Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1329 Nancha Disturbance
This letter from Wang Xijue was a little unexpected to Hai Rui.

Hai Rui and Wang Xijue actually knew each other.Wang Xijue was the second place in the 41st year of Jiajing. As one of the top three tripods, of course he stayed in Beijing as an editor for the Imperial Academy. In the 43rd year of Jiajing, Hai Rui was promoted from Xingguo County to head the Yunnan Department of the Household Department and also went to the capital.

However, Hai Rui and Wang Xijue were not familiar with each other at that time.Firstly, Hai Rui is relatively "reclusive" and doesn't often carry out routine actions among officials; secondly, Wang Xijue is well-known and noble, so Hai Rui failed the two examinations, and ended up being replaced as an official. , starting from the county edict, it took ten years to become a county magistrate, and another six years to become the head of the household department. The "stupid scum" completely looked down on him, and naturally he would not take the initiative to approach Hai Rui. .

The intersection of the two of them appeared in about half a year from the end of the third year of Longqing to the middle of the fourth year of Longqing.At that time, Wang Xijue was favored by Li Chunfang, the chief assistant at that time, for his good performance as an official lecturer at the Sutra feast. ".

And Hai Rui became famous because of his relationship with "Public Security", and has been promoted several times in the past few years. At this time, he also happened to release Governor Yingtian as the censor of Youqian Capital.

Yingtian is roughly the south of the Yangtze River in South Zhili. At its largest, it had jurisdiction over Yingtian, Chengtian, Suzhou, Songjiang, Changzhou, Zhenjiang, Taiping, Chizhou, Huizhou, Ningguo, Anqing eleven prefectures and Guangde prefecture.The scope is basically equivalent to the southern Jiangsu and southern Anhui in later generations.From the economic point of view at that time, it was almost the strongest area in Ming Dynasty.

Governor Yingtian was stationed in Nanjing in the early days and lived in Huitongguan. In Chenghua, another government office was built and moved out of Huitongguan.After Jiajing, he was stationed in Suzhou whenever there was a storm, called Xingtai, and Hai Rui was basically stationed in Suzhou during his tenure. (Note: In the second year of Wanli, in order to facilitate central scheduling, the Fu Department moved from Nanjing to Jurong; in the original history, after the 31st year of Wanli, it was permanently stationed in Suzhou.)
Speaking of this, the situation is very clear——Wang Xijue is the richest man in Suzhou, and he happened to return to Nanjing. It happened that Hai Rui was the governor of Yingtian, and he was directly stationed in Suzhou. How can this not be the case? Conflict?
Hai Rui continued to promote the one-whip technique after Ying Tian cleared Zhang Tianmu, in order to cooperate with Gao Gong's recovery.

Here I want to explain a little bit, the whip method was proposed by Gui E in the 40th year of Jiajing, and at the end of the [-]rd year of Longqing when Zhi Gao Gongqifu and Hai Rui served as the governor of Yingtian, it has actually appeared for [-] years.

However, although it has appeared for a long time, it has not been fully implemented in Daming, because the main feature of this tax law is that the land tax, corvee and other miscellaneous levies of various states and counties are combined into one, and the silver taels are collected together and paid by mu.

In this way, although the tax system is greatly simplified, it is convenient to collect taxes, and at the same time it is difficult for local officials to cheat, thereby increasing fiscal revenue. "Unacclimatized".

Things that have both advantages and disadvantages, according to the bureaucratic habits at this time, probably only a few people are willing to try to promote it, and more officials are inclined to "inaction is of course useless, but at least they will not be blamed for their mistakes", so they oppose promotion.

Of course, there were still reformers among the top officials of the imperial court, such as Gao Gong, Zhang Juzheng and other important ministers, who strongly advocated the promotion of the one-whip method.However, although Gao Gong was the core figure of the reformists at this time, he did advocate promotion, but his promotion was different from Zhang Juzheng's direct one-size-fits-all in the ninth year of Wanli in the original history, and engaged in "national forced promotion".

Gao Gong advocates implementing it one by one, one by one. His idea is that rich provinces go first, middle provinces follow gradually, and poor provinces postpone.So it is obvious that the richest Jiangnan area in the world, that is, the governor of Yingtian, must "dare to be the first in the world".

The benefits of simplifying administration are certainly clear to future generations, but the "ancient people" may not understand, so why hasn't such a simple thing come up with a trick 40 years after a whip method was proposed?
The reason is very simple: although I understand the reasons for this, the more complicated the administration, the more opportunities I have as an official.Now you suddenly say that you want to simplify, my interests are at stake, how can you agree easily?

Resistance, that's how it came about.

Since the resistance was high, the knife had to be sharp, so Gao Gong sacrificed Hai Rui's dragon-slaying knife.

Of course, the Dragon Slaying Saber deserves its reputation, but it is unrealistic to expect Hai Rui to "clear away the demon atmosphere" single-handedly, so Hai Rui's actions are still very targeted—yes, he aimed the main target at the young man who had just returned to his hometown after returning from official duties. Xu Jie, the former chief assistant of the cabinet.

There is no need to elaborate on this past event, only the incidental effects.As the richest man in Suzhou, Wang Xijue inherited most of his family property, but the source of these properties was naturally inseparable from the unified style of the government-business group at that time, such as "escape from the field", "guiji", "feisa", "feisa", "Moving hills", "changing paragraphs", "changing books" and the like, none of them will be missing, everything should be there, everything is there.

However, Wang Xijue has always been a smart person. He knew that with his reputation and status in the officialdom at that time, he was not enough to compete with Hai Rui, so he kept a low profile on purpose and refused to get involved in this "fairy fight" so as not to cause trouble. to the mortal man who suffered.

And it is true that Hai Rui only regards Xu Jie as the primary target. Regarding some matters in Wang Xijue's family, although he has also received complaints from some people (Note: Because Hai Rui encourages the people to redress their grievances, there are surprisingly many similar complaints. Not only against Wang Xijue), but did not directly use the national law, but wrote to Wang Xijue, and sent a copy of all those complaints.

Hai Rui also used this method with Xu Jie, it was a kind of "polite first, then soldiers".Xu Jie also "give face" at the beginning, and returned some fields, but Hai Rui thought that he had returned too little, and this "return" was purely for face-saving, so Hai Rui wrote to Xu Jie again, asking He retired half of the fields, but Xu Jie of course refused, so the conflict intensified.

As for Wang Xijue, Hai Rui used the same method, and the effect was far better than Xu Jie's.Without further ado, Wang Xijue followed Hai Rui's request and returned the fields pointed out in the letter. He even wrote back that he was busy with his studies and business, and had rarely cared about his family's situation, so he didn't know about these things.He himself was shocked and ashamed by this, and said that when he was busy with this period of time, he would definitely investigate thoroughly and live up to the kindness of Haigong's reminder.

As the No. [-], he said that he was busy with his studies in the past, which was a reason. Others didn't dare to say anything even if they didn't believe it. But at this time, he is a supervisor of the Southern Supervisory Department.

But Hai Rui didn't have time to pay attention to him. Since he was willing to quit the farm, Hai Rui temporarily stopped.

If things had only come to this point, the relationship between Hai Rui and Wang Xijue would not be that bad, because at least neither of them broke their faces.

Although Wang Xijue lost some land, his family is not a simple "landlord powerful", but a more typical Jiangnan chaebol who "get rich through business and then buy land".To some extent, land is just "investment in real estate", which is used to "preserve the value of spare money" when business expansion cannot find a good direction or good opportunity for a while.

Therefore, a loss is certainly a loss, but it neither hurts the tendons nor shakes the bones, and what is great is only a temporary pain in the flesh, and the enduring will pass.

Who knows that people are not as good as heaven, although Wang Xijue avoided the most rumored knife, he was shot by a stray bullet when he left office.

This is really Mr. Wang's bad luck. Hai Rui offended the Jiangnan officialdom all over the place after Yingtian's battle. Gong, to make peace on behalf of his teacher.

Although Gao Gong had heard that Zhang Juzheng had accepted the money, he considered that Zhang Juzheng was advocating reform after all, and that the reconciliation for Xu Jie might just be due to the relationship between teachers and students, so he decided to stop. There is a premise here, that is, Xu Jie At the same time, the softness of the hierarchy also means that the gentry and officials in the south of the Yangtze River have pinched their noses to recognize the implementation of a whip method.Now that Gao Gong's goal has been achieved, considering his reputation, he doesn't intend to have to kill people.

It's just that Hai Rui was tricked.

Gao Gong only cares about whether the policy is being implemented smoothly. Now that the matter is done, the rumors have been released from Zhang Juzheng's side. While the Jiangnan officials breathed a sigh of relief, they thought of revenge—of course not against Gao Gong, Gao Gong's family Tailong, they thought to themselves that they couldn't handle it, their revenge was on Hai Rui.

Immediately afterwards, Hai Rui was impeached, not one or two letters, but a snowflake of bullets flew from Jiangnan to the General Administration Department, entered the Department of Rites, and presented it to Mu Zong's desk.

The following plots are familiar routines: Hai Rui Shangshu defends himself, but as a foreign official, he can't stay behind closed doors like Gao Yushi's slander case, and he still has to do his work.

The timing of Hai Rui's self-defense this time happened to be during the Beijing inspection period.So Hai Rui didn't bother the two masters with one thing, and published a "Discussion on Self-Correction of Incompetence", writing thousands of words eloquently to defend himself.

Originally, this was nothing to do with Wang Xijue, because Wang Xijue kept a low profile during this period of time, and never confronted Hai Rui.Who knew that people were sitting at home, and the blame came from the sky. Because Hai Rui was impeached for many inexplicable "trivial matters", Hai Rui's temper came up.

A sentence was accidentally mentioned here: "Wang Xijue saw that he was transferred to the North Division, he carried the sedan chair and went straight to the Second Division, and the middle way caused harm to him, and he was charged thirty."

It stands to reason that Hai Rui wrote several thousand words in his self-defense and resignation essay, and answered at least dozens of false accusations, while Wang Xijue only had 24 words in total, which is really nothing. As far as my habits are concerned, I might not even look at them carefully, and it doesn't bother me at all.

But who is Wang Xijue?He values ​​fame and wings more than high pragmatism, so he is naturally furious when he hears about it.

What does this thing say?It is said that when Wang Xijue was promoted from Nanjing Guozijian to Beijing Guozijian, he probably felt that he was going back to Beijing again, and he would be reused soon (the promotion to Beijing means Gao Gong), so he was a little inflated. Division"—a bit too big.

It's not a big deal to be bigger, but the trouble is that there was an accident on the way, "the middle way caused harm"-Hai Rui didn't specify what harm was caused, but it probably hurt someone.So, Hai Rui arrested the bearer who was carrying the sedan chair and beat him with thirty boards.

In the eyes of ordinary people, this matter is naturally a trivial matter, after all, it was only the bearer who was beaten, and Wang Xijue himself didn't hurt a single hair.

But that's not how the account is calculated. Although the board hit the bearer's ass, in Wang Xijue's eyes, it was no different from hitting himself in the face!

What's more, if you fight, you will fight. It will be reported in the local area for a while that it is so great, and everyone will forget it after a while.But you absolutely shouldn't, you shouldn't have written this matter in the memorial!

Written in the memorial, this shit is archived in the imperial court, my face, Wang Xijue, was slapped into the annals of history just like that by you!
It is tolerable, what is unbearable!Liang Zi was so miraculously knotted.

It was common for Hai Rui to offend people, and he didn't pay attention to it at the time. He only learned about it from other people afterwards, but he didn't think it was a big deal. Not bad for Wang Xijue.

From then on, Wang Xijue never had any contact with Hai Rui, neither public nor private.Therefore, when he suddenly received Wang Xijue's letter today, Hai Rui naturally smelled something strange in it.

Hai Rui looked at the letter, but found that it was written more subtly than the highly pragmatic letter. Not only did it not mention past grievances, but it didn't even mention the word "Nancha".

In Wang Xijue's letter, which was almost devoid of oil and salt, there was only one sentence that was quite suspicious: "A small corner of the south of the Yangtze River provides nearly half of the world. The officials, gentry and common people suffer from tyranny for a long time, and all industries are withered. How long will it last?"

Although Hai Rui was straightforward, he was not dull. He soon realized that what Wang Xijue wanted to express was contained in this seemingly ordinary sentence.

Jiangnan has heavy taxes, which is true from the perspective of the entire Ming Dynasty, but Daming itself was a dynasty with very light taxes, and the taxation in Jiangnan was formulated according to the agricultural level during the Hongwu period, especially the grain output.

Now that times have changed, the main force of Jiangnan's economy has long been no longer food production, but has shifted to sericulture and silk production, papermaking and printing, porcelain ships and other industries.At the same time, commerce developed rapidly because there was almost no taxation before, private commerce was extremely prosperous, and even the so-called "emergence of capitalism" appeared in later generations.

Under such circumstances, insisting on saying that "officials, gentry, and common people have been suffering and tyrannical for a long time, and all industries are in decline" in the south of the Yangtze River is pure nonsense with open eyes.

withered?What is it like to wither?Has the Qinhuai River faded away for ten miles?
You bully me blind!

However, just like one of Sir Humphrey's famous sayings, "I am talking about my position, not the facts", Wang Xijue's words are naturally speaking about my position, as for the facts... that is not important.

Hai Rui wanted to understand this, and couldn't help but sneered, "I'm not afraid of death, why should I be afraid of death."
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Thanks to the book friend "Altai's Old West" for the monthly ticket support, thank you!
PS: Has anyone guessed the real intention of Wang Xijue's letter?

(End of this chapter)