On May 12 of the 19th year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, inside the yamen of the Cabinet Office (Ministry of Officials) outside the Fengtian Gate of the Imperial City of Nanjing, the middle hall was full of high-ranking civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty who stayed in Nanjing. There are not only the leaders of the two mansions (the Cabinet Office and the Generalissimo's Mansion), but also the prince who talks about things in the Zongren Mansion, as well as Yin Li Mingrui of the Yingtian Mansion, and the big treasurer of the top ten imperial merchants in Nanjing, and even the two great Huang Dabao and Qiu Zhizhong of the celebrant and the imperial horse supervisor, all of whom are crowded in. The cabinet hall, which was not spacious in the first place, is now almost crowded. However, when these civil and military officials who squeezed in to discuss matters came to an end, they all didn't speak, except for fans, and drank tea cup after cup.

The thing that made these big men become dumb one by one is naturally the rice snatching incident in Longjiang Rice Lane that happened yesterday morning!

Tens of thousands of "righteous people" and military dependents living in Nanjing looted 12 rice shops on Longjiang's rice lane, robbed about 4,000 or 5,000 stone of white rice, brown rice, and flour, and also stole other property worth tens of thousands of taels, smashed dozens of houses, and injured hundreds of people.

After receiving the report, Ying Tianfu immediately dispatched three shifts of officials to Longjiang Mixiang to get people, and at the same time reported to the Cabinet Office.

After Zhu Cihong took power in Nanjing, he began a series of reforms, one of which focused on the reform of the local government (Zhili Prefecture) and county (subordinate prefecture) levels. The reform of local political power focuses on "delegating power", "clarifying responsibilities", "linking interests" and "eliminating the last position".

The so-called "decentralization" refers to strengthening the administrative and financial powers of the prefecture (directly subordinate prefecture) and county (subordinate prefecture) levels. The principle of dividing fertilizer between local and central finances has been determined! That is to say, all the people's fat and ointment looted by the local government do not have to be handed over to the household department, but can be intercepted proportionally.

In principle, the public land can be divided into two percent, commercial tax (excluding checkpoint tax, customs tariff, salt tax), mining tax, tea tax, wine tax, etc., can be divided into up to eighty percent to the government (Zhili Prefecture), county (state) two levels, the field tax has not been levied for the time being, and it will not be mentioned.

Ying Tianfu is a fat mansion, and the amount of business tax, tea tax, and wine tax is huge, even if fifty percent is paid (at least half of these taxes can be retained in the place), the amount left in the hand can still be considerable. Therefore, the number of the three classes of officials in Yingtianfu is also quite considerable, as many as three or four thousand, almost all of them are natives who have settled in Nanjing for several generations, and many of them are also related to the declining Nanjing lords and hereditary military attache families.

Needless to say, these people get angry when they see the northerners on weekdays, but in order to keep their jobs, they don't dare to be angry casually, so they have to hold back.

This time, when the northerners "rice thieves" make trouble, can they still be polite? Immediately, they made a big move, and when they arrived at the place, they smashed their heads and covered their faces with sticks, beating many "rice thieves" with their heads bleeding and arresting hundreds of people.

Originally, this matter was settled here, but Wei Zaode, the first assistant of the cabinet who got the following notification, was afraid that Ying Tianfu would not be able to settle the matter, and after discussing with Wu Xiang and Cao Youyi, he jointly ordered the mobilization of the new army of Xiaolingwei to go to Longjiang Mixiang for martial law.

The Xiaoling Wei New Army is now a "origin" of the sons of the fallen sect and the noble sons of the Emperor of the Martyrs - first they have to go to the Xiaoling Wei New Army to be trained as soldiers, and then go to the lecture hall or the tax officer school to study.

And these sons and sons of the nobles are not necessarily northerners, but there are basically no Jinling natives, and the Jinling lords and military attaches who are in distress are not all the way, and they are more sympathetic to the northerners refugees - they are basically "refugees", and they all came to Nanjing empty-handed!

I don't know if it was the bastard bastard who picked the head, anyway, after the new army of Xiaoling Wei drove to Longjiang Mixiang, he fought with the officials of Ying Tianfu.

The two sides beat each other with wooden sticks (the new army did not bring murderous guys, only sticks), and actually killed people!

Of course, it was the Ying Tianfu officials who were poorly organized and trained that suffered losses, killing six and seriously wounding eighteen...... And the "rice thief" who was arrested by the officials of Tianfu took the opportunity to slip away, and all of them disappeared!

This is not over, because Longjiang Rice Lane has made a mess and can't end it, and the rice merchants in Tianfu City don't dare to open their doors to do business today - what if they are smashed again? One by one, they have hung out the sign of "no rice in our store" and are closed!

This is not the most troublesome thing, but the most troublesome thing for the bigwigs gathered in the cabinet office today, is that at least half of the millions of northern refugees who are wandering in the southeast really have serious living difficulties -- the main difficulty is that they have no food!

At least two or three million people don't have anything to eat!

And that's not even counting the food of the urban poor and slaves in the southeast!

Farmers who farm the fields have a stutter, or plant some sweet potatoes to save their needs - by this time, the southeastern provinces have generally begun to plant sweet potatoes; Or simply resist rent and debt - anyway, now that the authority of the gentry in the southeast has declined, the ability to collect rent and force debts is also weak.

However, the urban craftsmen and some of the declining gentry were domestic slaves, but they faced the same dilemma as the northerners and refugees who had no food!

By the end of the Ming Dynasty, many cities in the southeast had already entered the embryonic stage of capitalism, so there were a large number of wage laborers. The rise in food prices will of course hit them hard.

In addition, the gentry and nobles of the Ming Dynasty were very fond of slavery, most of whom were domestic slaves. When the gentry were rich and powerful, the house slaves had no human rights, but they could eat enough. But now many nobles and gentry are unlucky, and the treatment of domestic slaves has also declined, not only has no human rights, but even the right to life has become a problem, can it not make a fuss?

These two types of people, plus the refugees from the north who can't get enough to eat, well, at least five or six million people have nothing to eat!

What can I do?

If this is to make a fuss, then it will be another uprising! In case Li Zicheng is used (Li Zicheng is still pretending to be a man), then what is it?

The atmosphere in the middle hall is getting lower and lower, but the temperature is getting higher and higher, and finally there is a fat man Fu Wang who can't stand it, so he coughed and said to Shoufu Wei Zaode: "Wei Xiang, the prince is always compared with Zhuge Liang, you can quickly think of a trick and solve the dilemma in front of you!" ”

Wei Zaode rolled his eyelids, what is Zhuge Liang? That's what I will blow in the history of youth in the future, isn't it time for me to go to history? How can Zhuge Liang be so godly?

However, since he was the first assistant, he couldn't say a word, so he glanced at Wu Xiang: "Lord Huguo, how much rice is there in the treasury of the Military Field Division?" ”

Wu Xiang spread his hands, "It's less than a million stones...... We're going to have to hold on for a few more months! ”

"Why is it so little?"

Wu Xiang smiled bitterly: "The Communist Party has only collected 16 million stones, and it is military rations, and it is relief, and it is necessary to send food to those people in the north, so this will be gone!" ”

"Household, what about Household?" Wei Zaode asked, "How much more silver can be squeezed out?" ”

"Five million taels at most," said Chen Rui, the head of the household, "is reserved for the prince to reward the military exploits of Huguang and march into Sichuan." ”

"It's already been shipped to Wuchang?"

Chen Rui said: "The household department has already written two lines, let them go to Wuchang to open a branch and prepare five million taels of cash for withdrawal." ”

Now there is no bank in the household department, and all the tax and silver are put into the two banks to store and earn interest, and where the money is needed, the two banks are also called to start the branch and prepare cash for backup.

In addition, the account of the household department is much better than that of the grain depot of the military field department, because the salt tax of Lianghuai, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Fujian can finally be collected normally (all of them are tax packages), the customs duties of Shanghai, Ningbo, and Guangzhou can also be collected some, and the tax packages of Quanzhou Prefecture and Nanbeiyang can also be paid on time. A lot of taxes have also been collected from tax cards in various places in the southeast. There are also many cities that pay a tax (commercial tax) to the household department. Miscellaneous and miscellaneous together, there is always an income of 178 million taels per year.

Compared with the years when Emperor Chongzhen was in power, the accounts of the household department are really much better!

However, Zhu Cihong is now expanding the army, fighting wars, building fortresses everywhere, and by the way, he also has the lower reaches of the Huai River and the Yellow River, and there is a profligate faint monarch Chongzhen to feed, so the expenses are also very huge.

The five million taels that Chen Rui prepared for Zhu Cihong now were not squeezed out of this year's revenue and expenditure budget, but the silver obtained from the property of the southeast lord earlier.