The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 8 Civil Revolt
In the evening, Mrs. Zhang stewed a bowl of pork knuckle until it was very mushy, bought some river fish and fried it, cut half a head of salted duck and steamed it, stir-fried a bowl of shredded radish, and gave everyone on the table a bowl of white rice. Rice, mixed with lard, fragrant.

Wang Wenlong sat down and asked Wang Jingui: "Uncle, Brother Deng hasn't come here yet?"

Wang Jingui shook his head, and it was strange to see that the sky outside was already dark: "I should have returned from the bookstore long ago, but I don't know if something delayed me on the way."

Wang Wenlong wanted to thank Deng Zhimo for being able to send the manuscript to Yu Xiangdou this time, so he invited Deng Zhimo to come to Wang Jingui's house for dinner tonight.

After waiting for a while, Wang Jingui was about to go out to take a look, when he finally heard a knock on the door.

Wang Jingui hurriedly went to open the door and saw Deng Zhimo slowly walking in and sitting on the chair without saying a word, his cheeks bulging.

Wang Wenlong felt something was wrong in the atmosphere and asked, "Brother Deng, what happened?"

Deng Zhimo hammered the table hard and said, "I don't know, dear brother, but the people of Linqing changed a few days ago..."

When Wang Wenlong heard Deng Zhimo mention the Linqing Civil War, he suddenly remembered what historical event it was, and then he couldn't help but think.

……

Later generations summarized the character of Emperor Wanli and gave him a four-character evaluation: greedy for money and good goods.

This guy is obviously an emperor, but he seems to be obsessed with money. This guy even used his son's wedding to move money directly from the treasury.

Such behavior was actually due to Emperor Wanli's passive resistance to the official group.

Zhang Juzheng served as the first assistant when Wanli was a child. He had extremely strict requirements for Wanli. He repeatedly warned him to be simple and asked the little emperor to reheat the leftovers before eating them.

But Zhang Juzheng himself lived a luxurious life. When he returned to his hometown, he would always ride in a sedan chair.

When Wanli came of age, he found out about this and was very angry. He was so angry that he dug up Zhang Juzheng's body and whipped his corpse. From then on, he was afraid of Qingliu, a civil servant.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty's book tax revenue and the revenue from the imperial treasury did not account for much of the country's total output, but the people suffered from high tax rates. The real reason was that a large amount of money was shared among the officials who collected taxes.

These officials made a lot of money, but they kept warning the emperor not to compete with the people for profit, and advised him to live a frugal life. In Wanli's eyes, it was tantamount to Zhang Juzheng who deceived him one by one.

Emperor Wanli had no way to confront them in the court, so he resisted passively, started fighting for the country's foundation, and wanted to abolish the elders and establish the younger ones.

After the idea of ​​deposing the prince was not supported by the officials in the court, Wanli simply stopped going to court out of anger.

Now this guy lives in the harem every day, focusing on government affairs such as disaster relief and military matters, while taking a completely indifferent attitude towards the appointment and dismissal of officials in the court.

When an official scolded him, Wanli punished him and sent him back. When an official wanted to resign out of anger, Wanli approved it, but then he did not promote new officials to take office, deliberately leaving these positions vacant.

In Wanli's mind, all officials were corrupt and corrupt, and it was annoying to see them.

Moreover, he did not promote new officials for a while and did not see how chaotic the world was.

Wanli felt that this just proved that these officials were the scourge of the world, and there would be no difference between them and without them.

If there are fewer officials, the salary will be reduced.

Before Wanli's death more than ten years later, the shortage of officials in the capital alone exceeded one-third, which directly led to the complete inability of the court to manage at the grassroots level.

Local affairs cannot be left unattended, so the power in various places is increasingly controlled by the powerful people in the countryside. Even after the demise of the Ming Dynasty, the control of the grassroots could not be restored.

Many scholars who studied the Ming Dynasty in later generations believe that the lack of officials caused by lazy government in the late Wanli years was the beginning of the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

In fact, Wanli also knew that Ming Dynasty could not collect taxes because of institutional problems, but the institutional problems were too difficult to solve, and Wanli had no intention of doing so.

Because he was unsatisfactory in rectifying civil servants in his early years and was opposed by the civil servant group in everything, he had already developed a great resistance to work. He only thought about making money every day and living happily every day.

Countless people were involved in the emperor's expenses, and he spent a huge amount of money just to have fun in the harem.

In addition, there were fires in the three main halls of the Forbidden City a few years ago and the cost of repairing the palace had to be paid. Wanli was short of money, so he turned to tax collection.

Ordinary taxes are given to the state, but the income from the mine supervisor, the royal shop, and various tributes can go into his own small treasury.

So this spring, Wanli began to send eunuchs to various places to collect taxes.

These middle-ranking eunuchs sent by Wanli had to collect taxes to pay for Wanli, and they also had to collect the amount to line their own pockets, so they naturally started to make clever names.In March of this year, the eunuch Ma Tang was ordered to come to Linqing to impose taxes on all transactions such as rice, flour, grains and beans.

This guy gathered dozens of gang members, all of them criminals with tattoos on their faces, to act as thugs and go directly to the market to steal money.

He insults his wife and daughter and seizes his house.

The people are miserable.

It finally broke out a few days ago.

Linqing citizens expelled mine supervisors and burned government offices.Eunuch Ma Tang was rescued by Linqing guard Wang Yang and a group of servants.

……

The next day Wang Wenlong came to the bookstore, and a proofreader from the bookstore came over and handed him a piece of paper.

Wang Wenlong saw that it was a Di newspaper. This thing came out of the Yamen and recorded some recent news from the court. The Di newspaper was theoretically an illegal activity, but no one was arresting it for a long time. Each county had its own newspaper copying agency. In a dignified manner, the residence newspaper will be copied and sold.

Wang Wenlong saw that the residence newspaper was full of news about the appointment and dismissal of Linqing officials, and knew that the follow-up events of the Linqing Civil War had spread.

"Sir, take a good look at it, it's so angry!"

After the civil uprising, Wanli was furious. He raided the people who participated in the civil uprising and punished a large number of relevant officials.

Ma Tang took the opportunity to replace his own party members in Linqing official circles.Even Wang Yang, the guard who rescued Ma Tang, was falsely accused as the culprit and thrown into prison and tortured to death.

Since then, mine supervisors and eunuchs in various places have become even more rampant.

When the editor-in-chief said this, several more editors came over to talk. They were all scholars, and they all talked about current affairs with righteous indignation.

Listening to the discussions of the scholars in his ears, Wang Wenlong felt very entangled in his heart.

He knew that the Linqing uprising had begun to kill people's leaders.

This incident is of course the fault of Emperor Wanli.

Wanli hated the corruption of his courtiers and had no problem spending money if he wanted to, but instead of cleaning up the tax system, he passed on the money needs to the people.

Those people who participated in the civil uprising were forced to have no other choice before they rose up to cause trouble. They had no intention of rebelling, they just wanted to drive away the tax eunuchs, otherwise they would be forced to death.

But even so, Wanli still ordered a brutal suppression, killing hundreds of people, and completely denying the people a way to survive.

Moreover, Wang Wenlong knew that the public opinion in the world was raging at this time and Wanli ignored it at all. He would send eunuchs to collect taxes for more than ten years, and he did not withdraw these eunuchs until his death.
What kind of bastard thing is this?

Wang Wenlong finally experienced the darkness of this era personally, but he wanted to change but had no way.

Be an official or join the army?Even if you take the position of chief assistant, is it really possible to change the current situation?

Even if there is a chance to climb up, if you want to reform, you will be killed by the officialdom or the emperor first.

What Zhang Juzheng couldn't handle, it would be useless even if he risked his life.

Wang Wenlong still has the mentality of a small citizen, and for the time being he just wants to avoid these obligations of throwing his life and blood.

Alas, let’s do our own thing first.

In the next few months, news of the Linqing Civil War continued to spread in the market. Many prominent figures jointly wrote articles and published discussions, hoping to reach heaven to hear about it.

But Wanli hid in the palace and turned a deaf ear, and instead sent more middle-ranking officials and tax supervisors.

Public opinion in the world was in an uproar.

In this environment, Wang Wenlong quietly completed the manuscript of "The Scholars".A few months later, "The Scholars" published by Santaikan was finally released.

(End of this chapter)