Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 14: The people send off the heir

As soon as Yuan Zonggao said this, Liang Chu, Mao Cheng and other upright civil servants among the ministers who welcomed the emperor all opened their eyes with looks of astonishment.

Zhu Houcong glanced at Yuan Zonggao and laughed in his heart.

He couldn't help but recall Yuan Zonggao's advice to him to read more books of Wang Yangming.

And now.

Zhu Houcong had to admit that his teacher was indeed an official who could accept Wang Yangming's philosophy of mind. For the sake of what he believed in justice, he dared to use any means without any moral pressure, including offending the Buddha.

Zhu Houcong knew that in this era when productivity had not made any significant progress, saving the people basically meant changing distribution and affecting the interests of the rich.

But how to act often tests an official's ability.

in history.

In the late Jiajing period, the Japanese invasion in the southeast was rampant, and the recruitment system had to be implemented. The implementation of the recruitment system meant greater military expenditures, and the southeastern provinces were naturally obliged to bear the increased military expenditures, that is to say, military taxes had to be increased in the southeastern provinces.

However, the situation of land annexation in the southeastern provinces had become very serious by the end of the Jiajing period.

Most civilians are already overwhelmed.

Therefore, how to make the local wealthy households bear more of the temporary anti-Japanese military tax, and avoid causing more people to go bankrupt, which would lead to internal unrest before the foreign invasion is resolved, has become a science.

then.

With the permission of Jiajing, many governors in the southeastern provinces made many financial reforms, basically showing off their own special powers.

among them.

Pan Jixun set up a system of equalizing the lijia system in Guangdong, allocating the extra military taxes that each prefecture and county had to pay according to the amount of land they owned, and levying an additional levy based on the amount of grain they produced. This meant that even if the wealthy families used trickery and fraud to turn themselves into nominal small landowners, they still could not avoid bearing the extra military expenses.

Tan Lun in Fujian was even more simple and brutal. He directly confiscated the land that had been forcibly requisitioned from the temples and levied additional military taxes instead. This was equivalent to letting the temple landlords in Fujian bear all the additional military taxes, without imposing more on the common people.

In Tan Lun's opinion, the temple's money certainly did not come from ordinary people but from local wealthy families, so by doing this, the ones who would suffer would naturally be the local wealthy families.

Now that Yuan Zonggao did the same thing, Zhu Houcong naturally did not feel unfamiliar, and could even understand it.

How can we expect the new-school civil servants to have much respect for the Buddha when they dared to betray even Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism?

However, on the surface, as the heir apparent, Zhu Houcong naturally should not directly express his support for Yuan Zonggao's actions, nor should he appear to be so ungrateful.

Therefore, Zhu Houcong deliberately asked Yuan Zonggao at this time: "Sir, if the monks do not lend us food, why do they think they are ungrateful?"

Yuan Zonggao replied: "Because monks begging for food is a form of spiritual practice, and ordinary people begging for food is suffering. Therefore, monks who are truly devoted to Buddhism and are determined to save people would rather give up their mouths to eat for the people and beg for food themselves, and would not sit and watch ordinary people beg for food just to avoid begging for themselves. Otherwise, they are not real monks!"

"Besides, it is easier for monks to beg for food than for ordinary people, so it is better to let monks suffer than ordinary people suffer."

Zhu Houcong smiled after hearing this and said: "Sir, you are right. If the temple doesn't have much food, then let the monks suffer. After all, they can and love to endure hardships, so they should suffer more."

"But if we can persuade them to lend us grain, we should do our best. I don't want to establish a country by being overbearing and ungrateful unless it is absolutely necessary."

Yuan Zonggao bowed and said yes.

Mao Cheng suddenly said, "Your Majesty, the Royal Guards are the imperial guards. If they go to help the people, it may make the hungry people uneasy. I request that the Imperial Guards led by the Junior Sima carry out this work of helping the hungry people."

The guards of the princes were always drawn from the military households of the Jinyiwei, so they were also called Jinyiwei to the outside world.

Zhu Houcong knew that Mao Cheng raised this suggestion at this time because he was worried that the Jinyiwei would have a better impression of the common people because of their orders to help the people along the way.

However, once the Jinyiwei, who have always been known as yakshas and wolves among the people, really have a good reputation for protecting and helping the people, it will undoubtedly be detrimental to the bureaucrats' efforts to restrict the power of the Jinyiwei, and thus detrimental to the bureaucrats' efforts to restrict the imperial power.

After all, the Jinyiwei have always been the emperor's minions.

Therefore, Mao Cheng would rather let the 3,000 guards brought by Yang Tingyi from the capital do this good deed than let the royal palace's brocade guards do it.

This was actually exactly Zhu Houcong's purpose.

He suddenly proposed to help the hungry people along the way, and was unwilling to ignore them. His purpose was to divert the power of the civil officials in power from the capital and bring his people closer to him.

Zhu Houcong readily said, "In this case, let Luo Qianhu lead the Royal Palace Jinyiwei to protect the carriage, and Yang Qing will lead the guards to help the people."

in this way.

Zhu Houcong's old acquaintances from the prince's mansion, such as Luo An and Lu Song, and other military officers, led the palace guards to take over the duty of protecting the emperor from the 3,000 guards in the capital. Luo An, Lu Song and others also moved closer to Zhu Houcong, and even Lu Bing finally got to a position in front of Zhu Houcong's eyes, and therefore looked at Zhu Houcong with a smile.

Zhu Houcong also smiled at him.

In any case, since he was surrounded by old friends, at least he didn't have to worry about anyone trying to scare him with stories of people falling into the water or catching fire.

Mao Cheng was naturally very happy that Zhu Houcong was able to adopt his suggestion, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He secretly sighed that the successor was still willing to trust such upright officials as himself, and did not insist on asking the Jinyiwei of the palace to do good deeds to leave a good reputation.

Of course, Mao Cheng also felt disappointed that the guards around Zhu Houcong were eventually replaced by guards in the palace.

For this reason, he glanced at Yuan Zonggao with a complicated expression.

Yang Tingyi, the right assistant minister of the Ministry of War, who was ordered to be in charge of the 3,000 guards, also glared at Mao Cheng with dissatisfaction.

Because Mao Cheng made him lose the opportunity to show himself in front of the emperor, he even asked his nephew Yang Shen for a few Neo-Confucian articles, preparing to find an opportunity to show his talent in front of the successor Zhu Houzhao, who was rumored to also like Neo-Confucianism.

However, no matter how dissatisfied Yang Tingyi was, he did not dare to go against the decision made by the successor emperor Zhu Houcong and the Minister of Rites Mao Cheng, so he really arranged for the hundred households of the guards to take turns leading troops to provide relief to the hungry people along the way.

In this way, the starving people in many villages along the way received relief.

But at the beginning, when these guards came riding on tall horses and holding swords and guns, many hungry people were terrified and scrambled to protect their wives and daughters behind them. Some of the more cowardly ones even knelt on the ground and kowtowed.

Captain Wang Gang stopped his horse and shouted, "Look up, everyone! I'm not exchanging your heads for a reward this time. What are you afraid of?"

Wang Gang then said, "You are lucky. The heir in the carriage over there can't bear to see the poor suffer, so he asked us to give you fried rice. Come to me and line up to receive the rice."

The people were shocked after hearing this.

Several people have responded and lined up.

At this time, Wang Gang winked at his cavalry, and one of them came over with a one-liter bag of rice and started pouring fried rice to the hungry people who were already holding the rice.

A bag of strong men was poured out.

Half the bag was poured out for women, children, the elderly and the weak.

When these hungry people saw the fried rice poured into their arms, many of them immediately grabbed their clothes with one hand and grabbed the fried rice with the other hand and started eating it like gluttons.

Seeing this, the hungry people behind came over to snatch the fried rice from the hungry people who had already been given it.

The guard cavalry surrounding the area whipped several people with whips, which made the hungry people who were trying to grab rice no longer dare to do so and instead lined up obediently to get the fried rice.

After a while.

Zhu Houcong saw that many hungry people began to sit quietly on the ground and eat fried rice. Many of them picked up the fried rice that fell on the ground and put it into their mouths.

Zhu Houcong's mouth corners slightly raised.

What suddenly touched him was that when these hungry people finished eating the fried rice and gradually retreated behind him as the wheel ruts turned, they actually knelt down in front of him one after another and kowtowed to the ground.

Liang Chu and Mao Cheng could not help but have red eyes as they looked at the hungry people kneeling down to worship the heir under the sunshine of the morning sun, and they sighed to each other with faces full of shame.

Even the military hero Xu Guangzuo and the nobleman Cui Yuan looked at the kneeling hungry people for a long time without turning their heads, until the rising sun behind the hungry people had risen over Hualin, casting golden light on the sky and the earth, then they turned their heads.

"The heir really loves the people!"

"Yes, what a saint's son, on the way here, he was more anxious to welcome the new emperor than those of us who didn't study, and he didn't pay any attention to the hungry people along the way."

(End of this chapter)