On the third day after capturing Beisha City, Li Chao set sail south in Jinzhou Bay. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Beisha City has been handed over to Yu Chi Baolin, and Li Chao proposed to the imperial court to set up the Anton Metropolitan Protectorate, and recommended Yu Chi Baolin as the Protector of Anton. Before the approval of the imperial court, Wei Chi Baolin inspected the Beisha town general.

"Jinzhou Bay, is there really a golden mountain near here?" On the boat, Zhang Zhongjian looked at Jinzhou Bay, which was getting farther and farther away, and asked Li Chao with a smile.

"Well, when we broke through Qingnipu before, we found a lot of dog-headed gold and gold sand, and then we found out that there is a gold mountain under the big black mountain, and there is a gold river under the gold mountain, which flows into the bay. After several Kamcha, Jinshan and Jinhe have been found. Immediately, you will be able to mine and pan for gold. ”

The gold reserves found here are still very large, especially since they are shallow and easy to mine. And through the exploration of the knowing, the main associated ores of the gold mine here are silver and copper, which are extremely valuable minerals.

"Congratulations to the prince for making another big deal!"

"Although Liaonan is my Li family's fief, according to the imperial court's feudal system, the Li family only enjoys one-third of the income from the mines in the territory. Moreover, if the Li family wants to mine, they must first apply for a mining license from the imperial court, and then they have to pay the contract fee, and after mining, they have to pay the mining class. In the end, the imperial court gave one-third of the income obtained to the Li family after deducting a percentage of income tax. ”

This system makes it possible for the feudal lords to enjoy a lot of benefits, but they have no right to decide, they only enjoy dividends. For example, if this gold mine was not discovered by the Li family first, then the person who discovered it first would be eligible to apply to the imperial court for mining and contracting. Unless the Li family comes up with higher contracting conditions, the first discoverer will have the right of first refusal to contract mining.

But even so, the benefits are quite good.

The Li family was the first to discover this gold mine, and they were the first to submit an application, and the conditions for opening it were also high, so this gold mine has been contracted by the Li family.

Mining, alchemy, and finally processing and minting into gold coins, the profits in this are still very high. Even if you have to pay both the contract fee and the mining tax, the profit is still very high.

Li Chao had ready-made miners for mining, and he broke through the prisoners assigned to Beisha City and sent them directly to mining.

"The Central Plains lacks silver, but Lingnan has gold and silver." Zhang Zhongjian said with a smile.

In recent years, Li Chao and Zhang Zhongjian's Nanyang Trading Company, which they have partnered, has now sailed farther and farther, and even with the help of new technologies and new ships, they can sail directly to the Persian Gulf. The company also invested a lot of money to recruit an adventure fleet, and according to the route provided by Li Chao, it was sailing to Africa, to go around the Cape of Good Hope to Western Europe.

Once the fleet can really find this route and reach Europe, it will find a new trade partner, and Nanyang will be able to sell more goods in the future.

After all, if the merchant ships went to Persia, then the goods could only be sold to the Persians, who resold them to Europe. This is the same as the Silk Road in the past, the Western Turks controlled the Silk Road, and the Tang Dynasty's commercial goods could only be sold to the Turks, who in turn resold them to Central Asia and Europe, so that they could make more money.

Datang's voyage fleet is now faster and safer to travel between the South Seas, India, and the Persian Gulf, and a large number of goods are transported over, bartering, and bringing back a lot of coins.

Copper coins are heavy, and the fleet, of course, does not collect copper coins, and they only collect gold and silver. The gold and silver brought back by merchant ships were used most in the two major ports of Jiaozhou and Guangzhou, and were used to purchase commercial goods. The value of gold and silver coins in India, Persia and other places was slightly lower, and after taking them back to Guangzhou and Jiaozhou, they were exchanged for Datang money, and in fact, they made a lot of money in terms of foreign exchange.

Li Kee Money Zhuang has been buying these gold and silver coins brought from overseas in Guangzhou and Jiaozhou, and these coins are directly purchased by Li Kee according to the weight and composition of gold and silver.

After being recovered, it will not be re-circulated, but will be sent directly to the mint of Lee Kee, where it will be directly minted into standard Lee Kee gold and silver coins. Between changing hands, Li Ji can make a lot of money.

Because Li Kee has always been in great demand, many merchant ships are now willing to bring some gold and silver back when they sail back.

"Zhang Gong, what do you think of these Baiyue in Lingnan?" Zhang Zhongjian has been on the southeast coast for many years, and he must know more about these than Li Chao.

"Zhang Gong is worried about Baiyue?"

Li Chao smiled, the blue sea and blue sky, the white sails were dotted, and the seagulls were circling. I'm about to go to South Vietnam, which is far away from the Central Plains and separated by Baiyue slang, which is actually a good safe area. However, there are advantages and disadvantages, and the advantage is that the control of the imperial court over the Yue Kingdom will be weakened in the future, which is conducive to Li Chao's development of his own strength.

The disadvantage is that it is too far away from the Central Plains control area, and the surrounding area is full of slang, these tribes often fight chaotically, and Li Chao is also worried that he, an outsider, will be bullied by the surrounding local snakes.

From the Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang dynasties, the county system in Lingnan was still very imperfect, and even in name only.

Zhang Zhongjian stroked his beard and said to Li Chao with a smile, "In fact, the land of Lingnan is mostly the hereditary land of the leaders of the Slang Fang tribe, and the officials sent by the imperial court can't give orders because they are in a foreign country. There are even some officials who are greedy and unreasonable, which makes many slang fangs rebel. ”

The slang fangs in the land of Bailing South and Baiyue are not the people of the Central Plains, they are not tame at all, if the officials sent by the imperial court are a little harsh, those people will directly rebel, kill the officials and break the county, and be ruthless.

Therefore, all along, in order to settle the affairs of Suibian and make these tribes obedient, the central dynasty has always been the chief of the tree, so that the self-suppression support, using the barbarian rule of the barbarian bondage policy.

"What is bondage?" Zhang Zhongjian tapped his fingers on the railing of the deck, "The original meaning of fetters is to put knotted ropes on cattle and horses, rather than tying them up, so that they can be controlled. In fact, this was also the Central Plains Dynasty, which could not rule the barbarian lands on the frontier by force, so it used softer methods to make these barbarian tribes submit. Even if the Tang Dynasty gains the world, it is just a restraint to the slang fang, and it has not been able to subdue its people. ”

The barbarians are slightly attached, that is, their tribes are listed in states and counties, and their big ones are the governor's mansions, and their leaders are the governors' assassins, all of which are hereditary.

Over the past 100 years, three major families have risen in Lingnan, namely the three families of Feng, Chen and Ning. One of the three major families is that they were all Han immigrants from the Central Plains, who then married into powerful natives and became the leaders of one side.

For example, the Feng family is married to the Xian family.

Xian's family is the leader of South Vietnam, spanning the cave, with more than 100,000 tribes.

Feng An, the grandson of Mrs. Xian, controlled more than 20 prefectures at the end of the Sui Dynasty, with a place of 2,000 miles and more than 10,000 slaves and maids.

During the Chen Dynasty, Ning Kui, the Dingzhou Thorn Shi who was the Marshal of Nanping Qu, was reappointed as the Anzhou Thorn Shi, after Ning Kui's death, his son Ning Mengli was the Taishou of Ningyue County, and it was not easy to cultivate the Fang people in this area, and these Fang people were united together, and they were supported, and became the chief of Wuwu.

In the area of Luzhou and Xinzhou, Ge Fang lived, when the Liang Dynasty was in the south, Chen Fanian moved his family from Yingchuan County to Luzhou, and trained Xitong with filial piety, and the town customs were arrested for rape, and the thieves held their breath, and were supported by the local Ge Fang, became the leader, and served as the assassin of the history.

After the Chen, Sui, and Tang dynasties, the three major families of Lingnan, Feng, Chen, and Ning, all took Douzhou as the boundary and divided their spheres of influence, among which the Feng family was the most powerful, and even Hainan Island was controlled by him.

"The land of Lingnan, which is now truly controlled by the imperial court, is only the two cities of Guangzhou and Jiaozhou and the surrounding more than 100 miles. The rest of the land is almost all hereditary land of the slang fangs. Although the imperial court set up counties, most of the assassins and county orders were slang leaders, even if some of the county orders were sent by the imperial court, they couldn't actually manage anything. Zhang Zhongjian told the truth about Lingnan, and Li Chao frowned a little when he listened.

He couldn't imagine that there were still so many uncontrolled places in the world of the Tang Dynasty, which was not as good as the north. Even in Hetao, Longyou, and the Western Regions, the actual control of the imperial court is already very strong. But in this Lingnan, this is actually such a situation.

"Raccoon fangs are generally distinguished by the mountain, which is also known as the mountain, which originally refers to the flat land between two mountain ranges. Later, it was used to refer specifically to the blood tribes that lived in the area. The leader is called the lord or the commander of the ditch. By the time of the Southern Dynasties, there had been a large tribal alliance formed by the alliance of the Yuan, called the chieftain. ”

The three major families of Feng, Chen, and Ning are all chieftains, that is, the heads of a tribal alliance.

"The chieftains of Lingnan often push an elder as the king, but they can't be from afar. If the father dies, the son will succeed, if the nobles of the Central Plains are also. Each of the fangs has a pair of drum horns and commands for it. ”

Those handsome people in Lingnan have copper drums at home.

"Brass drums, why?" Li Chao asked with a smile.

It sounds like this bronze drum is a bit like the symbol of the king, and it is somewhat similar to the royal flag and the king seal of the Central Plains. It's just that the use of copper drums is still more peculiar.

"Because the slang fangs all believe in the god of thunder, the bronze drum they cast is a symbol of thunder. The ornaments on the bronze drum, the squatting frog and the feather man, are all related to the worship of thunder. The god of thunder is the god they believe in, and the frog is their totem. They believed that the god of thunder was the lord of heaven, and the god of frogs was the messenger of the god of thunder, who could call the wind and rain, kill buildings, and protect the peace of the world and the abundance of grains. ”

"It seems that when you get to Lingnan, you can't eat frogs."

In the Sui period, there were 25 counties in Lingnan, so to speak, there were 25 slang fangqu commanders at that time.

By this time in the Tang Dynasty, Lingnan was already divided into three provinces: Guangdong, Guangxi, and Guangnan, and eighty-one prefectures under the jurisdiction of the three provinces.

There are 81 prefectures, which is more than the 25 counties at the time of the Sui Dynasty, and many of them are actually very few. However, at the beginning, Feng Ang led more than 20 states to join the Tang Dynasty, and in order to appease these Qushuai chiefs, the imperial court established many new states as the hereditary territories of these tribes, and created 81 states.

In the land of Lingnan, the southbound Han people and the slang tribes continued to integrate and assimilate, and there were many Han slang alliances represented by the Han people, but on the whole, they were relatively scattered and their strength was not enough to confront the Central Plains, so they were often attached to the Central Plains, but the Central Plains was not able to really control it, so they could only practice the system of bondage, let these powerful leaders do hereditary assassination, and they led some hereditary lands and tribal people.

In fact, this system, from the perspective of the Central Plains Imperial Court, is of course flawed, and it is only right that they must be included in the imperial court system. But from the perspective of the Han people and slang leaders in these places, this form of local autonomy is very good.

Li Chao actually wanted to make his fiefdom into this model.

Hereditary territory, hereditary official position, and even taxes do not have to be paid, and they are in charge of their own, which is comfortable.

Look at the three families of Feng, Chen, and Ning, who have gone through the Chen, Sui and Tang dynasties for more than 100 years, and are the emperor of the soil in Lingnan, how cool. It doesn't matter who is the emperor in the Central Plains, I am the emperor of Lingnan.

"Slang people, haircut tattoos, wrong arms and left sides, strange customs. When you get there, you will find that the land of Lingnan is not like China! Zhang Zhongjian said.