Standalone Northern and Southern Dynasties

Chapter 369 Su Wen and Su Wuming
"Ling Chuo, what do you think?"

Su Chao was suddenly summoned to Su Ze's Tiger Hall in the military camp, which was the place where Su Ze discussed serious matters in the military camp.

Generally speaking, if Su Ze wanted to discuss important matters, he would summon the government officials or important officials of the shogunate in the Tiger Hall, but today only Su Cho was there, which made Su Cho feel very strange.

After taking the memorial, Su Chao's hands trembled slightly. These were two secret letters.

The so-called secret letter is a special kind of memorial.

Normally, military reports would be sent to the shogunate first, while government reports would be submitted to the Council of State. After the relevant ministers discussed and wrote down their opinions, they would be sent to Su Ze.

Of course, with Su Ze's prestige, the current shogunate and the government office would not dare to isolate the inside and the outside, and they would not dare to conceal the important memorials below.

Su Ze also placed a number of clerks and attendants in charge of delivering official documents, and so far there has been no interception of documents.

In addition to these two systems of official document delivery, there is also a special memorial.

This special memorial is called a secret letter.

This is a memorial with a special style, printed by the workshop under Su Ze's name using special anti-counterfeiting methods. When post stations in various places see this secret letter, they will rush it to Yongle City in the form of the most urgent military intelligence.

The secret letter does not need to go through any auxiliary agency and will be delivered directly to Su Ze.

Su Cho was also given several secret letters, but as a Confucian disciple, he did not like this kind of power politics. However, Su Cho also admitted that the secret letters were very lethal.

Because normal memorials need to go through many layers of circulation and are handled by many people, many people have the opportunity to read them.

Some things that may offend colleagues or leak confidential information can all be done through secret letters. People who submit secret letters can also say things in them that they would not dare to say in normal days.

Su Chao said quickly:

"This is a secret letter to the general. I dare not read it."

Su Ze was very satisfied with Su Chao's attitude. Among his subordinates, the Su brothers were the ones who knew when to advance and retreat, and they understood the fine line between lord and subject.

This may have something to do with the fact that they are all pure literati, including Yu Jin and Yang Kan, who are sons of gentry. Because they have been in the army for a long time, they have also picked up some military habits, unlike the Su brothers.

Su Ze said:

"This is a secret letter sent back from Liangzhou by Su Wen, the Inspector General."

This time Su Chao was even more afraid to look at it, and he quickly said:
"Then I dare not even look at it."

Su Ze laughed and said:
"Then I'll read it to you."

Su Ze took the secret letter, opened it and began to read.

Su Chao's expression changed as he listened. When Su Ze finished reading, he took a step back and knelt on the ground, saying:

"I am incompetent and have the honor of being in charge of government affairs, but I cannot share the general's worries."

Su Ze had no intention of warning Su Cho. He knew that Su Cho had no dealings with the wealthy families in Liangzhou. Moreover, Su Cho had been helping him manage Longxi, Gaoping and Xiazhou over the years and had never asked too much about the affairs of Liangzhou.

However, there is nothing wrong with Su Cho's apology. In theory, the Political Affairs Hall is the leader of all government systems. If there are problems with the subordinates, the upper level will naturally bear the leadership responsibility.

Su Ze did not want to hold Su Cho responsible. He helped Su Cho up and said:
"Ling Chuo said that you are responsible, but since I am also the governor of Liangzhou, don't I have more responsibility?"

Su Chao was relieved when he confirmed that Su Ze was not going to hold the Political Affairs Hall accountable. Su Ze returned to his seat and said:

"The officialdom in Liangzhou is really outrageous."

Su Cho sighed in his heart. It seemed that Su Ze had been holding back for a long time and was finally going to take action against the nobles and powerful families in Liangzhou.

But after listening to Su Wen's secret letter, Su Chao knew that this time Su Ze would have to take action.

Su Wen went to Liangzhou as a censor to investigate the rent and tax situation in a certain county in Liangzhou.

Liangzhou, as an important town spanning the Hexi Corridor, is located in the south of the Yangtze River on the Great Wall. There has been no war in all these years and it should be the richest region under Su Ze's rule today.

However, last year's farmland tax in Liangzhou only collected 300,000 hu of grain, the least among the six states and two counties under Su Ze's rule, even comparable to Longxi County, which was only one county in size.

This is where the problem occurred in Liangzhou, so Su Ze sent two inspectors to investigate the two counties in Liangzhou where the rent and tax collection situation was the worst.

The two inspectors, Su Wen (a cruel official who told stories based on rumors) and Su Renjie (a judicial official who solved cases like a god), went to Liangzhou together.

In fact, Su Wen's secret letter was sent to Su Ze through the system. Otherwise, with the current speed of document transmission, the secret letter would still be on the way.

However, Su Ze was very angry after reading Su Wen's report, and asked his followers to copy the report into the secret letter.

After Su Wen entered Liangzhou, he was soon warmly received by the local county magistrate.

Su Wen was a cruel official, but he was also a capable one. He knew that the county magistrate was a descendant of the Jia family of Liangzhou, who had great power in the local area. The Jia family and other large Liangzhou nobles actually controlled the operation of the Liangzhou Governor's Office. Even the former Liangzhou Governor Yuan Yu was not able to interfere much in the local affairs of Liangzhou.

Su Ze, the governor of Liangzhou, actually only controlled the Dunhuang area, because Dunhuang was conquered by Su Ze himself.

Several other counties in Liangzhou were all under the control of local gentry in Liangzhou. For example, the county that Su Wen went to was a county under Wuwei County, and the county magistrate was a descendant of the Guzang Jia family.

Su Wen and County Magistrate Jia thought highly of each other and were even about to become sworn brothers. He sent out his own clerks to make regular visits and observations, and asked the household officials he brought with him to check the county government's account books, and soon discovered the problem.

Obviously, this county had good weather last year, but the grain production decreased!
Moreover, the land in this county is constantly decreasing, and a lot of land has disappeared from the land register.

At this point, Su Wen actually already understood that this was a common method used by powerful families to seize land.

While occupying the land, they deleted the land from the land register, so that they would not have to pay land tax on the occupied land.

The same principle applies to the population. They keep hiding the population and evade paying the rent and taxes that they should have borne.

Su Wen was a little surprised. In other states and counties, local officials were busy increasing the number of acres of land. Some officials even falsely increased the number of acres of land in order to make progress, and were discovered and punished by the Inspectors when they submitted their reports. However, when it came to Liangzhou, these county officials did not pretend at all and directly used such crude means to help local wealthy families evade taxes?

Liangzhou is completely different from other places under General Su's rule.

Su Wen visited the countryside again and learned that local wealthy families were oppressing the people and forcing them to sell their ancestral property.

Even the County Magistrate Jia oppressed the disabled soldiers who returned to their hometowns. He granted the land that should have been awarded to them to the local nobles, but dismissed these old soldiers who had made contributions on the battlefield by saying that there was no land to be granted.

Su Wen was also extremely angry. He knew that the officials of these aristocratic families were corrupt, but he didn't expect them to be so rotten.
Just when Su Wen was collecting evidence, he encountered an assassination attempt!

Thanks to Su Ze's caution, he secretly arranged for the Xuan Jingsi's "White Egret Messenger" to escort the prosecutor in charge of the case, so Su Wen escaped the disaster.

When things got to this point, County Magistrate Jia completely broke off relations with Su Wen and even mobilized local county soldiers to kill Su Wen.

In the end, it was the Egret Messenger who used the mobilization token to mobilize troops from the nearby Zhechou Commandery and was able to rescue Su Wen.

This is why there was this secret letter on Su Ze’s desk.

A local county magistrate actually attacked and killed the inspector sent by the Council of State Affairs, and even dared to mobilize the county soldiers to attack openly after the incident. The aristocratic families and powerful people in Liangzhou are really too arrogant and domineering!

Such behavior is tantamount to rebellion!

In other areas controlled by Su Ze, such a thing would be unthinkable.

But the situation in Liangzhou is indeed different from that in other states.

In fact, a large part of the rise of the Northern Wei Dynasty was due to the dividends of Liangzhou.

During the period of the Five Barbarians' Invasion of China, a large number of people from the Central Plains fled to Liangzhou to avoid disaster. It can be said that Liangzhou preserved the flame of Han civilization.

When the Northern Wei Dynasty expanded, Emperor Taiwu Tuoba Tao moved countless rare treasures from the original Liangzhou and more than 30,000 Liangzhou nobles (there were heavenly masters, monks, architects, mathematicians, astronomers, economists, and Confucian scholars) to the capital Pingcheng. These were important steps in the transformation of the Northern Wei Dynasty from a nomadic regime to a Central Plains dynasty. From then on, the situation of the two powers in the north and the south was completely established, and the small regimes around the Northern Wei Dynasty were swept away one by one.

But everything has its pros and cons, and Liangzhou is also the region where the power of powerful families is the largest.

In fact, all the previous governors of Liangzhou did little while in office.

Su Chao certainly knew about this situation, but he did not expect that the powerful families in Liangzhou would be so domineering.

"Then Jia Yuan is the deputy governor of Liangzhou, right?"

When Su Ze entered Wuwei from Dunhuang, he once met the head of the Guzang Jia family.

Su Chao was in charge of the Government Affairs Hall, so he was naturally very familiar with the senior officials of various prefectures and counties. He nodded.

Su Ze said:

"Liangzhou must also implement the Three Mutual Law and transfer Jia Yuan out of Liangzhou. If he is unwilling, let him resign."

Su Cho nodded and wrote down the order. Regardless of whether Jia Yuan, the deputy governor of Liangzhou, knew about the affairs of County Magistrate Jia, as the head of the Guzang Jia family and a senior official in Liangzhou, he could not escape blame.

Transferring Jia Yuan away from Liangzhou on the grounds of the Three Mutual Law may just be the beginning of a major reckoning.

But this time Su Ze was in the right. The inspectors were not Su Ze's private ministers. They went to Liangzhou to verify the land tax situation last year under the commission of the Government Affairs Hall. It can be said that they represented the entire government system.

Now, County Magistrate Jia is slapping the face of the entire government system. At this time, let alone the identity he gave to the children of the gentry, he cannot be spared even if he is a member of the royal family.

I just hope General Su won't exaggerate further.

Just as Su Chao finished thinking, Su Ze took out another secret letter and said:
"Something happened to Su Renjie too."

(End of this chapter)