Zhang Juzheng saw Zhu Yijun's instructions and praised Zhu Yijun in his heart. Knowing that the emperor finally understood what he meant, he also gained more confidence in the future reform work.
His perspective was completely different from Zhu Yijun's. Deep in his heart, he wished he could kill Yu Maoxue, who had alienated the monarch and his ministers and corrupted state affairs, as a warning to those who disrupted the government.
However, as the head of the civil service and a disciple of Confucianism, Zhang Juzheng must adhere to the political correctness of the Ming Dynasty - censorship, science and freedom of speech.
On the other hand, as the emperor, Zhu Yijun did not want to catch Yu Mao and learn from him. Although his intention was punishable, the way of checks and balances lies in this "punishable intention". Otherwise, the integrity of the official would be regarded too high.
No matter what the emperor and the chief minister thought, the speechless reality was that those who wanted to kill Yu Maoxue had to protect him; those who wanted to let Yu Maoxue off lightly, but sent Jin Yiwei to capture him from Nanjing and throw him into Beizhen
Fu Si's prison. This is where the paradox of politics lies.
The first person to be punished was Wang Zhuoyu, who had "accepted bribes and made false statements to disrupt the government." Less than two hours after being tortured by the Jinyi Guards, Wang Zhuoyu was like pouring beans through a bamboo tube. He bribed the Lianghuai salt merchants with heavy bribes and bought memorials to boycott the salt method.
came out.
To be honest, the time-travel culture of the Ming Dynasty has not yet taken off. Wang Zhuoyu never dreamed that Zhu Yijun knew that the salt-drying method would be the mainstream in the future. His idea was similar to that of all the courtiers. It should be a middle-ranking official who wanted to be flattered and told the emperor about the salt-drying method.
Because of the benefits of the salt method, the emperor made a decision in the palace to develop salt production.
Since it can be moved by words, it can also be reversed by words. In the memorial, Wang Zhuoyu took great pains to say that he visited an old salt worker and "made him laugh". He said that at the age of the emperor, he was not annoyed by being laughed at? As long as he was annoyed.
, people must be sent to check, and that’s when it’s time to take action - all the salt merchants want is for the imperial court to send an imperial envoy.
It's a pity that this book worth three thousand taels got him into trouble. Jin Yiwei followed the clues and snuck out all the salt merchants who bribed the censor, and took them all to Beijing for trial.
Zhu Yijun did not act like Wuzong. He often acted recklessly and refused to reason with courtiers. What he was best at was the key points of defeating the enemy for our army in later generations: break through a point with all your strength, then use the point to lead the area, and then encircle in a roundabout way - occasionally when the conditions are ripe, there will be
The central flowering feast, etc. The salt policy and the revolution in Beijing best reflect the characteristics of his governance.
This time I opened a gap in Wang Zhuoyu's body, and if I didn't dig too hard, how could I be worthy of the emperor's skin on my body?
The collusion between officials and businessmen in the salt administration, Zhu Yijun thought with his toes, knew that it was already a chronic disease. When the reform of the salt administration was about to be launched, if the salt administration officials were not dealt with properly, there would be no reform.
How could the arrested salt merchants endure it? The Jinyiwei who had been personally trained and instructed by Zhu Yijun did not suffer any external injuries. Beizhen Fusi had already made the salt merchants desperate for death.
Salt merchant Jin Mou confessed that the Lianghuai Salt Division misappropriated more than 10 million kilograms of surplus salt every year, which was more than two and a half times the normal salt output of dozens of salt farms in Lianghuai. All of it was mixed with the normal salt sold by their salt merchants and sold together.
, they have already cleared all the checkpoints and other joints along the way.
This big thunder broke out, which made Wang Tong, who had become a colleague of Jin Yiwei, overjoyed and immediately played Zhu Yijun secretly.
The profit of more than 100 million kilograms of surplus salt every year was divided up by officials, businessmen and local officials along the way. Central officials divided the profits in the "ice respect, charcoal respect" method. Although Zhu Yijun had long expected the corruption of the Ming Dynasty's salt administration,
But he didn't expect them to be so unrestrained and ordered Wang Tong to continue digging in secret.
Later, the salt merchant Wang Gongyu bit out that Wailang, a member of the Salt Department of the Ministry of Household Affairs, and others knew clearly about the illegal sale of salt in Lianghuai and did not report it. They received an annual salary of 3,500 taels, and were entrusted with the extra salt to be distributed to nobles.
In this matter, Wang Gongyu was a private person in Wang Guangguang's pocket, a newly-ministered bachelor, and there is no need to say much about it.
After Wang Tong obtained the confession and checked the evidence chain basically completely, he received the secret order. Nearly half of the Jinyi Guards were dispatched to transfer the salt transportation from the Huaihe River to Si Yamen and the people involved in the six provinces of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, and Henan.
Almost most of the salt officials, including those from the Salt Department of the Ministry of Revenue and other officials, were taken to the Nanyuan project camp to keep company with the salt merchants.
Although the operation could not be kept as secret as that of later generations, under the strict family laws of Jinyiwei in recent years, only a dozen officials who should be arrested escaped - and no high-ranking officials escaped, and they were all arrested.
This thunderous action by the emperor's command of the Jin Yiwei stunned all the officials below the imperial cabinet. In order to make the action sudden, Zhu Yijun except for a secret discussion with Zhang Juzheng, no one inside or outside the palace knew about it.
Almost all salt officials under the jurisdiction of Lianghuai were wiped out - the number of people involved in the case soon exceeded 800. Although Zhang Juzheng knew about it in advance, the scale was beyond his expectation.
He didn't care about rescuing Yu Maoxue to gain a good reputation. He held a small meeting with the official department and urgently dispatched the salt patrol censors in the past as imperial envoys. He also dispatched them from nearby salt transportation departments such as Shandong, Zhejiang, Nanjing, and Beizhili.
Manpower came to fill the vacancy, and he was so busy wiping Zhu Yijun's butt that he was in a hurry.
When the big case first broke out, all the other Salt Transportation Department chiefs across the country were so frightened that they hurriedly poured money into their accounts. They made false accounts and burned files at the same time, including killing people, silencing them, and concealing property. What they were busy with was
His face was haggard and nervous. Later, when he saw that the emperor had no intention of expanding the scope of his attack, he put his heart in his stomach for the time being.
When Zhang Juzheng and the Ministry of Civil Affairs urgently transferred manpower to Lianghuai, they all celebrated again - since the establishment of the salt transportation bureaus in various places, this situation of fewer officials than positions was still experienced for the first time, and everyone felt like they were in a dream.
In order to prevent turmoil in the Huaihe River, Zhu Yijun ordered He Kuan, the censor of Caojiang, and Yang Cheng, the censor of the Yingtian governor, to lead 2,500 cavalry troops and 3,000 Nanjing garrison troops respectively to camp in Hangzhou to facilitate suppression.
Later, Yu Dayou, who had been dismissed from office, was urgently promoted to the Lianghuai Salt Patrol and promoted to the Prime Minister of the Lianghuai Salt Ding Affairs. He was responsible for calming the morale of the army, training the salt patrol soldiers, and exterminating the troublesome salt owl.
In fact, the imperial court made a big fanfare and struck with thunder. Unless the big and small salt lords wanted to rebel, who would dare to speak out? The so-called green forest heroes are smarter than monkeys with hair on them. How much water can be put into their brains to stand up for these corrupt officials? All of them?
The right thing to do is to calm down, disband the gang, and hide yourself.
Jinyiwei then mobilized its best personnel to continue digging into these officials. Zhu Yijun was always in charge of the overall situation in the inner palace and listened to the "task force" report once a day.
He also ordered Jin Yiwei to test more interrogation methods on these silverfish, analyze and organize the data, and formulate torture teaching materials as soon as possible to train Jin Yiwei's torture experts in large quantities.
Later, the salt merchants and officials could not say anything new, but the testimonies they provided could be used as supporting evidence. Finally, Zhu Yijun was able to outline a complete corruption network with the Lianghuai Salt Division as the core. The chain of evidence was complete and all kinds of circumstantial evidence were complete. Zhu Yijun
Pretending to be furious, he sent the report to the court for discussion and ordered the three legal divisions to review it.
During the judicial review, the souls tortured by Jin Yiwei were sublimated, and the salt merchants and officials who had changed their minds were all scrambling to be the first to bite each other, which shocked the officials of Dali Temple. Since Zhu Yijun came to power, the real major case -
-The case of the remaining salt in the Huaihe River was broken through a memorial written by Wang Zhuoyu and shocked both the government and the public.
...
It can be said that one wave has not subsided, and another wave has arisen. However, this wave came because of the previous wave, and the incident of Wang Zhuoyu and Yu Maoxue being imprisoned was photographed without a trace. By the end of July, no one in the government or the public cared about their lives.
.
All the officials focused on the "Two Huai River Surplus Salt Cases", including the imperial censors of rank four or above. Each of them had a movable type printed "Liang Huai River Surplus Salt Case Official, Business Warning Record", the content of which was shocking.
With the dissemination and copying of "Warning", the various bribery methods in it have opened the eyes and hearts of newcomers in the officialdom. However, think about so many elegant bribes, secular bribes, sexual bribes, real estate bribes,
Congratulatory bribery, personal servant bribery, pawn bribery, dry stock bribery, IOU bribery, retirement rebate bribery and other methods have all been plundered, and everyone is worried about how to develop new types of bribery.