"How much food is left in the Ministry of Revenue?"

Emperor Chongzhen continued to ask.

"Your Majesty, it's less than two million stones!"

There is no way to fake this data. For the Minister of Revenue, the data he reported was only reported to the Shaoli, not the Duli.

If I report too much, I can't take it out, and I thought it was because he had embezzled it.

Although he is indeed corrupt, it is better to report the data to the lower level. How can he report the data to the higher level?

"Two million stones?

How could it be so small? Hasn’t the autumn tax just been over three months? Isn’t it still nearly four months before the next tax collection?"

Emperor Chongzhen frowned, quite dissatisfied with this number.

"Your Majesty, in recent years, disasters have been repeated in the north and south, and rebels have crossed the border in southern Shaanxi and other areas. Naturally, taxes in these places cannot be collected.

Last year, the total amount of food collected was less than 20 million stones, which was nearly 10 million stones less than in previous years!

The food from the autumn tax revenue was only eight million stones. In addition, last winter and this spring, the number of troops went to war was also quite large, so the food consumption was naturally faster.

Even based on the current grain consumption, the existing grain inventory can only last until the end of April, and even May and June do not know how to survive.

Not to mention dispatching more soldiers to suppress Shanxi and Henan!”

The Minister of Revenue has no choice. He is just in charge of money and grain, not the one who produces money and grain.

Without food and silver, he can't transform it.

Every time he asks for money, he has to suffer some injuries. He has become accustomed to it for so many years.

He also wanted to give any money to anyone, but he could only think about it.

You have to be more picky about reality. If you are a little more generous, you won’t know how to get through the last one or two months.

Emperor Chongzhen continued to walk back and forth on it, but he wanted to be generous and said that he was taking silver and grain from his own treasury!

However, his treasury has been only seen and not in these years. Although he has not consumed all of it, it has consumed most of it, so how much can he get?

Moreover, his treasury only has silver and does not have much food at all. If he wants to exchange it for food, he has to buy it temporarily. No one knows how long it will take in the meantime!

Under various reasons.

Of course, the main thing is that it is poor. Emperor Chongzhen had to pinch his nose and chose Wen Tiren's suggestion, which was to send someone to comfort and provide relief.

Let's talk about it when it can't be comforted.

In fact, it is not necessary to ensure that the resignation must be successfully appeased, but anyway, at least the rebels in Shanxi and Henan must be restrained for a period of time.

After Lu Xiangsheng and the others beat Zhang Xianzhong and Gao Yingxiang, if they have not been comforted, there will be ready-made generals and soldiers.

It is difficult to do to comfort the work, let alone to comfort the more chaotic places.

This time, the ministers in the court showed an extremely humble spirit for the first time. If you recommend me, I recommend you. I don’t have enough ability, you have enough ability.

Everyone is very modest.

In the end, Emperor Chongzhen appointed a Ministry of War and two Ministry of Rites, and asked them to lead a few troops and horses and some gold and silver.

On the way, I bought some food to go to Shanxi and Henan to provide disaster relief and comfort.

As for whether the few thousand golds I brought are enough?

There is nothing we can do if it is not enough, the Ministry of Revenue really can't afford more money.

...

When the imperial court's disaster relief and comforting personnel were on the road, the peasant army led by Li Ju was the kind of peasant army that was so hungry that they could not walk. They soon occupied a large area of ​​territory and began to fight against landlords and divide the land.

Of course, in fact, people may not be very happy to divide the land at this time. After all, there is no way to farm when there is a drought. What is more important for fighting landlords is to plunder the landlord’s food.

Isn’t the uprising and fighting just to survive!

Without food, you can't fight with others on hunger.

Therefore, when there is no way to provide sufficient logistics supply, it is inevitable to grab those landlord families with food.

During this process, Jiang Hao was also trying to find ways to maintain order, constantly using some of the doctrines of the Ming Cult to promote that everyone joins the rebel army will be brothers, and that all the poor people will be brothers.

Only those local tyrants and evil gentry who are unkind and do evil deeds and corrupt officials who do evil deeds are the enemies and the enemies they need to target unanimously.

It is impossible to infringe on the poor people who are all brothers.

In addition, Jiang Hao will also appropriately select some officials who do evil deeds or some evil gentry who do evil, and confront the victims in public and criticize and kill them on the spot.

This is done to let everyone vent their inner anger, so that their anger can be vented without invading ordinary civilians.

Secondly, it is also to remind everyone to pay attention to consistent goals, focus on personnel, and not to take their anger on others.

The third is to attract some civilians in the town, let them join in, and let them criticize the evil and corrupt officials who once sat on their heads and rode on them to act as a mighty person.

Used to increase mutual identity.

It's the kind of identity that everyone has beaten people together.

Although this sense of identity is not as good as the sense of identity as if he had been a soldier together, it is also a little caring, at least it will not be too repulsive in the future.

At the beginning, Li Ju and the others didn't care about Jiang Hao doing this, but as time went by, the effect gradually became apparent.

Although their rebel army has not yet been able to do nothing infringe every place they occupy, at least they have basically not violated the ordinary people.

Even whenever he goes to a place and takes a town, some of the verbal people in the rebel army can quickly establish good relations with some ordinary people in the local area, and even gain vassals and support from a few people.

Just these few points have been quite awesome results.

Because many regular troops cannot do this, let alone the uprising troops of Zhang Xianzhong and others.

Since the uprising on March 4, Li Ju has led less than 10,000 troops and quickly set off from Shilou County. It took a month to successfully conquer the entire Luliang area.

Moreover, he began to plan to head from Luliang to other places, and at this time, his troops had already exceeded 100,000.

Although most of them are poor refugees with little combat effectiveness, the number of people is still relatively obvious.

But at this time, Jiang Hao was not ready to continue to follow them to conquer other places.

It is difficult for an uprising army without base and without sufficient logistical support to succeed.

Therefore, Jiang Hao planned to stay in Luliang to farm and manage the base area, and carry out the initial industrial revolution.
Chapter completed!