For some of the members of the Fengjie Committee, who had an idea of the profitability of shipping, Deng Ming shared important information about the relationship between western Sichuan and Huguang and Liangjiang. Among them, Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun have long known about this matter, and Hao Shaoqi and He Zhen also know it, but it is completely news for Wang Guangxing and Dang Shousu.

After Li Siye arrived in Fengjie, according to the agreement between Deng Ming and Li Dingguo, he also knew that part of the agreement between western Sichuan, Huguang and Liangjiang -- the inside story of the battle of Gaoyou Lake would of course not be made public at the committee, and Deng Ming thought that it was necessary to let the alliance know about the other agreements, so as to play a coordinating role in the committee. The insiders are all generals or their sons, nephews, and confidants who insist on resisting to the end, and they will not talk nonsense everywhere, and no matter what bad things they say about Manchu officials, they will not be believed by the Qing court.

The profits of the Yangtze River shipping greatly exceeded the expectations of Li Laiheng, Liu Tichun and Deng Ming when they jointly issued the Yiling Declaration, and even if Zhoushan's share of profits is not counted, excluding the subsidies to Li Laiheng, Liu Tichunyi, Yuan Zongdi and the two generals of Hanshui, it has also brought more than 200 million yuan worth of income to western Sichuan this year. Now this part of the income is Deng Ming's financial pillar, ensuring the credit of the IOU and the operation of the western Sichuan government, as for how much silver taels are converted, there will be some slight fluctuations according to the ups and downs of the silver price.

This year, Hao Shaoqi and He Zhen also adopted policies similar to those of Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun, adjusting their relationship with the gentry and receiving subsidies from the committee, while Li Laiheng and Liu Tichun hoped to increase their subsidies a little more.

However, after the start of this year's southeast transport, the committee's profits began to decline.

First of all, a lot of last year's income was extorted by Deng Ming, not entirely commercial income, and secondly, last year, the Ming army traveled back and forth on the Yangtze River, which played a role in replacing merchant ships. If commerce is developed, the people along the river can also sell local products to merchant ships, or provide firewood, river fresh, grain and other items, just like last year did to the Ming army, these income can subsidize the family, can also be further passed on to the area not near the river, so that the peasants can do more chores to subsidize the family, bear the tax. This year, in order to complete the transportation of water, both Huguang and Liangjiang had to further requisition civilian boats, which further emptied the already exhausted middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Shipping on the Yangtze River has become more depressed, and even if the peasants want to do more odd jobs, it has become unprofitable, and even if all this surplus energy is invested in the land, it is impossible to further increase grain production, and it is already difficult to bear taxes on land alone, not to mention the decline in the consumption and prices of grain, vegetables, fruits, and cotton.

The ban on the sea dealt the final blow to the economy of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, with a large number of fishermen and sailors losing their jobs and the normal export trade completely suspended. In the face of the ban on the sea, fishermen in Shandong, Liangjiang, Fujian, and Zhejiang began to go to sea secretly at the risk of death, but the Qing court was extremely strict in its methods, ordering officers and soldiers in various places to take stones as boundaries, and the people who crossed the border were killed, and many coastal people who took risks for their livelihood died under the butcher's knives of officers and soldiers patrolling the sea.

Even in Jiangnan, Jiang Guozhu also implemented a strict ban on the sea, first, he didn't take the lives of ordinary people seriously at all, and it was only easy to speak when facing a person like Deng Ming who held heavy troops; Second, although Jiang Guozhu had an agreement with Chongming, he also did not want to make this matter known to everyone, so except for a few smuggling docks, there was no difference in the implementation of the sea ban in other places; In the end, Jiang Guozhu secretly calculated that if the sea ban was implemented well, he and Chongming could obtain a monopoly position in the transaction, and it would be easier to raise the price.

Now that the economy of Liangjiang is about to suffocate, Jiang Guozhu and Zhang Chao have no other way to deal with it except to persuade Nongsang, after all, the imperial court's taxes cannot be stopped. And because he did not dare to reduce the taxes stipulated by the Qing court, it was an empty word to persuade the peasants, even if there was no future economic theory, the ancestors would have already summed it up, and if they wanted to restore production, they would have to pay light taxes. Therefore, the current method of Liangjiang can only be to mobilize more officials to go to the countryside to inspect the spring ploughing and autumn harvest, and crack down on the fugitives.

Seeing that the price of land has not stopped, and the officials rely on the power of the imperial court to seize the money, a large number of small landlords have begun to miss the time when the Ming army crossed the border last year, when the Ming army was deterred, the officials of the two rivers were much more restrained, and the price of grain could be maintained, and they could also sell local products and buy cheap goods, many landlords discussed privately, hoping that the Ming army would cross the border again, so that they could earn some silver money to pay the taxes of the Qing court.

The gentry were in a much better position than the small landowners, and they now had some preferential tax policies, which were much better than the ability of the small landlords and peasants to withstand disasters, and many of them took advantage of the heavy taxes to lend money and buy land when the price of land was cheap.

"What can we do about this?" After Ren Tang listened to Zhou Peigong's secret envoy, he immediately remembered Deng Ming's theory, but he didn't say it explicitly, but continued to bargain: "If you want the southeast to recover, you must stop paying taxes to Beijing, do Governor Jiang and Governor Zhang have such determination?" If there is, our army can help. If the two governors do not have such determination, we will not be able to convince the Tartars of Beijing not to collect your taxes. ”

It is impossible to directly defect to the Ming army, and although Jiang Guozhu is now using smuggling channels to collect money and actively cultivate private forces, he has only been drumming for half a year, and it is unlikely that he will achieve great results in any case. If it is blatantly anyway, the Manchus will definitely go all out to pacify the southeast even if they abandon Sichuan and Liangguang, and as long as Beijing returns to more than ten years ago overnight at any cost and is not afraid of the situation, it will definitely be able to put together a considerable counterinsurgency army, and Jiang Guozhu will definitely be a dead end; And if the Ming army is invited to help, not to mention whether the fight will be won or not, even if the battle is won, the territory will be the Ming army's.

"It's a bit too hasty to fight the Tartars now." Without waiting for Zhou Peigong's envoy to answer, Liu Tichun answered for him.

Now anyone with a discerning eye can see that the Qing court still has an absolute advantage, and the Ming army can hold on to the southwest, to a large extent, it takes advantage of the dispersion of the Qing court's forces, and the farther west it is from the political and economic loyalty of the Qing court, the weaker the Qing army's supply and control capabilities become, so even if the Qing court has several times or even ten times the advantage of national strength, it cannot achieve an overwhelming advantage on the western front.

To the east can only be a raid and harassment war, the purpose is to plunder materials to strengthen themselves, and weaken the national strength of the Qing court, which is very clear to all the generals of Kuidong. Even if he is as strong as Zheng Chenggong, he can't capture the southeast, and if he is as brave as Deng Ming, he can't firmly control even a stronghold, and the strength of Kui Dongzhong is even worse, Li Laiheng and Zhang Changgeng are now quite balanced, and Hao Shaoqi and He Zhen can't even beat the Chu army, and they can stand in Xiangyang because Wuchang is worried about Deng Ming's reaction. Therefore, everyone in this group of members of the committee knew in their hearts that the policy adopted by Deng Ming was probably the most beneficial to the Ming army at present.

"What the committee means," Liu Tichun used the name of this agency for the first time: "We sent troops to Jiangnan to break through some prefectures and counties, so that Liangjiang could obtain some tax exemptions, but we did not have enough ships, and we needed the help of the Western Sichuan Naval Division." ”

"Is that what you mean?" Mu Tan asked with some surprise, if the prefecture is breached, what good will it do to Jiang Guozhu even if he can be exempted from taxes? But if they just pretended to be and didn't let the Ming army take away the savings in the treasury, then how could Liu Tichun and the others actively agree with this resolution?

"Yes." Zhou Peigong's envoy replied, and then he told Zhou Peigong's plan.

Since he concurrently served as the political envoy of Liangjiang, Zhou Peigong was also very dedicated to the affairs of Liangjiang, and was also an active supporter of Jiang Guozhu and Zhang Chao's self-reliance: because Zhou Peigong knew that he himself was of greatest value only when Deng Ming was a great threat, whether his yamen was called "Suppress Deng" or "Tong Deng", the imperial court agreed to the establishment of this yamen because of the former, and the southeastern governor treated him favorably because of the latter.

Zhou Peigong also saw the predicament of the southeast, and was anxious in his heart, if the situation continued, not only would his yamen be affected, Deng Ming might be dissatisfied, but also Jiang Guozhu and Zhang Chao's reputation among the people would also become very bad -- this was very unfavorable for them to cultivate private power, and the officials of the imperial court did not need to care too much about their prestige among the people, but it was completely different if they wanted to be a local emperor.

Jiang Guozhu's original idea was to take a group of gentry under the knife, the reason was that these people missed the Ming Dynasty and were dissatisfied with the Manchu Qing. The Qing court had always been very sensitive to the rhetoric of the Han Chinese, and this crime must have satisfied the court, and the gentry had more family property, floating wealth could fill the treasury, and the land could be used to settle immigrants who moved to the sea, and there would be some income from renting it to them.

However, Zhou Peigong felt that it was inappropriate, because although this excuse was easily accepted by the imperial court, it would damage Jiang Guozhu's reputation too much, unless Jiang Guozhu took out a part of the income to compensate the people of Jiangnan - if he collected a group of gentry, exempted the small landlords who owed them loans, and gave them some land, it might be a good way, but Jiang Guozhu was reluctant to bleed after thinking about it.

In the end, this plan was further modified, Jiang Guozhu planned to reach a secret agreement with the Ming army, and the Ming army came forward to clean up a group of rich gentry, and Jiang Guozhu was responsible for secretly cooperating and not causing trouble for the Ming army's military operations.

The committee felt that this was a good idea, and that the camp did not have much affection for the gentry in the first place, and that Chiang Guozhu assured that the people on the list were the most loyal to the Qing court -- the common enemies of Chiang Guozhu and the Ming army. After knowing this secret plan, Jiangxi also gladly joined, Zhang Chao said that the Ming army could go around Jiangxi before going to Jiangnan again, and kill those wall-riding factions and hardcore pro-Qing factions, and he was responsible for letting the Jiangxi Green Battalion perform a "soldiers come without a shadow, bandits come without a trace, poor soldiers and bandits, when will they meet?" ”