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August.

The emperor sent envoys to Taozhou.

The military merits of the Battle of Jiangxin City were reported to the court, and all the merits of the meritorious soldiers were confirmed. The emperor even issued an order to increase the rewards of the meritorious officials and soldiers by one level on Zhang Chao's list of meritorious officials.

All the soldiers participating in the war in Taozhou recorded their merits.

The emperor also sent people to transport imperial wine and brocade to reward the meritorious soldiers.

All the military positions of grades also received a brocade robe and cloak sewn by the palace maids of the imperial palace, and all the soldiers of the palace got a brocade robe made in Taifu Temple and a cloak.

Ma Zhou, Xu Jingzong, Pilou Wuche and other groups of Taozhou civil and military officials also received special honors such as gold, purple, and special silver.

The Tang Dynasty gave clothes, but there were no python robes, qilin robes, bullfighting robes, and yellow jackets. However, the Tang Dynasty also gave clothes, including gold and purple and silver.

Giving gold and purple means giving purple robes and goldfish bags. Purple gold is the color ornament that only officials above the third rank can wear. However, those who have great achievements often give gold and purple to ministers of insufficient rank to show glory. The robe is the uniform color of officials of fourth and fifth rank, and the court sometimes gives black rewards to those officials of less than fourth and fifth rank, wearing silverfish bags.

Zhang Chao is already a third-rank high-ranking official and has long been Jin Zi.

Therefore, this time the emperor specially appointed Zhang Chao as the honorary official of the Shangzhu Kingdom, and rewarded Zhang Chao with gold and silver bottles, one bottle filled with money, one bottle filled with silver, and a lot of silk. Zhang Chao also specially granted three thousand acres of Yongye Field in Taozhou!

Zhang Chao was appointed as the recruitment officer, the salt and iron officer, and the transportation officer.

Looking at the many positions assigned to him by the imperial court, Zhang Chao was also a little helpless. One characteristic of the position was that it was not a formal permanent position, but a temporary position was assigned.

If Zhang Chao was given the pacification envoy, strategic envoy and military farm envoy who had been granted to Zhang Chao by the court, Zhang Chao had six envoys, this would be unprecedented.

However, Zhang Chao was a little confused about the three newly added jobs.

The people who came to announce the decree to express their condolences to the soldiers of Taozhou were the Secretariat Yu Wenshi, Duke Ying, Yu Wenshi and the Sima of Tiance Prefecture. The emperor sent the deputy chief of the Secretariat, and the Sima of Tiance Prefecture, which was a bit subtle.

Although Yu Wenshiji had not been a long time in Tang Dynasty, he was an old colleague and an old friend with Li Yuan. His brother Yu Wen and killed the lord in Jiangdu. He was later retained by Dou Jiande. However, as soon as he joined Tang Dynasty, Li Yuan valued him very much.

Li Yuan once said to Pei Ji and others, "I talked to him about major events in the world six or seven years ago, and you are still behind him."

However, although Yu Wenshiji is Yu Wenji's younger brother, he once married Yang Guang's daughter Princess Nanyang, but he did not participate in Jiangdu's conspiracy.

I have not been enrolled in Tang for a long time and have become the second-rank official of the Secretariat.

"Congratulations to Saburo!"

Yu Wenshi smiled and congratulated him with a happier smile. Zhang Chao had had a lot of dealings with him in the past. Because Yu Wenshi and not only were the Secretariat of the Secretariat, but also the Bachelor of Hanlin and the Bachelor of the Qinwangfu Literature Museum, they had dinner together and compiled books.

However, Zhang Chao also felt a little sympathetic to him.

He was the son of Yuwen Shu, the five nobles of the Sui Dynasty, and married Princess Nanyang, the daughter of Yang Guang. Princess Nanyang was a very good princess. The couple had a very loving life. However, after the Jiangdu mutiny, although he did not participate, Princess Nanyang hated him. Later, Yu Wenhe was defeated by Dou Jiande, and Princess Nanyang and Yu Wenshi and both arrived in the Xia army.

Princess Nanyang was quite determined to ask Dou Jiande to kill her and Yu Wen Shiji and her son, and then became a monk and became a nun.

This is really a miserable thing.

I heard that Yu Wenshi returned to Chang'an and met Princess Nanyang, and wanted to get back together, but Princess Nanyang looked down on her.

Princess Nanyang is indeed a strange woman, poor Yu Wenji.

"Duke Ying, what is the purpose of Your Majesty adding these three envoys?"

The position of vocation is not a title or a title of honor. The position of vocation is usually a special mission. For example, the management and appeasement are to appease the Taozhou people. The military farm envoy is specifically responsible for the military farming affairs in Taozhou.

"Sanlang, Your Majesty is very satisfied with the battle in Jiangxin City. This recruitment is to give you a greater power to deal with it cheaply."

Zhang Chao, the governor and governor of Taozhou, commanded the civil and military officials of Taozhou. Under normal circumstances, the soldiers of Taozhou Prefecture were not allowed to be mobilized without the order of the Ministry of War. The last battle in Jiangxin City was a defense, so it was special.

Now the emperor gave Zhang Chao a call to give him greater autonomy. If there was any disturbance on the Taozhou border, Zhang Chao could mobilize the troops to defend without first requesting the court, and even take the initiative to attack Tuyuhun.

This is the right to call for a recruitment, without asking for a request, and make decisions on the spot. The recruitment is specially designed to deal with Tuyuhun.

A call for help is full of murderous aura. It seems that the emperor and the ministers in the court were quite annoyed about the last time Tuyuhun took advantage of the situation to rob. This was intentionally indulging Zhang Chao to cause trouble at the border.

"What about salt and iron, transporter?"

Yu Culture and explanation, this salt and iron actually specialize in taxation of minerals and salt tea. In the early Tang Dynasty, many systems inherited the Sui Dynasty. Mining and smelting were managed by Shaofu, and copper and iron were mined by people. As long as they pay taxes to the government, the same is true for salt.

Now some officials in the court suggested that the right to collect mining and smelting taxes should be taken to the central government, and a monopoly tax would be imposed on salt, tea, wine and some materials, with the salt and iron in charge.

Various places also set up salt and iron envoys to manage one or some important towns.

Taozhou gave a lot of money to the court last time, which made the court pay great attention to Taozhou. Originally, there was only one salt and iron envoy in each channel, but now the court has set up a salt and iron envoy in Taozhou, and Zhang Chao also served as the other.

"Salt, tea, and wine are all taxed? How much is it?"

"The court's temporary plan is to draw one in ten."

The tax on one ten is quite good, but it is still pretty good, not particularly much. Historically, in the middle and late Tang dynasties, the tax on salt tea was extremely heavy. The official price of a dou of salt is only ten cents, but the tax was increased by 110 cents, and it was even higher at one point. The tax was levied more than ten times the price of salt.

"In recent years, the imperial court has been using troops continuously, and the treasury is empty. In order to reserve materials and wait for the early launch of troops to the Turks, Tuyuhun, etc., the imperial court had to impose salt and iron taxes, customs duties, and commercial taxes in border cities."

These were actually all the important officials of the court who were stimulated by Zhang Chao.

The operation of the Tang Dynasty has always been simple, and it is easy to spend as little as possible. If you can, don’t spend it. Taxes mainly rely on agriculture, and renting is collected, which is relatively fixed. Most of them are physical goods. Every year, these physical taxes are transported to the capital, which will cost a lot on the road.

But Zhang Chao set up a border market in Taozhou, imposed tariffs and commercial taxes, and took out a little to offer it to the court, which made the prime ministers and ministers extremely jealous and became ruthless.

It is too stupid to spend a penny on two halves. It’s not enough to save money, so you have to open up the source. But renters are dead and relatively fixed. Therefore, in the end, they can only start with commercial tax and tariffs. In the end, someone suggested levying special tax on salt and iron, which was once levied in the Han Dynasty.

In order to store more money and grain, I would overturn the Turks as soon as possible, so I would not let them ride on the Tang Dynasty's neck to scatter and pee, and I would not want to send the princess to marry him again, so Li Yuan slapped the table and decided to impose a salt and iron tax.

Fortunately, Li Yuan is quite conscientious. He has increased taxes such as salt, tea, wine, and iron, and only one tax is ten. He has not done anything to increase the price and collect taxes ten times!

"Sanlang, the imperial court has another task to you, to find copper ore in Taozhou. If you can find copper ore, and then organize people to mine copper smelting, the imperial court will set up a coin minting bureau in Taozhou and open a furnace to mint coins. You will also serve as the coin minting commander at that time!"

Speaking of copper coins, this has become an embarrassing problem for the monarchs and ministers of the Tang Dynasty today.

The old coins of the previous generation were abolished and the Kaiyuan Tongbao was minted.

Kaiyuan Tongbao is a good money, which is better than Wuzhu and Wuzhu meat, and it is much heavier. But there is a rule in the market that Li Yuan and the others don’t understand, that is, bad money drives out good money.

Kaiyuan Tongbao is very good, but the amount of coins is limited. Even if the Tang Dynasty tried hard to start the coin minting furnace, one furnace would only be minted about 3,000 guan a year. The Tang Dynasty built hundreds of coin minting furnaces in various places, and only 300,000 guan a year could be minted 300,000 guan a year.

New money is good, but small.

Therefore, after the new money was put into the market, the people began to hoard and exchange old money for new money, but new money was not used. As a result, Kaiyuan Tongbao kept investing in the market, but the new money in the market became less and less.

The Tang Dynasty lacked copper, and the old copper coins collected were constantly melted and cast new coins, and the old coins were also rapidly decreasing.

The Tang Dynasty had a shortage of money, and it was getting worse and worse. Now the court has to order that trading more than ten cents of coins is prohibited from using copper coins, silk, and copper coins are prohibited from leaving the Tang Dynasty border.

But this did not work much. Now the imperial court had to search for copper mines everywhere and continuously add new coin miners.

The money shortage has always been followed by the ancient Chinese dynasty, especially during the Sui and Tang dynasties. Even in the Northern Song Dynasty, millions of coins were cast a year, the money shortage could not be solved.

The money shortage is that in ancient China, copper was short of copper, and mining and smelting technology was not high, and the coin minting technology was backward, which caused high casting costs. In addition, the outflow of copper coins and the fact that there have been many profits in making money by melting copper into copperware, which made the money shortage very serious in all dynasties.

The Tang Dynasty had to trade both money and silk.

Crush money.

If this is added, Zhang Chao will hold seven entourage positions.

However, when it comes to minting money, Zhang Chao was quite interested. He knew that the official cost of minting money in the Tang Dynasty was very high. A minting furnace required many craftsmen. He only started working hard in a year to mint 3,000 yuan. Basically, there was no profit in minting money, and even a loss was required to calculate it carefully.

But if you improve the coin casting process and increase the speed, such as using a hydraulic punching or something, it should be much faster. If you have enough copper, tin, lead, etc., and change the ratio slightly, you can make a lot of money by minting it.

Of course, building more money shops and issuing some banknotes with better credit can also help solve the problem of money shortage. After all, money shortage mainly involves insufficient currency circulation, and if the banknotes have enough credit, they can actually be used as currency.

The transport envoy was similar to the salt and iron envoy, transporting money, grain and materials from Longxi. Because Taozhou became the largest border commercial port in Longyou, a large number of cattle, horses and other materials entered the Tang Dynasty, the court specially gave Zhang Chao a transport envoy.

"Sanlang, after I gave it to Taozhou, I will take a closer look at everything in Taozhou, military administration, military farms, schools, border cities, etc."

Zhang Chao smiled, "Of course there is no problem with this. Taozhou has really changed a lot. As long as Gong Ying has time, I can accompany Gong Ying to take a closer look."

"Sanlang, you have only been in Taozhou for three months, but you have already sent 30,000 guan to Chang'an. Your Majesty is very happy."

"This is also entrusted to His Majesty's great blessing. Taozhou has now entered a very stable period of development. From now on, it is possible to pay 10,000 trump cards to the court every month!"

"Hahaha, OK!" Yu Wenshi was so happy that he couldn't stop hearing about the fact that he could pay 10,000 yuan to the court. "Sanlang, I want to go to Jiangxin City now!"

"no problem!"
Chapter completed!