The ruthless emperor in the late Ming Dynasty forced Chongzhen to abdicate at the beginning

Chapter 291 The Empress Dowager Is Too Ruthless

By the time Zhu Cihong's order arrived in Nanjing, it was already the end of November.

Although both Zhang Yan and Ma Shiying were very surprised that His Majesty suddenly wanted to transfer Ma Shiying back to Beijing when the imperial examination was approaching this critical period, they chose to carry out this order without hesitation.

Ma Shiying just tidied up in a hurry, then selected hundreds of officials, big and small, from the seven cabinet ministries, and set off for the capital together without delay.

Although the six government offices in Beijing have long been useless, and a large number of officials have been removed to various places, there are still hundreds of people left to eat and die. Naturally, Zhu Cihong will not let Ma Shiying come alone, but allows him to choose One hundred officials accompanied them so that they could start work immediately after arriving in the capital.

As for Ma Shiying, the cabinet assistant, although hundreds of people were removed from various ministries and went to the capital, it had little impact on the southern administrative system, that is, Zhang Yan was busier than usual, and the other seven ministries were not affected at all.

Because the seven departments perform their own duties without interfering with each other, although the seven ministers are controlled by Ma Shiying, they have great power. The seven are eager for Ma Shiying, the immediate boss, to leave so that they can report directly to the Queen Mother.

The cabinet left the backbone of Ma Shiying, and it was really affected a lot. It was uncertain about big and small things, so I had to ask Zhang Yan for instructions. After a few days of busy work, Zhang Yan also completely delegated power to six departments. Shang Shu, this became easier again.

And Ma Shiying hurried along with a group of civil servants, and finally arrived in the capital before the year.

As soon as he arrived in the capital, Zhu Cihong asked him to reorganize the yamen first, and at the same time added a Ministry of Commerce and a Ministry of Agriculture. As for the Ministry of War, it was directly abolished, and the heads of the seven departments were all Zuo Shilang, and no new ministers were appointed.

After several years of training, Ma Shiying is indeed very experienced, and more importantly, compared with other civil servants, he has already figured out the attitude of the emperor.

He knows what he can do and what he can't touch, and he also knows how much power he has. Unlike other civil servants who worry about this and that, they can completely let go of their hands and feet, so naturally they can get twice the result with half the effort.

How to carry out the New Deal in the four northern provinces. On the road, I had a clear idea in my mind. I decided to reorganize the various departments in the central center of the capital first, and then carry out administrative reforms, swap the officials of the four provinces, and incorporate the officials into the civil service system. Wait, after completing this series of measures, count the population, fields, mines, and shops, and finally distribute them equally according to the total population and the number of acres of fields in each state and county.

Zhu Cihong saw that what he said was logical and understood the New Deal very thoroughly, and he was completely relieved. Just after the new year, he left Beijing with a team of Imperial Forest Army to go south in the third year of junior high school.

This time Zhu Cihong planned to go by land, first to check the Yellow River estuary near Tianjin, then go south along the Yellow River channel under construction, and after arriving at the Yellow River, go east to Nanjing via the canal.

After more than two years of construction, half of the Yellow River reconstruction project has been completed. Since the Yellow River took the Huaihe River into the sea in the Song Dynasty, the old river course after hundreds of years has either become fertile fields or villages.

If the villages along the way are not relocated and the river course is renovated, the Yellow River will be diverted northward forcibly. Although the Yellow River will definitely be diverted into the Bohai Sea in the end, the loss and damage will definitely be huge.

Another point is that the return of the Yellow River to the north will have a huge impact on the canal. This is why the Ming and Qing dynasties knew the harm of the Yellow River's seizure of the Huaihe River, but they always let it go. They were worried that the reintroduction of the Yellow River to the north would affect the canal.

As for diverting the Yellow River to the north, it is actually very simple. Without considering the life and death of the people, just dig a levee in the east of Henan, but the course of the Yellow River is out of control.

Because the course of the Yellow River in the north has not been stabilized in history, and it has been diverted several times. Each time it is earth-shattering, and there are countless casualties. Naturally, Zhu Cihong will not let the Yellow River return to the north by himself. Therefore, he did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to build the river first and then divert it. , and the new Yellow River channel is roughly built according to the Yellow River channel in the previous life, even if there is a discrepancy, it will not be too big.

Zhu Cihong walked and inspected all the way, the speed was very slow, but the countless scholars in the north were not as leisurely as him, but as soon as the new year was over, they hurried south with their friends from the same hometown.

Because the Shenwu Dynasty's second imperial examination will be held on the first day of February in all prefectures and counties of the seven southern provinces. Scholars outside the seven provinces can choose any prefecture to participate.

However, the scholars from Shandong naturally chose to go to the nearest Xuzhou to participate, the scholars from Henan and Shaanxi went to Fengyang Mansion, Xiangyang Mansion, and Xunyang Mansion, and most of the scholars from Sichuan went to Jingzhou Mansion.

However, scholars from Guizhou and Yunnan are rushing to Hunan and Guangxi provinces, and scholars from Northern Zhili and Shanxi also plan to go to Hubei to participate.

Compared with the 300 million examinees in the seven provinces, the other provinces add up to only 30 to 20. These [-] are all real scholars with financial resources, and there are almost no servant girls.

After the beginning of the new year, the atmosphere in the south became obviously tense, such as Guangxi, Guangdong, and Fujian in remote areas. A few years ago, Zhang Yan directly dispatched batches of imperial forest troops to escort the test papers to the capital cities of the three provinces.

These imperial guards escorting the test papers are almost always in teams of ten, each team has two female soldiers, and then temporarily hires ten to twenty people.

Not only the test papers, they will be directly escorted to the state capitals by the Imperial Forest Army. The local garrison will be responsible for all the supervision and order maintenance of the examination rooms. All will be handled by the local garrison.

The officials of the Ministry of Rites in each state capital are only responsible for registration and assistance from the sidelines, and they can't get involved at all. Even after the exam is over, the examinee's test papers will be brought back to Nanjing by the Imperial Forest Army for centralized review, and then the Ministry of Rites will announce the passing of each state capital. Talent list.

Although it is very troublesome to go back and forth like this, and it will take at least three or four months to get the result, it almost eliminates all possibilities of fraud.

Officials from all over the country had no access to the candidates' test papers from the beginning to the end, and even if they did, they would not know whose test papers they were.

How distrustful of their civil officials would it take to make such an arrangement?

Obviously, no one expected that the Queen Mother would be so ruthless. She not only sent the Imperial Forest Army to personally escort the test papers to the examination rooms, but also asked the garrison to take charge of the order of the examination rooms, so that the civil servants could not intervene at all.

(End of this chapter)