prosperous age

"My Lord, Minister Wang of the Ministry of Revenue has just arrived, and I don't know if he has left yet."

Lu Bu immediately stopped and answered in a low voice.

"Oh, then go over there later, after he leaves."

Wei Guangde rolled his eyes and immediately changed his way.

He didn't want to confront Wang Guoguang. This guy was now dissatisfied because the cabinet asked them to pay a large sum of money. This time he came to Zhang Juzheng, he must have come to quarrel.

In fact, in the court, such actions were often just a gesture. After all, the cabinet asked the Ministry of Revenue to pay money for river control.

If the Ministry of Revenue really delayed the important task of river management because of the issue of money, the old guy would be infamous through the criticism of scholars all over the world.

However, since Wang Guoguang was in charge of the Ministry of Revenue, he had to make some statement, otherwise any government office might come up with some expensive projects and ask for money from the Ministry of Revenue.

Wei Guangde wants to hide, but can he do so?
Of course, Zhang Juzheng would not bear Wang Guoguang's anger alone at this moment. He sent people to invite Wei Guangde and Zhang Siwei, and the three cabinet ministers accepted Wang Guoguang's roar together.

This way, he will feel better.

When the clerk sent by Zhang Juzheng left the duty room, Wei Guangde stroked his forehead and complained to the reed cloth beside him: "Was Wang Guoguang's expression very bad when he came over?"

“It’s very ugly.”

Lu Bu answered honestly.

"Then why don't you be smart and tell me the news? I'll go out and hide for a while."

Wei Guangde said very dissatisfiedly.

"Master, Lord Wang went straight to the Prime Minister's duty room. I didn't know he would ask you to go there as well."

Lu Bu felt a little aggrieved. If he saw an official with a bad face entering the cabinet, he would have to inform Wei Guangde to hide out. Wouldn't he have to hide every few days?

Don't think that cabinet ministers are one level higher than officials of the six ministries. That doesn't exist.

There are really a lot of trolls among the officials of the Ming Dynasty.

As long as their interests are affected, they will have plenty of reasons to speak out and criticize.

Any policy has two sides. If one side benefits, another side will suffer.

The cabinet actually makes choices among them and comes up with the proposal that is most beneficial to the country.

When someone suffers a loss, they are not allowed to criticize him or vent their dissatisfaction.

Not to mention the six ministers, even the vice ministers and even the seventh-rank officials in the Ministry of Rites dared to contradict the cabinet ministers in person.

To put it bluntly, they are all Jinshi, but they have different positions, which is somewhat similar to the different division of labor in later revolutions.

Of course, if you talk back to your superiors, also known as rebellion, and make things too ugly, you should also be careful about being retaliated against.

I made you go crazy this time, but next time you might fall into someone else's hands.

Officials of the Ming Dynasty were accustomed to flattery and knew how to grasp this balance.

Criticizing superiors is to demonstrate one's unyielding character and win a good reputation among the government and the public, but it is not to create mortal enemies with the leaders.

If one can grasp this balance well, one can win praise from both the government and the public for being honest and upright. If one fails to do so, one will end up like Hai Rui and others, who left behind a good reputation but eventually withdrew from politics in disgrace.

"Let's go down. I have to go over there and listen to what this Wang Pengzi has to say."

Wei Guangde stood up, walked out of the duty room, and quickly approached Zhang Juzheng's duty room.

I heard Wang Guoguang's voice from inside while I was still outside the door, and my pace couldn't help but slow down.

"Can you please say something? The Ministry of Revenue has no money to allocate, so why not just sell the government offices in the capital and exchange them for money?

Previously, the Ministry of Revenue had the old treasury to support it, but now the old treasury is empty. Where can I get money to pay the Ministry of Works to repair the river embankment?"

The Ministry of Revenue had no silver and the Taicang warehouse was empty, which was actually something the cabinet had expected.

Every year, during the middle of the year, Taicang would receive a lot of tax silver from provinces in the north and south, but when the accounts were settled at the end of the year, most of it would be withdrawn, leaving very little.

But it is unrealistic to say that the imperial court cannot come up with any money.

In fact, Wei Guangde and Zhang Juzheng had considered how to get through this hurdle at the end of the year during their discussion.

Of course, it means borrowing money.

Aren’t there boxes of silver dollars piled up in the Changying Warehouse of the Ministry of War?
It would be too embarrassing to leave it gathering dust in the warehouse. It would be better to let the court borrow some money for use when it is in deficit, and then fill it up with the tax silver collected later.

This is also the fundamental reason why the Ming Dynasty was able to maintain stable operation before the middle of the Wanli period despite the famine every year.

However, in the middle and late Wanli period, Emperor Wanli Zhu Yijun found a way to move the silver from the Changying Treasury of the Imperial Household Department into the inner court. The lack of court supervision directly led to the rapid squandering of tens of millions of silver reserves of the two Ming dynasties in the late Wanli period and the Taichang and Tianqi dynasties.

Don't think that letting a bunch of corrupt officials guarding Changying Ku will lead to embezzlement. In fact, the corrupt officials were all looking at the piles of silver there, but no one dared to touch it.

This is actually very difficult because the money spent from the Taifu Temple's Changying Treasury had a source, which was used for military purposes.

After all, the Ming officialdom was not a monolithic entity. It was divided into several factions based on region, and there was also a group of people headed by cabinet ministers.

Mutual supervision is the reason why the silver in Changying Treasury is there, but no one dares to touch it.

Even Yan Song, who had power over the government and the country, did not dare to covet this money.

Wei Guangde finally walked into the Prime Minister's duty room. He took the initiative to bow to Wang Guoguang, but Wang Guoguang was angry at the moment and ignored him.

"It's only a short time now, and there isn't much money left in Taicang. Everything has been settled, and it's all a precedent set at the beginning of the year.

After the Ministry of Works has withdrawn its money, except for the Ministry of Rites, which can take away the money for the emperor's wedding, the money from other government offices can only be delayed until next year."

Wang Guoguang continued, revealing all the secrets of the Ming Dynasty's Ministry of Revenue.

"If there is no silver, then there is the military pay for the nine frontiers and the reward silver for the southwest."

When Wei Guangde heard Wang Guoguang's words, his heart tightened.

He didn't care whether other government offices had money, but he had to pay attention to the money in the Ministry of War.

If the Ministry of War has no money, there will be unrest in the local areas, and perhaps another mutiny is inevitable.

Well, it has been many years since the court had a mutiny over military pay. If it really happened, he, as the second-in-command of the cabinet, would be to blame.

"Minister Wang, the Ministry of Revenue pays the Ministry of War every year. The Ministry of War must have money. Let's not talk about anything else. The Ministry of War must have money when the time comes. The consequences of defaulting on payment are too great. You and I cannot afford it."

When it comes to his own interests, Wei Guangde immediately interrupted.

The mutiny of the Ming army actually started after the Tumu Fort Incident. At first, the military system of the Ming Dynasty was designed by Zhu Yuanzhang, and the "three major camps" of the Ming army guarding the capital were the most elite troops of the Ming Dynasty.

Other regions adopted the Wei Suo system of "combining soldiers with farming", and officers were hereditary. The hereditary system became a protection for their misconduct.

The lower-level soldiers were either military households who had to serve in the army for generations, or were sent as conscripts. They were ordered around by the officers all day long, and were even forced to help the officers with business and farming. They were almost like the officers' slaves, and the phenomenon of escape was very serious.

The phenomenon of reselling military rations and withholding military pay was very common in the army, and even weapons and equipment were counterfeited on a large scale. This situation was not only prevalent among the border troops, but also among the three major camps of the Ming army in the capital.

The corruption in the army directly led to a rapid decline in the army's combat effectiveness. After the Tumu Incident, military heroes gradually withdrew from the court, and civil officials controlled the power of the Ming Dynasty.

Then, the military pay of the nine frontiers became the fat meat between the civil officials and the military heroes. Previously, this piece of fat meat was monopolized by the military heroes, and now a piece of it has to be shared with the civil officials, which naturally makes the life of the lower-level soldiers more difficult.

In the southern garrisons, soldiers who did not have enough food could choose to escape.

The military farming system in the north collapsed early, and the soldiers had nowhere to escape to. After all, they needed to defend against the Mongols' southward advance, and they were stationed in camps for a long time.

In order to eat, the border troops finally couldn't bear it anymore and started to demand pay, which led to a mutiny, or a rebellion.

Although according to the current system, this is clearly a malicious act of demanding wages that needs to be severely cracked down on, the military is different after all. The organizational structure is too large, and any single move can affect the entire body, so every time a disturbance occurs, it becomes a big deal.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

Not to mention the distant past, the Jiajing reign was a turning point in the Ming Dynasty. Before that, whether it was the Zhengde reign or the Hongzhi reign, there was always the legacy left by the ancestors and the support of the silver in the old treasury of the Ministry of Revenue. It was only because of the greed of the people below that the mutiny occurred.

But during the Jiajing period, after all the money in the old treasury was squandered, there was really no money left.

As a result, there were six major mutinies during the Jiajing period due to military pay, and other small-scale mutinies occurred one after another, with at least nineteen large-scale mutinies.

All of them refer to the Ganzhou Rebellion at the end of the Zhengde period. In fact, it was all led by middle and low-level generals in the army. The root cause was actually the struggle between civil and military officials at the grassroots level. The distribution of interests was unbalanced, and the military personnel directly chose to overturn the table.

We have gone off topic. Let's get to the point. After the Longqing Dynasty, the cabinet paid more and more attention to military affairs. Both Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng took into account the poor situation of the lower levels of the Ming army, so they gave priority to ensuring the needs of the Ministry of War in financial allocations.

The result is that in recent years, especially in the nearly ten years since the Wanli period, there have been no incidents of military mutiny at the local level.

Of course, Wei Guangde did not dare to say for sure that nothing had happened. Perhaps there had been a mutiny, but it was just a small-scale one, which was quickly quelled by local officials and then covered up without being reported.

In fact, local governors and governors-general of the Ming Dynasty had already begun to consciously conceal some situations.

The imperial court now needs to obtain a lot of intelligence from local areas, either through reports from the Embroidered Uniform Guard or through reports from local inspectors and censors.

The end of the year is the time to pay military salaries to the nine frontiers. If the Ministry of Revenue does not give silver, it means that the soldiers may not get the silver for their hard work for a year before the New Year.

The New Year is coming soon, and this is pushing the soldiers towards mutiny.

If the salaries of Beijing officials were in arrears during the New Year, they would go to the Ministry of Revenue and the Cabinet to block the doors, not to mention the soldiers who could only wield swords and guns.

"There hasn't been any trouble over pay in more than ten years. If we report it now, the Ministry of War won't be able to survive this year, and the Ministry of Revenue won't be able to survive either."

As soon as Wei Guangde finished speaking, Wang Guoguang immediately became angry and said to Wei Guangde: "Lao Wei, you are threatening our Ministry of Revenue, right?

If you don’t have money, then you don’t have money. If you want me to, take the money from the Ministry of Rites for the wedding.”

"I'm not threatening you, but you are threatening me with the lives of Ming soldiers."

Wei Guangde immediately replied, "In the past, river works would never ask the Ministry of Revenue for money unless the cost was huge.

But this year is different. In order to ensure the livelihood of millions of people along the river, the imperial court decided to launch a major project to renovate the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.

The Ministry of Rivers and the Ministry of Works cannot afford the money, so the Ministry of Revenue has to bear part of the responsibility.

what about you?
As the Minister of Revenue, instead of considering where to get the money, you use military pay to threaten the cabinet. What are you going to do?
Do you want the local guards to rebel?"

The precedent of threatening the Cabinet with military pay must never be set.

Wei Guangde originally planned to come here to have some angry words from Wang Guoguang and be done with it, but if the Ministry of Revenue had nothing to do and used the Ministry of War's military pay to make trouble, this would be a difficult situation to start.

No matter how angry you are, you can't joke about military and national affairs.

Therefore, Wang Guoguang's words were directly linked to rebellion.

Although there has been no military mutiny in the past ten years, no one here has experienced such a thing.

Not to mention, Wei Guangde also encountered the Nanjing Mutiny. That was Nanjing City, and the ones causing the turmoil were the Beijing Army, which shocked the entire Ming Dynasty at the time.

Although that incident was not caused by military pay but other reasons, the soldiers' unrest was more or less related to the shortfall in military pay.

If the military pay was in place, it would be difficult for officials to lead their subordinates to cause trouble.

“Be careful with your lending and your words.”

Zhang Juzheng shouted immediately upon seeing this, and then glared at Wang Guoguang fiercely, and said in a slightly slower tone: "You see, the Ministry of Revenue must ensure the payment of military pay, this is not negotiable.

If the Ministry of Revenue is in trouble, the Cabinet will naturally take it into consideration.

In fact, the court has been running into financial deficits over the years, and this is not just a problem for you. The cabinet has been considering how to increase the court's financial revenue.

But the ice is not formed in a day, and the Ministry of Revenue will have to endure hardships in the next two years, and wait for the new policies of the imperial court to come out. "

Several people present knew Zhang Juzheng's plan.

In the past two years, due to the performance evaluation system, the annual income of the Ministry of Revenue has actually increased.

In the past, arrears in various provinces were almost eliminated. No one would let the people below delay paying national taxes and imperial grain, as that would result in the loss of their official hats.

With this item alone, the Ministry of Revenue is able to collect taxes every year, which is a significant increase in revenue.

However, because of this, many incidents have indeed occurred locally in an attempt to collect taxes.

The purpose of surveying the land was, firstly, to reduce taxes for the common people by apportioning them, and secondly, to obtain more information on the land so as to re-formulate taxes throughout the country.

According to the figures set by Zhu Yuanzhang, the requirement of increasing revenue could not be met at all, and it could only be said to be a reduction in the burden.

Over the past hundred years, the amount of farmland in the country has increased dramatically, but the court's income has not increased at all. This time, Zhang Juzheng wanted the court to benefit from it as well.

Wang Guoguang also knew that his previous words were a bit too radical, so he remained silent at this moment.

After a while, it was Zhang Siwei who broke the atmosphere in the room and said, "The Ministry of Revenue is in trouble, but the river works still need to be done.

The Ministry of Revenue should be tight-lipped first and spend all the money. At the end of the year, when all government offices will need money, we can see how big the gap is. If we can slow down the process, we can slow down the process. If we can’t, we can borrow money from the Changying Treasury.”

Zhang Juzheng and Wei Guangde both nodded. Wei Guangde also took out the memorial sent by the Ministry of War and said, "This is a detailed battle report sent by Li Chengliang in the southwest. I have an idea. Why not ask the Ministry of War to let Li Chengliang contact Yu Dayou as soon as possible and send the treasures in Toungoo City, Myanmar to the capital.

Those in the Burmese royal palace must be brought into the inner court, but the gold and silver can be transferred to the Ministry of Revenue as rewards to support the court first.

As for the Ming army, let them continue to garrison in Burma. There is no need to rush to prepare the reward silver. Let's deal with the matter first." (End of this chapter)