"My lord, are you joking with me?"

Jabs looked at Wu Sangui with surprise.

Wu Sangui sighed: "To tell you the truth, I, the King of Pingxi, have suffered a loss... Even if I break my old savings, I still owe a lot of loan sharks! What else do you mean? What do you think I am trying to do?

?My sister is the queen, my brothers and father are both Dukes, and I am also a Duke. Moreover, I have made contributions to the defeat of bandits and sacrifices to Gansu and Shaanxi. After handing over military power and entering the court, are you afraid of losing glory and wealth? Why bother to fill in this in Gansu and Shaanxi?

Bottomless pit?”

He really wants to run away to Nanjing... His debts are too much, and he can't even pay them off! Moreover, the 330,000 households below are too difficult to take care of, and every one of them looks like his mother's ancestors.

When Wu Sangui defected to the Ming Dynasty before, he had already borrowed a lot of loan sharks to make up for the shortfalls of thousands of households below.

But this year there is another drought, and many thousands of households have reported no harvest! It is up to him, a big warlord, to find a way to provide relief... And what can Wu Sangui do? Should he continue to borrow loan sharks?

Seeing that his debts were increasing, Wu Sangui was really exhausted mentally and physically, and even thought of running away to Nanjing.

Oh, it can’t be considered as running away. By handing back the books, he is handing over the territory and population to the imperial court!

In this way, the loan sharks he was carrying could also be transferred out together. The loan sharks he owed were not due to personal squandering or gambling, but were all owed to him for being the damn Northwest King, and they were considered "vassal debts".

Not a personal debt.

He thought that as long as the feudal clan was handed over, the feudal debt would be handed over naturally.

Even if he "cleansed his life and left home", would he still be afraid that he would not be rich and prosperous after going to Nanjing? He was a hero of the Ming Dynasty! Without him opening Shanhaiguan to attract the Qing soldiers to come in, Zhu Cixiang would have been dead end - without the Qing soldiers to come in, he would have been dead.

Li Zicheng has secured his seat in the Dragon Court of Beijing!

At that time, some people will chop off Zhu Cixiang’s head to claim credit from Li Zicheng...

And now he has defected and returned to the Ming Dynasty with the territory of Gansu and Shaanxi!

If two great merits are added together, are you afraid of losing glory and wealth?

His demands were not high. As long as Zhu Cihong could reward him with a big house, tens of thousands of acres of land, and a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand taels of silver, and then give him a high-ranking official who took money for nothing and did not work, he would

Satisfied!

Wouldn't it be nice to eat, drink, have fun, and do some business with Chen Yuanyuan when the time comes?

After listening to Wu Sangui's words and looking at Wu Sangui's expression, Jabs felt that the Duke really wanted to quit - this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! As long as the emperor was determined not to shoulder the loan sharks for him, he could force Wu Sangui to

He became a wealthy and wealthy prince, and most of the Shaanxi and Gansu provinces returned to the hands of the imperial court...

...

The news that Wu Sangui attempted to evade debts and dump the financial black hole of Gansu and Shaanxi to the Ming court was quickly sent through Jin Yiwei's network to Zhu Cihong, who was about to leave Nanjing and head west to Wuhan.

"Your Majesty, good news! The Duke of Jin is willing to return the edition!"

This news was brought to Dongnuan Pavilion of Fengtian Palace by the jubilant Zhu Chunjie himself. When he arrived at Dongnuan Pavilion, Zhu Cihong was discussing the Huanghuai project with important ministers of the two governments.

The Yellow-Huaihe River Project was proposed by Fang Gongyue, the governor of the river channel. The specific idea was to "abolish the canals, control the Yellow River, and protect the Huaihe River" - the three-river management project of the Yellow River, the Huaihe River, and the Yun River was actually integrated. After the Yellow River flowed south to capture the Huaihe River, the Ming Dynasty

, both the Qing Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty faced the dilemma of "protecting the canals" and "protecting the Huaihe River".

To protect the canal, we cannot artificially excavate the channel for the Yellow River to enter the sea north of the Huaihe River, or even dig a flood discharge channel on the east (north) bank of the Yellow River to prevent the water from the Yellow River from destroying the canal.

Under this thinking, the Huaihe River will inevitably become a victim - the Yellow River water carrying a large amount of sediment can only rush into the Huaihe River! And when the Yellow River flood peak and the Huaihe River flood peak come at the same time, we can only force the water to flow into the Huaihe River and protect it at all costs.

Water transportation. After the Ming Dynasty moved the capital to Beijing, because water transportation had to be preserved at all costs, the number of floods in the Huaihe River increased significantly, almost once every two or three years!

In other words, although the rice transported to Beijing every year is only more than 4 million shi, the rice lost due to the flooding of the Huaihe River averages at least several 4 million shi per year...

Now that Beijing is no longer in the hands of the Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Cixi no longer regards Beijing as the capital, there is no need to implement the water control strategy of protecting the canal and abandoning the Huai River, and there is no way to abandon the Huai River again - because the Ming Dynasty is now crowded and the land is tight.

The food supply is unprecedentedly tight. Once the Huaihe River floods on the scale of the 21st year of Wanli, causing Huai'an and Yangzhou to lose their harvests, the trouble will be huge. At least tens of millions of white rice will be lost...

.

By then the throne under Emperor Zhu’s butt will be shaken!

Therefore, the policy of abandoning the canal was determined, and a plan was put forward to dig a 180-mile-long Yellow River channel into the sea in Suqian and Shuyang counties.

This is not a canal, but a large river that allows the water of the Yellow River to rush into the sea. It took hundreds of thousands of people and several years to complete.

Now that Zhu Cihong has abolished corvee labor and instead paid it into land tax, hundreds of thousands of laborers digging rivers and building dams can only be recruited through labor force. Although according to Fang Gongyue's plan, he is prepared to use labor force during leisure time.

Moreover, laborers were hired from the three nearby prefectures of Huai'an, Haizhou, and Yangzhou, which were suffering from the flooding of the Huaihe River, but the cost of the entire project would still be as high as millions of dan (rice).

The finances in the first year of Hongxing were not enough to support such a major project. However, in the second year of Hongxing, the five-year tax exemption in four provinces including Jiangnan, Jiangbei, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang ended, and more than 100 million acres of private land began to pay "two buckets of rice."

(According to the land tax of "two bushels of rice" planned by the Ming Dynasty to be implemented in the second year of Hongxing, which will be the highest standard, applicable to high-quality paddy fields, and will be paid by farmers without any additional fees), the Ming Dynasty will be able to start comprehensive

The great work of regulating the Yellow and Huai rivers has begun.

In addition to excavating a new channel of the Yellow River into the sea, there are also projects to expand the Hongze Lake flood storage area and build additional dykes, move the Zuling Mausoleums, build more dykes on the Huaihe River, build more dykes in the Xuzhou section of the Yellow River, and build a new channel of the Huaihe River into the sea, etc.

.

If all the projects are completed, it will not only ensure the safety of the Huaihe River in the next decades or even hundreds of years, but also ensure that the Huaihe River does not suffer from serious flooding (Hongze Lake flood storage) when the Beiqing people dig the Yellow River to lead the troops with water.

District expansion is to prevent this trick).

It is no exaggeration to say that this series of Huaihe River control projects are directly related to the survival and safety of the Ming Dynasty, and it is the most important national policy!

Before the Huaihe River project was completed, Emperor Zhu did not have the extra financial resources to fill the bottomless pit in Shaanxi and Gansu!

Now that Zhu Cixiang had finished listening to Zhu Chunjie's report, he just smiled faintly: "Wu Sangui still wants to escape from debts... No way! He and the King Dai must block the hole in Shaanxi-Gansu!"

This is not a loan shark worth millions... The holes in Gansu and Shaanxi are huge! There are so many troops under Wu Sangui and Dai Fan, and so many heroes, and Zhu Cixiang has to bear them. How much does it cost? And there are so many places in Gansu and Shaanxi.

If you can't collect taxes, you can't even collect official land and military land. Isn't it just a big black hole that can't be filled?

If you really memorize it, how can you do it without tens of millions a year?

"Your Majesty, the Duke of Jin is willing to return the edition!" Chief Assistant Wei Zaode thought that Zhu Cihong did not understand what Zhu Chunjie said, so he quickly reminded him.

Wu Xiang, Minister of the Ministry of War, was also stunned. He finally reacted and stammered: "Your Majesty, Quanzi, Quanzi is not trying to escape from debts... Quanzi is loyal to the Ming Dynasty and to His Majesty!"

Zhu Cixiang smiled and said: "Old Taishan, I know that my eldest uncle is a loyal minister... but a loyal minister can't run away just because he owes a debt!"

"Your Majesty, Sangui owes a debt to the country...and he really can't pay it back!"

Zhu Cixiang smiled: "It doesn't matter, I have sent Huang Jiang (Soy Sauce Huang), the general manager of Maritime Bank, and Su Sheng (Su Laomi), the general manager of Salt Mercantile Bank, to Wuhan. They will help the uncle solve his debt problem.
Chapter completed!