By the middle of March of the first year of Chongzhen, the previous treatment of the eunuchs in the imperial court had ended, according to the conviction at that time, the one who should be convicted of the family was not left, and those who were exiled to the army were also escorted on the road, and those who needed to pay silver for forgiveness were all completed, and the four or five hundred civil and military ministers in the handling had confiscated more than 9 million taels of silver, and other property, land, and houses were still being processed. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info Even this silver is enough for Emperor Chongzhen to spend for a while.

Although Sun Chengzong, Li Banghua, Yuan Keli, Lu Xiangsheng and others spent a lot of silver to recruit people and cultivate new troops, and it cost a lot of silver to open military academies, repair barracks, and promote new crops, etc., but even if we add the four million taels of military salaries that were repaid to Jiubian a year ago, this is only 8 million, which is only about one-tenth of the silver that Emperor Chongzhen has copied.

It should be said that the Ming Dynasty at the beginning of the seventeenth century was not without silver, but only the imperial court without silver. At that time, China exported a large amount of tea, porcelain and silk to the West, so a large amount of silver flowed into the West, but a considerable part of this silver was stored by the people and did not enter circulation, so it caused deflation in the market.

For example, at that time, a Yangzhou salt merchant surnamed Zhou, his family was rich, but he was a typical miser, when he died, he called his children and grandchildren to him, and told them the secret of his money, two words "no", so he accumulated a lot of silver, and invited many guards to guard the house, but when the Manchu army slaughtered the city, tens of millions of taels of family property were copied by the Qing army.

If the rich merchants of the Ming Dynasty were such misers, then no matter how much silver flowed into the country, the Ming would still fall into continuous deflation.

The fall of the Ming Dynasty was mainly due to financial collapse. In this regard, Emperor Chongzhen, who has the soul of later generations, of course knows that after all, the Ming Dynasty is so big, and the annual cash income of the imperial court is only five or six million taels, even if it is not more than eight million taels with Liao, which is very abnormal.

Especially in the case of the monopoly of salt, the family property of some big salt merchants is actually more than the annual tax and silver income of the Ming court. For example, the salt merchants of the Qin and Jin dynasties who lived in Yangzhou, such as the Liang family of Sanyuan and the Shen family of Xi'an in Shaanxi, and the Zhang family and Guo family in Taiyuan, Shanxi, all of them were rich and rivaled countries. Of course, the richest is the Jiang family in Huizhou, and the salt industry capital in Yangzhou exceeds 20 million taels.

Now the wealth accumulated by these two Huai salt merchants for many years has been arrested and imprisoned by Lu Shanji and Luo Yangxing in the name of the remnants of the eunuch party, and they have been sentenced to behead one by one, and all of them have been returned to the emperor and the household department.

In the past three months, Lu Shanji and Jinyiwei, with the cooperation of Luo Yangxing, in Yangzhou and Nanjing alone, in the name of confiscating the eunuchs, more than 42 million taels of silver.

Among them, one million taels were taken out and distributed to Zhu Xieyuan on the spot as silver to quell the rebellion of Lu'an; took out 500,000 taels to Wen Tiren, and ordered him to help the victims during his tenure as governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, recruit people to reclaim land, and organize the governor's standard camp.

Of course, after Emperor Chongzhen received the report from Lu Shanji and Luo Yangxing, he also gave 500,000 taels to Yuan Keli, the governor of Caoyun, who is now in Huai'an, to recruit people to reclaim and train Caoying.

Of course, in order to block the mouths of the Shangshu Shilang and the Imperial Historian of Nanjing, Emperor Chongzhen generously took out five million taels of silver and kept them in Nanjing, which was jointly managed by Qian Longxi, the new Nanjing garrison eunuch Wang Zhixin, and Luo Yangxing, the envoy of Jinyi Weinan Town, who moved to Nanjing.

And the rest, now is starting from Yangzhou one after another, taking the Grand Canal to Beijing, accompanied by the salt patrol imperial history, the minister Lu Shanji. Lu Shanji came back on the orders of the emperor.

For Emperor Chongzhen, the current salt administration rectification is almost over. His purpose in rectifying the salt administration was actually very simple, but he was to eat from large households, make money, and take such extraordinary measures to raise a large amount of silver as soon as possible to meet the needs of the time, and now this goal has already been exceeded.

It can be said that the role played by Lu Shanji has far exceeded the imagination of Emperor Chongzhen when he sent him out. Fiscal issues are no longer as pressing as they were at the same time in history. As the saying goes, good steel should be used on the blade, and a military talent like Lu Shanji, of course, can't always stay in the south to help the emperor make money. Emperor Chongzhen naturally had a better arrangement for him, that is, the position of Jiliao Governor.

As for the financial problem, Emperor Chongzhen had his own more long-term idea, that is, to mint new money. Today's Ming Dynasty is iron money, copper money, treasure money and silver circulation, and silver is expensive and cheap, iron money and treasure money are even more worthless. And the treasure banknotes printed by the imperial court have become a tool for collecting money, and it is a malpractice in the late Ming Dynasty, and no one wants any of them.

In the money issued by the imperial court to civil and military officials, except for a certain folded color, that is, silver, the rest is the so-called true color, that is, rice, cloth and treasure money. This is also an important reason why the officials of the court are dissatisfied with the emperor.

When the lives of officials are in question, how can they be able to do it if you ask them to be incorruptible. Ten years of cold windows for being officials, and after being officials, they still have to starve and work for the emperor, how can they have feelings for this court in their hearts. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, most of the officials came to surrender and the Qing Dynasty to surrender, and many of them were because they had no feelings for the Ming Emperor and the imperial court. And to solve this problem, improving the treatment of officials is the most effective way, and now through the means of raiding the house, a large amount of money has been obtained, in addition to being used to pay the army of the nine sides, another thing that should be put on the agenda is to increase the salaries of officials. This is also the most effective way to block the mouths of the military officials in the context of the imperial court.

Regarding the confiscation of the property of corrupt officials and corrupt officials, or the confiscation of the property of eunuchs and salt merchants, now Emperor Chongzhen does not have a sense of guilt or moral uneasiness, after all, most of these people's property is not obtained by the right way. However, other officials above the court did not think so, some did not dare to openly say that the emperor was greedy for money and murder, but some officials wrote to advise the emperor to be pro-virtuous and virtuous, and even some even impeached Lu Shanji, Luo Yangxing and others, catering to the will of the emperor, fabricating charges, and looting and looting people's wealth.

For these very few impeachments, Emperor Chongzhen of course ignored them. But for most of the officials, he still has to fight for it, a few officials with outstanding talents are important, but the world of the Ming Dynasty, after all, still depends on the vast majority of officials to support.

And the best way to buy and win over the vast majority of officials is to use what some of them call "bloody silver" to give them a raise. When they got the money in their hands, which also came from this batch of silver, they would no longer stand and talk without backache.

Regarding the matter of raising the salaries of officials, Emperor Chongzhen, of course, found Li Guoqi, the first assistant of the cabinet, Xu Guangqi, the cabinet minister, and Bi Ziyan, the secretary of the household department.

No minister dares to stand up against such a question, and if you oppose it, you will be putting yourself in opposition to the bureaucracy of the whole world.

But when Emperor Chongzhen said that he wanted to mint new money and use the new money as a salary increase for officials, the three of them were a little worried, thinking that the emperor was going to take the opportunity to make money again, nominally raising money, but actually reducing salaries.

Because such things have happened in history, such as the Wanli period and the Apocalypse period, such a thing happened, that is, to take more and larger denominations of treasure money to offset the money owed by the imperial court to officials.

Looking at the three ministers he trusted more with disapproval, Emperor Chongzhen smiled and said to them: "The new money I am talking about is not printing treasure money. Instead, the silver is cast into silver coins, and when the time comes, it can also be named Chongzhen silver dollars, one yuan is ten corners, one corner is ten points, and one point is ten points.

In this way, when a silver dollar is minted, it contains eight or nine silver coins, and it can be counted as a copper coin of one thousand yuan. It is not only convenient to carry and use, but also saves fire consumption. In addition, the silver content of a silver dollar is only eight coins, and the misers, large and small, will no longer cast silver into silver ingots and hide them, and the world will no longer lack silver. That's a little bit of my thoughts. Three Aiqing to see if it is feasible? ”