Ming Zhengzhi, I am Zheng Kezang

Zheng Kezang said that if Huguang had a population of 2000 million, he would not be concerned about the Northern Expedition. Of course, there was a reason for this. The large-scale Yellow River flooding area and Huai flooding area in the south are not good places for large-scale use of troops

Although Huaxia can still use the advantage of the navy to directly defeat Beijing and Tianjin, the Eight Banners New Army and the Inner and Outer Firearms Battalion, the largest mobile corps of the Qing court, are stationed here. Zheng Kezang is not sure that he can stand firmly in the first battle Invasion of Jiyan, if it is not possible to attack the slow with the fast, the Qing army will eventually be able to use the advantage of the inside line to drag down the Xia army's logistics. You must know that Zheng Kezang's smooth landing in the south of the Yangtze River was due to the Qing army's loopholes. , Rao has taken a considerable risk in the implementation process, almost the same as betting on the luck of the country, and betting on luck cannot be repeated over and over again.

Therefore, the choice left to Zheng Kezang is to attack the Yellow River through the gap on the Nanyang Xinyang line.

However, after the Northern Expedition through the Nanxin Line, there is a great disadvantage, that is, the inability to use the river to provide transportation convenience for the Northern Expeditionary Army cannot effectively use water transportation, which means strengthening the land transportation supply line, not to mention that the South has no way to be as good as the North Also keep a large number of transport mules and horses, even if there are, a large number of civilians must be mobilized to help transport

It must be known that husbands and mules also need to eat. The result of a large number of recruits will inevitably lead to a sharp increase in logistical pressure. Moreover, since the population of Huguang is only 500 million, Zheng Kezang has no way to ensure that a considerable number of laborers and mules will be recruited. After that, there will be no large-scale desertion in Huguang, which will affect the next year's harvest and shake the foundation of China's rule

Therefore, Zheng Kezang can only suppress his minions, give the southern regions time to recover, and take advantage of the momentary opportunity of being unable to move northward to consolidate the resources of the Huaxia Dynasty's base ship and balance as soon as possible, in order to completely overwhelm the northerner in the "race" "Holy King"

Of course, the so-called inability to use troops on a large scale in the Bashan, Qinling, Yellow River and Huaihe flood regions does not mean that troops must not be used

In fact, since the Xia army took control of Liangchuan and established the two provinces of Xichuan and Yidong, small-scale fights occurred from time to time in the mountains and forests on the Sichuan-Shanxi border. It is even more fierce to compete with each other. Often today you seize a certain sentry, and tomorrow I will attack a certain village of yours. In the repeated fighting, the battle line began to stabilize in the upper valley of the Jialing River near Jiange and Nanjiang Wangcang at the southern foot of Micang Mountain. other places

However, compared to the repeated competition in the direction of Jiange, Xia and Qing are relatively restrained in the northeast of Yi and the direction including Baiheguan, Zijingguan and Wuguan. Controlled smuggling has been repeatedly banned, making the Western Front one of the important channels for the exchange of news between the two sides

"Today, a senior official from the Privy Council came to the door." In a private house in Hanyang Mansion, several salt merchants gathered together. Walking across the river in Wuchang, so in fact, more businessmen either set up their private residences in Hanyang Fucheng or in Hankou County on the other side of the Hanshui River.

"If this account wants to find a way to smuggle Huai salt to Guanzhong, Hanzhong and Luoyang, I wonder if the imperial court has caught our sore feet, so I invite several shopkeepers to discuss countermeasures together."

Huaxia implements the free trading system of salt and iron. For this reason, Zheng Kezang sold the coastal tidal flats to merchants early in the morning, and the merchants and salt households combined interests to form a salt producer), and the salt farms could choose to sell the finished salt directly, or Salt can be sold to salt merchants (marketers) for subsale

During the period, Huaxia officials collected a fixed tax system salt tax (resource utilization tax) from the salt farm, and collected a proportional tax system city tax (sales tax) from the salt merchants at the sales terminal

Due to the widespread promotion of sun-drying salt technology, by the third year of Wucheng, the cost of salt per catty in Jianghuai salt farms was mostly less than two yuan per catty. Of course, the larger the production scale, the lower the salt tax per catty of salt, and the total cost of some super salt with a monthly production of ten thousand stones can be controlled at around eight liters. Generally speaking, the off-site price that salt farms sell to salt merchants It is 25 renminbi, the profit margin of the saltworks exceeds [-]%, and the salt merchants increase their prices according to the distance of the sales place, plus the market tax, the highest selling price is [-] renminbi to [-] renminbi per catty

After deducting expenses such as freight, manual storage costs, loss, etc., the profit of salt merchants is usually more than [-]%. Such a huge profit naturally arouses the interest of many people. Because the access to the salt industry in the Huaxia Dynasty is very low, salt shops are widely established in coastal areas. Chaos once led to disorderly competition

For this reason, under the coordination of the Yantie Yamen and the local government, the salt farms in various places have divided their respective sales scopes.

Among them, the Jianghuai salt industry has a large scale, and its salt production is distributed to the five provinces of Jianghuai, Jianghuai, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, West, Jiangxi and Jinghu, and the three prefectures of Taiping, Wuchang, and Jingzhou; In addition to ensuring their own needs, the salt industry in Ninghe and Fujian also supplies and sells southern Jiangxi, Chaozhou, eastern Guangdong, northern Guangdong and Hunan; Qiongzhou’s salt industry sells to western Guangdong, Guangxi and southern Guangxi; , but because Sichuan salt uses salt wells and boiled salt, the cost is relatively high, so the salt price in these places is correspondingly high

According to the scope of sales, Jinghu naturally belongs to Huaiyan