New Shun 1730

This opportunistic choice of a one-shot bet was inevitable after the Dashun envoys arrived in France.

Because the French government had no money.

War is all about money.

Before the Dashun envoys came, France captured Mahon, and the domestic mood was high. They felt that the possibility of exchanging money in the future was greatly increased, so they bought 136 million national debts.

After the Dashun envoys came, India failed, Louisburg was broken, and Prussia played two tactical genius operations...

In this case, the big capitalists who still bought national debts were fools. And such fools can't be big capitalists.

Moreover, just like Dashun, even the rural private lending in later generations: if you borrow money and can't pay it back this year, you have to pay the interest first, right? We can push the principal, but we can't not pay the interest.

Now France also owes a lot of debts. If you want to borrow more, you have to pay the interest to prove that you still have some credibility, at least pay the interest.

You don’t have to pay back the debt you borrowed with your own ability, but the premise is that you don’t use this method to get money next year.

To pay interest, you have to have cash.

What to do if you don’t have cash?

Last year, they actively borrowed 130 million, but this year they didn’t even borrow 100 million. The French government can’t borrow low-interest loans, and basically they have to reach an annual interest rate of 8% to 10% before they are willing to borrow.

No money.

Either tax reform.

Or eat up the food of the next year in advance.

The reform plan for France’s tax problem is actually very clear: the tax system is chaotic, with a mess of taxes and exemption money. If you want to reform, you can collect money by checking the land and gentry paying taxes together.

France has tried to reform. It’s not that they haven’t changed a financial director, saying that they want to carry out reforms such as gentry paying taxes together and checking the land. In other words, the tax-free class in France needs to pay taxes. Check the land and prepare to levy taxes based on land.

This, of course, failed.

Why should the tax-free class pay taxes? If they pay taxes, what is the privileged class? Where is the dignity?

The Grand Remonstrance of the Paris High Court opposed it.

So the financial director left.

Generally speaking, the Dashun side is really easy to understand.

For example, in addition to normal taxes, the French also have to pay military service taxes. It can be roughly understood as the miscellaneous taxes and corvée of the Ming Dynasty.

In theory, the premise for the French nobles to be exempted from military service taxes is that "the cultivated area is within a certain range", that is, there is an exemption quota. For example, how many acres of small nobles; how many acres of large nobles; how many acres of purchased nobles, etc.

The legal basis is similar to that of the Dashun and Ming Dynasty.

The legal basis of France is that the nobles have to pay blood taxes, so a certain area is exempted.

The legal basis of the Ming Dynasty is that students have to educate the local area and assist officials, so a certain area is exempted.

French nobles do not farm their own land, and many of them rent out their land. People in Dashun should not be too familiar with what this "cultivated area is within a certain range" exemption will lead to.

Since we can’t start taxing the privileged class, we can only eat what we have earned in the future.

The old three things:

Collect the taxes for ten years first; sell official positions and titles; force the church to donate.

The tax farmers prepaid 80 million in future taxes, and you can collect them slowly in the future.

Selling official positions for 27 million.

The selling of official positions in France can basically be understood as “donating to be a student”.

It may not necessarily lead to being an official, the key is to have “exemptions” - with a population of 200,000 to 400,000 people with “noble” status, just like the millions of students in Dashun, who can become a real official?

After buying an official position, it is actually basically empty, because there are professional tax farmers for tax collection.

However, with this reserve official status, there will be preferential treatment for gentry, and some direct taxes will be exempted. As long as you don’t die and the status of “student” is not abolished, it is actually equivalent to you having to pay 100 yuan in taxes in this life, which will be paid in decades. Let’s just do a one-time discount, you can buy a noble status for 50 yuan, and you don’t have to pay taxes in the future.

There were 400,000 nobles in the late France. There were not many feudal nobles in the medieval sense. Most of them were "students".

The church issue involves a conflict of doctrines. Is it possible to go to heaven by doing good deeds, or is it useless to do good deeds? As long as you are chosen by God, you can go to heaven even if you kill, set fire and scalp. The conflict also spread in France, but in the end, the local government and the church still "donated" 24 million.

Added together, it has raised more than 200 million, which can still hold on.

The problem is, if we raise enough this year, what should we do next year?

This money is all extra expenses, which are expenses outside the normal operation of the country. In short, this money is for war.

If there is no turnaround, there will be no need to fight this war next year. What's the point of fighting without money?

Moreover, if we continue to fight, in addition to fighting, we have to pay more and more interest every year. The interest to be paid this year is 100 million livres. Because there is still money owed before.

In front of money, any "strategic thinking and long-term considerations" are so pale and powerless.

They can only take the opportunistic route and try to achieve their goal in one battle, a decisive field battle or naval battle.

This is the French problem from the perspective of Dashun, and also the political and diplomatic issue of when to form an alliance from the perspective of Dashun.

But from the perspective of France itself, the problem is actually much more serious than it appears.

The huge monarchical crisis caused by this financial problem has begun to spread in France.

The starting point of this crisis is precisely the word "no money".

The King of France represents absolute monarchy.

The Paris High Court represents the interests of the nobility.

The French king, who was an absolute monarchy, proposed a tax reform plan, which was rejected by the Paris High Court, which represented the interests of the privileged class.

So they fell into a vicious circle.

Without the existence of the privileged class, there would be no absolute monarchy; and the absolute monarchy wanted to increase taxes, but the High Court, which was controlled by the privileged class, rejected it with the theory and legal principles of the absolute monarchy; the High Court, which represented the interests of the nobility, could only cite the theory of absolute monarchy as a weapon against the royal power; and the royal power was the most supportive of the absolute monarchy, but it tried to destroy the legal principles of the absolute monarchy itself.

In the end, it seemed that the only way to untie this knot was to get rid of the absolute monarchy.

It is somewhat similar to the Ming Dynasty and the Dashun Dynasty.

In other words, the real pillar of the imperial power was the privileged class such as the gentry officials; the legal theory of the imperial power made it impossible for the imperial power to equally tax the privileged class such as the gentry officials; and the legal theory of the gentry officials to protect their own interests was also the theory of the imperial power; because without the hundreds of thousands or millions of privileged classes of the Ming Dynasty or the Dashun Dynasty, there would be no imperial power.

Of course, under normal circumstances, this is not a problem. The royal power and the privileged class can live together. What else can they do?

But if the king or emperor is not very smart, this is a big problem.

The French king's brain is not very good.

He does not know where his royal power and absolute monarchy come from and what the pillars are, and whether the existence of the privileged class hinders the royal power or consolidates the royal power?

He thought that the existence of the privileged class hindered the royal power, but in fact it was just the opposite.

So he had no money and wanted to levy taxes. He thought that the middle class in Paris should be dissatisfied with the current tax inequality in France, so he stupidly opened the door of "no money, want to reform taxes, let's discuss it together."

Can this thing be discussed?

Why do we say that he is an unqualified king, or that his brain is not working well? This is the problem.

These things cannot be discussed.

Indeed, many people are dissatisfied with the tax exemption of the privileged class.

However, once this kind of thing is discussed, everyone will start to think: What is the legal basis of taxation? What is the nature of the privileges of the privileged class?

Once the discussion was opened up, the result was not that everyone was dissatisfied with the tax exemption for the privileged class, but that the sacredness of the king was completely diluted.

Through this debate on taxation, people's attitude towards the monarchy itself changed, and the state secret of taxation was no longer so sacred and inviolable.

What was finally agreed upon was not that "it is wrong for the privileged class to be tax-exempt or to pay less tax"; but "the existence of the privileged class itself is wrong".

From the perspective of emperors and kings in history, there were two stupid emperors and unqualified feudal emperors in the East and the West in the 18th century.

One was Louis XV, who stupidly discussed the issue of taxation and how to tax the privileged class.

The other was Yinzhen, who stupidly published "Da Yi Jue Mi Lu" and blasted the missionaries for feudal superstition to fool the people.

From the perspective of feudal emperors, those two people were pure idiots and were not qualified feudal emperors at all.

These things can also be published and let the people discuss?

Is it because they think their rule is too stable? Do they think the imperial power is too solid? Do you think the sanctity of the imperial power is too sacred, and are afraid that others can't break this window paper?

And now, we have to add the stupid Dashun Li family, who actually took Chen Liang's "performance scoring system" as the orthodox doctrine, and did not complete the transformation back to Zhu Xi's school during the stable period.

At this time, let's just talk about France. Because of the factor of the spread of Eastern learning to the West, this incident led to a route that made the royal power very painful.

The spread of Eastern learning to the West here does not refer to Voltaire, but the group of people in the French Physiocrats.

The theoretical journal of this group of people in the Physiocrats, "Physiocracy, or the Natural System Most Conducive to Human Management" written by Dupont, directly wrote the place of publication as: This book was published in Beijing.

It's a bit like the meaning of foreign monks chanting scriptures. Writing this book and publishing it in the capital is to boost the authority and sanctity of their school.

The core idea of ​​their school is: only collect agricultural taxes, abolish all industrial and commercial taxes, tariffs, commercial taxes, etc.

In fact, the school itself is to fight against mercantilism and France's controlled economy.

Its theoretical basis is: agriculture is the only production sector, and only agriculture can produce new wealth.

Industry and commerce do not actually increase wealth.

All the increased wealth is the result of natural forces participating in agricultural production, and is a gift from nature.

Net product is the balance of the value of the products produced by land cultivators over the production costs, and only agriculture can increase wealth.

Industry only processes the raw materials provided by agriculture and changes its material form.

For example, if you spin cotton into yarn and cloth, what has been added? Nothing has been added, it just changes the form of cotton, how can it be considered an increase in wealth?

Only agriculture is different. When you plant seeds in the ground, the great nature, rain, and sunshine will turn this seed into ten, which truly increases the total wealth on the earth...

Not to mention the most basic physical and chemical loopholes in this theory, and the development of natural science, this set of theories must be abandoned.

But this set of theories is now a popular school in France.

The rational conclusion of their theory is that only land tax should be collected, and any tax on industry and commerce is actually transferring pressure to the landowner.

The land of the landowner is the only way to increase social wealth. If you put pressure on the only means of increasing wealth, won’t it hinder the increase of the total social wealth?

For example, you collect salt tax.

Should the landlord eat salt? Should the landlord’s employees eat salt? The salt that the employees eat is the money given by the landlord. And where does the landlord’s money come from? It is the result of the appreciation of seeds after the great power of nature.

Then, if you tax salt, doesn’t it mean reducing the landlord’s capital investment in the land?

Then doesn’t this affect the increase of social wealth?

From this, it can be deduced that no matter what is taxed, the final tax will be borne by the landowner. And ultimately, it will also affect the investment in land. Less investment means less output, and land is the only means of "creating" value that their school believes.

Therefore, the most reasonable tax model is to tax only land and abolish any form of industrial and commercial tax.

This set of theories, which Liu Yu thought was pure nonsense, produced a wonderful reaction in France.

Because France has a privileged class.

The privileged class in France has a lot of land.

The privileged class in France has tax exemptions.

And this set of theories that only tax land naturally means that the more land you have, the more tax you pay, which is integrated with the social reality of the privileged class opposing France.

The King of France saw that this theory is good, especially the sentence "If the people are satisfied, who can be dissatisfied with the king; if the people are dissatisfied, who can be satisfied with the king", which makes sense.

So the King of France also learned from China. In the spring, he personally plowed and cultivated the land to set an example for the kingdom.

Then, something went wrong.

Under the influence of the Physiocrats, in conjunction with the spread of the Enlightenment.

In fact, a part of the privileged class, the aristocracy, and a large number of wealthy people in the third estate petitioned the king.

They hoped that the king would "levy a unified land tax across the country according to the amount of land."

It sounds like a good thing, which will greatly benefit the king's finances.

However, the matter is one thing, and there is a problem in legal theory.

"The reason why we support a unified national land tax is out of equality of people, not because the treasury does not have enough money."

"Objectively, the implementation of a unified national land tax will increase the treasury revenue."

"Subjectively, we must make it clear that we do not agree to a unified national land tax because the treasury has no money."

"We proposed a petition for a unified national taxation based on land based on the concept of human equality."

"We even support the abolition of tax exemptions, tax exemptions, and fiscal privileges. But we must reiterate that we support it not because the treasury is short of money, but because of the concept of human equality to demand the abolition of all these privileges and collect taxes based on the amount of land."

"It's just that our support for equality happens to increase the treasury revenue."

"Don't think that we agree to a unified taxation in order to increase the treasury revenue."

The most interesting thing in the whole incident is the Paris High Court.

If we substitute the nobles of the previous dynasty or the literati of all dynasties, their historical significance is the same as that of the group of people in the Paris High Court.

Perhaps, they are motivated by their own interests, selfish ideas, and the self-interest of the literati privileges.

But they all acted as "unconscious tools of history" in the fight against absolute imperial power and royal power.

In order to maintain the interests of the nobility, the Paris High Court dug out the ancient French charter before the absolute monarchy era to fight against the royal power.

In order to maintain their own interests, the literati dug out the ancient Chinese people-oriented thought and the theory of the emperor to fight against the imperial power.

And what is "unconscious tool of history".

For example, the Emperor of Dashun did not want to improve the lives of the people through railways, but just to facilitate the suppression and maintain the old rule, but he still decided to build a railway.

For example, the capital of Dashun did not want to seek welfare for the Javanese people, but in order to facilitate the transportation of rice, indigo and spices, it still strengthened the infrastructure of Java, built canals, roads, and even schools.

For example, in the development of the Northeast by Dashun, investors did not want to find a way to make a living for the people who lost their land, but for the profit of soybean, silkworm, sorghum and rice, they developed the originally barren Northeast region, which made millions of people who lost their land, lost their jobs and lost their salt survive.

When facing absolute monarchy and imperial power.

France did not have an institution that could represent the interests of all classes and put forward ideas to the monarch, so they could only use the High Court, an institution that protects the interests of the privileged class, to argue with the monarch.

Dashun and Ming Dynasty did not have an institution that could represent the interests of all classes and put forward ideas to the monarch. So they could only use the privileged class group of court officials and literati to argue with the monarch.

It was no longer important for what their purpose was.

What was important was that their actions served as an unconscious tool of history, constantly disintegrating the sacredness of royal power and imperial power.

And the old system, whether it was France or Dashun, the old system itself shaped the imperial power and royal power, and also shaped the privileged class.

The existence of the old system itself created the monarchy and the privileged class, and was also the root cause of the unsolvable financial problems.

If you want to solve it, the only way left is to solve the old system itself.

In the end, the privileged class and the king disappeared together.

Perhaps, the story of China is also like this. In the end, the literati and military nobles who represent the privileged class will also disappear with the emperor.

But it will happen sooner or later.

After all, Dashun now seems to be prosperous and prosperous, and the finances seem to be fine for the time being, thriving and full of vitality.

France, on the other hand, is already stretched financially, and Louis XV thought he was smart and played such a trick, trying to use public opinion to check the privileged class to collect taxes, but ended up messing up.

When the petitions piled up, Louis XV himself panicked.

He knew that if he continued like this, something big would happen.

But the war had already started, and Britain had the upper hand. Would Britain agree to peace talks at this time? Of course not. He had no choice.

Can the discussion of financial issues continue? No. If the discussion continues, it will be a flood.

Therefore, he had no choice but to go all out.

Either, he could concentrate all his mobile forces, fight to the death in Hanover, hold the King of England's eggs, and leave in a dignified manner.

Or, he could concentrate all his naval forces, fight to the death in the Strait, send 20,000 soldiers and the little pretender to the throne of the Stuart family, and land in Scotland.

The Dashun envoys were not in a hurry, just waiting for this opportunistic military adventure to fail before asking for a price.

Yes, China and France are traditional allies, but before that, the French Indian fleet could only return to Mauritius for ship repairs and supplies. Even the most complete naval supply base in South Asia and Southeast Asia is in Malacca controlled by Dashun.