Chapter 50: Great

Not to mention Xi'an, Fengxiang, and Hanzhong, including Gongchang Mansion, Pingliang Mansion, Qingyang Mansion, and even the farther Ningxia Sanwei (Ningxia Wei, Ningxia Zhongwei, and Ningxia Guard), Lintao Mansion, Taozhou Guard, Minzhou Guard, etc., all transferred troops and horses, totaling 60,000 or 70,000 troops, and stationed troops in Tongguan (now Tongchuan) and Lintong to prevent Guan Shengyun's army from suddenly attacking the provincial capital Xi'an.

Including the auxiliary troops, there were only more than 20,000 people in the customs department, and the ratio of troops between the two sides was more than three to one. Moreover, if the fight really starts, theoretically, the soldiers on Guan Shengyun's side can almost be said to have one less dead or wounded, but Shaanxi Province can rely on a relatively complete administrative system to obtain a steady stream of soldiers and material replenishment through systematic requisition. Take 10,000 steps back and say, even if Shaanxi Province can't do it on its own, the imperial court can still mobilize neighboring provinces to help. Shaanxi Xingdu Division, Shanxi, Henan, Sichuan...... can mobilize troops to encircle and suppress. Why bother to be ruthlessly knocked by Guan Shengyun in anger?

Guan Shengyun had no fear, because he knew that the dog officials would not dare to fight.

The officials of Shaanxi Province also know that they must not fight - these people and horses, it is okay to put on a façade and be brave, and it will be over if they really do it.

First of all, this matter must not be known to the imperial court. Well, at least you can't lift the lid and pick out the daylight. To make everyone's face go down is to block the imperial court and roast the Holy Son of Heaven on the fire: the thieves are almost all the prefectures, guards, prefectures, and counties on the east side of Shaanxi Province, and the total source is the three divisions of the provincial government! Even if the incident happens, you can't take down the core leadership team of Shaanxi Province and the officials of half of the province in one go, right? If so, Shaanxi Province will be paralyzed all of a sudden, and the imperial court will still want Shaanxi?

Secondly, the officials are very clear about the virtues of the officers and soldiers. didn't fight, circled in the camp, gave a few dollars to those who stuttered, and there were layers of officers suppressing it, and these plague gods were not very good at harming the place. Once the action is started, whether there is a real war in the area affected by the war, it will all be in vain! These guys, who plague the common people one by one, are majestic, expecting them to fight the thieves with real knives and guns? How much water does the brain have to enter to dare to think like this? It doesn't matter if the war is fought in a neighboring province, but if it is fought in this province, what will the adults eat and drink in the future?

Third, there is a high probability that he will lose the first few battles, Guan Shengyun will definitely use prisoners to expand his strength, and he will not care about the wrath of the Son of Heaven after turning Shaanxi Province into a scorched earth. Regardless of whether he can be caught in the end or not, the black gauze hats of the main officials will definitely fall first, and many of them may even fall off with their heads!

Therefore, the deployment of troops is only a precaution, and this battle must not really be fought. Of course, the chaos in Yan'an Mansion must not be hidden, but fortunately, Yu Shengliang has the black pot on his back, and he is all on his head. These Xinjiang ministers were scolded on the spot, fined for one year, and at most they were dismissed from their posts and retained. As long as they stay in office, who cares about that? The mobilization of troops and horses in Shaanxi Province can be reported as a large-scale military training activity to make up for the dead after discovering hidden dangers, and to prepare for military affairs, who can say that it is wrong? Guan Shengyun's troops, with the movement of the pen, can be packaged as part of the training officer army. With an illiteracy rate of more than 90 percent, and the lack of instant means of communication, Jingshi is so far away that it can always fool the past. As long as they get out of Shaanxi, it's time for those guys in Henan to worry about it!

In short, the situation in Shaanxi Province is very good. It has to be good.

To tell the truth, the combat effectiveness of the Qin soldiers in the Ming Dynasty is definitely second to none. However, that is talking about the family soldiers of the generals on the road, at least they must be descendants. Most of the soldiers were no different from the soldiers in other provinces, except that they were poorer.

This is a historical legacy that no one can solve, a dead knot.

As we said, the root lies in Taizu. Zhu Yuanzhang is notoriously ruthless. is ruthless, the greater the credit, the more you have to kill, and the more thoroughly you kill: Hu Weiyong's case and the Lanyu case, the number of people killed is in tens of thousands. At the same time, Grandpa Tai is even more of a money fan: Of course you do things well, but it's better not to eat, otherwise he will feel distressed! The early Ming officials had the lowest wage in the world, and they had to worry about losing their heads from time to time, which everyone on the earth knew.

The imperial court always has to give money and food to raise soldiers, right? Unalterable principle. But the grandfather has calculated the account: raise soldiers for a thousand days, and use soldiers for a while? In other words, if there were no thieves to rebel, wouldn't I have raised you in vain? If there are thieves in the northwest to rebel, you can't use the guys in the southeast, and I still lose money if you settle the account! Even if you use it, that is, all at once, if you defeat the thief, you will have to support you for a lifetime! How can I do this, I have lost a lot!

The best solution is that you don't usually eat, and if there are Tartars who are causing trouble, you will cut them down for me, and when they are all hacked to death, you better die with them - then I am the happiest.

Obviously, the cannon fodder didn't have this awareness.

Well, Grandpa Tai racked his brains and finally figured out a good way to Juntun. At the beginning of the world, there was a large amount of ownerless wasteland, and the system of the guard station was set up, and it was allocated to the troops, with 50 acres per person, and returned to the cattle. Those who have a daughter-in-law will bring their families over, and those who don't have a daughter-in-law will be helped by relatives in their hometown to marry one and send it over, and from then on they will take root in the health center - don't think about coming back, the place of residence will be changed there for you. Therefore, we sometimes read history and see that some people have two kinds of origins, most of which are for this reason: during the imperial examination, they have to take the examination in the place where Wei belongs, and the official archives record that the place of origin is the location of the Wei Station, and when they get ahead in the future, they don't want people to say that their ancestors are stinky soldiers, and they re-report their ancestral hometowns. In peacetime, the peasants and soldiers of the guard station plough the fields, eat the grain they grow, and in the event of a war, put down their hoes and pick up their knives to cut down the enemies for me, and when they cut down all my enemies, you still have your life to go home and continue to farm and eat yourself, and if you are hacked to death by thieves, I will catch the criminals and make up for the field again!

The smart grandfather was very happy to come up with this good method: "I don't need a grain of millet to raise a million soldiers."

As we said earlier, after a few generations, the system has changed. The generals gradually encroached on the land and property of the military camp as their own private property, and the production was all their own. The main labor force was no longer the soldiers, but the serfs with the name of the soldier (soldier), and the better name was the auxiliary soldier - these people had never touched a knife in their lives, they could not fight at all, and the earlier soldiers either became small landlords or captains of production teams. If there is a war, there must be real soldiers? So he had to raise soldiers alone.

This is how the question arises: why should the generals pay for the country when they fight for the country and for the country? The court has to give money and food!

Since Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the old Zhu family has never been more ruthless and blacker than these two people, and they are helpless when they encounter this kind of thing, so they can only transport grain and salary to the border towns through Cao Yun, and over time, a convention has been formed: Tuntian is privately divided by the generals, and the imperial court will separately transport money and rice to raise soldiers.

The price is too high. Not to mention the cost of time, the investment of manpower and material resources, the loss on the road, the greed for ink of officials of all sizes, and the eating and taking of cards by Cao soldiers...... Calculate the total amount of levy, and then count the materials transported to Jiubian, it is definitely not an exaggeration to describe it as "ten do not save one".

There were "smart people" who pondered solutions.

The first smart people were merchants.

They proposed to the imperial court: We merchants should contract the transportation work for the border army. The imperial court only needs to tell us how much grain the border army needs, and give it to us in the south, or directly give us the purchase money, and we are responsible for transporting the money and rice on time and in full amount, and the transportation fee is quoted at a ridiculously low price - the imperial court symbolically pays a little transportation fee, and then approves us some "salt introduction" as a subsidy. Salt citation is a license to sell salt. Since the Han Dynasty, salt and iron have been strategic materials monopolized by the state, and merchants need a special business license to sell them.

The Son of Heaven pondered: In the past, when I sent one stone of grain to the border town, I needed to invest ten stone of grain in the transportation fee, but now you have it all? This is a good thing, isn't it just to issue a few permits, and you don't have to pay cash. So it was approved.

Then, the border troops were all fed high-quality military rations—some of the military salaries had to be deducted, because it was impossible for the merchants to pay according to the salaries, and they had to go through the hands of the officers. But after all, there are a lot more people who can get their hands on it than before. It is great news for the court and the soldiers.

In other words, do businessmen really have such high efficiency that they can make a profit on the projects of the imperial court's huge deficit? Yes, businessmen really can. If the transportation cost of one stone of grain is ten stones, the court will invest ten stones, and the highest price of the merchants will be only two stones.

In the minds of the adults of the imperial court, no matter how hard you can endure hardships, no matter how much you travel day and night, thousands of miles, even if the convoy eats grass and no grain like mules and horses for more than half of the time (well, mules and horses will have to eat some grain when they go far away with a load...... I can't make a lot of money!

As it turned out, the adults were wrong: the merchants not only earned, but also, multiplied!

The principle is simple. Because the merchants didn't actually ship a grain of grain!

The merchants sold the grain allocated by the imperial court on the spot and exchanged it for silver, which was the silver of one stone of grain, together with the transportation fee, which was the silver of the two stone of grain, and brought it to the border town - that is, they took three times the price of grain to the border land, and then hired the displaced people to open up the wasteland! The commission price of the displaced people is much lower than the labor price in the grain-producing area of the land of fish and rice! Just this operation has made a lot of money.

Wait for the merchants to grow grain and pay it to the border generals, and then use the receipt vouchers of the border generals to exchange them for salt at the government, and then purchase salt from the coast and sell it to the Quartet!

Earn high.

And then...... It was banned.

The imperial court saved huge costs, happy.

The border troops were happy to eat high-quality military rations and receive more military pay than before.

The merchants made a lot of money and were happy.

If someone is happy, there must be someone who is unhappy.

For example, the officials in charge of Cao Yun were very unhappy. In the past, you could be corrupt, you could eat and take cards, you could reimburse the accounts of hiring fiber workers, and you could accept the filial piety of Caotou (contractor + underworld...... Now there is no way. The bigger loss is entrainment - transported from south to north, you can bring private goods! Taking a public ship, not only is there zero freight, but you don't need to pay taxes at various checkpoints! The more bootleggings you bring, the more you earn. Therefore, the boat is getting bigger and bigger, and even the largest is about as wide as the river, and the water level of the Grand Canal drops a little, and the whole ship runs aground, blocking the river tightly, not to mention the boat, not even a duck can swim over! The officials mentioned here are not the governors of Caoyun - from Huguang in the south to Jingshi, where the Grand Canal passes, those benefits, everyone has a share in the officials on both sides of the river!

The soldiers and servants were not happy. The oil and water that I could get from the slender man in the past is gone, and the opportunity to steal chickens and dogs and sell grain is gone.

The adults in the court were not happy. No more "drifting"! You must know that not only the materials transported by the Beijing division to the border areas will be lost, but also the road transported from Huguang, Suzhou and Hangzhou to the Beijing division will drift even more!

The civil officials of the border towns were not happy. In the past, the materials and silver had to be passed, and they could be earned by passing their hands, but now there is nothing to fish!

Even the generals are not happy! The businessmen reclaimed the border and farmed the land, and it was not clear that the Son of Heaven would remember one day that the grandfather had allocated a large number of military camps!

There is a way to cut off people's financial routes, such as killing parents, how can such a big revenge not be avenged!

So, this one reported that the merchant was spying on the military, the other reported that the merchant was shoddy, you reported the merchant for raising prices, and I reported that the merchant "trespassing" (such as wearing a silk dress) increased the rebellion......

Gotcha, clean up!

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the biggest feature was that there were countless "righteous men and gentlemen" in the court, who would lay on the ground and cry at every turn, and the more miserable they were, the more patriotic they became. At that moment, some people are heartbroken—oh, in fact, these are two words: "heartbroken" for less greed for silver, and then go to the feet of the emperor to "head up": Your Majesty, it's amazing, there is a great disaster! The merchants actually wore silk clothes, and they were colorful! This is not only a blatant disobedience to the order of the great grandfather, but also does not conform to the "etiquette"! What is a courtesy? Etiquette is the foundation of the country!

People were arrested and tried, those who were killed were killed, those who were exiled were exiled, family property was confiscated, and the barren land that had been opened up was nationalized...... Glad the situation is very good.

And then the border troops starved again.

Yes, every time the court cries out that the situation is good, there must be many people starving. The louder the shouting, the better the situation, the more hungry people and the worse they will starve.