Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 575

It has been almost half a year since Zhuang Yuanzhou went to serve as the magistrate of Qufu County, and the official life of these six months has completely overturned his cognition formed over the years, and also prompted him to abandon some fantasies, and finally chose to side with the emperor.

After arriving in Qufu for the first time, after participating in a series of routine gentry banquets, Zhuang Yuanzhou often dressed in casual clothes and went deep into the fields with his servants according to the pre-planned plan. To understand and understand in order to lay a solid foundation for subsequent governance.

But after more than two months of busy work, Zhuang Yuanzhou had serious doubts about whether he could make some achievements in office.He has already realized that, as the nominally supreme chief executive of Qufu County, as long as he does not bow to the Kong family, his government orders will not get out of the county government at all.

Since Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang appointed the prefect of Qufu as hereditary to the Confucian family, in the past 200 years, all the magistrates of Qufu have been descendants of the Confucian family. With the unshakable title of Duke Yansheng among scholars, Qufu was named Daming The affiliation is actually independent of the jurisdiction of the imperial court.

And since the current Zhu Youjian came here in the eighth year of Chongzhen, out of his heartfelt disgust for the various misdeeds of the Confucian family, he changed the rules set by the Taizu at the end of that year and reassigned a foreign official to serve as the magistrate of Qufu County. He wanted to use this method to disintegrate the huge power of the Confucius family in Qufu, and even the entire Yanzhou Prefecture.

But it turns out that Zhu Youjian's actions are futile and ridiculous.

As the first official with a foreign surname to be the magistrate of Qufu County, Li Shaohua went to Yanshenggong Mansion on the day he took office, and expressed his attitude in front of Kong Yinzhi: Although he was an official of the imperial court and was ordered to be the magistrate of Qufu County, he had no intention Offending and occupying the authority of Yanshenggong Mansion, in Qufu, all the rules remain as usual.

Since then, with the strong support of the Confucian family, all aspects of Qufu County have remained the same as before. Li Shaohua also respected the orders of the Confucian family everywhere, so he was rated as the top in the annual routine examination by the Ministry of Officials. After the five-year term expires, he can be promoted to a higher level in a logical manner.

However, this seemingly happy situation came to an abrupt end because of Kong Yinzhi's drowning. Li Shaohua was also dismissed and returned home because of the inexplicable drowning of Duke Yansheng. As if they had forgotten these two things, although the Kong family repeatedly submitted forms to ask for titles and appointments, all the forms were as if they had disappeared without any response.

At the beginning of Zhuang Yuanzhou's tenure, although the Kong family also arranged for the offspring to entertain him, Kong Xingxie, the eldest son of Kong Yinzhi and the nominal successor to the Duke of Yansheng, never showed up, and the family members of the Kong family turned a blind eye to his arrival. generally.

Zhuang Yuanzhou naturally understood in his heart that although Kong Xingxie did not inherit the title, he seemed to have done his part to regard himself as the new generation of Yan Shenggong, and he was waiting for him to visit him personally.

But he was very aware of the emperor's distaste for the Kong family, so he couldn't enter this door no matter what.As long as he stepped into the gate of the Kong family, it would mean the end of his official career, even if Sun Chuanting's face was there.

Therefore, after Zhuang Yuanzhou took office, he only went to the Confucian Temple to worship in a symbolic way, and turned a deaf ear to all kinds of hints from the gentry, whether explicit or implicit, and resolutely refused to enter the Confucian family.The reason was that Yansheng's position was vacant, and as an official of the imperial court, it was unreasonable for him to visit Kong Xingxie, who was nominally a commoner. As long as Kong Xingxie inherited the title, he would naturally visit him in person.

Seeing the behavior of the new magistrate, the gentry and officials of Qufu immediately adopted a strategy of alienating him intentionally or unintentionally, and Zhuang Yuanzhou didn't care about it.In his thinking, Qufu is just the starting point of his official career. As long as he can find out the emperor's true intentions and put them into action, and then get a middle rank in the official evaluation, it will not hinder his smooth promotion.

But Zhuang Yuanzhou soon discovered that since his statement, almost everything related to him has become worse.

First of all, the collection of summer grain encountered major obstacles, and the tax collection target of one thousand shi set by the imperial court for Qufu could not be completed at all.During the period of tax collection, the house clerk came to Zhuang Yuanzhou several times with various forms, and explained one by one how much a certain household should have paid, but due to the drought and lack of rain in the fields, the harvest could not be collected in place; The front was suddenly hit by strong wind and hail, which caused large-scale lodging and reduced production of crops. Not to mention paying taxes, even this year's rations became a problem and so on.

In the end, the housekeeper said frankly that this year's tax collection can only be completed for [-] shi, and the remaining [-] shi has no capacity to complete, so he can only ask the county magistrate to find a way by himself.Either they just took the three hundred stones and turned them in, and then they were judged as inferior in the evaluation by the Ministry of Officials at the end of the year; or they paid for this big hole out of their own pockets, and spent money to buy peace, so as to ensure that there would be no stains on their official career.

The pawn finally told Zhuang Yuanzhou with a smile that if the county magistrate wanted to buy grain at his own expense, he knew a few big grain merchants who guaranteed that the price would be a little cheaper than the market price. In the end, it was the Kong family who helped to complete the errand.

After Zhuang Yuanzhou sent the pawn away calmly, he already understood in his heart that the Kong family was responsible for all this. As long as he visits the Kong family right now, the tax collection will definitely be completed as scheduled.

Zhuang Yuanzhou felt both ridiculous and disappointed about the Kong family's filthy methods that were not on the table, but he didn't expect the sage to be so narrow-minded.

Some time ago, when he was observing people's sentiments, Zhuang Yuanzhou already had a general idea of ​​the land wealth owned by the Kong family. He knew that the grain tax of one thousand shi that Qufu should bear was like a drop in the bucket for the Kong family, which had hundreds of thousands of mu of fertile land. .

While the emperor and his ministers tried their best to raise food to accommodate tens of millions of victims, the Kong family, which produces millions of shi of grain in the fields every year, turned a blind eye to this and took the opportunity to raise the price of food to make a fortune. to describe.

Until this time, Zhuang Yuanzhou suddenly understood why the emperor hated the Kong family and what price he wanted to make the Kong family pay.

It is the fundamental purpose of the emperor to let the Kong family's hundreds of thousands of acres of land be able to pay taxes, and the duke of Yansheng has been vacant, which is one of the means the emperor wants to take advantage of the Kong family, but this kind of thing needs someone to do it The villain, unfortunately or fortunately, was favored by the emperor.

wrong!

Once the Kong family paid taxes on hundreds of thousands of acres of land, what about the other big gentry families in Ming Dynasty?Saints can pay taxes in the future, why can't you?
The emperor is planning to make an enemy of the world's gentry!
Thinking of this, Zhuang Yuanzhou's heart beat faster suddenly, and he came to his senses completely. At the same time, he felt both surprise and admiration in his heart.

In fact, he is very clear that there is no shortage of food in Daming now. The reason why the price of food is so high is that the big gentry in the world hoard the production of the land that does not pay taxes under their names, and then take advantage of natural disasters and man-made disasters to invest in the market. profiteering.

And once the emperor's grand strategy is finally achieved, Taicang will soon become extremely full, and no matter how big the disaster occurs, the court will be able to deal with it calmly, thus avoiding the large-scale thieves incident in the early years of Chongzhen happened.

If you have food in your hand, you will not panic in your heart.

However, if you really want to do this, you will immediately become the public enemy of scholars all over the world, and you will be cast aside by the entire gentry group. If the emperor can't bear the pressure and gives up halfway, those people in the early days will be pushed out as scapegoats , In the end, his reputation was ruined and his family was ruined.

Similarly, if this strategy can be successful, then my future will be bright. As long as I don't make big mistakes in the future, I will definitely have no problem in the imperial ranks in the future, and it is even possible to join the cabinet.

Facing this opportunity of coexistence of success and failure, how should I choose?
　Sincerely thank you for the continuous rewards that you missed!
　　Thanks to Asuka, who is also a writer, who is in love with cats.

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(End of this chapter)