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In the past month, the losses of the Mawei Army have been the heaviest in history. Only the last time the 20,000 soldiers and horses outside Ji'an Mansion blocked the Wu army and Wu Yingji, they lost nearly 5,000 people, of which more than 3,300 were killed in battle, and more than 900 were seriously wounded and discharged. Originally, less than 2,800 people died directly on the battlefield, but because the wounded soldiers on the battlefield failed to survive in the follow-up treatment, 500 died one after another. This hand-to-hand combat is all bloody wounds, and the weather is still relatively hot now, and a slight infection is really powerless with the medical conditions at the moment.

Bai Xianzhong, the commander of the First Division, felt that he should bear the responsibility for the huge losses in this battle, so he led these wounded back to Fujian to recuperate and accept punishment by the way. The first thing Geng Jingzhong did after Bai Xianzhong returned to Fuzhou was not to punish him, but to order Bai Xianzhong to personally move the remains of the fallen soldiers into the martyrs' cemetery with him, and ordered Yao Qisheng to calculate the compensation of the fallen soldiers and send them to the families of the soldiers.

"Governor, this time our army has lost a total of 3,361 soldiers, and 922 people are seriously injured and need to be discharged. Among them, the soldiers who died in battle were required to be allocated a total of 500,000 33,220 silver dollars, and 922 soldiers were unable to stay in the army due to injuries and had to be discharged, and these soldiers also needed to be allocated 85,290 large silver dollars. This is only a pension, and the soldiers of the 1st Division must also be given their due reward for their exploits, which adds up to more, totaling 1,086,800 silver dollars."

Of course, Yao Qisheng, the big housekeeper, does not need to do the work of the bookkeeper himself. At this moment, he was standing in front of Geng Jingzhong, and read down the results calculated and summarized below one by one to Geng Jingzhong. And this string of numbers made Geng Jingzhong have a headache. Geng Jingzhong stretched out his hand to interrupt Yao Qisheng's report, knocked on the table and said, "Okay, Mr. Yao, I already know, you can just tell me the total amount of expenses that need to be spent this time." ”

"Well, well!" Yao Qisheng didn't want to read them one by one, so he said very simply: "The total expenditure of the war this time is 1,900,04,352 large silver dollars, which is close to the income of our ocean-going trade in the early two months. ”

"Damn!" Geng Jingzhong couldn't help but burst into a foul mouth, what kind of war is this. That's a lot of money. Although the volume of ocean-going trade has shrunk by nearly half in the past six months, and the profit has decreased by six or seven percent, this is also two months' income, nearly two million yuan, and his treasury is only two million in total? If this continues, if this kind of Cheng Dù battle comes again ten times or eight times, he will go bankrupt!

Geng Jingzhong couldn't help but ask, "Mr. Yao, this is not right, how can you spend so much silver?" Isn't this month's pension plus the reward for war exploits totaling just over a million? ”

Yao Qisheng also smiled bitterly and said, "My Grand Governor, it is true that it has not exceeded one million yuan in the past few months. However, there had never been so many soldiers killed in battle before, but the average amount of ammunition, grain and grass consumed in the previous monthly battles was 670,000 or 700,000. Don't you want money for all the ammunition you consumed this time? And this time there was a big victory, and the rewards for the soldiers who went out were much more than usual. The simplest one, do you know how much silver it costs to just shoot those flowering bombs, tell you, although the technology of flowering bombs has been developed very maturely, but to create a qualified flowering bomb, it will cost ten big silver dollars, ten big silver dollars! Then if you think about the ammunition of those rifles and the cost of all kinds of baggage, the daily consumption is not a small expense! ”

"So expensive!" Geng Jingzhong was also a little surprised, he didn't pay much attention to these details, if he wanted to develop anything, he would let the base below do it himself, and how much silver was needed to report it, and he would send someone to calculate and inspect it after that. But in this way, he still didn't expect the cost of making zuò flowering shells to be so high, like the battle of the Mawei Army, the cannon moved twice, the first time it fired ten rounds, but the second time it fired forty rounds, that was nearly an hour. Although there are a lot of grapeshotfires in this, is the cost of grapeshotfires less than flowering bullets? It seems that the later generations said that when the cannon sounded, the gold ten thousand taels really made sense! As soon as I remembered that I had fought all the way to Guangdong, Jiangxi, Zhejiang and Wu Sangui's soldiers and horses, how much ammunition money had been spent in the past half a year! At this time, when he thought of using the flowering bullet like running water during the battle, Geng Jingzhong felt sweat begin to ooze from his forehead.

"Damn, we must reduce the cost of making flowering bombs!" Geng Jingzhong secretly made up his mind in his heart, and said the same thing to Yao Qisheng. He knew very well that as long as the large-scale manufacturing of anything began, the cost would naturally come down as the proficiency of the military workshop system increased. Just like the sophisticated electronic products of later generations, every year and a half, the cost will drop sharply, and then the price will also be greatly reduced.

"Yes, the Metropolitan Governor, although we have won consecutive battles since the start of the war, our cost is also several times that of the Qing court or Wu Sangui's soldiers and horses. The biggest head is the consumption of this ammunition and equipment, we have been replacing two batches of 48,000 rifles in the past six months. The day before yesterday, the recruit training camp sent a report again, saying that the last batch of rifles had been taken away with the transfer of the new army, and this new batch of new army recruits also needed a large number of rifles when the training was completed. ”

"Yes, this batch is ready to start recruiting 100,000 new troops, although the first batch is only half of 50,000 people, but that must be prepared for the new army in advance. Is there so much stock in the warehouse? Geng Jingzhong asked with some concern.

Yao Qisheng smiled bitterly: "Back to the capital, no!" Although the military workshop has been expanding, the production rate of rifles per month is more than 5,000 rounds, and it is unlikely that it will be expanded in a short period of time. It will take nearly two years to get these 100,000 rifles together. However, there are still 10,000 rifles in stock in the warehouse, which means that these 10,000 rifles can be used in rotation when the recruits are almost recruited, so that at the end of the recruit training that lasts for about half a year, most of the first round of recruits will be able to use rifles."

"Hehe, then find a way to increase production, fortunately, the production cost of this rifle is low, otherwise I really can't afford it! Can our bank still guarantee 20 million foundations? Are we spending money too hard these days? Geng Jingzhong couldn't help but ask with a bitter face.

"Governor, you're on the point. Aren't we spending too much? Guangdong is constantly building, building ports, building water conservancy, laying various official roads, which all cost a huge amount of silver, we not only returned all the benefits obtained from Guangdong, but also spent fifteen million taels, throughout the ancient and modern times, which one of the superior has such great courage as you, so much silver in the hands of the Qing court or Wu Sangui, that is not a desperate expansion of the army and then sweep the world in one fell swoop! Yao Qisheng said admiringly.

"The construction of the five state capitals of Quzhou and Wenzhou in Zhejiang, as well as the five state capitals in Jiangxi has also been in full swing, which has cost a huge amount of silver, although we have obtained a lot of silver from Wa and Manila a few years ago, but the construction is spent everywhere, so far, our silver treasury is less than 30 million taels, and if it goes on like this, there will be no new financial resources only for a year, and we should have no money."

What Yao Qisheng said is not an exaggeration at all, Geng Jingzhong also knows this, and he can still estimate this account as a highly educated person. Not to mention anything else, just the current 100,000 soldiers and horses, every month people eat horses and chew at least 500,000 yuan of supply, even if you don't fight, occasionally come to a drill and training or something, you have to consume a huge amount of ammunition, that's all money! Now it has been decided to prepare for an additional 100,000 troops, although it is not so much at one time, and it is not equipped with so many rifles and other weapons at once, but it will also be a huge expense.

In addition, Fujian, Guangdong, the two prefectures in the north of Zhejiang, and the five prefectures in Jiangxi, oh, and the two prefectures of Ji'an and Fuzhou that are about to be taken, how many officials do you need for such a large territory? These officials are not allowed to pay salaries? Even if the local construction has been spent in advance, but the operation of the institution must not cost money? It is equivalent to the territory of three provinces, and the monthly expenditure must be about 500,000 yuan, and the sum of these two alone is more than 1 million yuan.

At this time, it was the period of the Great War, especially in Jiangxi, and the Qing court and the Wu army could not say when the war would continue, although the strategy they set was to take Fuzhou and Ji'an Mansion and then enter the defense, but at this time to take these two provinces need to fight, which also requires a lot of silver. The latter stage of defense, all the guns and bullets, rolling stones and mines, and recruiting young men in the city to help defend the city, etc., all cost money. In short, as long as the horsetail army moves its body, it will cost a huge amount of money.

"I thought that the governor of Pontus was already the richest person in the world, and he should not be short of money anymore, but how do I know that a rich man like me, who has so much income every month, is about to run out of money, this is really" Geng Jingzhong said speechlessly. (To be continued......)

PS: Next chapter in the evening