Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 14: It’s a pleasure to confiscate the house
Zhu Tianqi immediately ordered: "All the property that has been copied will be collected from the public. As for the public announcement, just write a few thousand taels of silver at will. The main crime of this dog thief is conspiracy. There’s no need to list them all!”

"I obey the order!" Zhu Youjian quickly saluted and accepted the order.

Those present are all smart people, now that the emperor wants to take Wei Zhongxian's family property as private money, who would dare to block it so ignorantly?Naturally, they will do whatever the emperor says!
After sending everyone away, Zhu Tianqi went back to the Qianqing Palace, turned on the recording pen, and listened to the recording inside. As he expected, Zhu Youjian and the officials who went to ransack the house were indeed raiding the house and dividing up the loot. And he kept saying things like "this has always been the case" and "according to the usual practice".

However, just by listening to the recording, you can't tell what they took. You can only hear the amount when it involves specific silver, so Zhu Tianqi recorded the name and amount he heard, and then sent Zhu Youjian He was called to the palace.

Zhu Youjian naturally didn't think much about it. Now that he helped the emperor bring down Wei Zhongxian, he was feeling proud. He wanted to come to the emperor to find him, probably to praise him and give him some rewards.

As expected, Zhu Tianqi's first sentence after meeting was: "Fifth brother, you have helped me so much, what reward do you want?"

However, Zhu Youjian hurriedly saluted, "It is my duty to share your Majesty's worries. I dare not take credit for it. As your Majesty said to me before, as a descendant of the Zhu family, I should contribute to the foundation of my ancestors." !”

Zhu Tianqi couldn't help but smile after hearing this. He stood up and walked to Zhu Youjian with the list he had written, and handed the list to him: "Fifth brother, since you haven't decided what reward you want yet, Let’s take a look at this first!”

Zhu Youjian took the list with some doubts, and after just one glance, he suddenly broke out in a cold sweat and hurriedly kowtowed and fell to the ground: "Your Majesty, forgive me. I was confused for a moment and was obsessed with money..."

In fact, this is not a big deal. After all, even upright officials these days do not think there is anything wrong with the unspoken and explicit rules in the officialdom. Some things have become routine, and things that are agreed upon by the people are naturally not accepted by the people. Take it, the official will not investigate!

But even so, the emperor deliberately made this list and handed it to himself to see. It was obvious that the emperor wanted to pursue the matter this time, and Zhu Youjian was naturally afraid!

Zhu Tianqi smiled and helped him up, "Fifth brother, why are you so nervous? We are a family and we don't talk about two families! I know that this is the custom and rule of raiding homes, so I don't Blame you.

However, I can't stand these bad habits in officialdom. If you want money or rewards, I can give them to you, but you can't take them yourself! "

After saying this, Zhu Tianqi looked at Zhu Youjian.

Zhu Youjian was already sweating profusely and said tremblingly: "My lord, please keep this in mind and promise there will never be a next time!"

Zhu Tianqi patted Zhu Youjian on the shoulder and said with a smile: "Okay, go find the other people on this list for me, and take back everything they took. In addition, you will ransack your home this time." If you have meritorious service, I am not a stingy person. Everyone will be rewarded, so I will reward you with double the amount of money you took!"

"Ah?! This..." Zhu Youjian was extremely surprised when he heard this. He looked at Zhu Tianqi with a puzzled face. He didn't know whether he heard it wrong or whether the emperor was angry and said something sarcastic.It wasn't until Zhu Tianqi took his hand off Zhu Youjian's shoulder and said: "Go, go and do the errands according to my wishes!" Zhu Youjian came back to his senses, hurriedly gave a salute, and retreated. .

Zhu Tianqi didn't care about the little property they took away, but these bad habits must be corrected by them. Of course, he must not appear to be ungrateful, so this time it can be regarded as a small punishment and a big warning!
Next is the purge of court officials. All officials who have been eunuchs will be judged for their crimes, and the work of confiscating their homes will become increasingly arduous. I believe that after my warning this time, the people below will not dare to mess around again. Got it!

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the financial crisis of the imperial court was very serious, but what the Ming Dynasty faced was not only a financial crisis, but more precisely, a silver crisis.

The so-called silver crisis simply means that the silver circulating in the market is far lower than the number on the books. It is a serious deflation phenomenon caused by the insufficient supply of silver, the mainstream currency at the time.

The production of silver is limited, which Zhu Tianqi cannot change, so he can only discover the underlying reasons for the current silver crisis.

Obviously, the domestic silver reserves are very large, and Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangzhou and other places have developed foreign trade, and a large amount of silver flows into the country every year. The silver crisis is not at all caused by insufficient domestic silver production and reserves.

Instead, the vast majority of silver has flowed into the hands of officials, gentry, and wealthy businessmen. They worked hard to accumulate wealth, and each one was like a brave man who could only get in or out. Rich places such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangzhou were like a black hole of silver, hoarding all the money in the world. At least half of it is silver.

Chinese people have been fond of saving money since ancient times. The rich hold the silver in their hands and buy some jewelry, Buddha statues, etc. when they have nothing to do. When they need to spend money, they pick up the broken silver of poor quality and spend it. Over time, There are more and more pieces of silver of poor quality circulating in the market, and there is less and less silver that can be circulated.

Saving money cannot be regarded as a bad habit, and it is a universal truth that bad money drives out good money. But if people in the entire country do this, then there will be big problems.

Zhu Tianqi currently does not have the ability to solve this eternal problem. The only way he can think of to generate income now is to confiscate homes and take advantage of wealthy households. However, I have to say that confiscating homes feels good for a while and it will continue to feel good all the time!
In the next few days, Zhu Tianqi began to intensively compile the list of eunuchs. He did not have to go to the trouble of Chongzhen who had to convene ministers for impeachment, collect memorials, conduct open and covert investigations, and he had historical records in his hand, so he could directly follow the historical records. If you copy it, you would rather catch it by mistake than let it go!

In this way, it saves the people on errands below from fooling themselves or avenging public and private revenge!
As the list of crimes was sent out from the Qianqing Palace, everyone in the entire court was in danger, because whether it was the list of private property that Zhu Tianqi handed to Zhu Youjian before, or the current list of crimes, the ministers realized that Today's Holy Majesty, the control over Jin Yiwei has reached the point of perfection.

The reason why they say this is because they did not expect that Zhu Tianqi had such "magic weapons" as recording pens and historical records. The only one they could guess was the Jin Yiwei. But they couldn't figure out that Wei Zhongxian had just fallen, and the emperor could What kind of method is this to completely control Dongchang and Jinyiwei?Or maybe Dongchang and Jinyiwei have always been controlled by the emperor?

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(End of this chapter)