Luo Zhixue said: "For such a large expenditure, it is definitely not enough to rely solely on the taxes collected from Chunan, Chubei, Henan Prefecture and other sporadic places that our country currently controls."
In response, Xu Zhixian nodded slightly. Although he was a soldier, he also knew the basic situation on the financial side.
Although Huguang is an important grain-producing area, its private industry and commerce are very average.
In this way, the empire's tax revenue in the Huguang area was mainly agricultural tax.
In terms of commercial tax, it is not too much. In fact, it relies on the commercial tax contributed by various factories under the Ministry of Industry and the specialized salt tax.
Since the financial independence of each factory, factories and commercial banks under the Ministry of Industry must also pay taxes according to tax laws. Even if it seems that this kind of tax payment is left-hand in and right-hand out, the rules of tax payment cannot be broken, so you still have to go through it. Generated industrial taxes.
It's just that in order to support the national defense industry, the tax rate for the national defense industry is relatively low, and the total amount collected is not large.
Secondly, there is the salt tax paid by the official Da Chu Empire Salt Company. This salt tax revenue is real income, and the amount is quite large.
The above two parts constitute the current main source of commercial tax for the Chu Empire.
As for official industries, there are not many purely private commercial taxes. After all, Huguang is different from Jiangnan. There are not so many traditional handicrafts, and the economic structure still favors traditional agriculture.
Under such circumstances, the tax revenue collected by the entire Chu Empire in Huguang was only about ten million (the tax revenue attributed to the national treasury does not include the part of the tax revenue left to local finance).
This fiscal revenue of less than 10 million yuan is one-third of the current expenditure of the Chu Empire.
In other words, relying on taxation, even with the taxation contributed by the specialized salt business and official enterprises, it would not be able to support the Great Chu Empire.
So how did the Chu Empire support its huge expenditure?
Naturally, it relied on the assets of hostile forces and personnel that were constantly confiscated during the southern and northern wars.
The Taxation Department of the Dachu Empire, taxation is only one of their businesses, and another major business is confiscating homes...
All kinds of vassal kings, dignitaries, stubborn gentry and big gentry who resisted taxes were all targets of their property raids.
Most of the money in the treasury of the Dachu Empire was confiscated from people's homes.
But the income from house confiscation is a one-time income. Now that the Dachu Empire has money in its pocket, it does not mean that there will be money next year.
After all, even if tens of millions are stolen, they still cannot withstand the financial expenditure of more than 30 million yuan a year for the Chu Empire for several years!
It's good if this can last for a year or two. If it lasts longer, all the gentry under the rule will have to be killed and their homes will be ransacked...
But this is obviously unrealistic.
Judging from the current financial situation of the Dachu Empire, if the eastward campaign is postponed to next year, by the first half of next year, the Dachu Empire's finances may seem to be barely sustainable, but in fact they are at the end of their rope.
If you are not careful, you will be directly financially bankrupt.
If the eastward advance is delayed and the attack does not go smoothly, the war drags on for several months and the country's finances will go bankrupt in a matter of minutes.
Under such circumstances, Luo Zhixue would naturally not wait until next year to launch the eastward fortification project, which would put the finances of the Dachu Empire in a very dangerous situation.
Luo Zhixue would never do this unless it was absolutely necessary.
For today's Great Chu Empire, if it wants to maintain its own financial operations, Jiangnan must be captured, and it must directly launch a war while there is still some money in its pocket.
Only in this way can we capture Jiangnan as soon as possible and rely on the wealthy Jiangnan to maintain our own financial operations and avoid bankrupting the empire's finances.
Conquering Jiangnan and grabbing money is not a joke, but a real slogan.
As long as Jiangnan is captured, even if we don't make money by confiscating the big gentry houses, but just collect taxes honestly, given the situation in northern Jiangxi, southern Jiangxi, and northern Zhejiang, we can get at least 30 million a year.
Then through the official salt service, it is estimated that several million more can be made.
At the same time, the Jiangnan area will become the product sales place for many factories affiliated to the Industrial Department of the Dachu Empire.
In addition to arsenals, there are also a number of factories under the Ministry of Industry whose products can be sold to the public, or simply to the public.
For example, Hantian Iron Works and Hantian Machinery Factory have quite a few products for the private sector.
In addition to part of the iron materials produced by the Hantian Iron Works being supplied to the military, most of them are actually supplied to the private sector. Otherwise, relying solely on military needs would not be able to absorb the huge production capacity of the Hantian Iron Works.
After Jiangnan and other places are captured, the iron materials from Hantian Iron Works can be directly imported into Jiangnan, or turned into other iron products and imported into Jiangnan.
These iron products are all kinds of iron products from the agricultural machinery factory affiliated to Hantian Machinery Factory, including iron pots, hoes, rakes, sickles, kitchen knives, wood choppers, saws, sewing needles and other iron products used in folk production.
Hantian Machinery Factory has a large number of hydraulic machinery and can produce high-demand parts for various military supplies, not to mention these civilian products. The various types of civilian iron products produced are not only of good quality, but also cheap.
In the past six months, various iron products produced by Hantian Machinery Factory have not only sold well in mainland Huguang, but also businessmen from other places, especially Jiangxi and South Zhili areas, have secretly come to purchase a batch and transport them back for sale.
Once Jiangnan is captured, the crude iron materials from Hantian Iron Works and various iron products from Hantian Machinery Factory will be able to flow to the Jiangnan area, thereby reaping huge orders and profits.
This will inevitably bring huge taxes and profits to the Chu Empire.
Jiangnan's local tax revenue and Jiangnan's huge market can bring huge revenue to the Chu Empire's finances.
In other words, even if there is no such thing as plagiarism, as long as the Pan-Jiangnan region is captured, the financial dilemma of the Dachu Empire can be completely solved.
Therefore, even if it is for money, Luo Zhixue will launch the eastward campaign in the second half of the year.
Even if the king of heaven comes, it will be impossible to stop the Chu army's eastward advance!
If you fight in, you will have a bright future, the foundation of the empire will be completely solid, and there is hope for the unification of China in the future.
If you can't kill them, you will be completely overwhelmed by the pressure of your own huge military expenditure. Before the Ming army comes to attack, the Chu army itself will collapse!
Although the Chu army can also adopt cost-cutting measures to reduce its budget and balance its financial revenue and expenditure, this will undoubtedly interrupt the strong upward momentum of the Chu Empire.
In the early days when they were still in the period of protecting the countryside in Funiu Mountain, the Chu army had basically set a tone: that is, the mode of sitting and walking bandits.
Rather than the bandit model.
And since it is a bandit model, it cannot be called a bandit. You have to treat yourself as a serious ruling regime.
As a ruling regime, you must have an army that is good at conquering and fighting, and you must be able to govern the region so that the people have enough to eat.
In this way, you can suppress internal strife internally and continue to expand externally.
But in this way, it is equivalent to putting oneself on the bright side, and even attracting the attention of the Ming Dynasty to the greatest extent, which in turn triggers the Ming Dynasty's continuous and increasingly powerful encirclement and suppression.
This will continue to force the Chu Empire to expand its army, improve the treatment of soldiers in all aspects, and improve the level of equipment, especially the level of guns and armor.
And these are all gold-swallowing beasts!
To keep people fed, we need to restore people's livelihood, and restoring people's livelihood is not just a matter of words. It requires real money and money to be used for relief and repairing various water conservancy infrastructure.
If there were not two to three million taels of silver thrown in, people's livelihood in the Huguang area, which had experienced persecution by officers and soldiers and bandits in the early years, and was later affected by the war between the Chu army and the puppet Ming army, would have completely collapsed.
After the war, money was spent to restore people's livelihood. This is why the Chu Empire controlled Northern Chu, and so far there has been no large-scale famine in Northern Chu.
Without famine, there would naturally be no refugees, and there would be no living soil for the bandit model led by Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and others.
In this way, Chubei can regain stability and then become a boost for the Chu Empire in its foreign campaigns.
Otherwise, it will become like Shaanxi and Henan, which will not bring any help to the Ming Dynasty, but will be a heavy burden.
Money is needed to eat, let alone to expand the army and fight a war.
No matter which one saves money on people's livelihood and the army, it will lead to huge problems within the Chu Empire, failure in foreign wars, and even the loss of the possibility of continued development.
And this is not allowed by Luo Zhixue.
Since we can't cut costs, we can only increase revenue.
The internal tax potential is basically the same now. It cannot be increased on a large scale in a short period of time, so we can only turn our attention to the outside, to Jiangnan.
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On the third day of July in the second year of the Chu Empire's Chengshun period, Army Lieutenant General Xu Zhixian, the Chief of Staff of the Empire, led hundreds of thousands of generals and staff officers from various ministries, escorted by the navy fleet, and arrived at Fuchi Town on the Eastern Front by ship. .
This is also the headquarters of the First Army. Lieutenant General Li Chengtong, commander of the First Army, personally went to the pier to greet Xu Zhixian and his party.
However, Xu Zhixian and others did not stop in Fuchi Town. After hurriedly inspecting some of the local combat readiness conditions that day, they went to Ruichang City at the forefront the next day under the escort of the 1st Cavalry Brigade.
Ruichang City is the seat of Ruichang County under the rule of Jiujiang Prefecture. This county town is not very big, and the city walls are not very thick.
This county is just a very ordinary small county in the Huaxia region.
It is precisely because this is just an ordinary county town that when the Chu army marched eastward last year, they were able to capture the city with an eastbound detachment of thousands of people.
Later, they waited for the main force of the Chu army to advance eastward one after another, hoping to further capture the city of Jiujiang, that is, when it was Dehua, the Ming army had already garrisoned heavy troops in Jiujiang City, and even Hongyi artillery was deployed on the city.
The subsequent strategic target of the Chu army was the southern Chu line, so the fighting on the eastern front was suspended. The armies of both sides gradually formed a confrontation, and this confrontation became more and more serious as both sides continued to increase their troops.
Around the lines of Ruichang and Fuchi towns where the Chu army was stationed, the Chu army deployed about 20,000 troops.
Around the four cities of Dehua, De'an, Hukou in Jiujiang Prefecture, and Xingzi in Nankang Prefecture, the Ming army deployed more than 50,000 troops, and there was also a navy from Jiangnan and coastal areas to assist.
Among the 50,000 Ming troops, several thousand were the 'Anlu New Standard Army' created by Shi Kefa, and there was also a professional cavalry force of several hundred people.
The core city of the entire defense line, Jiujiang/Dehua City, has deployed more than 30,000 troops, 20 Hongyi artillery pieces, and the Anlu New Standard Army is also here!
The city's overall defensive strength far exceeds Linxiang or Changsha during the Chunan Campaign!
