I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 613 Chaos

But it is worth mentioning that although such a big change happened, Nanzhili did not suffer any war. Basically, when people woke up one day, they found that the flag on the city wall had changed.

But what worries Wei Dahe is the soaring prices of various commodities. Not to mention food, the prices of cloth, salt and other daily necessities have also skyrocketed.

The reason for the soaring prices was that there was a shortage of supplies due to the war, and secondly, all the merchant ships of the Royal Group had withdrawn from the Yangtze River. Suddenly, there was a shortage of ships in the south, which led to a significant increase in transportation costs.
But for common people like Wei Dahe, life became even more difficult. The soaring prices were only one aspect. The other was that the Nanjing court had added a heavy "Northern Salary" to be used for the Northern Expedition. Self-cultivating farmers like him who had always been on the yellow book could not escape this tax.

Moreover, because there was no currency in circulation at that time, taxes were still collected in the form of in-kind taxes, which caused great confusion. The tax reform had been going on for more than ten years, and both the government and the people were accustomed to collecting and paying in currency instead of in-kind. Both the government and the people had forgotten how to collect and pay in-kind taxes.
However, for the government, this problem is easy to solve. Just use a principle to collect taxes, that is, it is better to collect more than less, and the tax collection needs of the higher-level government must be met.
Moreover, the collection of in-kind tax itself has a lot of room for manipulation. Many yamen runners who collect taxes have resorted to their old tricks, such as measuring large and small measures, pouring water on the tip and kicking the bucket. If they don't know how to do these, they can just do something simpler and more crude, such as saying that the grain quality is not good, the water content is too high, etc.
This made the burden on the people even heavier. Many people weighed the weight in advance when they went to pay taxes, but after the yamen runners' hassle, they generally had to pay one-third or even one-half more. In addition, they had to say nice things to the yamen runners or give bribes before they would accept their grain, which brought great suffering to the people.
Wei Dahe soon began to miss the days when he used silver yuan coupons to pay taxes. He was told that he had to pay what he paid, and at most they would find fault with the newness of the coins, unlike the in-kind tax, which was full of endless complaints.
In order to pay the government's taxes, Wei Dahe gritted his teeth and sold five acres of land to pay the family's taxes.
Soon the government issued a new currency called the Gold Yuan Coupon, and required the people not to privately store gold and silver, but to exchange them for Gold Yuan Coupons. Since the people did not have much gold and silver, naturally no one would exchange them. As a result, some places began to force people to exchange them.
Wei Dahe's family had no gold or silver, but they did not escape the poison of the gold yuan coupons. He went to the county town to sell grain in exchange for oil and salt, but the grain he brought was forcibly purchased by the government with gold yuan coupons. When Wei Dahe used the gold yuan coupons to buy oil and salt, he found that the actual value of the gold yuan coupons was far lower than its face value, and he could not buy much oil and salt at all, which made him very hesitant.
While he was hesitating, the store owner actually raised the price of oil and salt purchased with gold yuan coupons.
Facing Wei Dahe's questioning, the shopkeeper calmly said that the gold yuan was depreciating very quickly and he had to adjust the price every few days.
This made Wei Dahe dare not hesitate any longer. He felt that the gold yuan coupons in his hand were very hot, and he dared not keep them in his hand any longer.
For ordinary people like Wei Dahe, the suffering has just begun.
More and more troops gathered in Nanzhili and then went north to fight. At the beginning, it was still okay because the troops heading north were all from Nanzhili and Zhejiang, and were considered local troops. These local troops did not harm the local people at all. After all, the people here were considered their own fellow villagers.

But the following troops did not have such good military discipline. The Min Army from Fujian was poorly equipped and began to steal from villages along the way. However, the people dared not speak out and endured the thefts at home. After all, the situation was stronger than the people. The people had weapons that could kill people, and the government would not make decisions for them.
The Guangdong Army was much better equipped, but they were obviously not well supplied, so they asked nearby villages to provide food.

However, what the people hated the most were the wolf soldiers in Guangxi and the chieftain soldiers in Yunnan. These two places were still wild and desolate at that time. The soldiers fought bravely, but their military discipline was poor.

They began to trample and destroy farmland at will. The movement of their horses, vehicles, and people would destroy crops, making the people's year's hard work go to waste, and the people wept bitterly.

The army previously covered up some of their actions to make them not so ugly, but they began to loot villages without scruples and occupied people’s houses to rest.

"When the soldiers arrived, they drove the people out of their homes and set up camps, and the people's cries shook the sky." The people lost their homes and had nowhere to stay in the severe cold or heat. Many people fell ill or even died.

Even later, they blocked the county town and asked the county officials for military supplies.
Local officials were anxious but unable to stop it.
Although all this was caused by the breakdown of military discipline, the deeper reason was the poor logistical organization of the Nanjing government.
Maintaining the supplies of an army of over a million is not an easy task, especially in an era when communication means are so backward. Naturally, there is no such talent in the Nanjing government, so their logistical supply is a mess.

Moreover, the unit numbers they faced were so complicated. The Nanjing government had enough supplies to supply a million-strong army, but the biggest problem now was how to deliver these supplies to the corresponding troops. This matter seemed simple, but in fact it was not simple at all.

Just transporting so much supplies to the front line is a very troublesome task.
The Ming Dynasty began to switch from canal transportation to sea transportation more than ten years ago, which greatly reduced the importance of the Grand Canal from Beijing, and also led to a significant reduction in the investment in the maintenance of the Grand Canal from Beijing.

In the past, the Grand Canal was the lifeline of the Ming Dynasty. In order to maintain the transportation capacity of the Grand Canal, the imperial court spent a lot of money and invested a lot in maintaining the canal, not to mention the work such as dredging the river. In order to maintain the water volume in the canal, the imperial court did not allow the people on both sides of the strait to use the canal water for irrigation during droughts. In short, the price paid for the transportation capacity of the canal was very high.

The Grand Canal now has no such treatment. In just a dozen years, many river channels have begun to silt up. Moreover, it is still autumn and winter, and the water volume in many river sections is insufficient, which further reduces the transportation capacity of the canal.
(End of this chapter)