Ming Dynasty: Moral blackmail? I, Emperor Chongzhen, have no morals!

With his hands on the table, Zhu Jian leaned over and carefully examined the map of Beizhili in the dim light.

His finger traced across the map, passing through important cities like the Great Wall, Jizhou, and Miyun, before finally landing on the capital.

Zhu Jian stared sharply at the capital.

It was here that Yue Tuo and Dorgon's two armies converged outside the city. Finally, they divided their forces into eight groups and swept along the Grand Canal and the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains, capturing most of Beizhili and dozens of prefectures and counties in western Shandong, burning towns and massacring soldiers and civilians.

As Zhu Jian's gaze slowly moved, familiar place names such as Gaoyang, Julu, and Jinan appeared on the map.

In the Battle of Gaoyang, Sun Chengzong led his family and the soldiers and civilians of Gaoyang to resist the Qing army. They held out for five days. After the city fell, he hanged himself. All seventeen members of his family died for their country!

In the Battle of Julu, Lu Xiang-sheng encountered the main force of the Qing army at Jiazhuang. Due to the constraints imposed by the imperial court and the lack of troops, he died in battle for his country!

In the Battle of Jinan, Imperial Censor Song Xuezhu and Left Provincial Administration Commissioner Zhang Bingwen led more than a thousand men to defend Jinan for nine days and nights. They died in battle. After the city fell, the Qing army massacred the city of Jinan, resulting in more than 100,000 civilian casualties!

Looking at these place names, Zhu Jian clenched his fists, the veins on the back of his hands bulging.

There was only one thought in my mind: to fight, and we had to fight! And we had to fight big!

Yang Sichang, the Minister of War, always believed that internal stability was necessary before resisting external aggression. Even after the Qing army entered the pass, he still wanted to seek peace with them and wanted to annihilate the forces of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong before starting to resist the Qing.

In Yang Sichang's view, the threat posed by peasant armies such as Li Zicheng was far greater than that posed by the Qing army.

Zhu Jian believed that the threat posed by the peasant army was a military threat, while the Qing army was a political threat, and moreover, a threat from two different dynastic systems.

Like bandits, peasant armies roamed around aimlessly, lacking any unified political system or territory to occupy.

However, the Qing army outside the Great Wall, under the reorganization of Huang Taiji, had already completed the transformation from a tribe to a regime.

Once the Qing army defeats the Ming regime, it will be easy for them to transform from invaders into rulers, and the peasant army's biggest demand is survival!

From this point of view, it can be concluded that the threat posed by the peasant army is far less than that of the Qing army. Zhu Jian set a general direction for the future in his mind, which is to unite all forces that can be united to resist the Qing first!

After bending down to examine the map, Zhu Jian slowly sat down on a heavily faded armchair. The wooden chair creaked under its weight.

He then placed the memorial beside him on the map and began to examine it.

In the past, Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, was incredibly diligent, attending to every detail. He would review and approve memorials almost immediately upon receipt, then forward them to the cabinet for specific implementation plans.

In Zhu Youjian's view, all of this was like trying to kill a pig by stabbing its ass, an effort that went in the wrong direction.

This is the first time that Zhu Jian has read the memorials since arriving here, but his focus is limited to the military and finance.

As for the memorials submitted by local prefects and provincial governors, requesting rewards from the court for widows who were observing chastity and for filial sons who had observed mourning for several years, they were simply thrown aside upon seeing them. Such memorials were left to the cabinet to handle.

He wasn't in the mood to care about these trivial matters.

In his eyes, only two types of memorials were most important: military and political memorials and financial memorials.

Military and political memorials were Zhu Jian's means of understanding all the armies of the Ming Dynasty.

Finance is about understanding how much money the imperial court currently has, where the money comes from, where it is spent, and how much money is left!

Before long, Zhu Jian threw the worthless memorials under the corner of the table; there were about a hundred of them.

Dozens of documents were left on the table, all of which were related to military, political, and financial matters.

"Send these memorials to the Cabinet! Let them review them themselves!" Prosecutor Zhu said, pointing to the pile of memorials on the corner of the table.

Before he could finish speaking, Wang Chengen, standing beside him, quickly bowed and went to the door, beckoning two eunuchs in. He then picked up the memorial from the ground, placed it in the eunuchs' laps, and whispered in their ears, "Send it to the Grand Secretariat! His Majesty's decree is for the Grand Secretariat to review and approve it themselves!"

"Yes!" The two eunuchs replied softly, bowing their heads and not daring to raise them, as they carried the memorials in their arms and left the small room.

Then Wang Chengen stepped forward, closed the door of the side room, and quickly returned to Zhu Jian's side, standing to one side behind him.

Zhu Jian looked at the memorials left in front of him. He still had to read them carefully to decide which ones to reply to and how to reply.

I just glanced through it and categorized it, but the main content can be summarized in two words—short of money!

In the eyes of these people, it seems that money is omnipotent, and that as long as they have money, everything can be solved.

In Zhu Jian's eyes, this was not as simple as a lack of silver.

Silver is a medium for the circulation of goods and an economic product; it can be said to be useful, or it can be said to be useless.

Even if Inspector Zhu actually had 100 million taels of silver, it wouldn't matter. If that silver were released into the market, it would instantly cause the prices of essential goods like grain, salt, and cloth to multiply several times over—simply put, it would cause inflation…

Currently, the economic situation in the Ming Dynasty is characterized by inflation among the upper class of powerful nobles and gentry, and deflation among the lower class of ordinary people.

The Ming Dynasty court, which should have been responsible for market regulation, instead took a leading role in the economic society, constantly increasing taxes to exacerbate economic deflation for ordinary people.

These taxes were not collected from the goods in the hands of the people, but from silver, requiring all the people to pay taxes to the imperial court in silver.

This will exacerbate deflation for people in silver-deficient regions such as Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Henan.

Silver was scarce to begin with, so the price of grain fell when people had to exchange it for silver to pay their taxes to the imperial court.

Furthermore, concentrated sales of grain can lead to price gouging by grain merchants, causing a run on the market and further exacerbating the price decline...

Grain merchants bought up grain and sold it to the Qing army or the imperial court at high prices, obtaining large amounts of silver, which they then hoarded. This further exacerbated the shortage of silver in the market and once again intensified the collapse of the economic order.

Furthermore, because the gentry and powerful did not pay taxes or grain, all the additional taxes levied by the imperial court were once again levied on the self-cultivating farmers.

Now, with natural disasters and reduced grain production, people are unable to pay taxes and have no choice but to sell their land to officials and become tenant farmers. However, not all people are "lucky" enough to become tenant farmers.

When officials felt they had enough tenant farmers, they stopped hiring more. The remaining people who couldn't pay their taxes would abandon their land and become vagrants.

The reason why peasant armies were everywhere lay with the imperial court, not with the people...

With the increase in the number of refugees, the number of self-cultivating farmers decreased, and the total amount of taxes received by the imperial court also decreased. However, in order to cope with the military threat, the imperial court had to increase taxes to serve as military pay, from Liaodong tax, suppression tax, to training tax.

Each uprising was more frequent than the last, creating a vicious cycle that eventually led to widespread rebellions, plunging the Ming Dynasty into an abyss.

Looking at the memorial, Zhu Jian frowned, his brows furrowing into a knot.

The current situation is a combination of multiple factors, including a major economic crisis, natural disasters, a rigid system, foreign invasion, and internal strife.

If he doesn't handle things well, he might die even earlier than the original Chongzhen Emperor, Zhu Youjian, and might not even last until the seventeenth year of Chongzhen's reign.

The Ming Dynasty, now in turmoil, is at a turning point. If it moves forward, the land will sink; if it retreats, it will plunge into an abyss!

Furthermore, the military pay originally intended to burden the people for a year was not only not stopped with the Qing army's entry into the pass, but was also increased by nearly three times, directly exacerbating social conflicts.

It completely destroyed the Ming Dynasty.

Strangely enough, every time the peasant army was about to be suppressed, it was always accompanied by the Qing army entering the pass to plunder, as if the two sides had agreed to it.

They gave the Ming Dynasty no time to breathe...

Zhu Jian sighed as he looked at the memorials from various military towns requesting the allocation of military funds. He then turned to Wang Chengen, who stood respectfully and upright to the side, and said, "Chengen, go and bring me the seal of the Directorate of Ceremonial! And have Cao Huachun come here too!"

Upon hearing Zhu Jian's voice, Wang Chengen, who seemed to be in a meditative state, quickly replied, "This servant obeys!"

There is currently no Grand Eunuch in charge of the Directorate of Ceremonial Affairs; the position has been held by the Grand Eunuch Cao Huachun. Just now, Zhu Jian saw Cao Huachun's memorial requesting resignation.

After thinking it over, I decided to grant his request. Since he wanted to go back to his hometown, there was one thing he needed to do before leaving.

That was to clear out Emperor Chongzhen's own imperial estates.

He just discovered that the royal estate's revenue has been reported. Although it's not much, it covers nearly two million mu of land, and most of it is located near Beizhili.

These lands are currently of no value, so Zhu Jian plans to have Cao Huachun get rid of all the eunuchs in charge of the estate before he leaves.

Then Li Banghua was recalled to manage the planting by recruiting displaced people.

This would at least reduce the number of refugees near the capital and recover some of the money embezzled by the eunuch in charge of the estate over the years...

The imperial estates were always managed by eunuchs, and all the profits went directly into the emperor's private treasury, having nothing to do with the Ministry of Revenue's national treasury. This part was something the emperor could control himself.

It also has the least reaction and resistance from North Korea and China.

The resistance from the eunuchs was dealt with by Cao Huachun before he left, with his assistance to Li Banghua.

Li Banghua committed suicide in the Wen Tianxiang Shrine in the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, when the capital fell, and followed the Ming Dynasty to its end.

In Zhu Jian's eyes, this person was an honest and upright official who was also very loyal to the court and could be put to use. However, due to factional strife, he was ousted and is now unemployed, so he can be directly appointed to manage the affairs.

As for the management method, the system of eunuch management will continue. The manager, Zhu Jian, has also figured it out. He will have Wang Chengen arrange a trusted junior eunuch to hold the title, while Li Banghua will actually manage the affairs.

This would prevent those involved in factional strife from launching a massive impeachment campaign against Li Banghua upon his reinstatement.

Li Banghua was a member of the Donglin Party who was capable of getting things done, but Emperor Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian, hated factional strife and preferred to use lone officials.

Ministers labeled as partisan are all dismissed and suppressed.

But he didn't realize that the more he suppressed the situation, the more partisan strife would arise.

Although the eunuch faction and the Donglin faction suppressed it, the Wen faction re-emerged.

Just like last year's Grand Secretary Wen Tiren, who was also the leader of the Wen Party, after he resigned, the Wen Party was no longer as powerful as it was when Wen Tiren was in power, but it still existed in the government and was still fighting with the Donglin Party, Fushe, Zhejiang Party and others.

Zhu Jian believes that wherever there are people, there will be struggles. No matter what dynasty it is, there will be factional struggles. The Tang Dynasty had the Niu-Li factional struggle, and the Northern Song Dynasty had the New and Old factional struggles, so the present is no exception!

Now, Zhu Jian is no longer going to suppress factional strife and constantly replace cabinet members like Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian did. Instead, he is going to adopt a completely new approach to turn the situation around!

That is to form a military group with himself at its core, with military generals directly leading the army, while he directly leads the military generals and controls the army's finances, and fully adopts military-led politics.

This is also a helpless choice under a state of emergency, belonging to the wartime mode under a national state of emergency.

Before setting up this goal, the first priority is to obtain the first batch of military pay and secretly transfer loyal troops to Beizhili.

Firstly, it was to prepare for the Qing army's entry into the pass in September of this year; secondly, it was to establish his prestige within the army.

Once these two conditions are met, he can firmly control the army and completely remove the civil service from it.

But to achieve this, the first step is to exploit factional strife among civil servants.

A civil service group with factional strife is not scary; the absence of factional strife is what's scary!

Then, the Ministry of Revenue and local government offices at all levels that were responsible for distributing military pay were removed from the military pay distribution process, and instead, the Ministry of Revenue directly distributed military pay to the army.

This would not only reduce the amount of money officials at all levels withhold from military pay, but also increase the loyalty of each army to their emperor.

There's no use in preaching the wisdom of sages to these soldiers; the only way to win their loyalty is through clear rewards and punishments and ample pay.

Once the soldiers identify with and pledge allegiance to the emperor, they will kill whoever he commands—princes, cabinet ministers, gentry, Qing troops, Li Zicheng—they will all be slaughtered...

Therefore, Prosecutor Zhu is preparing to establish the country through force once again.

Let Zhu Yuanzhang see from the afterlife how Zhu Jian wiped out all his descendants!

Anyway, if Zhu Jian doesn't execute them, then Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, or the Qing army will execute them; it doesn't matter who executes them...