Because Emperor Gao of the Ming Dynasty was born on September 18, and this year is exactly a full 300 years. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Therefore, Zhu Youxiao ordered to personally go to the filial piety tomb, thinking of taking this opportunity to promote the legitimacy of the Ming Zhu dynasty to the people of the world.

With the gradual elevation of imperial power by civilian officials, and the accumulation of class contradictions over the years, the popular foundation of the Zhu dynasty has begun to waver.

It is precisely because of this that many Han people who are opportunistic or only focus on personal fame have begun to deviate from their own rule, and even take refuge in the Tartars.

What Zhu Youxiao has to do is to warn the scholars of the world through this sacrifice to the filial piety tomb that the king they should really be loyal to can only be the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, that is, Zhu Youxiao, because only Zhu Youxiao is the most orthodox king in China.

Whoever betrays Zhu Youxiao is betraying the entire Chinese orthodoxy and is disloyal and unjust.

Since he wants to sacrifice to the filial piety tomb, it can be regarded as a southern tour, and Zhu Youxiao does not want to simply go to Nan0 Beijing once.

Zhu Youxiao found that with the long days when the kings of the Ming Dynasty were wrapped in the capital, the current people in the south have almost forgotten his existence as a king.

These people no longer seem to know who is guarding under Yanshan, and they have guarded the country as the Son of Heaven countless times, so as to resist Hu Qi, so that they have the current life of being drunk and golden.

We must not let the people in the south forget who laid down this peaceful country and who has blessed them for hundreds of years.

Therefore, he wanted to go to Jiangnan as a king, to this region where the reactionary forces were the most powerful, but the most developed productive forces and the most dynamic social and economic forms in the Ming Dynasty.

After the establishment of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the first project after the transformation of the capital was to comprehensively widen the southern water and land arteries, which was not only to facilitate the economic circulation between the north and the south and lay the foundation for the rapid military dispatch in the future, but also to pave the way for Zhu Youxiao's future southern tour.

In addition, Zhu Youxiao strictly ordered that the local provincial and state capitals were not allowed to apportionment on the grounds of their own southern tour of sacrifices, and all the itinerary arrangements were taken care of by the Ministry of Rites, while the road rectification and palace construction were all taken care of by the Royal Engineering Company, and the silver was also provided by the imperial court.

Because the time for Zhu Youxiao to leave for Jiangnan was imminent, not long after Zhu Youxiao returned from the Military Academy, Li Mingrui, a scholar of Dongge University and the right attendant of the Ministry of Rites, who was in charge of the trip, and Huo Weihua, the secretary of the Ministry of Works, who was in charge of the road traffic control, handed over a sign to ask for a meeting, and reported to Zhu Youxiao about the arrangements for the southern tour.

After listening to the arrangement of the two, Zhu Youxiao didn't think there was any big problem, Li Mingrui had been dormant at the bottom for many years, and his heart had already been calm and introverted, and now even if he has entered the cabinet and ruled a country, he has not shown the slightest sense of pride, and he still does things himself, thoughtful and meticulous.

And Huo Weihua is also a veteran of the Three Dynasties, and he is not rigid and rigid in his work, and now he has no deficit in the project funds that are almost equal to half a year's income from the national treasury, and miraculously completed the task of rectifying the imperial road and building the palace in less than two months.

However, Zhu Youxiao still put forward some supplementary suggestions, and said: "This trip to Jiangnan, not only to worship the filial piety tomb, in order to educate the place, in addition to the filial piety tomb, the loyal ministers and good generals of the previous dynasty, especially the heroes who have made meritorious contributions to the fight against foreign aggression, I will also go to their tombs to have a look, such as the tombs of Yue Wumu Gong and Yu Shaobao by the West Lake, as well as Qi Shaobao and Yu Wuxiang, etc., the Ministry of Industry and the Royal Engineering Company must renovate the ancestral halls and mausoleums of these loyal ministers and good generals, and find special personnel to guard and clean them." ”

Huo Weihua responded, and said: "Your Majesty Shengming, it is really a good government to educate the people with respect for loyal ministers, and now that the world is declining, the people's hearts are not ancient, and Weichen thinks about whether to simply build a loyal minister's shrine in a beautiful place such as West Lake, where both the bones of loyal ministers and traitors are buried, and gather heroes from all ages and presents, especially some heroes whose whereabouts are unknown and forgotten, for the people of the world to admire." ”

"Quasi-play! Don't be afraid to spend money, these things are better than building a few more palaces for me", Zhu Youxiao said this, Huo Weihua couldn't help but be a little moved, and bowed deeply to Zhu Youxiao, in his opinion, a king can have this consciousness, which is naturally the blessing of the country.

Here, Zhu Youxiao also instructed Li Mingrui: "Your Ministry of Rites must also take advantage of this to encourage the corporals of the world to eulogize these loyal martyrs in the form of poems, scripts, operas, etc., and newspapers and periodicals should also publicize the positive stories of these characters. ”

"Wechen has received the order, and Wechen has been prepared by the Ministry of Rites and the Hanlin Academy to carry out a genealogical revision and the sorting out of their heroic stories during this period of time.

After Li Mingrui said, Zhu Youxiao hurriedly nodded: "Very good, the old scholars of the Hanlin Academy should also do some serious things, they can't just go to the bottom of those Four Books and Five Classics, even if they read deeply, they can't become the old Master Confucius, it is better to learn more from the stories practiced by the sages." ”

Strengthening the idea of loyalty to the monarch through propaganda and respect for loyal ministers and good generals is an important purpose of Zhu Youxiao's southern tour, especially when he is about to implement reforms, it is undoubtedly a good measure to restrain the people through ideology, of course, Zhu Youxiao cannot expect to rely on this to make those with vested interests willingly divide the cake.

With the development of the Royal Industrial Company and the Royal Bank, Zhu Youxiao has now begun to gradually control the commercial economy, especially in the entire north, and the finances have basically gotten rid of the dilemma of relying on pitiful agricultural taxes to maintain military and civil affairs expenditures.

For reform, Zhu Youxiao had secretly summoned the important ministers of the royalist party before this, and discussed how to reform, that is, how to move against the gentry in the world, how to force or coerce these privileged classes to give up their privileged status, and also make their own contributions to the Ming Dynasty.

In the end, Zhu Youxiao and his other royalist ministers, who also attached more importance to the interests of the country than him, unanimously decided to select three localities to carry out pilot reforms, and the implementers chose the same royalist followers who were equally willing to carry out drastic measures and dared to take action against the stubborn forces.

After some discussion, Zhu Youxiao and a group of important officials of the royalist party decided to temporarily implement the policy of apportioning land to mu in Qindi, where the commercial economy was underdeveloped, and both the common people and the gentry lived on the land, but almost all the land was occupied by the gentry or rich peasants, while the common people who undertook the task of paying taxes occupied a small amount of land.

Because of this, the people have no land to plant, and the imperial court has no taxes to collect, Sun Chengzong also said in the excerpt, among the common people, there is no one out of ten who have land, but those who have no land occupy the number of nineteen, and many times there is no way to find the owner of the field, and it is unrealistic to collect taxes by household.

However, by taxing according to the acre of land instead of taxing according to the number of acres, this problem can be well solved, and a large number of landless peasants can be relieved of the burden of forced labor and taxes, and can more freely use their labor force in other industries, and gradually change from peasants to workers.

Of course, Zhu Youxiao did not intend to increase taxes when taxes were levied according to the acres of land, and still implemented a low-level taxation model for Qinland, which could reduce the exploitation of rich peasants and prevent them from giving up their land to work as tenant farmers for the landlords' families or to work in the cities, so that the entire agricultural economy of Qindi would be completely controlled by the gentry class.

Before the abolition of the privileges of all the gentry class, Zhu Youxiao could not expect to increase much income in Qindi, as long as it was gradual and gradual, it was also the first step to liberate a large number of landless people in Qindi before entering the mu this time.

In addition, Zhu Youxiao also plans to implement the integrated payment of grain by the officials and gentry in Shan0dong, and the reason why he chose to be in Shan0dong is because among the northern provinces where Zhu Youxiao's control is relatively strong, the gentry group in Shandongdong is the most powerful, and many of them are the big squires who have been ingrained for many years, and they are also the most difficult to deal with, such as Kong Yan's Shenggong Mansion, because almost every dynasty has graced them, including the Qing Dynasty in later generations.

In Zhu Youxiao's view, as long as the Confucian family and other big squires in Shandong are forced to admit that the gentry and gentry are integrated into the grain, when it is promoted to other provinces in the future, there will be less resistance.

The second is the collection of commercial taxes, Zhu Youxiao did not plan to move the money bags of the officials in the world when the fire was returned to the public, because that would not only offend the gentry of the world but also offend all officials.

After all, this is the money bags of the officials, if they move, it is equivalent to destroying the unspoken rules of the entire officialdom, of course, more importantly, even if it is the same as the more knowledgeable chief Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty in later generations, he used incorruptible silver to replace the fire consumption dividend, and did not stop the officials from demanding the people, but made the people only due to the increase in fire consumption by the imperial court, and at the same time they also received various excuses from the officials.

In the late Ming Dynasty, when the scale of commerce was already greater than the scale of agriculture, the non-collection of commercial taxes was simply a connivance at these Jiangnan chaebols, and they could not enjoy the national dividends at the same time, but they did not have any blood.

Zhu Youxiao planned to first pilot the collection of commercial taxes in the Nanzhili area north of the Yangtze River under the jurisdiction of the governor of Fengyang, which was the thoroughfare between the north and the south, the economy was prosperous, and it was the land of the Ming Dynasty, so his loyalty to the Ming Dynasty was naturally higher, and the resistance to implementation was relatively small.

However, Zhu Youxiao did not intend to directly point out that the commercial tax should be levied on a pilot basis in Fengyang, he first issued an order that on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of the birth of Emperor Taizu Gao, that is, Zhu Yuanzhang, and Fengyang is the land of Longxing, he will reduce half of the taxes paid by the people of Fengyang, and directly remove the forced labor, and explicitly require that the rent of Fengyang tenant farmers levied by the landlords of Fengyang shall not be levied for ten years, and the rent standard should be set by the local state government.

Zhu Youxiao's move was naturally aimed at co-opting the people at the bottom by favoring ordinary peasants before the commercial tax was levied in the Fengyang area, so as to further isolate the merchants, landlords, and gentry.

And before that, Zhu Youxiao had already communicated with Sun Chengzong, Denglai Governor Yuan Keli, and Fengyang Governor Ma Shiying, and the three of them had been in office for a long time, so they naturally knew the disadvantages of the place, and they also agreed with Zhu Youxiao's series of plans, and now they are only waiting to come to Zhu Youxiao in person to discuss the specific pilot reform rules.

Thinking that he was about to tour the south, Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but ask Wang Chengen, the master of ceremonies who was also serving in the Xinuan Pavilion: "Did Sun Chengzong, the governor of Shaanxi 0, Yuan Keli, the governor of Denglai, and Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, set off?" ”

"Back to Your Majesty, the celebrant has just received their folds, and the three of them have only set off for a few days at this time", Wang Chengen replied, and Zhu Youxiao said after hearing this: "Let them not have to come to the capital, just go to Ji 0 Nan and wait for me, in addition, immediately pass the decree to Lu Xiangsheng, the first cavalry battalion immediately ended the rest period, and promoted Zhu Youzhen to the commander of the service, leading the cavalry battalion to follow, and the three infantry battalions of the infantry left in Beijing to lead the commander. ”

Wang Chengen, Li Mingrui and Huo Weihua were all shocked, they didn't expect His Majesty to take so many elites out of the city, and even the king of letters, Zhu Youzhen, had to follow, but since ancient times, the emperor was out on patrol, and the capital must stay in a prison country, and now the three of them are silent, and they dare not ask why Zhu Youxiao did not keep the letter Wang to stay in Beijing to supervise the country, of course, they are not willing to believe in Wang Jianguo in their hearts.

As the ministers of the royalist party, they all know that they and His Majesty are grasshoppers on the same rope, and they are also worried that if Your Majesty has no children, if Zhu Youzhen, the king of letters, ascends the throne in the future, they will definitely not end well, which is also one of the reasons why they want His Majesty to kill King Xin, but at the same time, they dare not really advise His Majesty to kill King Xin, because His Majesty has been childless, if King Xin ascends the throne in the future, then whoever does this advice to kill King Xin's first bird, then whoever will die the worst in the future.

However, sometimes there are some things that have to be asked, after all, the capital can't be left without an owner for a day, the three of them looked at each other, and they all decided to grit their teeth and stand up and ask Zhu Youxiao who would be in charge of the country, but when they saw that the other two also stood up, they tacitly retreated again.

Seeing this, Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but laugh and scolded: "A group of old foxes who are wise enough to protect themselves, I don't need you to say it, I can also guess your thoughts, but I also made it clear that no matter what, King Xin can't supervise the country, and he must follow me, and he can't let him stay in the capital!" ”

"What Your Majesty said is very true, but I don't know who should be in charge of the country?" Huo Weihua stood up and asked Zhu Youxiao about whether he was an old minister of the Three Dynasties.

"Li Mingrui, you are a cabinet scholar, you come to draw up a decree, Qian Qianyi, a scholar of the palace and a scholar of the Ministry of Rites, and the title of the crown prince, a scholar of the Wuyingdian University and the left attendant of the military department, plus a young master Lu Xiangsheng, and Liu Ruoyu, the palm seal of the imperial horse supervisor and the master of ceremonies, will stay in Beijing, and small matters can be judged first and then reported, and major matters can be asked for instructions first!"

When Zhu Youxiao said this, the three of them responded, but at the same time, they all sighed.

Li Mingrui even knelt down directly: "Your Majesty, Weichen has the courage to speak up, although Your Majesty has a deep relationship with the queen and his wife, but please also think about the Jiangshan Society, please make an order to select people with excellent talents and virtues to fill the harem!" (To be continued.) )