In Guangdong, Zhou Shixiang, who was busy integrating forces and preparing for westward expansion, suddenly found that his money seemed to be insufficient.

All along, the Taiping Army practiced the public treasury system, that is, it stipulated that gold, silver, silk, treasures, grain, salt, oil, rape and meat captured in the war must be handed over to the public treasury, and then the public treasury will allocate them according to the needs of the families of officers and soldiers. This system ensured the living needs of the officers and soldiers who participated in the Taiping Army and their families, and also attracted a large number of poor people to join the Taiping Army.

At the beginning, Zhou Shixiang vigorously promoted the slogan of "everyone has food, everyone has meat, and everyone has clothes to wear" in Luo Dingshi, and the public treasury system is the guarantee of this slogan. The public treasury system, which was completely based on the principle of people's selfless wealth and equal distribution, played a positive role in the early days of the Taiping Army's establishment, but with the continuous military victories of the Taiping Army, the cities and towns occupied became more and more numerous, and the sources of goods became abundant.

People are selfish, and those poor people who had nothing in the past suddenly have their own income and a certain position in the Taiping army, and they will inevitably begin to gather their own private wealth. The composition of the Taiping Army is already complicated, and bandits and surrendered soldiers account for as much as 60 percent, and it is basically impossible to expect these officers and men who joined the Taiping Army either to survive or to make a fortune to strictly enforce the seizure and confiscation of the public and strictly discipline themselves. Therefore, when Zhou Shixiang established the old four towns, he began to set salaries for officers and soldiers, so as to determine the income of officers and soldiers and ensure that officers and soldiers had enough income to support themselves and their families. In this way, on the one hand, it unites the hearts and minds of the officers and soldiers, and on the other hand, it also avoids looting and massacring the city because of money to the greatest extent.

Zhou Shixiang, who returned to Guangzhou after the Chaohui War, did not forget the officers and soldiers who were killed and disabled in the war, and he set a high pension to compensate the families of the officers and soldiers who died in the war, and stipulated that those who died in battle should be given the title of "martyrs." Male members of the martyrs' families, and adult members who join the army are directly selected for military salaries, and they can also be given priority when they are promoted; If you do not want to join the army, you can be given a tax exemption for money and food. Minor children can enter the junior soldier camp to study, and after graduation, the outstanding ones will be promoted to the military equipment training center for further study, and after completing the study, they will start as a military commander and a junior envoy in the army. Those who are unable to be promoted to the military training center will be arranged by the local government, or work in the county government, or work in the township or village office. In short, Zhou Shixiang repeatedly emphasized that it is absolutely necessary to ensure the treatment of the families of martyrs, even if everyone is hungry, they must save money and food to support the children of martyrs and their parents.

Zhou Shixiang also attached great importance to the disabled, stipulating that those with minor injuries should be paid disability pensions and arranged to work in the township and village offices, so as to ensure that they had decent jobs and long-term and stable incomes, and also ensured the loyalty of the personnel in the townships and village offices to the Taiping Army. For the seriously injured who could not take care of themselves, the Invalides Hospital was built in Xiangshan and special personnel were arranged to take care of them, and this money, including personnel expenses, was a special expense of the military marshal's office and was not borne by the local government.

"Only if there is no concern, the soldiers will move forward bravely, if we pick the rope and are reluctant to pay some money, how can we make the soldiers willing to die for us."

"The money is opened from the military marshal's mansion, not the place, this is not to reduce the burden of the place, but to let tens of thousands of soldiers of our Taiping Army know that the marshal is their strongest and biggest backing! It doesn't matter if they die in battle, their parents, wives and children are raised for them, and their children are also expected to have a future in the future. Don't be afraid if you are injured or disabled, Ben Shuai is raised, it is nothing to be lame and break his arm, he is still the head of the township and the village, as long as Ben Shuai is here, as long as our Taiping Army is here, no one dares to look down on them! ”

In the Battle of Chaohui, the Taiping army suffered a total of 8,890 casualties, of which 4,620 were killed. When Zhou Shixiang was still in Huizhou, the pensions of the dead began to be counted and prepared by the Guangdong Political Envoy and the Military Marshal's Office, and after Zhou Shixiang returned to Guangzhou, the part of the disability pension was also counted. At the same time, the rewards of the meritorious soldiers in the Battle of Chaohui were also counted, and Zhou Shixiang spent two days checking them one by one, and after confirming that they were correct, he agreed to distribute them.

In addition to pensions, disability payments, and bounties, Zhou Shixiang also gave silver bounties to the people who transported grain and the masons who built forts.

Zhou Shixiang believes that war is by no means only a matter of the army, the people's efforts are greater than the army's efforts, and the army is rewarded for winning, so the people should naturally also get benefits, which Zhou Shixiang called "war dividends".

"If we win, the people will get benefits, and you say, will their enthusiasm for supporting us be high? Will you expect us to win? Will you fully support us? What do you think if every time we go out to fight and the people give us their husbands and food, but they get nothing? ”

Zhou Shixiang decided to distribute war dividends to the people despite the differences, but the people of Chaozhou and Huizhou did not get this dividend, and most of them were all obtained by the people of Guangzhou, especially in the Xiangshan area, almost every family received the war dividends of the Taiping Army.

The amount of this dividend depends on whether the household has children to join the army, the area of land cultivated, the amount of grain paid, and the amount of work. This dividend was not simply given to gold, silver and copper, but was also replaced by cloth, meat, rice, salt and oil. In practice, Xiangshan County also distributes the remaining land as dividends instead of money, which has been unanimously supported by the people of Xiangshan.

Pensions, disability payments, bounties, and various expenditures, plus the war dividends given to the people, add up to an astronomical amount. Even if the Taiping army gained the wealth of the entire city in Guangzhou, plus two palaces and a governor's palace, the money immediately became nervous.

After a large amount of money flowed from the Taiping military treasury into the hands of the officers and soldiers and the common people, a new problem soon emerged, that is, price inflation. The outflow of gold and silver is basically concentrated in Guangzhou Prefecture, which has a total of more than 500,000 people, and now there are millions of taels of silver and copper coins circulating in the market, and rising prices are inevitable.

Zhou Shixiang was a human being, how did he not know this truth, he decided to recover gold and silver, curb the soaring prices, and by the way reform the public treasury, so as to make the public treasury more suitable for the current situation. After much consideration, Zhou Shixiang decided to change the public treasury to a silver treasury and set up the Guangdong silver treasury head office in Guangzhou, with three branches in Guangzhou, Chaozhou and Huizhou. The counties under the jurisdiction of the three prefectures and Sanzhou will also set up sub-branches, and exchange offices will be set up below the sub-branches, and this exchange office will be built in the township offices.

The head office of the Guangdong Bank Treasury is under the direct control of the Military Marshal's Mansion and is managed by the Ministry of Household Affairs of the Military Marshal's Mansion. After the establishment of the head office of the bank, Zhou Shixiang ordered Song Xianggong to start issuing military tickets, the denomination of military tickets with reference to the later renminbi was set as three denominations of cents, angles and yuan, which were two cents and five cents in turn; one corner, two corners, five corners; One dollar, five dollars, ten dollars, twenty dollars, fifty dollars, and the maximum denomination is one hundred dollars.

Two points are equivalent to two copper plates, five points are equivalent to five copper plates, points and angles refer to the copper coins that are now circulating in the market, and the yuan refers to silver, one yuan is one tael of silver, and one hundred yuan is one hundred taels of silver. A tael of gold can be exchanged for a 10 yuan military ticket in the public treasury, that is, a tael of gold is fixed for ten taels of silver.

The exchange of gold and silver must be floating, and the intermediate profit is also huge, but it is not what Zhou Shixiang has to consider now, what he has to do now is to promote the popularity of military tickets, let military tickets circulate first in the area controlled by the Taiping Army, and guarantee the value of military tickets with absolute strength, and then consider the exchange rate issue. (To be continued.) )