Saving the Ming Dynasty: I can exchange bodies with Chongzhen

Chapter 119: Cut off the civil servants’ purses!
In the Qianqing Palace, Zhu Changgan went to the Grand Council again, listened to the report from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, and then summoned several ministers to hold a small court meeting.

All the ministers from the six ministries and nine departments were present. As they were talking, they suddenly saw Wang Chengen walking around outside.

He winked, and Wang Chengen walked over quickly and whispered in Zhu Changgan's ear: "Your Majesty, all the tax silver ships in Huguang, Jianghuai, Nanzhili and other regions have sunk."

Zhu Changgan's pupils shrank suddenly, and he gritted his teeth and said, "You're trying to do this to me again?"

It is very similar to the last grain transport ship, which still has some room for maneuver.

This time, the target was directly on the tax silver ship. Zhu Changgan knew very well what this meant.

"Okay, okay... I originally wanted to deal with them after some time, but now it seems that they can't wait any longer!"

He turned around suddenly and came to Wenhua Hall again. "Lord Sun, Bi Ziyan, the news just came in that the tax silver ship in Huguang, Nanzhili, and Jianghuai regions sank. All projects of the Ministry of Works have been suspended. The Ministry of War has stopped disbursing silver for all border town construction matters except for military training."

"Ok?"

Everyone present was stunned.

"Your Majesty, how can this be possible? If all the construction work in the border town is done, and the Manchus and Mongols come in, how are we going to resist?"

"Your Majesty, no!"

"His Majesty……"

During the Ming Dynasty, the most notable political achievement of all the famous civil servants in border towns was building border walls.

To put it bluntly, it means how many fortresses were built and how many cities were renovated. This is also a model of a civil official who knows military affairs. (If you open the history of Ming Dynasty, you will find that there are so many such things written in it that you can't count them.)
In the history of the Ming Dynasty, the quality of military training was not used as a criterion for evaluating the performance of a commander. On the contrary, those who carried out engineering projects in border towns were considered to be good and capable civil servants.

This is the shamelessness of the literati and bureaucrats. For the civil servants, infrastructure construction can be seen by the emperor and the people. This thing is real and left here without saying anything.

Key civil servants can make huge profits in the name of building border walls and repairing cities.

Compared with building border towns, training troops is time-consuming and laborious, and it offends local bureaucrats and gentry. It is a thankless task and does not bring any benefits.

Therefore, in the late Ming Dynasty, all civil servants were keen to be sent to border towns. In fact, the biggest reason was this: the court allocated funds to repair border towns. As for whether the soldiers had food to eat, military pay, and whether they were willing to work for the court, these were none of my business.

This is a great project that can bring benefits, political achievements, and leave people speechless!
Everyone is happy.

This is the logic of civil servants and also the evaluation in history books.

Zhu Changgan also discovered this bug after analyzing the finances of the Ming Dynasty.

Chongzhen Chao had no money to begin with, and facing threats, he was forced to continuously invest large amounts of financial funds into these major projects, which meant he had less and less money to maintain his troops.

Half pay, or even no pay, caused the field army to become increasingly weak and even to mutiny.

It is under this deformed administrative model that a tacit rule has been formed that things are valued more than people. People would rather build a bunch of useless fortresses and city walls than pay more silver to soldiers.

The civil servants only cared about political achievements and money. They didn't care about the lives of the soldiers or whether the Ming Dynasty could defeat the foreign races. As long as the border town was built and stood there, it was enough for them.

Many people say that the Ming Dynasty's vassal states sucked away all the money from the dynasty, but in fact, by the Chongzhen period, the finances had long been insufficient to support the expenditures of the vassal states, and they were always in debt.

The biggest money-spinner during the Chongzhen period was building border cities.

But these civil servants never think that any castle or city relies on people to guard it.

They can't even get enough food to eat and their families are struggling to make ends meet. How can the Ming army possibly hold on?

Not to mention fighting a field battle with the Tartars.

"Your Majesty..." Sun Chengzong also stood up at this moment. To be honest, he was the most ruthless person in repairing the border city, so Sun Chengzong's face was extremely ugly.

Zhu Changgan stopped him, "This is a different time. Before the Battle of Sarhu last year, we could not win a field battle against the Tatars, but now we can win."

"Since we can win the war, we should put all our money and food into training our troops."

"When Wu Zetian fought against the Khitan, the Tang army had 80,000 men in the first battle and was badly defeated. However, Wu Zetian immediately prepared for a second battle, hoping that the Tang army would be completely annihilated by the Khitan again.

Then the third time, Tang Hongjun only had 200,000 soldiers left and was defeated again! "

"But Wu Zetian quickly reorganized her army and continued to fight the Khitan. After a few battles, she began to win many battles, and big ones at that."

"Why? Because Tang's national strength is stronger than Khitan's. As the saying goes, if you kill 3,000 enemies, you lose 800 of your own. Tang used national strength to crush Khitan." "Now there are hundreds of thousands of people in the Later Jin Dynasty and hundreds of thousands of soldiers. There are tens of millions of people in the Ming Dynasty. Why can't we take out the money and use it on the army?"

"Fight, even if you lose, if you fight more, a stronger army will emerge."

What's more, now that we have the three major camps of Yongwei Battalion, Jingying and Baiganbing, we are able to fight even against the Qing Dynasty.

"Your Majesty, when Emperor Yuanzong of Tang abdicated the throne to the crown prince, he used his great reputation to maintain the people's hearts and corrected the foundation of the country to call on the world, but in fact he was not tolerated by the situation. Now I have never heard of such a thing, and I have only used the Mongolian troops. I have thought deeply and entrusted the responsibility to you. It is not enough to write the facts directly, but the meaning is self-evident..."

"The ruler is the master of all the people and all things in the world, and his responsibility is extremely heavy. If there is anything that is not appropriate for the benefit or harm of the people, then there will be something that is not up to his responsibility. If he wants to be up to his responsibility, he can only entrust the responsibility to his ministers and let them speak their mind..."

All these civil servants knelt down at this moment and submitted petitions in tears.

They have long been accustomed to undertaking engineering projects and are tied to the interests of the military generals. They would rather lose the battle than give up this lucrative job. They would only complain that the court is in financial difficulties and cannot pay the military salaries.

They would only let the soldiers endure for the sake of the Ming Dynasty, and the matter would pass if they endured. Interests and bureaucratic inertia made it impossible for them to turn back, nor were they willing to turn back.

"I have made up my mind. Anyone who wants to discuss this again will be thrown into prison."

Zhu Changgan's words stunned all the civil servants present. They suddenly realized that the emperor was determined to do this.

It was also a countermeasure to the sinking of tax silver ships in Jianghuai, Nanzhili, and Huguang.

……

"Master Sun, can you please say something?"

"Your Majesty cannot be allowed to act so stubbornly..."

"Minister Yang, can you say something too?"

"..."

As soon as the emperor left, almost all of these civil servants stood up and questioned Sun Chengzong and Yang Sichang.

Sun Chengzong didn't say a word, but just sat there in a daze, thinking about the emperor's words.

He was thinking about why the Ming Dynasty could not win a field battle over the years.

Are there no elites in the Ming Dynasty?

No, how powerful was Qi’s army back then?

In October of the 23rd year of the Wanli reign, the reward silver for the troops returning from Korea was delayed due to the court's long-term migration.

The Qi family army, which had been feared by the Koreans, mutinied, and the successor general Wang Bao lured and killed them.

As many as 3,300 Qi family soldiers were killed. The elite Qi family army lost most of its elite troops in this massacre, and was severely damaged, never to regain its former glory.

Another example is Hou Shilu, the general of Xuanfu. During the Ji Si Rebellion, the capital was in a state of emergency. A large number of troops hurried back and forth. They rushed to Jizhou, but were not allowed to enter the city. They arrived at Tongzhou in the early morning of the 13th, but were still not allowed to enter the city.

According to convention, after the Ministry of War arrives at the place, each city must provide supplies to the soldiers.

But in fact, Hou Shilu failed to obtain supplies in both Jizhou and Tongzhou. As a result, he could not even get food to eat, and finally one after another mutinied.

Starting from the Wanli period, it became a normal occurrence for the imperial court to owe wages, and mutinies caused by wage arrears were even more common.

So was it Hou Shilu’s own lack of talent that caused Hou Shilu’s tragedy?
Obviously not. What caused the tragedy of Hou Shilu's supporting army was the poor administration of the Ming court, constant factional struggles among civil servants, poor command, inadequate logistical supplies, and destruction by local officials.

It seemed that the emperor's words just now were meant for all the civil servants, but they were actually a warning to Sun Chengzong.

"Lord Sun, the tax silver ships from Nanzhili, Huguang, Jianghuai and other places have sunk."

The news about the Jinyiwei finally reached them.

Sun Chengzong raised his head suddenly and felt a chill on his back.

Your Majesty is going to kill someone again...

(End of this chapter)