The fourth year of the Apocalypse was a rare respite for the Ming Dynasty. Despite this year's summer harvest, disasters continued in the northern provinces.

For example, there is no snow in the winter of North Zhili, but the summer harvest is okay.

With the support of groundwater, the grain harvest in the central and western regions of the North China Plain is still abundant, while in the eastern region, because the groundwater is infiltrated by seawater, the drilling cost is relatively high, so the tube wells are not fully popularized, and some areas are affected by drought.

However, because of this in advance, the eastern coastal areas planted a large number of sweet potatoes in the spring of the fourth year of the Apocalypse, which are very drought-tolerant, and it is really arid, so it is enough to flood them with water once or twice. The water conservancy facilities in Beizhili were very complete at this time, with ponds, canals, and waterwheels, and even if there was no snow water to infiltrate the land, it would not affect the growth of these sweet potatoes.

With the advent of the summer harvest, Zhu Youxiao was exempted from the field taxes in various disaster-stricken areas.

In the same year, the Cabinet began to strengthen administrative supervision in the northern provinces, abolishing all kinds of exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous taxes. The main measures were to strengthen the treatment of officials and prohibit private assignments.

In fact, the imperial system is not a backward system, and no matter how mediocre an emperor is, he cannot hope to bring his country to ruin.

It is in fact the management class below that will bring the country to its demise.

As wage earners under the emperor, these management classes often did not care about the lives of the common people, because they were shaking the emperor's dominance, not their own.

At a time when the productive forces were not yet developed, they needed an emperor's banner to justify their ruling interests.

When the productive forces develop to a certain extent. They can kick the Emperor away. Blatantly black-box operations.

So the interests of the emperor. In fact, it has something in common with the interests of ordinary people. The bureaucratic class, on the other hand, is the main culprit.

At this time, Zhu Youxiao's biggest enemy is also these high-level workers.

The power of these high-level workers in the southern region is too strong, and Zhu Youxiao does not dare to move for the time being. But in the northern provinces, Zhu Youxiao and the cabinet have begun to cut the flesh with a blunt knife and take their time. Began to cut one knife after another to limit bureaucratic interests.

The result is obvious, and the livelihood of the people in the northern provinces has gradually stabilized. But Zhu Youxiao's reputation has begun to stink, and these high-level workers are like this. When they run into emperors who limit their interests. If they are powerless to change, then they will raise the pen and scold!

Even if you don't dare to scold now, you will scold in the future.

is like Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, who was scolded very badly. Because Zhu Yuanzhang rectified corruption and considered the problem from the perspective of the interests of ordinary people.

Why was the later Manchu Qing constantly praised by those upper classes?

Because when the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the customs, it basically did not shake the interests of those bureaucratic classes. As long as those bureaucrats are willing to take refuge in them, not only will they not have property security, but they will also be able to follow the Manchu ass and rob the common people of their money. As a result, after the change of dynasty, wealth not only did not decrease, but increased.

The Manchu Dynasty began with its establishment. It is a regime that allows bureaucrats to embezzle, thus co-opting the Han Chinese bureaucracy. Ask for money for money. Officials to officials. As long as you don't rebel, don't have military power. Therefore, the Manchu regime was a paradise for the bureaucratic class, so when suppressing the rebellion of the ordinary people, those bureaucratic classes were also extremely ruthless.

Because the Manchu Qing Dynasty gave the interests of those bureaucratic classes, the prosperity of the Kangqian era was blown out by the bureaucratic class that controlled public opinion.

It is indeed a prosperous time for them, but it is hell for ordinary people.

At this time, Zhu Youxiao is obviously moving towards a road that will provoke infamy, just like Emperor Wanli, but Zhu Youxiao is obviously much more ruthless than Emperor Wanli, and this is just the beginning.

Since the beginning of the year, Zhu Youxiao and Shen Yu have stepped up the promotion and appointment of grassroots officials. Most of the original high-ranking officials enjoyed the benefits of corruption, and their appetite was too great. Even if they use high salaries to support their honesty, they can't be exchanged for their loyalty.

But those grassroots officials are different, they enjoy little benefit from corruption, and many of them are even relatively clean. By promoting these officials, giving them higher salaries, and strengthening supervision, corruption can be curbed.

The anti-corruption efforts became more severe in the fourth year of the Apocalypse, and basically every month, so many high-ranking officials at the provincial level were dismissed, and once the corruption was confirmed, they directly searched their homes and reformed them through labor.

Under the anti-corruption pressure of the central government, the administration of the northern provinces has become much more clean, at least no one dares to openly engage in corruption anymore.

"Your Majesty, this is the list of officials selected from below, all of whom are relatively upright officials, and they have been at the grassroots level for many years." Shen Yu presented a list to Zhu Youxiao, and then continued: "You see that if there is no problem, fill in the gap." ”

"Hmmm! Let's put the list first! I asked the factory guard to check it. Zhu Youxiao nodded and said, this is the first batch of officials to be selected, if there is no problem, then these people will be appointed as county commanders and governors in various places.

Because of the increase in anti-corruption efforts, more officials have begun to fall from power. During this time, the officials who fell from power were no longer just Beijing officials above the court, but all provinces. As a result, there have been many vacancies, and after vacancies, it is natural that honest and honest officials will be selected for promotion one by one, and there will also be vacancies in the top leaders of the grassroots level.

How do you fill a vacancy?

If you choose from those jinshi, there are obviously not so many people. But the three-legged toad is not easy to find, and the two-legged official can't be found?

There are many officials in all parts of the Ming Dynasty, and there are many documents in each yamen. Most of these people who are engaged in clerical work in the government are some scholars who have not been admitted to the Jinshi, and their culture is actually not low. Moreover, he has been working at the grassroots level for many years, and he is also very familiar with the administration of the grassroots level.

The fame of those documents is actually not low, many of them are talents, and some of them are lifted.

There are also some masters who actually know more about administration than those officials, but many of these masters are very slippery, so they are not very good choices, but there are some that are good.

Anyway, there are a lot of people. Zhu Youxiao is not worried about raiding the home of many officials. There will be no one to work for him.

And that's exactly what happened. There are many scholars who want to be officials. And many scholars who want to be officials don't want money, but want to sit in that position and realize their ideals. And now with a high salary and honesty, as long as you are honest and self-disciplined, your material life will not be bad.

With the promotion of the system of high salaries and incorruptibility, Zhu Youxiao and Shen found that the administrative costs had increased a lot. For this reason, the system was changed to ensure that officials were paid high salaries only if they were incorruptible.

Therefore, not all local officials are now paid high salaries, but they are paid only after they are determined to be clean. And those officials who have not been identified as incorruptible. It is the main target of anti-corruption in factory guards.

The next step is to either determine that these officials are incorruptible or that they are corrupt. Batch after batch of reviews were passed, and the sorting out of the administration of officials was finally completed.

However, the anti-corruption campaign has aroused a lot of criticism, but it has also frightened those corrupt officials in the northern provinces, and they are afraid at home every day.

On Zhu Youxiao's desk, there was another stack of recitals opposing the anti-corruption campaign against the officials and against the factory guard.

In the eyes of those officials, the guards were simply illiterate and unqualified to engage in anti-corruption activities. The reason for the opposition is nothing more than injustice and opacity.

"Aiqing, the voice of opposition to the anti-corruption of the factory has been rising recently, and I have decided to leave the anti-corruption review to the ministers. Let's draw up a list of the cabinet first! What disciplinary committee to set up next. In the future, the new department will be responsible for scrutinizing official corruption, as well as death row inmates in various places. It must also be interrogated by this department, and no death row prisoner can be executed if there is insufficient evidence. Zhu You instructed Shen Yun.

"Your Majesty, unjust and wrongful cases in various places are indeed more frequent." Shen Yu agreed with the emperor's decision very much, the criminal investigation of the Ming Dynasty in this era was similar to that of later generations, and if those major vicious cases could not be solved, the criminal investigators would be punished.

If you can't solve the case, not only is it likely that you will have to deduct money, but you will also have to be punished. It's really urgent, and it's possible to pull a random ghost over to deal with things.

There are definitely such cases, but not so many in general. More often than not, local officials colluded with local wealthy families for the sake of profit, and deliberately framed them after accepting bribes.

Basically, every government has some such unjust and wrongful cases, and these unjust and wrongful cases must be sorted out in the future. But until it is sorted out, those people who shout injustice and go to prison cannot be cut down first. Such a model was also adopted by later generations.

A few days later, the news of the establishment of the Commission for Discipline Inspection was officially issued.

The Commission for Discipline Inspection was responsible for examining not only corrupt officials, but also death row inmates, and in the midst of the wave of opposition from those officials, the emperor finally made some concessions, and the factory guards officially withdrew from the process of censoring corrupt officials.

Of course, this does not mean that the factory guard will not be able to deal with those corrupt officials from now on, and Jinyiwei still has the power to arrest, and after the arrest, it will be handed over to the Commission for Discipline Inspection for review, which is actually a change of soup and not a change of medicine. The officials of the Commission for Discipline Inspection are all officials of the Han Emperor Party.

At the same time, the Han Emperor Party also introduced a stricter discipline requirement, stricter requirements for party officials, and began to make every effort to eliminate corrupt elements in the party.

When the Han Emperor Party was founded, it was mixed in with some corrupt officials. At that time, Zhu Youxiao was fledgling, but now he doesn't need these guys at all.

Zhu Youxiao must ensure that the political party's work style is honest and that it has the ability to work efficiently. If it is mixed and dirty, then it will surely become a weak and fragile party in the future.

At this time, Zhu Youxiao has a little prince, and he must also think about it for future generations. He needs a party that can continue the national policy.

Looking at the United Kingdom and the United States in later generations, they were able to become world hegemons, not because they could fight, but because they were more able to survive.

The British were suppressed by the Spaniards, who claimed to have the world's invincible armada, and then by the Dutch.

But the British survived, and the Spaniards and Dutch weakened one after another.

The same is true of Americans, who survived World War I, World War II, and the Cold War.

How can a country survive?

The basic characteristic of being able to survive is that no matter how successive high-level leaders alternate, they can continue the basic national policy that is beneficial to the country. In later generations, the hollowing out of the American industry and the continuous weakening of national strength were actually a vacillation of national policy. As soon as the Jewish-controlled Democratic Party came to power, it fought all kinds of wars, burned money, and constantly helped Israel to bully the Palestinians. The Republican Party came to power with the withdrawal of troops, cuts in military spending, and so on.

Party strife is also very serious in the United States, and behind the partisan strife is actually that Americans are beginning to be played to death by corporations. The Jews, after all, are a people without borders. They have long played to the death of the British, who claim to be the empire on which the sun never sets. The United States of later generations is basically about to be played to death. At the time of the siege of China. There are fewer and fewer cards to play.

The biggest problem of the Ming Dynasty is also party contention, and the national policy has changed back and forth.

Sometimes they advocate for the recovery of the Loop, but sometimes they don't. Sometimes it advocates the development of maritime transportation, and it is not such a thing if the emperor is changed.

In fact, it is the fact that the parties that hold power are constantly changing their forces and thus adjusting their national policy according to the interests of the interest classes they represent.

What Zhu Youxiao needs to do most now is not only to fight corruption, but also to completely quell the party dispute.

In quelling the party dispute, Zhu Youxiao took a simple and crude line, that is, he set up a party that was in line with the interests of the state.

Those who agree with the party's ideas come in, and those who don't agree get out.

Only this party is allowed to exist above the court. The other parties will be gradually destroyed, and this party will continue to absorb local officials and then occupy the places completely.

In the end, the other parties will be destroyed by the Han Emperor, and there will be only one political party in the entire Ming Dynasty.

So what should we do if there is another party dispute within the Han Emperor Party?

This is easy to do, and it depends on party discipline to resolve internal struggles. At this time, the political party in the Ming Dynasty was a loose and undisciplined political party established purely by common interests and ideas. If such a party is a rabble, then the Han Emperor was a disciplined and well-organized regular army.

Of course, not allowing corruption does not mean that it does not mean that it does not give benefits. The royal capital had an interest in giving these Han Emperor officials, but it was a commercial interest. Rather than allowing officials to rob the common people, as the Manchus did. Blatantly exploiting the people's fat and people's ointment. It's equivalent to making the cake bigger and giving them a slice.

The founding and growth of the Han Emperor Party was in fact a process of constantly forming a new class of bureaucratic interests. And the traditional bureaucratic interests will be swept into the trash.

As long as strict discipline is formed, strict organization. No matter how hard other political parties struggle in the future, they will not be able to turn over, and Daming will only need one political party.

Only when the world is unified will there be no chaos, and party strife is so harmful that it can even completely bury a country.

The current scale of the Han Emperor Party is not large enough, and the Donglin Party forces still exist in the court, and Zhu Youxiao has not completely expelled the Donglin Party from the court. However, at this time, the Donglin Party has been marginalized above the court, the cabinet has nothing to do with them, and the six ministries have nothing to do with them, basically they have no real power, either as a spokesman in the Metropolitan Procuratorate, or in the Hanlin Academy, and it has been confirmed that they have been squeezed out of the center of power.

In normal times, Zhu Youxiao rarely discussed major decisions in the court, and major decisions were basically made with the officials of the Han Imperial Party and implemented by the cabinet.

The early dynasties basically talked about some inconsequential things, and now Zhu Youxiao is an early dynasty once every three days. As usual, it is the morning court at the time of the morning, and the court disperses at noon.

In the early days of this day, the Funing Mutiny in Fujian Province reached the Beijing Division.

This mutiny was not very serious, because the warehouse official Lin Tingzhu stole the military reserve and did not pay his salary in time. The state and Xu Shizhang accepted bribes but did not pursue them, and Wang Zhoushou shielded Zuo Er without mediation. As a result, the soldiers Zhang Tianxi and Wang Yijing could not bear it anymore, and together with all the soldiers, they closed the city gate, surrounded the official office, beat the greedy officials, and demolished the house with banners, and the city gate was closed for 13 days.

The mutiny was quickly quelled, but there were no deaths.

The soldiers who participated in the mutiny were appeased and stopped making trouble. Zhu Youxiao did not order the soldiers to be held accountable, but ordered the investigation of corrupt officials in Funing Prefecture.

Killing a few corrupt officials to calm the anger of the people is also a good choice.

However, Zhu Youxiao felt that health centers across the country must be rectified as soon as possible, which is actually a repeal. However, at present, the main energy of the imperial court is still focused on the abolition of the nine sides.

The second batch of layoffs were Jizhou Town and Xuanfu Town, which were relatively close to Jingshi.

As soon as the summer harvest ended, the imperial court announced a plan for retrenchment. Military attachés were all admitted to the Royal Military Academy for reconstruction, and each household that the soldiers were willing to emigrate was given 200 acres of land. The place of migration was the plain area north of Liaodong, and the imperial court would organize military households to carry out semi-militarized military cantonments, and reclaim wasteland with the strength of groups.

Those who are unwilling to emigrate will be helped by the imperial court to change jobs.

After the plan was announced, some military attachés began to become restless. Attempts were made to incite the soldiers to make trouble in order to hinder the withdrawal of the border troops. These military attaches knew that their interests would be very seriously damaged if the border troops were dismantled. First of all, they will lose all their military power, and they will not even be able to have their families. Again they will lose the right to enslave the border army. Some military attaches are even subject to scrutiny.

However, before the dismissal plan was announced, Zhu Youxiao had already made preparations and transferred the Central Army to the side to stand by at any time to suppress the troublemakers.

After all, the arms still couldn't twist the thighs, and as soon as the soldiers who made trouble were instigated, they were suppressed, and the military attaché who was instigated behind them was also found out, and Zhu Youxiao ordered severe punishment. Nearly 200,000 military households in Jizhou Town and Xuanfu Town were finally dismissed by the imperial court.

The change of jobs, the migration of immigrants.

A large-scale immigration campaign began to be carried out in the northeast region under the organization of the imperial court. The road was built directly to the Sanjiang Plain and the Songnen Plain, where there were already official roads built by the government. On this basis, it is widened and reinforced.

Because the temperature is relatively low and the infrastructure is poor. At this time, Jilin and Heilongjiang were definitely a cold and bitter place. However, land, as the most basic means of production, is still very attractive.

Most of those military households chose to emigrate, after all, immigrants could own 200 acres of land in the past, even if the harvest was poor, 200 acres is a lot, which can definitely make it easy for the family to achieve food and clothing.

For those military households who are bitter and haha, there is nothing more attractive than this. There are also some military households who are afraid of the cold and choose to change jobs.

Immigration of hundreds of thousands of people to the Sanjiang Plain, that is, the Great Northern Wilderness area, at one time does have some tests for logistics. However, it can still be bearable, because this summer harvest in eastern Liaoning has also produced a lot of commercial grain. The agricultural population in Liaodong is not large, so the output efficiency of commercial grain is relatively high.

In the western part of the Songnen Plain, the Ming Dynasty has not yet arranged for immigrants to go over. Instead, it was mainly cultivated by the production corps, mainly because there were many Mongolian tribes here.

Clearing the land has already begun to clash with some Mongol tribes, so the Songnen Plain is a less stable place.

At this time, the Ming army was constantly sweeping away those barbarian tribes, and those Mongol tribes did not dare to be too presumptuous.

However, soon Jinyiwei sent information that Lin Dan Khan had returned victoriously from Mobei, bringing with him a lot of livestock looted from Mobei, as well as some people who had been reduced to slavery.

At the same time, Jinyiwei also detected that the remnants of Jiannu were also mixed in with these Mongol armies.

After Zhu Youxiao received the information, he knew that a war was inevitable. Lin Dan Khan conquered Mobei and took in Jiannu, and his ambitions must have swelled to a certain extent. (To be continued.) )