Harry Potter’s Morning Light

   Chapter 2163 Flower War (seventy-one)

   The Battle of Jinchuan, the Great and Smallest, lasted from the 12th year of Qianlong to the 41st year. The wars were intermittent. The Qing court invested nearly 600,000 manpower and spent 70 million taels of silver.

  The Yuan Dynasty was the era of banknotes. Although a lot of gold and silver were rewarded, the salary was mainly banknotes. In Marco Polo's travels, the process of forcing the use of banknotes is recorded: "Fanzhou County and the land under the monarch's jurisdiction are all accessible. Although the subjects are of high positions, they dare not refuse to use them, and those who refuse to use them are guilty of death. You and the others, everyone is happy to use this coin, covering the places where the merchants in the Great Khanate go, using this paper money to pay fees, to pay for the goods, and to get the price of the goods they sell, it is not comparable to pure gold. No, its weight is so light that if it is worth ten coins, its weight is no more than one coin."

   Paper money relies on the authority of the monarch, and it also brings convenience to the monarch. The Ming Dynasty once wanted to issue Daming treasure banknotes like the Yuan Dynasty, but it did not succeed.

  The Qing Dynasty also had silver bills, but they were issued by the Ministry of Households. After the White Lotus Revolt, it became a hassle to transport gold and silver to various places, and the **** bureau was no longer able to send money from merchants home. Compared with the two Huai salt merchants who were severely damaged by the salt case, Shanxi merchants who made money on the border have accumulated innumerable wealth. They began to go south, opened ticket numbers, and engaged in exchange business including official bank.

In May of the 50th year of Qianlong, Qianlong went to Rehe as usual, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had to prepare in advance for this. According to the usual practice, the accompanying guards needed to go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to collect money for assistance before departure, and then go to the street. The banker went to exchange for loose silver for use on the road.

However, 10 days later, some of the guards held silver ingots but did not exchange for broken silver. The silver shop staff told them that these silvers were "low tide silver" and could not be exchanged according to standard silver. Naturally, the guards did not believe it. As the guy said, the silver ingots are of insufficient quality, which is the so-called "low tide silver".

These silver ingots were obtained directly from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the silver treasury of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was located on the west side of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City. There is a strict procedure for opening the treasury. Three people must be present at the same time, and two people must sign for the closing of the treasury. The lock is painted and glued to the lock. There is a treasury officer on duty every night, but the person on duty does not have the key. Instead, the guards of the Qianqing Palace keep the keys of the six treasuries centrally, and they need the permission of the director of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

   That is to say, there will be no case of secretly substituting silver ingots, unless the officials guard themselves against theft or practice favoritism, and it is the county king Yongrong who is in charge of this.

   After learning about this, Yong Rong immediately recovered the sponsored silver that was sent out, and checked the silver ingots with several ministers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

  Then the ministers took a detailed count of the silver taels next to the Hall of Supreme Harmony, which was about 70,000 taels less. This amount is not large, but the key is that it happened in the Forbidden City.

  Although the Ministry of Internal Affairs can order those luggage shop owners to close their doors and not sell anything, it cannot force the silver shops to accept silver ingots of insufficient quality, and the control of silver bills is even stricter.

   Heshen’s funds for repairing the temple of Xumi Fushou in Rehe were reported by the Military Aircraft Office, and it should have been allocated one million taels of silver by the Ministry of Household, but Heshen himself figured out a way to raise part of it.

  The first is the criminal offender Yang Kui's negotiating silver 20,000 taels, and the AH governor Min Eyuan handed over 15,000 taels of silver, and then the gold, silver and jade wares obtained from the house of Gao Pu, the minister of the Ministry of War, and 139,000 taels obtained by changing the price.

   Gao Pu is the son of Gao Heng, the former two Huai salt administrators. He is in the same clan as Huixian noble concubine and Gao Jin. This time he is greedy for the jade business.

  XJ came out of Hetian jade, but private mining was prohibited from the Kangxi year, and the real execution was after Qianlong pacified Zhunge Er.

   After taking office, Gao Pu and Aqimu Boke'e teamed up, organized Uyghur miners to mine jade, and then ordered Han merchants to transport them to the mainland to sell them for huge profits.

   This is not the reason why the emperor was angry and wanted to severely punish the Gao Jia clan. After the death of E Du, Gao Pu once filed a petition, hoping that the son of E Du would inherit the position of Archimboke.

  The Tang Dynasty's Jiedu envoy was also hereditary in the later period. In order to avoid it, Qianlong sent the son of E Dui to KS, and transferred KS's Archimboke to Yeerqiang. Soon the newly arrived Archie Burke found out about Gao Pu's private jade mining and other problems.

The place where jade is mined is located in a deep mountain canyon. The terrain is high and cold. There is a lot of rain in summer, and flash floods are prone to occur. The work of jade mining is very difficult. In addition to facing various natural disasters, the safety of miners cannot be guaranteed. Heavily burdened, he negotiated to escape.

Only one of these miners knows how to mine. He is the leader of these miners. If he flees, he will be chased back no matter where he goes. The only way is to kill him. Once he is dead, the others will not know how to mine jade. People will be sent home.

   But the miners didn't want him to do that, so the leader jumped down the cliff.

  The angry miners carried the leader's body to the bottom of the mountain to ask for an explanation. The new Archimberke could see as long as he was not blind. Gao Pu gave him 50 ingots, hoping that he would keep his mouth shut. However, since the Qing Dynasty unified XJ, the military and political officials dispatched by the imperial court here have become accustomed to Yile and oppressed the people. The Changji Rebellion broke out in the 33rd year of Qianlong’s reign, and the Uyghur rebellion occurred in the 30th year. If the three thousand miners also rebelled, Archie would Mu Burke is to blame.

So he reported the matter to Yonggui, the newly appointed minister of Wushi, who rushed to tell Qianlong with 800 miles. Qianlong immediately approved the memorial, and asked Yonggui to go to the place where Gao Pu was and pull out his roof. Dai Hualing took the prisoners in custody and put them in custody for trial.

Agui, who participated in the pacification of Zhungeer in person, knew that this matter was important. He was ordered to check Gao Pu's property in Beijing. In his servant's letter, he saw that these Hetian jades were sent to Suzhou, Yangzhou, Jiangning and other cities with developed jade carvings. So Qianlong sent Sa Zai, governor of Jiangnan River Road, and Yang Kui, governor of Jiangsu, to inspect.

  Yang Kui is the one who paid 20,000 taels of crime money. He did not participate in Gao Pu's affairs, but in official circles, who knows if any stolen goods will be sent to him as gifts.

   This person has dealt with Xu Shukui's literary prison, and he has seen the scene of raiding his family and exterminating his family. He may have felt scared, so he was not sincere when he handled the errand, and he was eventually demoted by two levels to stay in office.

Later, the Wang Jiwang incident happened. He once assisted the governor Chen Zuhui to inspect his property together. No one knows whether he participated in the exchange of stolen goods by Chen Zuhui. Anyway, he fell ill when he was a governor in Fujian, and he wrote a letter to return to his hometown. He died of illness on the way back to Beijing. Qianlong also did not raid his home.

  The case of Gao Pu was very involved. Qianlong scolded that "such evil species are not only tolerated by the national law". Gao Pu was not only sentenced to beheading, but also had not been escorted back to Beijing for execution, because Qianlong's order was not to allow his corpse to be returned to the mainland. When it's over, you may feel unresolved, and people will smash Gao Pu's body into ten thousand pieces and feed him to the dog.

  Dogs are considered "Dragons" in the eyes of Manchurian Jurchens, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs feeds hunting dogs with meat.

  Yongrong had no intention of politics after being adopted, just like the former prince Yunxi, because Yunxi was indifferent to fame and fortune, and loved poetry and painting, so Yongzheng was very kind to this younger brother.

When the Yongrong branch went out, he got a pawnshop. Later, the money was not enough. Qianlong gave him another pawnshop, "Qingchun Dang", which contained more than 24,000 taels of principal and interest, and also gave him 1,000 yuan to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The rent of eight hundred official rooms.

After the case of the Guangchu Division, the case was also widely circulated. The Prince of Zhi, who was good at poetry and painting and liked math, immediately called up all the relevant people for isolation and interrogation, and obtained a written and signed confession. After the case, Yong Rong immediately reported it to the emperor, requesting to discuss the crime, and took the initiative to plead guilty, believing that he was oversight, and other relevant officials of the six libraries also had inescapable responsibilities and asked the emperor to give severe punishment.

The process of the case is like this. Except for the salt administration and tariffs, the General Reserve Department is the official quality silver ingot. Others, such as the silver that has been confiscated and put into the warehouse, are of uneven quality. . Because of the long time, the accumulation of low tide silver will be more. The Ministry of Internal Affairs will issue fees to some royal family members, and these royal family members usually ask for high-quality silver taels in order to exchange for small profits.

  The ones in good condition went out, but the low tide silver remained, which accounted for a larger proportion. The 70,000 taels of low tide silver accounted for one-tenth of the total inventory.

The report arrived in Qianlong's hands, only approved "I know, I respect this", and then fined Heshen and Yongrong three months' salary, with a grade of fines, and collected ten times the total amount of low tide silver for oversight, no grade. Suffer 80 big boards, and that's it.

   The county king's title "Master Jiusi" is three times more than "Think before you act".

The king of the small county "wanted" to inherit the position left by his father, but during his wedding in the capital, that position was already occupied by Tushetu Khan Chedendorji. He gave Ula Huangduan a ticket and was dismissed. Later, he asked Lavan Dorzi to be the minister of Kulun, and Yunduan Dorzi was the assistant. From then on, the small county king began to run on both sides.

  Unexpectedly, the Buryat Russians hijacked the Han merchants in the second year. Not only did they take the goods, but they did not let them go. It was useless to write down the letter many times. It stopped in the 50th year of Qianlong.

  The restless little county king can't be idle, of course, and then he moved the alliance to the Mulan paddock, and Kulun and Wulia Sutai each led the good players to practice the siege.

  The Qiansou Banquet in the 50th year of Qianlong didn't have any delicacies from the mountains and seas, and it was full of Manchu and Han banquets. It was just a few thousand people eating hot pot together, and the mutton was shipped from Mongolia.

   Qianlong was very happy and praised the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but no one was going to claim this credit.

Just in March of the previous year, Long Fuan died, and the six ministers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs became five, namely Yongrong, Heshen, Jinjian, Debao, and Fuchangan. In the past, each of them managed a treasury. If newcomers are not arranged to come in, one of their five ministers will always be in charge of two treasuries.

   Ever since the Old Summer Palace caught fire and Yongxun left Qianlong to escape first, he was adopted and left alone. His eldest son, Minhui, was born in the second year, and Yongxun didn't care about him, and his mother fell ill when he gave birth to him, and died not long after. When Mianhui was 14 years old, Yongxuan also died. Mianhui did not inherit his father's princely title, but was just a Baylor. Qianlong ordered Jin Jian to take care of him.

   In Baylor's words, Jin Jian is just a coated slave, who has the right to control him?

   His mother is the Wanyan family of Side Fujin, which means that Jin Jian is the uncle of Mianhui Belle.

  Yongxuan gave birth to five sons, and only one of them lived to adulthood, while Baylor died at the age of 33. If he did not stay behind, Pima Daixiao were all adopted sons, and the title he inherited had to be downgraded to Beizi.

   Wang Jiwang's father was an honest official, otherwise Qianlong would not have used him. But what kind of father does not mean what kind of son you have, Juren suffers from this loss, and he did not expect that the bank where he saved his money would "suddenly" close down.

  The bank was most afraid of a run on the money. When he arrived, it had already happened. In the end, he got a little back through a lawsuit.

   This new owner did not squander his father's family business, but was involved in the Changlu Salt case. Changlu has produced good salt since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, but Qianlong loved jade, and Changlu salt merchants also bought jade, and then paid tribute to the Yanzheng. But this time the problem was not Yan Yin or Yan Zheng, but the salt merchants themselves.

  The interest rate on the money lent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs is about 12%, which is much lower than that of ordinary usury, but they are mainly lent to merchants with "frequent contacts".

   Borrowing money requires interest to be repaid. The more you borrow, the more you will pay. If you can’t afford the interest, you have to tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall. No one thought that the salt merchants would not be able to repay the money.

   Not only the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but even the young owner of the money-saving bank did not know about them. In the end, it was discovered that these salt merchants were insolvent, and all their belongings were liquidated, leaving the Ministry of Internal Affairs 790,000 taels.

All of these "family belongings" have been packaged by the Household Affairs Office, and nothing is left for the people. There may be some left. Anyway, the young master didn't get it, but this is just the tip of the iceberg of what Changlu owes. This is a group incident, not a long-term affair. The salt trader owes money.

   When Emperor Jiaqing arrived, the tribute to Changlu was some silk, no more valuables, and the local salt industry also declined.

   And their arrears are largely related to the Battle of Jinchuan. They donate the money proactively, and they can also show "enthusiasm" in retribution.

   It is precisely because of this that Changlu salt merchants can borrow loans from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and they have not yet caused the emperor's anger.

   In addition, there is the problem of "silver is expensive and money is cheap". The quality of copper coins in different places is different, which is not convenient for long-distance circulation. The common people used copper coins or broken silver to buy salt. Their copper coins were different from those of Zhili. One thousand coins were not worth one tael of silver.

   Anyway, the decline of Changlu is a complicated issue, and one can only admit it.

   Besides, Xiaojun Wang went to Mobei not only to be an assistant, but also to inspect and "deal with" the Buryat people. It's hard to say what's the use of raising people there.

   Save it to meet you later, after all, in this world, who knows what will happen?

   (end of this chapter)