"Oh my God, our family didn't expect these profiteers to be so rich. This money is more than the emperor's inner treasury!"
Because of his careful work, Li Yongzhen, the eunuch of the Supervisor of Ceremonies, was asked by Zhu Youxiao to be the general manager of the liquidation of confiscated property of Shanxi merchants, and to command the accounting offices of the inner study hall.
And because of this, Li Yongzhen couldn't help but sigh when he looked at the silver in the cellar.
Li Yongzhen said and immediately ordered: "Search immediately!"
"yes!"
The eunuch who followed Li Yongzhen immediately began to seize the gold and silver jewelry.
For a moment, Li Yongzhen also saw a pile of unprocessed jewelry. After taking a closer look, he found that many of the jewelry had blood stains embedded in them.
Then, Li Yongzhen picked up a gem ring that had a piece of phalange left on it because it could not be pulled out, wiped the dust off, and was speechless: "I didn't know that the ring belonged to a Han family member, but someone cut off his hand and took it away. , actually ended up here, what evil crimes did these Shanxi merchants commit after all."
Li Yongzhen left the cellar and brought some bloody jewelry and the gemstone ring with a piece of finger bone to Xu Xianchun: "Xu Zhenfu, look at the evil done by these people, 80% of it is from The gold and silver jewelry looted from the people fell into the hands of these profiteers before they had time to deal with it."
Xu Xianchun took a look at this, and then glanced at the trembling Fan Ming: "Where do these jewelry come from?"
Fan Ming replied tremblingly: "The Mongols and Jurchens robbed the Han people after they broke the city. Then they wanted to exchange them with us for salt, tea and other things, so they fell into our hands."
Xu Xianchun stepped down and stepped on Fan Ming's bloody hand. He gritted his teeth and said, "Damn, even if you make all this money, do you profiteers still have a heart!"
"Ah! It hurts! It hurts! Master Xie, please spare my life!"
Fan Ming cried and begged.
Xu Xianchun let go of his feet, and after ordering his subordinates to look at Fan Ming and others, he continued to lead his men to confiscate other Shanxi merchants.
Fan Ming continued to sob and cry.
Fan Yongdou watched helplessly as boxes of gold and silver jewelry from his Fan family were carried out, and he shouted angrily in his heart: "What a shame that the inheritance of several generations of my Fan family has fallen into the hands of the imperial court!"
Next.
Other Shanxi merchants involved in smuggling and collaborating with the enemy were also confiscated.
The amount of property that was confiscated is difficult to count at the moment.
Xu Xianchun, Qin Liangyu and others had to stay here for more than a month.
at the same time.
The hometowns and properties of these Shanxi merchants suspected of smuggling and collaborating with the enemy were also confiscated by factory guards who had been prepared. They were also being counted and escorted back to Beijing.
"Your Majesty, according to the reports of Xu Xianchun and Li Yongzhen, as well as the reports of factory guards dispatched from other places at the same time, it is preliminary estimated that the confiscated property of these Shanxi merchants is no less than 50 million taels. I really didn't expect that these Shanxi merchants would There will be so much wealth, but now it seems that the internal funds are more abundant than before. In addition, the money still needs to be stolen from greedy ministers such as Zhang Heming and Wang Zuo. The emperor will no longer have to worry about money in the future. ”
Wei Zhongxian smiled and reported to Zhu Youxiao.
Zhu Youxiao was not surprised after hearing this.
In Zhu Youxiao's view, the Ming Dynasty's business tax was so low and there were many people exempted from tax. In addition, Shanxi merchants colluded with the ministers of the DPRK and China to smuggle military supplies from the Nine Borders for so many years. Therefore, Shanxi merchants were copied out of tens of millions of taels of silver. A piece of cake.
Moreover, as far as Zhu Youxiao knows, this is still relatively small. If it develops as it did in history, Shanxi merchants will become more and more daring to make money as the power of establishing slaves grows. By then, the money accumulated by Shanxi merchants will be more than There will be more to this.
"This is my money! Let them not take me seriously!"
Regarding Wei Zhongxian's words, Zhu Youxiao only said one sentence and added:
"However, these tens of millions of taels of silver are just a one-time income. The Ming Dynasty has a lot of expenditures now. A lot of this money should be paid to the border troops. Therefore, it will be spent sooner or later. The most important thing is to have With continuous income, we cannot follow the old financial methods of these landlords and hide the money in the cellar. We must let them circulate to stabilize prices and increase income!
You ask Jin Yiwei to inquire about the price of food, iron ore, livestock, etc. in North Korea, Siam and other foreign countries, and buy some that are cheaper than domestic ones. The money is just money, and it cannot be turned into food for disaster relief to defend against enemies. Weapons will become worthless if there are too many, so you have to spend them and turn them into more useful things. I intend to set up a royal foreign trade bureau as one of the inner court yamen. You and Liu Ruoyu each recommend a eunuch. Take charge of this bureau and apply to me to use part of the internal funds to purchase various important products, especially grain, ore, and timber. "
As far as Zhu Youxiao knows, prices have been rising in the Ming Dynasty because of the increase in silver.
In other words, the economy of the Ming Empire has been experiencing inflation.
This situation actually required the court to use the increased silver to import the commodities that the Ming Dynasty needed more, so as to realize the real benefits brought by the increased silver.
For example, as the Ming Dynasty's population increased, the number of fields did not increase significantly, so the contradiction in food demand became increasingly large, and silver needed to be exchanged for more food.
In the past, it was because a large amount of silver was in the hands of gentry landowners, and these gentry landowners liked to hide the silver underground or use it to buy fields, thus exacerbating involution.
Therefore, Zhu Youxiao did not have much silver capital to improve the economic environment of the Ming Dynasty and bring more needed food to the domestic people.
But now that Zhu Youxiao has this first amount of silver capital, he naturally wants to do this, and it can also bring him some foreign trade income.
"My slave obeys the order!"
Wei Zhongxian and Liu Ruoyu replied.
"In addition, the follow-up matters after the confiscation of Shanxi merchants must be arranged. Although these profiteers smuggled and betrayed the country, they did reduce the frequency of Mongolian harassment to border towns by trading with the Mongols. Now our Ming Dynasty's biggest enemy is the East Therefore, the trade with the Mongols cannot be cut off, and the Mongolian tribes must be controlled through trade with the Mongols to prevent the Mongolian tribes from turning to the side of the Eastern captives and kidnapping our Ming Dynasty together with the Eastern captives!
But this trade cannot be done by private merchants. Private merchants only care about making money and have no regard for the interests of the imperial court. It is planned to set up a shipping department in each town in Jiubian, which will be managed by Jin Yiwei or eunuchs and specialize in trade with the Mongols. Things;
Instructions are given to send all the inspected account books of Shanxi merchants to the palace, and then be sure to know the volume of trade with Mongolia and the volume of trade with Jurchens through Shanxi merchants' trade with Mongolia and Jurchens over the years;
And through this trade volume, the trade volume of the Mongolian tribes was controlled to a level that allowed the Mongols to survive through trade but were unable to obtain a large amount of surplus grain and other important military supplies through trade and then sell them to the Jurchens;
This can be regarded as controlling the Meng Zhu tribe to become bigger!
This is also a means and my real purpose. If the courtiers think that I copy Shanxi merchants just to get money, then they think of me too simply. "
Zhu Youxiao said: "Go and do it quickly!"
"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, your servants will do it now."
Wei Zhongxian and Liu Ruoyu suddenly understood and knew that this would bring a lot of benefits to their inner court. After all, whether it was foreign trade or trade with the Mongols, once these were controlled by the inner court, they would increase the power of the inner court.
