On July 20, 1697, Chengdu, Duke Shu, Duke Shu of Dashun, and Sichuan Jiedushi Liu Zhonggui were talking to his chief aide and the chief secretary of the Jiedushi Liu Qi.

"Master, the town has not been restored after many wars. I have gone downstairs and saw that the soldiers were tired, the people were poor, and the gentry was uneasy. In this case, if you keep them calm, you must not use any more weapons." Liu Qi sat on an embroidered pier and persuaded with great sincerity.

"Haha, why did Ziyou say this?" Liu Zhonggui smiled and replied, "I am not the one who doesn't know the truth. I know exactly what the situation in the town is. I'm here today, not to fight a war, so please relax. I just want to make a calculation with you to see if I can squeeze out some money and build a few roads to the north."

"This..." Liu Zhonggui smiled bitterly when he heard this, and he didn't know how to answer. The Duke of Shu was indeed not looking for him for war, but the people's and financial resources spent on building roads may not be much less than war.

Although the shogunate occupied half of Yunnan, the rich Kunming and nearby areas were forced to give it to the court, and they had to have some useless land that was abandoned. In the long run, it might be beneficial, but in the short term, it could not provide much money and food to the shogunate, and it would have to be subsidized. In addition, although the battle to clear the chieftains in southern Sichuan is nearing its end, it still needs to be sent to garrison, and the dead and injured united soldiers must also be given pensions. Tens of thousands of former surrendered troops were broken up and placed in the old land of these chieftains. As a result, conflicts between the locals and the fights occurred frequently. The shogunate had to continue to subsidize money and food to allow these Han people to gain a foothold in the local area. In general, it costs a lot of money. Although Sichuan has been rich since ancient times, it cannot withstand such torture. The finances of the shogunate in Chengdu have now become very tense to a very dangerous level!

Of course, we cannot forget the large number of enterprises established by the Sichuan Shogunate to make money. Some of these enterprises are in charge of the government and are directly invested by the government, which costs a lot of money. Fortunately, Sichuan has been rich since ancient times, and tea, salt, wood, medicinal materials, grain, brocade and other daily necessities have been sold in all parties since ancient times. These investments in the Sichuan Shogunate have made a lot of money. Since these industries can make money, Liu Zhonggui and Liu Qi have nothing to hesitate to continue to spend money to expand the scale. So, a large amount of gold and silver seized from Kunming was quickly invested in this bottomless pit, which is resolute and decisive.

But there is nothing to do about this. Modern warfare is really too expensive, so Liu Zhonggui cannot do this. In fact, in ancient times, warfare was also very expensive, but it was far from being as expensive as it is now. If the general was a little more ruthless, he would not have to pay military pay at all, as long as there was food, it would be enough. As for the money, haha, just go to the enemy to grab it! How low is the cost, right?

But modern warfare cannot be fought like this. First of all, this locust army that only distributes rations is too low to compete with modern army that has undergone strict training. When encountering it, it often collapses in one blow. Secondly, modern warfare consumes gunpowder, shells, medicines, food, equipment, transportation and other materials, so it has reached an amazing level, which can be called a giant beast of gold swallowing. Taking the Sichuan Shogunate as an example, even though they work hard to produce themselves every year and receive a large amount of equipment and ammunition provided by the Changsha court, they still need to purchase more than one million taels of silver from the East Coast people, and the financial pressure is very huge.

The reason is actually very simple. Can you not feel troubled if you, an agricultural country, fight in the way of an industrial country? I won’t talk about the East Coast Republic. Take the British in Europe as an example. Their army is also modernized equipment and modernized fighting methods, but their industrial production efficiency is high. The production cost of guns, ammunition, and equipment is not many times cheaper than that of your agricultural country. At the same time, the overall society has a strong ability to create wealth, and the country’s tax revenue has increased, so it is naturally not as difficult as you.

It is indeed very hard to play the war style of industrial countries based on the material basis of agricultural countries. If there is no mine at home, it is indeed very hard. Later, the Qing Dynasty mobilized the whole country to only raise six towns of the Beiyang Army and two mixed associations. This is an example. How many troops can Japan raise with the same money next door? The Japanese soldiers are not inferior to you, they are more diligent in training than you, and they spend a lot of money to introduce canned production lines from the United States. Ordinary soldiers can also eat canned sea fish and canned soybeans and beef. As a result, a single soldier spends less money than you. Why? People have high industrial production capacity and strong ability to create wealth. The same effect of one or two silvers is very different.

The Sichuan shogunate is also in this situation now. They desperately bought second-hand or even third-hand equipment from the East Coast people (eliminated locally to Denglai, and Denglai to Chengdu again), established the Chengdu Manufacturing Bureau (including the gun bureau, artillery bureau, pharmacy bureau and miscellaneous bureau), and produced scarce military equipment. Unfortunately, the production cost was extremely high, and the production capacity was far from enough, so they had to spend a lot of money to purchase from outside.

Of course, Liu Zhonggui wanted to get rid of this embarrassing situation, but he had no choice. A lot of people who were familiar with the Four Books and Five Classics in Sichuan were pitifully few and could not support a large-scale military industry. In desperation, they could only rely on their local advantages to build a series of light industrial workshops, and exported a large amount of silk, fine salt, medicinal materials, tea, and grain in exchange for precious gold and silver to make up for the huge deficit in purchasing machinery every year.

After fighting in Yunnan this time, many were seized. Liu Zhonggui was delighted and asked Liu Qi to expand the scale of these industries. All the machines needed were sold by the East Coast people, and they even sent fifty young children to study in Denglai, which cost a lot of money and showed their ambitions.

What happened today? Liu Zhonggui seemed to regret it and wanted to embezzle part of the funds to build a war-ready road, but how could this be possible? The money to order machines from the East Coast people has been given, and they have always paid on cash on delivery. They will not refund the money even if you don’t want it. In addition, the resettlement costs of immigrants spent on the old land of the southern Tusi cannot be saved! In recent years, Sichuan has been engaged in cash crop planting, developing sericulture and introducing cotton on the east coast. In short, he was very busy and the grain planting area plummeted. He finally reclaimed some fertile fields in the south to grow grain. How could he give up halfway?

"Master, the only thing that can be squeezed out now is the 'weed money' of several mansions in the south. But Master, the money cannot be moved." After thinking for a while, Liu Qi still spoke to dissuade him.

The so-called "weed money" is actually immigration resettlement fees. In the past two years, the Chengdu shogunate has successively eliminated tens of thousands of surrendered troops in the Southern Ming Dynasty, and a large number of local ethnic minorities liberated from the chieftains. For these people, Liu Qi had a long-term plan, namely, selecting places to "reclaim wasteland, planting bad people, and turning bad people into good." To put it bluntly, it means to plant these not very reliable people into the original chieftain's jurisdiction, selecting suitable places to reclaim wasteland, and establishing a relatively stable ruling order through this method. This takes one or two generations of people to be completely digested and becomes a stable agricultural product base for the Sichuan shogunate.

It should be said that although Liu Qi was vigorously engaged in industrial and commercial affairs, he still had some agricultural-oriented ideas. He had read some books from East Coast people and listened to suggestions from East Coast friends who had good personal relationships. For example, Chen Ming, a former Chengdu Business Station website manager, said to him: "The agricultural sector needs to be fundamentally reorganized in order to provide raw materials for industrial development, provide food for the growing urban population, and provide a market that is sufficient to accommodate them for the increased products. Now Sichuan's commodity market is limited by the actual needs of low-level rural areas. Due to the lack of technological progress, too many people are bound to the land, which threatens the sustainable development of Sichuan's new policy."

Liu Qi absorbed these suggestions well and vigorously promoted new agricultural technologies in Sichuan to increase the yield of grain and cash crops. For example, he once vigorously promoted "Dong Cotton", that is, introduced cotton seeds from the east coast and planted them in Sichuan. He believed that Dong Cotton "has high cotton bushes, lush leaves, large flowers, many cotton, thin and long velvets, white and bright colors, and the yield is twice that of Hua Cotton." As a result, in that catastrophic promotion, because the seeds were discharged, and the planting was too dense, the sunlight was insufficient, and the local climate might also be disadvantageous, so "many cotton can't bloom", which caused a lot of losses.

Fortunately, Liu Zhonggui trusted him very much and believed that everything was difficult at the beginning and continued improvement in the future, which moved Liu Qi very much. Therefore, he learned from his mistakes and hired some agricultural experts from Ningbo to open an agricultural school in Chengdu, specializing in teaching more than ten courses such as agriculture, horticulture, agrochemical, plants, silkworm breeding, animal husbandry, aquatic products, soil, measurement, meteorology, agriculture and industry, and agricultural administration. He also personally served as the mountain chief, various agricultural practice activities, purchasing new agricultural tools, printing agricultural books, and opening the "Journal of Sichuan Agricultural Sciences", etc., and never rejected it, which shows his importance.

After several years, Sichuan's agricultural output has increased significantly (but there is still a big gap from Denglai), so Liu Qi founded the Sichuan Quye Shop in Chongqing, displaying the grains, fruits, tea, sesame, oil, mulberry, lacquer, bamboo, wood, etc. in Sichuan, marking the price and indicating the origin, for reference by foreign businessmen, including East Coast merchants, to increase the export of Sichuan agricultural products.

Of course, what Liu Qi pays most attention to is the cultivation of food. It has nothing to do with anything else, but is the instinct of traditional scholars. Since ancient times, Liu Qi is naturally clear about how many problems have been caused by famine in China. Therefore, after seeing the huge increase in the sowing area of ​​cash crops, he was a little worried - ironically, the increase in cash crop yield was promoted by Liu - so he took advantage of the opportunity to change the land and return to the current to continuously place surrendered troops and liberated chieftain slaves in the south to expand the area of ​​food crops. This "weed money" is spent here, almost every year, and the amount is quite large. After all, it still bears the mission of assimilation of "turning weeds into good".

Today, Liu Zhonggui asked him for money to build roads. After thinking about it, Liu Qi only squeezed out this place. But he was very reluctant, thinking that it would be harmful to Sichuan in the long run and not worth it. However, he also knew that his lord built the roads to the northern expedition to Hanzhong and to the king's hegemony. The priority of this matter was obviously more important than immigration assimilation.

There is no way, so I can only embezzle part of it. Moreover, the amount of "weed money" in the future is likely to be greatly reduced. Because of the northern expedition to Hanzhong, the intensity of the war is very small. God knows how many years it will take to fight, how much money it will cost, and how many Masters will be requisitioned.
Chapter completed!