readx;?readx; Chapter 650: The Rule of Heaven (II)

Qin Lei has always loved this army, and since the end of Zhaowu, there has been a bloody and brutal suppression and purge in the imperial court...... First the liquidation of the Li family, then the purge of the Shi officials, and then the blow to the Yushi party. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info Until July of the sixth year of Tianyou, Wang Anting, a scholar of Shoufu University, took the initiative to return to his hometown, and the people of the Yushi Party were scattered, and the court situation was considered to have stopped.

But looking back on this period of history, we suddenly find that although the political turmoil has been wave after wave, and the new people in the court have replaced the old people, it has not affected the army of Daqin at all. Qin Lei protected his generals under the wings of the egg, never harmed, and did not allow others to harm.

This is a very wise move, because the army is no better than other places, it is a weapon to defend the country normally, but once it is in chaos, it will immediately turn into a murderous beast, which can smash its own country to pieces. And the middle and high-ranking generals of the Qin army are either inextricably linked with the Li family, or they are from famous families. If Qin Lei extended the liquidation of the Li family and the family to the army without restraint, it would inevitably cause a strong backlash from the generals, and no matter how high Qin Lei's prestige was, the consequences would be unimaginable.

And Qin Lei's retention of these scholar officers not only made them grateful and desperate, but also made those families whose status was seriously damaged by the Great Purge see the hope of a comeback, which greatly reduced their resentment, so that there was no major chaos.

After talking about the good, let's talk about the bad ones. That is another miraculous fulfillment of the 'law of officials must be greedy'.

Even though Qin Lei has to kill a group of corrupt officials every year, corrupt officials still appear one after another. Facts have proved that the collective wisdom of these educated and intelligent bureaucrats can completely bypass all kinds of surveillance measures of the imperial court, and they have the ability to achieve the point of being greedy with big power and greedy with small power, and being greedy with power, and not being greedy for nothing.

In the first few years, Qin Lei couldn't help but grit his teeth when he heard that someone was corrupt, slapped the table and scolded his mother: "These people should be killed!" He also fantasized about creating a truly pure dynasty, a dynasty in which all the officials were honest and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment. For this reason, there was no mercy on corrupt officials and corrupt officials, and it was stipulated that all officials who embezzled and accepted bribes should be punished with a third-degree punishment, and even dealt with more than 2,000 officials who committed crimes in one year.

At the same time, he also racked his brains in a vain attempt to mobilize the masses and let the eyes of the whole world supervise the officials of the world -- the new policy in the second year of Tianyou stipulated that whoever found corrupt officials and corrupt officials could be tied up and sent to Beijing to be punished, and they could take the carriage of the post station, and the checkpoints along the way must be released, and if anyone stopped them, they would be killed without mercy, and the whole family would be exiled!

But this seemingly awesome policy is actually quite bad, since ancient times, the people did not fight with the officials, and the common people couldn't hide when they saw the officials, and they dared to grab him and send him to the capital? The official is fighting alone, huh?

It is said that there is an honest person who really wants to send his county magistrate to the capital, and he really caught him and went on the road smoothly. So the whole world looked at this unprecedented first person, pressing the official who was sued all the way to the north, who knew that before he left the province, the person who complained was due to excessive psychological pressure, left the county magistrate, and secretly ran away, and at this time it was naturally gone.

What's more, now everyone's life is good, and the officials are quite restrained, and they haven't done anything to force people to jump off the cliff. Later, this edict full of idealism was naturally ignored and became the first decree in the "Heavenly New Deal" to be substantially scrapped.

Of course, Qin Lei also knew that he was counting on broken shoes and broken feet, if he just relied on the masses to report and expose him, his Great Qin would be corrupted by the officials, and he didn't know it. The main clues to his crackdown on corruption came from his secret agencies, the Civil Intelligence Department and the Espionage Department, as well as the anti-corruption department that was later set up. The number of corrupt officials investigated and dealt with every year is not small, and its efficiency is not insignificant.

With so many means used, he also attaches great importance to it, and the spy surveillance and strict punishment are all used, and it is said that corruption should be eradicated, but the situation is far from being as simple as he imagined.

However, the officials of the Great Qin Dynasty are still corrupt one after another, living like a group of death squads, going to the prison of the anti-corruption department in droves, or rushing to the court, or being exiled for thousands of miles, but they still don't know how to stop?

Ironically, the corruption situation of the Tianyou Dynasty was even more serious than that of the later period of the Zhaowu Dynasty, second only to the period of Wen Yanbo's reign, which is incredible.

Qin Lei fell into confusion, he didn't understand very much, why these intellectuals who read poetry and books, took 'self-cultivation and Qi family, ruled the country and leveled the world' as their life creed, and paid attention to 'gentleness, courtesy, and frugality', were so fond of corruption?

After thinking about it repeatedly, he vaguely felt that this was related to the background of the current group of officials, and his own official policies could not be shirked -- although it was clean and neat to plow the court and sweep the holes of the scholar clan bureaucracy by thunderous means, it seemed a little inappropriate to suddenly elevate those scholars of the Shu nationality who did not have a high social status and whose wealth status was far inferior to that of the scholar clan.

This is like a reason for him to get rid of the fat and greedy former corrupt officials, and then replace them with some poor new officials. Of course, these new officials will want to make a career to prove themselves, but seeing that those departing officials are making a lot of money, still enjoying a luxurious life, and even having a higher social status than themselves, the imbalance in their hearts can be imagined.

Naturally, there will be people who follow the example of their predecessors and start making money, and then many more will follow the example of the pioneers. Moreover, they or their families generally have a bitter history of struggle, and many of their families have just embarked on a well-off life, and even struggle with food and clothing. It is needless to say that the importance of wealth is far greater than that of the children of a family born with a golden spoon, and it is natural that they are more ugly than them.

Moreover, during the Tianyou period, the country's economy grew rapidly, fiscal and tax revenues continued to rise, and the treasury of various prefectures and counties was full of grain and money, which made officials even more itchy, and in the absence of effective supervision, corruption was inevitable.

In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to effectively supervise, in addition to playing his own life to catch insects, he also pinned his hopes on the 36 inspectors of the imperial history elected by the six revival yamen, counting on these officials who took the revival yamen to help him more effectively supervise those officials who were unconscious.

On the other hand, Qin Lei finally understood the truth that 'when the water is clear, there are no fish', in order to make the reform go smoothly, in addition to severely punishing officials who blatantly bend the law, he also secretly left a way back for the officials.

For example, Daqin implemented the system of 'tax into silver', and all kinds of items handed over by the common people to the imperial court, such as grain, vegetables, cloth, fruits, medicinal materials, etc., were converted into silver taels and handed over in accordance with the regulations, and although the conversion rate was controlled by the imperial court, there were naturally special circumstances in the local area, and it seemed to be normal to take proper care of them and make a fortune from them.

The officials also coined the term 'folding color and fire consumption', because the silver coins handed over by the people had various shapes and mixed colors, so they had to be uniformly forged into neat silver ingots by the government and handed over to the imperial court. Broken silver may be lost when it is melted...... The government used this name to collect excess silver taels, and these excess taxes were called fire consumption.

In fact, only the government itself knows whether there is loss or not, and this is just an excuse to overcharge.

Qin Lei knew about this situation, but he just turned a blind eye, except for beating from time to time, he didn't make a dead hand to rectify it, because he knew that pressing the gourd to float and stop this method, those 'genius' officials would come up with more and more ways to embezzle. Rather than make the people suffer more at that time, it is better to acquiesce in this moderated corruption method.

So everyone was happy, the court should collect a penny less, and the people didn't have to listen to the officials to fool them, whether they were greedy or robbed, they said that they would slaughter a knife, at least life would be better. The officials also reaped the benefits, and life was not bad, so be it.

So it turns out that you have to leave a way for people to live, and if you want to do something, you have to make everyone satisfied, and the rabbit bites when it's in a hurry, let alone people?

Although the Qin State is a little messy, compared to the old enemy Qi State, it is simply in heaven.

Since that war, the state of Qi has been mired in the quagmire of the myth of Baisheng Gong, and cannot extricate itself, the emperor no longer obeys Zhao Wujiao, and from time to time there are remarks of 'honest and old'; the aristocratic class is pessimistic and disappointed, and paralyzes themselves in feasting and drinking all day long; the common people are overwhelmed by the sequelae of Zhao Wuji's overdraft of national strength, and a considerable number of displaced people flee to Qin every day to make a living by doing coolies that the Qin people are unwilling to do.

If it weren't for the fact that from the second year of Tianyou, the merchants of the Qin State sold a large amount of grain to the Qi State, which greatly stabilized the prices of the Qi State, and purchased musk, deer antler, goatskin, and rhinoceros skin at a high price, which brought a lot of income to the Qi State, otherwise there would have been a big mess......