On the second day after taking office, Feng Chang Lujia fired the first shot of the "Dingli" he had painstakingly planned, to use the strengths of Confucianism to justify Heifu's seemingly nondescript regency system.

As the economic sector that is most valued by Heifu, Shi Xiao He is also busy.

The victory in the south was expected by Xiao He, but he never imagined that he, who had never had military merits, would be designated by Heifu as "the first civil minister of the Northern Expedition", not only promoted to the chief of the chariot, but also ranked as one of the nine secretaries of the internal history of the Su.

Many years ago, Xiao He was rated as the first in political performance by the Imperial History of Surabaya County, and wanted to be recommended to enter the court as an official, but Xiao He refused.

But this time, Xiao He hurried as soon as he received the appointment, and after arriving in Xianyang, he reported to Heifu that he was "sincerely afraid".

Heifu comforted him and said:

"Yu and Wang Ben are more than a year away from Jianghan and Nanyang, the north is strong and the south is weak, but Xiao He Zhen Fujiangling, often sent the father and the old to fill the vacancy, the front line is more than 100,000 people, the heavy grain depends on Jianghan, and you turn to Caojingzhou, there is no shortage of food, this is a great achievement."

Lu Jia lobbied Bashu for Heifu, which can be described as a strategic turning point in the Civil War.

And Chen Ping and Xu Shu occupied two corners for Heifu, laying the groundwork for the attack on the bandits of the Six Kingdoms.

But none of their credits can catch up with Xiao He. Heifu knew very well that if Xiao He had not coordinated properly, so that Nanjun could still have a bumper harvest during the war, and continuously mobilized Nanren to join the war, even if he could withstand Wang Ben's several waves of offensives, it would never be possible to enter Xianyang so quickly.

Now that the center of gravity of the regime has shifted to Guanzhong, it is natural to transfer Xiao He to continue to give full play to his strengths.

Xiao He's internal history of governing Su is in charge of the state land rent and the income and expenditure of various money and materials, also known as the "calculation phase", under which there are five orders such as Taicang and Jitian, which are responsible for the national county and county calculations and "living within the means", that is, the state budget.

As soon as Xiao Hefu took office, he was taken aback, but it was not his subordinates who were arrogant to him, but the red-hot deficit and the precarious state finances......

A bad debt was presented by Zhu Cheng, and the more Xiao He looked at it, the tighter his thick eyebrows became.

What Hu Hai and Zhao Gao left to Heifu was a mess of withering, depressed cities, and shrinking economies.

In the past year and a half of civil war, the two sides launched a population of hundreds of thousands, and countless people were smeared with liver and brains, which squeezed out the economy of Nanjun and made Guanzhong miserable.

In order to "sweep away the rebellion", Hu Hai repeatedly increased his salary, and even failed to fulfill his promise of rent reduction, which caused a lot of complaints. A large number of laborers went to Nanyang and Sanchuan, delaying spring ploughing, and with the rebellion of Kanto and Bashu, the grain could no longer be concentrated in Aocang as before, and Guanzhong bore all the consumption.

No matter how rich the fields by the Zhengguo Canal were, they couldn't stand eating like this, and after a year, there was not much grain left when Qin Shi Huang was still abundant.

Coupled with the destruction of the West River by the bandits of the Six Kingdoms, and the emergence of more than 100,000 refugees out of thin air, Xiao He looked at the rewards and food that the army was urging for, and then looked at the dwindling warehouses, which were really the first two big.

"Marquis Wu Zhong, you really stuffed a hot potato into my hand......"

At the moment, there is no other way, no matter how big Lao Xiao's ability is, he can't turn it into millet rice, but fortunately, there is still a harvest in August and autumn to save his life, and Shu County, which has not been affected by the war, has enough food to rely on.

But they are by no means as much as imagined, the plank road has been burned, and the grain transportation in Shuzhong is more troublesome, as for Guanzhong......

Quickly calculating on the abacus, Xiao He sighed.

He knew that Heifu had promised the people of Guanzhong that the land rent would be halved, and the Xihe area was directly rent-free......

Xiao He gritted his teeth and said, "Tear down the east wall and make up the west wall!" ”

……

On the third day of the eighth lunar month, Xiao He personally went to Shaofu to visit Zhang Cang.

When He was young, he also wanted to go to Lanling and study from Xun Qing, but his father passed away and he couldn't make the trip, which is often regretted. Later, he served as a small official in Surabaya, and often listened to the laws of Xianyang, and the person who delivered it to the master praised Zhang Jun for his erudition and knowledge, and his mathematics was unparalleled in the world. ”

Xiao He Chao Zhang Cang, who was slightly younger than him, said: "Today, He Meng, the Marquis of Wuzhong, Ren Zhisu's internal history, when he first entered Xianyang, he has no clue about everything, and I hope that Zhang Jun will not hesitate to give advice." ”

Because he is asking for help, and he knows that Zhang Cang has a lot of personal relations with Heifu, Xiao He's posture is very low.

Fortunately, Zhang Cang is a person who does practical things, and he doesn't dare to hold it up, and he has heard Xiao He's name as a "cadre" for a long time, so the two sides sat down, not mentioning anything else, and chatted about mathematics first.

What Zhang Cang didn't expect was that Xiao He actually read through the first volume of the "Nine Chapters of Arithmetic" he had made earlier, that is, the parts of practical mathematics such as Fang Tian, Corn, Decay, Shaoguang, Shang Gong, and Equal Loss......

"Marquis Wuzhong likes this book very much, even if he was fighting with Wang Ben, he also asked people to print it in Jiangling, and often ordered the officials under his command to read it through, and those who can't count Fangtian and corn can't be scribes."

Xiao He said with a smile: "He is also fortunate to learn all the calculation techniques, but it is a pity that the lower volume of the Pythagorean and the lack of profit are too profound, and He is busy with official duties, and it is difficult to be proficient in calculations." However, just relying on the upper volume is enough to rule several counties. ”

Obviously, Xiao He scratched Zhang Cang's itch, although it was the first time they met, but after a few words, the two actually had a feeling of hating each other, and soon reached a consensus:

"When the first emperor was the first emperor, there were many shades of the old Qin, but especially the shelter of wealth!"

Zhang Cang once served as an official in the history of Zhisu Nei, and he knew very well how the world's finances operated.

The system pioneered by the First Emperor has indeed brought countless benefits to the world: he concentrated such a large number of people under one regime, destroyed the customs and defenses, unified the same tracks, books and texts, unified coins, weights and measures, created a large national market, and the scale of the economy reached an unprecedented height.

Unlike Confucianism, who only knows how to blindly criticize, Zhang Cang does not hesitate to praise the good side of Qin Zheng.

But his voice changed: "There can be more together, as well as the expenses of the government." ”

The Qin Dynasty was a big government, abolished feudalism, established counties and counties, and personally participated in the economy in various fields, such as collecting salt, iron, wine, and sugar as official camps, and set up a large number of Qin officials in the local area, no matter what small things were managed, so as to extend the tentacles into the grassroots.

However, these huge officials made the bureaucratic system swell several times more than before the unification, and the annual income alone was enough to become a huge burden, and the reason why Qin collected half of the rent was not only used for wars almost every year, but also to support a large number of officials.

"That's true."

Xiao He, who has eaten Yulu for more than ten years, has a document in his hand, which is to count the number of financial expenditures of each county in the history of Zhisu, which is used for officials, public expenses, and city construction, and converts grain into half a tael, from the twenty-sixth to thirty-sixth years of Qin Shihuang, 400 million yuan rose to 1.2 billion.

"Three? What is this. ”

Zhang Cang also asked people to take the expenses of Shaofu over the years: "With a smile, from the initial 200 million yuan to 1.8 billion yuan, it has increased by nine times!" ”

Zhang Cang's Shaofu is in charge of the private treasury for the emperor, the world's wealth, in addition to the theoretical majority of the land rent, the rest of the mouth, city tax, mountains and seas Chize taxes, official salt, iron, wine, sugar, silk, gold and tin, lacquer income, all belong to the Shaofu, used to support the name of Qin Shi Huangdi, those huge palace institutions, all food, clothing, daily life, safari and play.

In other words, what does it mean that the government spends two-thirds of the total fiscal expenditure in the entire fiscal plate?

"Inflation, in the past ten years, the royal family's spending has been swelling rapidly."

For more than 100 years after the Shang Dynasty changed the law, the consumption of the Qin royal family accounted for a very small proportion: Qin Law canceled the devotion to the huge princes, and those who were not meritorious were not allowed to belong to the register, and when Qin Xiaogong, Qin Hui Wang, and Wu Wang, there were very few palace concubines, and the number of people who served them was only 1,000.

However, by the time of King Qin Zhao, as Qin had obtained the capital of the imperial industry, in order to show the demeanor of a great country, the palace was quietly expanding, and the palaces such as Ganquan and Zhangtai were completed at that time. When he arrived at King Zhuangxiang, this king was in Handan all the year round, and when he returned as king, he brought not only Lü Buwei, but also the extravagant atmosphere of the East, and the Qin royal family was completely out of place.

When the first emperor unified the world, this atmosphere was more inflated to the extreme, the first emperor accepted all the concubines of the six countries, and even more disliked the Xianyang palace was small, Qin broke the princes, wrote and put his palace room, made Xianyang North Hanshang, south of Wei, from the east of Yongmen to Jing, Wei, the palace house Fu Dao Zhou Pavilion belonged. The bells and drums of the princes and beauties are obtained to fill it. With the establishment of the emperor, the first emperor's arrogance and extravagance are also flourishing, in addition to the palace group near Xianyang, but also the palace view and road within 300 miles are connected, and the curtain bell and drum beauty are not enough.

For a time, there were dozens of palace rooms in Guanzhong, and the Yichun Garden, which had amazed Yuanyong and other Nanjun hillbillies, was just the tip of the iceberg, and the largest Afang Palace covered an area of more than 30 miles. The famous concubines and women in each palace are either from the six countries, or newly selected from the people, amounting to thousands, and the palace people and maidservants who support them have also reached hundreds of thousands!

Just these huge populations, the masters are clothed and fed, and the slaves and maids at least live the life of a Chinese family, how much clothing and silk do they need every year? Not to mention the people's finances consumed by building palaces, brick by brick, all of which are people's fat and people's anointment.

Although there are very few of these concubines, Qin Shi Huang really slept with very few, and most of them were martyred by Hu Hai in the end, and only many temples and maids remained, still in the palaces.

Although there are many palaces, there are many, Qin Shi Huang, who has not even stayed for a night.

But for the emperor, they were necessary, it represented his vanity, his wealth, his power!

And his, face!

Unlike the Ming Dynasty in later generations, the royal finances of the Qin Dynasty did not have to raise many children and grandchildren, but only one person needed to be supported, but the ambition of this person alone was enough to suppress the people of the world to the ground.

For the sake of His Majesty the First Emperor's face, and in order to make the barbarians and contemptible people envy and praise, isn't it natural that the insides of the common people of Qiantou have been hollowed out?

"Really?" Zhang Cang shook his head, this was his doubt a long time ago, and now, it was finally solved.

"If it's for the dignity of the whole country, yes."

"If it be the vanity of one man, it shall not!"

The part of the first emperor's personal vanity, in addition to the beautiful palace outside, there are many wonderful buildings, they are flashy, like a relief carved on the face of the first emperor, and the twelve golden figures are like gold leaf pasted on.

However, the war accounts for the largest share of fiscal expenditure.

"From the beginning of the 30th year, the first emperor ordered that the taxes on salt, iron, sugar and other industries in the Shaofu should also be added to the internal history of the army, so as to increase the need for conquest."

The first emperor's ambition was too great, the southeast and northwest, within ten years, after paying a huge price, the territory of the empire is indeed the East China Sea in the east, wading quicksand in the west, passing the Great Xia in the north, and ending in the north and the north. But the financial situation is becoming more and more difficult.

In the past, wars with the Six Nations occupied mature agricultural areas with rich populations and arable land, and after copying the Qin model in these areas, taxes could be levied immediately to expand fiscal revenues.

However, South Vietnam, the Xiongnu, the Western Regions, and Haidong were all foreign lands, and after the conquest, the population and land that could be used to pay taxes were too small to make up for the war expenses. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of miles or even thousands of miles of grain have been transported, hundreds of thousands of people are waiting to be fed, and the large-scale infrastructure construction along the border has become a financial black hole.

The consumption of each of these four major expeditions is equivalent to the financial revenue of the Qin Dynasty for one year, and the two battles of Lingnan before and after are equivalent to two years......

In the end, the war will completely drag down the already unhealthy finances, although the increase in the sugar industry, the wool industry, the opening of the Western Regions, etc., have increased the income of the Shaofu slightly, but this is just a drop in the bucket, and even, holding on to the salary to put out the fire!

Thirty-three years later, the empire's finances were no longer able to make ends meet, and it had to rely on temporary measures to get by—raising taxes and taxes, and maintaining the red line of half or even two-thirds of the land rent for a long time.

These VAT will eventually be passed on to the head of Qian, making their lives more and more difficult.

This is the truth that in the past ten years, the more the Qin Dynasty's public and private revenues and expenditures have skyrocketed.

This is also the truth that people all over the world feel that the burden is getting heavier and heavier, and life is getting more and more difficult!

Imperial expenses, redundant officials, and war expenses have become the three mountains that crushed the old Qin finances and worsened the people's livelihood in the world.

Speaking of this, Xiao He also expressed his intention: "How to get the trust of Wuzhong Marquis, let him be the prime minister, I think that today's business is to prohibit harshness, stop unauthorized endowment, force the peasants, provincial redundant officials, and advocate frugality." What we have to do is to move these three mountains one by one like a fool! ”

"What is Xiao Jun doing today, Zhang Cang knows!"

is also the financial department, Zhang Cang also confessed to Xiao He, who looked at the right eye:

"If there is a lack of the son today, the royal expenses that account for the majority of the Shaofu will be useless, instead of wasting money and food, it is better to open the garden, let the palace be used for other purposes, and liberate the many maids who are imprisoned in it...... It's time to move this mountain, which is overwhelming the world. ”

He patted his fat body: "Therefore, Zhang Cang's first knife after taking office will be cut at Shaofu himself, and from now on, Shaofu will no longer be the emperor's private treasury!" ”

"Then Marquis Wu Zhong's ......" Xiao He hesitated, if anyone else, he would take these things as his own, right?

"Hahaha, Xiao Jun rest assured, Marquis Wuzhong is not a good woman. After he entered Xianyang, there was nothing to take from the goods, nothing to do with the women, all of them were sealed and handed over to the Shaofu, and he also said......"

Zhang Cang got up and told Xiao He what Heifu said.

"Marquis Wuzhong said, in the past, Daqin served one person in the world."

"Today, Kyushu is in tatters and people's livelihood is withering. It's also time to make a contribution to the people of the world with the greed of one person! ”

……

PS: In the airport code, there is only one chapter today, and after tomorrow, stay at home and resume normal updates.