The reform methods mentioned by Zhu Shuren are still very pertinent to the disadvantages of the Ming Dynasty and the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Further promoting the collection of centimen and expanding commercial taxes to support the military are miraculous strokes that have been proven by later history. The Qing Dynasty relied on this trick to extinguish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

If there is no money, maybe the Qing Dynasty would not have survived as well as the Ming Dynasty that was hit by Li Zicheng under the blow of Hong Xiuquan.

The only problem of Li Jin is the decentralization of local financial power and the division of warlords, which led to the later Qing Dynasty Although Hong Xiuquan was extinguished, it also made Zeng Guofan Li Hongzhang Zuo Zongtang tail.

But this problem doesn't matter if it's put on Zhu Shuren, because he can replace the position of Zeng, Li, and Zuo in later generations, which is equivalent to pure profit on both sides of the front and back. If it weren't for the arrival of his father-in-law, King Lu, and a vassal king who had no son and was not afraid of being usurped from his family business, he really wouldn't have been able to meet the right time and place needed for the deepening of this reform.

And Zhu Shuren mentioned later that "high salaries and honesty, get rid of bad rules", that is also a proven good law in the Qing Dynasty in later generations, although it is not completely clean, it has finally hit the greed for ink to the extent that it can not become a rule openly, and it has also changed the filth of the late Ming Dynasty until Kangxi.

Only by solving these problems can we talk about solving the evil problems of the troops eating empty salaries, drinking soldiers' blood, and deducting more than half of the military funds allocated by the household departments as soon as they leave the treasury before they leave Beijing.

Otherwise, no matter how good the fiscal reform is and there are more financial resources, if more than half of the money is not really spent on the army and on armaments, it will all be in vain, let alone combat effectiveness.

After Shi Kefa understood these truths, he would naturally give his full support out of public intentions.

……

Of course, Zhu Shuren still does not have a reasonable status to intervene in politics, and this kind of heart-wrenching reform also needs time to coordinate interests. So after he helped Zhu Changzhu and Shi Kefa come up with ideas in late March, he himself left Nanjing at the end of March to avoid suspicion.

Shi Kefa continued to be busy with the work of other ministries, plus liaising with the local governors to support King Lu's new policies, and became the spokesperson of the reform.

The detailed rules for the above-mentioned reforms were finally issued from Nanjing in early April and distributed to all provinces one after another. From the point of view of time, this was basically issued ten days after Zhu Shuren left Beijing, and it blocked the mouths of the people in the world, and did not fall behind the handle of "the country's surname overstepping his authority to interfere in politics as the son-in-law of the country".

The tortuous and complicated compromise of interests in this is also not to be underestimated, Shi Kefa has done a lot of work for this, Zhu Shuren is still too young, and he is really not good at this kind of officialdom interest exchange.

Even so, after Shi Kefa implemented the financial part of the new policy of supervising the country, there were still some small voices of resistance in the local area.

But fortunately, Shi Kefa has explicitly and secretly emphasized that "these are the three fires necessary for the new prison country to take office, and it will end here when it is burned", and it also abolished the "three salaries" that the Chongzhen Dynasty hated, which was regarded as a big relief to the people.

So those victims who didn't have too much conflict just pinched their noses and endured it for the time being, and decided to wait and see again, don't be a bird.

On the other hand, Shen Tingyang, the head of the household department, was also very powerful, and took the initiative to let his family expand their business recently, making a fuss, and then obeyed the new policy and took the lead in paying a large amount of new deal money (in fact, it should be called "dividing money")

The wealthy businessmen in the south saw that the Shen family and the Zheng family had softened one after another, and they became less and less willing to resist.

Among the household departments in charge of Shen Tingyang, there are still a few subordinate officials, who think that they understand the thoughts of their bosses, and secretly think that the current prison lord is a sonless, and the lord of the ministry and the lord of the prison are still in-laws, and feel that the lord of the ministry wants to "turn the family into a country", so he is so willing to spend money.

As a result, Lang Zhong, a subordinate of Lang Zhong, did what he liked and put forward a new financial reform plan on his own at the court meeting, saying:

Since all localities enthusiastically support the abolition of the three salaries and the increase of the centi, it is better to give more opportunities to the patriotic rich businessmen and gentry, and the household department should introduce a system to allow the gentry to pay the centigold in advance in exchange for the tax payment certificate, and then use the tax payment certificate to deduct the actual business across provinces in the future. The imperial court can also give interest discounts to merchants who prepay the centime in advance. ”

This line of thinking, to put it bluntly, is already a bit similar to issuing treasury bonds, when Shen Tingyang heard it at first glance, he secretly said that he had capable people under him, and even wondered if his son secretly taught white gloves to say this.

But after thinking about it, he also trusted his family's father-son relationship very much, and knew that his son didn't need to hide his hand from him, so he didn't use colored glasses to judge this kind of invitation.

Shi Kefa's side, when he heard about this trick at first glance, he also felt a little novel, but fortunately, Shi Kefa was knowledgeable and well-informed, and he also consulted Xu Guangqi and other seniors who were involved in Western studies back then, so in the end, I also pondered the taste:

In the Ming Dynasty, it was not surprising that some finance officials could think of issuing "prepayment tax deduction bonds", and in fact, the Venetians in the Western world had already done so two hundred years ago.

Even if the news of Daming is closed, considering that the Dutch also learned this trick more than a hundred years after the Venetian pioneered it, and Daming has been dealing with the Dutch Hongmaoyi people for so long, it is not surprising that he has heard of this trick.

If a Han man in the Han and Tang dynasties thought of this trick, he might be able to say that he was a traverser. It was only at the end of the Ming Dynasty that he thought of this, and he was not considered a traverser, at most he learned from both China and the West.

After calming down and carefully and carefully considering the pros and cons of this request, Shen Tingyang still advised Zhu Changzhu not to accept such a request at the court meeting very sincerely.

Zhu Changzhu was a little surprised at first, because he also felt that the solo performance of the Hubu Langzhong was a bit reasonable, and it could indeed open up financial resources and eat grain, why did the father-in-law disagree?

Faced with this question, Shen Tingyang said solemnly: "As soon as this law is opened, it will be difficult to suppress the wind of local looting, and it is difficult to imagine how officials who have obtained the authority to collect money in advance will abuse this power.

I, a local official in the Ming Dynasty, may change jurisdictions in a few years, who doesn't want to overpay taxes during his tenure? In this way, the old officials have scraped the ground and made outstanding political achievements, but the new officials take over only to find that the local commercial tax has been pre-levied for several years, and the rich businessmen have a bunch of tax payment deduction vouchers in their hands, how can the new successor carry out his work?

Considering the predicament of my Ming Dynasty's current governance, these powers must not be delegated casually, otherwise the people will definitely be miserable! ”

Zhu Changzhu was originally a soft-eared root, and he had never learned to govern the country, so when he heard it, he felt that it made sense, so he asked other courtiers for their opinions.

So, there were a few courtiers who didn't know much about finance, but were really loyal and patriotic (those who were not patriotic and selfish, they couldn't wait for this suggestion to be implemented, so they wouldn't speak), so they followed Shen Tingyang's train of thought and asked:

"Shen Butang, since the decentralization of the power of the pre-levy and the payment of interest deduction vouchers will lead to so many opportunities for greedy ink, isn't it okay not to decentralize?

If it is uniformly recruited by the Ministry of Households, with the integrity of the Ministry of Households' current strict law enforcement, Shen Mintang and your high style and bright festival should be able to plug these loopholes, right? ”

At this moment, the trust of the people in the DPRK and China for Shen Tingyang's non-greed is still very high, because Shen Tingyang has taken the lead in supporting the increase in commercial taxes, and many people estimate that according to Shen Tingyang's payment of money, the Shen family is afraid that they will be able to pay two million taels of commercial tax this year.

And the Zheng family also has to pay so much, and there are other merchants in the southern provinces who all do inter-provincial trade, adding up to 10 million and a little more. The total income of the Ming Dynasty this year can exceed 15 million taels.

This is to take more than 4 million from the Shen family and the Zheng family, and more than 10 million from half of the world in the south. It's just that Shen Tingyang eats well, and he won't engage in the kind of trick of "after the matter is completed, Master Huang's 1.8 million will be returned, and we will divide the two major families in the south of the city".

Therefore, everyone now believes that Shen Tingyang will definitely be able to strictly enforce the law and will not go out of his way to catch fish.

But Shen Tingyang still shook his head fairly, and reminded him with a slight understanding: "This is not a question of whether or not Yin can stop eating and fishing after the right to collect the household department.

As you may remember, the reason why the law of the gold was effective in the first place, which allowed the people to support it, and also strengthened the military strength of the southern provinces, was that 'the commercial taxes paid by the local governments were only used for local expenses, and only for the defense of the provinces'. This avoided the gentry of the southern provinces, worried that their money would be subsidized by the imperial court in other provinces, so they would be stingy.

Human nature in the world has been like this since ancient times, in order to protect their hometown, the squires are still willing to pay, but in order to defend the world, to defend the distant things, the world does not have such a high realm. If today, in order to pay the centiko in advance, the right to pre-levy is returned to the Ministry of Households, how can the people of the local provinces be willing to be enthusiastic? Isn't that the old way?

At the beginning of the birth of Lijin, it was said that each province had separate accounts, and the money of the province only supported the military expenses of the province, so it could never be changed, at least until the world was re-stabilized. ”

After saying this, most of the officials who held the discussion also shut up. Some people are still ashamed, it is said that Confucius has said that benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and faith for so many years, but in fact, Confucian scholars also talk more about benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom, and just say the word "faith", which is not as important as the merchant class.

However, the discussion was not entirely fruitless in the end. In line with the attitude of treating things and not people, everyone continued to refine and discuss each other according to the situation, and Shen Tingyang really found a method that could be piloted:

Although allowing the prepayment of centiko in all provinces in the country will lead to exhaustion and fishing, and the full collection of the household will lead to local distrust of the earmarked funds, then only in the Nanzhili area pilot, concession of prepayment of commercial tax deduction, and give interest, the above problems can be perfectly avoided.

Because in the Ming Dynasty, the Nanzhili region did not have its own financial officer system, and the finances of Nanzhili have always been managed by the Nanjing Household Department. Now in a special period, Nanjing's household department has been upgraded to a formal household department, but the original authority is still there.

In addition, this is at the foot of the prison country, with hundreds of officials staring, and the officialdom environment is more transparent, Shen Tingyang is indeed an iron-fisted and fair financial official, and he will not be greedy for his own money. Therefore, in the end, Zhu Changzhu allowed this opening of a special case, and this year in the Nanzhili area, it will be directly managed by the household department, and the pilot project will pay more commercial taxes and pay interest deductions in advance.

Starting next year, if the wealthy businessmen and gentry in other provinces are envious of this meager interest and are willing to share the worries of the imperial court, they can apply again and discuss it separately.

In this way, it can be regarded as carrying over the initial period of fluctuation of fiscal reform, so that things will not be done too quickly and cause chaos.

It is a matter of millions and tens of millions of dollars, of course, we can't be in a hurry, we must be part of the pilot, and then promote.

After the passage of this law, the relatives of the Shen family who ran the merchant fleet (after Shen Tingyang became an official of the household department, he had long since stopped running the family business himself, and his relatives held it on his behalf) also subscribed and paid a large amount of prepayment in a large amount of face, which further stabilized the financial gap in front of Zhu Changzhu's prison regime.

With such a leader, the voices of resistance in various places have been suppressed more and more weakly.

……

It will take one or two months for the decree on fiscal reform to be first promulgated in early April, and it will take one or two months for it to be implemented in various localities.

Therefore, in the four or five months of the DPRK and the central government, there will be no new actions in the civil affairs for the time being, and the court basically revolves around the three fires of King Lu and the prison of the country.

Regardless of the final result, most of the officials, gentry, and generals in the south saw a prison prince who was light on government, did not work too much, and only did what was necessary, and fully realized the completely different styles of King Lu and the first emperor.

The ruling tone of "not to blame for the past and not to dwell on historical merits and demerits" has also been fully displayed, making people's hearts more stable.

In addition, the words are divided into two ends, before the three fires of King Lu's new policy, as early as mid-March, the will to summon the kings to come to Nanzhili has also been issued. This work originally took a month or two to take effect, so now it is being carried out in parallel with the new policy of supervising the country.

By mid-April, the first batch of vassal kings who had obediently come to Beijing after receiving the order arrived in the territory of Nanzhili.

The other vassal kings, if nothing else happened and did not disobey their orders, could have come to Nanzhili later in April and as late as June at the latest, and accept the closer control of the imperial court.

In the two hundred and sixty or seventy years of the Ming Dynasty, thirteen generations of emperors, a total of more than 200 princes have been crowned so far. Of course, a small half of them have not been passed down because of the lack of children and the expulsion of the country.

There were only more than 100 princes who could reach the Apocalypse, and in the early years of Chongzhen, because the war had begun, the thieves began to kill the vassal kings in the fallen areas one after another, so at the beginning of Chongzhen's ascension to the throne, the number of princes had fallen below one hundred and fifty.

Now after nearly twenty years of bloody civil war and internal strife, the number of princes continues to decline sharply, after all, the princes of the northern provinces have basically been killed, either at the hands of Li Zicheng and other thieves, or by the Tartars.

Even in the south, the princes of Hunan and Sichuan were all swept away by Zhang Xianzhong, and a total of more than a dozen families were taken away.

Therefore, there are less than 50 companies in the world who can have the identity of a prince. The bloodline can be closer to the first emperor than Zhu Changzhu, only the blessed king Zhu Yousong is the only one, and the others are even as close as Zhu Changzhu, and none of them are gone (Wanli does not have so many children and grandchildren who have survived until now)

Now that they have received Zhu Changzhu's edict, the first and most positive responses are those vassal kings who live in the marginal areas of the border between Shandong and Nanzhili. Because they are on the territory of the domain, they are already on the verge of Li Zicheng and the Tartar soldiers going south, and if they don't run, they will die, and they wish that the imperial court would issue an edict to allow them to escape from the fiefdom.

From Zhu Shuren's standpoint, he didn't really want to save those Shandong princes at the beginning, and wished that those pig wastes were directly killed by Li Zicheng or Dolgon, and he could still be quiet. The imperial court was also able to spend less money and more money on the people and the army.

However, Zhu Shuren also knew that he must use these Shandong princes as an introduction to hook out other princes in the south who are stable and prosperous, so as to show that the court treats them equally.

Otherwise, only the princes of the rich areas in the south will be forcibly recruited, but the princes of Shandong will not be summoned or rescued, and no matter how stupid people are, they can see that there is a cat that "weakens the clan and respects the king of Lu alone".

As a result, on the way south for this group of Shandong princes, some small accidents naturally inevitably occurred - two or three of them were pampered, lacked exercise, and never went far in their lives, so they were not adaptable.

If you can slowly recuperate, you can also recuperate, but because some of Liu Fangliang and even Dolgon's troops have infiltrated and harassed in Shandong, especially the Tartar cavalry can cross the fortified city to the rear non-war zone to burn and loot.

When the war is in chaos, where do these princes dare to rest halfway?

So after some tossing, two of the dozen princes who went south on the edge of Shandong and Henan died from the chaotic army infiltrated and plundered by the Tartars, three died from the toss of the epidemic and the soil and water, and only nine of the fourteen northern princes arrived in Yangzhou alive.

Zhu Changzhu would not allow them to cross the river to Nanjing, and it was also to prevent careerists from appearing in the city of Nanjing, so he placed all the princes from the north and the terminal station in Yangzhou, which is across the river.

At the same time that the nine northern princes arrived in Yangzhou one after another, six or seven of the remaining about 30 princes of distant or near bloodlines from the southern provinces also arrived in the vicinity of Nanjing alive. And behind the arrival of these six or seven families, there was also a death of illness and death at the hands of thieves-

The south is not completely safe now, Zhang Xianzhong's army that was wiped out in southern Hunan two years ago, some remnants fled west to Jinggang and Luoxiao mountains after the battle of Hengzhou, and the major mountainous areas in the south, and now many places are still quite chaotic. The two princes who were killed and died of fright were from Jiangxi.

After this wave, a total of more than 40 surviving princes in the world, seven died, and fifteen were completely controlled by Zhu Changzhu.

There are more than a dozen on the way, only a few single-digit ones, for various reasons, they chose to learn the king of Fufu to resist - not that these resisting ones must have more ambitions, it can only be said that there are more than a hundred people, all kinds of people, so many princes of the Ming Dynasty, those who are not clear, those who are cowardly, and those who are afraid of being killed, all kinds of people.

In any case, after this wave, the vassal kings of the world have been ploughed like ploughing, and they have been completely classified and filed. If you want to be a thorn, you will naturally be cleaned up by the imperial court.

In addition, in the process of escorting the vassal king across the border, the local officials involved in various places were also trembling, and those magistrates who caused the vassal king to be killed by Tartars and bandits in their own defense area were all frightened at first, lest King Lu and the previous emperor value the crime of "trapping the domain" and want to use their heads to pay tribute to the murdered prince.

However, Zhu Changzhu took the opportunity to extend an olive branch, and repeatedly expressed the goodwill that "in this autumn of national calamity, during the special period, it is not easy for northern officials to defend the territory, and they are infiltrated and killed by a small group of Tartars, and they cannot be punished as trapping the domain, as long as they do not lose the city, it will not be counted", and pardoned the sins of these officials.

The magistrates and generals saw that "it turns out that there is now a vassal king who has been killed in the territory under his jurisdiction, and he will no longer be questioned", and he became bolder, and then recalled the harsh punishment and harsh law of the Chongzhen Dynasty, how many governors and military officials were executed by Chongzhen because of the death of the vassal king.

Who let the Ming Dynasty develop to this day, there are few people in the world who like vassal kings! I heard that the vassal king is not responsible for the death, and it can be analyzed on a case-by-case basis, who doesn't feel relieved.

Of course, Zhu Changzhu's "generosity" will definitely leave an excuse for the vassal kings. For example, King Fu has repeatedly privately connected with other vassal kings, expressing that "Zhu Changzhu is weak, and now he has been controlled by Zhu Shuren, which is deliberately mutilating the clan's siblings, and only then did he change the good law of severely punishing feudal officials when the first emperor was trapped, and changed it to the current state of collapse."

In the Liangguang region, where the power of the Zhu Shuren in the south is the weakest, there are also some vassal kings who have been quite ambitious in history and want to be emperors, because they are afraid of entering Beijing and want to stay in Liangguang, which is far away from the Tiangao Emperor, and they choose to echo Zhu Yousong.

As the time entered May, two months after the Fu King Zhu Yousong first complained of illness and refused to go south, Zhu Changzhu specially issued another edict for him, asking Zhu Yousong's condition whether he had improved, and whether he could go south to state the responsibility of "intervening in the division" before.

If he continued to call himself sick, Zhu Changzhu also said that he could send a few imperial doctors to Fengyang from Nanjing to help Zhu Yousong consult and confirm his condition.