Adding up the personnel and mules and horses, the food, drink and chew cost in one year would be more than 8.6 million. If the combat time is slightly longer and the losses are higher, it is possible to exceed 10 million.
Chengshun's regular military budget for the second year only totaled fifteen million taels.
These ten million have been occupied by people, mules and horses.
The remaining five million taels of silver are used for purchasing equipment and ammunition.
Don't think that five million taels of silver is much.
Because when the cannon goes off, there is ten thousand taels of gold!
If you want to hit the enemy's position with artillery shells, the price is not cheap!
Every time a gun is fired, not to mention the iron lumps in the solid shells, the propellant alone is not cheap.
If it is a grenade fired from a mortar, there is still powder in the grenade.
And gunpowder in the Dachu Empire was very expensive!
There is no way, core raw materials such as saltpeter and sulfur must be purchased from outside, and in order to maintain outsourcing channels, high prices must be paid.
Therefore, the cost of ammunition in the Da Chu Empire has always been relatively expensive, even more expensive than that of the Ming Army, and it was much more expensive.
That is to say, the Dachu Empire now has a lot of money, otherwise it would probably not be able to use the large number of guns and artillery.
The military of the Dachu Empire is expected to purchase various equipment, ammunition and other military supplies totaling about five million taels of silver this year. The orders for these military supplies will eventually flow to various military supplies represented by Hantian Arsenal and Xiangyang Arsenal. In the factory.
At this point, the military is still too small, and the Ministry of Industry also feels that the military is a bit stingy... When the Daye Industrial Base is fully rolled out, that is, when most factories reach the designed production capacity by the end of this year, these 500 Ten thousand taels of silver may only be enough to maintain Daye Industrial Base operating at full speed.
As for the Xiangyang Industrial Base, I am afraid that it will take the initiative to reduce production...
To this end, Yuan Gaofeng of the Ministry of Industry has held many meetings with senior military officials to discuss increasing military orders.
But now the military doesn’t have any extra budget, so it can’t add more orders if it wants to. It can only paint a bigger picture for Yuan Gaofeng:
"After we capture Chu Nan, we will increase the order as appropriate!"
After taking down Chu Nan first, you can add orders when you have money. Now, we haven’t even started to add orders yet...
In other words, just when the monarchs and ministers of the Great Chu Empire felt that fifteen million taels of silver were not enough, the military felt that money was tight, and the Ministry of Industry also felt that there were not enough purchase orders.
However, Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty could not even afford hundreds of thousands of taels of silver...
Chen Biqian wrote to the court every two days asking for money. Naturally, the Ministry of Revenue had no money, and the internal treasury did not have much. Chongzhen scraped everything together and announced a reduction in palace expenses.
He even abandoned the dignity of the emperor and announced that he would wear one coat every two days.
In other words, wear a piece of clothing twice before throwing it away...
As soon as this statement came out, the government and the public were shocked. Many ministers quickly wrote letters, crying and saying that Your Majesty had been wronged. Some people also wrote letters praising Chongzhen. His Majesty was really a benevolent king, and his frugality in life was rare for thousands of years.
If you wear an item of clothing twice and then throw it away, does this become frugality?
Well, don’t be surprised, it really is!
We cannot use ordinary people's thinking to evaluate the daily life of an emperor.
Because there are not at least thousands of us ordinary people, but thousands more, who do nothing all year round and just sew embroidered clothes for us...
The emperor's warehouse was stocked with hundreds or even thousands of commonly used clothes. Not to mention the clothes that were thrown away every day, some emperors who liked cleanliness and were more particular would throw away several sets a day...
Not to mention ancient emperors, many of the couture dresses worn by modern wealthy and famous ladies in later generations were worn once and then thrown away.
If you want to wash it before wearing it, other designers will be dumbfounded...because they didn't consider washing this issue when designing...
The ancient emperors, especially the emperors in the traditional Chinese feudal dynasty, who concentrated power in one body, lived a life that was ten thousand times more luxurious than that of the rich men of later generations...
Going a step further, let's say that Chongzhen once again reduced the palace's expenses, especially those of individuals and concubines, and misappropriated a lot of money from other directions.
In the end, after scraping together here and there, he managed to come up with 500,000 taels of silver for Chen Biqian.
What’s interesting is that according to the tradition of the Ming Dynasty, 30% of this money had been dissipated before leaving the capital, and was used to replenish the officials.
From the top to the common officials in the six ministries, they can all make more or less profit from it...
The officials who dealt with it were not deliberately corrupt and expropriated, they were just drifting away in accordance with the routine. Even if Chongzhen himself came to hold him accountable, people would have the courage to say that this is the tradition of the country and the dynasty!
Isn’t this ridiculous? You’re letting so many officials in the economy take advantage of the northwest wind...could it be possible to achieve success with just that little salary? That little salary is not even enough to make a living.
As for being corrupt, not all officials have the opportunity to be corrupt. Many officials in Qingshui Yamen and low-level officials actually don't have the opportunity to be corrupt, but they still have to support their families.
Where did this money come from?
It can only be lost by various means.
After so many years, Mingting has formed a management here. It doesn't matter what the money is, let's float it first and then talk about it later.
This is still military expenditure, so it has been reduced by 30%. If it were replaced by other funds, it would be normal operation if it was reduced by 50%.
After 30% of the money was lost, Chongzhen had only 350,000 taels of silver left out of the 500,000 taels he squeezed out through frugality.
Most of this money was converted into supplies such as guns and food.
After conversion, this batch of gold and silver materials finally turned into one hundred thousand taels of cash, grain, grass, guns, armor, swords, etc. with a market value of approximately two hundred thousand taels of silver.
Where did 50,000 taels of silver go? Nonsense, a large group of people worked so hard, but they shouldn’t be paid for their hard work. There are so many supplies that don’t need to be shipped.
As for why the materials are transported directly from Henan, which does not cost so much freight, you are talking nonsense. We obviously transported the materials from the capital...
These supplies were transported all the way south to avoid further losses.
Well, it's normal for a car to overturn on the road, or to meet a robber or something like that!
So by the time it was delivered to Chen Biqian, this batch of supplies only had 50,000 taels of cash and food and supplies worth 150,000 taels of silver.
These grains are all old and moldy grains soaked with sand.
When Chen Biqian received the imperial edict that His Majesty had squeezed out 500,000 taels of silver for himself, when he looked at the pile of cash and materials with a total value of only 200,000 taels of silver in front of him, there was no big surprise or surprise. It's anger.
As a person in the officialdom, especially an official who had served in Gyeonggi Province before and had received numerous shares after being floated, Chen Biqian knew very well why 500,000 taels of silver turned into 200,000 taels.
But he couldn't say it, or even accuse him.
Because this is tradition and the unified will of countless officials from top to bottom of the country.
We all have to support our families, right... You, Chen Biqian, do bad things, who are you trying to disgust?
Not only was Chen Biqian not angry or accusing, he was even a little lucky. Most of the court officials and people who dealt with it along the way knew that the situation was tense and the importance of this batch of money and food, and at the same time, it gave him Chen Biqian face.
A total of only 60% was lost and deducted!
If this were exchanged for money and food sent to Liaodong and other places, it would be impossible for the frontline troops to get 60% of it. At most, they would give you some silver dregs to let you smell...
This batch of money and food can still leave 40% and 200,000 taels of silver for Chen Biqian, which is already a good result.
It's just that, seeing that this amount of money is not as much as the silver stored in the vault in his cellar... Chen Biqian has a headache, such a small amount of money is not enough.
At this time, he remembered a rumor he heard some time ago. It was said that the Chu thieves in the south spent tens of millions on military expenses a year, which made people envious and angry at the same time.
I’m envious, how much free money can I eat with tens of millions of dollars of military expenditure this year... Oh, no, how many troops can I support!
And the anger is that the Chu thieves only relied on Chubei and Wuchang Prefecture, but they looted tens of millions of dollars to support the army.
Such ruthless plundering shows the cruelty of the Puppet Chu's tyranny. No wonder many local gentry and common people in Huguang said that the Puppet Chu's tax collectors were as fierce as tigers and their tyranny was even more brutal than the Qin's.
Not to mention that Chen Biqian was envious and frightened. When other people heard that Chu Thief's annual expenses reached tens of millions, their reactions were also very exaggerated.
When Yang Sichang, who was in Changsha, heard that the Puppet Chu's annual military expenditure exceeded ten million taels, he sighed and said: "If I have tens of millions in hand, how difficult is it to organize two hundred thousand new standard troops? There are two hundred thousand new standard troops." With this in hand, how difficult is it to pacify the Chu thieves!"
"such a pity!"
After Shi Kefa, the governor of Anlu in the east, heard the news, he blocked a group of subordinates and yelled: "The fake Chu and Luo thieves are cruel and unscrupulous. They rob the people of the people for their own selfish desires. There are also the fake Chu tax collector Chen thieves, who have tens of millions of taels. He How many people have been drained of their flesh and blood!"
"In Wuchang in the north of Chu, I am afraid that the people are now in dire straits and starving all over the place!"
If Chen Xingkai, the Minister of Taxation of the Da Chu Empire, heard this, he would definitely roll his eyes at him: You can slander my character, but you must not slander my IQ.
How stupid do you think I have to be to let a group of gentry and wealthy people not collect taxes and go find a group of Kuhaha to collect taxes?
Just the three or five copper coins of ordinary people, I, Mr. Chen, don't look down upon... If I ask them to collect taxes, I won't even be able to collect the tax costs.
You really think that the tax patrols and armed tax patrols in my tax department are free of charge, right... It’s very expensive to keep these people, right?
There is a cost to collecting taxes!
I really found a group of hard-working people to collect taxes and squeezed them all dry. The money collected may not even be able to cover the operating costs of the tax department itself...
Therefore, the main target of the Taxation Department of the Da Chu Empire, that is, the tax collection target, has never been the ordinary people, but the gentry and wealthy households. Regardless of whether they are big landowners or the owners of big trading houses, they are all their key monitoring targets. .
In this process, it was inevitable that some wealthy gentry families would have their homes confiscated and exterminated because of armed resistance to taxes. Others were arrested and imprisoned or had their homes raided for tax evasion. Therefore, there were many casualties among the wealthy gentry families.
But no matter what, it won't reach the point where the ground is full of hungry people.
Even if all the big gentry families were captured and starved to death, the ground would not be filled with starvation... It is simply because there are not enough people in the big gentry families. Starving to death would be possible, but it would never be possible...
Compared with the ordinary people, the wealthy gentry were an absolute minority.
After all, generally speaking, if a rebellion wants to succeed, it must stand on the side of the majority of people and represent the interests of the majority of people!
Well, that's just theory.
In actual operation, Luo Zhixue does not represent the interests of any group, he only represents his own interests!
He rebelled just because he wanted to be emperor!
The reason why his rebellion reached this level was purely because the Baoxiang Army under his command was better than the Ming Army.
That's all!
