Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 632 Divide
"Who are you and what are you accusing?"

"Student Luo Ji from Zengguang, Licheng County, Jinan Prefecture, informed the county that Yao Qisheng was in collusion with the powerful local sticks to rob the students." There are four hectares and fifty mu of ointment land, and one villa.

"Follow me back to the Yamen, and tell me carefully!"

The inspectors and governors are also responsible to the emperor. Soldiers and horses, military salaries, money and food, cities, and Lijia are handled by the governors. The governor is in charge, and the governor must not interfere.

In case of major local government affairs, the governors and inspectors will handle them jointly.

The local health officials informed the county that this was within the scope of the inspection.

Qi Lisun took him back to the Xunya Yamen and began to investigate the case.

After a preliminary inquiry, I learned something. This Luo Ji is a Zeng Guangsheng from Licheng County, and Zeng Guangsheng is also a scholar.

The official name of Ming Dynasty scholars is students. Those who pass the three examinations of the county, government, and hospital enter the prefecture, prefecture, and county school, which is called Jinxue. Just childish.

The students also include Gongsheng in the Imperial College.Gongsheng is subdivided into Suigongsheng, Xuangongsheng, Engongsheng, Bagongsheng, and Nagongsheng.

The students of local Confucianism can be divided into several types: Lin students, Zengguang students, and affiliated students of prefectural schools and county schools.

Grain students are also scholars, but they are equivalent to scholarships or public-funded students. They are given monthly granary meals and subsidized living. There is a fixed number of places, 40 students from prefectural schools, 30 students from state schools, and 20 students from county schools.

Those who increase are called "Zengguang Shengyuan", and the province is called "Zengguang Sheng".In addition, it is added and attached to the end of the students, which are called "attached students", and the province is called "attached students".Later, all beginners are called epiphytes, and those with the highest age and grades in the two examinations can be supplemented as hyperplasia and linsheng.Those who are old enough to eat granary can be paid as tribute.

Luo Ji is Zengsheng, who is equivalent to a second-class scholar. He has no rice, but he can make up for his grades in the two examinations.Zengguang students also have quotas. Although there is no public fee, they have advantages in assessment and subsidy, so their status is not bad, and they have advantages in teaching in the hall.

Of course, no matter what kind of talent the Ming Dynasty was, they all had the privilege of exempting themselves from Yao service, and even at the end of the Ming Dynasty, they could also be exempted from a lot of land tax and grain.

Of course, if a scholar fails to pass the Juren examination, and his performance is too poor in the annual assessment, he will also be degraded. He is called Qingyi, Shesheng, and cannot be called a scholar. , and also lost the privilege of exemption from military service and food.

Luo Ji is a Zengguang student of the county school, a second-class scholar, and has a lot of privileges.

Having a reputation as a scholar shows that officials don't kneel, and they can't be punished even when they are promoted to trial.

Ordinary people had to have a way to go out, but scholars didn't need it. They were exempted from military service and grain.Even in a lawsuit, ordinary people have to ask someone with a reputation to write a complaint, which is equivalent to acting as a lawyer and collecting a sum of money.

In addition, those with fame and fame can keep slaves, but ordinary people can't, and even the standards for dressing and traveling have been improved.

Although it is not as good as Juren can directly become an official, but the common people have to use official courtesy when they see the gentry.

Those who passed the examination as a scholar entered the gentry class and became a privileged class.

Luo Ji filed a lawsuit for himself, wanting to fight for 250 mu of good land and a manor house. According to his complaint, the reason for the incident was that this field and manor house were originally owned by a general of the Jinan Defan, and later Distributed to his descendants, and then during the reign of Chongzhen, the descendants were poor and sold out to the people, and Luo Ji bought it with silver.

Unexpectedly, not long after, Qigu Qigu, surnamed Wei of Lu Fan, who was the manager of the land and recognized the species, sold the land to the local tyrant Gao Kai, and even took a deposit from the epiphyte Guo Zhuangtu and Guo Jia.

Sell ​​more in one place.

Qigu, surnamed Wei, took the money and ran away, but disappeared.

Of course, the few companies that paid the money refused, so they filed a lawsuit.

Later, when Gao Kai saw that he could not win the lawsuit, he directly sold the land to the Kong family in Qufu.Luo Ji was unwilling to take over the land from the Kong family, so he continued to fight the lawsuit. As a result, Guo Luo and others lost the lawsuit, and all the land fell into the hands of the Kong family.

Then the Tartars went south to Shandong, and the bannermen raced to enclose land, and the Kong family was also enclosed a lot of land, including this land.

Then, isn't the Qing army regaining Jinan now? Of course, the land that the banner people circled must return to its original owner.So the Kong family and the Luo family began to fight for land again.

After quarreling, Yao Qisheng, the magistrate of Licheng County, made a verdict.

Yao Qisheng sent someone to investigate, and said that the land was not sold by the Defan clan, but was sold privately by Wei Qiguo.In the Ming Dynasty, the vassal estate Wangtian was managed by some specific managers, such as Chengying, Zhuangtou, Xiaowei, Zhongjun, Qigu, etc., who managed the land and collected rented grain.

They know the property of the feudal clan like the back of their hands, and some of them are even local tyrants.

At the end of Chongzhen, the Qing army went south to attack Jinan and took away King De's family. Many vassals were also taken away, and the owner of the land was also taken away, but Wei Qigu still managed it.

Later, seeing that the situation was not good, he sold the land.

I also sold two of them in one place, and collected deposits from two more, and ran away without a trace after taking the money, which caused several companies to file lawsuits for several years.

After the Tatars came, there was no result to this lawsuit, but because the Eight Banners encircled the land, the lawsuit was also settled.

Now that the Ming Dynasty has regained Jinan, the old lawsuits are brought up again.

Unexpectedly, after investigation by Yao Qisheng, he found that Wei, surnamed Wei, had privately sold the property of the Zong vassal, so the sale was illegal, after all, the land belonged to the Clan of Defan.

Whether it is Luo Ji or the Kong family, they were actually deceived by Wei. Since they have been deceived, they will find Wei, and the land will still belong to Defan.However, under the current policy of the imperial court, the land of suzerains and vassals will be taken back to the state, so these lands will have no officials directly.

This time, no one can compete.

Unless the person surnamed Wei is found for the money that several companies were cheated of buying land, even if they are found, the money will probably be spent.

Of course they were unwilling and wanted the land, but Yao Qisheng ignored it.

Luo Ji made trouble every day.

And since Yao Qisheng is the kind of person who can earn 20 taels of silver in three years and can persuade Yang Jie to donate to Jinan City, he is not an ordinary person.

Since Luo Ji was dishonest, let's find a way to make him honest. He didn't go to look for Wei, anyway, he had nowhere to look, so he went to Luo Ji and sent someone to investigate secretly.

Sure enough, many problems were found.

For example, he reported to Shangguan a piece of land, 52 mu per hectare, which he said was bought at the end of Chongzhen with 38 taels of silver, and he also issued a land purchase contract.

But after Yao Qisheng's investigation, he found that the transaction was fake. The clan had not been involved in war for a long time, and had never sold the land to Luo Ji.

This Luo Ji is usually a litigator, controlling the yamen and collecting taxes.

After the Qing occupied Shandong, on the one hand, the Eight Banners raced to enclose the land, and on the other hand, they changed the price of the fan fields and changed their names.

The so-called price change and name change means that the confiscated Huangzhuang Wangtian and Xunqi Tianguantian are sold for estimated silver in order to collect land sales silver to subsidize financial expenses.

This Luo Ji is usually a shit-stirring stick in the Licheng county government, otherwise ordinary people would not dare to entangle with the Kong family in a lawsuit.

He colluded with the county magistrates and subordinate officials to occupy those fields, or underestimated the lowly people. For example, Zhang Guoji, the father of Emperor Tianqi, was granted the title of Taikang Bo, and he was given sixteen hectares of good land in Licheng. Sixteen hectares of sandy land, 63 acres.

Licheng County Fengwen sold it to Luo Ji at a price of [-] cents per mu for good land, and [-] cents per mu for sandy land.

This price, even in times of war, is too cheap.

But they colluded up and down, dared to estimate such a price, sold it at a serious low price, and embezzled assets.

The Tazi officials in the Qing court in Beijing knew that the price was wrong even if they were thousands of miles away. The increase in silver per mu has been increased three times, but it is only a good increase to two cents and five cents per mu, and one cent and two cents per mu for sandy land.

One tael of silver can buy four acres of good land and eight acres of sandy land.

Moreover, this mu is still a large mu, which is equivalent to the normal three mu, which means that they actually bought twelve mu of good land for one tael of silver.

Through such means, Luo Ji swallowed up more than 200 mu of land with only a few hundred taels of silver, which was actually more than 600 mu of land.

This guy, together with other people, invested 570 and three hectares of official land in Jinan Prefecture under the name of Prince Duanzhong Boluo. In fact, he turned the official land into his own private property. After paying the rent to Boluo, the rest It's all theirs, but originally it was public land, and everything was owned by the government.

Through these means, Luo Ji became the richest man in Licheng and even a famous landlord in Jinan, even though he was still a scholar during the years when the Qing occupied Shandong.

They also used some other means to occupy land, such as reporting the property of the vassal king as wasteland to the government, and then it became their own wasteland.

A mere scholar in Luo Ji is certainly not an exception. In fact, the situation was very serious in the late Ming Dynasty. After the Qing army invaded Shandong, they took advantage of the opportunity of changing the price and changing the name of the vassal fields, etc., and set off a feast of carve-up and occupation. Almost all the prefectures All the powerful gentry in the county participated in it, and officials and subordinate officials at all levels in the prefecture and county of Shandong Province also participated in the whole process, and even accepted bribes to the point of being soft.

A large number of fertile farmlands were reported to be registered and renamed by them as wasteland.

And many vassal kingdoms were sold and bought by them for a few cents per mu, or one or two coins per mu.

Even by changing the size of acres, cultivated land, wasteland, paddy fields, dry land, etc., the interests are encroached upon.

The so-called price change and name change is actually a process in which the Shandong gentry united to divide and occupy the original Ming vassals, vassals, and official land.

It is said that the name was changed to Mintian, but in fact it was sold at a low price and embezzled, and the upper and lower colluded together.

So in the past, it was mainly the vassals who had the most land in various places. For example, several vassal mansions in Shandong each occupied [-] to [-] hectares of land. A lot.

However, in the short few years since Beijing fell and the Tatars went south, many large families with an area of ​​several thousand hectares appeared in Shandong, such as the Liu family in Changshan, with an area of ​​more than 3000 hectares.

Except for Jiming Tianqianqing, among the remaining nearly 20 mu, the land itself is no more than [-] mu, and the rest is almost all divided up in this round of feast.

Almost no cost.

Luo Ji was only a talented scholar, but in this tide, he became the richest man in Licheng, owning thousands of hectares of land.

There is also the Confucius family in Qufu.

After being re-established by Beijing as Duke Yansheng, he also invaded a lot of vassal properties. Only what he now admits to Da Mingzi includes more than 93 hectares of grain land in the original Defan of Dongping Prefecture, and three lands of Luwangzhuang in Ziyang County. For more than ten hectares, Yanggu County has more than two hectares of abolished vassal grain land, and Yuncheng County has one hectare of [-] mu of land recognized as a king.

In addition, in Qufu, Zou County, etc., there are also many places where the kings are recognized.

In many places, they also competed with the local gentry for property. For example, a piece of land in Woli Village, Zou County, was originally Wangzhuang of King Yangxin, with a total of more than [-] hectares.

Originally, a landlord named Xu Qing occupied five hectares first, and then Kong Shangren, a close relative of the Confucian family, took a fancy to it, and the whole village recognized it. As a result, the two families filed a lawsuit. .

In addition, property disputes such as those between Luo Ji and Luo Ji were all over the five provinces of Zhili, Henan, Shandong, and Shanxi.

Even Beijing has discovered many problems. For example, the newly reclaimed land reported in the newspaper is actually the land in the original Shandong field records. .

Shandong fields, in this round of process, were merged on a large scale, and the land was basically concentrated in the hands of those gentry and powerful, and the Eight Banners.

Some of the remaining common people, in order to escape the heavy burden of Ding service, Ding Yin, and additional levy, simply took their land and people to donate together. , just to survive.

Many more simply fled.

Unwilling to be a slave, overwhelmed.

With his wife and children, he left his hometown and fled, especially after Zhu Yihai hit Denglai, he fled continuously.

However, local officials of the Qing Dynasty and gentry tycoons kept reporting to the court that the land was deserted and that [-]% of the land in Shandong was deserted, and the land could not be planted at all. to people.

The land price is still set too high, several times higher than the market price, and tenants cannot be recruited to rent.

Although the Tartars also sent Manchu and Han imperial envoys to Beizhi, Shandong and other provinces to preside over the cleanup together with the governors in order to obtain urgently needed money and food, but the effect was minimal, because the interests were being divided up from top to bottom.

In the end, Beijing can only decree that for the Fanzhuang Xuntian, which no one has bought or rented, it will be allowed to recruit people to reclaim it as the old wasteland, exempting them from paying prices and not being able to afford scientific taxes.

In the end, there was no scum left, and the powerful officials directly divided up these lands as wasteland, without paying even a few cents of silver per mu, and even directly became wasteland that was exempted from investigation, and would never be raised.

Yao Qisheng had stayed in Jinan for a long time, how could he not know about this, this Luo Ji insisted on suing and suing without knowing the reason, and after rejecting the gift, he still wanted to sue him, so that he could go on with someone else collusion.

Yao Qisheng couldn't get used to him, so he publicized the evidence he had found, and wanted to confiscate all the fields that Luo Ji had occupied. A total of more than 1000 hectares of land would be confiscated no matter what method was used to seize them.

Only then did Luo Ji stop the patrol at the gate of the city and inform the county according to Qi Lisun's petition.

Although Qi Lisun was young, he had followed Qi Biaojia for a few years and he had served in the Central Academy of the Court. He had knowledge and experience, so he would not be easily fooled by Luo Ji.

"This petition has been accepted by the inspector. You go back and wait for the investigation and listen to the summons."

Luo Ji also came prepared.

He took out a stack of land deeds directly from his arms.

"This is the fiefdom of Licheng County, the father of the former Emperor Zhang and Empress Zhang. There are 240 hectares of good land and [-] hectares of sandy land. They are all large hectares. One mu is equivalent to three mu of [-] steps."

"What does that mean?"

"Small kindness is not a respect. If Mr. Qi can help me uphold justice, after the matter is completed, the student is willing to present two more Zhuangzi."

Qi Lisun smiled.

Luo Ji also laughed.

then.

"Come here, take down this daring and crazy student, put him in a prison, and dare to openly bribe the police, you are so audacious."

Several attendants came up, knocked Luo Ji to the ground, and quickly tied him up.

"My lord, after the matter is completed, I am willing to give half of the more than 1000 hectares of land to your lord." Luo Ji was in a hurry.

"Take it off!"

"I don't know how to live or die, I think I can be deceived when I'm young!" He shouted angrily.

(End of this chapter)