There was no network, no satellites, no radio, not even a cable telegraph. At present, China's communications mainly rely on the four-legged N hundred miles of expedited, and the use of sailing ships to carry letters can also be regarded as a supplement. Now that the Yellow River has been diverted, the Yellow Flood area has appeared in the area around Zhilu and Henan, and coupled with the activities of the Taiping Army, it is not surprising that Beijing's land communication with Shandong and Jiangnan has been interrupted. But how did the sea communications go wrong? Could it be ...... Beijing has already been occupied or surrounded by the Taiping Army!?

There was silence in Zhu Jishi's Fengtian Palace, the momentum of this Taiping army was so fierce, it was indeed beyond everyone's expectations! If Beijing had fallen into the hands of the Taiping army by now, would the whole of North China be swept away by them quickly? Next, will the Taiping army wave its army to the south to fight Zhu Ming?

A lot of question marks lingered in Zhu Jishi's heart, how could he have a wishful thinking that was originally very good, but how could it look like he was about to fail?

Thinking of this, Zhu Jishi glanced at Zuo Zongtang with some complaints, wasn't he the one who proposed the strategy of "using the courage of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom"? Now people are very angry to win the world.

Zuo Zongtang's face was also a little ugly: "Your Majesty, Sichuan and Jiangnan must be in your hands, and you must advance to the Huai River line in the middle road, and make a plan for the Northern and Southern Dynasties first." ”

"Will, how many troops can the army send to fight in Sichuan and Jiangnan now? If you want to seize the two places by force, how much military spending will be needed? Zhu Jishi frowned and asked the Chief of the General Staff. Hamming.

"Including the Jinyi Guards, the army can dispatch four military operations in the direction of Sichuan and Jiangnan, as for military spending...... It is difficult to obtain accurate data until the operational plan is formulated. However, the area of this operation is extremely vast, and the special cost is estimated to be no less than 30 million yuan. ”

The so-called special fee. Refers to the "special budget" set aside for military operations. Now Zhu Ming's fiscal system is modeled after the West. There is a word for "budget". This money is not spent casually. Budgets need to be drawn up and then published in Ta Kung Pao, even for military spending. This is to let government expenditures be supervised - Zhu Jishi knows that it is difficult to eradicate corruption by relying on the emperor alone to supervise his subordinate officials wisely and punish the law severely. The successive Ming monarchs of the Qing Dynasty took the Internal Affairs Office as a lesson from the past!

If the expenses of the Ministry of Internal Affairs had to be budgeted and made public, Emperor Daoguang would not have eaten an egg for 60 taels of silver anyway! Should the Ministry of Internal Affairs dare to make such accounts public, and not arouse public outrage? As for false accounts, of course, it can be done. But public false accounts must always be seen in the past. It can't be said that the emperor Lao Tzu eats thousands of eggs at a meal, right? No one believes this.

So Zhu Jishi thought about it and thought that the best way to prevent corruption was to make public the financial accounts - in this era, Britain's finances were quite open, and the common people knew how much annuity their queen and her husband could get every year. Therefore, the British government's efficiency in spending money is much higher than that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (of course, there are still corruption and bribery, but it can't be too outrageous), and the cost of Emperor Daoguang to make a dragon robe, the British Navy can build a warship!

"Zuo Xiang, how much does the administrative cost of Liangjiang Sichuan need to be paved by the central government?" Zhu Jishi asked Zuo Zongtang again.

Liangjiang plus Sichuan is a total of four provinces, not to mention "showing talent as an official." The government went to the countryside". Even if the original administrative system of the Manchu Qing Dynasty is followed, I am afraid that a large sum of silver will also be pasted. Because it's already November 1848. Don't think about the autumn tax in these four provinces this year. In addition, due to the impact of the war, the salt tax, customs duty, mining tax, and tea tax in 1849 were at least halved.

"It is estimated that it will be 5 million," Zuo Zong rubbed his hands and said, "If the king doesn't want to bear this cost, he can leave it alone...... It is even possible to apportion military salaries in the four provinces. ”

The practice of apportioning military salaries to the new territory was not adopted by the Ming army for various reasons when it occupied Lianghu, Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangdong, but this does not mean that it will not be able to use this method to raise money in the future.

Zhu Jishi snorted, "Let's make up a 40 million yuan fundraising plan!" ”

Liangjiang Sichuan has always been rich, as long as it has not been ravaged by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, there will be tens of millions of people if you scrape the ground a little! Of course, Zhu Jishi would not be stupid enough not to loot it...... Before, he didn't scrape the land in Guangdong, mainly to win over the Cantonese people to rebel with him, and he didn't scrape the two lakes because it had been scraped by Hong Xiuquan. In order to show that Zhu Ming's army was different from the Taiping army, it had to pretend to be a "People's Liberation Army."

In Fujian and Jiangxi, Zhu Ming did not exempt the 1848 Tian Fu and miscellaneous factions, and also sent Pan Shicheng as a minister to Fujian to preside over the establishment of the public bureau and the apportionment of commercial taxes, 12 million a year is not scraped, but 5 million is always available. Zhu Jishi's tax target for Fujian Province was 5 million yuan in 1848 and 9 million yuan in 1849, which is really not low.

As for Liangjiang and Sichuan, of course, they have to be looted even more! Now there is no Donglin Party in the Zhu Ming Group. Those in power are Hunanese, Cantonese, and Fujianese. In the future, the tax indicators of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Sichuan provinces cannot be lower than Guangdong, right? As long as these three provinces are in hand, Zhu Ming's financial pressure will be gone.

"Attacking Liangjiang and Sichuan by force is only a last resort, and it is ideal if we can take all four provinces without blood." Zhu Jishi pondered and went down again, "Now that the Manchu Qing Dynasty is likely to have been shattered, is it possible to spread the land of the four provinces?" ”

"Wang, Sichuan is now under the control of Qi Shan, he is the governor of Sichuan and the general of Chengdu, and he completely controls the military and political power of Sichuan, and will not take refuge in us. However, the number of people stationed in Sichuan to defend the Eight Banners is not much, and the total number of soldiers and their families is only more than 10,000, which is similar to Guangdong and far less than Jingzhou. It is not difficult to take, the key is to prevent the Taiping army from Xiangfan to Hanzhong and enter Shu. It is necessary to be prepared for war with the Taiping army, so the size of the army cannot be less than 2 armies. ”

Zuo Zongtang has long had a belly case to take Sichuan and Liangjiang, and at this time he said eloquently: "As for Liangjiang, it is tied to Lin Muweng alone." Li Wen'an, Li Hongzhang and his son have long stepped on two boats, if the king can win over the Li family father and son with the treatment of Yanping County Duke and Kaiping County Prince, Anhui should go down without a fight. As for...... Jiangsu and Zhejiang, his subordinates are willing to go to Shanghai to persuade Lin Muweng to return to obedience. ”

"Are you sure?" Zhu Jishi asked uncertainly.

"This ......" Zuo Zongtang frowned, who dares to say that he is sure of this? Lin Zexu, the old man, is stubborn, and no one can take him.

"I have a way!" Rodriguez grabbed the topic and said with a smile: "Your Majesty the King, I came to Guangzhou to discuss this matter with you, and I have a plan to make Lin Zexu's finances collapse by suffocating Jiangnan's finances." ”

"Suffocating Jiangnan's finance? Ricardo, what do you want to do? Zhu Jishi asked.

"Tighten the money and run the bank." Rodriguez just laughed and spat out eight words.

"That's all?" Zhu Jishi still didn't quite understand, let alone the other people in the hall.

Rodriguez smiled and said, "Your Majesty, do you know where Governor Lu Daolin Zexu's tens of millions of yuan in military salaries came from? ”

"How did Lin Zexu raise his salary? Isn't it a blackmail businessman? ”

Rodriguez waved his hand and said, "No, no, no, I didn't mean that. No big businessman would bury mountains of gold and silver in the back garden, that is the practice of the rich landowners in the countryside. The merchants' money was either used to invest in land, to run businesses, or to lend money...... For example, those who open money banks, pawnshops, etc., at least they will deposit their silver in the bank bank to eat interest. Especially in recent times, the situation has been unstable, so many merchants in Jiangnan have deposited their working capital in your HSBC bank, just like the Cantonese merchants in 1847. So your HSBC bank is already the de facto master of Jiangnan's financial industry. And Lin Zexu's military salary, whether donated by merchants, lent out, or obtained through treasure money. In the final analysis, it is to take the silver out of the Jiangnan financial plate controlled by HSBC. And HSBC ...... It can make Jiangnan's financial plate extremely tight into a state of no money, and it can also make Jiangnan's money and bank industry collectively suffer another run. (To be continued......)