On May 12, the 19th year of Chongzhen's reign in the Ming Dynasty, inside the Yamen of the Cabinet Office (Public Staff) outside the Fengtian Gate of the Imperial City of Nanjing, the nave was filled with senior civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty who had stayed in Nanjing. There are not only the heads of the two offices (Cabinet Office and Generalissimo's Office), but also the princes who talk things over in the clan office, Yingtian Prefecture Yin Li Mingrui, the top shopkeepers of the top ten imperial merchants in Nanjing, and even the Chief of Ceremonies. Huang Dabao and Qiu Zhizhong, the two great officials from the Royal Horse Supervisor, all squeezed in. The main hall of the Cabinet Office, which was not even spacious in the first place, is now almost overcrowded. However, these civil and military officials who crowded in to discuss matters were all silent and silent. Apart from fanning themselves, they drank cup after cup of tea.
The thing that made all these officials mute was naturally the rice robbing incident in Longjiang Rice Alley that happened yesterday morning!
Tens of thousands of "volunteers" and military dependents living in Nanjing robbed twelve rice shops on Longjiang Rice Lane, taking away about four to five thousand shi of white rice, brown rice and flour, and also took away tens of thousands of taels worth of rice. Other properties were destroyed, dozens of houses were destroyed, and hundreds of people were injured. Fortunately, no one died.
After receiving the report, Yingtianfu Yamen immediately dispatched three teams of Yamen officials to Longjiang Mixiang to pick up the person, and reported it to the Cabinet Office at the same time.
After Zhu Cihong came to power in Nanjing, he began a series of reforms, one of which focused on the reform of the local government (Zhili prefecture) and county (affiliated prefecture) levels. The focus of local government reform is to "decentralize power", "clear responsibilities", "link interests" and "eliminate those at the bottom".
The so-called "delegation of power" means strengthening the administrative and financial power of government at the government (directly controlled state) and county (affiliated state) levels. The principle of financial sharing between local and central governments has been determined! That is to say, all the people's money collected by local governments does not have to be turned over to the Ministry of Household Affairs, but can be intercepted in proportion.
In principle, public land can be divided into 20%, commercial tax (excluding customs tax, salt tax), mining tax, tea tax, wine tax, etc., and up to 80% can be divided into the government (Zhili Prefecture), county (affiliated prefecture) ) two levels, the land tax has not been levied for the time being, so I won’t mention it.
And Yingtian Mansion is a big and fat mansion. The amount of business tax, tea tax, and wine tax is huge. Even if you pay 50% (these tax types can keep at least half), the amount left in your hands can still be considerable. Therefore, the number of Yingtian Mansion's third squadron of yamen servants is quite considerable, as many as three to four thousand, almost all of whom are natives of several generations of Nanjing. Many of them are related to the declining Nanjing honorary ministers and hereditary military attache families.
Needless to say, these people usually get angry when they see Northerners, but in order to keep their jobs, they don't dare to let out their anger casually, so they have to hold it in.
This time when they encounter the "rice thieves" from the north causing trouble, can they still be polite? They immediately went out in large numbers. When they arrived, they smashed their heads and faces with sticks, beating many "rice thieves" with bloody heads, and arrested hundreds of people.
Originally, the matter was over here, but Wei Zaode, the chief minister of the cabinet who had received the notification from below, was afraid that Yingtian Mansion would not be able to solve the problem. After discussing with Wu Xiang and Cao Youyi, they jointly issued an order to mobilize the Xiaoling Guards' new army to Longjiang Mixiang. Martial law.
The Xiaoling Guard New Army is now the "origin" of the noble disciples of the Luo Zongzi and Kenan Xunjun - they must first go to the Xiaoling Guard New Army to be trained as soldiers, and then go to the Martial Arts School or the Tax Official School.
This group of eldest sons and noble disciples of Kenan Xun may not all be Northerners, but there are basically no Jinling natives. They are not the same as the Jinling Honorable Ministers and military attachés who were in trouble, and they are more sympathetic to the Northerners refugees - they are basically the same. “Refugees” all come to Nanjing with nothing!
I don’t know if that bastard was the one who picked the fight, but after the Xiaoling Guards’ new army arrived at Longjiang Mixiang, they got into a fight with the Yamen servants of Yingtian Mansion.
The two sides fought each other with wooden sticks (the New Army did not bring killers, only sticks), and a man was actually killed!
Of course, it was the Yingtianfu yamen who were poorly organized and trained who suffered the loss. Six died and eighteen were seriously injured... But the "rice thieves" who were arrested by the Yingtianfu yamen took the opportunity to escape and were all lost. Trace!
This is not over yet, because the trouble in Longjiang Rice Lane cannot be ended. Today, the rice merchants in Yingtianfu City dare not open their doors to do business - what if they are smashed again? Everyone put up a sign saying "This store has no rice" and went out of business!
This is not the most troublesome thing, but the most troublesome thing for the big shots gathered in the Central Hall of the Cabinet Office today is that among the millions of northern refugees wandering in the southeast, at least half of them really have serious problems in life. Difficulties - The main difficulty is not having food to eat!
At least two to three million people have no food to eat!
This does not take into account the food problems of the urban poor and slaves in the southeast!
After all, farmers in the fields have a stutter, so they can either plant some sweet potatoes to save themselves from the emergency - at this time, sweet potatoes have been widely planted in the southeastern provinces; or they can simply resist rent and debt - anyway, the authority of the southeastern gentry has declined, and their ability to collect rents and debts has also declined. Weak.
However, the urban handicraftsmen and some declining gentry were domestic slaves, but they faced the same plight of having no food as the refugees from the north!
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, many cities in the southeast had entered the embryonic stage of capitalism, so there were a large number of wage laborers. Rising food prices will of course hit them hard.
In addition, the gentry and nobles of the Ming Dynasty liked to keep slaves, and most of them were domestic slaves. When the gentry was rich and powerful, domestic slaves had no human rights, but they had enough to eat. But now many nobles and gentry are unlucky, and the treatment of domestic slaves has also declined. Not only do they have no human rights, but even the right to survive is in question. Can we not make a fuss?
If you add these two types of people to the northern refugees who don’t have enough to eat, well, at least five to six million people will have no food to eat!
This is how to do ah!
If this all breaks out, it will be another uprising! What if Li Zicheng takes advantage of him (Li Zicheng is still pretending to be a human being)?
The atmosphere in the central hall was getting lower and lower, and the temperature was getting higher and higher. Finally, a fat man, King Fu, couldn't stand it anymore. He coughed and said to Wei Zaode, the chief assistant: "Xiang Wei, the prince always wants you to compare with Zhuge Liang, so you can't stand it anymore." Hurry up and think of a clever trick to solve the current predicament!"
Wei Zaode rolled his eyelids, why is it just Zhuge Liang? That's what the Qingshi will brag about in the future. Isn't it time for me to go to the Qingshi? How could he be as awesome as Zhuge Liang?
However, since he was the chief assistant, he could not remain silent, so he glanced at Wu Xiang and said, "Duke Protector, how much rice is left in the warehouse of the Military Field Department?"
Wu Xiang spread his hands and said, "It's less than one million stones... I still have to hold on for several more months!"
"Why only so little?"
Wu Xiang smiled bitterly and said: "The Communist Party has only collected 16 million stones. It is military rations and relief. We also need to send food to those people in the north. Isn't it all gone!"
"Hubu, where's the Hubu?" Wei Zaode asked, "How much more money can be squeezed out?"
"At most five million taels," said Chen Rui, the Minister of Household Affairs. "This is reserved for the prince to reward Huguang's military exploits and to march into Sichuan."
"Has it been shipped to Wuchang?"
Chen Rui said: "The Ministry of Accounts has written two lines, asking them to open a branch in Wuchang and prepare five million taels of cash for withdrawal."
Now there is no bank treasury in the household department, and all tax money is transferred to the two banks for storage to earn interest. Wherever money is needed, the two banks are also asked to open branches and prepare cash for backup.
In addition, the accounts of the Ministry of Household Affairs are much better than those of the Military and Field Division Grain Depot, because the salt taxes of Huaihei, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Fujian can now be collected normally (all taxes are included), and the tariffs of Shanghai, Ningbo, and Guangzhou are also collected If we can collect some, the tax package from Quanzhou Prefecture and Nanbeiyang can also be paid on time. A lot of taxes have also been collected from various tax cards in the southeast. There are also many cities that pay shared taxes (commercial taxes) to the Ministry of Household Affairs. Adding all the miscellaneous things together, we can always earn 178 million taels of income every year.
Compared with the years when Emperor Chongzhen was in power, the accounts of the Ministry of Revenue are much better!
However, Zhu Cixiang was now expanding his army, fighting wars, and building forts everywhere. By the way, he was also managing the lower reaches of the Huaihe River and the Yellow River. He also had a profligate emperor Chongzhen to support, so the expenses were also very huge.
The five million taels that Chen Rui has prepared for Zhu Cixiang are not squeezed out of this year's revenue and expenditure budget, but money obtained from the early looting of Southeast Xungui's family property.
