The merchant was nervous, but Wang Zezhi shook his head indifferently.

When people stand taller, they can see farther, and the realm will naturally be different.

"It's okay, you have come from afar, the journey is tiring, Wang has a banquet in Kuixing Tower, and I invite you to enjoy your face and talk about it."

Wang Zezhi didn't care about the merchant's behavior, hugged his fists and saluted, and motioned for the merchants to enter the city.

"You're welcome, you're welcome."

"Disturb, disturb."

"Thank you, thank you."

The first official of the imperial court invited everyone to dinner, and the merchants only felt that there was light on their faces, and there would be people who did not appreciate their faces.

The merchants walked in front of Wang Zezhi one by one, and the people in the city led them towards Kuixing Tower.

As for the arrogant merchant, he still bowed down and did not dare to move.

"Get up, they're all gone." Shopkeeper Sun passed by the merchant and said lightly, put his hands behind his back and sang a little song into the city.

The merchant straightened up, moved his stiff waist, looked at Wang Zezhi who was walking away resentfully, hesitated for a moment, and finally did not enter the city.

In the Ming Dynasty, offending the court officials was the most taboo thing for businessmen.

He didn't expect that he would make such a stupid mistake, and he didn't dare to imagine how Wang Zezhi would be treated if he stayed in Datong Mansion.

So, he chose to leave.

In fact, he didn't need to be like this at all, in Wang Zezhi's eyes, he was just a businessman, and he didn't have to work hard to deal with him.

Wang Zezhi and Wang Shan listened to him while walking.

It turned out that Wang Shan, who went to the south to open a semicolon, met the third team leader who came back from buying potatoes.

It just so happened that Wang Shan was about to come back to restore his life, so he came back with the three team leaders.

"My lord, now that Jiangnan is flooded and there is a shortage of food, the potato (potato) has risen to four taels and one stone, so the brother who went to Jiangnan to buy artichoke only bought back 200,000 stones.

When passing by Taiyuan Mansion, the Governor of Song wanted to intercept 100,000 stones, but his subordinates did not dare to make their own claims, saying that they would make a decision after asking for your instructions, and they did not allocate it to the Governor of Song. ”

"You're doing a good job." Wang Zezhi patted Bai Wang Shan's shoulder and signaled him not to be afraid.

"Lord Xie, there is one more thing, this time I went to Jiangnan, I met many post guards, they had nothing to do, so they robbed the house and became bandits, our team was strong, so we defeated them and took them back, and there were more than 10,000 people along the way."

At the beginning of February of the second year of Chongzhen, Liu Mao wrote to Liu Mao in the matter: "Please cut the post station redundantly, and you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars in money." ”

Chongzhen Yue, then cut the post station.

At that time, the number of additional factions in Shaanxi was increasing, and the officials were traitorous due to fate, and the people were in great difficulty.

The nomads of the mountains and Shaanxi are seeking to be post soldiers but cannot get it.

At that time, Shaanxi was plagued by famine for many years, so hungry people, unemployed soldiers and fugitive soldiers joined the rebel army one after another.

In other words, in February, Chongzhen began to remove the post guards.

It takes time to cut from the north to the south, and in July, the head of the household department said that the increase in the dispatch of post stations should be reduced, which intensified the speed of the reduction of post stations.

Sixty percent of the post stations of the Ming Dynasty were abolished, which led to a large number of post station soldiers losing their jobs.

Without a job, they have no source of livelihood, no source of livelihood, they can't live, they gather and become bandits.

Why was Chongzhen so confused as to allow the abolition of the post station?

In fact, this is also something that cannot be helped.

Originally, the function of the post station was mainly to deliver intelligence, transfer military funds, and deliver 800 miles of urgent documents.

By the Chongzhen period, the Ming Dynasty was full of post stations.

It can be said that dense post stations have spread all over the country in the Ming Dynasty.

The original function of the post station has also changed by this period.

More and more post stations have been turned into luxury guest houses for officials, and they have become the best choice for them to visit at public expense.

The post station became a place for officials to provide accommodation, carriages and horses, and other services.

In order to enjoy the official lord, the post stations in the Chongzhen period have standardized facilities.

Each inn had at least ten luxuriously furnished rooms for high-class customers, and twenty rooms for officials and servants.

Feed at least ten high-quality war horses and ten mules pulling carts all year round.

In order to ensure the normal operation of the post station, each post station must be equipped with more than a dozen people such as grooms, post guards, cooks, and sprinklers.

These people not only have to be controlled, but they also have to be fed, and most importantly, they have to be paid.

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, official corruption became commonplace.

When they came to the post station, they not only enjoyed free food, drink and lodging, but also extorted a sum of money from the post station when they left, which was used as an emergency on the way.

The reason they asked for money was that the Ming Dynasty had a lot of land and vast land, and the post stations could not be exhausted, and the officials passing by needed some silver in case of emergency.

Ming Dynasty court.

The officials themselves are corrupt, and this time they are even more unscrupulous.

They demanded money from the station without restraint, causing the already overburdened station to collapse.

In the Chongzhen Dynasty, the operation of the post station not only relied on the appropriation of funds from the imperial court, but also apportioned to the people.

This kind of apportionment has neither the standards set by the imperial court, nor the supervision of higher-level officials, and it all depends on the words of the post station officials, who can collect as much as they want.

The consequence of the loss of supervision is that the management of the post station is full of loopholes, and the officials become insatiable.

According to normal calculations, a horse used only 80 stone of horse material a year, and in the Chongzhen Dynasty, the horse material used by a horse at the post station reached an astonishing 500 stone a year, an increase of more than six times.

Behind these abnormalities is the huge chain of interests of the post station.

In addition to letting officials at all levels take advantage of it, the rest all went into the pockets of post officials.

What's more serious is that the officials in the Chongzhen period knew about the loopholes of the post station, and they issued official documents one after another, blatantly for private use.

As the emperor of a country, he knows all these shortcomings of the post station, which is why he wants to vigorously rectify the post station.

A large amount of people's fat and ointment flowed into the pockets of officials, but Chongzhen, as the emperor of a country, couldn't even get the Liaodong military salary in his hands.

Emperor Chongzhen, who couldn't bear it, had no choice but to break his arm to survive, and began to vigorously rectify the post station.

As a result, the first thing to happen was Shaanxi.

Shaanxi, as an important frontier in the northwest, is stationed here with one-tenth of the heavy troops of the Ming Dynasty.

As a result, one-tenth of the country's post stations are concentrated here.

This vigorous storm of layoffs has left tens of thousands of post workers in Shaanxi unemployed.

Due to the drought in Shaanxi for many years, the thieves everywhere had no way to live, and these lost post guards had no way to go, so they rebelled with the thieves.

If Chongzhen had thought about the aftermath of the resettlement of the unemployed post keepers before the abolition of the post station, maybe things would not have been so bad.

However, the placement of unemployed post men also needs silver, and what Chongzhen needs most is silver.

In other words, in any case, it is inevitable that a postman will become a thief.

After the disaster of Lin Dan Khan, coupled with Wang Zezhi's rectification, there is no such post station anymore.

Otherwise, the rebellion of the post guards in the east and the west will be very troublesome to deal with.

Wang Zezhi is okay here, it doesn't mean that others are okay.

For example, Song Tongyin, the governor of Shanxi, and Hong Chengchou, the governor of the three sides.

Hong Chengchou has only one word in the face of hungry people and thieves, and that is "kill".

Defeated, killed, surrendered, killed.

The thieves in Shaanxi could not withstand Hong Chengchou's encirclement and suppression, and began to break through to Shanxi.

At this time, more and more unemployed postmen joined them.

With this new force, they have a better chance of breaking through.

To make matters worse, the unemployed postmen in Shaanxi had contacted the postmen in Shanxi beforehand, and they planned to join forces on both sides.

Hong Chengchou intercepted their letter and immediately sent the news to Song Tongyin.

The two cooperated with each other and began to fight for their lives with the thieves in both places.

Due to the prolonged drought in Shaanxi and the scourge of thieves, Hong Chengchou has less and less grain and grass in his hands.

Song Tongyin received the support of the Pingyang Mansion and the gentry and merchants of the Fenhe Basin, and the problem of grain and grass was temporarily alleviated.

However, in the face of more and more thieves, he also felt a little weak to follow.

So, the two sang in unison, saying that the thieves in the mountains and Shaanxi were trending day by day, and asked for reinforcements from the imperial court.

The imperial court had just collected the summer tax and was planning to allocate some to the border army in Liaodong.

As soon as Chongzhen received the report from the two of them, he remembered that Yuan Chonghuan had beheaded Mao Wenlong privately and confiscated Mao Wenlong's salary.

After weighing the pros and cons, he made a decision and allocated the collected political taxes to Hong Chengchou, as for Song Tongyin, he had the support of the squires and businessmen of Pingyang Mansion, so let him support it first.

Chongzhen believes that as long as Hong Chengchou solves the thieves in Shaanxi, the thieves in Shanxi will not be a problem.

What's more, it really reached the point of last resort, and he could call Wang Zezhi to suppress it.