Daming: Apocalypse of Longevity

Chapter 53 The Busy Capital

Although the official administration of the Ming Dynasty has been in bad shape since the Wanli dynasty. During the Wanli dynasty, officials were only retired but not replaced. The shortage of officials across the country was as high as nearly [-]%. Although the situation gradually improved after Wanli, it is still a problem to this day. Bad debts have led to the Ministry of Personnel not knowing the situation of officials in various places.

Therefore, when faced with the contents written in the memorials written by officials from various places, the Ministry of Officials could only compare some files left decades ago, that is, before the 14th year of Wanli, to make inferences and guesses to determine the authenticity of the contents of the memorials. .

Zhu Tianqi had no choice in this matter. After all, even the officials at the time could not find out the matter, and there was no reliable record in the historical records, so he could only make a fuzzy calculation.

Fortunately, Zhu Tianqi did not expect to rectify the Ming Dynasty's officialdom just by relying on a "self-inspection and self-inspection" letter from officials from various places. He only hoped that through this "self-inspection and self-examination", he could make slight improvements. After looking at the official administration across the country, a thorough investigation was completed.

Therefore, he did not ask Sun Chengzong, Xu Guangqi, and officials from the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War to examine these confessions very strictly. Instead, he only ordered them to select those with "extraordinary" contents and focus on investigation.

The so-called "extraordinary" content not only refers to officials with big problems or many problems, but also includes officials with small problems, few problems, or even no problems at all.

Officials with big problems and many problems do not necessarily mean that the current officials have problems, but there must be problems in this area, so they need to be investigated and dealt with.

Officials with minor and minor problems are likely to be deliberately concealing their crimes and need to be investigated intensively. Of course, if the investigation finds that there are indeed no problems, then it means that these officials are relatively clean. Uncovering such a group of officials is not considered a crime. All your efforts are wasted, and they will all be useful talents in the future.

In short, we still need to catch a few more typical ones, choose a few big problems but be honest and pardon them, prove that we do what we say, and don’t pursue it if we don’t pursue it, so that those who are still vacillating and hesitating Officials are at ease.

Catch a few more people who conceal the truth and be dishonest and kill them. This can be considered as a warning to other officials all over the world. They will let officials all over the world see what will happen to them if they dare to be clever and not tell the truth.

This time, the imperial court acted very quickly, without giving officials from all over the country a chance to react. Zhu Tianqi summoned Sun Chengzong, Xu Guangqi and officials from the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Husbandry, and the Ministry of War to the Qianqing Palace, and let them watch under his nose. In the office, a batch of memorials will be processed after reviewing them.

If there are any problems that need to be investigated, Zhu Youjian will immediately send Jinyi Guards to investigate, and if there are no problems, the household department will immediately arrange for the salary and salary owed to be reissued without delay.

Therefore, the capital was really lively during this period. The Jinyi Guards would leave the capital in small groups and rush to the local police station or the guardhouse. The execution ground in the West City would kill several corrupt officials every now and then. , there was an endless stream of imperial envoys returning to Beijing to resume their duties, and even more officers and soldiers escorting payment came out of the Forbidden City one after another, leaving Beijing and rushing to various places.

As a result, officials in various provinces, prefectures, counties and health centers, even if they were still hesitant, had to make up their minds early and obediently write down their confessions and hand them over to the imperial envoy who came to deliver the order. After all, although they are not in the capital, they have already heard about what happened in the capital in recent days.Those who didn't tell the truth were beheaded, and even the review process was omitted. This is no joke, the emperor is serious this time!

On the contrary, for those who honestly explained their problems and admitted their mistakes, even if some people had serious problems and even committed capital crimes, the court did not pursue them and directly pardoned them. This shows that the emperor absolutely means what he says!
The most important thing is that for those colleagues who submitted their confessions and passed the court review, the court directly repaid their salaries and wages that had been owed for many years in one lump sum. This time it was real money. If it was too late, , Don’t let it happen that when it’s your turn, the court is out of money, that would really be a big loss. Who knows, the next repayment of salary arrears will have to wait until the Year of the Monkey and the Horse?

So when it comes to saying one thousand and Tao ten thousand, nothing is as powerful as silver. As soon as they saw the silver, these officials all obeyed obediently. These memorials handed back later are obviously much more authentic. The "problematic memorials" that need to be investigated "It's so rare that everyone has become "honest" visibly!

Zhu Tianqi didn't feel any stinginess or reluctance about the money he was going to spend. He readily allocated the money from the internal funds and left the task of going to the internal transportation warehouse to get the money to Wang Yuanbao and Zhu Tianqi. By inspection.

Originally, the inner transport warehouse was managed by eunuchs, and it was enough to let Wang Yuanbao do the job alone. However, Zhu Tianqi was not 100% confident about Wang Yuanbao, so he asked Zhu Tianqi to do so on the grounds that the amount of money coming out of the warehouse was very large. The inspection team will handle the mission, and the purpose is to allow the two of them to supervise each other.

Zhu Tianqi is very relieved of himself as the fifth younger brother at present. After the family raid, Zhu Youjian is currently very clean and honest. I don't have the heart, nor the courage.

As the imperial envoys who went to deliver the imperial edicts brought back the confessions from officials in all provinces, prefectures, counties, health offices and Qianhu offices one after another, Zhu Tianqi and the ministers in the Palace of Qianqing also became very busy.

At dawn every day, Zhu Tianqi got up early, opened the palace door, summoned the ministers into the palace and started working. He stayed busy until it became completely dark and the curfew in the Forbidden City came to an end.

The specific work is that Sun Chengzong and Xu Guangqi will lead the Ministry of Household Affairs, the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War to review the officials' confessions. If there are any problems, they need to be reported to Zhu Tianqi, who will make a decision and send Jin Yiwei to investigate and arrest the people.

If there is no problem, the Ministry of Household Affairs will approve the amount of back pay and salary arrears, and report it to Zhu Tianqi. After Zhu Tianqi writes and approves, it will be handed over to Wang Yuanbao and Zhu Youjian to collect the money and issue it!

After one month in a row, everyone seems to have become accustomed to such a busy life. The key is that although the daily work is very busy, the emperor treats everyone well. Not only does he take care of the food, but he also allows everyone to rest and do activities every other hour. After a while, the emperor even took the lead in Tai Chi.

Everyone said in private that although the emperor was still young, he seemed to pay special attention to health preservation, and even lived a "delicate" life than the old guys like them. No wonder the emperor miraculously recovered from such a serious illness!
But fortunately, the emperor is not interested in things like alchemy and Taoism, otherwise everyone would think that he has inherited the legacy of Jiajing!

(End of this chapter)