"The soldiers and horses of the three towns in Liaodong only dispatched 30,000, less than half. surrounded the rebel general Kong Youde and others in Gaizhou, but for most of the month, he only dug trenches and fired artillery, and did not charge a single city. What is Zhu Ciye doing, is there such a war? Fan Zhi, the governor of Liaodong, finished reporting that Liaodong's soldiers and horses repeatedly blasted through the city wall, but Liu Jun missed the opportunity again and again, and refused to send troops to seize the gap. ”

"I think Zhu Jiye doesn't want to fight hard at all, he wants to preserve his strength and raise thieves for himself. Zhu Jiye has a large number of firearms in the army, and he has been refusing to pull out part of it to the imperial court, and he has such a siege weapon, but he only besieges but does not attack, this is not the self-respect of raising thieves? ”

"Supporting the army and raising thieves is self-respecting, Zhu Jiye didn't take the court in his eyes at all, domineering! What did Kedao say, did the imperial historians of the various departments and the Metropolitan Procuratorate just sit idly by, and how could the people of the Six Ministries and the Nine Qing Cabinets be silent? ”

Zhou Yanru, the first assistant of the cabinet, sat behind the bookcase, listening to Wu Changshi's impassioned speech in the Ministry of Officials, and he knew that in fact, many people in the court and the central government were very dissatisfied, or jealous, with Zhu Jiye, a dazzling celebrity who crossed the sky like a meteor. In the past three hundred years of the Ming Dynasty, there has never been anyone like him, who has turned from a flat-headed common man to a pillar of the country in such a short period of time, and even controlled the military power of several towns.

Especially for those scholars who have studied hard for more than ten years or even decades to be able to be promoted in the imperial examination, they are born to look down on military attachés, a seven-rank magistrate from a two-rank jinshi, can not put the four or five rank generals in his eyes, if he becomes a patrol, or a superintendent of the army, then even the first and second rank of the general lieutenant can be called and drunk.

But Liu Jun only took a short time to surpass the position that they could not climb to in their lifetime, a military general, and even without taking them into account. Who can be convinced willingly.

Not to mention, this military general has also deeply touched their real interests.

For example, Wu Changshi in front of him, a Jinshi from Zhejiang, the backbone of the Restoration Society, originally Liu Jun was also a member of the Restoration Society. Even when it was decided to make an exception to recruit Liu Jun into the Restoration Society, although it was proposed by the fourth son of the Restoration Society, he also voted in favor. At that time, Liu Jun was just an inconspicuous little military attaché, and Wu Changshi only felt that Liu Jun could be used, and what he valued more was not Liu Jun's ability, but his relationship with Macheng Mei Zhihuan, Li Changgeng and Liu Qiao.

But now Wu Changshi is scolding Liu Jun, saying that he supports the army and raises thieves for self-respect. Why? Because Liu Jun provoked him, Wu Changshi and Zhou Yanru planned to win over Liu Jun, a new force in the court, and unite to deal with Wu Fu's Jiangbei Party. Wu Changshi felt that this was a trivial matter at the time, and Liu Jun would definitely support him if he came forward.

But in fact, he hit a wall everywhere after he came out.

Liu Jiye didn't want to pay attention to him at all, and he tried to contact Liu Jun repeatedly, but he didn't get a response. He instead wanted to come forward through Li Chunjiang and the fourth son, who were close to Liu Jun in the society, but whether it was Li Chunjiang or Hou Fangyu and other four sons. are lukewarm to him, and they are obviously estranged from him.

He personally went to meet Zhang Pu, the leader of the Restoration Society. But after talking for a long time, I understood from his words that Li Chunjiang, Chen Zhenhui and others had already talked to Zhang Pu, and it was Li Chunjiang and others who persuaded Zhang Pu not to meddle in the battle between Zhou Yanru and Wu Fu.

If it was just like this, Wu Changshi would not be as angry as he is now. Just a few days ago, he just met his old family Wu Bo. Uncle Wu rushed to Beijing to tell him. Li Shuchu, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, put his eldest brother in prison because the government accused them of taking advantage of the opportunity to lend money in the disaster year, plundering the people's land, hoarding and selling grain, and smuggling to the sea. Evasion of commercial taxes and tariffs and many other crimes.

Governor Li Shuchu imprisoned his eldest brother, confiscated the money they lent, confiscated the smuggled goods, hoarded grain, and even the grain fields bought at low prices during the famine, and even fined his family a large sum of money. Being tossed like this, the Wu family, which was originally a local clan, was greatly injured, not to mention that the savings for many years were gone, the eldest brother was also imprisoned, and the old man and the old lady were all sick, especially the reputation of the Wu family was completely ruined in the local area.

When Wu Changshi heard the news, he was furious.

It turned out that Liu Jun did what customs collected and what tariffs, and he also objected a few times without pain, but he didn't come out much, after all, the emperor strongly supported it, and the first assistant and the second assistant were Liu Jun's teachers at that time.

But now, the matter is on my own family, and this thing is absolutely unbearable.

Zhou Yanru also knew what happened in Wu Changshi's family, and of course he knew who he was competing with for profit when Liu Jiye proposed and Mei Zhihuan and Li Changgeng vigorously supported the establishment of the Municipal Bureau, the establishment of the Taxation Bureau, the collection of commercial taxes, etc.

These things have little to do with ordinary people, and what really affects them is those merchants, and in the Ming Dynasty, in fact, most of the merchants were gentry. Daming now has more than 600,000 talents, tens of thousands of people, and thousands of jinshi, not to mention a large number of prisoners. But not everyone who reads can become an official, and the vast majority of people have turned to business.

In other words, from the countryside to the city in the Ming Dynasty, those merchants who sat in shops, and even those who rented land and opened mines, and those who ran maritime trade, were basically those who read books. There are too many scholars in the Ming Dynasty, and there are also a lot of famous ones, who occupy the officialdom on the one hand, control the court and the locality, and on the other hand, fully infiltrate the merchants, peasants and workers.

With their control of the court and the locality, this huge group is unusually stable. The officials in the DPRK are also their spokesmen, firmly maintaining their privileged position. Their fields have many privileges, they are exempt from many taxes, and they do business, and there is basically no commercial tax, and there is only a little pass, but as long as they are under the banner of government officials, they can also travel unhindered.

The income of the imperial court is decreasing year by year, but these gentry of the Ming Dynasty live a luxurious life.

Zhou Yanru has been the first assistant twice, and of course he knows what is going on here. Every time the imperial court wanted to levy some commercial taxes, the officials fiercely opposed it, saying that they were competing with the people for profit, but in fact, they just didn't want the government to infringe on their inherent privileged interests.

Zhou Yanru himself also belongs to this interest group, but if you look at it from the side of the imperial court, establishing customs and collecting commercial taxes are indeed very correct strategies, just blindly collecting taxes from ordinary people, how much can you collect? Because of the privileges of the gentry and their local connections, often all those taxes were passed on to the common people.

Just like the three salaries were levied that year, Yang Sichang reported to the imperial court, saying that it was levied according to the acres of land, not according to Dingkou. Converted, the three salaries are taxed nearly 20 million taels of silver a year, which can be calculated according to the world's acres of land, and the Liao salary is levied by one and two cents of silver per mu.

At that time, it was calculated that each stone of grain was converted into eight dollars of silver, and the levy of more than one cent of silver was only equivalent to an extra few catties of grain for one acre of land.

However, on the surface, the accounts are calculated like this, but in actual operation, the local area is not levied by the mu, and most of the land in the world is occupied by a small number of gentry and landlords, but when the levy is apportioned, they instead pass on the vast majority of these levies that should be paid to the common people, or to their own tenant farmers, and even some landlords and many local officials even take the opportunity to embezzle, in the name of fire consumption, etc.

As a result, the three salaries, which should have little impact on the ordinary people, were originally only a few catties more per mu, but in the end they made the people miserable and went bankrupt, but those landlords who owned a large amount of land did not bear much additional distribution, and some even took the opportunity to squeeze the people and make another profit, and even took the opportunity to occupy a large amount of land.

This is the status quo of the Ming Dynasty, when Wanli wanted to collect mining taxes, the world was shaken, why, it was those gentry officials who refused to give up their interests. In addition, the emperor had no one to use, so he appointed eunuchs, and the eunuchs were also lawless, corrupt and corrupt when collecting taxes.

The less income the imperial court has now, the little income that is already small, there will always be arrears, and if this goes on like this, the country will inevitably become a country. But the officials of the Ming Dynasty shouted loyalty and patriotism, but in fact, they were reluctant to spit out those privileges and interests at all. Just like a few years ago, the emperor wanted to borrow some silver from the officials and nobles to help the emergency, but no one was willing to come up with the money.

"Hou Sui, the secretary of the Nanjing Military Department, Fang Kongjiong, the secretary of the Nanjing Household Department, Li Shuchu, the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang and the governor of Zhejiang, Zhang Guowei, the governor of Liangguang and Guangdong, Yuan Jixian, the governor of Lianghu and Hubei, Zhu Dadian, the governor of Hunan, Shi Kefa, the governor of Jiangbei, Chen Jiyu, the governor of Jiangnan, Wu Zhiping, the governor of Fujian, He Tengjiao, the governor of Taiwan, and Zhang Jingxin, the governor of Guangxi, are all local officials who support the new tax law."

Zhou Yanru said slowly, these people were all appointed by Mei and Li when they were there, and it is reported that these governors were actually recommended by Liu Jiye to Mei and Li behind the scenes. Because of this, now these feudal officials in the south are also classified as the Chu Party.

Whether it is the Jiangnan Party or the Jiangbei Party, even their own base camp is controlled by the Chu Party, which is also a strange thing. Wu Fu and Zhou Yanru both wanted to win over these governors, but it was obvious that although these people were basically from Donglin, they were now going further with Liu Jiye and were classified as the Chu Party.

In a certain way, in fact, the so-called party at this time does not have strict boundaries, perhaps just because someone's teacher or classmate, fellow villager, or the same year is a certain party, and then they are often classified as the same party. The Jiangbei Party, the Jiangnan Party, and the Chu Party, which are now privately divided between the DPRK and China, are in fact essentially the original Donglin, and there are also some re-established parties, and even some former eunuch parties.

However, these three parties are not formal parties, but are just private names given by officials to the three pan-alliance official groups headed by Wu Fu, Zhou Yanru, and Liu Jiye. (To be continued.) )

PS: Thank you for 100 years, Nanying Yu, and the feeling of going home. It's been too cold these days, and I've caught a cold again, and it's really beepping the dog.