"Your Highness, is six hundred coins too cheap?" Liu Yanzong asked in shock, "I went to the official to find out that a pound of mutton in the Song Dynasty now costs nine hundred coins, and the people of Song Dynasty are particularly happy with mutton."

Zong Wang said: "I have many sheep in my court, and I need copper coins even more. I will sell them for six hundred wen per catty first. People in the Song Dynasty must also have sheep herders. The price will be determined according to the actual market situation."

In fact, the price of mutton at 600 yuan is already sky-high.

A few decades ago, the price of mutton in the Song Dynasty was about 130 Wen per catty.

However, the price of mutton has increased sharply in recent years. The Liao Kingdom, which continued to import sheep to the Song Dynasty, perished. People's livelihood in the northern part of the Song Dynasty was in decline, so mutton prices naturally increased.

At this price, only rich people can afford it.

But it does not prevent Zong Wang from inhaling copper coins.

He continued: "Furthermore, arrange for a group of old, weak, sick and disabled horses to be sold to the Song Dynasty."

"All arrangements have been made for the horses to be sent down to the official level. Currently, we have found three thousand thin horses, each of which can be sold for one hundred guan."

This kind of price would have been unthinkable in the past. However, after several years of wars between the Song and Jin Dynasties, the Song Dynasty, which was already short of horses, was robbed of a large number of war horses.

For example, in the first battle to defend Tokyo City, Zong Wang took away 20,000 fine horses from the royal stables near Tokyo City.

Countless war horses were plundered in Hebei, Hedong, and Shaanxi, and almost all the horses raised by private grooms were also plundered.

So for the current Song Dynasty, the price of a horse has risen to one hundred guan, or even more.

Zong Wang said: "If you give them fifty guan, they must receive copper coins."

"Your Highness, the people of Song Dynasty are short of horses, we can definitely give them a hundred guans."

Zong Wang said: "Time is the most precious thing. We must absorb a large amount of copper coins from the Song border in the shortest possible time. The art of war has its own meaning, and soldiers must be quick."

"We have to leave enough room for those businessmen to make money, so that they will be more willing to help us resell them quickly."

Of course, not all 10,000 sheep were sold to the Song Dynasty in one go.

Sell ​​it step by step.

Zong Wang's first-stage goal is to absorb all the copper coins from the state capitals in northern Hebei.

Each adult sheep weighs about 100 kilograms. If the bones are shaved off and only the mutton is counted, it is about 60 kilograms. Each kilogram is worth 600 wen. A sheep can be sold for 36,000 wen when selling its meat.

Bones can be sold for 200 Wen per pound, and the bones of a sheep can be sold for 8,000 Wen.

A whole sheep can be sold for 44,000 wen, which is 44 strings.

Ten thousand sheep can be sold for 440,000 yuan.

3,000 horses can be sold for 150,000 pounds.

The total is almost 590,000 yuan.

What is this concept?

In the second year of Xuanhe, that is, eight years ago, the Song Dynasty minted 3 million copper coins a year.

After the Chanyuan Alliance, the Song Dynasty gave the Liao Kingdom only 100,000 coins a year.

Generally, a person is considered a rich man if his wealth exceeds 10,000 yuan.

So he has a lot of money.

Generally speaking, in some counties in Hebei, assuming 50,000 people, one person circulates an average of 100 Wenqian per day, which is 5,000 Guanqian.

If a county has 5,000 coins, it can ensure normal trade in the county.

In a slightly larger county, the total number of copper coins circulating in the market may not exceed 10,000 guan.

Of course, this is counting currency in circulation, plus the currency that is not in circulation, it is far more than that.

In ancient times, most of the money was hidden by landowners, either in their own homes or buried underground.

If Zong Wang sells all these sheep and horses, it may really cause a large outflow of copper coins from many places in Hebei and Hedong.

However, the market is volatile.

The price of mutton may fall, but that is a story for another day.

Zong Wang emphasized again: "Remember, ordinary people won't buy it, so there is no need to waste time on them, and they don't have copper coins."

"I understand that there are special people transporting goods at the border. Your Highness can rest assured that I can guarantee that some sheep can even be sold to Tokyo."

"oh?"

"The rich people and officials in Hebei and Hedong will buy mutton at this price, but those businessmen may be more willing to sell it to Tokyo."

"What you said makes sense. I'll leave this matter to you."

"yes."

Of course, there are many goods from the Jin Kingdom that are on the list heading south.

This kind of trade was not allowed to come to the fore before the Song and Jin Dynasties formally negotiated peace.

But there are a lot of people doing it in the private sector.

Whether it is Song Xia or Song Liao, there has been a large amount of border smuggling for hundreds of years.

Those smuggling traders bribed border officials and sergeants.

Even the military is involved in smuggling.

Historically, there were a large number of soldiers secretly engaged in smuggling business on the Song-Xia border.

In the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, Zhang Jun was the leader in the border smuggling business. He even transported state-owned assets to the border to sell them.

It is unrealistic to use the ancient bureaucracy to strictly investigate smuggling and completely eliminate it.

In any organization, once the number of people increases, the internal efficiency will inevitably be low, accompanied by corruption, inactivity and other stinky problems.

Historically, the Song Dynasty court explicitly banned smuggling due to the outflow of copper coins many times, but the ban continued.

Even in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, there was a lot of smuggling among the people.

You must know that commercial transactions will always exist. As long as people have needs, there will be transactions.

As long as there is money to be made, there will be businessmen.

Even many ordinary people will participate.

For example, knitted shoes and hats can be sold to make some living money.

The two countries of Song and Jin did have a hatred for the destruction of the country, but as small as an individual, when an individual has no food to eat, he will not think about the destruction of the country.

Individuals are like ants, they just want to eat a bite of food, nothing more.

Therefore, it is unrealistic to use national justice to call on borders not to buy things from the Jin Kingdom, or to sell things to the Jin Kingdom.

Besides, when businessmen or ordinary people buy it, they most likely don’t know that it is something from the Kingdom of Jin.

Just like if you buy something from the next village or county without a trademark, you don’t know where it is produced, and you don’t care where it is produced!

If Zhao Ning invests a large number of anti-smuggling personnel at the border, these anti-smuggling personnel may not only produce little, but may even participate in smuggling.

Therefore, blocking is worse than removing.

Time is flowing rapidly.

In the blink of an eye, it is already April 15th, and the sun is shining on people, making them a little hot.

The Huaixi rebellion was originally a small matter, but when word spread to the capital, it became a major event.

After all, the nature of this incident was defined as a "rebellion", and some officials even felt that it might evolve into the scale of Fang La's rebellion.

If it really reached the scale of Fang La back then, the Song Dynasty would probably be completely doomed.

At that time, the Kingdom of Jin sent a stupid envoy to directly march south.

But Zhao Ning is not worried, Huaixi will definitely not be able to make a noise.

The powerful class has their weaknesses.

Now we are recovering taxes, not implementing new policies.

The implementation of the New Deal will cost them their lives. It is reasonable for them to rebel, but the tax collection now only allows them to make up for what they have missed before.

What landowner has lost his mind and rebels because he doesn't want to pay taxes?
Chapter completed!