In fact, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, gentry was roughly divided into traditional gentry and industrial and commercial gentry. Traditional gentry had land rent income as the main income, and the rest, such as lending loans, opening money shops, supporting grain merchants, and cloth merchants, can only be said to be their additional income. For those traditional gentry, they represented the landlord class that had begun to gradually lag behind this era. To allow the Ming Dynasty to enter capitalism, they eventually needed to eliminate the landlord class. There are two ways to eliminate it, one was transformation, and the other was to use a butcher knife to cut and kill like Li Zicheng, or confiscate land and property to eliminate the landlord class.

Li Guodong's method of dealing with the landlord class was relatively gentle, and he adopted the method of inducing transformation, which led to the landlord class gradually becoming a real bourgeoisie, completing the transformation of the Ming Dynasty from a feudal state to a capitalist state.

But the gentry in the north have already surrendered to the enemy. Since these landlords who represent backward systems surrendered to the enemy and treason, there is nothing to be polite. They waved their butcher knives, sent troops to confiscate their homes, and directly confiscated their property, enriched the national treasury, and at the same time enriched their pockets and redistributed the farmland.

Industrial and commercial gentry no longer focuses on land rent income, but on industrial and commercial income. Most of this type of gentry are in Jiangnan, which can be said to be considered bourgeoisie.

As for salt merchants, it is an exception. Because of the monopoly law of salt, salt merchants colluded with officials and gentry. Comprador-type industrial and commercial gentry also belongs to the type of industrial and commercial gentry. However, this kind of gentry relies entirely on bribing court officials, obtaining salt indicative, and obtaining monopoly power of bureaucratic comprador bourgeoisie.

The Donglin Party in Jiangnan has gradually transformed from the original traditional gentry with land rent as its main income to the direction of industrial and commercial gentry, becoming a national bourgeoisie.

Most of the Donglin Party are national bourgeoisie, and industrial and commercial income accounts for most of their income. Although they still have a lot of farmland, the main purpose of these farmlands is to provide industrial and commercial raw materials. Only a small amount of grain is used to increase prices for Huguang grain in Jiangnan. Most of the farmland is used to produce mulberry leaves and tea, and provide raw materials for their handicraft workshops.

It is precisely because the income of the Donglin Party mainly relies on industry and commerce that they strongly oppose the court's increase in commercial tax collection. Wouldn't that ask for their money? Cutting off people's wealth is like killing parents. Of course, the Donglin Party has the highest voice to increase in commercial tax.

Guangdong and Fujian are actually the world of industrial and commercial gentry. However, the Ming Dynasty had very poor control over Guangdong and Fujian. When Wanli sent tax supervisors to Guangdong, he could not even think about entering the territory of Guangdong. In fact, Guangdong's wealth was not inferior to Jiangnan. Guangdong had a Haojing, that is, Macau. Guangdong was the window for the Ming Dynasty to connect with Western colonists. Local gentry made a fortune by relying on industry and commerce, but almost no need to pay taxes to the court. Of course, local officials were also rich.

Why was the Southern Song Dynasty rich? It was because the main source of economic resources of the Southern Song Dynasty was commercial tax.

As human history has developed to a certain extent, the proportion of agriculture in economics is getting lower and lower, and the proportion of industry and commerce will become higher and higher. As early as the Song and Yuan dynasties, the history of China had entered an era when industrial and commercial income was higher than agricultural income, not to mention the Ming Dynasty, but the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were deceived by civil officials and did not know how to collect commercial taxes.

Of course, there are also emperors who understand, such as Wanli and Tianqi. Wanli sent mining supervision and tax supervision to collect industrial and commercial taxes, but the mining supervision system was strongly backed by the Donglin Party. In addition, the mining supervision and tax supervision themselves were also insatiable, and most of the taxes collected were greedy by the eunuchs themselves. Therefore, the mining supervision and tax supervision system in Wanli failed.

The response method of the Apocalypse was to close the door and let the Nine Thousand Sui collect taxes, which caused a party struggle between the eunuch party and the Donglin party. This method was proved to be a failure afterwards. First of all, the civil officials of the eunuch party were not as honest as the Donglin party, because the civil officials group of the eunuch party was actually a member of the gentry group. Their greed was not inferior to the Donglin party at all. Most of the taxes that were finally collected fell into the hands of these civil officials. In addition, the core of the eunuch party itself was greedy, and not many of them were actually in the hands of the Apocalypse.

If you want to truly collect commercial taxes, a more complete tax system is needed. Logically, the taxes in the Ming Dynasty were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Revenue, but Li Guodong is currently worried about handing over the commercial tax to the Ministry of Revenue. If the Ministry of Revenue collects cash, how many can it really be in the hands of Huangdi? Most of them are not corrupted by officials.

Therefore, Li Guodong directly asked the Jinyiwei to send out his home to search, and all the confiscated property turned into royal property, so that Emperor Chongzhen would have money.

Emperor Chongzhen had money, which was equivalent to Li Guodong's money. Don't forget that Chongzhen still owed him millions of taels of silver to his military pay. As long as Chongzhen had money, it would be much easier for Li Guodong to ask Chongzhen for military pay. In military investment, Chongzhen was not a stingy person, but he really had no money.

Li Guodong said to Wang Chengen: "Eunuch Wang, we will solve the problem of salt merchants sooner or later. Most of the annual salt income in the Ming Dynasty fell into the hands of corrupt officials and salt merchants. When you arrive in Yangzhou, you will know how much money those salt merchants have in their hands! However, we do not have our own royal salt industry yet, and we cannot kill the salt merchants for the time being, so we can only do it step by step. When your Majesty starts his own salt industry, these things can be handed over to the Jinyiwei to operate. The Royal Salt Business Company defeats them with its own price advantage! In this way, those salt merchants will collapse and the salt will no longer be corrupt."

Wang Chengen was stunned for a moment, and then asked: "If the emperor asked the emperor to open a salt business directly, I'm afraid a large group of censors will jump out and say that the emperor is competing for profit with the people."

"Let them say go, Your Majesty was fooled by them before, and even the dragon robe was patched! Which of those officials is a good person?"

Wang Chengen nodded and asked again: "Wuweibo, the people are so miserable, why don't we distribute the confiscated land to the people, but just hand it over to the emperor?"

"Old Master, the reason why we gave confiscated fields to His Majesty to fill them into the imperial house instead of the land to the farmers is because we distributed the land to the farmers, or the land will inevitably fall into the hands of officials and gentry! Only by turning the land into His Majesty's imperial house will no one dare to make this idea."

This method is actually a way to prevent land annexation.

Wang Chengen asked again: "Wuweibo, the rebels are now besieging Your Majesty's palace. When will we send troops to rescue him?"

"Eunuch Wang, my brothers asked me to prepare for it. We will set off tomorrow morning. We will not receive any reports at night, saying that Liu Liangzuo set up an ambush on the way and wanted to deal with us with fire."

"I don't know how my uncle will deal with it?"

Li Guodong laughed: "Didn't Liu Ni want to attack us on the fire halfway? They want to launch a fire attack, don't they need people to set fire? We restrain the infantry head-on, and then use cavalry to detour behind them. We simply help them set fire, and the cavalry took a swarm of rockets and set a fire in their hiding place. Liu Ni's army will inevitably be in chaos."

Liu Liangzuo cleverly implemented the plan to surround Wei and save Zhao. Li Guodong responded with his strength and calmly destroyed Liu Zeqing first. The next ones he had to deal with were Liu Liangzuo, Gao Jie, Tian Xiong and Ma Degong, who were disobedient.

At this time, Gao Jie's army had arrived in Liangzhuang and joined forces with Liu Liangzuo's army.
Chapter completed!