Daming wolf ride

Shaanxi.

After Sun Chuanting forced Xi'an officials and gentry to donate 17 taels of salary, he recruited 5000 young and strong people from Yulin, ordered his subordinates to train them, and then led Futai Xingyuan to various prefectures and counties for inspection.

When we arrived at a post station in the east of Huaxian County, Sun Chuanting sent an order to stay at this post station.This post station is said to be a post station, but it has been abandoned for a long time, the condition of the station is extremely poor, and the accompanying officials hastily sent someone to clean it up.They also sent people to find the local Lizheng to come.

As soon as the inn was packed, Chuanting was about to move in, but a general came from Hua County, and it was the deputy general Luo Xueqi.

"The last general, Luo Xueqi, has met Lord Futai!"

"Don't be too polite!"

Sun Chuanting made a false reply and went straight into the post station.Luo Xueqi saw that something was wrong, hurriedly followed, and said: "My lord, the pommel horse is tired, let's rest first, and then we will go to arrange wine and dinner."

"Take your time," Sun Chuanting said, "I have something to ask you."

"Sir, please speak."

"Benfu walked all the way and saw that most of the fields in Hua County were abandoned. Let me ask you, how many fields in the territory are abandoned?"

"This... I can't answer it in the end, but Futai wants to ask someone who knows." Luo Xueqi shouted, "Is it right here?"

The waiting man outside the door was busy opening the curtain to come in, "Please give orders, my lord."

"I ask you, my lord, how many fields are abandoned in the territory?" Luo Xueqi asked.

"I don't know if it's far away, but I only know that the ones near my hometown are bad, and the ones that are better are four or five out of ten."

"Is there no shortage of food?" Sun Chuanting asked.

"Originally it was a rich land, so how could there be no shortage of food?"

"Then why not plow?"

"No cows."

"No cows? Why no cows?"

"Some were stolen. The stolen cattle were either sold or slaughtered for food. The ones that were not stolen were also sold."

"Selling cattle for fear of being stolen? No more farming?"

"What kind of land are you planting? The Mahu servants are harsh and hard! The farmers can't bear the hard labor, so they sell their cattle and abandon the land, and run away. But people run away, but the tax and food are still there, and the rest of the household who did not run away will have to sit and pay. The households couldn’t bear the compensation, and ran away again, so the relatives paid the compensation, and the relatives also ran away, and the family was paid, so the whole village abandoned their households and fled.”

"If you have a field but abandon your home, why don't you sell the field and flee instead of abandoning it?"

"It is precisely because of the land that I suffer from the servants. I bought the land tax and the servants came. Even if I paid the whole year's harvest, it would not be enough to pay taxes. What's more, there are servants. If there is a disaster year, how can I live? So They all escaped, whoever has the money to buy it, even the wealthy big family dare not buy it!"

Sun Chuanting turned to Luo Xueqi, "Don't you know the county government in this situation?"

Luo Xueqi shook his head, "Most of the officials are from Gongju. Life here is hard, and it is difficult for officials here to be promoted, so they are either greedy or whipped to force them to finish their food. Moreover, there are many disadvantages in the yamen. Officials, big and small, know it by themselves. They are powerless to get rid of their accumulated disadvantages, and only want to protect themselves. How can they have the time to take care of the fleeing of households and the desolation of fields? So even though they know that the people are full of complaints, they all pretend to be deaf and dumb."

"This is a thoroughfare, so there should be people who often pass by, so no one asks, are they all blind?"

"My lord, the emperor said at the beginning of his ascension, 'The additional levy is a must. Recently, a division has been knocking on the bones and sucking the marrow to make it real!" Being chained in shackles, relentless in teaching, whipped and beaten, called to the court. The emperor wants money, so he just opens his eyes and closes his eyes. Who dares to babble in front of the emperor?"

"There are more and more dispatches, so there is a large number of fleeing, and the burden is passed on to those who did not flee, so more and more fleeing, the result is that the court finally loses tax revenue, and there are more rebel troops!" Sun Chuanting took a deep breath, "General Luo , not counting Hong Daren's army, how many original troops are there in Xi'an Prefecture?"

Luo Xueqi smiled wryly, "There are [-] on the roster, but in fact it is less than half of them. The others are all fake, just falsely receiving salary."

Hearing this, Sun Chuanting fell silent, and said for a while, "The disaster and taxation are beyond my expectations! Now I understand why Xiang Sheng was not allowed to say anything when he was appointed as the prime minister of the five provinces. It seems that Qin Bing can only To protect the land of Qin, and to support Qin soldiers with the land of Qin, suppressing bandits and rectifying them must go hand in hand."

..............

Jingshi, there is a lot of trouble.

After Zhou Yanru returned to the prime minister, he rejected dissidents, reused Donglin party members, and dismissed non-Donglin officials. For a while, there was a dispute between the North and the South.The south is the Donglin party members, and the north is the non-Donglin officials.Later, the "24 Qi" case broke out. The so-called "24 Qi" is actually a mockery of 24 officials, using "murderous air", "stick air", "hostile air", "yin air" and "evil air" Attributives like "" and "" were added in front of the names of those Donglin officials who were listed, followed by nicknames such as "two-headed snake" and "gray ground snake".The creators of the list took great pains to muddy the water on purpose, attacking both "Northern Party" figures and "Southern Party" figures, inciting mutual suspicion among them.Chongzhen has always opposed ministers forming cliques and fighting against each other. Therefore, after the 24 Qi incident, a special edict was issued to severely condemn the officials and not to encourage this trend.

Jiang Cai was an official in the matter of Rites, thinking that the emperor's condemnation of them was influenced by "24 qi", so he impassionedly criticized the emperor.He said: The emperor is currently cultivating himself and sinning against himself, so he warned the officials, so that they don't feel disgusted?Because the speech officer is particularly valued, the requirements are also particularly high.There are also loyal figures like Jia Yi from the Han Dynasty among the officials. Perhaps they were too hasty in their speeches and did not understand the emperor's intentions. This is of course the fault of the officials.As for what the emperor said, the eunuchs "resigned on behalf of others", I dare not say that there is absolutely no such thing, but most of the eunuchs are not like this.What did the emperor hear before he said this?Maybe I saw something from the memorial, or occasionally speculated, so I said this?Recently, rumors and rumors about "24 qi" have been raging. It must be that treacherous officials in power hate the officials who are unfavorable to them, and deliberately spread rumors to slander them.If the emperor can't see through their conspiracy, then the officials will not dare to speak in the future, who will discuss the world's major affairs for His Majesty?

Chongzhen is still blaming himself for the burning of the ancestral mausoleum in Fengyang. The purpose of his "crime edict" is to hope that the ministers will share the responsibility with him, and work together to tide over the difficulties. Zhou Yanru's return to the prime minister is also for the government. The improvement is definitely not the hope that the court will continue to fight among the parties as before, you attack me, I attack you, and in the end it is Daming who will be destroyed, he is the emperor!

Jiang Cai's groundless speculation and unreasonable criticism naturally made Chongzhen, who was in a bad mood, furious. He couldn't help but issue an imperial edict, condemning Jiang Cai for daring to question the emperor's edict. He despised the court to an intolerable level. The Ministry of Criminal Justice will handle it, but Jin Yiwei, who has been silent for five or six years, will be interrogated.

In order to combat this trend of forming cliques for selfish interests and attacking each other, Chongzhen clearly instructed Jin Yiwei: Jiang Cai's crimes are particularly serious, and if he sees anonymous documents such as "24 Qi", he should be destroyed immediately. Why are they repeatedly disseminated in memorials?He must be honest about his motives.

At this time, Xiong Kaiyuan, a member of the Donglin Party who served as the deputy director of the Pedestrian Department, also presented a memorial to the emperor, echoing Jiang Cai, and falsely accused the emperor of attacking their officials.

Chongzhen ordered Xiong Kaiyuan to be imprisoned in Jinyiwei Town Fusi Prison without saying a word after seeing Xiong Kaiyuan's memorial, and ordered Jinyiwei to command Luo Yangxing to quietly shoot Jiang and Xiong to death in prison.The young emperor has been disturbed by the noise of these speech officials, and it is also a big headache. Since he took the throne, whenever he went to court, there are always so many speech officials who have nothing to do. What they want to do is to gain fame, but they can't do anything when they are asked to do something serious. They are just like a group of crows.Chongzhen had had enough patience, he decided to use this time to deal with the speech officials.

The emperor issued a secret decree, so Luo Yangxing naturally did not dare to act hastily. He discussed countermeasures with a group of Jin Yiwei's colleagues, but the colleagues reminded him that the former commanders of Jin Yiwei, Tian Ergeng and Xu Xianchun, died because they killed the Donglin party members. In the end, we have to learn from this lesson.In case the Donglin party counterattacks, with the current Jinyiwei foundation, they are not their opponents. Kuangshoufu Zhou Yanru is the leader of the Donglin party. Let Jin Yiwei go?

Luo Yangxing was scared, ridiculous, he is not afraid of the emperor but afraid of the Donglin Party.Instead of carrying out the emperor's secret decree, he revealed the secret decree to the speech officer Liao Guolin, who in turn revealed it to his colleague Cao Liangzhi.Both of them are members of the Donglin Party.

Cao Liang never believed that the emperor would issue such a secret decree to impeach Luo Yangxing publicly. This is an act of "referring to the emperor". Should not leak.He asked the emperor to execute Luo Yangxing and Xiong Kaiyuan immediately.Chongzhen was afraid of making things worse, so he withheld this memorial, and did not give it to the cabinet.

In fact, although Xiong Kaiyuan is a member of the Donglin Party, his conviction has a lot to do with Zhou Yanru.When Xiong Kaiyuan was the magistrate of Wujiang County, he admired Zhang Pu's academic reputation and strongly supported Fushe to hold a conference in Wujiang County.After Zhou Yanru came back, he was promoted from a local official to a Beijing official.

After all, the pedestrian department is an idle job, and he hopes to be promoted.It happened that there was a shortage of staff in Guanglu Temple, so he asked Zhou Yanru "Tongzi", hoping to get this fat vacancy.For some unknown reason, Zhou Yanru didn't help him with this matter, which caused his boss to be unhappy.

It just so happened that Chongzhen hoped that the minister would offer suggestions on how to encircle and suppress the bandits in the Central Plains. Xiong Kaiyuan wanted to take this opportunity to win the favor of the emperor, so he actively signed up and was soon called into the palace to express his opinions to the emperor.Xiong Kaiyuan originally wanted to impeach Zhou Yanru for being ineffective in governing. Seeing Zhou Yanru standing beside the emperor, he was embarrassed to speak ill of him face to face, and talked about some military opinions in a perfunctory manner.

Two days later, Xiong Kaiyuan asked the emperor to summon him again.Chongzhen summoned him and his cabinet ministers in the Palace of Imperial Virtue. Xiong Kaiyuan saw that Zhou Yanru was present, and said bluntly: "If you don't keep secrets, you will lose your ministers, and if your ministers don't keep secrets, you will perish. Please retire temporarily."

Zhou Yanru and other auxiliary ministers repeatedly expressed their intention to avoid it, but Chongzhen disagreed and asked Xiong Kaiyuan to speak out in front of the auxiliary ministers.

Xiong Kaiyuan had no choice but to bite the bullet and said: "Your Majesty has been seeking a great order for the world for eight years, but the world has become more and more chaotic. There must be a reason."

Chongzhen asked: "What is the reason?"

Xiong Kaiyuan said: "The focus of today's planning is to solve the military salary and quell foreign troubles and internal strife. If the cart is turned upside down, even if you don't eat or sleep day and night, it is impossible to achieve great order in the world. Since your Majesty ascended to the throne, there have been as many as dozens of ministers in the cabinet, but It is your Majesty who says they are virtuous, left and right say they are virtuous, but the feudal officials and the common people may not say they are virtuous. The emperor appointed them as his confidantes, and those mediocre people in high positions have committed adultery one after another. The natural disasters caused by them have never been seen so far. A sign of stopping. When the officials expose their crimes and the emperor punishes them, politics has become hopelessly corrupt.”

Chongzhen tasted the meaning of Xiong Kaiyuan's words, and understood that he was insinuating at Zhou Yanru, but deliberately pretended to be confused, and asked, "Is there anyone in your mind who you want to recommend?"

"I don't have any!"

Xiong Kaiyuan immediately denied it, but he couldn't hide his inner secret, and looked at Zhou Yanru contemptuously while speaking.

Such a clever person as Zhou Yanru had already seen the signs, and immediately pleaded guilty to the emperor and asked to resign from the post of chief assistant.

Zhou Yanru has only been back together for a few days, can Chongzhen let him go?He said: "It is my fault that the world is not governed, and it has nothing to do with Qing and others."

After Xiong Kaiyuan heard this, he raised his voice and said: "Your Majesty wants the ministers to tell the truth, but the cabinet ministers stand by, who dares to express different opinions and suffer disaster! Besides, the former ministers extorted violently and attacked loyalty, and the current ministers practice moral government , release prisoners, reduce taxes, quote a gentleman, but there are occasional grievances."

These words were obviously not sincere, but they didn't dare to say them in front of Zhou Yanru. Chongzhen knew that Xiong Kaiyuan still had something to say, so after a little thought, he asked him to step down and write a memorial to hand it over.