In the guest room of the palace, Chang Yu soaked in a bucket of hot water. After holding in his breath for a long time, he slowly poked his head out and took a long breath of turbid breath, which smelled strongly of alcohol.
Now that we have money, food, and soldiers, and the walls of Taiyuan City are high and thick, if we can't resist the intruders, it can only mean that either God's will is hard to violate, or that we and others are extremely useless.
Chang Yu didn't feel much guilt when he thought about cheating Zhu Shenxuan so much money. These vassal kings, who have enjoyed the emperor's favor for many years, do not contribute money or efforts when the country is in crisis, but when disaster strikes at their doorstep, why don't you contribute?
It is unreasonable to give out grain.
Furthermore, at this time, the Ming Dynasty was in a situation where the national treasury was short of money and food. How could we survive the difficulties without such extraordinary means, extorting nobles and blackmailing the rich? Chongzhen had not thought about it, but he just couldn't do it. But Chang Yu was different. He
I am destined to take the blame, and I have no choice but to take it if I want to.
And he didn't feel there was any shame in taking the blame. There were precedents for this kind of thing, and others would come later. The most famous one was Zeng Guofan.
When Zeng Guofan established the Hunan Army, the maximum salary was forty taels a month, killing an enemy was twelve taels, capturing an enemy alive was thirty taels, plus casualty pensions, etc., the salary expenditure was much higher than that of the government army, but the high military pay
Where did it come from? The imperial court was left with nothing.
So Mr. Zeng found his own way out. In the areas controlled by the Hunan Army, he held donations, donated money, sold officials, extorted distributions from wealthy households, taxed wealthy businessmen, withheld customs duties, etc. In the 12 years since the founding of the army, he had collected a lot of money.
Military salary is nearly 30 million taels (according to later scholars’ statistics, the actual amount is more than 40 million taels)
More recently, the King of Saudi Arabia has recently placed hundreds of princes and wealthy men under house arrest, and demanded that they pay a ransom of hundreds of billions in the name of corruption!
Since there were sages before them and they followed suit later, he was just adding fuel to the flames, so why should he be afraid of the negative fans? Chang Yu sneered, and then sighed secretly, it was a pity that Liu Fangliang had to take advantage of such a wealthy family like Prince Zheng.
When King Zheng was in Huaiqing Mansion (today's Qinyang County), he broke into Fenzhou Mansion on the second day of February. At the same time, Liu Fangliang on the east road broke into Huaiqing Mansion and ransacked King Zheng's house.
There is also Wei Hui's King Lu. Chang Yu frowned. Wei Hui was defeated by Liu Fangliang at the end of February, almost twenty days ago. However, at this time, the Taiyuan bandit army was approaching the city. It was naturally difficult for him to go to the rescue. It was a pity.
That family business.
He went to the rescue, thousands of miles away, but he was powerless, but whether he could get some of his wealth, Chang Yu fell into deep thought.
Also lost in thought was Chunxiang. Chunxiang was Chang Yu's closest person in this world, he was also a teacher, a friend and occasionally a servant.
While Fang San is away, Chang Yu has been taken care of by him. For example, he is also doing the work of adding water to the bath and rubbing his back.
However, he was shocked in his heart. It had only been a few days since Chang Yu's arrow wound in Datong, but it had already healed and even the traces were no longer visible. This was enough to surprise him, but there was something even more shocking to him. Chang Yu
My father-in-law actually has sex, and he is no different from ordinary people!
After getting up early in the morning, Chang Yu ate breakfast in a hurry. He smelled that King Jin was still drunk, so he left without saying goodbye and wanted to leave the palace through the south gate to go to the tower.
There was still a lot of traffic in the palace. How could nearly 600,000 stones of food be moved so easily? After half a night of work, only half of it was done.
Chang Yu took his attendants out of the mansion and saw several people standing at the middle gate watching the moving army. One of them was the princess Zhu Zhi'e. The other older woman saw him coming from a distance and left quickly. When asked, she turned out to be the concubine.
.
Such avoidance is obviously because he has a grudge against Chang Yu. Chang Yu is aware of this. After all, he has gained half of his family property, and King Jin is very likely to be unhappy at this time, so he excuses himself from being hungover.
See.
Sure enough, Zhu Zhi'e, who had been having a flirtatious chat with him last night, now had a stern look on her face. When she saw Chang Yu, she said coldly: "Mr. Factory Supervisor, we are going to evacuate Prince Jin's palace."
"Why do you say this, princess? This little money and food is just a drop in the bucket for the palace, let alone the money taken from the palace and used by the palace!" Chang Yu said with a smile.
What he said is absolutely true. All the princes in the Ming Dynasty were extremely rich. In addition to making money from their own large businesses and various side businesses, they also received salaries. From the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the average prince's salary was 50,000 dan per year. Later, it became more and more popular.
For example, during the Jiajing period, the annual salary of the Prince of Jin was 870,000 shi, and the annual salary of the Prince of Zhou in Henan was 690,000 shi... plus the land tax of their respective fiefdoms, it is definitely a truth, not a metaphor, to say that one is as rich as one's country.
It can be seen from the memorial of Lin Run, the censor at that time, that the annual fiscal revenue was more than 4 million, but the expenditure exceeded 8.5 million shi. It can be seen that the salary of the vassal king was actually one of the main reasons that overwhelmed the Ming Dynasty's finances.
"I'm not talking about money, I'm talking about food!" Zhu Zhi'e snorted coldly: "The Jin Palace doesn't want to rebel, so why do they save so much food?"
This time it was Chang Yu's turn to be embarrassed. Thinking about it, as a vassal king, the land granted to him often amounted to thousands of hectares. But in fact, not all of this land was really given to him. Most of it was given to the palace at the equivalent of about one centimeter of silver per acre.
Of course, the taxes from these lands are also paid to the prince.
Even so, the palace still has an astonishing amount of land, and the annual income of food is an astonishing amount. However, usually the palace only retains enough food for two or three years, and sells the rest. If there is too much food, local civil servants and court spies will keep an eye on it.
However, natural disasters have continued this year, the grain harvest has been severe, and the palace's income has decreased. However, few have been sold and many have been left behind. Zhu Zhi'e said this just because she felt distressed.
"Okay." Chang Yu walked forward and reached out to grab Zhu Zhi'e's little hand: "We have said that we can take the prince's palace and use it for the prince's palace. Let's drive away the rebel army, save Taiyuan, and also save the Jin prince's palace. That land still belongs to the prince's palace.
The land and food are still the food of the palace, and everything that should be ours is still ours. It is just a small difficulty at the moment and it will be over soon."
The sudden irritation made Zhu Zhi'e tremble suddenly and almost twist her waist. Damn, why are you so disgusting? She immediately threw away Chang Yu's hand: "Go away quickly, don't let me see you."
After saying that, he turned around and left, but couldn't help but turn back three times, glared at Chang Yu and snorted, clenching his pink fists as if don't mess with me, I'll beat you away.
"Bring it on" Chang Yu licked his lips. The princess was too good for his taste. Well, he had to stay in Taiyuan for a while and try to win her over.
After walking not far from the south gate of the palace, I gradually noticed that there were more and more refugees on the street. There were soldiers on the roadside shouting and directing these refugees to go to the west or north of the city. These two areas were relatively open and had refugee camps set up.
After riding a horse for a short distance, we arrived near the south gate. From a distance, we could see that the gate was dark and crowded. The chief envoy Zhao Jianji and several officials were leading the government officials to maintain order.
Chang Yu watched from a distance for a while, then went up to the city tower, only to find that there was no one on the city. Standing in the empty hall, he couldn't help but smile. This is good, everyone is busy, instead of sitting in the yamen.
Pointing fingers, talking on paper, being so pragmatic, nothing can't be accomplished.
Walking out of the city tower and supporting the wall, I saw two porridge shacks had been set up on the left and right sides of the city gate. The people who had fled from afar also quickened their pace...
There was a notice posted on the city wall next to the porridge shed. Sun Kangzhou, the prefect, was loudly explaining to the refugees that the refugee camps would be located in the west and north of the city... We are now recruiting migrant workers to take care of food and drink, and wages will be paid daily. Sign up as soon as possible...
"Where did Commander Zhou go?" Chang Yu turned around and asked the soldiers on duty nearby.
"Back to the Governor, General Zhou is training troops in the west of the city, and Commander Wu Gang also went there..."
He had heard for a long time that Zhou Yu Jishan was training troops. At this time, the bandit army was approaching and he was about to sharpen his guns before the battle. Chang Yu decided to go and have a look, so he got on his horse and ran straight west from the city.
Two or three miles west of Datong City is the Fen River, but at this time the river has already frozen, not to mention pedestrians, even cars and horses can bear it.
Sixty thousand men and horses gathered on both sides of the Fen River, forming square formations, uniformly arranged, sometimes forming formations and sometimes killing, with a large number of people and a majestic momentum.
It was the first time for Chang Yu to see such a big scene. There were more than 60,000 people, which was a huge crowd, and he was very excited to see it.
"Eunuch Chang"
As soon as he arrived near Fucheng Gate in the west of the city, he hurriedly pulled Wu Mengming over: "I was just thinking about going to the palace to find you." Then he walked up to Chang Yu and asked in a low voice: "I heard that you got hundreds of thousands from the palace of the Jin Dynasty."
Two silver coins, almost all the palace has been emptied?"
Chang Yu turned over and dismounted, nodded slightly, hum.
Awesome! Wu Mengming gave a thumbs up: "I didn't expect this King Jin to be so generous. He is much more generous than the stingy King Dai. He is so damn rich."
Chang Yu curled his lips and glanced at the flashing Wu Mengming: "This really has nothing to do with being generous and stingy. I can only say that whoever has the sore on his face will know how painful it is. After all, a weird young man like King Fu would rather take money than his life."
There are very few."
"That's true." Wu Mengming nodded: "I also love money, but if the bandit army comes to my door, I'm afraid I will spend all my property to save my life."
"Besides, our family doesn't believe you, you are just a miser!" Chang Yu joked with a chuckle.
Wu Mengming's face turned red: "It's not that I'm a miser, the key is that it's hard to make money now." He sighed and turned his head to look east, looking at the greedy look on the face of Prince Jin's Mansion: "He's really rich!"
"Isn't it easy to make money? Now we have a lot of work on hand and you can take it." Chang Yu thought about it all night last night. He always felt that it was a pity to let King Lu's million-dollar family fortune go to others, so he decided to make some money, but this trip was even more difficult.
It's dangerous, so I'm afraid Wu Mengming may not be willing to go. Although he is greedy for money, he is even more timid.
When Wu Mengming heard this, his eyes immediately lit up and he was very excited: "Eunuch Chang, tell me quickly, I make money, I must make money! How much can I share, which big family is far away?"
Chang Yu couldn't help but laugh after asking so many questions in one sentence. He stretched out his hand and patted him: "Master Wu, don't be anxious, just listen to me and tell me slowly." He whispered in his ear for a long time.
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