Chapter 99 Rule the Country with an Iron Arm

After thinking for a while, Chongzhen felt that it seemed reasonable for Yu Xiaotian to do so, and that he could control the power of local officials too much, so he nodded and praised for the first time.

With Yu Xiaotian taking power and entering the autumn, Chongzhen began to see some better news from the briefing. For the exiles in the Central Plains because of the construction of slaves, Yu's army entered Beijing, and the imperial court pumped Hong Chengchou and a large number of Shaanxi soldiers to take a breath and start to recover.

However, with Yu Xiaotian's take of power, the redeployment of officials and the arrangement of Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting to return to the Central Plains provinces to supervise and suppress the exiled civilian army, the life of the exiled army was obviously difficult.

With the implementation of various new policies, the burden of the people has been reduced by the mate. In many noisy places, the imperial court directly issued an order to exempt those local people from various tax burdens that have accumulated over the years, and the grain provisions of those years have also been reduced or exempted, striving to attract the people who left home to return to their homes to return to cultivate.

As for many places that have been affected for years, it has also decreed to avoid all tax arrears, and promised to re-examine the land and drastically reduce the various additions of the previous court.

This made the people see hope and no longer worry about not being able to afford to pay the imperial grain, so the people began to feel at ease and were unwilling to easily join the exile army.

The exiled army gradually began to lose blood. Many of the rebels, after hearing the various policies announced by the imperial court to benefit the people, were no longer in the intention to follow the bandits, so a large number of them began to be deserters, surrendered to the government, and then returned to their hometowns again as their peasants.

In this way, a considerable number of exiles can no longer be as arrogant as before, and after the elites of the family army also devoted themselves to suppressing them, all kinds of exiles have been defeated in a row, and their range of activities began to be greatly squeezed. There is a continuous stream of exiles that have been wiped out under the strong suppression of various places. The bandits are either arrested and surrendered. After being killed, more than a dozen civilian troops were wiped out by Hong Chengchou, Sun Chuanting and others.

At the end of the 12th year, Luo Rucai and Zhang Xianzhong were appointed as leaders, leaving only the largest unit of Li Zicheng, who were driven to the area of Qingyang Prefecture and Heping Liangfu.

At the same time, Yu Xiaotian invested a large amount of funds stolen from various places to help the disaster victims, causing local governments to vigorously help the disaster victims, restore the victims to return to their land for farming, cooperate with the implementation of the new policy, curbed the momentum of land annexation, and made the people see hope, and gradually Return to their hometown and re-cultivation.

During this period, Yu Xiaotian ordered Jinyiwei to make an unannounced visit, and at the same time let his men monitor, which really caught a large number of officials. These guys are used to being greedy. Now that they have taken over such a large amount of relief money, how can they not reach out to make money, so they roll their arms and sleeves to prepare to make a lot of money.

Yu Xiaotian is waiting for them to do this. They are worried that they can't find an excuse to kill these guys. This time they reached out to make money, which can be said to be in the heart of Yu Xiaotian.

With both hands, Yu Xiaotian grabbed the dirty hands of a large number of officials while providing disaster relief. This time, he will not be polite. When dealing with these corrupt officials, he directly started to kill them. It can be said that people's heads are rolling, and even some counties, from the county to the servants below, were arrested by a clean, even officials who did things. It's gone.

Yu Xiaotian doesn't care about this. The most indispensable thing in the world is the people who want to be officials. He ordered to draft a large number of students who used to want to be officials but did not have the opportunity to be selected and directly send them to various places to fill the gaps. As for those family officials who control local affairs, they also use new people to fill the gaps. , don't be afraid that they will muddy the previous water. At worst, tie up the bad account in the previous local area and open a new account. In short, it is enough to ensure that local affairs are managed.

Although there have been many drawbacks in doing so, it is better than following the old system and continuing to let local officials rot. Such a thunderous method, in the history of the Ming Dynasty, except for Zhu Chongba at the beginning, even the cruel Zhu Di was not so cruel to Xiaotian.

Yu Xiaotian also tried his best to raise grain, and promoted the cultivation of improved rice and cereals in various parts of the north, so that the people could first have food to use, and mobilized a large amount of grain from the south to transport it to the north, so that the people could at least have a mouthful of food first. As long as the north arrives After the summer harvest of the 13th year of Chongzhen, the chaos can basically be controlled.

Chongzhen saw from the briefing that so many exiles had been wiped out one after another. He couldn't help but feel ashamed. He has been emperor for more than ten years, but the exiles have been more and more. The Central Plains are becoming more chaotic. However, after Yu Xiaotian has been in power for more than half a year, the exiles have been wiped out in large numbers, and Henan has gradually restored to calm. Lake The deminent forces in the Guangyi area have also been gradually purified. Now only Shaanxi is left, and the deminunciation forces have not been fully controlled, and the rest of the provinces have gradually returned to peace.

Although he thought that Yu Xiaotian was so easy to kill, it was not a good thing that he would make the place useless, but the facts told him that his worry was not realistic. Yu Xiaotian broke the fact and hired a large number of new officials, flooded the places where the officialdom had been cleaned, and quickly stabilized the shape of those places. Potential.

After a large amount of disaster relief money and food were put into the local area, the people enjoyed the treatment of the Ming people for the first time. Although the relief was not much, they could barely survive. As long as there was a mouthful of food, the vast majority of the people were unwilling to rebel and fight with the imperial officials and soldiers with their heads.

In addition, during this period, Yu Xiaotian ordered the Metropolitan Inspectorate and the new Jinyiwei to strongly intervene in relief activities, and actually arrested and killed a large number of officials who tried to get their pockets from the money and food to help the disaster victims, so that the people really received the money and food allocated to them for the first time, so that they could get the real Positive benefits.

In order to persuade farming and restore local agricultural production, Yu Xiaotian also ordered local supervision of the people who had received grain seeds to resume farming the land. Once they found that someone was lazy and refused to replough their land and ate the grain seeds sent to them, they would confiscate their land, put them in prison, and sent them to other places for hard labor. Doing hard work in the camp and asking them to repair rivers and roads is cruel enough to really eliminate some lazy people and get a lot of free labor.

In a word, after Xiaotian took over power, the situation in the north of the Ming Dynasty quickly began to be calmed down. Chongzhen had to admit that Yu Xiaotian was a hundred times stronger than him, and Yu Xiaotian's wrist was much more vicious than him. He had a tiger and wolf division that he could drive at will. This army was extremely loyal to him. Wherever Yu Xiaotian's sword pointed, they killed wherever he went, and any power that tried to stop Yu Xiaotian's progress was completely crushed by them.

And Chongzhen asked himself that although he was the lord of a country, he had never had such an army loyal to him and did not have the ability to build such a strong division.

The biggest difference between Yu Xiaotian and him is not that he has such a fierce tiger and wolf teacher at hand, but that Yu Xiaotian does not ask for fame. In order to achieve his goal, he can do whatever he can do. Cao Huachun, Wang Dehua, Wang Chengen, etc. who walked out of the palace during this period The intimate eunuch also brought back some gossip to Chongzhen.

There are rumors that in the past six months, many officials in the Ming Dynasty have actually opposed the implementation of Xiaotian's new policy, and many local officials have colluded with local heroes to try to use force against Xiaotian's new policy, but many of them were not ready and were inexplicably given Assassination.

And many assassinations can be directly pointed to Yu Xiaotian. There are assassins hundreds of meters away, using fire-guns and one fatal shot to solve the target of the assassination, often without giving them any chance.

Even a deputy general in Jiangxi shouted to support the governor of Jiangxi to rise up to fight against Yu Xiaotian. As a result, one night, his whole family was killed by people at home, and even the house was burned down. In the end, there was no evidence of guilt left. As a result, his soldiers and horses were immediately taken over by Yu Xiaotian. Disarmed on the spot.

The governor of Jiangxi himself was also quickly assassinated. At the moment when he went out to do business and got off the sedan chair, more than a dozen assassins shot him on the roof of a house not far away and killed him with fire-guns. Finally, the officials in Jiangxi quickly expressed their willingness to implement Yu Xiaotian's new policy.

And in all parts of the Ming Dynasty, it is said that there are no 10,000 assassinations like this everywhere, at least thousands of them. Although everyone knows that this was secretly done by Yu Xiaotian's men, there is nothing they can do about him, which makes those in the Ming Dynasty who try to fight against Yu Xiaotian all scared. , I didn't even dare to go out of the door, and I was worried when I sat in the house.

After listening to this, Chongzhen felt a burst of chills and had a deeper understanding of filial piety. This guy really had no scruples about achieving his goal. No matter what means he used, as long as he achieved the purpose he wanted.

At the end of the 12th year, Chongzhen had just opened the sea ban for less than half a year. At the end of the year, Yu Xiaotian made statistics on the tariffs received from the four open commercial ports. In just half a year, the four city departments located in Songjiang Prefecture, Ningbo Prefecture, Quanzhou Prefecture and Guangzhou Prefecture harvested 1.7 million yuan for Daming. The tariffs of silver, and these tariffs directly entered the treasury of the Ministry of Household, almost up to the national taxes in the first year of the Ming Dynasty.

In this way, the financial difficulties that the Ming Dynasty had always been overstretched were also solved. Yu Xiaotian continued to make persistent efforts to open up the three places in Tianjin Dagukou, Fushan Institute in Shandong, and Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang, each adding a municipal shipping department, and officially subordinated the municipal shipping department to the household department of the imperial court.

Zhou Fang, the new secretary of the household department, was very happy. In the past, whoever was the secretary of the household department was big. Daming asked for money everywhere, but the household department has never had enough money to use. Now, with the opening of the sea ban, the municipal department alone has made so much money for the household department, and the household department finally doesn't have to do it every day. Lack of money gives me a headache.

Of course, no one will think there is a lot of money. Yu Xiaotian's ability to make money is strong, but he spends money faster than anyone else. This guy is generous. Often, the household department has just received some money and food, and he immediately turns to spend it out.

At the beginning of the 13th year, Yu Xiaotian announced a new policy, which is to directly increase the salaries of Daming officials from high to four times on the original basis. The salary increase of low official positions is the largest, while the salary increase in official positions is slightly lower, but it is still much higher than before.

In addition, for some people who used to need to be supported by officials themselves, such as some government officials who were not responsible for developing salaries, now Yu Xiaotian has instructed the court to set quotas for various places, and their salaries are also borne by the court.

In this way, local officials will avoid an extremely heavy burden, and they no longer need to pay out of their own pockets to feed these people who have to run errands for them.

Since the Ming Dynasty, the salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty have not improved. At the beginning of the founding of the country, Zhu Yuanzhang formulated a policy of thrift, making the salaries of Ming officials have been very low.

And Daming officials want to live a decent life, but they can't rely on this meager salary alone. In addition to supporting a large family and ushering in sending them to normal expenses, they also need to feed some personnel who run errands for them. These people who run errands for them also need to pay out of their own pockets. To feed.

So they have to find a way to get money from other places. Otherwise, officials will not only live a decent life, but also go bankrupt.

This is also after Zhu Yuanzhang established the country. Although he adopted extremely strict management of officials, even introduced the method of peeling and killing many officials, he still could not completely control the corruption of officials in the Ming Dynasty, and the low salary was undoubtedly a very important reason. Officials can't take it. It is impossible to get a good salary, live a decent life, and support many people. It is impossible not to find a way to make money.

Now, in response to this corruption, Yu Xiaotian has greatly increased the salaries of officials, and has also included some people outside the system that used to be supported by officials at their own expense, and the state will give them salaries so that they can live a decent life.

However, based on this item alone, it is absolutely impossible to raise a high salary and maintain integrity. This is also the original intention of Yu Xiaotian to reorganize Jinyiwei and put it under the Metropolitan Inspection House to monitor local officials in various places.

At this time, the Metropolitan Procatorium and the new Jinyiwei under its jurisdiction have actually become a supervision department. The inspectors who specialize in doing things and investigating the corrupt people among them.