Chapter five hundred and thirty fifth spoils conference
The transport fleet from Guilin had not returned yet, so Li Xuan summoned officials from the tax department to discuss spending such money!
That's right, we are not discussing how to make money, but more about spending money. In the past, when Li Xuan met with tax officials, most of the time he urged the tax officials to make money in this way, make more money, or discuss where to squeeze out the money.
To purchase supplies to maintain the expenses of the army and so on.
But this time, the topic they discussed was how to spend this windfall.
But before they can formally discuss spending money, they need to discuss how much money they have available!
Many properties in the transport fleet are difficult to value, because in addition to cash, many of them are paintings, calligraphy and curios. If you say it is worth one tael of silver, it is one tael of silver. If you say it is worth a million taels, it is worth repaying.
Millions of taels of silver, these things have different values in the eyes of different people.
For example, in Li Xuan's opinion, these treasures are worthless and can be exchanged for as much cash as they can, but in the eyes of those elegant people, these things are priceless treasures!
So these things are really hard to value!
Fortunately, the people in the tax department are all smart people. They deal with money every day and they have some knowledge of these things. Although they have not seen the actual objects, they have already estimated the general value based on the list. Except for
In addition to cash, if all the rare paintings, calligraphy and other luxury goods on the transport fleet are sold, it is possible to get back between 300,000 taels and 1 million taels of silver. The reason why there is such a big gap is because if it is directly
If you sell it to locals in Wuzhou, the price will definitely be low.
But if they are transported to prosperous areas such as Jiangnan and sold, these things will be valuable.
In the end, Li Xuan personally decided that after the transport fleet came back, he would first sell some of the items that had a relatively fixed value and could be easily converted into cash, and the remaining items would be sold through various channels to try to get a good price.
Li Xuan set a task for the tax department. This batch of rare and luxurious jewelry should bring back at least five hundred thousand taels of silver. If he can buy more on this basis, then he will give the tax department a big credit.
At the same time, a part of it will be allocated for the office expenses of the tax department.
After getting Li Xuan's promise, the people at the Tax Department were very excited. Even though the Tax Department is an organization that manages money, their expenses are also huge!
In order to collect taxes, the Tax Department dispatched tax officials and tax inspection teams to all places within the control area. This also resulted in the Tax Department having the largest number of administrative personnel and even the largest number of cabinet ministries, and the funds spent accounted for the most.
It accounts for more than one-fifth of the total budget of the cabinet ministries.
After all, tax collection also requires costs!
It will take a certain amount of time to realize those treasures and luxury jewelry, so the money to be spent on today's discussion is still nearly 150,000 taels of cash that the transport fleet will bring back. This scene is as intense as a spoils-sharing meeting.
.
In this regard, officials from the Ministry of Taxation proposed several plans to Li Xuan. One was to use this batch of money to repay the salary arrears of administrative staff, the second was to use it to build new troops, and the third was to invest in work.
The first part was used to expand the workshop, and the fourth part was used to build the palace.
According to the report of the First Army on the front line, they have already arrived at the foot of Zhaoqing City, and the Ming army's defense force in the city is not too strong. It is estimated that it will not take long to capture Zhaoqing. By then, Zhaoqing will be the capital of the country. Naturally, it will be impossible to compete with Zhaoqing.
Like Liuzhou and Wuzhou, any house can be used as a palace. For example, there must be a palace that matches the national power of the Tang Dynasty!
Building a palace is not a matter of enjoyment or not, but a kind of political propaganda!
Otherwise, the Tang dynasty was so huge, with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of miles of territory, but the emperor still lived in ordinary houses or in the prefecture's yamen left over from the Ming Dynasty. How unconventional would it be?
If you say this, you won’t laugh out loud!
Therefore, although Zhaoqing has not yet been taken over, the construction of the palace has already been placed on the desks of many cabinet departments. The Ministry of Taxation must prepare the necessary funds for this, the Ministry of Industry must prepare design and construction plans, and other departments must prepare the necessary funds for this purpose.
Departments also need to cooperate.
And building the palace also requires a lot of money!
Of course, no matter which one of these four plans, actually involves the above four items, the difference between them is nothing more than which one is the main one!
After the Ministry of Taxation proposed these four plans, Li Xuan did not hesitate to reject the plan of retaining most of the money to build the palace.
The war is still going on, and military expenditures are still a bottomless pit. Li Xuan cannot squander all the money. What kind of palace can he use to build it? Can the palace go into battle to kill the enemy? Can it save his throne and life?
cannot!
However, the remaining three plans needed to be carefully considered. Therefore, Li Xuan did not give the tax department an immediate reply. Instead, he asked the tax department to continue to improve the plan, and at the same time ordered that the money would not be his.
Commands are not allowed to be misappropriated.
While Li Xuan was thinking about these things, Major General Hao Bainian, commander of the First Army of the East March, finally sent the news of the successful capture of Zhaoqing!
After seeing the good news, Li Xuan also showed a satisfied smile!
Zeng Ziwen on the side said: "General Hao fought beautifully in this battle. Not only did he successfully capture Zhaoqing, but he also did not cause too much damage to Zhaoqing. This laid the foundation for us to establish Zhaoqing as the capital of the Tang Dynasty. In this way,
After the imperial dynasty moved its capital to Zhaoqing, there was no need for large-scale construction projects to repair the city wall!"
Li Xuan also nodded with a smile: "The fight was indeed good!"
In the process of marching and conquering Zhaoqing, the First Army moved extremely quickly. It surrounded Zhaoqing before the Ming army recruited Qingzhuang and other reinforcements from the hinterland of Guangdong. At that time, there were less than 2,000 defenders in Zhaoqing.
Facing the attack of tens of thousands of people from the First Army, it was impossible to withstand it.
However, no loot was captured after entering the city, and the food supply was only a few hundred dan. None of the mid-level and senior officials of the Ming army were killed or captured because they had already run away.
Obviously, Wang Yue, the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, also knew that it was impossible for Zhaoqing to withstand the attack of the puppet Tang rebels, so he had no intention of resisting in Zhaoqing, but retreated to Guangzhou early, leaving only two thousand old and weak soldiers in Zhaoqing.
, and only a thousand of them are regular soldiers, and the rest are young and strong.
It is unclear whether Wang Yue planned to gather heavy troops to defend Guangzhou. In short, Zhaoqing was defeated easily.
No, I couldn't wait to deliver the good news as soon as I defeated it.
Because the First Army moved quickly, and the defenders in the city were not strong, and their will to resist was relatively weak, in order to protect Zhaoqing's city walls and buildings within the city, the First Army did not resort to blasting or large-scale shelling, but adopted a direct charge.
, tens of thousands of people rushed up, and the Ming troops in the city were either killed or frightened. Therefore, the captured Zhaoqing City was basically intact. It was not in tatters like Wuzhou. The east and west walls are still in tatters.
Tattered.
Hearing that the city was in good condition, and that the prefect's Yamen over there was also relatively new, Li Xuan thought that the palace was still under repair, so he would not repair it and use the money sent from Guilin directly to expand the armament.
The salaries of the officials, damn it, I won’t even build the palace anymore, you still want to get salary, it’s a good idea!
So, when the transport fleet from Guilin returned to Wuzhou, Li Xuan personally made the decision. About 150,000 taels of cash in the transport fleet were replenished into the national treasury, and 100,000 taels of silver were used as military expenses.
As for how these military expenditures will be spent, it will be discussed within the military.
Another 10,000 taels of silver will be used to repay the salaries of grassroots staff. It is not good to have too much salary arrears, and there is no money to pay too much. The only way is to squeeze it out for a while like it is now.
The treasury reserves 20,000 taels of silver for emergencies. The Tang Dynasty’s treasury only has a few thousand taels of silver at the bottom. This kind of thing is absolutely intolerable. There must be at least two to thirty thousand taels of silver.
The remaining 20,000 taels of silver were used to prepare for the expansion of the arsenal in Zhaoqing, where a large-scale comprehensive arsenal was expected to be built.
That's right, Li Xuan no longer plans to let the Ministry of Industry continue to operate small-scale workshops as before, but to centralize and establish an arsenal.
And the Ministry of Industry was ordered to integrate the various workshops in Liuzhou as soon as possible. Among them, the artillery workshop, musket workshop, gunpowder workshop, sword workshop, armor workshop, bow and arrow workshop, steel workshop, etc. were merged into Liuzhou Arsenal, and some others were used for
The workshops that produced daily necessities were also integrated into Liuzhou Clothing Factory, Liuzhou Food Factory, etc. Even the shipbuilding workshop was renamed Liuzhou Shipyard.
In the end, dozens of large and small workshops owned by the Ministry of Industry in Liuzhou were integrated into six large and small factories, all of which were related to military industry.
The few remaining workshops in Xingquan Mansion were consolidated and renamed Xingquan Arsenal.
The ones in Liuzhou were just integrated and renamed, but the factories established in Wuzhou and Zhaoqing were aiming to build large-scale factories from the beginning.
It is expected that two large-scale arsenals, Wuzhou Arsenal and Zhaoqing Arsenal, will be established. As for some workshops related to the private sector, they will be established as needed, such as clothing factories, textile factories, shipyards and the like.
The purpose of this integration is not just to change the name, nor to pursue a larger factory scale, but to improve production efficiency and management level.
To build a factory, funds are naturally needed, and the two thousand taels of silver are only the initial construction funds. How to solve the subsequent expansion funds, production funds, and operating funds will depend on the military's procurement funds.
And where do the funds for the military come from? Of course it comes from military expenses!