Prince Gong did not dare to make his own decisions, and asked Emperor Xianfeng to get instructions that he was willing to pay money for peace, but he did not sign a territorial cession, and he did not pay too much attention to the territory. {starter} 20 million taels have been lost, and I don't care more about this million taels anymore.

Vladivostok was too important to the Russians, and the Russian minister had a good idea, first extorting a large amount of money, and then looking for an opportunity to sign a contract, so they did not believe that the reform of the Qing Dynasty would succeed, and Russia itself was an example, the reform of serfdom has been carried out for so long, and the law has clearly stipulated it, it is still difficult to enforce it. In the end, the Qing Dynasty knocked out the front teeth and swallowed it in the stomach, so that the mediation fee was locked at two million taels.

This time, the Qing Dynasty had to spend an additional fee of 27 million taels at one time, because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom occupied half of the Qing Dynasty, and the imperial court, which originally earned 40 million yuan, suddenly became 20 million. What is the concept of 20 million? Before the Opium War, the 600,000 troops raised by the Qing Dynasty cost 20 million, and now there are Taiping troops in the south and twist troops in the north, and the financial resources of the imperial court have reached the limit, and they can't get the 22 million indemnity + 5 million bandit cooperation money.

Downing convened the ministers to discuss, what could be done to increase taxes? If not, I would have really arranged a buyer for the Old Summer Palace!

Su Shun and other ministers came up with a lot of plans to exploit the people, all of which were vetoed, in one sentence: "If you do this, do you want the Qing Dynasty to do it?" Now there are only Cantonese bandits and twist bandits, and if you do this way, there will soon be other bandits. ”

In the end, Su Shun finally came up with a reliable one - to halve the salary for the flag man. The banner people are specially used to fight in the imperial court, a bit like the samurai in the old days of Japan, and they are professional soldiers, but these scraps are useless at all, and their combat effectiveness is not as good as self-funded regimental training, such as the Hunan army. According to Downing's idea, this waste should not be paid a penny.

Except for Su Shun, a ruthless man, the other ministers are strongly opposed, if you really do this, I am afraid that the Qing Dynasty will really lose the country, of course, a certain thief chief may not care about this Qing Dynasty at all. This is not Tang Ning's original intention, although the Qing Dynasty is a bastard, but it is suddenly gone, and China is even more chaotic and miserable, which is why he wants to take care of this idle matter and blackmail the Son of Heaven to order the princes. Otherwise he should now be more concerned about the situation in Italy. It is more in his interest and much more reliable for him to control Italy. Europeans all know him as the Duke of London, and almost no one in the Qing Dynasty knows him and his value, if he appears as a European capitalist, I am afraid that these guys in the Qing Dynasty will find an excuse to fight again.

Anyway, Tang Ning asked Su Shun to make a plan, how much silver can be made by reducing the banner people by half, and whether it is possible to reduce it all.

It not only made the ministers who were under house arrest by the Emperor Taishang think about it, but also made the courtiers in Beijing and the governors in various places think about it. At this time, Su Shun recommended to Tang Ning that a talent named Guo Songtao was available. This person was recommended by Su Shun and was appreciated by Emperor Xianfeng and entered the Zhinan Study, which was the emperor's private secretary.

Emperor Xianfeng sent him to the front line in Tianjin to accompany the monk Greenqin to assist in the defense. At the beginning of 1859, Guo Songtao came to Tianjin monk Lingqin. But Seng Lingqin, the Mongolian prince, did not take Guo Songtao, a southern scholar, in his eyes at all, and was very cold to him. And Guo Songtao is already full of literary popularity, plus he is the emperor's pro-faction, and it is clear that he and the monk are "parallel", not "accompanying utility", so he can't swallow this breath, and he doesn't understand the reason that the assistant should take care of things less according to the unspoken rules, but is conscientious, and the monk Greenqin is even more dissatisfied, so the cooperation between the two is extremely unpleasant.

In mid-October 1859, due to the strict corruption along the coast of Shandong, Emperor Xianfeng ordered him to go to Yantai and other places in Haikou to investigate the concealment and embezzlement of trade taxes, but Seng Lingqin, who had always been dissatisfied with him, sent his confidant Li Xiangdi to accompany him as the meeting office. Although Guo Songtao did not have the name of "Qincha", everywhere he went, officials of all sizes knew that he was a big official sent by the emperor to inspect finance and taxation, so he was received very grandly and with generous gifts.

Unexpectedly, Guo Songtao has always been honest and square, strict with himself, and stipulates that "if you don't live in the mansion, you won't be allowed to eat and drink", and she is not polite. His entourage was greatly dissatisfied because he could not get rich, and those magistrates were also embarrassed and dissatisfied because he had broken the rules of the game that had been in officialdom for a long time. After arriving in the coastal counties of Shandong, he carefully checked the accounts and found that almost everyone, from county officials to ordinary errand servants, embezzled taxes, bribed public banks, and extorted extortion outside taxes was astonishing, more than four times the regular tax.

He immediately took all kinds of vigorous measures to rectify taxation, plug loopholes, and set up a bureau to extract money. The so-called "centijin" was a tax set up by the Qing government to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom when the financial situation was extremely difficult, Guo Songtao wanted to rectify and reduce other taxes and fees that were easy for officials to fill their own pockets, and through guò the new bureau was set up to make the tax really collected by the government. These measures violated the interests of local officials, and they were naturally extremely dissatisfied. And the establishment of the bureau has added a new name, because in the case of the political zhì strict zhòng**, the new gentry of the bureau is also greedy. As a result, not long after the establishment of the bureau, there was a riot in which the businessmen of Fushan County angrily smashed the bureau and killed the new gentry director.

Despite this, the current tax rectification has been very effective, with a number of corrupt officials and corrupt officials being investigated and rectified, and government tax revenues being increased. But Guo Songtao never expected that just when he thought he had contributed to the imperial court, he suddenly received a notice from the imperial court that he was investigating and handling improper trade in Shandong and handed over to the ministry.

It turned out that Guo Songtao, who was full of bookishness, did not expect that Li Xiangqi had been secretly monitoring his actions and reporting to Seng Lingqin at any time. After Guo Songtao opened the bureau, Li immediately reported to the monk that such a major matter was decided on his own without consulting with him. At the end of December, on the grounds that Guo Songtao had not attended the meeting with Li Xiangtong and had not met with Wen Yu, the governor of Shandong, he sent a gentleman to set up a bureau to set up a bureau to draw a decision, which led to a change in the people's situation.

With the dignity of Monk Greenqin's status, his opinion is of course deeply valued by the imperial court. Moreover, the arrogant Guo Songtao had little communication and coordination with Wen Yu, a local magistrate in Shandong and the governor of Shandong, in dealing with the coastal taxes of Shandong, which also made Wen Yu very dissatisfied and sided with the monk to oppose him. In January 1860, Guo Songtao was forced to leave Shandong and return to Beijing, lamenting that "two months of searching for money were wasted" and "endured hardships and endured hard work, and made a dream come true".

On the way back to Beijing, he was given a cold reception, which was in stark contrast to the grand welcome and send-off all the way when he came, which made him taste the heat and coldness of the world and appreciate the snobbery of officialdom. After returning to Beijing, he was punished by "demoting two levels to call", although he still returned to the south study, but he was actually an idler and was left out in the cold. In April 1860, Guo Songtao strongly opposed Seng Lingqin's withdrawal from Beitang Beibei, but his opinions were not heeded, and Guo Songtao, who was left out in the cold, returned to his hometown with a lonely and depressed mood, and returned to his hometown for medical treatment.

This talented person full of patriotic feelings even persuaded Zuo Tangtang, Zeng Guofan and others to go out of the mountains to organize regimental exercises to suppress the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, in fact, he was an extremely important minister of the humerus of the Qing Dynasty, without him to persuade Zeng Zuo to go out of the mountain, I am afraid that the Cantonese bandits would have been able to have a general decisive battle with Seng Lingqin, and there was no need for foreigners to enter Beijing and the Qing Dynasty would be in danger of losing the country.

It's not that Su Shun also thought of this talent in Fan Long, but Guo Songtao was very excited after reading the Daqing News, and felt that the emperor was "enlightened" like Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang, so he had the idea of Zhishi again, he was only in his early forties, and he was full of energy.

Now Hunan has become a strategic place in the Qing Dynasty because of the relationship between the Xiang army, and Guo Songtao, who is in Hunan, is friends with Zeng Guofan and others, and can use the Chinese telegraph set up by Tangning in this strategic place to send telegrams to Sushun. Of course, these telegrams exchanged by the ministers under house arrest were to be checked by the "assistants" arranged for them by Tangning, lest they have bad ideas and undermine the current situation of stability and unity.

After Guo Songtao returned to Beijing, he boldly proposed to Emperor Xianfeng that almost touched the emperor's bottom line - to investigate the corruption of the internal affairs government.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs is the emperor's private treasury, with as many as 3,000 officials, not counting ordinary craftsmen, soldiers and eunuchs. This is more than ten times more than the number of households in charge of the most complicated affairs of the country's territory, acres of land, household registration, and money valley, and can be said to be the largest organ in the Qing Dynasty.

In fact, everyone knows that the emperor is the most corrupt person in the world, and the Emperor Qianlong created the first greedy gentry, who has saved 2 billion taels of silver, and Lord He is just a slave of the Qianlong Emperor. Due to the full enjoyment of Emperor Qianlong, in the Jiaqing and Daoguang years, the two emperors were very frugal. When Qianlong died, he ordered someone to get a huge piece of strange jade from Xinjiang that required a lot of manpower to be transported to the capital was still on the way, and Emperor Jiaqing immediately ordered the eunuch in charge of this matter to throw it directly on the road.

The gentleman fell, and Jiaqing was full. Emperor Jiaqing did not have a long time, and the gentry were the heads of both the internal affairs government and the household department, and often embezzled the property of the household department to the internal affairs department, and used the corrupt system to completely transform the internal affairs government into an institution for bureaucratic profits, and the emperor could only investigate and deal with high-ranking officials, and middle-level officials were a class, and it was impossible to find a class of representative figures. This class is dominated by eunuchs. In order to prevent eunuchs from awkward governance, the Qing Dynasty selected low-level civilians who were uneducated, who quickly integrated into the corrupt system and shared royal privileges without shame.

There is a folk song in the Qing Dynasty that says, "Fang Xinshu's small paintings are not ancient, and this person must be the Ministry of Internal Affairs." It is said that if there is a nouveau riche in the capital, a new mansion is built, the trees in it have not yet grown, and there are paintings of neighbors on the walls, it must be an official of the internal affairs government. Because he was on an errand in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, he was doing things for the royal family, and the money came very quickly, and it would not be long before he could buy a high-rise mansion in the capital where every inch of land was valuable.

There are about seven major sources of funds for the Ministry of Internal Affairs: monopoly income from the sale of ginseng and mink; the profits and capital obtained by the government and the royal businessmen from doing business; interest and principal on loans to salt merchants; the rent paid by the various Huangzhuang and the income from the rental of official houses in Beijing; the share of the surplus of each pass; property confiscated by criminal officials; Officials secretly atone for fines. The confiscation of family property or fines from officials who violated the law did not go to the treasury, but to the emperor's small treasury. Most of the property of corrupt officials is the people's fat and people's ointment, and in doing so, it is tantamount to passing the guò corrupt official's pump in disguise, and continuously transporting the people's fat and people's ointment to the royal treasury.

In this way, the corruption system has actually become an important means of accumulating wealth for the internal affairs government, and it is also a means for the emperor to control the courtiers, because basically no official is not greedy, and if he is not obedient, as long as he instructs him to investigate and deal with it, he will basically arrest one by one. The royal nature is to encourage corruption, and if it is the case at the top, of course those below will follow suit.

Emperor Daoguang was a stingy master who wanted to break a copper plate into two petals, and when he saw a hole in the dragon robe, he had to fill it.

One day, Emperor Daoguang found a small hole in the knee of the silk trousers, so he asked the Ministry of Internal Affairs to sew it up. After making up for it, Emperor Daoguang asked how much it spent, and the Internal Affairs Office replied: Three thousand taels of silver. Daoguang almost lost his breath when he heard this. A patch is even more expensive than the price of a dragon robe! The Ministry of Internal Affairs explained: The emperor's pants are lake silk with flowers, and it took hundreds of pieces of silk to find the corresponding matching pattern, so it is expensive, and the general patch is about five taels of silver.

Emperor Daoguang gritted his teeth and memorized it in his heart. It is said that the courtiers saw a patched emperor sitting on the dragon chair, and they all pierced the official uniform and made up for it, and Emperor Daoguang saw that the minister of military aircraft Cao Wenzheng had a striking patch on the knee of the court uniform, and suddenly asked him: How much silver does it cost to patch the torn clothes outside?

Cao Wenzheng was stunned for a moment, looked at the eunuchs around him, and found that the eunuchs were glaring at him with malicious intent. Cao Wenzheng's scalp was numb, so he had to go to the sea and say: It costs three coins of silver to make a patch outside. At that time, three coins of silver could buy a whole set of ordinary clothes, Cao Wenzheng thought to himself: This is probably about the same as the "salary" reported to Emperor Daoguang by the eunuchs of the Internal Affairs Office. Who would have thought, Emperor Daoguang exclaimed when he heard this: The outside is cheaper than the palace, and I need five taels of silver to patch it. Cao Wenzheng was stunned all of a sudden.

Who would have thought, Emperor Daoguang continued to ask: How much is an egg outside? Cao Wenzheng hurriedly replied: Chen has been sick since he was a child and can't eat eggs, so he doesn't know the price of eggs. （http：/／.）。

The people of the Internal Affairs Office were so arrogant and domineering, but whenever the emperor couldn't figure out the Guò Internal Affairs Office to go outside and buy it directly, the Internal Affairs Office would instruct the dog-legged people to forcibly close the market that day. And these people from the internal affairs office were the domestic slaves of the emperor's family, and they knew that the emperor wanted to use them to collect wealth and pleasure, so they could be quite presumptuous.

Su Shun and Guo Songtao bitterly Chen The unreliability of the Internal Affairs Office, hoping that the Emperor Taishang would vigorously rectify it, but unexpectedly, the Emperor Taishang finally asked them to directly study how to abolish the Internal Affairs Office, and all royal affairs were returned to Su Shun's household department, which made Su Shun Great Khan, so that after he was released, he would have to be desperately mixed with the Emperor Taishang, because the Internal Affairs Office is actually the greatest privilege of the emperor's pleasure, and this time Emperor Xianfeng may be offended.

Do? Or don't do it? That's a problem. If it is done, Su Shun, the head of the household department, is likely to become the first important minister of the Qing Dynasty, (in addition to being monitored, which is very poisonous). The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was originally the "First Chancellor of the Exchequer", but after the abolition of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the household department became the first chancellor of the exchequer, and the emperor had to look at the face of the household department. If you don't do it, the emperor will naturally ask others to do it, Guo Songtao was eager to try after receiving the news, full of guts, and told people everywhere that Jinshang is one of the most courageous emperors in ancient and modern times.