Qiming 1158

Chapter 1227 Boundless Despair

When the Chengdu court was first established, many institutions were not fully staffed, and many powers had not yet been returned to the central government. The local government took charge of it. Therefore, during this period, the local officials of the Chengdu court had great power.

Many things are resolved by themselves, rather than reported to the Chengdu court to wait for the court's resolution. Many matters, including finance and justice, are resolved by the local government, and the Chengdu court does not ask.

After feeling the thrill of freedom, the local officials felt that their hearts for freedom began to take off, so when they were ordered to stop by the imperial court, they felt dissatisfied and felt that the imperial court hindered their freedom.

They don't care about the life and death of civilians, they just want to squeeze the oil and water of this group of poor ghosts in the next life and the next life to satisfy their desires.

Since ancient times, how can there be a reason not to let the officials scrape the poor ghost's money?

It was October when the imperial court issued an order to impose additional levies. Officials acted on the wind and immediately started robbing. The efficiency was amazing, and they quickly created a large number of refugees. It makes people sigh that the bureaucracy can only show super efficiency at this level.

However, when the order to stop was promulgated in mid-November, the officials continued to delay, speeding up the speed and forcing farmers to pay taxes, while blocking the news to prevent farmers from knowing the court’s order, so as not to delay their earning money, which fully reflects the executive power of the bureaucracy.

So it was delayed until mid-December.

When Su Yonglin set a future prospect for the Ming Kingdom to sail to the sea of ​​stars, the bureaucrats of the Shu Song regime were still making money.

From the beginning of October in the sixth year of Hongwu to the middle of December in the sixth year of Hongwu, Sichuan and Shu officials forced a large number of farmers to go bankrupt at an extraordinary speed.

They not only robbed farmers of their deposits, but also took the initiative to cooperate with local powerful landlords. The two sides cooperated tacitly and operated traditional arts. While forcing farmers to pay taxes to the point of nowhere, they came forward to buy land at low prices.

The peasants were desperate, and could not think of resistance for a while, and in desperation, they could only sell their land in large quantities and at low prices.

The officials robbed the property and stored grain of the peasants' homes, and the powerful landlords stole the peasants' land, and then gave the government a kickback.

In less than three months, officials in Chuan and Shu successfully created hundreds of thousands of refugees in more than a dozen prefectures on the Fifth Sichuan Road, and as time passed, the number of refugees increased. many.

But the bureaucrats didn't care.

For the bureaucrats, the most important thing now is to hurry up and make a fortune, and the rest are not important. Whoever dares to stop them from making money and making a fortune will treat them as enemies.

As for the court's request for local big households to stop plundering the peasants' land and building porridge sheds to serve porridge to the peasants, it's basically a joke, and I laughed it off, and then pretended that such a thing never happened.

The local officials colluded with them and would not allow the refugees to return to their hometowns at all, which also caused a small friction between the local officials.

Obviously, the refugees leave their hometowns and go to other places. During this process, some places belong to the "net outflow" of the population, while some places are the "net inflow" of the population.

The burden of net inflows is too great. The local officials were very happy when they heard the order of the imperial court. They immediately sent people to count the household registration of the local stranded refugees, and prepared to call the officials in those places to pick them up.

But the net outflow local officials promised to say good, but no action.

Net flow local officials sent people over and over to ask questions. They all said that they would be fine, and they would send someone to pick them up tomorrow, but after several tomorrows, there was no movement.

It is the so-called tomorrow after tomorrow, how many tomorrows.

After more repetitions, the local officials of the net inflow have also figured out some things, realizing that the colleagues in the damn net outflow place will not send someone to pick them up.

What they hope most is that these refugees die in other places, and they will never go back and cause trouble for them, so that they will not pay to build porridge and porridge to feed these refugees.

At that time, there was also something to say to the court.

It's not that they didn't pick it up, but that the group of refugees was dead and no one could pick it up, so although they were very sad, they had to endure it.

This is absolutely unacceptable to the bureaucrats in the net inflow.

There are many dead people, and the unfortunate one is the net flow into the land, which belongs to the behavior of taking the blame for others. In this kind of matter, the bureaucrats who are good at dumping the blame and treat the blame as official business will definitely not be ambiguous.

So while they presented the Chengdu court to accuse the bureaucrats in the net outflow area, accusing them of evading their responsibilities and not coming to pick up people, they planned to organize their own personnel to send the refugees back to them.

Of course, it is impossible to escort them. Dispatching people to give weapons and expelling them from their own jurisdiction by violent means is the best way to "send people".

And this matter was also learned by the Chengdu court.

Zhao Buxi was furious, and ordered the officials of the Jingliu district to take everyone back, and immediately sent a censor to supervise. Whoever dared not take them would be dismissed on the spot.

The officials in the net outflow area were helpless, and while scolding the officials in the net inflow area for not doing human affairs, they argued on the table, and then prepared to spend money to bribe the censor.

It is always cheaper to bribe one or a few people than to settle thousands of people.

The imperial court just messed around with it at will, and if they really want to bring back all the refugees, tens of thousands of mouths can't be fooled, and it will cost real money.

They will still calculate this economic account.

The bureaucrats are happy to fight with each other. All kinds of decision-making interventions against the Chengdu court are made. All energy is concentrated on this matter. .

The peasants could not stay in the refuge, and after being violently driven away, they found in desperation that no county would accept them, and there were brutal armed teams everywhere to drive them, driving them around, even worse than livestock.

Some stay in the wilderness, so that every day should not make the earth and the earth unworkable.

Some were forced to return to their hometowns, only to find that their hometowns were more ruthless in their defenses. When they saw them, they came up to beat and drive them away, and never let them return to their hometowns.

Although this world is big, it seems that there is no place for them to stand, and they seem not to belong to this world and this era.

Therefore, in the coldest season of the sixth year of Hongwu and the first spring of the seventh year of Hongwu, the peasants who had lost their land in Sichuan and Sichuan died of starvation and freezing to death in batches.

In the process of begging for food from one county to another, more than one-third of the refugees died of starvation, and the distance was longer, and two-thirds of them died of starvation.

As the team walked, someone fell down and never got up again. How many relatives were still alive and some people howled around the corpse a few times. For those without relatives, the corpse was pushed directly to the side of the road.

No one is watching, no one cares, just waiting for the spring, the corpse will slowly rot and become a lonely ghost.

Although the land of Sichuan and Shu has always had a hot and humid climate, in winter and early spring, it should be cold or cold, and it is piercingly cold.

The refugees, who were dressed in single clothes and had no food to eat, froze to death in large numbers, and could not see any hope at all. What awaited them anywhere was not warm houses and thick vegetable porridge, but fierce armed forces. Personnel and hard sticks.

After all, they fell into boundless despair.

But the fighters and bureaucrats who treat them this way may have forgotten that people are not only miserable, pitiful, but also dangerous in times of despair.

Physically dangerous.

(End of this chapter)