At the beginning of February in the first year of Hongxing in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Cihong, the emperor of Hongxing in the Ming Dynasty, had already left the city of Wohu Mountain in Jinan and arrived at Dengzhou City on the coast of the Bohai Sea.

Because the war situation in Shandong was not very good, Zhu Cihong moved the capital of the integrated Shandong Province from Jinan to Dengzhou. Dengzhou is not only far from the front line, but also a port city by the sea, and for the past four years, Su Guansheng and Shen Tingyang have been operating as the Ming Dynasty's base in the north.

So when Zhu Cihong arrived, he saw a seaside city that was completely new and impregnable, and the industry, commerce and fishing were very prosperous.

Moreover, Su Guansheng and Shen Tingyang also built a small and exquisite Penglai Palace very efficiently for the princess Donggu of the Qing Dynasty who did not know when she would come to Dengzhou.

Now that Dongguo has not come, Zhu Cihong took Ning Xiangyu and Fei Zhen'e to live in this palace built on Danya Mountain, like a fairyland on earth.

In this palace, Zhu Cihong got three good news in a row.

It's three joys again!

The first joy is, of course, Wu Sangui anyway!

Although Wu Sangui is notorious in history, Zhu Cihong doesn't care about history at all...... He is looking forward to the stars and the moon to Wu Sangui's defection.

If Wu Sangui doesn't defect again, Zhu Cihong's cavalry of the New Army can be disbanded!

In last year's war, the biggest loss on Zhu Cihong's side was not the personnel, let alone the dead equipment such as artillery and firearms, but the horses!

The folded ears of horses in Fengyang Horse Farm have only accumulated 300 horses now...... What does it do?

And the loss and retirement of various units of the new army (the war horse will be old, and it will get sick!) The total number of war horses is more than 2,000. The stock of war horses of the Shandong Army, the Huaibei Army, and the Xu Navy has also decreased by about 3,000.

The sum of the two is 5000......

If you count the loss of horses (some retired horses can be used to save horses, but because of the heavy burden, horses are easy to die of exhaustion and illness), the state of war in World War I can make the Ming army, which does not include the southwest, Sichuan, Shanxi and other armies, lose 10,000 horses and horses.

Historically, the Northern Expedition to the South has always been very difficult, in fact, it is also related to the lack of horses. The lack of horses not only affects the front operations, but also poses a difficulty to the rear transport.

Because the consumption of horse-drawn carts is much lower than that of oxen-drawn carts and human-drawn carts, if cattle and people are used instead of horses, then the "delivery rate" of grain and grass (that is, the proportion of grain that can be delivered to the destination after deducting transportation consumption to the grain when it is delivered) will drop significantly.

If the 1,000-kilometer relay transportation prevails, the horse-drawn cart can reach a 10% delivery rate, the ox-cart is only half of it, and the rickshaw is ...... It will be a negative deliverability!

If a relay system cannot be established (with stops along the way and losses carefully calculated), the delivery rate will be even lower. So the supply lines that rickshaws and ox carts can afford will also be shorter.

Therefore, in the Northern Expedition, the Ming army wanted to leave the support of the canal system, and a certain number of horses were indispensable.

Look at the Northern Expeditionary Army during the Northern and Southern Dynasties in history, sometimes even digging canals to transport grain, you can see how painful the lack of horses is - there were no horse-drawn cannons during the Northern and Southern Dynasties!

So Wu Sangui pulled the land of Shaanxi and Gansu to produce horses Anyway, for Zhu Cihong, there is no doubt that it is a charcoal in the snow!

The second happy event is that Ning Xiangyu and Fei Zhen'e, who accompanied Zhu Cihong's Northern Expedition, are both happy, plus Zheng Chagu, who is about to give birth, Emperor Zhu has three chances to get a son......

As for the third joy, it was brought by Chen Rui, the head of the household!

Daming is making money!

Last year, that is, the twentieth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty finally achieved a profit after "deducting non-recurring profits and losses".

The so-called "deduction of non-profits" is, of course, the profit and loss after deducting the one-time income of the house and confiscation.

Of course, because this is wartime, the war budget is a recurrent expenditure.

In other words, after spending a large amount of military expenses on the Northern Expedition, the Ming Dynasty still made a profit last year.

What a joy!

"Your Majesty, this is the account book of the household department...... The accounts were all made in accordance with the rules you gave, and the Metropolitan Procuratorate sent personnel to verify them, which were basically correct. ”

After more than 20 days of driving, Chen Rui, who looked at the dusty household secretary, pointed to a few thick account books, and couldn't close his mouth with a smile.

Chen Rui smiled: "This is after the temple, we really achieved a surplus in the first year of the Ming Dynasty...... The minister does not dare to take credit, everything is the credit of the emperor's good management! ”

Good at gathering, right?

Zhu Cihong thought ill-willedly: In the eyes of the gentry and scholars in the south, this emperor must be a black-hearted emperor who is blacker than Emperor Wanli......

"Mr. Chen, how much did we earn?" Zhu Cihong asked with a smile.

Chen Rui stretched out five fingers and said with a smile: "More than six hundred and fifty-five taels, all of which are stored in the accounts of Haishang Bank and Yanshang Bank......

"Six million five hundred and fifty thousand taels? How are there so many? When Zhu Cihong heard this number, his brows were already frowning slightly. It's not that he thinks he has a lot of money, but before he left Huai'an, he had to read the monthly financial statements every month and knew Daming's "financial situation" well.

He not only had to read the reports of the Ministry of Households, but also the monthly reports of the Military Department, the Maritime Bank, the Yanshang Bank, the Yingtian Grain Depot, and the Wuhan Grain Depot (the two largest grain depots under the Juntun Division) -- these monthly reports were all made according to the method of the "Theory of Financial Planning" compiled by Zhu Cihong himself, and a semi-annual report was published every six months and an annual report every year. The semi-annual and annual reports are also subject to external audit.

Among them, the annual reports and semi-annual reports of the Ministry of Households, the Ministry of War, the Yingtian Grain Depot, and the Wuhan Grain Depot will be audited by the Metropolitan Inspection Yuan, and the Yingtian Chamber of Commerce will also send personnel to assist in the audit work.

Although the Haishang Bank and the Yanshang Bank were not yamen, they were responsible for managing the treasury funds and issuing silver and copper coins on behalf of them (authorized by the Ministry of Household Affairs and collecting seigniorage), so they were also subject to a joint audit by the Imperial Procuratorate and the Imperial Chamber of Commerce—this time it was a joint audit, not the Imperial Chamber of Commerce assisting the Imperial Procuratorate. Because the Imperial Chamber of Commerce itself is the majority shareholder of the two major banks, it naturally has the right to participate in the management and review of accounts.

When the Emperor's Chamber of Commerce looks at the name, he knows that it has a lot of origin! This chamber of commerce was established by Zhu Cihong after the rebellion of the Ying Tian Eunuch Party. At that time, Zhu Cihong distributed the confiscated gold and silver, land (farmland), and mansions, but the bright and dark shares of the shops and businesses that were confiscated from Nanjing Xungui and the four old Xiyan generals in Yangzhou were "blackened".

The Ying Emperor Chamber of Commerce was used to manage and dispose of these assets, and later Zhu Cihong put his own shares in the Maritime and Salt Merchant Houses, and the land in Shanghai into the Imperial Chamber of Commerce, and later added the land of Wuhan Prefecture. Under Zhu Cihong's control, the Imperial Chamber of Commerce gradually concentrated its investment in the three major industries of finance, real estate and military industry.

Finance is, of course, the two major banks, and after the market of the two major banks gradually rose, the Royal Chamber of Commerce continued to seek to increase its shareholdings, and now it holds more than one-third of the shares of the two banks.

Real estate only invests in high-quality real estate in five first-tier cities such as Nanjing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Suzhou and Guangzhou, and only rents but does not sell, and holds it for a long time.

Of course, the financial real estate assets owned by the Royal Chamber of Commerce are of extremely high quality, and Zhu Cihong personally checks them, can there be any mistakes? Under the circumstance of "lying down to make money" in financial real estate, he got involved in the military industry, which is easy to lose money, and invested in the Nanjing Artillery Factory, Nanjing Shipyard, and also opened Daye Iron Works in Daye County and Xingguo Prefecture in Wuhan.

In addition, the Imperial Chamber of Commerce also opened a Shanghai Business School, and Zhu Cihong personally participated in the compilation of some teaching materials, and also invited retired stewards, bookkeepers and shopkeepers from various imperial merchants to serve as teachers. The students who come out of this academy will not only be able to easily enter the major imperial merchants and the trading houses under the imperial chamber of commerce, but also easily become a trick officer.

Now the accounts of the Household Department, the Military Department, the Maritime Bank, the Salt Merchants Bank, the Yingtian Grain Depot and the Wuhan Grain Depot are all done by graduates of the Shanghai Business School, so Zhu Cihong can read all the accounts without difficulty.

According to his memory, as of August last year, the "net profit" of the Ming court did not exceed 1 million taels, how could it suddenly increase to 6.55 million taels in four months?