Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1139 [What will it be like in a hundred years? ]

Zhu Guoxiang knew why his son was angry.

It is too general to say that the grandson has grown up. As for bullying the market, setting up private casinos, and robbing women, if we stand completely from the emperor's perspective, we can actually just give him a few warnings and let it go.

What did King Cai and his gang do?
Blocking freedom of speech and interfering with the judiciary!

They killed five people who went to Beijing to file a complaint, and drowned them in the Yellow River. This is to block the way of speech.

After learning about the murder, the Prince of Cai should have at least pretended to be unaware of it. But he didn't even pretend, and directly threatened the Hebei Provincial Procuratorate not to investigate further, using his status as a prince. This is interference with the judiciary.

Of course, these are not the only things those guys have done.

Otherwise, it would not have caused public outrage in Daming Prefecture, and finally forced the inspector to take the risk of submitting a memorial to expose the incident.

The truth is that the corrupt officials and unscrupulous businessmen in Daming Prefecture formed a criminal network with Prince Cai Zhu Zhi as the core.

Zhu Zhi did not do many bad things himself, but countless people used his name to bully the people, and even the clerks and servants boasted everywhere that they were the King of Cai's men.

Every bad thing they did was blamed on King Cai by the people of Daming Prefecture. How could it not anger the gods and the people?

Take the chief secretary of the Prince of Cai's mansion, for example. He was a fifth-rank official with little real power. He had been with Prince of Cai Zhu Zhi for less than three years when he moved to Daming Mansion. After the case was discovered, 60,000 strings of banknotes were seized from him! How many bad things did he have to do to get so much?
There is also King Cai’s brother-in-law.

This person's distant ancestor was the Fanyang Lu family, and his recent ancestor was the Yuchuan Lu family in the early Song Dynasty. The Yuchuan Lu family was divided into nine branches in the Northern Song Dynasty, and the brother-in-law of King Cai came from one of them.

By the way, the founder of the third branch of the nine Lu clans was originally surnamed Chai. One of Chai Rong's sons was adopted by the Lu clan and married into the Lu family.

This brother-in-law, surnamed Lu, traveled around in the name of studying. When he moved into his brother-in-law's Prince Cai's mansion, the officials in the mansion were actually already messing around.

The brother-in-law and the officials of the palace hit it off immediately, and they quickly evolved from secretly breaking the law to doing it openly. Moreover, he had many bad ideas and many ways to make money. When he was arrested, there were 80,000 strings of treasure notes hidden in his house, all of which were obtained within two years.

They also seized land in the suburbs by force, occupying nearly 10,000 mu in two years. This incident involved the most people and had the worst impact on the local area.

What's even more ridiculous is that, of the nearly 10,000 acres of land outside Daming Prefecture, Prince Cai Zhu Zhi only received more than 2,000 acres, and the rest was divided up among the officials of the palace and his brother-in-law.

The same was true for money. Zhu Zhi only got a few tens of thousands of strings of cash and a lot of treasures (someone else often paid for his daily consumption). If we ignore the treasures and only count the cash, the officials of the palace and his brother-in-law together made more than three times the money Zhu Zhi got.

Zhu Ming's dislike for his son was not only because his son did bad things, but also because he thought his son was too stupid!
"There's really no end to the killing." Zhu Ming looked at the impeachment memorial on the table.

The publication of the treatment of King Cai in the "Da Ming Monthly" instantly inspired countless censors and local judicial officials.

For general cases, the Censorate, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Court, the Censorate, and the prefectures and prefectures can handle them. But if the officials involved reach a certain level, they must report to the emperor and the cabinet.

In just two months, the central government received eight requests for investigations that required reports. This did not include those from more distant provinces, where the relevant memorials had not yet been delivered.

Cases that they had not dared to investigate before, because even the King of Cai could be exiled, the censors and provincial inspectors now dare to investigate!
The person summoned by Zhu Ming alone today was Wei Liangchen.

Although Chen Dong is not yet sixty years old, he has been overworked in presiding over various major cases in recent years, and his health condition has been somewhat worrying in the past two years.

An autumn wind and rain left Chen Dong bedridden again.

Wei Liangchen carefully examined the petitions and sighed, "People are always greedy. There are always so many greedy people. In recent years, there is a saying that prices in big cities are too high and officials' salaries should continue to rise. No matter how high prices are, can they be as high as those in the late Song Dynasty?"

Zhu Ming said: "It is normal to have such demands. In the future, we will find an opportunity to increase the official allowances (position allowances) for officials in big cities according to the annual price of official badges in various places."

There has always been a subsidy for official positions, especially for grassroots art officials (including agricultural promotion officials). The court also gave sufficient subsidies to officials who were assigned to remote and poor areas.

Wei Liangchen paused when he saw a petition. "This man was a former censor of the Censorate. He was transferred to civil affairs because of his ability to investigate corrupt officials. I didn't expect that he investigated others before, but now someone is investigating him."

"Is he your disciple?" Zhu Ming asked.

Wei Liangchen said: "I don't have any students. But I am close to this man. We often exchange letters. Whenever he takes up his post in a place, he will bring me some local specialties. We can start with him. Officials who were former censors should be investigated first."

"Investigate Yang Wei as well." Zhu Ming said.

"Yes." Wei Liangchen accepted the order.

When Zhu Ming was the principal of the Imperial College in the Former Song Dynasty, Yang Wei was his student. Although he has never been well-known, he has now become the Right Governor of Hebei Province by virtue of his special background, hometown and ability.

The problem is huge.

An imperial censor took advantage of the opportunity of Prince Cai's exile to request a thorough investigation of Yang Wei.

This guy is not only the emperor's student, but also a capable general of the Sichuan faction with a strong background in the court.

The Left Censor-in-Chief might not be able to handle it, so Wei Liangchen, who has become a cabinet minister, is needed to hold the fort.

Zhu Ming's intention was very simple. By exiling one of his sons, he was severely cleaning up the officialdom. And he wanted to thoroughly establish a concept of clean government: no matter how powerful or how strong the background, if one dares to take bribes and pervert the law, he will be caught!
Perhaps after Zhu Ming's death, the Ming officialdom will become dark again, but this concept of clean government can remain in people's hearts.

It becomes a pursuit and a hope.

It becomes a faint but never extinguished fire in the darkness.

……

Because his grandson was exiled, Zhu Guoxiang lost interest in traveling for a while, and actually stayed in Hangzhou, sitting by the West Lake all day to relax and enjoy the breeze.

In order not to disturb the local people, the food, drink, and defecation of nearly a thousand people, including the accompanying guards, were borne half by the royal family and the national treasury.

It is normal for the national treasury to pay. Zhu Guoxiang's trip this time is not purely for tourism, but more like a local inspection on behalf of the emperor.

Of course, local governments will definitely contribute money. For example, Hangzhou has renovated Changsheng Garden.

But Zhu Guoxiang seriously suspected that given Li Wenhui's official style, he was most likely using the emperor to wash away the bad luck of the garden. After the emperor left, the garden would most likely be sold.

Every day, merchants would bring livestock, fruits and vegetables to Changsheng Garden to sell, and those merchants had also been examined by the government. "Your Majesty, today the merchants who delivered goods brought news that the Right Governor of Zhejiang was arrested. In addition to the Right Governor, several officials at the provincial and government levels were also arrested. I heard that the Hangzhou Maritime Customs arrested six people in one go." The eunuch reported.

Zhu Guoxiang sighed: "Alas!"

The old eunuch stood obediently by the side without saying anything else.

Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, eunuchs continued to be employed, but large-scale castration was not resumed.

The first eunuchs came from the Song Dynasty. They promoted those powerless eunuchs from the former Song Dynasty and trained young eunuchs from the former Song Dynasty court.

Soon after, he destroyed Zhong Xiang in Hunan, the pseudo-Song in Hebei, and the small court in the southeast, and captured and trained some young eunuchs.

Then came the captured eunuchs from the Jin Dynasty, and in more recent years also the eunuchs from Goryeo and Dali.

These young eunuchs of a fallen country became obedient after being trained for two or three years. They only knew about the Ming Dynasty but not their homeland.

The Ming court also performed a small number of castrations itself, all of whom were young children of enemy nobles who had no value in the united front work but could not be easily let go.

There is no need to worry about this kind of child causing trouble, as the Ming Dynasty in another time and space often did the same thing.

For example, Zheng He was captured from Yunnan, and Ruan An, who participated in the construction of Beijing, was captured from Jiaozhi.

Can't the eunuch system be abolished?

Zhu Ming had thought about it too.

But it is unrealistic. If it is abolished forcibly, it may leave huge hidden dangers.

Zhu Ming has tried his best to reduce the number of eunuchs. For example, the office area within the imperial city, although it belongs to the imperial city area, is separated from the harem and the Eastern Palace. Therefore, eunuchs are no longer used to do odd jobs for the Cabinet, the Tongzhengyuan, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, the Hanlin Academy and other institutions.

As for the royal properties outside the palace, eunuchs are even less needed.

Aren’t eunuchs greedy when they manage royal properties?

A bird-like thing.

The surrounding countries that should be destroyed have almost all been destroyed, and it is impossible to capture young eunuchs from the enemy countries. The number of castrations will definitely have to be increased in the future.

They would not just castrate anyone from the public. There were two main sources of eunuchs in ancient times: prisoners of war and criminals.

If there was a rebellion somewhere, they would castrate a group of young rebel children.

For those who committed extremely serious crimes, young children among their direct descendants would also be selected for castration.

Otherwise, the shortage of reserve eunuchs cannot be filled.

Ancient society was so cruel and bloody.

Zhu Ming doesn't want people who castrate themselves, and there aren't many of them.

If there are a lot of people who castrate themselves, it means that the dynasty has entered its final period. For example, in another time and space, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, a large number of people who castrated themselves came to Beijing. At first, the court would take them in, but when the number of eunuchs exploded, they simply drove them away.

The eunuch who attended Zhu Guoxiang was already over fifty years old.

He was a nobody in the former Song Dynasty court, but suddenly became a close follower of the emperor (Zhu Guoxiang). Although he had no power after leaving the palace, he was still grateful and loyal to Zhu Guoxiang.

After so many years, Zhu Guoxiang's relationship with this old eunuch is even deeper than that with some of the emperor's grandchildren whom he has only met a few times.

There were also two female officials who also served Zhu Guoxiang for many years.

The current rule of the Ming Dynasty imperial family is that when palace maids reach a certain age, they can leave the palace and go home to marry. If they want to continue working, they can be gradually promoted to female officials and be responsible for a few administrative affairs in the palace.

The two female officials beside Zhu Guoxiang were both palace maids of the former Song Dynasty.

They could no longer find their relatives and didn't know how to live among the common people, so they stayed there and grew old.

It sounds a bit inhumane.

But if they were asked to marry ordinary people, they would not look down on them because they were not ordinary palace maids, but high-ranking female officials around the retired emperor!
Not only do they have ranks, they can even receive pensions.

"Xiao Zhong, your hometown is in Shandong, right?" Zhu Guoxiang suddenly said.

The eunuch in attendance replied, "It is on the east-west road of the former Song Dynasty, not far from the Yellow River."

Zhu Guoxiang asked: "What do you think of Ming Dynasty?"

The eunuch in attendance smiled and said, "It was a great and prosperous era. Although I can't remember clearly what happened when I was young, I still have some vague impressions. At that time, the Yellow River burst its banks and flooded. My whole family fled from the famine, and my parents died of illness and starvation. If we, the Ming Dynasty, can control the Yellow River, the people of Shandong and Hebei will surely live a good life."

"Do you want to go back to your hometown? I'll give you a vacation." Zhu Guoxiang asked.

The eunuch who was accompanying him said, "There is no one in the family any more. The Yellow River has also changed its course and is flooding our village. Even if we return to the village, I am afraid we won't be able to find our ancestral graves."

Zhu Guoxiang asked again: "What do you think the Ming Dynasty will look like in another hundred years?"

The eunuch thought for a moment and replied, "It surpasses the Han and Tang dynasties."

Zhu Guoxiang walked to the window of the pavilion and opened it to see the West Lake.

The cold wind of late autumn was blowing, and the lake was shimmering. Zhu Guoxiang was staring at the boats in the distance in a daze.

(End of this chapter)