Chapter 1310 The Emperor's Concern
"The transfer envoy Liu Xiangdao pays homage to His Majesty!"
Hearing the voice, Li Yin put down the notebook in his hand and raised his head, "Liu Aiqing excuse me, please sit down."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
"Are you familiar with the affairs of the transfer department? How do you feel?"
Facing the emperor's question, Liu Xiangdao, who was newly appointed as the transfer envoy, was a little nervous. He was a new transfer envoy. Still very heavy. Especially in recent years, the imperial court continued to use troops. North Korea alone fought for a full ten years, and then the Xiqi rebellion continued for another three years.
Even the remnants of Silla, Baekje, and Goguryeo on the peninsula are still resisting, and the financial expenditure brought about by the war is too great. Transporting money and food across provinces to the peninsula, transported countless money and food in ten years, and built countless cities and fortresses there.
The war horses alone lost more than two hundred thousand horses.
The expenditures for meritorious service and pensions are also huge.
The previous Ji Xiang Yu Wenjie was demoted to Lingnan because of his quarrel with Changsun Wuji.
Afterwards, various parties competed for the position of Minister of Finance, but it was always vacant. Until now, Changsun Wuji's party was purged, and the emperor appointed Liu Xiangdao.
Liu Xiangdao's father used to be the servant of the household department at the beginning of Zhenguan, and Liu Xiangdao's father, Jue Leping County male, relied on Guangping Liu's family connections and his own efforts, and his official career was smooth. Since the new dynasty, Qin Lang has been appointed as a member of Zhongshushe, and his official career has been smoother since then.
Successively served as Zhongshusheren, Yushi Zhongcheng, Libushilang, Huangmenshilang, and has been awarded the post of Minister of Finance until now.
From being in charge of selecting officials to being in charge of finance and taxation, the work has changed a lot, and Liu Xiangdao has not adjusted to it for a while.
"I have recently read a report from the Department of Transshipment that Luzon's tax payment in recent years has been astonishing, and it has increased rapidly. The two taxes are regular, as well as the industrial and commercial tax, monopoly tax on salt and iron tea, and city ship tariffs. The source of tax payment has even far surpassed that of Yunnan, central Guizhou, and Guangxi. If Luzon and Wu'an are counted together, the taxation of Jiaozhou, which does not include Wu'an, is even lower than that of Luzon."
"The minister checked the files and found that Luzon's taxes have increased rapidly in recent years, mainly due to trade, minerals, salt and wine."
Li Yin stroked his beard, "King Qi is good at war and economics. When I was young, I learned economics and finance from him. Twenty years ago, Luzon was just a deserted island. The barbarians, but now, in just 20 years, Luzon now has more than 1.2 million Han people and more than 4 million Tibetans, with a population of nearly 6 million. This strength has far exceeded that before the war. Baekje or Silla."
"It's not much worse than Goguryeo."
"Even in terms of economy, it is far stronger than them. Luzon now has transit trade, sugarcane planting and sugar refining, cotton planting and cotton textiles, abaca planting and abaca textiles, logging and shipbuilding. , Whaling, wax industry.
There are also many emerging and powerful industries such as salt drying, wine making, perfume, glass, porcelain, and paper. "
"I heard that countless Hu merchants are going directly to the new San Francisco port in Luzon. The glass, silver mirror, perfume, ceramics, white sugar, wine, candles, etc. of the Qin family in Luzon have become extremely popular foreign trade commodities, and even seized the A lot of business in the southeast port."
Liu Daoxiang answered cautiously, "The Qin family has advanced technology and top-secret formulas in the three industries of sugar, glass and perfume, and they also have great technological advantages in the fields of blue and white porcelain, cotton spinning, papermaking, and shipbuilding. "
Li Yin said slowly, "You forgot about mining and smelting. In the past, the imperial court mined only a few hundred thousand catties of copper a year, but since the Qin family came up with the gall copper method, copper production has increased dramatically. One million catties, to two million, four million, five million, all the way to tens of millions of catties, and even 20 million catties of copper were produced in a year at the highest. Only the copper mine in Shaozhou, Guangdong, was 800,000 at the lowest Jin, sometimes tens of millions of catties."
Ninety-ninety percent of such a huge copper output was obtained through the gall copper method. The Qin family cooperated with the imperial court or with the royal family and relatives to increase the copper output of the Tang Dynasty by dozens or even hundreds of times.
The gall copper method is inseparable from iron. It takes a few catties of pig iron to smelt a catty of copper through the gall spring method. Therefore, compared to mining copper ore directly from the mountains, the gall copper method needs enough pig iron.
The imperial court’s copper output has been increasing over the years, and the most important thing is that the iron output is getting higher and higher, and there is no way to replace the iron output with other methods, so it can only find iron ore mining.
Among the large-scale iron ore mining across the country, the iron ore mining of the Qin family still occupies a large share.
The reason why Shaozhou can have such a large production of gall copper is mainly because there is the largest gall spring in the country, and then countless pig irons are gathered in Shaozhou gall spring by sea or by water such as Xijiang, Beijiang, and Ganjiang. Continuous replacement into gall copper.
Guangzhou Foshan is the largest iron smelting center in the country today.
The reason why Li Yin specifically mentioned this matter is because the Qin family is quite powerful in the mining industry, almost occupying the first place in the mining and smelting of coal, petroleum, iron ore, copper ore, gold and silver ore. location of the name.
Although the imperial court encouraged private mining and monopolized the gold, silver, copper and iron collected and processed by the Qin family and others to the official warehouse through the mining department or monopoly system, these also had to be paid.
The most important thing is that the Qin family's mining industry in the Central Plains is naturally strictly supervised by the court, but in Luzon, Wa Kingdom, Linyi and other places, it is not subject to this restriction.
In fact, due to the large increase in copper production, the amount of coins minted by the imperial court has also greatly increased. Nowadays, only the standard Kaiyuan Tongbao coins are minted every year, and at least five million coins are minted every year.
The imperial court has a total of twenty-three money casting supervisors, but half of the five million coins came from the Qin family's Lusong money casting supervisor.
The money minted by the Lu Song Jian Qian Jian is exquisite in quality and is also the most popular in the market. Even in Waguo, Linyi and other places, Kaiyuan Tongbao with the word Lu is far more popular than money from other money supervisors in the imperial court.
The Qin family also minted a large amount of the other eight kinds of coins.
Although for the imperial court, the amount of coins minted from hundreds of thousands of coins in the past year has increased tenfold to millions of coins, the Qin family still occupies half of the country's minted coins. Wan Guan.
The only thing that can make the imperial court more gratified is that no matter what property the Qin family makes money from, the Qin family never escaped when it was time to pay taxes.
The imperial court can share one-third of the tax in Luzon, but the imperial court collects more and more taxes from Luzon, and the imperial court actually feels more and more unhappy. This shows that the Qin family gets more, which is always twice as much as theirs .
Not to mention, they only got one-third of the tax, while the Qin family got even more profit from their own business in addition to two-thirds of the tax.
Liu Xiangdao couldn't guess the purpose of the emperor asking him to talk about these things today.
You don't want to attack Luzon, do you?
The imperial court has fought in North Korea for ten years, spending 30 million yuan on the military each year, turning a rich peninsula into a purgatory. In the past ten years, more than 100,000 soldiers have died in the Tang Dynasty and the servant army. This is also an important reason why the two tribes of Xi Qi had civil strife after the death of Dahe Kuge and Keduzhe, and then the new leader wanted to join forces to fight against the Tang Dynasty. .
The tribes of Mohe who belonged to them also died tens of thousands.
As for the surrendered troops from Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla, they were not even included in the official number of deaths in battle. They died more, two to three hundred thousand.
Of course, it was even worse for the rebels of the Three Kingdoms. Li Ji, Su Dingfang, and Xue Rengui, Liu Rengui, and even Li Simo, Li Sheer, Qin Guozhong and other Hu generals took turns to fight on the peninsula, plowing the plow again and again.
Li Yin doesn't play any kind of confinement and appeasement with the Three Kingdoms at all, he just fights and does it.
Even if they were forced to kneel down and beg for mercy, Li Yin's strategy was to change all the races on the island, and all the defeated rebels would be directly captured as slaves.
These slaves first helped build fortresses, strongholds, and roads under the Tang army, and might even help to reclaim some military settlements, and then they would be bought by merchants in the Central Plains, and some of them would be sent back to the Central Plains to become official slaves or slaves. Emperor's slave.
The money sold is used to supplement military use, or to reward the soldiers of the Eastern Expedition for their meritorious service, etc.
Under this kind of conquest strategy, as long as the Three Kingdoms have a little bit of backbone, they would rather fight to the end. After all, Li Yin will not give the slightest way to survive. Learning Chinese, paying taxes and serving in the military, etc., they have already recognized it.
Changsun Wuji and other prime ministers had been opposed to such a fight before, thinking that with a proper change of strategy, the entire peninsula would be stabilized immediately, the court could save countless military expenses a year, and it could also get a lot of taxes, money and food, etc.
But Li Yin refused, and he would do it to the end, saying that he would do it once and for all.
But the problem is that the three Hans resisted fiercely, and even slowly not only Goguryeo and the others, but also nomadic tribes such as Mohe, Xi, and Qi, could not stand such continuous wars, and began to rebel against the Tang Dynasty.
This also triggered the three-year Xiqi War. Li Ji won many battles, but he refused to admit defeat, because it was useless. The soil returned, and the immigrants opened up borders.
This is to push people to a dead end, and they can only resist to the end.
However, the emperor's mad dog-like fighting style is still supported by the military. Generals like Li Ji, Su Dingfang and Jin Jin are very good fighters. They have fought for more than ten years, and the more they fight, the more courageous they become. For the generals, only fighting can show their strength value.
Besides, the past ten years have not been in vain. From Liaodong to Haidong, the land expansion of thousands of miles is not a real achievement that can be recorded in the annals of history?
Although there were a lot of casualties, the imperial court’s rewards for military exploits have always been able to be honored, and they have always been relatively generous. In Liaodong and North Korea, the imperial courts have given out a lot of land as rewards for honors and titles. Soldiers are rewarded for fighting and meritorious service , and even have the opportunity to confer titles and officials for military merits.
Which soldier is unwilling?
It is precisely because of this that when the emperor was preparing to purge Changsun Wuji's party, the army expressed their support in such a unanimous manner.
After another two or three years of fighting, it is estimated that Xiqi will be completely conquered, and then this area will become the territory directly under the imperial court, which can be regarded as expanding the territory.
According to the current news, the Xiqi war will have to be fought for at least several years, but Mohe in the east is now resisting more and more fiercely. A round of big resistance.
If this is the case, then it is possible to fight for another ten years, and even military expenditures will not only not decrease, but may even increase.
Liu Xiangdao felt that he might have guessed something about the emperor's thoughts. It costs money to fight a war, and rewarding and comforting soldiers cost even more money. The Koreans and Goguryeo people were sold as slaves, and the money from selling the slaves alone was hundreds of millions, but the annual war expenditure was at least 30 million, in fact, it was not profitable in general.
It is true that you have earned thousands of miles of territory, but this is real estate.
"Liu Qing, I know that you have a good relationship with King Qi, so I hope that after you take over as the Transshipment Division, you can lead the Transshipment Division well. Luzon is only a corner of the South China Sea, but it can have such a prosperous economy. You are in charge of the big business. The taxation of the whole world in Tang Dynasty must be done well."
"Okay, you go back first."
After the emperor finished speaking, he waved to Liu Xiangdao.
Liu Xiangdao hurriedly bowed and exited the hall, still confused all the way, what does the emperor mean today? Do you want the Transshipment Department to attack Lu Song, or is it really just for him to learn from Lu Song and Qin Lang?
After thinking about it for a long time, he still had no idea. Liu Xiangdao planned to return to the Yamen of the Transport Department, and immediately summoned his subordinates to carefully check Luzon's economic accounts over the years.
went home first.
It happened that brother Liu Yingdao had just returned from the official office.
"Is the official department dismissed so early?"
"The county lord has made an appointment to take his mother-in-law to Mrs. Cui's mansion to drink tea and enjoy flowers today. I will send them off."
Liu Yingdao is currently a member of the Ministry of Officials, Wailang, and his wife Wenxi County Lord is the daughter of Prince Yin Jiancheng. media. After the Xuanwu Gate, Zheng Shisanniang was entrusted by the Crown Princess Zheng Guanyin, and fled with Princess Wenxi and a county king, and was finally taken in by Qin Lang.
Qin Lang pleaded with the holy ancestor to save Wenxi Princess Li Wanshun.
Because of this relationship, Liu Yingdao and Li Wanshun have always had a good relationship with the Qin family, and they have been walking closer for many years. Li Wanshun lived with Concubine Zheng in the palace for many years, and then married into the Liu family. After so many experiences, she was completely different from the open-minded behavior of those golden branches and jade leaves in Li Tang's royal family. She hides nothing, lives in poverty and enjoys low life, caresses her husband and teaches her children, usually studies at home, arranges flowers, burns incense and repairs the garden, and rarely participates in the circle of noble ladies outside.
However, every month, I will go to Qin's house with Princess Yin and my younger sister, County Master Guide.
Both brothers Liu Xiangdao are very talented, but Liu Yingdao prefers to study knowledge compared to his elder brother's conduct.
He reminded his brother, "Nowadays is a troubled time, you just let your servants **** your younger siblings to the Qin Mansion, and you don't want to go. Now you are an official in the Ministry of Officials, and I am a planner, so you have to pay attention to some influences."
Liu Yingdao looked at his elder brother suspiciously, "Is something going to happen, involving the Qin family?"
Liu Xiangdao can only say, "Now is the time to be more careful, being cautious."
"Brother, if the Qin family is really involved, no matter what, the Qin family has been of great help and care to our Liu family, our brothers, and my wife's family. Mr. Qin took care of him, big brother must not forget his roots, if he can contribute, he must help."
Liu Xiangdao nodded, "You don't need to say these things, I understand it myself."
(end of this chapter)