The convoy that came back from Guilin has not yet returned, and Li Xuan summoned the officials of the Ministry of Taxation to discuss spending money together!

That's right, it's not about how to make money, it's about spending money, when Li Xuan met with officials of the Ministry of Taxation in the past, most of the time he urged the officials of the Ministry of Taxation to make money like this, make more money, or discuss where to squeeze out money to buy materials to maintain the army's expenses and so on.

But this time, the topic of discussion was how to spend the windfall.

But before they can talk about spending money, they have to talk about how much money they have available at hand!

Many of the possessions in the transport fleet are difficult to estimate, because in addition to the silver, many of them are calligraphy and painting treasures, these things you say are worth one tael of silver, and if you say that it is worth one or two taels of silver, it is worth one million taels of silver, and in the eyes of different people, the value of these things is different.

For example, in Li Xuan's opinion, these treasures are worthless, and they can be exchanged for as much cash as they can, but in the eyes of those elegant people, these things are priceless!

So these things are really hard to value!

Fortunately, the people in the tax department are all human spirits, and they deal with silver every day, they have some knowledge of these things, although they have not seen the real thing, but according to the list, they have estimated the approximate value, in addition to the silver, if all the luxury goods such as calligraphy and painting on the transport fleet are sold, it is possible to return between 300,000 taels and 1 million taels of silver, the reason why there is such a big gap, is because if it is sold directly to the locals in Wuzhou, the price must be low.

However, if it is transported to prosperous areas such as the Gangnam area and sold, these things can be worth a lot of money.

In the end, Li Xuan personally decided that after the transport fleet returned, he would first sell some of the things with relatively fixed value and easy to realize on the spot, and the rest of the things would be sold through various channels to strive for a good price.

Li Xuan set a task for the Ministry of Taxation, this batch of luxury jewelry, at least 500,000 taels of silver, and on this basis, if you can buy more, then you will give the Ministry of Taxation a great credit, and at the same time take a part of it for the office expenses of the Ministry of Taxation.

After getting Li Xuan's promise, the people on the side of the tax department were very excited, don't look at the tax department as an institution that manages money, but their expenses are also big!

In order to collect taxes, the Ministry of Taxation dispatched tax officials and tax inspection teams to all places in the control area, resulting in the largest number of administrative personnel in the Ministry of Taxes and even among the Cabinet Ministries, and the expenditure also accounted for more than one-fifth of the total expenditure of the Cabinet Ministries.

After all, there is a cost to collecting taxes!

It also takes a certain amount of time for those treasures and luxury ornaments to be realized, so the money to be spent on today's discussion is still the cash of nearly 150,000 taels of silver that the transport fleet is about to bring back.

In this regard, the officials of the Ministry of Taxation proposed several plans to Li Xuan, one was to use this batch of silver to repay the arrears of administrative salaries, the second was to prepare for the construction of new troops, the third was to invest in the expansion of the workshop of the Ministry of Industry, and the fourth was to build the imperial palace.

According to the report of the first army on the front line, they have arrived at the city of Zhaoqing, and the Ming army in the city is not too strong, it is estimated that it will not take long to conquer Zhaoqing, when the country will set the capital of Zhaoqing, it is naturally impossible to find a house to act as a palace like in Liuzhou and Wuzhou, such as a palace that matches the national strength of the Tang Dynasty!

The construction of the imperial palace is not a question of enjoyment or not, but a kind of political propaganda!

Otherwise, a huge Tang Dynasty, with 100,000 troops and a land of thousands of miles, the emperor still lives in an ordinary house or in the prefect's yamen left by the Ming Dynasty.

If you say this, you must not laugh off the front teeth of the world!

Therefore, although Zhaoqing has not yet been taken down, the construction of the imperial palace has already been placed on the desks of many departments of the cabinet, and the Ministry of Taxation must prepare the necessary funds for this, the Ministry of Industry must prepare the design and construction plan, and other departments must also cooperate. 、

And repairing the palace also requires a lot of money!

Of course, no matter which of these four schemes actually involves the above four items, the difference between them is nothing more than which one is the main one!

After the Ministry of Taxation put forward these four plans, Li Xuan did not hesitate to veto the plan to keep most of the money for the construction of the palace.

The war is still going on, and the military expenditure is still a bottomless pit, Li Xuan can't squander all the money, what kind of palace can he use to repair it, and the palace can go into battle to kill the enemy? Will he be able to save his throne and his life?

No!

However, the remaining three plans had to be carefully considered, so Li Xuan did not give the Ministry of Taxation an answer as soon as possible, but asked the Ministry of Taxation to continue to improve the plan, and at the same time ordered that the money should not be misappropriated without his order.

When Li Xuan was thinking about these things, Major General Hao Bainian, commander of the First Army of the Eastward Advance, finally sent the good news of successfully conquering Zhaoqing!

After seeing the good news, Li Xuan also showed a satisfied smile!

Zeng Ziwen on the side said: "General Hao fought beautifully in this battle, not only successfully captured Zhaoqing, but also did not cause too much damage to Zhaoqing, laying the foundation for Zhaoqing, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, so that after the dynasty moved the capital to Zhaoqing, there was no need to build a large number of buildings to repair the city wall!" ”

Li Xuan also nodded with a smile: "It's really good!" ”

In the process of marching and conquering Zhaoqing, the First Army was moving quickly and extremely quickly, and had already surrounded Zhaoqing before the Ming army recruited Qingzhuang and other reinforcements from the hinterland of Guangdong, and the defenders in Zhaoqing City were less than 2,000 at that time, and they could not resist the attack of tens of thousands of people in the First Army.

It's just that after entering the city, no booty was captured, and the food was only a few hundred stones, and none of the middle and senior officials of the Ming army were killed or captured, because they had already run away.

Obviously, Wang Yue, the governor of Liangguang, also knew that it was impossible for Zhaoqing to resist the attack of the puppet Tang thief army, so he did not plan to resist in Zhaoqing at all, but retreated to Guangzhou early, leaving only 2,000 old and weak soldiers in Zhaoqing, and only 1,000 of them were regular troops, and the rest were young and strong.

As for whether Wang Yue planned to gather heavy troops in Guangzhou to defend it, it is unknown, in short, this Zhaoqing was easily defeated.

No, I can't wait to deliver good news just after I hit it.

Because the first army acted quickly, and the defenders in the city were not strong, and the will to resist was relatively weak, so in order to protect the city wall of Zhaoqing and the buildings in the city, the first army did not take means such as blasting or large-scale artillery bombardment, but used direct charge, tens of thousands of people rushed up, and the Ming army in the city was either killed or frightened stupid, so the captured Zhaoqing City basically remained intact, not like Wuzhou was beaten to tatters, and now the east and west walls are still in tatters.

I heard that the city is kept intact, and the prefect's yamen over there is also relatively new, Li Xuan thought, this palace is still repaired, if you don't repair it, the money sent from Guilin will be directly used to expand the armament, as for the salaries of the officials, Ma Dan, Lao Tzu doesn't even repair the palace, you still want to get a salary, think beautiful!

So, when the transport fleet from Guilin returned to Wuzhou, Li Xuan personally made a decision to replenish the cash of about 150,000 taels of cash in the transport fleet into the treasury, of which 100,000 taels of silver was used as military expenses.

Take out another 10,000 taels of silver to make up the salaries of grassroots clerks, it's not good to have too much salary, and there is no money to pay too much, so it can only be squeezed a little bit for a period of time like now.

The treasury has 20,000 taels of silver left for emergencies, and there are only a few thousand taels of silver in the treasury of the Tang Dynasty, which is absolutely intolerable, and there must be at least 20,000 taels of silver.

In the end, the remaining 20,000 taels of silver were used to prepare for the expansion of the arsenal in Zhaoqing, where a large-scale comprehensive arsenal was expected to be built.

That's right, Li Xuan no longer plans to let the Ministry of Industry continue to run any small-scale workshops as before, but to set up an arsenal together.

And it is to order the Ministry of Industry to integrate the various workshops in Liuzhou as soon as possible, including the artillery workshop, musket workshop, gunpowder workshop, sword workshop, armor workshop, bow and arrow workshop, steel workshop, etc.

In the end, dozens of large and small workshops owned by the Ministry of Industry in Liuzhou were integrated into six large and small factories, all of which were related to the military industry.

The few remaining workshops in Xingquan Mansion were integrated and renamed Xingquan Arsenal.

Liuzhou was just consolidating and then changing its name, but the factories established in Wuzhou and Zhaoqing were rushed to build large-scale factories from the beginning.

It is expected that two large arsenals, Wuzhou Arsenal and Zhaoqing Arsenal, will be established. As for some workshops related to the people, they are set up according to needs, setting up quilt factories, textile factories, shipyards and the like.

The purpose of this integration is not only to change the name, nor to pursue a larger factory scale, but to improve production efficiency and management level.

To build a factory, it is natural to need funds, and the 20,000 taels of silver are only the construction funds in the early stage, and how to solve the subsequent expansion funds, production funds, and operating funds, that is, it needs to rely on the military's procurement funds.

And where did the money come from for the military? Naturally, it's military spending!