To be honest, although the Jianzhou Jurchens are a fishing and hunting people, they are still afraid of the sea. Therefore, if you go to serve as a supervisor in the Shang Kexi Army, you will definitely go to sea in the future. Although it is said that it can bring blessings and power, the power of heaven is unpredictable. Even if it is Jianzhou Jurchen, it would be a lie to say that it is not afraid.
Therefore, this job of supervising the army was not a good job. Then, there was shame on Turg, and it finally fell on him.
After he got the order, Huang Taiji summoned him again, dismissed the others, and told him some things in private before letting him escort the grain and supplies to Jinzhou with the army.
They didn't know that Emperor Chongzhen, who was far away in the capital of the Ming Dynasty, knew clearly what they thought was unknown to heaven and earth.
Emperor Chongzhen combined the information from the Class-A eavesdropping seeds on Turg and the information from the Class-A eavesdropping seeds on Zheng Zhilong and Lu Xiangsheng, and it was not difficult to deduce the current situation in Liaodong and what it was like.
In fact, what he learned about the situation was much clearer than that of Lu Xiangsheng or Huang Taiji.
For this reason, he quickly issued an order to Hong Chengchou, the newly appointed governor of Jiliao, asking him to order Zu Dashou's troops on the Tashan side to make feints and make some noise to add to the obstruction on the Manchu side.
Aren’t you going to play Golden State? No problem, Jinzhou is here to join in the fun.
Relatively speaking, if Emperor Chongzhen was in the capital, he would make a decision after learning the news, and the speed of feedback to Ningjin would be much faster than the speed of conveying the order to Lushun.
Then, he sent someone to convey an order to Chen Hongxu, the governor of Denglai, asking him to send the subsequent supplies to Lushun as soon as possible. After all, if Lushun wants to stand firm, it won't work without enough supplies.
In addition, the warships hidden by Denglai Navy can also be dispatched. By the time we reach Liaodong, it will be almost time for the naval decisive battle. When the time comes, we can give the Manchu and Korean naval forces a surprise.
After completing these matters, Emperor Chongzhen temporarily put aside the war in Liaodong and began to formally implement the salt policy reform strategy.
The salt policy of Ming Dynasty can actually be said to be a great failure.
Salt monopoly is basically a fixed model. Since the 14th year of Jiajing, the prices set have basically not changed. Officials of the Yandao Yamen never knew how much of their fiscal and tax revenue came from the salt class and how much came from Yu Yanyin.
The management of salt administration is said to be the Supervisory Officer of the Ministry of Household Affairs. There are also six Dushu Salt Envoys and eight Salt Class Promotion Departments. Each Dushu Salt Envoy controls a major salt-producing area. The salt class controls a slightly smaller area. But in fact, each Salt Road Yamen is actually under the jurisdiction of the local government. Some are under the jurisdiction of the local prefect, some are under the jurisdiction of the Chief Envoy, and some are even under the jurisdiction of military generals, such as the Salt Course Department in Lingzhou, Shanxi. Among them, there are also salt inspectors.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, rations were distributed to kitchen households so that they could concentrate on producing salt. But later, when food could no longer be distributed, kitchen households were allowed to sell excess salt to merchants with salt leads in exchange for rations.
Censor, corruption has begun here, and there are also people in the world. Those who have the means control other kitchen households and become powerful kitchen households. If these people wanted to make money, in addition to exploiting other kitchen households, they would inevitably embezzle the salt and silver that originally belonged to the imperial court.
In addition, kitchen households, patrolling salt collectors, and officials colluded to sell salt privately, that is, private salt. This situation became very common, especially after the late Ming Dynasty. Some powerful people, such as big salt merchants like Le Qingsheng, simply set up their own private salt teams, produce their own salt, and sell it as official salt without much cost; then, they will collude with the government to crack down on other people's salt production. , to ensure his monopoly.
Not only that, the price of salt, in the early days of the Ming Dynasty, was about 3.345 taels of silver per ton. However, in the late Ming Dynasty, the price of salt reached fifty-six taels per ton, an increase of nearly twenty times. The reason for this is that the price of official salt is determined by the government, not the market. Such high salt prices have burdened the common people. During those periods when food prices were low, they accounted for a very large proportion of household expenses.
It can be seen that the salt in the Ming Dynasty was extremely high and the people could not bear the burden; however, the court did not get most of the benefits. Most of the benefits were embezzled by the salt merchants and the officials he colluded with.
Now, Emperor Chongzhen took advantage of the case of Le Qingtian, a major salt merchant in the south of the Yangtze River, and began to rectify the salt policy.
As for some people who knew the details of the Leqingtian Tonglu case, they felt that the emperor deliberately induced such a thing to happen, which was the so-called fishing law enforcement in later generations. Emperor Chongzhen felt that this was a misunderstanding, and it was not at all.
Because in Huang Taiji's plan, he sent Wu Zhong to Jiangnan to find someone to do business with him. Even if Emperor Chongzhen doesn't send Li Ruolian there, in the end, the only people in Jiangnan who can hook up with Wu Zhong are either these big salt merchants or those smugglers. Only they have the strength, ability and ambition to do business with Wu Zhong and the Manchu Qing Dynasty behind Wu Zhong.
What was a bit unfortunate about this matter was that the consort who was entrusted with the important task by Huang Taiji was actually a secret agent of the Ming Dynasty Jin Yiwei. Therefore, this matter was under the control of the imperial court. There is a difference between this and a person who was originally a law-abiding person but was tempted to commit a crime and was arrested.
Of course, in this era, Emperor Chongzhen would not be merciful to those big salt merchants. You can tell by watching them show off their wealth that these people need to be dealt with! I didn’t see that disaster relief was needed everywhere in the Ming Dynasty, and how short of money it was!
Under the will of Emperor Chongzhen, Qiankun finally vetoed all the reforms proposed by those ministers because he was really dissatisfied, and finally came up with his own innovative strategy: unified management of the national salt administration, and new reforms under the Ministry of Household Affairs. Set up a salt department yamen, with the rank of chief official being the Minister of Household Affairs, divided into thirteen levels, each corresponding to a province. At the local level, there is also a Salt Road Yamen, whose name remains unchanged. It is still the Salt Class Promotion Department and has jurisdiction over the salt field.
The salt farm implements a contracting system and uses an auction system, with the highest bidder winning. Of course, there is a reserve price, which is estimated based on the salt tax collected in this area in previous years. In addition, sales are no longer strictly divided into regions. As long as you are not afraid of expensive shipping costs, you can sell wherever you like! However, there is a condition. The price of salt has an official guide price. No matter what, the salt sold to the people cannot exceed this guide price.
The government's Salt Administration Office is mainly responsible for supervision and is no longer specifically involved in the sale of salt. The market determines the market price on its own. If salt merchants want to make more money, they must find ways to produce more salt, find ways to reduce the cost of salt, improve the quality of salt, and reduce the cost of selling salt. Only in this way can we be competitive.
At the same time, the salt merchants themselves also had needs to crack down on private salt and squeeze out private salt. This point was consistent with the interests of the court.
As long as the salt merchants innovate the mass production technology of salt, innovate the refining level of salt, and lower the selling price of salt to occupy the market for the sake of profit, then sooner or later the court will no longer need to waste time and effort to crack down on private salt dealers, because it will Being eliminated by the market, they cannot compete with these regular salt merchants. But the people will get greater benefits than before. The price of salt has become cheaper and the quality of salt has improved again.
This salt management model can be said to be unheard of by people of this era, and it immediately became a hot topic.
"You have heard that the emperor has decreed to reform the salt policy and leave it all to the businessmen!"
"What, didn't the businessman make a lot of money? Didn't everyone rob him?"
"Absolutely. Everyone must buy salt. As long as there is salt, it is money!"
"Yes, there will no longer be the problem of not being able to exchange salt for salt. As long as you get the salt farm and pay the tax, no matter how much salt you produce, the court will not care about it!"
"Is that true? If this happens, those salt merchants will really make a lot of money!"
"..."
In the Ming Dynasty, one of the biggest drawbacks of the salt policy was that ordinary merchants could not exchange for salt if they had no connections. If you can replace it with salt in time, you will definitely make money. The common people are well aware of this.
Therefore, when they learned that the salt was produced by themselves and that there was no longer a source of salt and they could not exchange it for salt, those businessmen with more strength immediately caused a stir. In fact, not only businessmen, but also wealthy civil servants, military officers, and royal family members were looking for their agents and rushing to win over the salt fields to buy salt. Because anyone can see that this is definitely not a loss.
Therefore, the Salt Division of the Ministry of Household Affairs took the lead in investigating the national annual salt tax data. After the review and approval by Emperor Chongzhen, the auction began on the basis of previous salt taxes.
For this auction, you must register at the Yansi Yamen in advance and pay a deposit. There are various ways to register, and you don’t have to go in person. You can also register from salt offices across the country. The final auction will be held in the capital.
Therefore, the auction took a long time, because it had to wait for salt merchants from all over the country who were interested in auctioning to gather in the capital.
Then there was an auction with clearly marked prices, and people from the Metropolitan Procuratorate, Dongchang and Jinyiwei supervised the scene to prevent possible fraud.
The first salt auction is the biggest event. Many businessmen with average strength are thinking about whether they can take advantage of the situation and participate in it, and the result can be imagined.
Although Emperor Chongzhen was not present, he secretly sent people to bid. But after the price reached his expectations, he stopped bidding and let the merchants continue to raise the price.
As for the salt fields in Shandong, in previous years, Shandong would transfer the salt department to the Ministry of Household Affairs, which would earn about 50,000 taels of silver a year. However, through the auction, under fierce bidding competition, The final transaction price was 800,000 to 3,500 taels of silver, more than ten times more than that.
Each coastal province has an auction salt field for auction, including Jingshi, Shandong, Nanjing, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, and Guangxi. Among them, the auction price of the Guangxi salt field is much lower than that of Shandong, but the Nanjing salt field The auction price is much higher than that in Shandong;
There are also inland provinces, some of which do not have salt fields and need to rely on surrounding salt fields to produce salt. For example, Shaanxi needs to rely on Shanxi, Sichuan and other neighboring provinces to transport salt there. As a result, the salt auctions in these provinces became more intense, and the final auction price also reached an astonishing price.
For example, the original annual salt tax revenue from the Sichuan Salt Class was only 71,464 taels in the eighth year of Wanli. However, after the auction, it received 802,570 taels. The amount of silver was ten thousand taels. This was because the salt merchants considered that the cost of producing salt in the mainland was not as low as that on the coast, and the sales could not exceed the retail guide price set by the government, so they did not continue bidding. Otherwise, without the upper limit of the retail guide price stipulated by the imperial court, the auction price would definitely be higher depending on the population of the mainland and the sales area.
The auctions were held in turmoil one after another. Although not all the salt works had been auctioned yet, all officials knew how shocking this year's salt tax would be.
Taking the seventh year of Wanli as an example, the country's annual salt tax revenue was only 1,292,224 taels of silver, of which more than 300,000 taels were not transferred to the Ministry of Household Affairs, but It is used for local defense. Of course, the annual salt tax revenue is different, but the maximum is not higher than two million taels;
However, before the auction was completed, the imperial court had already received more than five million taels of silver. Regarding this income, both the Ministry of Revenue and other officials could not help but admire Emperor Chongzhen's innovative strategy. This was simply a good fortune. Boy, turn something like table salt into a real cornucopia!
Of course, Emperor Chongzhen's salt policy reform system would eventually fall to the richest and most powerful businessmen in the Ming Dynasty. But so what, as long as they can use the money to pay off the tax, the price of salt that ordinary people can buy at retail in the future will be lower than before, that's enough! At least for now, that’s it!
This reform of the salt administration system also brought about another development.
Rich people from all over the Ming Dynasty had to move out the money buried in the cellar for this auction, deposit it in the branches of the Royal Bank of the Ming Dynasty in various provinces, get a deposit certificate, and then go to the capital to exchange it for silver notes for auction. . Otherwise, just transporting silver to the capital would probably discourage these merchants, and they would not be able to achieve such a high price at auction.
As for the silver deposited in the Daming Royal Bank branch, of course not only the winning bidder would do so, but all merchants who wanted to auction it had to do so. As a result, a large part of the silver that was not involved in circulation in the Ming Dynasty began to flow into the market and participate in circulation with this salt policy reform.
Of course, some of the money will still be withdrawn after the bidding is completed, regardless of whether it is successful or not, and will continue to be hidden in the cellar. However, at least a large part of them will stay if they feel that the bank notes are good.
This time, it also strengthened the Royal Bank of the Ming Dynasty in disguise, making banknotes further the real banknotes of the Ming Dynasty, and made a lot of contributions.
