It is more difficult to sit on the throne than to fight the country, and this is an obvious truth, because governing the country is more complicated than directing war.

Over the past year or so, Yang Chao has fought two battles of Yangzhou, a battle of the Yangtze River, two battles of Taipingfu, and has fought with the Qing army generals Duoduo, the Azig brothers, and Huang Taiji's eldest son Duoduo.

But Yang Chao felt that compared with the tragic war, stabilizing the economy of Jiangnan was the more important thing for him.

At that time, the Qing army approached Nanjing, and the Hongguang Emperor Zhu Cihong abandoned the city, and Nanjing was in chaos, and the poor people in the vicinity even broke into the palace to rob and steal.

It would be too arbitrary to treat this turmoil as a mere robbery by thugs, knowing that three days after the emperor abandoned the city, the price of grain in Nanjing reached 10 taels and 11 quintals, in this case, many people could no longer afford to eat, and it also meant that the economy was on the verge of collapse.

Economic collapse often means the collapse of the social order.

Yang Chao returned to Nanjing, and soon stabilized the war situation, but the price of grain continued to be high for a month, with an average price of five taels and one quintal, even if Yang Chao repelled all the enemies on all sides, the market still continued to be high for more than five months, making Nanjing a depression.

It was not until Yang Chao began to reform the tax collection system, squeezed out a large amount of hidden land from the wealthy family, and collected this year's summer grain, that the price of grain was reduced to two taels of silver.

The hard work is much more than fighting a dangerous war.

Although the price of grain was high, in the countryside, ordinary peasants could not profit at all, because of the implementation of a whip law, the imperial court only collected silver, and the common people had to pay taxes, and they needed to sell grain after the grain was harvested, and then they could pay taxes.

But at this time, the grain merchants and the wealthy began to work together to lower the price of grain, and the government pressured the peasants to pay taxes. Instead, the wealthy and grain merchants began to sell grain to them at high prices, and many people could go bankrupt in one fell swoop, and the land was sold to the wealthy families, and even their children had to be slaves.

This kind of thing has been happening since ancient times. It is not a matter of Zhang Juzheng's whip law, any law has loopholes, and rich and powerful people can always use their advantages to obtain benefits, Zhang Juzheng's original intention of implementing a whip law is two, one is to increase the tax revenue of the imperial court. The other also has the purpose of reducing the burden of the people, Zhang Juzheng before the Ming Dynasty implemented the tax in kind, the grain was planted, the mulberry was planted, and the silkworm was cocooned, but at that time the officials were also oppressing the people.

If Zhang Juzheng wanted to collect money, the officials would have no excuse to kick Hu Linjian. But what he didn't expect was that the government would have other worse ways to deal with the people.

Anyway, as long as it is the law, there are always rich and powerful people who take advantage, and this point can never be changed.

Yang Chao naturally knew all kinds of maladministration, so when he went to collect grain, Yang Chao did not give the profiteers and wealthy families the opportunity to collude, set up granaries in various counties, and directly collected grain, and the government's price was one load of rice and one tael of silver, so that the common people had a choice, if the grain price given by the grain merchants was too low. If it is less than one tael of silver, they will sell the grain directly to the government to pay taxes, and if the grain merchant bids a high price, they will sell it to the grain merchant.

In the end, as a result of stabilizing prices, the common people finally got a steady income of one or two silver. Compared with the ending of the harvest and tears in previous years, it is really much better.

Collecting grain from the common people for one tael of silver is naturally impossible to sell for one tael of silver.

Yang Chao, who held 8 million quintals of grain, did not do anything at first and let the market run, but the grain merchants still sold grain at a high price. The price of grain in Nanjing was still as high as three taels and one quintal, and at this time Yang Chao had to take action and transport a large amount of grain to Nanjing, and the unlimited supply of two taels and one quintal was enough to suppress the grain merchants' attempts, and the grain price was restored to two taels of silver per load.

Yang Chao didn't go too far, leaving them a profit margin of one or two silver, which can be regarded as the management fee for them to collect the grain from the farmland and then run it to various markets.

Compared with the price of 10 taels or 5 taels in the past, two taels of silver is also an acceptable price, although the pressure of life in the city is still greater than in the past, the peasants have a greater income than in previous years, and the peasants have no income, and their enthusiasm for production will naturally not be high, and the grain output will not be raised.

As for the grain merchants who did not get huge profits, the wealthy families failed to annex the land, and they had no way to be resentful, Yang Chao had to make them accept their own rules.

After stabilizing grain prices and stabilizing the basic economic order, Yang Chao set his sights on another field.

Private money!

Many of the large and small money banks, silver numbers and pawnshops of the Ming Dynasty are involved in the field of manufacturing private money, and they are the main business.

In the early days of the Ming Dynasty, emperors like Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di dared to mint private money, and they were absolutely intolerable, and they were directly beheaded.

However, the profits of private money are too rich, and I still can't help it, but the money minted by the imperial court in the early Ming Dynasty is of good quality and weighty, and private money is not too rampant.

After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the economy was more prosperous, the circulation of money needed increased greatly, and there was a serious shortage of money in the market, so the trading of private money was greater.

The Ming Dynasty tried to prohibit it, and the court itself wanted to mint a large amount of money, but the copper was not enough at all, and the government was corrupt, and the quality of the money cast by the court was not as good as private money.

After that, the imperial court ignored the minting of private money, anyway, the imperial court was not able to mint money, and the money in the market was completely insufficient, so in the end, the right to mint coins was given to private money banks and silver shops.

The court used the levied copper, and the craftsmen who did not want to pay the wages did not have the money minted as the private ones, which had to be said to be an irony, the civil officials were too greedy and wanted to make a profit from it, but the court could not rely on them, and finally could only give up the coinage rights to the people.

However, these minting private money is not a good thing, using the minting of private money to disrupt the currency market, copper money is more volatile than silver price fluctuations, sometimes 12300 wen for one tael of silver, sometimes 5 or 600 wen for one tael of silver, they take advantage of the strong financial advantage, from which to extract precious metals.

The crazy increase in grain prices some time ago is not unrelated to the chaotic financial order.

To be honest, these people won the right to mint coins because of market demand, and the imperial court could not provide enough currency, if it was just this, Yang Chao would not be willing to move their interests and let them continue to mint coins.

However, using the power of coinage to loot silver and disrupt the financial market is not acceptable to Yang Chao.

This is something that must be resolutely cracked down, and the coinage power will be taken back to the imperial court, or the Dadu Governor's Mansion, which will be controlled by Yang Chao.

But this group of minting private money is definitely not so easy to deal with, first of all, there is a huge force behind them.

Yang Chao didn't believe that the inferior money minted by the civil officials of Donglin back then could make the people of Nanjing take to the streets to protest.

Are the common people of Daming so aggressive? Behind this must be the same as the boycott of Wanli's collection of mining taxes, it was instigated by someone.

As for who the person instigated, Yang Chao knew that anyone who dared to mint private money was a powerful and deep-rooted force, and there were only two kinds of such forces in the Ming Dynasty, one was a wealthy family that had been heirloom for a hundred years, and the other was a nobleman who had retired with the country, and ordinary businessmen could not do this kind of business.

So Yang Chao had to strike at the wealthy and noble again.

As for the nobles, there is nothing to worry about, the imperial court has become like this, and they who rely on the imperial court to gain power are not much different from ordinary wealthy families, so it is actually the wealthy group that is attacked.

Or it's not right to crack down, Yang Chao just wants to take back the right to mint coins, anyway, de jure they have never had this kind of power, it's just that the court just turned a blind eye to their actions.

So after the grain price stabilized, Yang Chao felt that the time had come, and immediately issued a decree prohibiting the minting of private money, and violators of the order were punished according to the law.

The laws of the Ming Dynasty have not changed, how did Zhu Yuanzhang treat the minting of private money, and now it is still those stripes, but no one implements it, and now Yang Chao has moved out and let the government strictly enforce it, which is reasonable and well-founded, and he is not afraid that the wealthy families will not comply.

As for the rebound of the wealthy clan, there is no need to be afraid of the force for the time being, I just hit them once, I believe that these wealthy clans still dare not stand up and let Yang Chao cut them, and their most powerful weapon is not the group of family members, but the financial power in their hands.

The reason why private money is popular on a large scale is that the Ming Dynasty lost the ability to mint money, and after the Apocalypse, that is, Emperor Chongzhen set up a minting bureau in Linqing, the purpose of which was just to mint money to arbitrage money and raise military spending.

Now Yang Chao forbade those pawnshops to mint private money, but Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't ban it by peeling the skin and filling the grass, and he didn't believe that he could ban it, so he agreed with the Dutch to ban the tin trade, and planned to let the money village not get cheap tin from Nanyang, so that even if they wanted to mint money, they had to weigh the cost, and if they couldn't get the money minted to cover the cost, it would naturally be banned.

By the time they had slowly collected enough tin to mint it again, Yang Chao had already removed the copper coins from the Ming monetary system.

This is Yang Chao's ultimate plan, to use paper money against copper coins, and kick copper coins out of the Ming monetary system in one fell swoop.

Let the Ming monetary system be further upgraded to the silver standard stage, so it is still one era behind the West.

You must know that the West has a gold and silver double standard system, and the stability of gold and silver is obviously much stronger than that of copper, and the use of silver as currency is obviously more determined than the use of money.

After the ban was issued, Yang Chao sent many spies in the army to report on the market situation in various places at all times.

Yang Chao thought that the money banks would continue to secretly mint money desperately, but it was just more hidden, but what Yang Chao didn't expect was that these money banks not only stopped minting private money, but began to return copper coins on a large scale, coupled with the ban on private money, and soon the financial order in the market became chaotic.

Jiangnan was expensive and cheap for a while, and the price of one tael of silver rose from 900 to 1,000 wen to four or five hundred wen a tael. (To be continued.) )