A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Emperor Yuan Cong

Chapter 838: One Hundred Thousand Guan in a Time of Need

"I wonder if Commander Lian will be free tomorrow?"

Zhang Fuguo, the envoy of Guangzhou, asked with a smile. Huaiyu looked at the tall and burly eunuch and said, "Gong Zhang invited me, I must be free."

"Actually, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just that under the new policy of the imperial court, Lingnan's tax is three-thirds. Tomorrow I will sort out the accounts of the Shipping Department and show them to Lian Shuai, and transfer the two-thirds that should go to Lingnan to Lian Shuai."

He is worthy of being Fan Xuanfu’s righteous uncle.

Zhang Fuguo was really timely. He knew that Wu Huaiyu needed money the most, and he especially needed someone to take the lead in dividing taxes and paying them. He stepped forward without hesitation.

"Thanks."

"No need to be so polite."

As the shipping envoy of Guangzhou, Zhang Fuguo actually has quite a lot of power. He is not only responsible for trade, but also for diplomacy. He even manages the Guangzhou Shipbuilding Bureau.

The City Ship Envoy was formerly called the City Ship Envoy. After the City Ship Department was officially established, the imperial court became involved in overseas trade, and customs duties were treated as an important tax for the imperial court.

Of course, the city envoy was a eunuch, because he also had a special mission to purchase rare and exotic products imported from overseas for the royal family. In addition to meeting the needs of the palace, he would also buy some imported foreign trade products, and then Resell and earn the difference.

On the surface, the imperial court stipulated that, except for shipping, closing, and offering, foreign merchants were allowed to trade freely, and overseas merchants were allowed to trade in the designated fanfang in Guangzhou.

But in fact, if there is something good, Shibosi needs to get involved first.

They levy taxes first, and usually directly use the goods on board to offset the tax. If there are good things, they will ask for and buy some, and they will definitely get a discount on the price. Sometimes they may even directly monopolize some scarce and in-demand goods, and then resell them to make a profit. A lot of money.

The Shipbuilding Bureau is responsible for building and repairing sea-going ships, which is naturally very profitable.

The regulations of the Municipal Shipping Department are very strict. For example, foreign trade ships must obtain a certificate from the corresponding Municipal Shipping Department before they can go to sea. Otherwise, they will be punished for violating the order. Returning vessels must be registered at the place of origin and pay taxes.

The Shipping Department of each city is responsible for managing the corresponding foreign tribute ships, tribute envoys and their activities in the region. In order to reduce costs, tribute items from various countries are generally not transported to the capital, but sold on the spot.

The main way for Shibosi to make money is to draw and buy.

The solution is the tariff. The tax rate is divided into two points, that is, 20%, and the tax is collected in kind. Some goods, such as tortoise shells, even cost up to three points.

In-demand commodities such as frankincense, medicine, ivory, and rhino horn are usually extracted and the remaining ones are bought and monopolized directly.

Objects that could be used to make weapons, such as cowhide and sinew, were also on Bo's buying list.

Through extraction and gambling, Shibosi obtained a large amount of materials and profits.

"How much is the revenue of Guangzhou Shipping Company this year?" Huaiyu was not polite to him.

"This year, there are more than 4,000 large and small foreign ships shipping to Guangzhou Port, and the revenue is about 400,000 yuan,"

Huaiyu was surprised at this number, which was soaring every year.

If it lasts all this year, wouldn't it have to exceed 500,000 coins?

It is even possible to reach 600,000 yuan.

The Lingnan area can get two-thirds, and Wu Huaiyu's embassy can directly get one-third.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

As for Guangzhou's share, that's 400,000 yuan.

"I didn't expect that Guangzhou Shipping Company would make so much money now. It's really great for Zhang Zhi." Huaiyu praised.

Zhang Fuguo smiled and said, "Actually, all the credit goes to Lian Shuai and Wu Hou. I'm just picking up the slack. Thousands of merchants and foreign ships come to Guangzhou Port every year, but they all come because of Lian Shuai's reputation."

This is a slight exaggeration, but Wu Huaiyu did contribute a lot in Lingnan, especially the current overseas trade policy of the Tang Dynasty, which Wu Huaiyu single-handedly promoted when he was the Prime Minister of the court.

However, Wu Huaiyu was really shocked that he could earn 600,000 yuan a year, and this was only from Guangzhou Port.

"The main thing is to make money from fragrant medicine." Zhang Fuguo was very honest. Anyway, Wu Huaiyu couldn't hide these things. The shipping company did make a lot of money, but the martial arts family in Guangzhou didn't make less.

Shibosi mainly makes money by drawing and betting, which is simple and crude.

The Wu family, on the other hand, has its own merchant fleet that goes out to sea for trade, and is also the most popular trading house in Guangzhou Port. On one side, they are intermediary merchants, responsible for organizing goods, helping with procurement and sales for cargo owners, ship owners, and merchants. At the same time, they themselves are Big exporters and big importers,

A large part of the imported goods bought by Shibo Sibo were sold to the Wu family's trading firm. The Wu family then resold it and made a fortune.

Nowadays, the most profitable imported goods in Guangzhou Port are spices, which are mainly divided into animal and plant-based. The main varieties of animal-based natural spices include musk, civet, castoreum and ambergris.

Plant-based natural spices can be divided into three categories based on material and shape: flowers and fruits, resins and wood. Flower and fruit spices such as rue, clove, cogongrass, styrax, and rosewater; resinous spices such as dipterocarp and frankincense; and wood spices such as agarwood, sandalwood, and incense.

Because the Tang Dynasty only produced some spices such as musk, agarwood, and cinnamon, and the quality was not as good as overseas, a large number of spices were imported from abroad. Among them, Tibetan merchants came from all over the sea, and the incense was produced in many Tibetan countries overseas.

These overseas fragrant medicines are also extremely valuable.

Just like the pepper in Chang'an, which was mainly sold from the Silk Road in the Western Regions, it was known as black gold and even became a hard currency.

Fragrant medicine is the largest imported product in Guangzhou Port, followed by ivory and rhinoceros horns, and then treasures.

To be honest, there were no high-quality handmade products overseas that could enter the Tang Dynasty market at this time. We could only bring boatloads of fragrant medicine, rhinoceros horns, ivory, gold and gems, etc. to the Tang Dynasty, and then go back to purchase silk, porcelain, tea, paper, medicinal materials, etc. Returned with a full load.

People in the Tang Dynasty loved incense, and it had a wide range of uses, including medicinal, edible, cosmetic, sacrificial, and burning incense...

But if you really want to talk about it, the fragrant medicine sold by Fan Hu's maritime merchants in Guangzhou Port was very high, ridiculously high. For example, pepper, one tael of pepper and one tael of gold in Chang'an is worth 8,000 yuan. Hu Shang said that pepper was produced in Tianzhu and came from the Western Regions along the Thousand Miles of Silk Road.

But in fact, although pepper is produced in India, its production is greater in Nanyang. It is not too far from Nanhai to Guangzhou. On the islands in Nanyang, the price of pepper was extremely low, with one tael costing seven or eight yuan at most. But in the Tang Dynasty, the price increased a thousand times.

Although pepper needs to be planted, picked, dried, processed, sold and transported from the place of origin to the Tang Dynasty, a thousand-fold increase is still too much.

All the money goes to the middlemen.

Later, during the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He discovered this situation when he went to the West. So he took his huge fleet and purchased large quantities of it directly from the Southeast Asian origins and shipped it back to China. He directly monopolized the pepper supply of the Ming Dynasty. A huge amount of cheap pepper was shipped in, completely breaking the market supply and demand,

The price of pepper was cut in half, and there was too much to sell. Lao Zhu's family simply used pepper as official salary. The officials had to sell the pepper on the black market. This made the pepper that originally cost twenty taels of silver a pound drop to one or two. Two silver coins per catty, and later a liter of pepper cost only six silver coins.

In Sumatra, one hundred kilograms of pepper is worth only one tael of silver. If shipped to Chang'an, one hundred kilograms of pepper would be worth one thousand six hundred taels of gold and more than twelve thousand copper coins.

Even though pepper was not that valuable in the late Tang Dynasty, when Prime Minister Yuan Zai's house was ransacked, the 800 stones of pepper that were confiscated was still a huge fortune that shocked the world.

"The total revenue of the City Shipping Department this year is about 450,000 yuan, and the revenue from the first two seasons has been sent to the capital." Zhang Fuguo and Huaiyu directly opened the skylight and said clearly,

"Commander Lian now needs money to reward the army, so our family will use the 150,000 guan in our account directly for Commander Lian to use first,"

"If it's not enough, our family can borrow some from maritime merchants first."

Huaiyu was very grateful,

"Let's follow the rules. The 150,000 yuan is the income of the third quarter. I won't be pretentious and treat it as three-thirds of the tax starting from the third quarter.

Of the 150,000, the Observer's Office will take 50,000, the Guangzhou Prefecture will take 50,000, and the remaining 50,000 will be turned over to the imperial treasury, so there is no need to borrow the money. "

Zhang Fuguo asked directly, "Is the reward for the army enough?"

"There is still money in other places, but it won't be enough until then."

One hundred thousand guan is a lot of money and can be used to accomplish many things. Currently, there are 48,000 Lingnan garrison troops and more than 14,000 government troops. It is also planned to organize a total of 24,000 general army and garrison troops.

As for the regiment training camps in various states, these can be ignored for the time being, or only those states that are actually controlled by the imperial court, such as Shaozhou, Qinzhou, Lianzhou, Duanzhou, etc., can be left alone for the time being. Other states controlled by Feng Chen Ningxian.

"Soldiers have merit, generals have work, and rewards are given according to circumstances. There is no fixed reward."

Although the reward is not certain, it must not be a small number, let alone delay.

The normal salary of food and clothing for the border troops of the Tang Dynasty was twelve shi of millet per year, seven pieces of spring and winter clothing, and there were additional subsidies for guarding the border for more than a year.

Currently, there are six towns in Lingnan, the three inspection battalions, and the three sea waterproofing division battalions. These 68,000 people, plus Wu Huaiyu's one thousand Forbidden Army tooth soldiers, are actually the Central Plains soldiers who are on duty to guard the border.

Divisions were assigned based on distance. Originally, each division lasted two or three months. Because it was a border garrison and the distance was far away, we guarded for a year at a time and put several divisions together. There was no need to rotate the garrison again in the next few years.

They were essentially soldiers of the Tongjun Mansion in the mainland. When they came to guard the border, they were given twelve stones of millet and seven bolts of silk for food and clothing a year, and an additional five bolts of silk for the full year.

In fact, one month is a bolt of silk and a stone of millet.

As for the soldiers of the twelve Tongjun Mansion, this is the local military government. When they are not on duty, they do not need to be given salary, clothing and food. They only need to be allocated fields and the soldiers will prepare their own food and clothing.

Forty-nine thousand garrison soldiers, nearly 50,000 stones of millet and 50,000 bolts of silk a month, and 600,000 stones of millet and 600,000 bolts of silk a year.

Not counting the New Year and Winter Solstice rewards, training subsidies, review rewards, combat merit rewards, etc.,

It is still very expensive to raise troops. This is why many ministers in the imperial court initially opposed stationing so many troops in Lingnan. You must know that the Tang Dynasty has 600,000 to 700,000 troops, but the number of troops stationed in Chang'an is only about 100,000.

There are only 50,000 garrison troops stationed in Lingnan, and there are also twelve military offices, which is indeed a lot.

Fortunately, Wu Huaiyu promised Lingnan to handle these expenses himself, so it was considered approved. Now the pressure is really on Wu Huaiyu.

Not only are there 49,000 garrison troops, there are also nearly 15,000 government troops, and now there are 6,000 new military commanders and 18,000 garrison troops. These are selected from the regiment training and then become standing troops. recruitment of troops,

Even if the food and clothing are less than those of regular garrison soldiers, the expenses for recruiting 24,000 standing soldiers are still quite high.

49,000 garrison troops, 24,000 recruited troops, 15,000 government troops, plus local regiment troops,

At least 100,000 shi of millet and 100,000 bolts of silk are required for a month. The millet is worth 3,000 guan, and the silk is worth 20,000 guan. Including officers, ordnance, etc., it is estimated that a month of at least 30,000 guan is at least 3,000 guan.

Zhang Fuguo gave Huaiyu 200,000 yuan, which could support the army for half a year.

But with this income of 200,000 guan, at least there is money for military rewards and military supplies.

From now on, the Shibo Division will be able to earn nearly 50,000 guan per month, and the Imperial Government alone will be able to receive more than 16,000 guan. The water will flow continuously, so there is no need to worry so much.

"Shuai Lian, if the Lingnan chieftains are unwilling to accept the three-thirds tax system and are unwilling to pay two-thirds of the taxes to the envoys, military expenditures will skyrocket once the war begins."

This is indeed a problem.

But Wu Huaiyu was not afraid, "Whoever dares to rebel will be directly suppressed. Then the property of those rebels will be confiscated, and the rebels will even be sold as slaves to pay for the military expenses. There is no chance that they will make a fortune."

Zhang Fuguo looked at Wu Huaiyu's sneer and believed in his heart that he would really do this. He was even completely convinced that he could suppress those powerful chiefs and slang commanders who dared to rebel.

"Our Guangzhou Shipping Department fully supports Lian Shuai, and we will just give you instructions if necessary."

"Thank you. I'll leave Guangzhou Port to you. If you need anything over there, just say hello."

(End of this chapter)