After Zhu Cihong left, not only did there not be any trouble in the capital, but everyone became cautious, even more cautious than when the emperor was there.
Especially the civil servants, for fear of being caught by the red lady, even held fewer gatherings.
When the commanders of each army and the general officers of each town returned to their respective stations, they fully supported the reorganization and training of the students, fearing that they would be treated like chickens.
Obviously everyone understands that the red lady is the sword in the emperor's hand, specially used to kill people and raid homes.
Almost everyone cursed the little emperor in his heart for being shameless.
Compared with the emperors of previous dynasties who used powerful ministers and eunuchs to do dirty work, today's emperor uses a female rebel like the Red Lady to do it. The lethality is more terrifying and more carefree than those eunuchs and powerful ministers.
After all, the eunuchs and powerful ministers still have to consider whether cunning rabbits will die and lackeys will be cooked. They will inevitably have a little selfishness and dare not offend everyone, but the red lady does not care about this at all. This is the most terrible thing.
However, even if everyone was cautious, what was supposed to happen still happened. Just three days after Zhu Cihong left, the Red Lady, as the left governor of the Metropolitan Governor's Office, ordered all the civil servants in the seven major governor's offices to be swapped and to review each other.
After the order was issued to Baihu Fort, the garrison of each capital, all the scholars were shocked and were in an uproar. They were angry and guilty at the same time.
In addition, in order to prevent the literati from Datong and Xuanfu from connecting with each other on the way, the Red Lady also stipulated that the literati from Datong and Xuanfu should go south to Ningwuguan first, and then go from Guguan in the east of Shanxi to Zhendingfu and Baodingfu.
The guards at the four capital divisions in the capital have a deadline of one month to arrive.
The literati from the four capitals near the capital went directly to Juyongguan and went to their respective guards in Datong, Xuanfu for verification. They were required to arrive within ten days and report the verification results within one month.
In addition, the literati did not know in advance who was coming to examine them, so almost everyone felt threatened and panicked. They secretly decided that when they got to the place, they must find out something in order to reduce their guilt.
Although the Red Lady only announced that if someone else is found to be engaging in malpractice for personal gain, she can reduce her own culpability and did not mention the corresponding punishment, everyone knows that if she is not found out and commits another crime, her end will definitely not be much better.
Otherwise, Your Majesty would not have just stepped forward and asked the red lady to take care of this matter. In the end, the scholar will definitely be killed, it depends on who is unlucky.
More than two thousand scholars are still on their way, and the emperor's edict is sent to Henan, Shanxi, and the south of Beizhili.
The content of the edict is very simple. All civil servants who surrendered to the rebels at the beginning, except for the northeastern part of Yingtian Mansion, and other civil servants from other places, will commit suicide within three days to apologize within three days based on the arrival of the edict, and the local Dongchang branch will be responsible for supervising and verifying their integrity.
Although all the civil servants in the capital cursed the emperor for being too cruel and ruthless, they could not say anything. If the king wanted his ministers to die, they had to die, not to mention that these civil servants who were sentenced to death had lost their integrity.
Of course, those Jinshi of Enke High School and the civil servants who had been sitting on the bench in the Hanlin Academy for several years, although they could not say it in words, they all called His Majesty the Holy Spirit in their hearts and strongly supported His Majesty's decision.
The first to commit suicide were naturally the civil servants from Datong Prefecture who were under house arrest in the capital, followed by the states and counties in the southern part of Beizhili, and those from Yingtian Prefecture who were dismissed from their posts and never hired.
In just one month, as many as a thousand people, ranging from the third, fourth and fifth-grade civil servants such as the chief envoy, the inspector-general, and the prefect, to the sixth- and seventh-grade civil servants such as the magistrates and magistrates, hanged themselves, and almost no one dared to resist. They were all old people.
I honestly chose to hang myself and apologize.
The imperial power of the Ming Dynasty suddenly reached its peak.
At the same time, after nearly half a month, Zhu Cixiang's dragon boat finally arrived in Nanjing.
When they heard that His Majesty was going to tour the south, the literati, gentry and merchants in the south of the Yangtze River were excited and at the same time very uneasy.
On the day of arrival, there was a sea of people outside and inside the city of Nanjing, which was even more sensational than when Zhang Yan and the Red Lady arrived.
Compared to the time when the Red Lady rode into the city, Zhu Cixiang was much more careful and rode the carriage honestly, which greatly disappointed the countless people and scholars along the street who wanted to have a glimpse of the dragon's face.
On the day of arrival, Zhu Cixiang took the imperial sister to the ancestral mausoleum to worship before heading to the palace.
Zhang Yan only greeted her at the palace gate and did not go to the dock.
After returning to the palace, Princess Kunxing was exhausted and went to rest. However, Zhu Cixiang and Zhang Yan came to the imperial study room and sent everyone out. Zhang Yan then said: "Xian'er, why are you so serious?
Have you come to Nanjing? Now that the various places in the south of the Yangtze River have calmed down, and several southern provinces have also stabilized, you should be in charge of the capital!"
Zhang Yan sounded reproachful, blaming him for leaving hundreds of thousands of troops to the Red Lady while running to Nanjing herself, which was really not the behavior of an emperor.
"There is no war in the north for the time being. The south seems to be stable, but in fact it has long been in decay. My son is here personally to carry out drastic reforms and enhance the national strength of the Ming Dynasty."
"Auntie, you have worked hard for more than a year, but judging from my complexion, the climate in the south of the Yangtze River is really pleasant."
Zhu Cixiang said at the end, seeing that she seemed a little younger than she was in Beijing, he also smiled.
"You know how to make fun of my mother-in-law. I can't sleep at night because of the imperial concubine's troubles a while ago. If you don't transfer her back to Beijing, my mother-in-law will be scared to death by her."
Zhang Yan glared at him angrily, and then said with concern: "Hang'er, you've been tired from traveling all the way, so you'd better go and rest first, and we'll talk about it tomorrow if you have anything to do."
"No need, the kid is in good spirits. Let's talk about business first. Auntie, let's talk to the kid about the salt industry first. How is it now?" Zhu Cihong waved his hand.
"Ying'er just disposed of hundreds of salt merchants. Their stewards are still performing their duties. It has little impact on the salt in various places. The price is cheaper, but it is not a long-term solution. Many civil servants are
The report wants to rectify the salt industry, but I don’t dare to make the decision without permission. I am planning to sort it out and report it to you...
As Zhang Yan said this, she picked up a large stack of memorials from the shelf on the side and placed them on the dragon table.
Zhu Cixi picked up a book, flipped through it casually, and then threw it aside, too lazy to read any more.
"What's the matter, Xinger?"
"My child has already formalized the salt industry, so it's okay not to look at it."
"Oh? How do you plan to rectify the salt industry?"
"The salt industry will be completely nationalized. The Children's Association will establish a salt bureau under the Commerce Supervision. This salt bureau will be operated entirely according to a business model. The royal family will hold 50% of the shares and the state will hold 50%. From now on, it will be responsible for the production and processing of salt. The provinces will then
Set up a branch and set a unified price. Anyone can come to the branch to buy salt and sell it everywhere..."
Zhu Cihong told her his salt monopoly plan in detail.
He plans to build a huge salt production base in Lianghuai and divide it into three types according to quality. He will use oil paper bags to package the salt in quantities of one kilogram and print a special mark on the bag. From now on, all bulk salt will be for private use.
Salt, anyone who dares to sell it secretly will be beheaded and their homes will be ransacked.
The Salt Bureau does not sell salt directly, it is only responsible for processing and packaging the salt, and then transports it to provincial branches for wholesale. Anyone can buy salt for sale.
In addition, the royal store will also sell them, so there will no longer be a situation where they are sold at high prices.
"This is quite novel. It can also prevent salt merchants from exploiting the people and salt households. It's just that they are packed in paper bags, and each bag only weighs one kilogram. Isn't it too cumbersome? It will also increase some costs."
Zhang Yan's eyes lit up after hearing this. In fact, she was not satisfied with the salt policy reported by the civil servants. They were just changing the soup without changing the medicine. Over time, I am afraid it will become like the current salt industry and enrich the salt merchants.
, causing hardship to salt households and ordinary people.
"It's a bit troublesome, but it's still worth it in order to stop the people from eating those poisonous salts in the future. At worst, it's better not to make money from the people, but only the money from the rich."
"In the future, I plan to divide table salt into three types. One is refined salt, which costs at least two coins per catty, the other is ordinary table salt, which costs about a hundred cents per catty, and the last one is coarse salt, which costs twenty or thirty cents.
One pound, of course, the specific price will not be determined until the child has visited the place of origin.”
After Zhu Cixiang finished speaking, Zhang Yan nodded appreciatively, obviously understanding that even if the prices were very different, those rich people would not eat coarse salt.
"Then how does Xinger plan to reform in other aspects?"
Zhang Yan knew that any political reform had always been an earth-shattering event, with many difficulties and few successes, so she was very concerned about how he wanted to reform the country and revive the Ming Dynasty.
"This time, I plan to carry out reforms in four aspects: commerce, agriculture, government affairs, and imperial examinations. The first is commerce. The Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Taxation will be established to manage commerce and collect commercial taxes. Then, in agriculture, we will re-measure and register land.
The officials and the gentry will pay the grain together. In addition to the abolition of all miscellaneous taxes on land and land, government officials and generals will also be included in the official system. Salaries will be distributed uniformly by the court. The imperial examination will select scholars by subject. I have to think carefully about how to implement the reform."
Zhu Cihong knew that reform would not be achieved overnight. He planned to proceed step by step, first collecting commercial taxes, establishing a maritime ban, establishing a municipal shipping department, then re-measure the land, formulate agricultural taxes, carry out government reforms at the same time, and finally reform the imperial examination.
In Zhu Cixiang's view, this kind of reform is only applicable within ten years. Ten years later, there will definitely be another era-changing reform, and there will be continuous adjustments during this period.
But in Zhang Yan's opinion, this was simply an earth-shattering reform. Compared with the reform carried out by Zhang Juzheng back then, it was like a candlelight and a bright moon. She was so shocked that she couldn't recover for a long time.
After a long while, he said nervously and tremblingly: "Hong'er, is this too radical?"
"That's it, still radical?"
Zhu Cixiang said in a bad mood, instead of dividing the land among the local tycoons, completely abolishing the status of lowly slaves, etc.
The new policy he is planning to implement is already quite moderate, far worse than what Wang Mang did at the time.
Of course, the main thing is to consider the thinking and ideas of people in this era. This kind of New Deal is already the limit. If you rush to divide the land from the local tyrants and everyone is equal, I am afraid that it will end like Wang Mang, causing everyone to betray their relatives and end miserably.
Because all generals and ordinary soldiers follow the emperor, the biggest pursuit is to abolish these.
All the people hate the big families, but what they hate is the big families themselves. What they hate is why they are not rich people with luxurious houses and beautiful wives and maids, not this system.
