Chongzhen revived the Ming Dynasty

The fact that Gu Yanwu became a Yuanshi stimulated many college students.

They began to realize that besides burying themselves in studies, there were other opportunities to succeed in the capital.

Some people believe that Gu Yanwu was appreciated by the emperor because of his good writing skills.

Some people believe that Gu Yanwu was loyal to the emperor because of his achievements in guarding Tsinghua Garden.

Some people also believe that the Yuanshi Sun Qifeng played a role in this. I didn’t see his name among the recommenders of Gu Yanwu. Is it possible that he was mentioned?

Therefore, the Beijing Normal School became famous. Many students from Beijing came to inquire about the enrollment plan for next year.

There were even students from other schools who asked how to transfer to the Normal School.

Sun Qifeng answered all of these questions and recommended that they subscribe to the Education Newspaper, which was his most recent concern and he was using the newspaper to compile literature teaching materials.

As a result, the subscription volume of Education Daily has increased dramatically, even approaching that of The Guardian, and only behind the four major newspapers.

After learning about the story of the "master and apprentice", the gentry in northern Zhili also generously donated money to the Normal School. Even other schools received donations of money and grain.

With this funding, and the fact that the Normal School building is about to be completed, Sun Qifeng has already planned to move out of Tsinghua University next year to avoid being criticized by other schools for staying in the royal villa.

After Zhu Youjian learned about this, he specially granted the Normal School 1,000 mu of residential land for the construction of school buildings and dormitories, and also granted 1,000 mu of farmland as the Normal School's school land.

After learning about this, other schools also requested to be granted farmland.

In order to win the hearts of the students and show that he was not a greedy person, Zhu Youjian generously granted land to these schools. According to the size of each school, hundreds of acres of residential land and school land were generally granted.

At the same time, in order to appease the nobles, they were granted residential land near the royal palaces, with 500 acres for a duke, 400 acres for a marquis, and 300 acres for an earl.

These lands were all located in the northwest of the capital, which was where the Haidian District he had drawn was located. Therefore, Zhu Youjian ordered the patrol camp to take advantage of the rebellion to clean up the area.

Those who were involved with the rioters would naturally be exiled overseas and their property would be confiscated.

Even the big households that were not involved were forced to move to Tianjin on the grounds that they might have had connections.

There are still many wastelands there. Some of the lands of the previous royal palaces and university towns were exchanged for wastelands in Tianjin.

Now Zhu Youjian took advantage of this opportunity to expropriate land on a larger scale and turn this place into a gathering place for nobles and students.

Because of this, he chose Lu Guanxiang to be the Tongzhi of Tianjin.

This man was once highly valued by Zuo Guangdou and Zhang Shenyan, and served as the co-magistrate of military farming in Hejian Prefecture, and was in charge of military farming in Tianjin and Jinghai.

After checking his resume, Zhu You reinstated him and Zhang Shenyan, established the Tianjin Administrative Office, and put them in charge of military farming.

Several other newly added Tongzhi of Shuntian Prefecture were also appointed by Zhu Youjian during the martial law. He took the opportunity of arresting thieves to promote the reform of the garrison and survey the land.

Students from various schools were also sent out again to continue surveying the land.

Because these students were frightened by the Jingxi Rebellion and had Gu Yanwu as a role model appreciated by the emperor, they put in their utmost effort to survey the land, hoping to give those who might be involved in the rebellion a good beating.

The new troops of the Patrol Battalion also sent out many teams to protect these students. The manors and temples that dared to resist were also guarded by the Patrol Battalion.

Because of this, the land survey of nobles and wealthy families was carried out smoothly. Buddhism and Taoism also quickly surrendered and promised to pay religious taxes.

This made Zhu Youjian realize more clearly that sometimes people have to be forced to give up their interests with force.

It can be said that after the new troops of the patrol camp were dispatched, the situation in Shuntian Prefecture suddenly became very good.

Zhu Youjian finally felt that the area he truly controlled had expanded from the imperial palace to the capital, and then from the capital to Shuntian Prefecture.

His goal for next year is the entire northern Zhili. He will take advantage of the opportunities of the various places in northern Zhili to hold advisory meetings and the people's support to clean up the whole place and completely control it.

However, this incident also caused a lot of backlash.

For example, the collection of property tax in the capital city attracted Princess Shouning to the palace to request that property tax should not be levied on Yiyuan where she lived.

Princess Shouning was the daughter of Concubine Zheng and the sister of Prince Fu.

Zhu Youjian needed Prince Fu to help him stabilize the royal family, and he didn't want outsiders to say that he was harsh towards his relatives.

Therefore, he was very cautious about this matter and asked Jinyiwei to investigate the details. He also asked Dongchang, which was mainly responsible for the intelligence of the royal family and the capital, to investigate the matter as well.

After checking, he found out that it was the Taifu Temple that asked the Household Registration Section of the Dongcheng District Government Affairs Office to collect property tax from Yiyuan where Princess Shouning and Prince Consort Ran lived.

This garden was granted by Emperor Wanli and was once part of Shi Heng's residence. It was granted to Princess Shouning when she got married. The princess and her husband lived here for more than ten years and never thought about being taxed.

Zhu Youjian also did not expect this. After learning about this, he was extremely angry.

In order to ease the pressure of implementing property tax, he had previously stipulated that nobles and officials who were granted houses were exempt from property tax.

Unexpectedly, someone was secretly doing bad things and collecting taxes on the prince consort first.

This reminded him of the previous levy of property tax, which was first collected by civil officials on the nobles, triggering a rebellion in western Beijing.

Now the mastermind behind the rebellion in western Beijing has not been identified, and a similar incident has occurred again. Therefore, Zhu Youjian believes that this incident is not an isolated incident, and someone is trying to sabotage it in various ways.

So he summoned officials from the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Agriculture and reprimanded them severely.

And let them investigate the matter thoroughly and find out who is behind it.

But after Taifu Temple checked, it found that it had not sent any official document to the Dongcheng District Household Registration Office. However, the Dongcheng District Household Registration Office produced documents proving that it was sent by Taifu Temple.

The seal above also undoubtedly belongs to the Taifu Temple and is not a forged seal.

So this matter quickly turned from a work mistake into a criminal case, and became a case of forgery of official documents.

The official in charge of the seal at the Taifu Temple was soon arrested. Under the interrogation of the Jinyiwei, a minor official confessed that the seal was stamped privately.

This case became even more serious and became a major case of seal theft.

According to the "Great Ming Code", anyone who steals the seal or uses the seal on blank paper will be hanged.

Therefore, the officials in charge of the seals of the Taifu Temple were undoubtedly sentenced to death. Even Dong Yingju, the Minister of the Taifu Temple, was punished and demoted to the rank of the third-rank Chengzhengshi.

The Ministry of Revenue was responsible for this failure and was also punished.

The officials of Dongcheng District, such as the inspector of the city, the director of the government affairs department, and the head of the household registration section, were also punished. The emperor dealt with dozens of officials involved in the case with great vigour, and even sentenced several to death and exiled dozens of them overseas.

Such a severe punishment made all the officials in the Ministry of Revenue feel insecure. When the emperor required all officials in the Ministry of Revenue to declare their property, no one dared to resist.

Han Yu's previous suggestion to require all officials to declare their assets in order to protect themselves began to be implemented.

The counter-case trial committee, of which he served as the chairman, also hung up the sign of the Anti-Corruption Committee to strengthen the construction of anti-corruption.

In the future, after the trial of the counter-case is over, it will be transferred to the Anti-Corruption Committee to continue to deter officials.

But this was not the end. Just when the officials of the Ministry of Revenue breathed a sigh of relief, Zhu Youjian issued another decree, requiring the Ministry of Revenue to transfer all responsibilities such as military pay distribution and military supplies procurement to the Logistics Department of the Privy Council.

The Ministry of Revenue is only responsible for allocating funds to the Ministry of Logistics. How to pay the soldiers and how to deliver supplies to the front line will be the responsibility of the Ministry of Logistics.

The payment of military pay must also go through Shuntian Bank and must be paid in full.

This order made the officials of the Ministry of Revenue feel as if they had lost their parents. According to the custom, when the troops from various places asked the Ministry of Revenue for pay, they would report more quotas in order to get more food and pay. When the Ministry of War asked them to request to fight, they often said that they were short of troops and requested more troops.

Almost everyone in the court knew about this malpractice, but the Ministry of Revenue pretended to be ignorant of it and simply paid salaries according to the reported lists and took a share of the profits itself.

Generally speaking, it is good enough to get 60% to 70% of the food and wages requested by the local governments, and the rest is divided up by the middlemen.

Military pay was the biggest expense of the imperial court, amounting to more than 10 million taels per year. Although the Ministry of Revenue did not handle all of it, it did get a large share of the profits.

Now, the emperor has transferred the power of distributing military pay to the Logistics Department of the Privy Council, and the Ministry of Revenue can only allocate funds to the Logistics Department. And it has to be paid from the Shuntian Bank account, completely losing the opportunity to share profits.

How could the officials in the Ministry of Revenue not be heartbroken?
But that was not the end. After urging the officials of the Ministry of Revenue to declare their properties, Zhu Youjian asked the Integrity Committee to authorize the Anti-Corruption Agency to review all officials of the Ministry of Revenue who declared their properties.

Anyone whose declared amount of property is inconsistent with their actual property will be detained and interrogated.

Those who are extremely wealthy and whose income is not in line with what they deserve are also detained.

All of a sudden, the officials of the Ministry of Revenue, the Imperial Household Department, and the Ministry of Agriculture were emptied out. Of the more than 100 officials, only less than 50 remained. Almost all the clerks were affected, and not many were left.

It can be said that the entire Ministry of Revenue was cleaned up, and the accumulated malpractices of more than 200 years were completely swept away.

Zhu Youjian then recruited officials from students in the capital, and selected those with good performance from the Ming Suan Ke Jinshi and Fu Ban, and selected them to serve in the Ministry of Households.

It can be said that it was these talents that gave him the confidence to clean up the Ministry of Revenue.

Use these newcomers who have just entered the officialdom to reshape the Ministry of Revenue.

The Minister of Revenue, Bi Ziyan, was almost numb to this.

He never imagined that the Ministry of Revenue, which he thought was functioning well, had so many shortcomings in the eyes of the emperor.

This forced him to resign and take on the responsibility.

Officials from the Ministry of Personnel also impeached Bi Ziyan as per custom, believing that Bi Ziyan should be held responsible.

But Zhu Youjian knew that he was cleaning up the malpractices accumulated in the Ministry of Revenue.

Although Bi Ziyan was responsible, he could not be held responsible for all the problems accumulated over the past two hundred years. That would be unfair to him and would also discourage other officials from correcting the problems in their own offices.

In addition, Bi Ziyan was brave enough to take on responsibilities and could be regarded as a capable person. Therefore, Zhu Youjian gently retained Bi Ziyan, only symbolically deducting his salary for three months, and authorized him to sort out the Ministry of Revenue system and reduce related malpractices.

Bi Ziyan was treated with such courtesy by the emperor that he had no choice but to continue serving in his post despite being impeached, and he was determined to improve the relevant systems.

However, Zhu Youjian did not place all his hopes on the Ministry of Revenue to conduct self-examination and self-correction. After authorizing the parliament to supervise taxation and audit expenditures, he emphasized that officials, ministers of state, secretaries of state and parliamentarians all had this power. He even authorized journalists approved by the Public Opinion Department of the Embroidered Uniform Guard to supervise the Ministry of Revenue.

The Ministry of Revenue’s annual income and expenditure must also be reported and subject to supervision by everyone.

It can be said that the government affairs of the Ministry of Revenue were basically open to the public. Everything they did was subject to supervision by officials and the public. Any mistakes they made could be reported.

This made the officials of the Ministry of Revenue sigh that the good days were gone forever.

There were even some officials in the Ministry of Revenue who secretly regretted separating the inner treasury and the outer treasury.

After the emperor no longer needed them to collect money for the inner court, the Ministry of Revenue was ruthlessly made public by the emperor, making them miserable.

They couldn't even come up with the excuse of keeping it secret, because the emperor had already transferred the responsibility of distributing military pay to the Logistics Department, and there were very few other things the Ministry of Revenue did that needed to be kept secret.

From then on, the officials of the Ministry of Revenue had to do their jobs with their tails between their legs. The Ministry of Revenue also became the government office that officials were least willing to work for among the six ministries of the State Council.

But for Zhu Youjian, his goal was not fully achieved, because the mastermind behind the cleansing of the Ministry of Revenue was not found.

This made him feel sad, and he felt that his control over the capital was not strong enough. The rebellion in western Beijing might become an unsolved case.

He was somewhat annoyed and took his anger out on Yang Wuhou, urging him to take those involved with the rioters south to establish a fiefdom in Nanyang.

Some monks and Taoists who were found to have committed bad deeds in some temples were also taken south by Yang Wuhou to spread the teachings.

The ship originally responsible for immigration in Cangzhou soon moved to Tianjin and transported these people to Southeast Asia.

At the same time, some personnel from the military garrisons also went to Southeast Asia.

Although the reform of the Wei system took the Three Guards of Zhuolu as an example, the power of hereditary officials was greatly protected, and they could continue to be rich and prosperous for generations.

However, some hereditary officers were not satisfied, did not see the situation clearly, and resisted the reform of the garrisons.

Zhu Youjian was not polite to these people and directly moved them to the Nanyang Guards. The remaining land was just right for the soldiers to recruit soldiers from among them.

The problem of insufficient number of immigrants that the Nanyang Governor Guo Shangyou was worried about was also solved.

No matter how incompetent these hereditary officers were, they were still competent in the stable areas of Southeast Asia. They would even take the initiative to capture the natives as serfs and help them cultivate farmland.

Moreover, due to the renewal of weapons in the patrol camp and the imperial camp, Zhu Youjian allocated the obsolete weapons to the Nanyang guards.

This made the Nanyang Governor-General's Office stronger and able to gain a firm foothold.

The development of Southeast Asia thus entered the fast lane.

Zhu Youjian took advantage of the martial law period to do many things that were inconvenient to do at other times. He imposed his will on every aspect. (End of this chapter)