readx; Wang Zhifa and several other big landlords looked around, and saw that the officials were busy cleaning up the ruins, so they mysteriously stuffed Gu Yanwu with an unsealed envelope, and said with a smile on their faces: "When my husband first came to Tongzhou, many old things may not be clear. Pen, fun, pavilion www.biquge.info/ now Tongzhou is in ruins, it is the time to use money, some silver is not a tribute, even if we donate to the yamen, but also ask the old man to use it as appropriate. In the future, as long as my husband and ancestor take care of it a little, I will have everything! ”

Gu Yanwu looked inside through the mouth of the envelope and saw that it was a thick stack of 1,000 taels of silver tickets from Jingshi Qianzhuang, adding up to at least 10,000 taels!

This is blatant bribery. At the first meeting, several landlords threw out such a big deal, which shows the depth of their personal disadvantages.

If Huang Zongxi, who was as hot as fire, he would have been so angry that he would have scolded and threw the silver ticket in the other party's face. But Gu Yanwu has a calm personality, thinking that although this is undoubtedly a bribe, but the other party claims to donate to the yamen, and he really wants to climb up, he insists that it is not a bribe, but he can deny it for a while. Besides, the middle door has not been figured out, and it is not easy to launch it suddenly, and it will be a big thing if it is not good.

Therefore, Gu Yanwu deliberately pretended to be greedy for money but refused to show it, and pretended to excuse himself: "What are you doing, this official is as clear as water and as bright as a mirror..."

When Wang Zhifa saw Gu Yanwu's appearance of wanting to refuse and welcome, his heart was already stable for seven or eight points, and he hurriedly stuffed the envelope into Gu Yanwu's sleeve, and said in a stacked voice: "Don't shirk your husband's ancestor, what are some small things!" ”

Gu Yanwu half-pushed and half-picked up the envelope, pulled a few people to a secluded place and whispered: "This official has just arrived, so naturally everything depends on your fathers and elders. But there are some things, and a few people must let the official know about it, so that when the above investigates, the official can also grasp the situation. Otherwise, the eyes will be black, and the saint is the master who does not rub sand in his eyes, once asked, the official does not know how to answer, and the silver of several people will be donated in vain. ”

These words sounded like he had already stood on the side of several landlords, and Wang Zhifa had heard this kind of words many times in the past, so he was not suspicious, so he said the door to Gu Yanwu.

It turns out that this imperial village is a farm directly owned by the royal family and run by the imperial family. Huangzhuang has been in the Yongle and Tianshun years, and it has expanded sharply since the Zhengde years. This is because Emperor Zhu Houzhao of Zhengde naturally likes to have fun, so he naturally needs to spend a lot of money to satisfy his selfish desires. However, at that time, the official group was already very strong, and the officials led by the cabinet controlled the treasury and refused to provide more silver taels to the emperor.

Under these circumstances, Zhu Houzhao "opened up a wide range of financial routes" and appointed Liu Jin and other eunuchs, on the one hand, bypassing the household department to collect salt tax, mining tax, and city tax, and on the other hand, he tried by all means to change the land that originally belonged to the official field into an imperial village, such as the grazing horse and grassland fields, the fields that were seized from the relatives, the occupied private fields, and the fields that the princes who had not surrendered to the feudal domain. In the first month of Zhu Houzhao's accession to the throne, seven new imperial villages were added, and in just a few years, the number has increased to more than 300.

In the years of Jiajing and Wanli, Huangzhuang has spread all over the country, especially in the eight prefectures of Shuntian, Baoding, Hejian, Zhending, Shunde, Daming, Guangping and Yongping in the north of Zhili. And there are not only the emperor Zhuangtian, but also the queen mother Zhuangtian and the crown prince Zhuangtian. The emperor appointed eunuchs to manage the imperial village, headed by the eunuchs in charge of the village, and set up dozens of people such as the official school, the head of the village, and the villagers, who did not pay grain to the government, and all the fields except for a few to maintain the survival of the villagers, most of the rest belonged to the emperor.

Of course, it is impossible for the emperor to personally go to the Huangzhuang to collect grain, so in fact, the Huangzhuang is at the disposal of the eunuchs in charge of the village. Naturally, this is indispensable for exploiting and deducting and enriching one's own pockets, so the more emperors, the greater the impact on the country's taxes, and the more money and grain the eunuchs embezzle.

If this is the case, the economic impact of Huangzhuang on the entire Ming Empire is still limited, because each Huangzhuang covers an area of only tens or hundreds of hectares, and the total is only a hundred thousand hectares, which is still a drop in the bucket compared to the seven million hectares under the management of the household department and the four million hectares of fields under the management of the Governor's Office of the Five Armies.

However, with the increasing bureaucracy and eunuch system in the Ming Dynasty, some treacherous landlords invented a wonderful way to escape the land endowment: surrender.

The so-called dedication is to put the land that belonged to oneself under the name of someone else. There are two specific methods, one is to hang it in the name of the gentry, that is, the person who has a reputation or has been an official, because according to the rules of this era, the gentry do not need to pay food. Putting the land property in the name of the gentry, the land that should have been paid for the land was exempted from taxation, and only a little benefit was needed to the gentry.

However, too much land in the name of the gentry was hanging too much, so some people resorted to an even more desperate trick: dedicate the land to the emperor, that is, hang it in the name of the emperor. There is no way to check how much land there is in Huangzhuang, and no one dares to check it, so that you can safely and boldly evade taxes, as long as you have a good relationship with the eunuch in charge of the village. As for the land hanging under the imperial village, of course, the eunuch in charge of the village will not report to the emperor, so no one can figure out how much land has been sacrificed. Over the years, I don't know how many of the taxes that should have been paid have gone into the pockets of eunuchs and tax evaders.

Originally, this method could be described as seamless, but after Zhu Youzhen ascended the throne, the eunuch system was abolished by thunderous means, and all the eunuchs in charge of Zhuang were recalled to Beijing and all took their posts for the people. Due to the fact that there were too many major matters that needed to be dealt with urgently and there was a lack of sufficient manpower, Zhu Youzhen did not care about dealing with the Huangzhuang issue for the time being, so he ordered the heads of the Huangzhuang villages to temporarily take over the duties and powers of the eunuchs who were originally in charge of the village.

But of course, this temporary state will not last long, and Zhu Youzhen has already made important plans for Huangzhuang. He started with Shuntianfu, on the one hand, he asked the secretariat to send people to various Huangzhuang to verify the land, and on the other hand, he confirmed from the local government that he had a preliminary understanding of the situation of "serious inconsistencies in the accounts and land" of Huangzhuang.

This time, Wang Zhifa and other landlords came to Gu Yanwu to be accommodating, precisely because the several Huangzhuang selected by Zhu Youzhen happened to be all "anchored fields" that were not in the account books of the Huangzhuang but the government had never levied grain, and in fact they were all their own fields. Now Zhu Youzhen wants to use it as a real Zhuangtian for free, of course they won't do it.

However, the trick of "surrender" could not be put on the stage, and of course Wang Zhifa and others did not dare to openly resist the order, so they had to find Gu Yanwu, the new Tongzhou Tongzhi who was directly responsible for this matter, and let him be accommodating.

Only then did Gu Yanwu figure out the joints, and he was already furious in his heart, but on the surface, he acted as a dilemma: "So that's the case!" But the decree has been given, how should the official maneuver? ”

Wang Zhifa hurriedly smiled and said: "There is a lot of land in Tongzhou Huangzhuang, as long as the real farmland is exchanged for those few pieces of land for us, it will not be regarded as disobeying the holy decree." Long live how can I take care of such a small matter, my husband and ancestor just made a gesture, and he helped me a lot. As he spoke, he presented Gu Yanwu with a map of all their fields hanging in the Huangzhuang, asking him to avoid these lands.

Gu Yanwu pretended to agree, these people were naturally very grateful, and promised him many benefits, so he had no choice but to retreat.

After a few people walked away, Gu Yanwu sneered, raised his legs and went straight to the emperor.

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