Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 202 Although I live deep in the palace, don’t try to deceive me!
June 7th, the second year of the Jiajing reign.

Zhu Houcong was admiring a pair of white deer presented by the Liaodong inspector in Shanglin Garden.

"Yo yo, the deer roars, eating the apples of the wild."

Zhu Houcong couldn't help but recite a line from the Book of Songs. Then he asked Wang Yangming, the Minister of War who came with him to Taiye Lake:
"Have all the soldiers selected to serve as inspectors in Huguang arrived in Beijing?"

Wang Yangming replied: "They have all arrived in Beijing."

“Where were they selected?”

Zhu Houcong asked.

Wang Yangming replied: "Because Jizhou, Xuanfu, Datong, Liaodong, and Shanxi are close to Beijing, we basically choose veteran soldiers with meritorious service from these places!"

Zhu Houcong nodded after hearing this and said: "Before sending them to take office, we still need to gather them together, train them, and explain the national policy to them, so that they understand why the court wants them to serve as military officials in Huguang."

Wang Yangming bowed and said yes.

For Zhu Houcong, what he needed most now was to allow the silver collected from Nanzhi to continue to flow out on a large scale in the form of silver dollars and into the hands of the people.

Now, the powerful bureaucrats who lent him money at low interest rates included the royal relatives in the capital, the Yuan family in Huguang, and the Liang family in Guangdong.

Naturally, there is no need to worry about loans not being disbursed to the people in the capital, because there are many Jinyiwei in the capital to keep an eye on it.

Guangdong has even less to worry about, because Guangdong's main borrowers are big players in overseas smuggling trade. If they want to borrow money from the Liang family, other powerful families cannot stop them.

The only thing is that Huguang is mountainous and far away from the emperor, and it is also inland and the main grain producing area of ​​the Ming Dynasty. The people who borrow money are definitely mainly farmers.

If the imperial court wants to truly benefit local farmers and common people, it needs to strengthen the power of the government to keep an eye on it.

Therefore, Zhu Houcong decided to pilot reforms in Huguang to increase the number of local officials and their salaries.

Wang Yangming naturally supported the emperor's reform measures to set up local armed inspection offices to strengthen local public security.

Because he himself was an official who rose to his position by suppressing bandits, he was very clear about how serious the local security had become as the contradiction between people and land intensified. He also knew that it was no longer realistic for the Ming Dynasty to rely solely on local gentry to maintain local order.

After all, due to the intensified contradiction between population and land, local gentry often took the lead in local struggles and even colluded with bandits to carry out annexation.

He was very fortunate to have met such an emperor who was willing to do practical things, and this also made him take the tasks assigned to him by Zhu Houcong very seriously.

"You are to be sent to Huguang to serve as officers of the Inspection Office of the Inspection Department. You are all clear about how your salary and performance bonus will be distributed."

"Now I want to make it clear to you that the reason why the court has added so many inspection officers is not to send more officials to Huguang to oppress the people, but to better ensure the local security in Huguang, so that the court can more effectively suppress the oppression of the common people by the rich and powerful."

"For example, right now, the imperial tutor Yuan Gong is lending low-interest loans in Huguang to help the people, in order to get interest rates reduced in his hometown. If this happens, the local tyrants will be dissatisfied, and some bold and reckless people will cause trouble. The simplest way is to instigate bandits and outlaws to attack and deter the common people who borrow money from the Yuan family, so that the common people dare not borrow money at such a low interest rate."

"So!"

"At this time, we need the troops of the Inspection Office and the Inspection Office to fight these people, so that the common people can borrow money at low interest rates and achieve your majesty's goal of sending the newly minted silver dollars to the common people through the Yuan family."

"Although, according to the latest regulations, you can kill people when performing official duties due to necessity, but your performance is linked to the number of people killed in the area under your jurisdiction each year. The more people you kill, the less your performance will be, so don't forget to remind you."

After Zhu Houcong asked Wang Yangming, the Minister of War, to organize temporary training for these soldiers who were about to be sent to Huguang, Wang Yangming asked Gui E, who had been promoted to the Deputy Director of the Military Selection Department of the Ministry of War, to train these soldiers and mentioned the real reason why the court sent them to Huguang.

Ma Jixian, a soldier who had lost one eye due to an injury, could not help but say to his fellow villager Dong Guan, who had been elected with him, "So we are going to fight against the powerful?"

"Otherwise, do you still think it's as simple as suppressing bandits and catching thieves?"

Dong Guan asked with a low laugh.

Ma Jixian smiled and said, "That's quite exciting. Not to mention such a high salary, even if there is no salary, but only two full meals a day, I am willing to do this job."

"How much do you hate the rich?"

Dong Guan replied.

Ma Jixian smiled awkwardly and said nothing, but his eyes moved involuntarily, as if he was recalling some past events.

Seeing this, Dong Guan guessed that Ma Jixian was remembering the scene where his father was forced to commit suicide by the powerful, so he patted him on the shoulder.

After the training, those old soldiers who had been slightly injured in the court's wars and could no longer serve as regular soldiers of the court, or who were old and sick, were sent to the inland areas to serve as officers in the Inspection Office and to train the militia. They were then boarded ships and transported to Huguang one after another.

In midsummer, outside Chaoyang Gate, the ground is covered with green trees and the boats are densely packed like a forest.

Ma Jixian and others walked along the green trees along the river and took a look at the Forbidden City.

The reason why they took a look at the Forbidden City before leaving was because they knew that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was there.

The Emperor of the Ming Dynasty gave these people, who would have lost their military qualifications due to injuries and whose economic income would have plummeted and who would have become poor people in border towns or refugees in the capital, the opportunity to continue to live a decent life and create value for society.

For them, it is inevitable that they will be grateful to this emperor in their hearts, and feel that this emperor is a really good emperor who actually cares about them, who are not valued by society. ...

……

After Zhu Houcong and Wang Yangming watched the white deer at Taiye Lake in the Forbidden City, he received a secret report from Guo Xun from Huguang.

Zhu Houcong also learned that Huguang Governor Xiao Cong intended to join forces with Guo Xun to harm Yuan Zonggao.

"As expected, you can only know a person's face but not his heart!"

Zhu Houcong complained in his heart, then wrote a secret handwritten decree to Zhu An, a Jinyiwei in Huguang, asking him to investigate the monk in the Liao Palace and Zhu Zhige, the prince of Liao, and report immediately if there was any evidence of their crimes.

Zhu Houcong knew that it would not be easy to reform the civil service system in Huguang and increase the number of grassroots officials.

Therefore, he was not surprised that Governor Xiao Cong pretended to obey but actually disobeyed.

Notice.

He had already issued a secret order to the Jinyiwei in Huguang, stating that if the governor was dishonest, even if there was no solid evidence, he could be killed in the name of a rebel after getting one person to testify. This would make him a sacrifice for the reform even if he could not be the executor of the reform.

Zhu Houcong was not a person who only knew how to use open strategies. He would also do something ruthless when he dared to.

There is no way. The struggle between the central imperial power and the local scholar power is destined to be bloody. It is impossible to issue an order easily, and the officials at all levels below will not carry it out as seriously as the game characters with 100% loyalty.

Because people are always complicated. Some die for money, some die for justice, and some may even fight for money before and then fight for justice.

However, Zhu Houcong's reform in Huguang was not complicated. It was nothing more than returning the fire consumption tax to the public, increasing the salaries of officials and adding some grassroots bureaucrats.

Logically, officials should not object.

But this is only theoretically possible. For local bureaucrats, it actually meant that they lost the power to decide on fire consumption and were forced to make local finances transparent to the central court.

Of course, Zhu Houcong had to implement it even if local officials opposed it.

After all, if the central court cannot understand the local finances, how can it control the local areas, how can it allocate local money and grain, and how can it determine which officials are greedy and where the deficit is the most serious?

In this way, once disaster relief occurs, the relief grain cannot be distributed to the people, and the special funds for benefiting the people cannot be distributed to the lowest-level people to promote prosperity in the market.

But if the imperial court really wanted to strengthen its control over the local areas, relying solely on fire consumption silver would not be enough.

Because there were structural problems with the Ming Dynasty’s tax rates.

The regular taxes were set very low since Zhu Yuanzhang founded the country. Not only the land tax, but even the commercial tax was set very low.

This resulted in the fact that after the fire consumption was returned to the public, although the possibility of the people being over-exploited was curbed, the total tax would still not be high enough because the base of the regular tax was too low. In this way, the fire consumption silver associated with it would not be too much. Taking the tax amount for next year as more than 20 million shi of grain, even if the fire consumption was set the same as the regular tax, it would only be more than 50 million shi of grain.

Of course, the Ming Emperor could not do such a thing as raising the fire consumption tax to the same level as the regular tax.

But this does show that the base of the regular tax was too low, which limited the total tax revenue of the Ming Dynasty to not be too high.

Therefore, if Zhu Houcong really wanted to increase the number of grassroots bureaucrats by hundreds of thousands or even millions across the country, the silver for fire consumption would not be enough to support local expenditures.

Especially in many places in the northwest and southwest, the people are so poor that it is difficult to collect the full amount of regular taxes, so the fire consumption silver is naturally even less. How can a huge grassroots bureaucratic system be maintained?

It just so happens that these places are the most vast and face the most complicated situations, with various forces such as gentry, chieftains, and foreign invaders intertwined.

Therefore, Zhu Houcong was very clear that if he really wanted to strengthen his control over the local areas, it would not be enough to just remit the fire consumption revenue to the public, but he also had to prepare for financial allocations to some places.

This will also increase central court spending.

to be honest.

If he, as an emperor, really wants to strengthen his control over the local areas, he should make more money and get more money from everywhere.

As long as you spend enough money, there is nothing that cannot be controlled.

The most important source of extra income for Zhu Houcong now is the mineral resources in Donglai.

But after Zhu Houcong gave the secret decree to the Jinyiwei of Huguang, Mao Ji reported to him one thing. Lai Yuan, the imperial censor of Fujian, reported that the Donglai mineral veins had been exhausted, and requested to change the organization of immigrants and exiled criminals from mining to reclamation.

Zhu Houcong naturally didn't believe this.

Because he knew that the Jingua gold mine in Donglai was not fully mined by Japan for more than half a century in modern times. With the mining capabilities of this era, how could it be possible to mine almost all of it in one year?

This reminded Zhu Houcong of Liang Chu's words, and knowing that these people really thought that he, the emperor far away in the Forbidden City, was easy to deceive, he could not help but smile coldly and thought:

"These local tyrants really want to take my gold mine for themselves!"

(End of this chapter)