The Qing army's strategy was to go straight to the nest, capture the thieves and the king, and disintegrate and eliminate the Ming Dynasty's resistance center from above. Zhu Yihai's strategy was to use the superior force of the navy he had now formed to attack the Qing army's water transportation and erode his water transportation and
The salt transport tore their salt and grain money bags.
Fighting requires money and food, and raising troops also costs a lot of money.
The current size of the Qing army requires a military expenditure of at least 10 million taels of silver a year. If the scale of the war expands, this military expenditure will soar dramatically. Zhu Yihai knows this well.
After the Three Hundred and Eighty Banners were sworn down in Yangzhou City, Zhu Yihai summoned the salt merchants who had no time to escape, as well as the merchants and shipowners responsible for water transportation, etc. in the still-broken Yangzhou City.
Yangzhou has long been the center of the southeast because of two valuable things: water transportation and salt. In the early years, Shanxi merchants rose to become the world's largest merchant gang because of the Ming Dynasty's salt law and the use of nine-side branches to transport salt.
Conveniently, first-come-first-served basis for buildings near the water, one side hires people to farm in Jiubian merchant villages, and after harvesting the grain, it is directly transported to the border army, and then the grain is transported from the Huaihe River to the Central Plains. In this way, more salt can be obtained and the salt trade can be monopolized.
Huge profits.
Later, the rise of Huizhou merchants was also inseparable from salt.
The Kaizhong law gradually became corrupt, so the imperial court introduced a new law on salt administration. In the process, the Huizhou merchants close to the Huaihe River and Huaihe River Basin also took advantage of the geographical advantages. They came from behind and defeated the Shanxi merchant group and became the new leader of the salt industry in the Huaihe River and the Huaihe River.
As a result, he made a lot of money and became the new number one business gang in the world.
Hui merchants mainly engaged in two businesses, Huaiyan salt and Caoliang. Even Caogang was established to transport Caoliang.
The two major granaries of Huguang and Susong were requisitioned by the imperial court. Most of the other provinces used land tax in exchange for silver. However, Huguang and Susong protected a large amount of grain and collected it. This was because these two places were grain-producing areas.
Because transportation is convenient.
Huguang can be connected to the south of the Yangtze River along the Jingxiang, Xianghan and Han Rivers, and the Susong and Taihu Lake areas are densely covered with water networks. Going north via the canal, grain from these two places basically passes through Yangzhou, an important transfer station.
The salt from the Huaihe River and Huaihe River was concentrated and transported to Yangzhou.
Whether it is the transportation of grain to the north or the transshipment of salt to Huaihe, huge interests are actually involved here. The collusion between government and businessmen is a huge industrial chain that has created countless rich people with a net worth of millions.
Even though the Qing army slaughtered almost all Yangzhou salt merchants this year, a new group of salt merchants soon emerged.
Previously, Ruan Jin and his navy had been crossing the Yangtze River to attack and suppress the salt merchants' salt ships sailing in the Yangtze River. They were not allowed to cross the Yangtze River even with half a grain of southern grain. Once discovered, they would capture or destroy them.
Later, Ruan Jin and others went straight into Yangzhou and headed straight for the Yellow River along the canal. They captured countless canals along the way.
The salt merchants in Yangzhou are actually having a hard time during this time.
They established a good relationship and became the new salt merchants of the Qing Dynasty. They bought the salt nest at a high price. This followed the old salt law system of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the hereditary sales system of monopoly merchants, commercial transportation and sales, and monopoly merchants specializing in shore.
Roughly speaking, it is the division of salt areas and the way of specializing salt merchants. A salt merchant gets a special salt sales area. The identity of the salt merchant is hereditary and the salt area is also fixed.
These must be obtained by paying money to the court. Every year, you must first receive salt imports, then go to the salt warehouse to collect salt, and then transport it to your own salt area for sale.
Each link has detailed regulations, which are very complicated. There is a lot of room for manipulation. For example, high-ranking officials and dignitaries in the court and even clan members often rely on their power to ask for some salt nests and salt guides from the emperor, and then sell them to salt merchants.
, and make a fortune.
Of course, after the salt merchants obtained the monopoly rights, their profits were even more astonishing. They colluded with the government and businessmen, and openly sold private salt themselves. For example, a salt area originally required 10 million jins of salt a year, but they only purchased 1 million jins of official salt from the government.
, paying salt tax based on this amount, but actually sold another 9 million kilograms of private salt, and no salt tax was paid on this amount.
There are many similar methods.
In short, obtaining the qualification of an official salt merchant to sell salt is a very profitable business. In the end, it was the interests of the court that were harmed. The price of salt in the Ming Dynasty was far higher than that in the Song Dynasty, but the salt tax revenue was far less than that.
The Qing government also followed the old rules of the Ming Dynasty, but in order to get more money from salt merchants, they first recruited salt merchants again. If they wanted to sell salt, they had to re-qualify as salt merchants and obtain salt areas, which required new money.
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The second is that the Qing court sold more salt citations. The salt warehouse originally had 10,000 shi of salt, but they sold 100,000 shi of salt citations. In fact, the salt citations included the salt price and tax. Received the salt citations meant that
You bought salt and paid the tax, but the salt is less and the tax is more, which means you have to queue up. You may not get the salt until next year after you get the salt. This is called over-payment of salt, which means you have paid the money and tax in advance.
Of course, the Qing government's methods went beyond this. They also asked salt merchants to raise donations and donated again and again.
Because of the change of dynasties and the massacre of Yangzhou, today's salt merchants are not as powerful as before, and they don't dare to fight against the Qing government, so they can only be plucked out.
Of course, for salt merchants, these are actually costs. As long as they maintain their qualifications as salt merchants, their profits will still be considerable.
Even because this status is hereditary, even if you lose money this year, you can still make it back next year, which is always a good deal.
After all, if they don't want to do such a good thing, the Qing government can immediately replace them. There are many businessmen who are willing to become salt merchants.
But now Zhu Yihai first blocked the Yangtze River, then blocked the North-South Canal, and then occupied Yangzhou, Yancheng, etc. This made the salt merchants uneasy.
A large amount of salt was robbed before, and everyone suffered heavy losses. Now it is even more difficult to continue this business.
Zhu Yihai summoned them, but they didn't dare not come. Who told them to run away if they didn't come?
Fortunately, this time an old friend, Cheng Bi, met them on behalf of the Supervisory State and communicated with them. Cheng Bi was also an Huizhou merchant. He also sold salt before and his industry was not small. But when the Qing army massacred Yangzhou,
His whole family was slaughtered, so he devoted himself to resisting the Qing Dynasty and donated his entire family fortune of hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to fight against the Qing Dynasty.
Now Xin was promoted by Lu Jianguo to the position of salt transport envoy to the Huaidu and Sidu transfer envoys. From the third rank, he was in charge of the salt administration of the two Huaihe Rivers.
He told the fellow salt merchants in Huizhou that most of the salt in the world comes from the Lianghuai River, and people cannot live without salt in their diet, so the salt transportation and sales must continue.
However, some rules of Lianghuai Salt Industry need to be changed.
Salt merchants were very wealthy. In the late Ming Dynasty, many salt merchants were worth millions or more. However, no matter how rich the salt merchants were, they had no political identity. They were even just pigs raised by the court and the powerful.
You can kill pigs at any time when you have money.
No one, including the salt merchants and even the Cao Gang, dared to be disrespectful to Lu Jianguo, who now occupied Yangzhou again.
When Jian Guo summoned them, they all lined up quickly and even secretly discussed how much filial piety should be paid. Although some people thought that it was unlikely that the Ming army could occupy Huaiyang for a long time, they did not dare to offend Lu Jian Guo.
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You still have to pay for the money you need to pay, and the salt merchants have nothing else to offer except money.
All they have to ask now is to pluck some hair, but not to ransack their homes and chop off their heads. It is best to collect their money and allow them to continue collecting, transporting, and selling salt.
The war caused these new salt merchants to spend a lot of money, but they have not even begun to repay the money. If they continue to spend like this, everyone will go bankrupt.
