Qing Yao

Chapter 297 Stop fooling around, it's payday.

Asking Fuchang to help open a public fund account for the Jiangning provincial treasury at Xianfeng Bank was undoubtedly a means for Zhao An to build the power of the Liangjiang financial group.

Because finance can not only help Zhao Anhua with his grain debts in Anhui, but also become his magic weapon for swallowing up Anhui and even the three provinces of Liangjiang.

Historically, Hu Xueyan was able to build the Zhejiang financial group using only the provincial treasury silver of Zhejiang. He became a "red-hat merchant" (a merchant with official connections to the government) and also fully supported Zuo Zongtang's reconquest of Xinjiang. This shows that the financial industry not only has a huge influence on the people, but also plays an irreplaceable role in the political and military circles.

Whether it's disaster relief, war, rebellion, uprising, or even dynastic change, all require massive financial support.

To put it bluntly, if you don't have money, you can't play with birds.

Zhao An injected "public funds" from the Anhui Provincial Treasury and the Jiangning Provincial Treasury into Xianfeng Bank, intending to make it the largest "commercial bank" in the Liangjiang region. With the endorsement of the Anhui Provincial Administration Commission and the Jiangning Provincial Administration Commission, Xianfeng Bank's credibility was guaranteed to be top-notch.

With public trust, there's no need to worry about "depositors".

If there were an opportunity to persuade Jiangsu Governor Fu Song to convince the Jiangsu Provincial Administration Commission to also "invest" public funds into the Xianfeng Bank, then among the three provinces of Liangjiang (four provinces), only Jiangxi would remain without a stake.

There are regrets, but with the support of public funds from the "Three Cloths," Xianfeng Bank could theoretically rank among the top five commercial banks in the Qing Dynasty.

First place is definitely the old master's family, second place is either Heshen's family or Fu Chang'an's family, Zhao An is not sure, in short, Xianfeng's family is definitely in the top five.

Previously, Zhao An stipulated that grain merchants could only obtain silver from the Anhui provincial treasury by taking a slip of paper. If this method were extended to all areas of commerce, and even to the basic necessities of life for ordinary people, through the influence of the government and officials, then the Xianfeng Bank could become the number one commercial bank in the Qing Dynasty.

After all, the two provincial administrations of Jiangsu were the wealthiest regions in the Qing Dynasty, with a very strong private capital base and a more developed commercial trade than other regions.

Zhao An knew better than anyone how to use administrative means to strengthen local banks.

Public funds of the government, private deposits of officials, business funds of merchants, small deposits of ordinary people, and even military pay of the Eight Banners Central Army and the Green Standard Army, and salaries of government staff.
Everyone's money is in Lord Zhao's bank, and everyone's salary is paid entirely by Xianfeng Bank. So everyone has to understand one thing - anyone else can get into trouble, but Lord Zhao cannot get into trouble!

A tangible bond of shared interests is more realistic than any rational appeal.

It wasn't some kind of conspiracy or trickery, nor was it about exploiting loopholes in the Qing Dynasty's financial system; it was simply operating according to the existing financial system of the Qing Dynasty.

It's legal and compliant; who can explain the details?

Money doesn't matter where you save it.

The old man had some knowledge of finance, but his knowledge was limited to usury, and he was only concerned with how much interest he received. His understanding and application of finance differed from Zhao An's by not just a fraction, but by a difference of hundreds of years.

This shortcoming can never be remedied until the old man dies, unless he asks the heavens for another three hundred years.

Before the body of Fengyang Prefect Li Yuan had even cooled down, Zhao An appeared in his study in the prefectural government office. His family and servants were all taken into custody, and Qing Yao, leading several guards from the Eagle and Hound Bureau, was interrogating all the relevant personnel, including Li Yuan's advisor.

Only the prefect was executed; others were not questioned.

As long as the other officials in Fengyang Prefecture acted honestly, Zhao An had no intention of implicating them in the Li Yuan incident, since he still needed these officials to carry out disaster relief.

If all the officials are arrested and killed, then disaster relief will be out of the question.

Even the most corrupt bureaucratic system is better than none at all.

After confirming that Lord Zhao, who held the power of life and death, would not cause them any trouble, the officials of Fengyang Prefecture displayed exceptional efficiency and initiative, no less than those in Dingyuan County.

The disaster relief system in Fengyang Prefecture is operating rapidly, and some officials are even going to the countryside on their own initiative. Even if they intend to "hide" from the disaster, it is still playing a positive role in advancing the disaster relief efforts.

Upon learning that the provincial governor was investigating the prefect, many clerks and minor officials from the prefectural government came to report him, allowing Zhao An to obtain a lot of incriminating information about Li Yuan without much effort.

With just a little sorting out of these incriminating materials, it would be enough to prove that Li Yuan deserved his punishment. Among them were two criminal cases in which Li Yuan distorted the truth, as well as the serious crimes of embezzling disaster relief funds and privately reselling grain reserves.

However, Zhao An's current focus is not on collecting dirt on Li Yuan, but on finding out how much Li Yuan has assets of dubious origin.

It's stolen money.

Besides the fact that Heshen was a powerful minister who threatened the imperial power, the most important reason why Emperor Jiaqing killed Heshen was that Heshen was too wealthy. Heshen was so wealthy that Emperor Jiaqing had to get rid of him, otherwise the Qing Dynasty's financial crisis could not be resolved. In particular, the White Lotus Rebellion had reached its peak in the year that the old emperor died, which not only forced the Qing court to mobilize most of the country's army to suppress it, but also completely bankrupted the Qing court's finances.

Therefore, fighting corruption is not about killing corrupt officials, but about recovering all the ill-gotten gains they have made.

Killing corrupt officials without recovering their ill-gotten gains is worse than not fighting corruption at all.

Confiscation is a very effective way to increase fiscal revenue.

The ill-gotten gains of a corrupt official at the prefectural level are definitely equivalent to the fines of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people for riding electric bikes without helmets.

"A clean prefect for three years can amass 100,000 taels of silver"—this is not just a joke from "The Scholars."

Fengyang is an impoverished area, but Li Yuan, the prefect, received more than 3,000 taels of silver annually as a stipend for official duties. Combined with his salary, his legal income over three years was around 10,000 taels.

If it exceeds this number, Li Yuan will be in trouble.

The guards in the Hound and Falcon Bureau were responsible for raising dogs and feeding hawks in the capital. They were nominally ranked guards, but in reality, they were just idle people doing odd jobs, and hardly anyone respected them.

But once this group of people left Beijing, it became quite frightening, because everyone was wearing a yellow jacket.

Zhao An valued these guards for their intimidating presence, so he entrusted the task of interrogating Li Yuan about the embezzled funds to Qing Yao. As long as Qing Yao and his team could recover Li Yuan's embezzled funds, he didn't care what methods they used.

Li Yuan's most favored concubine, Ma, was the first to succumb to the cruelty of the thugs and their henchmen. She confessed that her husband had over 40,000 taels of silver in savings at a money exchange in Anqing, and that he had also purchased "luxury houses" in Anqing and Huizhou.

Li Yuan's finance clerk confessed that he had repeatedly acted on Li Yuan's orders to transfer 70,000 taels of silver to Li Yuan's hometown in Taizhou through various channels.

These two confirmed cases of embezzled funds alone amount to nearly 120,000 taels of silver, and further investigation could uncover even more.

Without further ado, Zhao An immediately used the official seal of the provincial governor to write a note, ordering someone to take Li Yuan's personal seal to the Anqing bank to collect the embezzled funds, and to seal up Li Yuan's mansions in Anqing, Huizhou and other places.

The instructions were to instruct the person withdrawing the money that if the bank refused to cooperate, they should immediately take the note to the provincial governor's office to mobilize troops to raid the bank.

If the manager of the money shop is determined not to cooperate, Zhao An wouldn't mind taking a few heads in the financial world to establish his authority.

He then sent a letter to the Jiangning Provincial Administration Commission in his capacity as the Provincial Administration Commissioner of Anhui, requesting that Jiangning send personnel to cooperate with Anhui in searching and confiscating Li Yuan's hometown in Taizhou.

Jiangning Provincial Governor Fuchang is now wholeheartedly following Brother Zhao; a simple greeting would suffice. Why then is such an official document being issued?

Because cross-provincial raids can only be initiated by the Ministry of Justice, local authorities have no authority to do so.

Zhao An didn't want Fuchang to get into trouble, so he had to send Fuchang an official document. He then submitted a memorial to the old master emphasizing that investigating and confiscating the property of corrupt officials would help alleviate the disaster in Anhui.

The subtext was that if the imperial court truly couldn't provide Anhui with sufficient disaster relief funds and grain, then he, as the acting provincial governor, would have to resort to special means and special channels to obtain them. A prefect could confiscate tens of thousands of taels of silver; confiscating a third or even a quarter of the taels from Anhui officials could probably yield the entire tax revenue of Anhui province.

Knowing the old man's nature, he would definitely approve it as long as it didn't involve him taking out money.

In this way, procedural violations can be avoided.

In order to provide disaster relief, everything was handled on a special basis.

No large denomination banknotes or priceless antiques were found in Li Yuan's study; there were only two boxes of books from the Song Dynasty.

Zhao An casually flipped through a few books but lost interest. He opened the window and saw a yellow ox tied to the corner of the wall not far away.

Out of curiosity, he asked one of the junior officials working in the room, "Why are there oxen in the yamen?"

The clerk glanced out the window and said cautiously, "Your Excellency, this ox is for the Prefect's health."

To nourish the body?
Upon further inquiry, it was learned that the Prefect of Fengyang had a particular fondness for beef, so the yamen kitchen always kept live cattle on hand, slaughtering and cooking them fresh. Even with such a severe disaster, the Prefect's preference could not be neglected.

"I do have an appetite, but I wonder if Meng Po's soup is as good as beef soup."

Zhao An snorted and ordered his men to take the ox out to sell it to wealthy households in the city in exchange for some grain. He then went to the yamen's household office to check on the state's grain reserves. However, An Deshun, the Assistant Magistrate of Fengyang, rushed in with a panicked expression, saying that the Fengyang garrison troops stationed in the city had rioted.

The battalion was the first-level command system of the Green Standard Army. A battalion consisted of about 200 to 500 soldiers, and the commander was a third-rank military officer. Under the battalion were garrisons, each with about 30 to 50 soldiers, commanded by a sixth-rank captain or a seventh-rank battalion commander.

Above the battalion level is the brigade, which is generally directly commanded by a general or deputy general, and usually consists of around a thousand men.

The next higher ranks consisted of personal guards, numbering around two thousand, directly under the command of the governor-general or the admiral.

Judging from the number of troops under their command and their ranks, the Green Standard Army's official positions have experienced severe inflation.

If a general is equivalent to a major general, then a major general only directly commands a thousand men, doing the work of a lieutenant colonel or regimental commander.

A seventh-rank officer is on par with a county magistrate, but can only manage thirty or forty people, which is equivalent to the work of a company commander.

There is a serious mismatch between authority and responsibilities.

Shouchun Town is just a general term for the Green Standard Army stationed in northern Anhui, with a total strength of more than 6,000 troops. The Green Standard Army in Fengyang area has 3,000 troops, but only more than 300 troops are stationed in Fengyang Prefecture. The other troops are stationed in various strategic passes and checkpoints in the form of garrisons.

This is also the distribution pattern of the Green Camp across the country, which is quite scattered. In Zhao An's previous life, the idea was to station a platoon in this county and a platoon in that county.

The city will station a company or a battalion, but never a regiment.

With such a troop distribution, if something happens, it will not only be difficult to mobilize superior forces to suppress it in the first instance, but it will also be easy to be defeated one by one.

Zhao An's understanding is that the dispersed troop deployment and the serious mismatch between the Green Standard Army's authority were both deliberate actions by the Qing court, because the Qing court's rule was based on "preventing the Han people," which was also the ultimate goal.

Although the Green Standard Army was the regular army of the Qing Dynasty, the problem was that the soldiers were also Han Chinese. Therefore, if the Green Standard Army soldiers were too concentrated in one place, the consequences would be far more serious if the officers developed rebellious intentions than if they were stationed in a dispersed manner.

In fact, it was quite effective. For example, as a general, Ding Musan could directly mobilize the Fengyang Battalion of more than 300 men. This meant that even if Ding Musan had the intention to rebel, he could not succeed because he lacked enough troops.

Why did the Fengyang camp riot?

To be precise, it cannot yet be called a mutiny, because the Fengyang Battalion is still making noise within the camp and has not yet broken out of the camp to do anything real.

Therefore, Zhao An believed that the Fengyang Camp was using the pretext of making a fuss to put pressure on him, the provincial governor who held the Ebilun sword, and that they did not dare to rebel at all.

If that's the case, what's there to be afraid of?

With only a little over three hundred men, he immediately waved his hand at the Fengyang Prefect: "What's the panic? The sky isn't going to fall. Lead the way, I'll go and meet these soldiers."

Upon hearing that Lord Zhao was going to Fengyang Camp, An Deshun quickly tried to dissuade him on the grounds of danger. One thing led to another: the prefect had just been killed by this kid, and if this kid were to be killed by the camp soldiers, then An Deshun's head as the assistant prefect would surely be taken by the imperial court.

Zhao An ignored the timid and cowardly Fengyang Tongzhi and led a large group of imperial guards and attendants to the Fengyang camp where the incident had occurred.

An Deshun had no choice but to follow. Just in case, he transferred more than a hundred yamen staff members from the third shift to accompany him, so that if a fight really broke out, they could at least hold their own.

Upon arriving outside Fengyang Camp, they saw a large crowd inside, with shouts and curses filling the air, and the crowd was filled with indignation.

I could vaguely see someone standing on a high place, waving their arms from time to time, not pounding their chest, but giving a speech.

Without a doubt, they are the instigators.

He must also be a close confidant of Ding Musan.

Finding no soldiers guarding the camp gate, having all gone to listen to the "speech," Zhao An chuckled, shook his head, and led his men directly into the camp.

Before the officers and soldiers in the camp could react, he stepped forward and asked the guerrillas who were giving a "speech" to the soldiers, "What are you doing?"

"us,"

The guerrilla was about to speak when he was startled by the several people in yellow jackets in front of Zhao An. He hesitated for a moment and then remained silent.

The others were also "suppressed" by the sudden appearance of Zhao An and his group. Upon seeing Zhao An's third-rank official robes, they immediately knew that this person was Zhao Youlu, the "culprit" who killed their commander-in-chief.

But not a single soldier who had been arguing fiercely just moments before jumped out to berate the culprit. Instead, they subconsciously looked at the guerrilla commander who had spent so much time mobilizing the troops.

Zhao An wouldn't give this guerrilla-style thinking any time to play along. He immediately hardened his face and said, "I am Zhao Youlu, the acting provincial governor of Anhui. What is your name? Why is there such a commotion in the camp? Some of you have knives, some have guns. What is your intention?"

"I, I, my name is Zhou Ku,"

The guerrilla was somewhat bewildered by Zhao An's posture. He was about to speak when Zhao An rudely interrupted him, asking sharply, "Zhou Ku, what is your relationship with the White Lotus Sect?"

"White Lotus Sect?"

Zhou Ku was taken aback, then quickly shook his head: "I have no connection with the White Lotus Sect."

"It doesn't matter, why rebel?"

Zhao An walked straight past the guerrillas with grim faces, glanced at the Fengyang Camp soldiers who looked neither like soldiers nor civilians, and waved his hand impatiently: "Disperse, everyone. Pay will be issued this afternoon."

(End of this chapter)