Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 136
As for the petty minions and lower-ranking officials below, Zhu Tianqi didn't care, nor was he in a hurry to engrave their names. After all, these petty officials below couldn't donate much money, so they were willing to delay. Just procrastinate, if you don't want to leave your name on the merit monument, you won't leave it. Anyway, the money will be donated in the end, so they can't run away.

But even if the people below have not been engraved with names and do not have the pressure faced by the big guys in front, they still care about reputation. Seeing that the big guys have begun to donate money, some small ones with money in their hands have Officials also began to spend money to buy fame.

Xu Guangqi and Lai Zongdao naturally welcomed these people. They accepted the money and engraved their names, and everyone was happy.

However, when the names of these people came up, it was really a slap in the face to big guys like Qian Qianyi and Qian Longxi, because a small person cares so much about the people, donates generously, and is eager for justice. But the big shot is still dragging his feet and making no move, so it is inevitable that the truth will be true.

Therefore, Qian Qianyi and Qian Longxi had no choice but to admit defeat, and the amount of money they had to donate could not be less than what Xu Guangqi and the others donated. After all, they were in the cabinet and both were ministers of the Sixth Bureau. It would be a joke to donate less. Besides, who doesn’t know that these Donglin Party bosses from Jiangnan have rich families, let alone appear to be too stingy with money.

Since Zhu Tianqi made the announcement, within one month, all the officials whose names were engraved on the merit monument have donated money, and each of them has donated a lot of money, none of them less than 1000 taels.

In addition, there are also those petty officials who are joining in the fun. Although each person's donation is not much, when added together, the amount is still considerable. There are less than 800 officials, big and small, in Beijing. Basically, everyone or They donated more or less money, and when they were finally added up, it turned out to be as much as 300 million taels.

After seeing this amount, Zhu Tianqi was really surprised. You know, when the Ming Dynasty was about to fall, Chongzhen asked ministers to donate their salaries, but in the end they donated less than 20 taels of silver.

Did these ministers really have no money? Of course not, but they refused to take it out at all. As a result, after Li Zicheng came to Beijing, he tortured them and seized nearly 8000 million taels of silver from them.

Could it be that he is more attractive than Chongzhen?Of course not, Zhu Tianqi knew this very well, and he also knew that he was able to extract so much money from the ministers this time only because he understood the "pain points" of the ministers.

It's totally unreliable to talk to them about the feelings of family and country like Chongzhen did. These talents don't care whether they die or not, they have already made plans to change their bosses and continue working.

Therefore, to deal with these vain and unscrupulous civil servants, you still have to use something they care about as bait and leverage. Naturally, they are willing to spend money to buy themselves a reputation.

After Zhu Tianqi collected the money, he didn't waste any time. He immediately sent someone to send it to Zhang Guoji for Zhang Guoji's use in collecting grain. He also sent someone to tell Zhang Guoji that he would stop after spending the 300 million taels and put the grain in the nearby warehouse. The library is.

The amount of autumn grain is only much greater than that of summer grain. Twenty percent of the total three million two-year autumn grain harvest is insufficient. What to do with the remaining 300 percent of grain?Are they just for the gentry, wealthy families and corrupt officials?That's right, this is what Zhu Tianqi planned. He was not compromising with them. If he had to give a reason for doing this, he could borrow a sentence from "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu, "Don't contain the enemy when they return, and they will be surrounded when they are surrounded." ", don't pursue the poor enemy", which means not to over-force the enemy who is in a desperate situation, but to leave a way for the enemy to survive. Otherwise, the enemy will jump over the wall in a hurry and counterattack before death, which will injure himself.

Now Zhu Tianqi does not have the ability to truly defeat the entire civil servant group, nor does he have the ability to compete head-on with it, so he cannot completely cut off their financial resources and induce them to fight against him, and they must endure it.

However, the civil service group obviously did not expect that Zhu Tianqi would leave a way for them to make money, so when Zhang Guoji removed all the grain collection points next to the taxation department offices in various provinces, prefectures and counties, the civil service group was even a little unbelievable. Some people wonder if there are any other tricks or traps.

It wasn't until Zhang Guoji's grain collection points had been cleared for many days, and the people began to look for grain merchants to sell grains on the streets, that they dared to take the lead and rush out to collect grains. This made the people who were already desperate for grain harvesting People saw hope again, and everyone even felt like they were surviving the disaster.

Even though this year they received only half of the summer and autumn grains from previous years, and donated a large amount of money to the court, the amount of money they could earn in the end was already quite limited, but overall, the result was beyond Their psychological expectations, after all, judging from the previous series of methods of the emperor, did not intend to give them a way out.

However, although Zhu Tianqi no longer sends people to collect grain from them, he is still very concerned about the taxation work of the taxation departments of various provinces, prefectures and counties. The taxes currently collected are mainly from the Jiangnan area, which is the Donglin Party and the DPRK. After all, this year is the first year of the tax and labor reform and the promotion of the new tax law in the territory of the Chinese civil servants, so there is no room for any mistakes.

The collection of autumn taxes will not end until February next year. It takes a long time. Zhu Tianqi cannot keep an eye on this matter personally for such a long time, so he has to hand over the matter to Zhu Youjian to take charge. Now Jin Yiwei is the one who supervises the taxation work of the taxation departments in various places, so we simply send more manpower. In addition to increasing the intensity of supervision, we also need to solve some of the troubles encountered in the work of the taxation department.

This time, Zhu Tianqi also gave Zhu Youjian a Shangfang sword, and publicly appointed Zhu Youjian as the imperial envoy to oversee the national tax collection work. He also issued an edict: "Any tax officials who dare to take bribes, bend the law, or neglect their duties will be punished." Anyone who dares to refuse to pay taxes, or obstructs the court's tax collection, or evades taxes will be severely punished, and those with serious crimes may be killed without mercy!"

With the previous incident of Zhang Guoji killing the prefect who obstructed tax collection as a lesson, this time no one dared not to take the emperor's words seriously, and no one dared to doubt Zhu Youjian's courage and dare to challenge Zhu Youjian's bottom line again. , to try the method by oneself.

In fact, the main tax collection problem for the chief ministers in Jiangnan is not land tax, but industrial and commercial tax. Although the imperial court also collected industrial and commercial tax before, it did not pay attention to it and lacked supervision. Therefore, tax evasion was very common. Every year I can only collect some money symbolically.

(End of this chapter)