Chapter 2435

Tao Donglai was not too unfamiliar with the name Yang Sichang, because in the reports sent back from Shandong not long ago, both the military and the intelligence agencies mentioned this name repeatedly, believing that this person was responsible for the incompetent command and missteps.

Only then did the Qing army move south to 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 could 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.

, his performance will naturally not be ideal. However, although Yang Sichang lacks 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 neighbor in the north. Why?

There will also be thoughts on the post of a magistrate in Jiangnan.

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 and decide, 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 War, but Yang Sichang is skilled in writing and eloquent. Now he has won the trust of the emperor. His advice is very valued by the emperor, and he is said to obey his words.

It’s not an exaggeration.”

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 Ping Liao's 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 the Ming Dynasty to resist foreign invaders, it must first quell the internal strife, and second, prepare sufficient

Weapons, money and food. How to get enough military pay to support the battle? Naturally, he 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 the local profits into the national treasury as payment. He

He once served in the Ministry of Household Affairs, and 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?"

Comrade Qu Yu said: "That's why some people have secretly submitted memorials 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.

Innocent. As long as the emperor is made suspicious of me, their goal will be achieved."

After listening to this explanation, Tao Donglai felt that the causal relationship was somewhat straightened out. Yang Sichang made extremely serious command errors this past winter, but now that the Qing army has withdrawn, he wanted to make up for his mistakes.

They can only make efforts in other directions. 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 fault of command errors that led to the Qing army's invasion of the country will not be

was 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.

With silver as the standard, more than 2 million taels of Liao pay were levied from the private sector. The three-year levy raised a total of 5.2 million taels of Liao pay for the Ming treasury.

By the time of Tianqi, the scope of increased taxes was expanded from cultivated land to Gueguan, salt trade and other areas. 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 was

Up to four million taels of silver.

Of course, not all of this large amount of money was distributed to the frontline soldiers, or used to increase armaments and build city defenses. Bureaucrats and generals at all levels would actually take advantage of Liao's pay. Although the court also thought of many ways,

For example, officials are dispatched to supervise the entire process from collection to distribution of Liao's salary, but after all, there are too many links to prevent the massive loss of Liao's salary 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 bankrupt and unable to pay.

After clearing 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 was not significantly strengthened due to the increase in military spending.

After a year of attacks, it has become increasingly vulnerable. Only God knows how much money has been collected and distributed to strengthen border defense.

Of course, not all the people in the Ming Dynasty 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. But for

To maintain the rule, military pay must not be stopped, and the court cannot expand the scope of tax collection to the elite class, so it can only find ways to increase revenue from other places. And the simplest way, of course, is to look at where the country is richest and how quickly 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 economic situation is relatively poor.

The good ones 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, the Ming Dynasty became the

The most prosperous area.

But the Fu-Guang area is now somewhat beyond the reach of the imperial court. Because the two Guangxi areas are adjacent to Hainan Island, which was occupied by Haihan, it has been penetrated most thoroughly. If the appointment and removal of local officials by the imperial court are not approved by Haihan, it will be very difficult.

It is difficult to complete his term safely, and if he wants to directly intervene in local trade affairs, it is 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 the Guangdong and Guangxi areas.

If not, a careless move might give Xu Xinsu an excuse to rebel. At that point, there would be no way to clean up the situation. So even if it was known that the Xu family was rich and powerful, running many industries that could make a lot of money, the court could only covet it.

, but couldn't get the Xu family to spit out these benefits honestly.

The Fu-Guang 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 small number of upper-class people, and these powerful people have never been the main bearers of taxes. The court wants to give these people

It is actually quite difficult for people to directly increase taxes. Based on the information he obtained, Yang Sichang came up with a solution, which is to put the maritime trade in Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, especially the international trade part, into the hands of the government for management, and then extract money from it.

Part of the profits were put into the state treasury as salary.

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 Shishi Ship Division was in name only.

It may become a powerful bureaucracy and 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 not a secret. If Yang Sichang wants to implement his new policy, he will certainly not allow Qu Yutong to continue

Take charge of Ningbo. Although doing so may offend some people, the profits Ningbo creates through international trade every year are astonishing, 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.

Relations. 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 could only ask Haihan for help, hoping

He can keep his official position with the help of Haihan.

Of course, the goal that Yang Sichang wants to achieve is huge, but it is not that easy to achieve. If one move 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 listened to 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 Prefecture is monolithic by holding joint military exercises and will not easily

Being shaken by external forces, have you ever thought about whether the commanders and Qianhu you are currently contacting have enough courage to fight against the Minister of War? Or do they know who they are dealing with?

When things come to a head, 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, and they wanted to use it to show their confidence in the joint military exercise.

The imperial court stated the difficulty and risk of interfering in the affairs of the Ningbo Prefecture, but those military leaders were not necessarily all Qu Yutong, who put all their wealth, life and future on Haihan. Participating in military exercises was not a big problem, but they had to go against the imperial court.

, that 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. They can only stand on the same front as us from now on."

"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 backhand and sell you out first!

When the time comes, Yang Sichang first requests an order to have Mr. Qu resign 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. Yang Sichang wants to take action here, but after all, he still has to worry about the local reaction. He

You can’t just 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 would not be too difficult to take advantage of his position to find a reason to replace these generals who participated in the military exercises. It will definitely have a big impact on our normal trade. We have saved Mr. Qu, but

If we lose control of the guard base, 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. Haihan spent several years

It took time to manage the current situation. If Yang Sichang realized that the generals at the guard station in Ningbo were unreliable, then in order to achieve his goal of controlling trade channels, he would definitely have to replace these people, and this would obviously be detrimental to Haihan.

Although the plan discussed by Shi Diwen and Qu Yutong is feasible, it seems to Tao Dong that it is too risky. Even if it is implemented smoothly, it may not achieve the purpose they expected, and it may even be ineffective.

The negative impact affected Haihan's trade situation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. So despite the two people's persuasion, Tao Donglai still insisted on his objection.

"If this doesn't work, then wouldn't we have to wash our necks and wait for the knife?" Seeing that he could not persuade Tao Donglai, Shi Diwen couldn't help but feel a little frustrated at the moment.
Chapter completed!