Repatriation to his hometown and substitution of punishment with work is Zhu Youzhen's method of dealing with the people who have been coerced, and on the whole it is still very lenient. As a result of this disposition, the number of immigrants in the city was greatly reduced. When the two walls are completely completed, those young adults will also be released, and the people of Qinwangzhuang will be able to return to a peaceful and vibrant life.

Finally, there is one remaining problem that cannot be left unsolved, and that is the real thief. These captured thieves are now being held in a prison called the "Grace House", and the number of them has also reached more than 1,000. If you add their families, the total number is as high as 3,000.

Thieves are not the same as ordinary people. Although they were also born from the common people, after many years of fighting with Li Zicheng, the simplicity of the peasant households had almost been lost, and all that remained was the anger of killing people without blinking.

Regarding how to deal with these thieves, Zhu Youzhen had a big disagreement with Sun Chuanting, Yang Sichang and others. According to the meaning of those two, these people are all great traitors, basically they have killed people, and they have committed unpardonable crimes, and they must be punished canonically. Even if Jingyang County has no right to deal with criminals, it should be sent to Xi'an Mansion or Jingshi, in short, it can no longer be kept to avoid disasters.

Zhu Youzhen doesn't see it that way. He believed that although the thieves had caused great damage to the country and the nation, fundamentally speaking, they were forced to rebel. As Li Zicheng said before the battle that day, if there is a way to live, who is willing to risk killing his head to rebel? This is an official coercion and a rebellion, and the crime is unforgivable and excusable.

Therefore, it is simple and trouble-free to kill all of them, but it does not eradicate the ** of the imperial court, and the common people cannot live and work in peace and contentment, and in the end there is only one way to rebel. Kill a hundred here, and a thousand will pop up elsewhere; Kill another thousand, and ten thousand will be stirred up. In the end, the spark will be formed, and the Ming will be completely finished.

But if the thieves are not punished severely, it will not work either. For example, if they are released like ordinary people, and Zhu Youzhen dares to pack up tickets, these people will definitely defect to the old master Li Zicheng immediately.

The reason is very simple, they have become accustomed to the life of licking blood with knives and grabbing all the way, and then letting them face the loess and dig in the soil with their backs to the sky, they can't do it anymore. Releasing them under such circumstances is tantamount to returning to the mountains, and can only make the thieves more and more powerful.

Moreover, Zhu Youzhen traveled from his previous life, so he naturally knows the process of history. Even if the thieves really "cultivated to the right fruit" and overthrew the Ming Dynasty, they would never be the opponents of the murderous Manchu cavalry. Whether it is Li Zicheng or Zhang Xianzhong, they were all defeated and died in the end, and no one can blame them, only because they are short-sighted and have limited skills, and they have neither the talent to govern the country and the country, nor the ability to resist the enemy.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen's attitude towards the thieves is also very clear, that is, their team must be exterminated, and the first evil must be dealt with! The rest can not be killed, but they must be strictly reformed, so that they can atone for their past deeds with hard labor!

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen entrusted this matter to the county magistrate Sun Chuanting, and asked him to immediately start the classification of the thieves.

The so-called classification is, first of all, to distinguish between the thieves involved in the war and the dependents of non-combatants. This step is very simple, the family members are all old, weak, sick and disabled, women and children, it can be seen at a glance. These people can be treated with a little preferential treatment, except that they are not allowed to leave the city, and they are allowed to move around the city relatively freely. They are also engaged in some labor within their means, such as pulpping laundry, cleaning the streets, etc.

As for the combatants, according to Sun Chuanting's idea, they still have to be interrogated strictly to see if they have killed anyone. If someone is killed, it is still punishable by death.

It stands to reason that murder pays for life, and Sun Chuanting's point of view is not unreasonable. However, after careful consideration, Zhu Youzhen still did not adopt this suggestion. First of all, this evidence collection work is very difficult, these thieves have rebelled for many years, who knows if they have killed people elsewhere?

If you rely only on torture to extract confessions, no one will confess if the punishment is light, and if the punishment is severe, it will be tortured into a trick, which is actually meaningless. In particular, Zhu Youzhen traveled back in time, and in the original time and space, it was strictly forbidden to extort confessions by torture because it was very easy to cause unjust, false and wrongly decided cases, and confessions could not be the only basis for conviction, and other evidence was still required.

In addition, there is a difference between killing an enemy in battle and ordinary murder. Regardless of whether the court admits it or not, the behavior of the thieves is no longer a petty fight, but a war in the true sense.

And in war, a soldier who kills a soldier of the opposing side should not be sentenced to death unless the other side has laid down his arms. This was common knowledge in previous lives, and of course the "Da Ming Law" certainly did not stipulate so. However, Zhu Youzhen didn't want to abide by the "Da Ming Law" at all, he has no power now, and one day he will revise the "Da Ming Law" according to his own requirements.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen also advocated interrogation, but the focus of the interrogation was not whether he had killed or not, but whether he had tortured and killed civilians in the recent past, and committed atrocities such as rape of silver women. This forensics work is relatively easy, and Sun Chuanting guards a group of thieves every day for those people who are coerced to identify them.

As the saying goes, the eyes of the masses are bright. Of course, the people have a deep memory of the murderers who destroyed their families, and within a few days, about 100 thieves were found guilty of serious crimes such as indiscriminate killing of innocents and insulting women. And not only did they identify them, but they also told the details of the atrocities they had committed so clearly that they could not quibble at all.

According to the normal trial procedures of this era, the next step was to interrogate these criminals one by one, record their confessions, have them sign and draw them into custody, and then take them into prison, after which the files had to be handed over to the higher yamen. Because they were all capital crimes, they had to be reported to the criminal department of the Beijing division according to the rules, and finally the emperor himself wrote the execution. Then it was sent back to the county layer by layer, and the county received the official approval before the death penalty could be carried out. This back and forth will take a few months at the earliest.

After listening to Sun Chuanting's report, Zhu Youzhen waved his hand and said impatiently: "How can there be so much food and air for them to spoil, tomorrow at noon, they will all be killed!" ”

"This..."Sun Chuanting and Yang Sichang, who was sitting idlely there, were a little hesitant when they heard this, thinking that this prince was too lawless. Although these thieves are indeed heinous, they should not act so hastily.

Zhu Youzhen saw their hesitation, and immediately smiled slightly: "The two adults don't know how to be flexible. These villains will die anyway, so why bother to cause trouble to the court and ourselves. If you turn around, you will report a victory, and hand over the heads of these people as combat merits, and it will be over. Isn't there a merit in killing the good, let's come back to kill a thief and take the merit! ”

ps: In order to celebrate the VIP closure on the first page of this book, the little brother will try to do as much as possible today, so stay tuned!