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"What's going on with the chaos in Shanxi now?" A young man sat on the dragon chair and asked the kneeling ministers below, this young man has a goose egg face, one eyebrows, and small eyes, but he has a big nose, and the nose is even wider than the corners of his mouth on both sides, his eyes are a little blank, and he can't help but yawn, obviously sleepy.

"Back to the emperor, the current situation in Shanxi is acceptable, my Shanxi Pingchao battalion recently drove the Shaanxi bandit king away from Xiangling with his main force, and has fled to Taiping, and now according to the Shanxi governor Mu Zhikui, the king used more than 10,000 bandits in the battle of Xiangling, and the head has been escorted to Beijing at this moment." It was Shoufu Shi Fenglai who spoke, and he bowed his head respectfully and continued to report, "My Shanxi Rebellion Battalion has been pulled out of the camp and headed south at this moment, and is on the way to Taiping, and this group of rebels will be completely wiped out in the near future. ”

"I don't know how much silver will be consumed for such a toss." As he spoke, the young man sat up straight, looked at the few household officials kneeling on the other side and asked, "How is the current Liao salary?" ”

"Nowadays, in addition to Guizhou, an average of nine cents of silver per mu is levied," said Wang Yingjiao, the head of the household, who spoke, "Originally, he should have received three million taels a year, but in addition to receiving one million taels in the first year, he only received one hundred and thirty thousand taels in the previous year, and only received five hundred and seventy thousand taels so far this year, and may be able to collect some silver by March, but the total is estimated to not exceed six hundred and fifty thousand taels." ”

"Now Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Henan have been hit by disasters year after year, and the people have changed everywhere, and it is the time to open a warehouse to release grain. An official on the side said loudly, and someone next to him immediately chimed in, "Your Majesty, this is the time to stop giving mercy to farmers, and forcibly levying Liao salary will cause changes among the people!" ”

Sitting on the dragon chair is the Emperor of the Apocalypse Zhu Youxiao, who is famous for being the carpenter emperor, in fact, since he ascended the throne, he also wants to be a Ming monarch, and in the past few years, he has worked hard, and he has to go to the court early every day, but this has now entered the ninth year of the Apocalypse, and in the experience of ruling the world in these nine years, he only has one feeling, that is, the world is really not easy to rule. Especially above this court, every day in the court is to listen to the officials below to report all kinds of news, as the saying goes, good news is not reported bad, but now he thinks that God is deliberately playing him, since he ascended the throne not long after, almost the entire North China began to drought, Shaanxi people are fierce, there is no food to rob the official warehouse to kill the official rebellion.

At first, the officials below felt that it would be unreasonable to send troops to suppress these peasants, so they all advised him that he should replace them with Fu, in fact, even he thought so at that time, and sent a large number of officials to contact the rebels who were in rebellion everywhere, and recruited them one after another. But it didn't take long for these rebels who had been recruited to rebel again, and the scale was far larger than the previous one. At that time, he came to Zhenhuo and wanted to send troops directly to suppress it, but the officials continued to speak, saying that the local officials were ineffective in pacifying or greedy for food and wages, which caused the rebellious people who were recruited to rebel because they could not survive. So Zhu Youxiao asked Jinyiwei and Dongchang to investigate the local officials in Shaanxi, but after the investigation, it was found that it had nothing to do with the officials.

The enemy is far away, and after the independence, the art is Mo Yue

Due to the disaster, he ordered the exemption of the grain in the affected areas of the year and also opened warehouses to release grain, but these official warehouses and Yicang have always been the small money bags of local grain officials and large households, they often sell those new grains with better condition and exchange them for old rice to earn the difference, which is still good, and those who are not afraid of death will even directly use sacks filled with soil and yellow sand and piled up in the corners of Yicang and Guancang. In the past, when the disaster was not serious, even if the grain from the official warehouse and the righteous warehouse was used, these old rice or grain bags with mud and yellow sand would not be touched, but now the disaster is very serious, and most of the original "granaries" have become a place of no harvest, and the victims who have no food supplement quickly and completely solve the grain in the official warehouse and the righteous warehouse, and when the rats that were starved to death were found in these granaries, chaos basically became the only choice for the victims. Although the imperial court exempted the grain tax, but at this time the land has long been annexed on a large scale, most of the farmland has been concentrated in the hands of the big gentry, most of their families have scholars, there is the privilege of exemption from taxation, the grain exemption will inevitably have no effect on them at all, they just rent the land to the tenants to cultivate, and the silver must be paid if it is not affected by the disaster, after the disaster at this moment, the tenants are out of harvest, and the only way to choose is to abandon the land and flee the famine, otherwise I am afraid that the whole family will become the landlord's domestic slaves. And these landlords who own a large amount of land, their families have enough rice and grain for a family to eat for three or four years all the year round, once they are affected, they will close the door and play in their own villages, and the victims outside cannot break through the walls, and there is a lack of sufficient food support, so even if there is a large-scale civil uprising, these big gentry will not be affected at all.

After the victims were forced to rebel, they still had no food, and under the leadership of people with ulterior motives, they gradually gathered into a large army of rebels, which swept through the prefecture and county like locusts, swept through villages and towns, and plundered the rations of other peasants. The natural disasters that were originally just one place have been expanded to man-made disasters in the whole province and even in many surrounding provinces. At this time, those bandits and bandits who were originally active in various places appeared on the stage, raising their arms and calling on the victims to follow them to kill officials and rebel and rob the rich and help the poor. In fact, even this kind of "robbing the rich and helping the poor" rebel army, after opening the warehouse, often only distribute less than one-tenth of the grain, and the rest is still packed and taken away, sometimes in order to coerce the local people, they will directly not distribute food, but force the people to join them to have food to eat.

In such a righteous army, the concept of hierarchy is also very obvious, when the big leader's meal is full of wine and food, chicken, duck and fish are never lacking, but those who are cannon fodder people often can't even eat, can shine the figure of the gruel can not drink a few sips, in the severe cold of winter can not eat enough food and clothing, can only be frozen to death in large quantities, only in this way can the cannon fodder be forced to die generously, because if they do not rush forward, their lives will not be improved, there is the possibility of freezing to death and starvation, in case they rush up to make meritorious contributions, Immediately become a petty official, be fed and clothed, and even have privileges, so that these cannon fodder will rush to fight harder.

After several repetitions, Zhu Youxiao lost confidence in the "disaster victims" who recruited and rebelled, you must know that although it is true that it costs more money to send troops to suppress the rebels, but these rebels will recruit them after taking the money, and they will rebel after spending the money, burning, killing and looting and then waiting for the imperial court to send people to recruit An, and so many times over and over again, in fact, it will cost more silver. Therefore, since last year, both Zhu Youxiao and Wei Zhongxian have decided to no longer use the method of recruiting security to solve the problem of bandits, but to directly send troops, and as for the local military expenses, they will be directly drawn from the "Liao salary".

But the corruption of the Wu Dynasty is not something that the high-ranking Emperor of the Apocalypse can imagine, at the beginning, the imperial court policy was to suppress the local officials and generals by taking a cut from the middle, three to fifty percent of Zhao'an's silver, and even seventy percent of the silver, which was used to buy the local bandits, and then buy them when they made trouble, and did business. Now the imperial court has changed its attitude towards the rebellious people, adopting a strict approach to suppression, but it cannot stop the way to make a fortune for local officials and generals. Exterminating the thieves is nothing more than counting according to the head or ears, and these corrupt Wu Dynasty armies cannot defeat the bandits, but they can harm the people. Everywhere they go, they do their best to loot the local wealth and food, and kill many innocent people as chaotic people to get the first level of reward, officers and soldiers have an innate advantage in doing this kind of thing, because the common people are often unwary of the imperial court soldiers, and the officers and soldiers say that they want the people to come out, they will basically come out, and they often kill people without leaving a living mouth, even children will not let go, anyway, the heads of the rebels are not as difficult to fake as the heads of Liaodong Jianyu, and they can be exchanged for money immediately after cutting them off. After being washed in bloodbath many times, Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places are even more empty, and there is only one way left to go.

Zhu Youxiao, who learned these facts, was of course furious, and ordered that all the officials and generals who harmed the people should be executed, but the hundreds of officials below dissuaded them one after another, and the reasons were also varied, what executed the officers, the soldiers would be even more uncontrolled; If the local officials are executed, there will be no backbone in the local area, and there will not be enough people to fill these real shortcomings, etc., in a word, these officials and generals cannot be killed, and finally bargaining for a while, which made the execution of a group of soldiers with great resentment. Both Zhu Youxiao and Wei Zhongxian know that this kind of thing cannot be carried out so thoroughly without the approval of officials, but once it is investigated, it is likely to make the entire court shake it, and now the struggle between the officials of the various ministries represented by the Donglin Party and the eunuch party led by Wei Zhongxian has already entered the white heat, and everyone expects to be able to use the power of the emperor to eradicate the other party and clear some more political obstacles for themselves, so Zhu Youxiao does not dare to break such a balance, so he has to let it play freely, Anyway, if the eunuch party is one point stronger, the Donglin party will naturally take a step forward, and if the Donglin party takes a step forward, the eunuch party will be one point stronger. This white-hot struggle began not long after he ascended the throne, and seriously affected his "governing policy", this Dawu Dynasty, although he is said to be the emperor above 10,000 people, but above the court has to rely on hundreds of officials. But the hundred officials have their own various forces and are entangled, so he would rather leave all the state affairs and hide in the harem to do carpentry work alone, rather than come out to manage the affairs of the court.

Just when Zhu Youxiao was stunned, the officials below had already quarreled over something that he didn't even understand, "Liao's salary is collected for the military expenses of the Liaodong Front, how can it be easily abolished?" "Now Shanxi, Shandong, Henan, and Hebei have all been affected by the disaster, many places are ten rooms and nine empty, the grain harvest is out, the victims still need relief from the imperial court, how do you collect the money from them?"

"Liao salary is nothing more than nine cents of silver, this acre of land is not much money at all, even if these places are affected by disasters, it is enough to stop the collection of money and grain in these places, why do you want the whole country not to levy Liao salary?"

"That is, the suspension of Liaodong salaries, the Liaodong military has always been not very good-looking, the officers and soldiers are short of food and salary, and there is a shortage of 2.9 million taels at this time, if this silver cannot be collected as soon as possible, I am afraid that this Liaodong war will be ......."

"It's light to say, what is lacking in that place in Liaodong is not silver, but grain and grass, a pound of grain to be transported to Liaodong or Dongjiang, at least ten taels of silver will be spent on freight, and the household department and the military department are unwilling to pay this money and directly give them silver, resulting in inflated local grain prices, more than 40 taels of silver can not buy a pound of grain, you still have to send the silver over, what is the use of sending it over?"

"According to what you say, then Liaodong doesn't need to send silver over? The silver was used to reward the loyal and patriotic soldiers who had besieged the loyal monarchs, and as for the grain, it was the poor shipping on the Denglai side! ”

"Now many bays in the Bohai Sea have begun to freeze, ships cannot leave the port, and now there is a shortage of food everywhere, and there is not enough food from anywhere, even if the Bohai Sea is not frozen, there is not enough food to transport over!"

The knot is the only enemy ball by the lonely cold solitary technique

"So according to you, the only thing to blame for this is the weather? Now the officers and soldiers on the front line are fighting hard with Jianyu, but they don't even have anything to eat, isn't it too chilling? ”

"That's it!" Zhu Youxiao heard a burst of fire, in fact, both sides sounded reasonable, and the reasons were very sufficient, but he knew very well in his heart that the quarrel between the two sides was not to solve the crisis of this great martial arts at all, but just to make his own strength stronger to crush the other party, he couldn't help but shout, so that the court was suddenly quiet, and no one spoke anymore. "Today's withdrawal from the dynasty, Liaodong and Shanxi will be discussed after the first assistant of the cabinet is discussed." After saying that, he stood up and walked out.

Although these officials usually don't take the emperor too seriously, after all, they are the emperor, and at this moment, the hundred officials are just honestly kneeling on the ground and waiting for the emperor to leave before getting up and leaving.

Zhu Youxiao left the court under the support of many eunuchs, and walked towards his "carpentry room" with a huff, muttering as he walked, "Money, money!" Is this bit of silver so difficult? The household usually doesn't save a penny? Do you still have to come out of my inner net? I'm not a cornucopia, how can I throw so much silver out? ”

"Your Majesty ......" Wei Zhongxian's voice sounded from Zhu Youxiao's ears, making him feel relaxed for a while, now only this henchman can let himself relax, and he was about to speak, but he saw Wei Zhongxian fall to his knees, and said three times in his mouth, "Congratulations to the emperor, this silver thing should have been settled." ”

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