Even if the various reductions and exemptions are removed, as well as the allocations to Wu Sangui and other feudal lords, a total of 4 million stone of grain and 10 million taels of silver will enter the Grand Canal from Yangzhou this year and be sent all the way north to Yanjing.

Since the capital of Chengzu Beijing, the canal is the main artery supporting the dynasty, without the support of Cao Yun, the northern border defense of thousands of miles can not be maintained at all, and the imperial court cannot operate. The 20 years of expropriation and extortion since the Qing court entered the customs have refilled Beijing's treasury, and even if the Cao Yun is cut off for a while, it will not be as immediately breathing as Chongzhen, but it will also cause heavy damage. It will not be long before the Cao Yun is cut off for one year or even more than the annihilation of 100,000 troops, and it will not be long before the Qing court loses control over the green camp in the north for three to five years, and the policy of combining favor and power with the Mongols cannot be maintained.

It is precisely because Cao Yun is so important that the army of Jieshu gathered in Shandong also has a sense of being a rat bogey; The Beijing court also felt a deep dilemma, not only wanted to send troops to ensure the safety of Caoyun, but also feared self-defeating because there was no Yangtze River sailor, and finally chose to believe Li Guoying's analysis for the time being, hoping to use Deng Ming's greed to form a tacit understanding.

As on previous occasions, Lin Qilong rushed from Huai'an, where the governor's yamen was located, to the Biquge www.biquge.info Yangzhou on the Grand Canal before the start of the Cao Yun, and he would personally supervise the handover work in Yangzhou, and after the completion of the work, he would take the officers and men of the Cao Yun to escort the Cao Yun fleet into Beijing -- the purpose of setting up this governor was to escort the Cao Yun. After arriving in Yangzhou, Lin Qilong could see Deng Ming's army stationed in Zhenjiang on the other side, and he also knew that whether the Cao Yun was smooth or not completely depended on the other party's thoughts.

During this period, Lin Qilong had received several handwritten letters from Jiang Guozhu, who asked him to help ensure the safety of Caoyun to the imperial court to avoid a major war in Huaiyang and Jiangnan.

"Jiang Guozhu is afraid of destroying his territory." Lin Qilong read the meeting book before going to sleep tonight, although the Ming army was close at hand, but Lin Qilong was not worried about completing the Cao Yun task, he had already bought Deng Ming's war bonds, and Jiang Guozhu's several letters also showed that Jiangnan and the Sichuan army had reached a new agreement. However, Lin Qilong didn't feel very fortunate or happy because he arrived and he was trapped more and more tightly, he was just worried about the Qing court family before, but now he has two mothers-in-law on his head.

Zhou Peigong also came to Yangzhou at this time, and his army of suppressing Deng was still far away in Luzhou Mansion, and after seeing Lin Qilong, Zhou Peigong also talked about the importance of abiding by the agreement with Deng Ming, saying that this was another win-win agreement. Lin Qilong agreed with this on the surface, but he didn't think so in his heart: "This is a win-win situation for Jiang Guozhu and Deng Ming, and it has nothing to do with me." ”

As for the establishment of the Yangtze River Suppression Deng Squadron that Zhou Peigong tried to promote, Lin Qilong also had no will, because it cost money, and it cost a lot of money. And Lin Qilong has no territory in the prefecture and county, only a canal, he is unwilling to spend money to help others raise the army, not to mention that the Caoyun Governor Yamen, as the richest governor, is bound to bear the largest proportion of military expenses.

The amount of silver imported into the canal every year is extremely considerable, but only half of it can really reach Beijing, for example, this year's 10 million taels of silver will definitely not go into the state treasury more than 5 million taels -- in fact, Beijing will demand that much from the southeast this year. There are many kinds of maintenance expenses on the canal, including fire consumption, drifting, money and food for laborers, and ship repairs. As long as the silver required by the imperial court can be sent to Beijing, the maintenance of facilities is easy to say; As for whether Caogong needs to be appeased to ensure work efficiency, the imperial court also has a lot of trust in the Yamen, the governor of Caoyun, as long as the requirements are not excessive.

In addition to the balance of maintenance costs, the ship has always been entrained with goods, although from the Ming Dynasty there is a strict limit on the size of the boat, but the provinces of the ship are more and more bigger, and finally developed to transport 600 stone grain The actual loading capacity of the ship is more than 3,000 stone, and four-fifths of the load is used to transport goods. Such huge boats often cause the canal to be blocked, and if it is not really impossible to go, and the canal is also very stranded because of the large amount of money for dredging and deducting, the provinces will have to build boats comparable to sea boats.

The officers and men of the river guarding the entrance of the Yangzhou Canal plucked their feathers, and even qualified boats that did not pay taxes and fees did not want to enter the canal, but as long as they acted according to the rules, each boat with several thousand stones would be considered a qualified 600 stone boat and would be released. For example, a few years ago, the officers and men of Huguang made a kind of boat similar to a brick, and in order to load more goods, the draft was extremely deep or generous, and not only was the speed as slow as a snail crawling, but once it sank, it could perfectly block the channel. The governor of this kind of boat transportation will not agree to sail into the canal under any circumstances, although the imperial court is very good at talking about maintenance fees and wages, but if the transportation is not completed on time, the governor will lose his head.

The sum of all kinds of income, not counting the property extorted by the officers and soldiers below and the yamen at all levels, the governor of Caoyun Yamen himself can get more than 3 million taels of silver, and the governor of Caoyun himself can get one-fifth to one-tenth. Even if the filial piety to the dignitaries of the capital is removed, Lin Qilong is also the well-deserved annual salary of the governors of the Qing Dynasty, even more than the sum of the incomes of the latter ones.

There was money but no land and no soldiers, and the fortune related to Lin Qilong's life was also pinched in Deng Ming's hands, and the result was that Lin Qilong had to subscribe for four million taels of silver in the Ming War bonds, of which two million were punitive, because Lin Qilong violated the Chongming commercial tax agreement signed by Deng Ming with him last time - the two million taels of silver Deng Ming agreed to give Lin Qilong two months to raise them.

In order to get through the immediate difficulties and save Cao Yun and his life, he not only turned all the accumulation of eunuch bags into Ming War bonds, but also embezzled the public funds of the governor of Cao Yun, which not only included next year's river maintenance funds, but also the dividends of the Yamen officials and officials -- this Cao Yun could not fill such a big hole, not to mention that there were two million behind.

"If Prince Kang's southern expedition is cut off, it won't be my responsibility." Lin Qilong muttered to himself, but with a governor who didn't have much army and no territory in his hands, he couldn't afford to provoke a war with Deng Ming, and he didn't dare to write it according to Jiang Guozhu's meaning in the recital, which would attract all the hatred between Jiang Guozhu and Deng Ming to himself: "It would be good if Prince Kang and Baoguo Gong fought for a while, and both would lose." ”

If a war really broke out, it would be very troublesome for Jiang Guozhu and Zhang Chao, because the Central Army and the Ming Army were fighting on the territory of the Liangjiang River, and if they strictly maintained neutrality, it would inevitably make the imperial court angry, but if they participated in the war, it would annoy Sichuan, not to mention that Deng Ming would be expected to pay back the money. However, Lin Qilong did not have similar worries, because Lin Qilong had no territory, and the force of the river officers and soldiers was not enough to undertake tasks other than suppressing the Caogong resistance, and the guards who fought in Yangzhou and Huai'an were also the green battalions of the two rivers. Deng Ming also didn't care about Lin Qilong's military strength, and even assured Lin Qilong that as long as he was willing to buy bonds, Deng Ming would guarantee that he would be able to complete the Cao Yun task on time.

Therefore, if everyone fights, Lin Qilong is the only one who will not suffer losses, and there is no need to worry about economic losses - even if the Caoyun transaction cannot be done, at least the two million punitive bonds will not have to be bought.

It was already midnight when Jiangxi's Caoyun escort vice president asked to see the governor of Caoyun, but at this time Lin Qilong still did not sleep, and was still reading books hungrily on the desk.

This book, which made the governor of Caoyun forget to sleep and eat, is not a book written by sages, but a book smuggled from Sichuan by Premier Deng Yamen, and the theme is on the tactics of struggle under the complex situation of those years.

Compared with Deng Ming's previous life, the iron-blooded prime minister played five balls in the sky at the same time, Bao Guogong's diplomatic skills are still very simple, but for the unheard of Sichuan public, this still caused Yan Zòng's demonstration chaos. Many people felt that their brains were insufficient, so when such books that tried to explain imperial tactics came out, the professors of the academy rushed to buy them, because in addition to their curiosity, they also had work needs, and they could not answer their students' doubts without knowing the reason.

The book in Lin Qilong's hand was written by a businessman named Ye Tianming, and it is also the most popular and widely circulated book in Sichuan that tries to interpret Deng Ming's behavior. The book is written almost in the vernacular, and there are a lot of private conversations with Deng Ming, and it is completely from the perspective of a businessman to interpret Deng Ming's behavior.

"Sure enough, if it's a threesome, there must be my teacher." Lin Qilong has read this book several times, and the contempt for Ye Tianming's identity as a businessman at the beginning has long been thrown out of the clouds. For the complicated situation in front of him, Lin Qilong and Sichuan's Tongxiucai were at a loss, and the previous philosophy of struggle was very simple, as long as he obeyed the orders of the imperial court and bitten all the thieves who did not fight the banner of the "Great Qing Dynasty".

But now it's a complete chaos, sometimes you need to fight with the court, sometimes you have to fight with thieves, and sometimes you have to fight with those who betray the court; Sometimes it is necessary to unite the thieves to fight the imperial court, and sometimes it is necessary to unite with other Erwuzai to fight thieves, and it seems that sometimes there is also the possibility of uniting the imperial court and Erwuzai to fight thieves. In the past, military struggles were aimed at destroying the enemy, and even if the negotiation struggles were to persuade them to surrender; Now, however, not only are the objectives diversified, but the military and the negotiations are also interpenetrating -- there will now be a feint and a main offensive in the same way as the military, and even a military offensive and a negotiation will require a feint and a main offensive against each other.

The officialdom experience accumulated in the past is completely insufficient, and Lin Qilong has drawn a lot of nutrients from Ye Tianming's book, for example, when the author interprets Deng Ming's strategy for Jiangnan, he also vividly uses eating chicken to play generous: chicken is very delicious and can also nourish the body, but you can't eat four or five in one go, otherwise you will die, and although you can't eat more chicken, it's okay to drink more chicken soup - the author compares Deng Ming's crusades again and again to stewed pot after pot of chicken soup, and highly praised: drinking soup also has a nourishing effect, You don't have to worry about being held alive, it's the best of both worlds.

On the title page of this book, there is also a friendly recommendation from Deng Ming - because it involves a lot of private conversations, Ye Tianming gave it to Deng Ming before publication, and Deng Ming gave him this recommendation when he returned it.

"There are no eternal enemies, only eternal interests."

Lin Qilong read this sentence softly, and for some reason, this sentence deeply touched him.

Just when Lin Qilong reluctantly closed the book and was about to go to bed, the guards reported outside the door: "Lord Governor, something happened to the Cao boat in Jiangxi, it seems that it was robbed by the Ming army." ”

"What?" Lin Qilong shouted and asked tremblingly, "Is it the Sichuan army or the Kui Dong thief?" ”

"It's not clear."

"Let him in." As soon as he heard that Caoyun had an accident, Lin Qilong dared to delay, and immediately asked the guards to lead people, but he also had some doubts in his heart: "There is an agreement Caoyun will have an accident?" Is this the collapse of the talks between Admiral Deng and Jiang Guozhu and Zhang Chao? Is there a chance that I don't have to buy the remaining 2 million taels of bonds? ”

When Liu Ji in Jiangxi Province had made up his mind a few hours earlier to plead guilty to the guerrillas and try to drag the commander into the water, he had no idea how much this matter would turn overnight.

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