Di Ming

Chapter 486 Young Tiger, I can't hold on much longer! Where is your army?

"360,000 taels of gold, 23,580,000 taels of silver, over 800 Mogok pigeon blood rubies, over 5,200 pieces of jade (jadeite), over 6,400 bolts of Longna brocade, over 8,000 bolts of Temin skirt fabric, over 900 pieces of ivory, over 240 red corals, over 150 catties of South China Sea pearls, and over 320 catties of lake pearls..."

"120,000 shi of Iroha rice, over 70,000 jin of Delindayi pepper, over 80,000 pieces of Chindwin teak, over 40,000 Burmese bows..."

Upon seeing this, Zhu Yin was at a loss for words.

A preliminary estimate puts it at least at least 50 million taels of silver!
This is just the wealth in the treasury; what about the decorations in the palace? That hasn't been calculated yet! The Burmese royal palace is called the "Glass Palace," and just hearing the name tells you how magnificent it is.

Therefore, the history book about the Toungoo Dynasty is called "The History of the Glass Palace".

This glass palace is made of gold, silver, and jewels in many places; even the pillars are covered with gold leaf. Many of the palace's utensils are made of gold, silver, ivory, and jade.

If all the gold and silver decorations and artifacts in the entire palace were collected, the estimated value would be at least over ten million taels!

This only includes the royal family and their treasury; it doesn't include the assets of temples and noble families. If you add them all together, the amount could potentially double!
Zhu Yin conservatively estimated that after looting the entire Burma, he would make a fortune of at least 100 million taels of silver!
In reality, the Toungoo Dynasty at this time was by no means a small country.

Judging by the wealth of the royal family and the royal court, the Toungoo Dynasty truly deserves its reputation as the hegemon of central and southern China, the Great White Elephant Kingdom!
This is truly a case of Dongyu falling down while the Ming Dynasty feasts!

"Caiwei, Caiwei, we've struck it rich again this time," Zhu Yin muttered to himself, already numb with despair.

But Zhu Yin's brief joy quickly faded. Although he had acquired gold and silver jewelry worth tens of millions, was this truly wealth?

not necessarily!

In Zhu Yin's view, true material wealth is material goods, such as food, cloth, raw materials, salt, energy, tea, and porcelain, while gold and silver are merely monetary mediums, not wealth itself.

Bringing back the gold and silver treasures from Burma to the Ming Dynasty might bring the national treasury to two hundred million, but would that truly make the country wealthy? The Ming Dynasty's supplies of grain, cloth, tea, salt, and other goods wouldn't increase accordingly. No matter how much gold and silver was produced, the lives of the people wouldn't improve.

To put it bluntly, the imperial court had more gold and silver, which allowed it to openly plunder the people's resources, making life even harder for the people while the court prospered. Essentially, it was plundering the people's wealth.

After all, gold and silver cannot be eaten when hungry or clothed when cold.

Therefore, during periods when productivity cannot be significantly improved, it is definitely not a good thing for the people for the country to have too much gold and silver.

Of course, Zhu Yin could only keep this thought to himself and could never utter it aloud. He still needed gold and silver to strengthen his army, implement reforms, and develop industry, commerce, and technology.

However, while acquiring so much gold and silver, we should also increase production and accumulate social material wealth equivalent to that of gold and silver, so as to prevent the value of gold and silver from depreciating.

In addition to improving production, it is also necessary to expand territory and occupy more resource-rich areas to hedge against the inflationary risks of increased gold and silver prices.

If wealth is defined by gold and silver, then Myanmar can certainly be considered wealthy.

Ancient Myanmar was the richest region in Southeast Asia in terms of gold and silver resources. Just how rich?
Zhu Yin knew it very well!
Western merchants described the Burmese king as having "silver bricks paving the ground and gold leaf covering elephants" and "the Burmese king's treasury of gold nuggets piled up like mountains, requiring elephant caravans to transport them."

The royal tomb of a Burmese king in Toungoo was looted by the British, and two tons of gold were found buried with him!
The golden roof of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon alone used a ton of gold!
So what's the reality? Ancient Myanmar had abundant gold, silver, and tin mines. Today, its annual gold production exceeds 50,000 taels, accounting for 10% of the world's annual gold production during the same period! In contrast, the Ming Dynasty, with its vast territory, only produced around 30,000 taels of gold annually, less than Myanmar.

Myanmar's annual silver production reaches an astonishing six million taels! That's nearly one-tenth of the world's silver production!
It was the newly mined silver, six million taels per year! In other words, the annual silver mine output of the Toungoo Dynasty exceeded the tax silver of the central treasury of the Ming Dynasty during the same period.

Not all of Myanmar's gold and silver mines are directly controlled by the royal court; many are privately mined. The state levies a 10% gold and silver tax, known as the "tithing tax."

Even so, Wang Tingguang's income came from the gold and silver mines, which amounted to a huge sum of money every year.

Although Myanmar has abundant gold and silver, much of it is spent on Buddhist temples. These temples consume vast amounts of gold and silver.

It is no exaggeration to say that half of Myanmar's gold and 30% of its silver reserves are used in temples!

Moreover, because Burma was rich in gold and silver, the nobility and the people paid less attention to production. They spent a lot of silver to buy Indian cotton cloth, spending two million taels a year, and to buy porcelain, silk and tea from the Ming Dynasty, spending more than one million taels a year.

Wang Ting also spent hundreds of thousands of taels of silver every year to purchase Western firearms and gunpowder, and spent hundreds of thousands of taels of silver to hire Western mercenaries at high salaries.

This resulted in Myanmar being rich and militarily powerful, but its production was a mess, because it could buy gold, silver, and tin, and its agriculture, textile industry, shipbuilding, and other industries were very backward.

If wealth is defined as material possessions, then Myanmar cannot be considered particularly wealthy.

Although Myanmar has fertile land and can harvest rice three times a year, its productivity is far inferior to that of the Ming Dynasty.

The Burmese possess the Irrawaddy River plain, a high-quality plain with fertile land that could have been a premier granary of the Indochina Peninsula. However, due to the Burmese's laziness, they only cultivate three crops every two years, and their agricultural techniques are also quite poor.

The Burmese still use wooden and stone plows, irrigate with manual hoes, and harvest crops by hand instead of sickles.

The royal court also neglected the irrigation system, relying solely on monks chanting prayers for rain.

Even more critically, serfs were required to perform corvée labor for as many as 120 days each year, spending a third of their time in this task. Furthermore, their corvée labor primarily involved building temples, followed by city walls and transporting military provisions. This severely disrupted agricultural production, leading to reduced yields.

However, the Irrawaddy Plain is incredibly fertile, with 50 million acres of arable land—a veritable granary blessed by nature. Even though the Burmese are relatively lazy and their agricultural technology is underdeveloped, they can still easily feed Myanmar's six million people.

The Toungoo Dynasty was able to maintain a standing army of 200,000 men and support as many as 300,000 full-time monks (accounting for 5% of the total population) thanks to the vast granary of the Irrawaddy River plain.

Ironically, the main gold and silver producing areas and jade producing areas of Myanmar, including the Irrawaddy River plain, a major granary, were originally the chieftain areas of the Ming Dynasty. They were annexed by Myanmar and never recovered.

The Myanmar of today is not the real Myanmar. The real Myanmar was originally the Myanmar Pacification Commission of the Ming Dynasty. The current "Great White Elephant Kingdom" is actually a country that usurped the name of Myanmar after Toungoo expanded and annexed Myanmar.

In Zhu Yin's view, the so-called Dongyu Dynasty and the Great White Elephant Kingdom were actually slave-owning feudal lord states.

The Toungoo Dynasty implemented the "Akhmedan system," which bound the population together with thirty-six hereditary professions, forming a tight pyramid structure. These included professions such as elephant cavalry, shipwrights, rice farmers, temple slaves, and hereditary soldiers…

Myanmar has a very strict caste system, heavily influenced by India, and bears some resemblance to the caste system.

The Toungoo Dynasty was a theocratic kingdom. The Burmese king was known as the "White Elephant King," and also held the title of Chakravartin (universal monarch) in Theravada Buddhism, while claiming to be a descendant of the sun god. He was a "divine king" who combined theocracy and monarchy.

Therefore, the royal family also calls themselves a divine race. This is the pinnacle of the pyramid.

Secondly, there are the monks. The Burmese monastic community numbers as many as 300,000, who not only enjoy tax and labor exemptions but also control vast amounts of property, estates, and temple slaves.

Furthermore, in Myanmar, all courts and schools are located in monasteries, with monks in charge of both judicial and educational functions. High-ranking monks are not only judges but also teachers.

This is the meaning of the saying "Buddhist temples are government offices, and monks are judges".

The Sangharaja's judgment was equivalent to a royal edict and the law. As for what the students would study? Well, of course, Buddhist scriptures and teachings.

Next were the tribal leaders and military nobles known as "Seye," who inherited military power and owned large estates and numerous serfs.

Next were the administrative bureaucrats known as "Wenji," who were mostly sons of powerful chieftains such as the Meng clan.

Then there are the professional hereditary soldiers, whose military status is passed down from father to son. It seems similar to the garrison system of the Ming Dynasty, but unlike the Ming Dynasty, the hereditary soldiers in Burma are considered minor nobles with relatively high status. They are also subject to high training intensity, provide their own weapons and provisions, and have their own serfs.

Moreover, soldiers can also obtain the status of "Wenji" or even "Seye" through military merits, thus achieving upward social mobility.

Therefore, the Burmese army was very powerful, far superior to the Ming Dynasty's garrison troops. Those of lower status than hereditary soldiers were various artisans.

Below the artisans were the serfs and temple slaves, who comprised the majority of the population. Serfs and temple slaves had no land of their own and no personal freedom. They could only work on royal lands, noble estates, and temple estates.

The serfs suffered the most. They had to pay 50% of the harvest and 25% to support the monks, leaving them with only 25% for their own food rations.

However, the lowest class was not the serfs; the lowest class was the slaves, who made up 10% of the total population and mainly came from prisoners of war and punished serfs.

To strictly control serfs, the Toungoo Dynasty implemented the "Lutai" system. This meant that serfs could not leave their villages freely; they had to apply for a "village exit permit" to do so. Checkpoints were set up at various locations to inspect serfs who left their villages without permission.

Violators will be punished... First offense: toe amputation; second offense: beheading!
In each village, a "toe warning frame" is set up, in which severed toes are strung together and hung high at the village entrance as a warning to others.

It also implemented a system of collective punishment, with five households forming a unit. If one person fled, all five households would be punished and made royal slaves.

Even marriage was confined to the village and manor. This kept the serfs firmly bound to the land.

It sounds like Burmese serfs lived a very miserable life. But they themselves probably didn't really feel that way.

Because Buddhist temples preached that "serving and suffering can atone for sins committed in the previous life," they also "tattooed obedient and law-abiding serfs to ward off disasters."

Because the Toungoo Dynasty valued military merit, serfs could escape serfdom through military achievements, and their status was not fixed. Royal law stipulated that a serf who killed three enemies or achieved a corresponding level of military merit could be promoted to a hereditary soldier and become a minor noble.

Slaves who perform military service can be redeemed.

Military merit was the only way for serfs and slaves to rise in social status. Therefore, in order to seize this opportunity, serfs and slaves were very willing to join the army and voluntarily practiced archery and hand-to-hand combat in peacetime.

This is one of the reasons why the Myanmar army is so powerful.

Although the Burmese army is very strong, it is currently far away in Yunnan, leaving the country vulnerable and allowing Zhu Yin to do as he pleases, with no way to exert his influence.

Zhu Yin showed no mercy. After reviewing the recorded financial ledgers, he ordered the plundering of the gold and silver treasures in the 'Liuli Palace,' even taking the gold leaf from the pillars.

He wanted to transform the famous Crystal Palace in Southeast Asia into a simple and shabby royal palace.

That wasn't all; Zhu Yin also ordered the looting of all the gold and silver treasures from the temples and noble residences throughout the capital city.

Completely looted everything, pack it all up and take it all!

If you're going to do something, do it thoroughly!

Even the captured royal nobles had all their jewelry confiscated; they were practically stripped of their underwear. The Burmese Queen Mother and Queen's gold-embroidered dresses and shoes were also taken by the Ming army.

Logically speaking, as a royal family, even if captured, they should be treated with some dignity. However, Zhu Yin showed no respect whatsoever and lacked any of the grandeur expected of the Ming Dynasty.

At this moment, Zhu Yin resembled a greedy and ruthless pirate, completely unlike a king representing the Ming Dynasty.

……

The Burmese capital of Bago had changed hands, with the royal family and nobility falling into the hands of the Ming army, who were also massacring the city. News of this spread like wildfire throughout Burma, reaching every corner of the country at breakneck speed, creating an atmosphere of panic and fear wherever it reached.

Some tribal chieftains who were not convinced by Burma were eager to come and pay homage to Zhu Yin.

But many more tribes were terrified.

Zhu Yin knew that capturing Bago was only the first step. The next step was to see what choices the various ethnic groups of Burma would make in this changing situation.

He has encircled this "Wei" position, and attacking it will force the enemy to come to its defense, which will surely compel the main force of the Burmese army to return to its aid.

Then we should choose the best place for the decisive battle and wait for the Burmese army to return home.

The best battlefield, of course, is... Ava!
Ava is the second largest city in Myanmar and a very prosperous city. It is an important commercial hub and transportation route, and also a necessary route for the Myanmar army to return to Beijing.

Two days later, the Ming army, having plundered the Burmese dynasty, finally tallied up their spoils:

As Zhu Yin had predicted, the entire royal city reaped over 70 million taels of gold and silver alone!

The Glazed Tile Palace, major temples, noble residences… all were looted. The wealth accumulated by the Burmese capital over many years all benefited the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yin ordered that the captured elephants and oxcarts be used to transport the gold and silver treasures, which amounted to more than a thousand carts! For this purpose, he specially dispatched five thousand soldiers to escort the convoy to Bago Port and load it onto the ships.

Next, Zhu Yin led his army north, heading straight for the equally empty city of Ava! The capital city had already been completely annihilated, and now it was Ava's turn.

Take advantage of his illness and kill him!
Zhu Yin intends to use the most ruthless and decisive means to destroy the Great White Elephant Kingdom and send this so-called Dongyu Dynasty into the annals of history!

This country no longer needs to exist.

……

Just as Zhu Yin captured the Burmese capital and marched north to Ava, over a thousand miles away in Yunnan, the Ming army was struggling to hold out, relying on the natural barrier of the Lancang River to resist the attack of the Burmese army.

However, the Burmese army was too powerful, and it was clear that they could not hold out any longer.

The Ming army had only about 30,000 soldiers left who were capable of fighting. Within half a month at most, the Burmese army would capture Feilong Pass, a key fortress along the river.

In early March, Yunnan was bathed in the bright sunshine of spring, but the Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou, Hao Yunlai, the Governor of Yunnan, Chen Yongbin, the Duke of Yunnan, Mu Changzuo, and the head of the Mu family, Mu Qing, all felt as if they were in the dead of winter.

The Lancang River is on the verge of collapse. Even half a month is unlikely!

Once the Burmese army crosses the Lancang River, it will be unstoppable, and Kunming and Dali will soon fall! Then the Burmese army will be able to sweep across the entire Yunnan province within the next month.

In the Ming army camp at Feilong Pass, Governor-General Hao Yunlai of Yunnan and Guizhou sat in the center, looking at the silent people, his heart filled with bitterness.

After arriving in Yunnan, he used all his skills to unite the various forces in Yunnan into one, and gathered 80,000 troops to hold off the Burmese army at the Lancang River for several months.

But now, they are exhausted. After months of fighting, the Ming army has suffered heavy casualties, and with the reinforcements from the Song family of Shuidong arriving, only a little over 30,000 men remain capable of fighting. With such a long river defense line, they are caught in a bind and cannot hold out for much longer.

The Burmese army has already amassed a large force west of the Flying Dragon Bridge, clearly preparing for a final blow.

Young Tiger, I've been in Yunnan for half a year now.

Young Tiger, I can't hold on any longer. But what about your army?

If you don't support me, I, the Governor-General of Yunnan and Guizhou, will have no choice but to die for my country!
"Gentlemen, I believe in the Regent!" Hao Yunlai said, forcing a smile. "I estimate that the Regent's army may be arriving in Burma soon!"

(End of this chapter)