Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, it's another year.

In the first month of the eighteenth year of Chongzhen, there was peace inside and outside Beijing, and the officials and people at the feet of the Son of Heaven were preparing to spend a rare and peaceful Spring Festival.

Historically, the Chongzhen era only lasted until the seventeenth year, because the seventeenth year of Chongzhen was the year of the Jiashen national disaster, and with the entry of the Qing army, the Chongzhen era was abolished. Therefore, according to historical records, the eighteenth year of Chongzhen should be called the second year of Shunzhi.

It was also in this year that many major events occurred that shocked future generations.

First, the Qing soldiers Tatar broke through Tongguan and captured Chang'an, the capital of Dashun, and Li Zicheng was forced to withdraw from Guanzhong. At the beginning of May, when the Dashun army arrived at Jiugong Mountain in Tongcheng, Hubei, Li Zicheng led more than 20 light horsemen to climb the mountain to explore the road, and was killed by the local militia armed Jiang Dayan, the Dashun regime fell, and he reigned for 18 years, and Li Zicheng, the king of the emperor who was only the emperor in Beijing for one day, completely withdrew from the stage of history.

Then the Qing soldiers began to carry out a bloody massacre of the Ming people, according to various historical records, since the Chongzhen 17th year after the Jiashen national disaster, in just six years, the Qing soldiers killed the Ming people at least more than 50 million, the larger massacre involved more than 20 cities, only in the second year of Shunzhi, there were Yangzhou, Jiading, Jiaxing, Jiangyin, Kunshan, Changshu and so on several times of big killings, resulting in a river of blood, bones like a mountain, the corpse thrown into the river to make the river flow of the tragic scene.

Among them, the Ten Days in Yangzhou and the Three Massacres in Jiading were the most tragic. On April 25, 1645 in history, the city of Yangzhou was broken, Shi Kefa refused to surrender and martyred, the commander of the Qing army, Duoduo, ordered the slaughter of the city, and the Qing soldiers did not seal the sword for ten days, turning Yangzhou City into a bloody city, and 800,000 people inside and outside Yangzhou were slaughtered.

In the summer of 1645, the Qing army broke through Jiading and slaughtered the city three times. At the beginning of the Qing army, the Qing army issued a shaving order, the people of Jiading refused to obey the order, and resisted the Qing Dynasty under the leadership of the squire Hou Tong, after the city of Jiading was broken, Li Chengdong, the general soldier of Wusong in the Qing Dynasty, ordered the slaughter of the city, and more than 30,000 people were killed; Later, Zhu Ying led the public exhibition to launch the anti-Qing struggle again, executed the traitors and officials who surrendered to the Qing army, and Li Chengdong led the army back to carry out the second massacre; More than 20 days later, General Wu Zhifan led the rest of the army to resist the Qing army three times, Li Chengdong counterattacked as a whole army, slashed and killed hundreds of Wu's soldiers, and carried out the third massacre of the city, resulting in the terrifying "Jiading Three Massacres", a total of about 100,000 people in the city.

It can be said that every word of this history is infected with the blood of the Chinese people and piled up tens of millions of white bones!

Fortunately, because of Liu Yan's arrival, at least in this time and space, this tragic history did not happen, and now the Manchu Tartars are shrinking in Liaodong, and the Ming Dynasty is regaining prosperity at an astonishing speed.

Just after the lively Spring Festival, Liu Yan convened the cabinet ministers, first greeted everyone for the New Year, and then began to deploy the general outline of government affairs for this year.

The new deal has been fully implemented in the provinces of the Ming Dynasty, and the military reform policy and the compulsory military system have been basically implemented, only Fujian is still being implemented, Liu Yan has said that he will lead the troops to Fujian after the beginning of the spring to "inspect", and it is estimated that he will discuss with Zheng Zhilong about the reorganization of Zheng Jun.

With the foundation of the new policy, military reform, and compulsory military system, the amount of revenue of the Ming court has continued to increase, and all parts of the country have regained their vitality, even Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Gansu, etc., the provinces that have been severely harmed by the army of thieves have now recovered a lot of vitality.

Merchants in various places flourished, farmland was also redistributed in place, the Ming officialdom was thoroughly governed, and even the vassal kings in various places were much more honest, and the imperial court also added a clause to reduce the supply of vassal kings in the new policy, and the vassal kings in various places did not make any splash.

Liu Yan even heard that the German king Zhu Youli took the initiative to help the poor people, and the governor of Shandong, Yan Jizu, expressed the news to the imperial court, which shows that after the general environment changes, those vassal kings will also "keep pace with the times".

"The next topic is the ban on mining!"

Everyone was taken aback when they heard this, only Xun Jingyun, the secretary of the Equipment Department, and Tian Huixu, the secretary of the Ministry of National Defense, were overjoyed, and a smile appeared on their faces.

The Ming Dynasty's mining ban policy has a long history, and the more famous event is the mine supervisor incident of the Wanli Dynasty, when the Wanli Emperor used eunuchs to open mines in various places and collect mining taxes, which caused great turmoil.

Generally speaking, gold, silver, copper, iron and other mines, after the salt and iron official camp, the imperial courts of all dynasties are not allowed to mine privately, if the people want to mine, all actions will be under the strict control of the government, from private to public.

Moreover, mining is easy to gather a large number of young and strong men, and the miners compete with each other for minerals, which is easy to cause accidents, and it is common for miners and miners to break out in uprisings in the past dynasties, so the general supervision of private mining is relatively strict.

Before that, the country was not in charge of private mining, so there were many people who made a fortune, such as Guo Zong: "Handan Guo Zong made a business with iron smelting, and became rich with the king", as well as Ba Qing: "And Ba Widow Qing, she first got the Dan Cave, and she was good at it for several generations, and her family was not happy." "Danxue is a cinnabar mine. There are many examples of making a fortune by mining and smelting iron.

In the early Ming Dynasty, it was not important to pay attention to and did not advocate mining, so in the early Ming Dynasty, there were fewer mines in all parts of the country, and then in the Ming Dynasty, although the imperial court still did not support mining, but the mining ban has been loosened, and in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court began to attach importance to and widely exploited, and the mining tax was prosperous.

However, at this time, although the people can be mined, but the tax is heavy, and in the later period, because of the mining tax, the chicken and dog jumped, and the imperial court collected the mining tax by the Donglin Party at that time said that it was competing with the people for profit, and then took the lead in attacking the imperial court and resisting the mining tax.

However, there are many people in the Donglin Party who are secretly mining behind their backs, and on the one hand, they do not allow the imperial court to collect mining taxes, and on the other hand, they secretly make a lot of money, and they interpret the shameless people to the fullest.

To get back to the point, this time Liu Yan is preparing to open the mining ban, of course, not directly and let the people open the mine on their own, but to formulate a detailed management law, conditional and limited opening of the mining ban, in order to increase the output of various mineral deposits and increase the mining tax revenue of the imperial court.

"Gold, silver, copper, and iron are still not allowed to be mined by the private sector, and can only be invested and mined by a mining trading company established by the Ministry of Commerce."

"At the same time, the Ministry of Land and Resources, which is responsible for farming, collecting land taxes, reclaiming wasteland, and building water conservancy, also manages the country's minerals, and all new minerals opened by the Ministry of Civil and Commercial Affairs must be examined and approved by the newly established Mining Department of the Ministry of Land, and the minerals that have been mined must also be reported to the Mining Department of the Ministry of Land."

Then Liu Yan said to Zhang Lei: "In the future, Zhang Shangshu will be in charge of both agriculture and mining, so we must understand the mineral deposits in Daming as soon as possible, send people to verify the mining situation in various places, and come up with a set of mining tax collection rules as soon as possible, and each mineral must have a corresponding tax rate." In the future, the Ministry of Land and Resources will be responsible for collecting the mining tax and transferring it to the Ministry of Finance. ”

The authority in Zhang Lei's hand has increased a lot, and he suddenly smiled, and immediately hugged his fists to receive his life.

However, Chen Xinjia, the secretary of the General Staff Department, was still a little worried, and said: "Ge Lao, the matter of mining is important, if there are more mines in the world, it will inevitably cause the miners to gather, and it will also make many powerful people take the opportunity to get rich. ”

Liu Yan nodded in agreement, but said: "Therefore, the imperial court should strengthen the concurrent management, and the local large households can open mines, but the output and employment situation must be reported to the imperial court every year, and the local yamen will also manage it, and the mining tax must also be paid on time, and the safety and income of the miners must be guaranteed." In this regard, the Ministry of Land and Resources must formulate strict regulations and must not relax them. ”

Liu Yan naturally understands that with the current level of governance of the Ming Dynasty, it will definitely not be comparable to that of later generations, and as long as the Ming Dynasty's control over the local area is lax in the future, there will definitely be something that Chen Xinjia is worried about.

However, Liu Yan is not very worried, because judging from the current development prospects of the Ming Dynasty, even if someone gathers miners to make trouble, it will be suppressed in a very short time.

Liu Yan can't just let the mineral resources not be developed because he is worried that someone will make trouble and that there will be strong ones, and he sees that the military industrial base built by the Ministry of Equipment lacks raw materials, and that the mining, smelting and other technologies of the Ming Dynasty cannot be developed, right?

If Liu Yan really did that, it would be a waste of food because of choking!

Zhang Lei immediately set up a "military order", when the court disbanded, Zhang Lei began to rectify the Ministry of Agriculture, only four days later, the Ming Ministry of Land and Resources was put on the office, and a series of matters related to the mining ban were also being carried out in an orderly manner.

At this time, Liu Yan was in the imperial study and reported to Emperor Chongzhen about the mining ban.

Because according to the provisions of the Ming Law, the income from the mountains and rivers of the Ming Dynasty should be paid by the emperor and used for the expenses of the imperial family.

This time Liu Yan is preparing to open a mining ban, in essence, he is robbing Emperor Chongzhen's silver, although the mining of people in various places has already begun, and the imperial court is unable to manage and collect taxes, Liu Yan does not care, and Emperor Chongzhen cannot collect money.

However, Liu Yan still officially reported the matter to Emperor Chongzhen, and promised that every year the imperial court would take out 20% of the mining tax, which would be at the disposal of the Ming royal family.

"Your Majesty, the minister is ready to divide the revenue of the mining tax into three, the royal family accounts for two, the counties of the Ming Dynasty account for one percent, the prefectures account for one and a half, each province accounts for one and a half, and the court accounts for forty percent."

As a result, Liu Yan used the mining tax as a means of "financial supplement", which could not only increase the revenue of the central government of the Ming Dynasty, but also allow the local government to drink soup with him, and also give a part of it to Emperor Chongzhen, which can be described as killing three birds with one stone.

Emperor Chongzhen pondered for a while, and then agreed, even so happy that Liu Yan was a little surprised.

In fact, Emperor Chongzhen also understood in his heart that even if he didn't agree, what could he do, now that the Ming Dynasty was in the hands of Liu Yan alone, he was also raised by Liu Yan as the emperor, and he had no right to speak at all.

Now that Liu Yan can report himself every time he encounters a major event, and he can still think of giving himself a little after collecting the mining tax, what else can Emperor Chongzhen say? How dare you say anything?

However, in order to show the majesty of the emperor, Emperor Chongzhen paused, and still said: "Even if the mining ban is opened, the imperial court must put an end to the gathering of miners by the powerful, otherwise Li Zicheng's disaster will be a lesson from the past!" ”

Liu Yan naturally agreed not to mention it.

Coming out of the imperial study, Liu Yan walked towards the noon gate, the weather was still very cold at this time, Liu Yan breathed in the cool air, only felt very comfortable in his heart, and said secretly: "Now that most of the things in the court have settled, it's time to prepare to leave for Fujian!" ”