Prince of Song Dynasty

Chapter 1089 Post
Ye Chen nodded and said: "Now it seems that this may not be the case. It's just that Bai Zixuan has a good mind and has no intention of official fame, so how could he suddenly be willing to join the Wuyue Kingdom and become a courtier of the Wuyue King. If you talk about the founding hero, He could be regarded as the founding hero of our Xiangfu Kingdom, and I have a lot of trust in him, and most of the Bai family members are still in Xiajing City, there is really no reason."

Shangguan Bingyun said: "Your Majesty, General Bai Canghai thought the same way, so he rescued the servant girl, and when the servant girl's injury improved, he went to Jiangnan again to ask Bai Zixuan for clarification."

Ye Chen shook his head, there are too many strange things in this matter, too many things that cannot be explained, and too many things that are unreasonable.

"Your Majesty, what should the Bai family do?" Shangguan Bingyun suddenly asked again.

Ye Chen thought for a while and said, "As long as the Bai family doesn't leave Xiajing City, other things will remain the same as before. Your security department is responsible for handling this matter. I will ask Xiajing Mansion and the city guards to cooperate."

Shangguan Bingyun said: "This servant will obey His Majesty's will."

.........

.........

After Shangguan Bingyun left, Ma Wentao, Han Xizai, and Jia Xian, who had been waiting in the side hall for a while, were called into the imperial study by Ye Chen. The three of them came to benefit the people and benefit the country during his inspection. Policy Post.

Ye Chen ordered Xin Shi to give the three of them seats, and said, "How's the plan for postal services?"

Han Xizai said: "Don't worry, Your Majesty, the preliminary plan for postal implementation has been prepared. However, for the sake of safety and security, I thought that the local governments should be asked to verify and investigate the actual situation of each state and county according to the requirements issued by the Ministry of Education. After the actual situation of each state and county is reported, the ministers will discuss and study it again, and then they can decide on the final implementation plan, and I will ask His Majesty to make a decision at that time."

Ye Chen nodded slightly, expressing his satisfaction, and said: "Han Xianggong has always acted prudently and thoughtfully, and this is the best way to deal with it."

"Your Majesty's postal policy is actually something that has never happened in the Chinese dynasties for thousands of years. It can be said that it is unprecedented, but because it has never happened before, it must be implemented carefully." When it comes to postal services, Ma Wentao's eyes shine , very excited. "According to His Majesty's vision, we will take Xiajing as the center and the five prefecture cities of Longzhou, Yanzhou, Lanzhou, Liangzhou, and Fuzhou as the nodes, and we will divide the 27 prefectures and 110 counties of our Xiangfu country on the basis of the original Some official roads, post stations, and horse shops are all connected into a large network. Each county sends a postal carriage every five days to the nearest county seat, and it takes a day or two at the earliest, and a round trip can be made every five days at the latest. ; Then all the counties gathered in five cities including Longzhou, and dispatched postal carriages every two days. The manpower and material resources that can be saved by implementing postal services in this way are incomparable! This is really a great pioneering work, and it is also a great virtue!"

Ye Chen nodded with a smile, and said: "Everything in the world, as long as it is new, there will be many unexpected difficulties, but we should not take it lightly. Otherwise, it will waste people's money, and in the end, painting a tiger will not be an anti-dog, and good intentions will do bad things. Oh no."

"Don't worry, Your Majesty!" Han Xizai said confidently, "How can I not know the importance of this matter? If this matter is successfully implemented, I don't know how many people will benefit. Based on this, I will definitely be cautious and try my best to be thorough."

"In this way, I can rest assured that the Ministry of Households will withdraw special funds to facilitate this matter as soon as possible." Ye Chen nodded and said.He entrusted Han Xizai and Ma Wentao to take charge of this matter, and with their abilities, he believed that nothing would go wrong.

Jia Xian gave a wry smile, and said, "Your Majesty, I made a preliminary estimate. It will take at least 300 million taels of silver to complete this matter. Now that the finances are inclined to the army, your Majesty requires that all the preparations newly developed by the Equipment Department be listed within three months." Arming the troops has consumed half of the finances, but the treasury is not enough money."

Ye Chen smiled and said: "The household department doesn't have enough money, so I don't know, but Jia Aiqing doesn't know that although the postal service costs a lot of money at the beginning, once it is implemented, the 300 million taels of silver spent may not be enough. It will be earned back in half a year, and it will earn tens of thousands of taels of silver to the court every month. If it is fully promoted, in my opinion, it is no less than what another glass factory makes to the court."

After Jia Xian, Ma Wentao, and Han Xizai heard this, their eyes lit up. Although they had some knowledge about the profitability of the postal service, they never expected it to be so profitable. But who is your majesty? It must be another cash cow for the court.

Ye Chen was inspecting the world this time and noticed one thing, so just after returning to Xiajing after the inspection, he drew on the postal and express delivery systems of later generations, combined with the actual situation of Xiangfu Kingdom and current conditions, and decided on the postal route. Policy.

Ye Chen discovered that government servants have one main job every month and every quarter throughout the year, which is to escort items or deliver documents.These items and documents are either sent to other counties, or to the state capital, or to Xiajing. Every time there is such a task, a special person must be sent to escort them. A lot of expenses, and there are many people on the road who are not in a hurry. If it is not for the important urgent items and documents specified by the court, it is not impossible to travel from Xiajing to Guazhou for several months and half a year.As for the letters and articles of the common people, they can only be entrusted to caravans, escort bureaus, and horses and horses, not to mention that they are easy to lose, and such opportunities are rare.Ye Chen didn't need to ponder or investigate at all, he knew that the people urgently needed the implementation of the postal policy, and once it was implemented, it would be convenient for the people, and the court would not only save this expense, but it would also be a huge income.

This matter may have been discovered by many people of insight in the past dynasties, but it obviously cannot be solved.Sometimes it is very common in later generations. A strategy or a method that seems very simple will only appear after thousands of years, or even thousands of years of people's thinking.

Therefore, when Ye Chen explained the postal policy to Ma Wentao, Han Xizai and others in detail, everyone was surprised and inexplicable, and each of them secretly sighed in their hearts that His Majesty is indeed His Majesty. Don’t say it before the founding of the country. In the past two years since the founding of the country, Xiangfu College, The establishment of military academies, primary and secondary schools, technical schools for craftsmen, the establishment of lists of benefactors, civil affairs research departments, agricultural research departments, weapons and equipment research departments, repeated reforms of the army, and glass, cement, red bricks, etc. have changed the world. People's livelihood, and created a lot of money for the court.Of course, the emergence of those factories and workshops in the weaponry base is also inseparable from His Majesty's guidance.The emergence of these miracles made the entire court, including nearly tens of millions of people, take it for granted that His Majesty performed miracles.With this understanding, Ye Chen proposed the postal policy again. Although the court was pleasantly surprised, it was already used to it.

In fact, whether it is the Song Dynasty or the Xiangfu Kingdom, the postal post system is very developed, the official roads are smooth, and there are post stations and horse shops above the official roads to provide supplies for travelers along the way.Ye Chen just decided to use these originally mature systems to set up post offices in various cities, regularly send horse-drawn carts or ox carts to nearby cities, then transfer from that city to another city, and finally concentrate on five larger, And the city on the traffic points.These five larger cities then ship the items to nearby places.

Using this method, although it is not as fast as some big families and rich families sending special escorts, the time spent is limited, and the labor and material resources saved are extremely expensive.In Ye Chen's vision, except for military communications, extremely important official documents and very bulky transportation that cannot use this system, most of the transmission tasks can be solved by this system.

For this reason, in Ye Chen's plan, a postal department will be established under the Ministry of Commerce among the six ministries of Zhongshu Province, and corresponding officials will be transferred from each ministries. The specific postmen will be recruited from the civilian population, and retired soldiers will be given priority Get hired and then do some training.Even in Ye Chen's plan, after the postal system gradually matures, he can not only deliver goods and letters, but also transport people in the postal system, similar to the shuttle buses of later generations. way.

In addition, Ye Chen also knows that once the postal network is built and spread across the country, the development momentum will inevitably be very strong. In addition to the above, it will also promote exchanges between localities.

However, for such an unprecedented system, in addition to Ye Chen knowing exactly what the situation is and what it will eventually develop into, Ma Wentao, Han Xizai and others who are in charge of organizing the matter only vaguely feel that this system is extraordinary. The situation can only be roughly guessed.

As long as Ma Wentao and Han Xizai think of the admiration and admiration on the expressions of civil and military officials when His Majesty proposed the postal policy to the ministers at the court meeting, Ma Wentao and Han Xizai will feel that such a wonderful idea that benefits the country and the people, and is also rich in wealth, they If they can't do it perfectly, but throw it in their own hands, they will become the eternal sinners who are ashamed of the country's court and shameless of the people.

Therefore, Ma Wentao and Han Xizai, who were secretly fighting each other, reached an unprecedented tacit agreement on this matter. The imperial court worked at full capacity, mobilized a large number of capable officials from various ministries, and calculated in detail the annual cost of escorting goods and delivering documents in all states and counties across the country. In terms of manpower and financial resources, we also investigated the official roads between the prefectures and counties and the posthouses and horse shops along the way, and then designed five larger transit cities according to the distance of the roads, the population, the wealth of the residents, and the size of the logistics. So that items in each city can reach each place through the shortest route.

(End of this chapter)