"Why did dad come back from the Yamen at this time?"
Han Qian saw that his father seemed to have something to say, so he went to the main room in the east courtyard to sit down and talk, and asked Zhao Ting'er to arrange for Mrs. Xi to come over to serve tea, so that the second generation ancestor could enjoy his life.
"Why did you kill Ji Kun in public?" Han Daoxun wanted to ask Han Qian this question last night, but Han Qian fell asleep like a baby when he came back yesterday, and he couldn't bear to wake him up.
Han Qian raised his head and glanced at Fan Xicheng, thinking that it was probably after he found out about this that he ran to his father to chew his ears.
Han Qian didn't know how to explain to his father that the man in Anning Palace was by no means a merciful person. After the death of Emperor Tianyou, the brutality and bloodshed of the minions revealed in Anning Palace would shock everyone.
It would be absolutely foolish for them to leave some room for the people in Anning Palace in order to be lucky in the future.
If Han Qian had the opportunity to kill Ji Kun, he would never be soft-hearted, and he would never expect good results from falling into the hands of Anning Palace in the future. However, he also had reasons why he wanted to kill Ji Kun in public. He took a long breath and said:
"People are killed for the four surnames to see, so that they will know that if there is something wrong with my father in Xuzhou, I will use all means and without any scruples to make Xuzhou full of corpses and blood."
Xi Rong dragged the heavy iron shackles over and brought the tea. Her heart palpitated when she heard Han Qian speak in an extremely calm tone. Her hands shook and the tea cup almost rolled out of the tray.
Han Qian raised his head and glanced at Mrs. Xi, without saying anything, and took the tea cup.
Fan Xicheng was also shocked.
Although there was no evidence, but based on the crisis they had experienced in the past few days after entering Xuzhou, as well as the unscrupulous and ruthless behavior of the four surnames, he had to be more inclined to believe that Wang Yu's "death of illness" was probably problematic.
It is easy to dodge open spears, but hard to guard against hidden arrows. Fan Xicheng also has a headache about how the family will be prepared to guard against the dirty tricks used by the four surnames secretly. However, he did not expect that the young master insisted on killing Ji Kun in public, and this was his intention.
Even if Fan Xicheng doesn't like Han Qian's bloodlust, he still has to admit that such ruthless methods have the most obvious deterrent effect. Unless the four surnames really jump over the wall and take the last step, otherwise, they should be able to restrain themselves, right?
"well,"
Han Daoxun knew that Han Qian still believed that Wang Yu's death was caused by someone from the four surnames. He sighed and directly changed the topic and asked,
"How much money did you make in the past few days? Now the state capital is building a shipyard and a crafts workshop, but the state warehouse doesn't have much food. How much do you plan to share with me?"
"Ah?" Han Qian saw that his father had changed his subject so quickly that he couldn't adapt to it, so he asked, "Why don't you just teach me a few words and talk about other things?"
"What should I teach you?" Han Daoxun urged, "How much money did you collect in the past few days?"
In addition to paying taxes to the court, prefectures and counties themselves had certain financial resources to establish small treasury, whether they levied city parking taxes, allowed prisoners to take copper as atonement, or managed official fields.
However, the problem is that before Han Daoxun took office, the four surnames had already emptied the state warehouse of money and food, and then burned the account books to ashes. Han Daoxun had no way to check even if he wanted to.
At present, what Han Daoxun can control is the regular tax collected at a certain percentage, but this amount is very limited, and it is simply impossible to use it to maintain the operation of the entire state capital.
The chaos in the state prison was suppressed, and the four surnames withdrew all their core disciples from the state camp. Han Daoxun had the opportunity to take over the state camp, but he did not do it. In addition to lowering the vigilance of the four surnames and leaving enough buffer space, there was another major
The reason is that once Xuzhou falls into a serious confrontation, he will simply not be able to raise enough money and food to support the state's operations.
The system of local state soldiers is different from the forbidden camp army and bodyguard army directly under the imperial court. The soldiers mainly come from recruitment.
The military pay that Xuzhou needs to allocate to the state camp is calculated as two liters of japonica rice and ten copper coins per soldier per day. The state camp has 400 soldiers. The daily soldier pay is eight shi of japonica rice, 4,000 qian. The annual payment is 3,000 shi of japonica rice, 150 coins.
One hundred thousand coins for military pay.
This does not include the cost of repairing barracks and weapons.
The operating income of official fields mainly comes from paying salaries to officials, and collecting fixed taxes from tenants according to the number of acres of land. This matter was originally under the jurisdiction of the chief clerk Xue Ruogu, and there were not many ways to do it, but regardless of whether it was official fields
It will take a certain amount of time to generate income from taxes, city parking, state prisons and other rights that are currently in the hands of the income. However, Han Daoxun wants to further stabilize the situation at this time and start doing what he can, so he needs to raise additional funds.
money.
Not to mention others, there were a hundred jailers, Furongyuan soldiers, wives and children in total, and their basic monthly expenses were more than 100,000 yuan. Even if Han Daoxun paid all his official salary, he would still be short of more than half.
"The state capital is short of money, dad, you can't use me as a money bag to exploit me - besides, talking about money between father and son would hurt our feelings!" Han Qian said with a wry smile.
This time he did not directly steal money from the four surnames. Instead, he asked Dr. Zhao Zhixian, a medical doctor, to come forward to organize a dinner. The bribe he received was only two million dollars, which is less than two hundred cakes of gold. It was really not enough.
of.
"You always have something to think of," Han Daoxun said.
"Of course there is a way. If we don't take advantage of the four surnames to relax their guard, dad, will you allow me to lead troops to capture a stronghold?" Han Qian asked with a shy face.
Han Daoxun glared at Han Qian, backed down and said, "Okay, okay, how much do you charge and hand over half to the head office?"
"Okay, I can probably scrape together half a million dollars to give you." Han Qian reluctantly said.
"Ting'er, is this really all Han Qian received?" Han Daoxun asked Zhao Ting'er.
"Ting'er dare not say it. If Ting'er tells the truth, the young master will punish Ting'er." Zhao Ting'er said.
"..." Han Qian picked up the tea cup and pretended to throw it at Zhao Ting'er. He usually treated her well in vain.
"Don't make it difficult for Ting'er, and I won't make it difficult for you either. You first come up with one million dollars; from now on, Zuosi Warehouse will give another three million dollars to Xuzhou every year." Han Daoxun said.
"We, father and son, must not conspire to collect more from Xuzhou. How can there be any reason to repay the money and food that we have eaten in our stomachs?"
Han Qian cried out in pain,
"Dad, you also know that if you transport goods worth 10 million yuan from Xuzhou to Jinling and sell them for 20 million yuan, you can make a net profit of 10 million yuan. If we really want to open up the trade route from Xuzhou to Jinling, I will
We don’t know how many elites and how much money we need to transfer. It’s impossible to have much surplus in the early stage. As for the governors of prefectures and counties, if there are no accidents, the civil service department will be elected once every three years. If you, dad, are transferred from Xuzhou by then, we will invest.
You can’t even recover the capital! You also know that Xuzhou is a barren place, and there really isn’t much product that can be shipped out. If you ever serve as the governor of Runzhou, Yangzhou, or Yuezhou, I can double the money back to you.
You old—these places are so fat."
"What conditions do you want to make?" Han Daoxun asked.
Looking at Han Daoxun and Han Qian and his son sitting there bargaining, Fan Xicheng was also dumbfounded.
"Okay, I want to use Yang Qin to form a shipping gang in Xuzhou, and the tribute from Xuzhou will be handed over to the shipping gang to be responsible for transportation." Han Qian said.
The money, grain, and other physical tributes transported by the prefectures and counties to Jinling were all organized and transported by the prefectures and counties themselves, and military attachés and soldiers were dispatched from the prefecture camps to escort the transportation.
However, the Xuchen Prefectures are located in remote areas and the population is quite sparse. The annual tax deducted and paid directly to Jinling is extremely limited, even only 23% of that of Runyang and other prefectures. In the end, it is converted into money.
Several were shipped to Jinling.
This is actually a change from paying taxes in kind to paying taxes in currency.
In this way, there is no need for the local government to worry about the fate of the country.
It was one thing for the four surnames to repeat their promise to organize a fleet to transport goods and trade with Zuosi's warehouse, but Han Qian suggested simplifying it and simplifying it. He hoped that his father would pay the taxes from Xuzhou to Jinling and return them to currency taxes.
The method of paying taxes in kind such as grain, silk cloth and local specialties seems to have become complicated, but his most fundamental purpose is that he plans to form a boat gang headed by Yang Qin to take over the transportation of Xuzhou, so as to be able to
Take on a semi-official status.
In this way, the boat gang formed by Yang Qin as the leader can legally possess armor and weapons, can legally become an armed fleet, travel on the Yuanshui River and the Yangtze River, and can "incidentally" serve other commercial fleets
Provide protection.
When encountering bandit attacks on the way, Yang Qin was able to directly organize a counterattack openly and even take the initiative when he heard the news.
Otherwise, Secret Cao Zuo Si was not a room official officially recognized by the imperial court. Yang Qin, Tian Cheng, and Gao Shao were setting up an armed fleet outside. Once their whereabouts were exposed, the local prefectures and counties treated them as river pirates and suppressed them.
Who does he go to cry to?
"What else?" Han Daoxun asked.
He knew that without armed escort or sending elite scouts to keep an eye on the route, the Xu family and Anning Palace would contact the river bandits and water bandits at any time to focus on attacking the merchant ships from Xuzhou to Jinling and cut off the material exchange between Xuzhou and Jinling.
.
If that were the case, even if the Fourth Surname promised too much at this time, as long as the fleet suffered heavy losses once or twice between Jiang and Hubei, no matter how much pressure he exerted afterwards, the Fourth Surname would never be able to cooperate with them.
Of course, ensuring the safety of merchant ships from Xuzhou to Jinling is something Han Daoxun is also extremely concerned about. He does not believe that Han Qian only has such a condition.
"Also, if there may be foreigners pouring into Syria in the near future, my father should give them status and not drive them away as refugees," Han Qian said.
"Why are there so many refugees coming to Xuzhou? What kind of idea do you have?" Han Daoxun raised his eyebrows and asked in confusion.
Although there are between 4,000 and 5,000 guest registered households in Xuzhou, accounting for 40% of the total population, they are mainly refugees who came south from Jingxiang and other places to escape war and famine. This was formed over a long period of time, not
Done in one go.
But now, the situation in Yuetan and other places is calm, and the area around Dongting Lake is more suitable for people to live and reproduce. At this time, ten or twenty households of guest residents can move in every year, which is already quite impressive; and if there are only this few foreigners every year
After moving in, Han Daoxun was well fed, so he wanted to treat them as refugees and prevent them from entering?
However, when Han Daoxun saw that Han Qian said this seriously, he should have concluded that a large number of foreign people might flow into Xuzhou in a short period of time. He didn't know why Han Qian had such a judgment, or maybe Han Qian was thinking of it.
Do you have any other plans this morning?
"I didn't have any idea," Han Qian said with a smile, "I just asked Zuo Si to sneak into various places and release news like saying that a large amount of gold sand was found in the upper reaches of Jingyun River and Tiebi River, and many people became rich overnight.
!”
Hearing what Han Qian said, Han Daoxun couldn't help but slap his forehead and said: "You are spreading rumors without caring about the serious consequences. Don't you know that Xuzhou cannot accommodate too many refugees in a short period of time?"
He knew that the reason why Xuzhou was not taken seriously was not only because it was located in a remote area, but also because it was sparsely populated. There were only more than 12,000 households in total. There were tens of thousands of households in an ordinary county such as Chizhou or Chaozhou.
For any region to have sufficient economic and military potential, the most directly related factor is population.
However, the problem is that if Xuzhou wants to host more people, it needs to go through a step-by-step process. Thousands of people will flock in all of a sudden, which will have a huge impact on Xuzhou's traditional social structure.
Many conflicts will be catalyzed, intensified, and even out of control.
This also means that there will be famine, fighting and even uncontrolled death and injury!
What's more, how many desperate and cruel people must be among those who can believe this?
