Chapter 96 Hangzhou Ambition (please subscribe for support)

Author: Scholar Wu

Chapter 96 Hangzhou Ambition (please subscribe for support)

After taking over the fortified city of Hangzhou, Qian Mo was very high-spirited.

As early as the Five Dynasties period, Hangzhou surpassed Nanjing and became the veritable first state in the southeast. In the Northern Song Dynasty, Hangzhou was the first state in the country for commercial taxation. The Southern Song Dynasty directly established its capital here, which naturally made it more prosperous.

Although in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang established Nanjing as the capital, Nanjing has always been the companion capital since then, making it difficult for Hangzhou's political influence to match Nanjing. Moreover, Hangzhou's population and commercial prosperity are not as good as Suzhou at the same time.

But after all, it has been one of the most prosperous and prosperous areas in China for hundreds of years, and has not been affected by too many wars. At this time, Hangzhou city had a population of nearly 500,000, including the populations of Qiantang and Renhe counties directly under the jurisdiction of Hangzhou Fucheng

More than 900,000.

The entire population of Hangzhou Prefecture exceeds 2.2 million, which is only behind Suzhou Prefecture.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhejiang had a population of more than 13 million, second only to Southern Zhili (today's Jiangsu, Anhui, and Shanghai). If Anhui is not included, it surpassed Jiangsu. It was the province with the highest population density in China at that time.

The three prefectures of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Huzhou currently controlled by Qian Mo are rare plain areas in Zhejiang. The population of the three prefectures is close to 6 million, which is equivalent to 9% of the national population. They are the essence of Zhejiang as a whole.

Capturing Hangzhou meant that Qian Mo owned the granary and silk in the Hangzhou-Jiahu Plain, and his wealth was no less than that of the Susong region.

Of course, if Qian Mo can further seize the two palaces of Su and Song, he will completely control the economic and demographic lifeline of the entire Jiangnan in his own hands.

Different from Suzhou, Hangzhou itself is a solid city. Its outer city perimeter is more than 40 miles, and the city wall is about 2 feet high. It is built near mountains and rivers. Moreover, there is Tianmu Mountain as a barrier to the northwest of Hangzhou, and Qiantang to the southeast.

Jiangtianxian is a place where you can build your foundation.

After taking Hangzhou, Qian Mo raised his influence to a higher level. At this point, Qian Mo was no longer a small-scale anti-Qing guerrilla force, but had risen to an anti-Qing warlord force that could separatist power in local areas.

Its appeal and influence are far beyond what the capture of Huzhou Prefecture can match.

After the annihilation of the Eight Banners in Hangzhou and the massacre of the families of the Eight Banners all over the city, Qian Mo also successfully put himself on the list of the first batch of people to be exterminated by the Qing Dynasty.

In terms of influence, Qian Mo felt that he should be ranked behind Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren. After all, these two had slaughtered all the Eight Banners in Nanchang City when the uprising first started.

However, it is estimated that Qian Mo is only ranked behind these two in Dorgon's extermination list at this time, and he is not out of the "second place"!

If Qian Mo continues to capture the Soviet Union and Song Dynasty, or even approaches Nanjing, then it is not impossible to achieve "overtaking in a corner". Tan Tai and He Luohui's southward army will probably abandon Jiangxi first and rush directly towards Hangzhou.

Qian Mo needs time to digest the fruits of these victories, so he needs to let other Ming armies have a greater impact to attract the firepower of the Qing army. Although it is no longer possible to develop the head covering at this time, he really can no longer continue to "seek death."

Already.

Therefore, Qian Mo decided to temporarily give up Suzhou and Songjiang, the two big fatties that were close to his mouth, and now the first priority was to expand the army and prepare for war.

Jiaxing Prefecture in the north originally had 2,000 Jiaxing Battalion soldiers, plus 1,000 surrendered troops from the Han Army's Zhenghuang Banner under Zhang Tianlu and 1,000 Green Battalion troops from the original Jiaxing Prefecture. Now they were all incorporated into the Jiaxing Camp, and Jiaxing Magistrate Lu Bingwen was asked to recruit 1,000 new soldiers.

The Jiaxing camp has been expanded to 5,000 people, and the safety of the Jiaxing area must be ensured.

The Huzhou area now has three battalions of Taihu Camp, Huzhou Camp and Tianmu Camp with 9,000 troops. Qian Mo ordered Huzhou Magistrate Ma Li to continue recruiting troops and add another 1,000 troops to each of the three battalions. Among them, the Huzhou Battalion is all cavalry and serves as a strategic reserve.

, are always ready to support other fronts, even the Huizhou and Jiangxi front lines.

The Hangzhou treasury has a lot of money, food and military supplies. There are 250,000 taels of silver alone, 150,000 shi of grain, and a large amount of cotton armor, gunpowder, swords and guns, bows and arrows, pig iron and other materials. It can be said that Qian Mo has made a fortune.

Small fortune.

This time, Qian Mo of the Hangzhou Prefecture recruited more than 3,000 Qing soldiers and thousands of young men, so he established the "Hangzhou Battalion" based on the surrendered Qing troops. He appointed Hou Qianhai as the chief soldier of the Hangzhou Battalion, and Zuo Shuxun and Huang Bao as the Hangzhou Battalion.

Deputy Commander-in-Chief, responsible for guarding Hangzhou.

The Chongming Camp, Shenji Camp and Jingnan Camp each added 1,000 people, mainly young men and a small number of surrendered Qing troops. It was still the old method of "bringing the old with the new" and "fighting with training".

Now there are 4 battalions in Hangzhou. Chongming Battalion, Shenji Battalion, Jingnan Battalion and Hangzhou Battalion have all expanded to 4,000 personnel.

Due to the previous successful "encirclement and reinforcements" tactic, the prefectures around Hangzhou are also empty of troops. Whether it is Susong's Second Prefecture in the north of Hangzhou, Shaoxing in the east, or Yanzhou in the southwest, there are not many Qing troops left. As long as they are defeated

After defeating the Qing army heading north from Fujian, Qian Mo could look for opportunities to capture Yanzhou or Shaoxing and expand his territory before Tan Tai's southern army arrived.

After another crazy expansion of the army, the Suhu Governor's Mansion now has 8 battalions of 33,000 land divisions, plus 3,000 Zhejiang navy troops, a total of 36,000 troops.

By then, even if the Qing army concentrates its main force to attack itself, it will still have enough strength to fight them!

However, the biggest worry after the army expansion was that Suhu Chief Minister Fu Er had no money. He really had no money.

Qian Buer said: "After this round of military expansion, the monthly salary of soldiers alone will be nearly 100,000 taels. The annual taxes of the three governments of Hangzhou, Jiaxing and Hu are converted into about 1.2 million taels of silver, which is barely enough to pay the annual soldiers' salary."

Military pay.”

"Now that the governor's office has moved to Hangzhou, and the successive wars have consumed huge amounts of supplies every month, the Chief Secretary is now seriously unable to make ends meet. If it hadn't been for the huge harvest from the capture of Hangzhou, the Suhu governor's treasury would have been at its bottom long ago!

"

Qian Mo said: "During the siege of Hangzhou, the food price rose to 3 taels of silver and one stone. The Industry Department should have made a small profit."

Liu Yichen was asked again: "How much silver does the Intelligence Department hand over to the Chief Secretary every month?"

Liu Yichen said: "Ten thousand taels of silver!"

Qian Mo asked: "The property under your Intelligence Department's name should have increased a lot. Why hasn't the amount of money paid in increased? Have you secretly increased the benefits?"

Liu Yichen also looked helpless and said: "It is true that the income of the industries under the Intelligence Department has increased, but now that the war is intensified, the Intelligence Department spent a lot of money to penetrate into the Qing army. The last time he instigated Hou Qianhai, he spent 10,000 yuan at a time.

Two pieces of silver."

"Furthermore, the accounts of the Intelligence Department have been verified by personnel from the Chief Envoy's Department, and the monthly budget for the use of silver has been submitted to Governor Xia for approval. There is absolutely no violation of regulations in issuing silver rewards."

Qian Mo said: "I can rest assured about the fund usage process of the Intelligence Department, and those who have merit will be rewarded. This time Huang Bao performed outstandingly, and I directly promoted him to the position of deputy commander-in-chief. The Hangzhou Battalion must pay close attention to me."

.”

Liu Yichen said: "Thank you, Mr. Governor, for trusting the Intelligence Department. We will definitely follow Deputy Chief Huang as an example!"

Qian Mo said to Qian Buer: "The Intelligence Department has indeed tried its best. What suggestions does Chief Minister Qian have?"

Qian Buer said: "Taxation is nothing more than two big heads, one is land tax and the other is commercial tax. Should we think of some ways from these two aspects?"

Of course Qian Mo knows that these two pieces of money are the big ones, but currently Qian Mo doesn't want to touch these two pieces of money. To be precise, he doesn't dare to touch them. If he does, the gentry will have to fight him desperately.

Qian Mo said: "The non-payment of taxes on the land under the gentry's name cannot be solved overnight. Let's not consider this for the time being. If taxes are levied hastily, it will inevitably cause turmoil, and I'm afraid the gains will outweigh the losses."

"However, the people are currently displaced. Although there will be no additional taxes on the land under the gentry's name for the time being, we must effectively prevent them from taking the opportunity to continue to annex the people's land."

"The fields confiscated by traitors in various places were turned into farms by the Department of Industry to recruit displaced people as tenants so that the governor could stock up on food."

"This can also solve the problem of homeless people. After all, the rent collected by the Industry Department is relatively reasonable. Those tenants must have a surplus, and they must be appropriately reduced or reduced when there is a famine. In this way, other large landowners will not dare to increase rents indiscriminately, and it can provide some relief in disguise.

contradiction."

"In addition, the Industry Department can lend money to people in need, so that they don't have to sell the acres under their names at low prices. After that, the people can pay it back with grain or silver. Of course, a certain guarantee is required."

"If there are some short-sighted local tycoons who want to take advantage of the property department's name on the farm, or obstruct the property department's normal mortgage business, then we will not have an excuse to fix them."

For the time being, Qian Mo has decided to focus on "maintaining stability" and curbing the momentum of mergers and acquisitions by these powerful powers. He has not dealt harshly with them. After all, this kind of class conflict cannot be resolved in a short time. Qian Mo still needs to unite all parties.

A kind of force to fight against the Qing Dynasty.

The main contradiction in current society is the ethnic contradiction, that is, the contradiction between the pro-Ming forces with the Han as the main body and the Qing Dynasty with the Eight Banners as the core. All other contradictions are secondary contradictions and can be temporarily put aside.

Corresponding reforms can only be carried out after a large amount of resources are in hand. At present, the Suhu Governor's Office is still collecting taxes according to the old system, so that there will be no opposition voices in the ruling area for the time being.

After all, these areas have just been conquered. If you don’t touch the cakes of the Jiangnan gentry, they will not oppose you and hinder you overtly or covertly. If you attack these gentry now, it will be no different from the rogue regime.

Already.

Money, with the "first pot of gold" from catching traitors, can temporarily maintain the operation of the Suhu Governor's Mansion. Qian Mo can make high profits by doing business on his own. There is no need to collect all the gentry in order to collect a little business tax now.

Force yourself to be the opposite.

As long as there is stability under Qian Mo's rule, the business environment improves, and those businessmen make money, then the resistance to collecting reasonable business taxes will not be so great.

Now occupying Mancheng, a large number of industries occupied by the Hangzhou Eight Banners have all been taken over by the Suhu Governor's Mansion. Qian Mo intends to build a brand new business district in the original Mancheng of Hangzhou. Let these businessmen participate together and share some of the cake dividends.

As for the commercial tax, Qian Mo decided to organize a large overseas caravan and use the Shipping Department to open up the commercial tax.

After all, the territory of these three states is not yet in Qian Mo's hands, so it is normal for these gentry to have a wait-and-see attitude.

At this time, it was the more visionary businessmen who bet on Qian Mo in advance. Such visionary leaders are always a minority in every era. For example, the few businessmen who used to transport supplies for Qian Mo in Tianjiazhuang are now in Tianjiazhuang.

Jiaxing and Huzhou have mastered a large number of industries and channels, and prosperity is booming.

Qian Mo also intends to build his own "Jiang-Zhejiang Consortium" with support based on the three northern Zhejiang states.

Later generations of Chairman Chiang succeeded in standing out among various warlords by relying on the "Jiang-Zhejiang Consortium" behind him.

Qian Mo said: "This time I plan to use the entire city of Hangzhou to build a commercial district and attract all the big businessmen from all over the south of the Yangtze River. The Industry Department can first select some good shops to bring in its flagship products.

, some other businessmen who cooperate with us can also say hello in advance and promote this business district."

"I will also contact businessmen from overseas. The Portuguese, Dutch and Spanish will all come here. We will build Hangzhou into a business capital."

"Anyway, we have all the shop land in the city, and the rental income will be a large amount of income."

Qian Mo said to Xia Wanchun: "I can't find a suitable candidate for the governor of Hangzhou at the moment, so I asked Governor Xia to investigate and promote a suitable candidate. Now this position is equivalent to our Shuntian Governor. It is too important. For the time being, Governor Xia will hold the concurrent position.

.”

"Besides, do Governor Xia and Chief Minister Qian still have any questions about the concept of the city-wide commercial district I mentioned?"

Xia Wanchun said: "I already understand what Governor Qian means. The governor's office must restore public security in Hangzhou as soon as possible and create a stable business environment for the commercial district. This will also help the rents in the commercial district rise."

Qian Mo said: "After all, Xiaoyin understands my thoughts. I will leave Hangzhou to you. From now on, this will be our capital."
To be continued...