong, Guangxi, etc., relying on relatively developed maritime trade, It has become the most prosperous area in the Ming Dynasty.
But the Fuguang area is now somewhat beyond the reach of the imperial court. Guangdong and Guangxi were most thoroughly penetrated because they were adjacent to Hainan Island, which was occupied by Haihan. If the appointment and dismissal of local officials by the imperial court were not approved by Haihan, it would be difficult to safely complete their terms. Moreover, if they wanted 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 included in the consideration from the beginning.
The Fujian area already has Xu Xinsu, a local emperor, who manages the place like a country within a country. Xu Xinsu's influence in Fujian is no less than that of a vassal king who divides territories and divides the territory. It is no more difficult for the court to intervene in local affairs than in Guangdong and Guangxi. If anything, a careless move might give Xu Xinsu an excuse to rebel. At that point, there would be no way to clean up the situation. Therefore, even if it was known that the Xu family was rich and powerful and ran many industries that could make a lot of money, the court could only covet it, but it could not make the Xu family spit out these benefits honestly. The Fu-Guang area cannot be moved, leaving only Jiangsu and Zhejiang. But the problem is that although the local area is rich, most of the wealth is also concentrated in the hands of a small number of upper-class people, and these powerful people have never been the main bearers of taxes. It is actually quite difficult for the court to directly increase taxes on these people. Using the information he had, Yang Sichang came up with a solution, which was to bring the maritime trade in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, especially the international trade part, into the hands of the government for management, and then extract part of the profits from it and put it into the national treasury for payment.
Of course, the tax part is definitely not collected from our own people, but from 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 Municipal Shipping Department was in name only, but in the future, it may become a powerful government agency that will bring all cross-border trade into the scope of supervision.
Ningbo Prefecture is the closest to Zhoushan, so it naturally bears the brunt of Yang Sichang's target. The close relationship between the prefect Qu Yutong and the Zhoushan authorities is no secret. If Yang Sichang wants to implement his new policy, he will definitely not be able to let Qu Yutong continue to be in charge of Ningbo. Although doing so may offend some people, the staggering profits Ningbo generates through international trade every year are enough for Yang Sichang to ignore the hidden conflicts and crises and start planning and arranging a plan to overthrow Qu Yutong.
And since Qu Yutong has the courage to cooperate with Haihan, he is naturally not an honest person. He has given away a lot of the money he has earned in his pockets over the years, and he has not left any places where he should burn incense. Of course he also has connections in the capital. relation. All his money was indeed not in vain. At the critical moment, someone finally sent a message to warn him in advance to prevent the crisis. Qu Yutong assessed the situation and realized that he was unable to resolve the offensive from the court, so he had no choice but to seek help from Haihan, hoping to retain his official position with Haihan's support.
Of course, the goal that Yang Sichang wants to achieve is huge, but it is not that easy to do it. If it affects the whole body, this kind of measure will definitely affect the cake of many people, and the resistance encountered will not be just Qu Yu. This is the same place, so it will take a long time to act, and Qu Yutong also has the opportunity to change the direction of the situation.
After Tao Donglai heard the whole story, he quickly discovered a very fatal problem in Qu Yutong's response strategy: "Master Qu, you and General Shi hope to show that Ningbo is monolithic by holding joint military exercises and will not easily Being shaken by external forces, have you ever thought about the commanders and Qianhu you are currently contacting, are they brave enough to fight against the Minister of War? Or do they know who they are dealing with? When things come to a close, can they withstand the pressure from the court and the Ministry of War? ”
"This..."
Qu Yutong failed to respond smoothly to Tao Donglai's question, which made Tao Donglai more certain of his guess. Qu Yutong and Shi Diwen's conception of the joint military exercise was not comprehensive. They wanted to use it to show the court the difficulty and risks of intervening in Ningbo affairs. However, those military leaders were not necessarily the ones who put their lives and futures at risk like Qu Yutong. All the chips are on Haihan's side. Participating in military exercises is not a big problem, but going against the imperial 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 get these people on board as soon as possible. After the matter was settled, they realized what happened and did not regret taking the medicine. From now on, they can only stand on the same side as us.”
"So you mean to cook the raw rice into cooked rice first?" Tao Donglai shook his head slightly and said: "The risk is very high. If someone learns of Yang Sichang's plan in the meantime, he might sell you out first! When the time comes, Yang Sichang will request Master Qu to step down immediately, and you may not even have a chance to fight back!”
"So the military exercise must 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 the local reaction. He We can’t replace all the civil and military officials in Ningbo in one go, right?”
Tao Donglai still shook his head and said: "It's still inappropriate. What you are doing is just betting that Yang Sichang will be wary of Ningbo's situation, but what if he still decides to attack Ningbo after the military exercise? Even if he doesn't move, Master Qu, However, it will not be too difficult to take advantage of the position to find a reason to replace these generals who participated in the military exercise. It will definitely have a big impact on our normal trade, but we can keep Mr. Qu. If we lose control of the defense, even if we win, it will only be a miserable victory.”
Nowadays, many health centers in Ningbo and 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 several years to manage the current situation. If Yang Sichang realizes that the generals at the guard station in Ningbo are unreliable, then in order to achieve his goal of controlling trade channels, these people must be replaced, and this is obviously It would be detrimental to Haihan.
Although the plan discussed by Shi Diwen and Qu Yutong was feasible, it seemed to Tao Dong that it was too risky. Even if it was successfully implemented, it might not be able to achieve the goals they expected, and it might even be ineffective. The negative impact has affected Haihan's trade status in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. So despite the two people's every possible persuasion, Tao Donglai still insisted on his objection.
"If this doesn't work, wouldn't it mean that we have to wash our necks and wait for the knife?" Shi Diwen couldn't help but feel a little frustrated when he saw that he couldn't persuade Tao Donglai.
(End of chapter)