Zeng Disheng told Dong Shuheng a lot about the civil service culture in Chinese history. These things cannot be directly seen in books.
These are all summed up slowly by a veteran official like Zeng Disheng based on his own personal experience.
Since the establishment of the imperial examination system in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, civil servants have gradually formed a cultural heritage.
By studying and taking the imperial examinations, scholars ultimately want to complete the sublimation of their status and maintain or improve the living conditions of themselves and their families.
There is a strong idea of privilege here.
Of course, many people will also serve the country loyally during this process.
They regard this kind of loyalty to the emperor and the country as an exchange for privileges.
Now, although the Fuxing Army has reformed the imperial examination, it has lowered the examination threshold and the starting point of officials.
When he originally designed this, Dong Shuheng wanted to weaken the idea of privilege among officials.
Including the later warning that they only serve the people, it is to let them establish the understanding that being an official is just a profession, a relatively sacred profession.
But essentially I haven't changed my mind yet.
Especially the large number of officials in the team who were transformed from the staff and masters of the old era.
At the beginning, their ability to do things was really good, but they did not dare to bring the same tricks to work.
But this was only because the Huaihai Navy was small at the time. The newly established Supervision Department, under the leadership of Li Hu, was diligent enough and did not give them the opportunity to make mistakes.
However, as time goes by, the true nature of these people gradually becomes apparent.
Especially after the Restoration, many people took higher positions, and the areas they managed became more remote. This geographical remoteness will make many people bolder. They will use their original officialdom skills.
Forming cliques, excluding dissidents, embezzling and accepting bribes...
All kinds of behaviors emerged, but the officials trained by the Renaissance Army and the students from the academy were no match for them in the officialdom.
Although it is not a common phenomenon, some individual cases have caused Dong Shuheng a headache.
Among them, there are even veteran figures who joined the Renaissance Army from the beginning.
At the beginning, the Control Yuan was still able to deal with it.
But later some local officials even bribed people sent from the Procuratorate.
They form a local interest group by forming cliques, deceive the superiors, and continuously expand the scale of this group by recruiting and suppressing the subordinates.
This kind of thing was commonplace in the previous dynasty.
Zeng Disheng told Dong Shuheng very bluntly that there was no way to completely prevent this kind of thing.
It can only be like what Dong Shuheng said, the next generation has grown up, and the proportion of scholars among the common people has increased. Those people will use the law as a weapon to protect themselves.
Also, after the telephone and telegraph were popularized, local officials could not completely cover local affairs with one hand.
Under such circumstances, as long as the integrity of the top management is ensured, this kind of corruption can be effectively curbed or alleviated.
If you want to alleviate this situation in a short period of time, you can only create an enemy for them.
Evil people will always be punished by evil people. Zeng Disheng suggested that Dong Shuheng add some old bureaucrats to the Supervisory Yuan. These people can only be fixed within the Supervisory Yuan system.
Let them deal with these original staff and subordinates. Because they understand the methods of these people.
The character of these old bureaucrats does not necessarily have to be very good, but they must be the kind of people who have the ability and means.
This allows the two parties to fight, and at least a balance can be maintained.
Dong Shuheng also thinks this makes sense.
He originally wanted to establish a system like a local council and establish local democracy first.
However, Zeng Disheng immediately denied it.
He told Dong Shuheng that the council he wanted to create would only be used by these people.
Because under the current circumstances, there must be only a small number of literate people in the local area who can and are willing to join the council.
Most of these people are local landowners or businessmen, and these people are the most likely to have selfish motives.
At that time, as long as those officials transfer part of their interests, the two parties will easily collude to form a larger and stronger interest group.
During the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the local officialdom was like this. Local officials, subordinate staff and the gentry teamed up to oppress the people.
Under the oppression of such a big mountain, ordinary people don't even have a chance to speak.
Dong Shuheng did have a batch of old bureaucrats who came over from the Manchu Qing Dynasty.
At first, they were placed on some idle positions, but now it is very easy to pick a few.
Finally, Dong Shuheng invited Zeng Disheng to come out and help him, but Zeng Disheng declined without hesitation.
His current state is even greater than what he played when he came out.
However, he promised to write down his thoughts on some current affairs in notes and submit them regularly.
After leaving Changsha, Dong Shuheng continued to go south. He would enter western Guangdong from southern Hunan and then enter Yunnan and Guizhou.
Next, he will go to the Southwest Military Region for a visit, and by the way, he will go to Tengchong Mansion to meet some important people.
During this period, the battle planned by the Holy Army and participated by the New Gurkha Army and the Royal Burmese Army also ended with the arrival of the second batch of expeditionary forces of the Great Empire.
The coalition forces once reached the city walls of Calcutta.
Allied artillery has already blasted into the Indian settlement in the lower city.
It caused a lot of casualties to the people here.
However, the second batch of 30,000 British Expeditionary Forces and more than 10,000 troops transferred from General Robert from the south marched directly into Calcutta, instantly filling up the military strength here.
The British army even organized troops to go out of the city to fight the coalition forces in the north of Calcutta.
After all, the quality of the coalition forces and the quantity and power of artillery were not as good as those of the British.
The coalition forces suffered heavy casualties during the battle. Of course, the British army also paid a heavy price.
Faced with this situation, Chen Yucheng advocated taking the initiative to withdraw from the army.
It would be unprofitable for both sides to continue fighting like this.
The coalition forces then withdrew north to the city of Padbara for repairs. At the same time, they hoped to monitor Calcutta through this city.
Although Calcutta was not captured in this battle, the coalition forces still made great gains.
The biggest one is that the British and Indian troops have completely withdrawn from the Ganges River Basin in the north.
The crisis of the rebel Northern Alliance was lifted.
The northern rebels controlled by Queen Bai took the opportunity to counterattack and successfully captured all the areas abandoned by the British and Indian troops.
Almost everywhere Queen Bai went, the remaining servants in the city surrendered.
The British retreat devastated their morale. The local people were also attracted by the various slogans of the rebels and were eager to join the Northern Alliance.
The Gorkhas were given large tracts of land in the Gendege River Basin.
They finally have a plain area suitable for farming, which will greatly improve the life of the Gurkha people.
The Rangpur district, which was originally under the control of the Holy Army, became the rear area of the Holy Army.
The territory of the Holy Army advanced to the west to the Gendegar River and the border with Gorkha. It expanded to the south to the important town of Rajshahi.
This plain area between the Yajiang River and the Ganges River was named the Hezhong area by Shi Dakai. The land here is fertile and can be easily irrigated, and can support at least tens of millions of people.
The Burmese royal army gained the Khulna area on the west side of the river mouth.
According to the agreement between the three parties, the coalition forces will continue to stay in Padbala to deter Calcutta and buy more time for the rear.
Because they need to digest the land slowly.
The rebels of the Northern Alliance are also working hard to integrate their various internal forces and are also expanding in the west and south directions.
In the west, they were blocked by the Punjab Army. The British and Indian troops were not weak there.
In the south, Queen Bai personally led her troops and almost swept across the Malwa Plateau.
The city of Jhanxi was originally located in the northern part of the plateau. Most of Bayi's cavalry troops came from here.
After sweeping across the plateau, they established a geographical barrier to the south.
The Vindhya Mountains could help the Northern Alliance block the northward advance of the Bombay Corps of the British and Indian Army.
The current Calcutta Corps is completely contained in the city of Calcutta by the coalition forces.
As the coalition forces withdrew, General Robert, who had returned to Calcutta to command the army, prepared to organize an army attack.
But at this critical juncture, the plague broke out in Calcutta.
When the coalition forces attacked before, the British focused their defense on the upper city where their own people lived.
However, there is little protection for the local indigenous people living in the lower city slums.
As a result, these indigenous residents suffered heavy casualties and suffered heavy casualties.
But due to the blockade, there was not enough firewood for cremation of these dead people.
Local people can only bury them in earth or water.
And because of the blockade by the coalition forces, these corpses could only be dumped near the lower city.
The domestic water used by residents here is water from those small rivers.
And these water sources are contaminated by corpses.
Plus the rats that eat the corpses are rampant.
The poor people in the lower city even hunted the rats to eat because they were hungry.
In this way, the terrible plague first spread among the Indian slums in the lower city.
The sick person will have a chill all over his body, but he will sweat constantly. Then he will become thirsty and drink water constantly, but he will not urinate.
Immediately afterwards, the patient's body began to swell, like a sponge that has absorbed water.
Eventually the patient will die of acute renal failure.
The British never cared about the life or death of these Indians in the lower city.
So much so that the situation was not noticed in time.
It was not until the disease began to spread in white areas that the colonial authorities began to take it seriously.
Perhaps the germs were brought in by poor indigenous people who went to work in white areas.
Maybe it was brought here by mice or mosquitoes.
Western medicine during this period was just in its infancy and was immature, so it was impossible to trace its origins.
Otherwise, in the Crimean battlefield, the British and French coalition forces would not have lost so many troops due to several plagues.
John Ramsay, who was still in the position of governor, decisively blocked the passage between the upper city and the lower city. At the same time, they also used some epidemic prevention methods they knew.
The army that was originally preparing to go out could only stop.
Because the entire Calcutta is almost shut down, the local natives who were originally responsible for doing physical work may carry the plague.
The coalition forces also knew that there was a plague in Calcutta.
Under the advice of military doctors assisted by the Renaissance Army, the coalition forces, which had not yet discovered the plague, also took many necessary measures.
The most important one is to completely shrink the defense and no longer fight the army in Calcutta.
…
In the dense jungle in the northern part of Ceylon Island, Zhang Deshuai led a few assistants and hundreds of elites borrowed from the Tamil King Puwekili to advance with difficulty.
In order to avoid the British eyes, they could only advance secretly in the jungle.
Fortunately, these Tamil warriors grew up in the jungle, and this kind of marching in the jungle is child's play for them.
They marched long distances in the jungle and didn't even need to bring much supplies.
Because almost everything they see here can become their food. Banana trees, the heart of palm trees, monkeys, lizards, chameleons on the trees...
Several Tamil soldiers brought a roasted monkey to Zhang Deshuai, trying to please the big man to choose the most delicious part.
Seeing that the monkey looked like a baby after being baked, Zhang Deshuai almost couldn't help but vomit it out.
He would rather nibble on dry compressed biscuits than eat this thing.
The destination of their trip was a manor on the edge of the central mountains of Ceylon.
The mission was personally assigned by Intelligence Minister Ji Mingshan, and the mission level is very high.
The Ministry of Intelligence received a surprising piece of information from the Portuguese.
In 1848, the East India Company secretly sent the Englishman Fortune to China. Then in 1851, he returned to India with 17,000 tea seeds and 2,000 seedlings.
These seeds and seedlings were divided into three places for cultivation.
The Markwood Manor they were going to this time was one of the largest tea tree cultivation and planting bases.
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