The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 493 Heshen and Jiaqing

Beijing, Forbidden City, Zhongji Hall.

Mo Zibu first cleared out the Qing Dynasty elements in the Taimiao of the Forbidden City, but he didn't destroy them directly. He just threw them somewhere.

Since the Mo family's ancestral temple was built in Yingtian Prefecture, the one in Beijing is temporarily vacant. As for the plaques inscribed in Manchu and other things, it will take some time to replace them.

After making these simple adjustments, Mo Zibu summoned all the high-ranking Manchu officials in Beijing to the Zhongji Hall.

At this time, the future Emperor Jiaqing was just twenty years old, thin and small, and did not look like a big shot.

His body had been trembling slightly since he entered Zhongji Hall. Mo Zibu even suspected that he would suddenly urinate.

"Yongyan, haven't you heard that I'm going to kill all of you Yellow Belts and Red Belts? Why don't you follow your Sixth Brother and run away?"

When Jiaqing heard Mo Zibu's words, he trembled even more violently.

This emperor was famous in history for his confusion and weakness. In the first half of his life, he relied on his teacher Zhu Gui and others for protection. After Zhu Gui and others died, Jiaqing could only ask what to do when encountering problems. He was almost stabbed to death by his cook Chen De at the Shenwu Gate of the Forbidden Palace.

Lin Qing's Tianli Sect also broke into the palace in his later years, causing a huge joke.

From the perspective of being an emperor, Jiaqing's ability was not as good as that of his son Daoguang, who was charged five taels of silver by the Imperial Household Department for eating an egg.

"Your Majesty, my sinner Sixth Brother didn't call me when he left."

Ah? ? ?
Mo Zibu almost laughed out loud. He had thought of many answers, but he never expected Jiaqing to say this.

If he didn't have a rough idea of what kind of person Jiaqing was in history, he would almost think that this guy was pretending to be stupid.

"You refused to leave even when I told you to. It seems you are ready to die for your country, right?" Mo Zibu continued to question, trying hard to suppress his laughter.

When Jiaqing heard the words "die for the country", he was completely frightened. He didn't know how to answer and actually looked back as if he was looking for someone.

"Your Majesty is a wise and brave ruler, a benevolent and righteous king. Why kill a useless person?" One of the kneeling people took two steps on his knees, came out and kowtowed.

When Ji Yun saw this person, he immediately whispered in Mo Zibu's ear, "This person is Zhu Yun, the one who first proposed compiling the Siku Quanshu."

Mo Zibu was furious and sneered, "Okay, so you are Zhu Jun."

Emperor Mo stepped down from the throne, pointed his halberds at the old man kneeling on the ground, and roared, "I can spare the lives of useless people, but I must kill you, Zhu Yun!"

After saying that, Mo Zibu was still not satisfied, so he kicked Zhu Jun on the left shoulder, causing him to roll on the ground.

“You bastard, even though you grew up in Shuntian Prefecture, you are still a Han Chinese and a scholar.

How mad and heartless must you be to have initiated the compilation of the Siku Quanshu? Do you know how many ancient books our great China has lost because of your suggestion?"

Zhu Jun actually didn't quite understand why Mo Zibu had to dwell on this matter. The Siku Quanshu hadn't been completed yet when Dayu attacked back. Ji Yun and his men had at least saved more than 80% of it, so the loss wasn't that big!

Of course, Zhu Yun at that time never dreamed how serious an impact his suggestion would have in history.

However, Zhu Jun did not make much of an argument. Ever since his brother Zhu Gui died in Kunming, he knew that there was no chance of survival.

"The reason I proposed this is because the Yongle Encyclopedia had omissions. I originally wanted to add to and revise it so that it would be remembered forever, but I didn't expect that Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty had other requirements. I..."

In fact, the reason is exactly as Zhu Yun said. This person has high literary attainments and is very fond of this kind of work of compiling, statistics, and revising books.

More importantly, Zhu Yun was a stutterer, which meant that he could never become a high-ranking official. Therefore, he particularly hoped to rebuild a national project like the Yongle Encyclopedia to leave his name for posterity.

But he never dreamed that Qianlong had become a little crazy in these aspects because of his inferiority complex about his own culture. As a result, the Siku Quanshu proposed by Zhu Yun became the most tragic cultural catastrophe in Chinese history.

It can be said that Zhu Jun's mistake may have been unintentional, but he was at least responsible for 20% to 30% of the fault.

Even this 20% or 30% is enough to cost him his head.

Zhu Jun was stuttering here, and Mo Zibu was too lazy to listen to him continue, so he immediately interrupted him and waved to the back.

"Even if it was an unintentional mistake, as you said, the devastation it caused requires your death to atone for it."

"Take the criminal Zhu Yun outside Chengtian Gate and behead him on the spot!"

"Your Majesty, I am a criminal who is willing to be punished. I only ask Your Majesty not to implicate my family!" Zhu Jun's face was pale and cold sweat was dripping down. After hesitating for a moment, he said the most uncluttered words in his life, and then he was quickly dragged away by the executioner of the Jinyiwei.

The 20-year-old Jiaqing was so frightened by this that he burst into tears and collapsed to the ground.

"What about you, Yongyan? I just asked you if you also want to die for your country. Now answer me."

In fact, Mo Zibu no longer had much killing intent at this time. If you were to see someone like Lao Nu, Dorgon, or Kang Mazi in front of him, he would naturally humiliate him before executing him by slow slicing.

But there is no point in bullying a cowardly and useless person like Jiaqing.

"Your Majesty, if the king wishes me to die, I must die."

Unexpectedly, Jiaqing was not completely stupid. He actually handled this sentence quite well.

Mo Zibu was so angry that he almost laughed. He pointed at his nose and said, "What kind of minister are you? Who agreed to let you be a minister?"

At this time, He Shen, who was kneeling on the ground, glanced at Ji Yun and Ji Xiaolan. Ji Yun hesitated for a moment, then stood up and said, "I will do my best to help you."
"Your Majesty, Yongyan is Hongli's fifteenth son. He was never favored, and he suffered the pain of losing his son at the beginning of the year. I think this is also a punishment from heaven.

Moreover, there is no point in killing such a mediocre and cowardly person. It is better to expel him from the palace and let him guard the tombs of the false emperors of the Qing Dynasty."

"Yes!" Mo Zibu thought about it and agreed without much hesitation.

Several generations of Qing Dynasty emperors have been buried inside the Great Wall. We cannot just raze their tombs to the ground; that would be inappropriate.

However, Mo Zibu felt unhappy again after a moment of disgust, so he continued, "The tombs of the emperors who rebelled against the Qing Dynasty are divided into two tombs, the east and west, which makes it inconvenient to take care of them.

In my opinion, it is better to move Yongzheng's tomb from the Western Tombs and rebury him in Shengshui Valley of the Eastern Tombs.

Imperial mausoleums have always been a waste of money and labor since ancient times. I will not build them. The construction of Shengshuiyu Mausoleum has consumed a huge amount of people's money, and many people have lost their families. Let's stop the construction now.

Don't build anything that's not finished yet, and let the laborers go home."

At this time, only Yongzheng and his concubines were buried in the Western Qing Tombs of the Qing Dynasty. As for the tomb built in Shengshuiyu of the Eastern Qing Tombs, it was built by Qianlong for himself.

The construction of this mausoleum began in the eighth year of Qianlong's reign (1743), shortly after Hongli ascended the throne. It has been under construction for 1799 years and has not yet been completed. Historically, it was not completed until , which shows how large its scale is.

Ji Yun understood that the emperor wanted to use this as an excuse to disgust the bannermen. Yongzheng was buried well, but they insisted on digging him out, saying that he was moving the tomb, but in fact he was digging up people's ancestral graves.

The people whose tombs were dug up couldn't say anything, because when Yongzheng and Qianlong were building their mausoleums, they ran out of precious wood and had to dig up the tombs of Ming emperors like Jiajing.

“As for the title, Ni Qing once conferred a title of Marquis of Yan’en, but my Dayu’s title is not as worthless as Ni Qing’s.

"I will appoint Aixinjueluo Yongyan as the Eastern Tomb Worship Officer, and from now on he will take his family with him to guard the tomb for his ancestors."

"I thank Your Majesty for his grace." Jiaqing was obedient and kowtowed to express his gratitude. It was good enough that he could save his life, and he also had an official position and salary, which was indeed a blessing from heaven.

After saying this, Mo Zibu asked someone to call in the Marquis of Yan'en, who was canonized by the Qing Dynasty.

The so-called Manchu Marquis of Yan'en was a man named Zhu Zhilian whom Yongzheng found in Zhengding Prefecture at the beginning of his reign. He said that he was a descendant of Zhu Gui, the King of the Ming Dynasty, and then conferred a hereditary first-class Marquis of Yan'en on him.

This rank of Marquis of Yan'en may sound very prestigious, but in fact his status is extremely low, with an annual salary of only 600 taels of silver and about 300 dan of rice.

The treatment was not even as good as that of a middle-class landlord. The title of a crappy marquis was actually just a face-saving project to let Zhu Zhilian come out to guard the tombs of the Ming Dynasty emperors.

Moreover, the generation name of Zhu Zhilian's family is different from that of the Dai Wang line. If the Qing Dynasty was not so bored as to forge this thing, Zhu Zhilian could only be from a distant branch of the Dai Wang and a descendant of the Jun Wang line.

The Marquis of Yan'en of this generation was named Zhu Yifeng, who inherited the title in the 1775th year of Qianlong's reign (). As soon as this man came in, Mo Zibu disliked him very much.

You are a descendant of the Ming Dynasty, and the Marquis of Yan'en who is responsible for guarding the mausoleum. As a result, I have conquered the city of Beijing, but you didn't even cut your braids and are still waiting outside in a Qing Dynasty official uniform waiting to be summoned.

Mo Zibu really didn't know how to comment, and for a moment he lost interest in talking to him, and directly ordered:
"The bannermen are originally the people of the Ming Dynasty. I am also a general of the Ming Dynasty. How dare you, a traitor, usurp the throne and confer the title of Marquis of Yan'en? You don't need to be a marquis anymore. I will grant you a royal farm in Changping. Go home and live your life."

Zhu Yifeng was overjoyed, because the Yan'en Marquis of this rank in the Qing Dynasty really had no status, and even his salary and rice were often in arrears.

The new emperor gave him a farm, at least one or two thousand acres of land, and collecting rent himself was definitely more practical and comfortable than waiting for a salary.

Moreover, the descendants are no longer required to guard the tomb, and can go out to study and become officials in the future.

After dealing with these issues, the only thing left was how to resettle the Bannermen. Ever since Mo Zibu started his rebellion to regain the lost territory, the Bannermen had been hit hard repeatedly.

Before this, there were about 800,000 bannermen in the country, excluding the small number of Mongolian Eight Banners in the south of the desert. Now, according to preliminary statistics, there are only about 400,000.

Among them, there are about 40,000 in Shaanxi and Gansu, controlled by the Qing Dynasty's General Xi'an, about 20,000 in the Western Regions, and another 40,000 to 50,000 outside the Great Wall.

In other words, the number of Bannermen decreased by more than 300,000 in just two years. Of course, this does not mean that all these 300,000 Bannermen died.

Those who died in battle or were killed were probably around 100,000, and the remaining 200,000 or so simply disappeared among the Han people after their braids were cut off.

Many of these bannermen, especially those stationed in the south, could speak the local dialect and took advantage of the chaos to disguise themselves as Han Chinese. As long as they were not high-ranking officials, it would be difficult to find them.

No, it should be said that even if a high-ranking official hides among the people, it is difficult to find him in a short time.

For example, at the end of last year, the Jinyiwei Beizhenfu Division received news that the former Qing Dynasty Jiangsu Governor Yang Kui and Jiangxi Governor Hao Shuo were hiding among the people with hundreds of thousands of taels of silver. The Beizhenfu Division investigated for four months and still has no clue.

Among the remaining bannermen, those in Chengdu are easy to arrange, and they can just continue to serve in the army.

Because not only the Qing Dynasty needs to strictly control western Sichuan and northern Sichuan, but Dayu also needs to be controlled. Now let those who are already familiar with the job continue to serve as soldiers.

A group of Jingzhou bannermen were defeated in Macun, and the rest were taken to the south without even leaving the battlefield. Mo Zibu planned to exile them to Guiren Prefecture in Rinan Province and Jiaxi Prefecture in Jiaqing Province.

Only these Beijing bannermen, most of whom were high-ranking officials of the Qing Dynasty, controlled a large amount of land and other means of production, and had relatives in the Western Regions and the Northeast, so they could be considered of some use.

Therefore, it is very troublesome to arrange, as it requires identifying each one individually, finding the useful ones and recruiting them, separating and exiling the useless ones, and imprisoning the guilty ones to await trial.

Mo Zibu looked at Heshen and the adult beside him. This man really had the talent to be a prime minister, especially in financial management.

It's just that he has no moral integrity and can easily lower his bottom line as the needs of the people above him change.

Mo Zibu believes that in history, Heshen could have obtained enough money for Emperor Qianlong to squander without going so far.

But Heshen did not do that. He chose the method that was most convenient and could bring him the most benefits.

Thinking of this, Mo Zibu asked He Shen, "Now Yongrong has fled to southern Mongolia under the protection of Kalaqin. What do you think should be done?"

Heshen was a little nervous when he heard Mo Zibu's question, and he felt quite emotional. He had just climbed to a senior management position in another company, and before he could even get comfortable in the office, he had to start climbing up again in a new company.

If there was a choice, Heshangren really didn't want to repeat it again, but unfortunately there was no choice. After thinking for a while, he replied:

"The policy implemented by successive Qing emperors towards the Mongols was to establish marriages with the Mongols in the south of the desert and to confer titles of nobility on the north to win them over.

The Khorchin and Kharchin people in the south of the desert are all bannermen. Although there is a feud between the Chahars, it has been almost resolved, and they can basically be regarded as bannermen.

Therefore, Your Majesty still has to give them a painful beating so that they will know how powerful you are. He then sent Yongrong and others to the capital.

As for the four tribes in the northern desert, their population had been reduced dramatically after hundreds of years of control by the Qing Dynasty. The upper class could not do without the luxurious supplies from the Central Plains, and the lower class could not do without the food, rice, oil and salt from the Central Plains. They were actually much easier to deal with than the Mongols in the south of the desert.

We just need to wait for a while, and then let the merchants going west notify them to come to Chengde to pay homage."

After saying this, He Shen looked at Mo Zibu's expression and continued cautiously, "But this is based on the current situation. If Yong Rong and others are gone, the Mongolian Plateau will be easier for the imperial court to control.

The Mongols in the northern desert will not obey orders, and I'm afraid it will take several more battles to make them completely submit."

The basic strategy was correct. Mo Zibu stood up and said, "You have been instrumental in preserving the Forbidden City. Now, I will leave the task of how to deal with the 160,000 bannermen in Zhili to you. I believe you should understand which ones are useful to the new dynasty and which ones are not."

Heshen was overjoyed. If this matter was done well, it would definitely mean a great promotion.

He knelt down with a plop. "I understand. Your Majesty, please rest assured that I will do it beautifully."

Heshen was right. Mo Zibu did want to use him, but not in the court. Instead, he wanted to use him in Fuxing Company.

As a company responsible for promoting industrialization and monetary reform and establishing financial markets in the Great Yu Dynasty, Fuxing Company has developed very slowly in recent years. It often needs the emperor Mo Zibu to personally assign tasks before it will move forward.

Those who were in charge of Fuxing Company, whether it was Wei Changle, the nephew of his sworn brother Wei Rikun, or Liu Zhisan, who was from Mingxiang, Hoi An, could not understand what Mo Zibu meant at all.

They did not understand that the Fuxing Company should be an entity between the Imperial Household Department and a business firm, similar to the key state-owned enterprises of later generations.

These two people either regard themselves as the Minister of the Imperial Household Department or as Mo Zibu's white gloves, and have no idea of their position.

Mo Zibu decided to take a good look at Heshen's abilities before sending him to Europe for two years.

After his horizons broadened, he gradually let this historical corrupt official, who was two years younger than him, manage Fuxing Company for him.

(End of this chapter)