Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 144: Removal of Fame

Chapter 144: Removal of Fame
The gentry of Suzhou Prefecture were naturally very indignant about this. They had never expected that the magistrate Pan Duan would dare to treat them, the scholars and officials, in this way.

Within a few days, more than a hundred students gathered in the Confucius Temple, venting their dissatisfaction in the name of offering sacrifices to the former emperor, and began to cry in the temple.

For a time, the entire Suzhou Prefecture was in an uproar, causing more and more students to start crying in the Confucius Temple.

Among them, a student named Tan Qingshan directly encouraged on this day:
"Everyone, County Magistrate Pan Duan is greedy and cruel by nature. He has stolen and sold official rice, tortured people to death, and committed all kinds of evil. We cannot allow him to harm the people of Wu County! As scholars, we should draft a petition and post it to accuse him of his crimes!"

"Yes, accuse him of his crime! This Pan is a man of all evils, he doesn't respect the gentry, he abuses and harms the people, he is an unforgivable criminal! He must be punished!"

One of the students responded.

Then other students followed suit:

"Accused him!"

……

Therefore, Tan Qingshan immediately organized the students to write a complaint against Pan Duan, the county magistrate, and selected twenty students to go directly to Nanjing to file a complaint against Pan Duan, the county magistrate.

At the same time, other gentry who remained in Suzhou Prefecture began to spread rumors to slander Pan Duan and fabricated a series of evil deeds committed by County Magistrate Pan Duan.

The purpose of these Suzhou gentry was to force the court to send Magistrate Pan Duan to the eighteen levels of hell and never let him be reborn. They wanted everyone to know the consequences of not respecting gentry when being a magistrate in Jiangnan.

However, these gentry in Suzhou Prefecture did not know that the entire Southern Zhili was currently carrying out an operation to recover the unpaid taxes.

Therefore, they naively handed the petition to Wang Yangming, the governor of Nanzhili. In their opinion, there was no inspector in Nanzhili now, so they could only count on Governor Wang Yangming to make the decision for them.

Of course, they may not know that Wang Yangming had just killed fifty gentry some time ago, or they may know but do not realize the political relationship involved. They did not realize that Wang Yangming came to Nanzhili not to serve as an official who represented the gentry, but to gain benefits from the gentry on behalf of the court.

Just like, in history, officials and gentry in Jiangnan had illusions about the Qing Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty, and hoped to join forces with it to deal with Li Zicheng and proposed the policy of "allying with the Manchus to suppress the bandits."

At this time, these students in Suzhou Prefecture still had illusions about Wang Yangming, thinking that he would really hold a county magistrate accountable for them.

"Grandmaster! Student Tan Qingshan! Student Dai Jianye! Student Wan Qisheng... Today we are suing Pan Duan, the magistrate of Wu County, Suzhou, for thirty crimes of insulting scholars and harming the people! I hope that the Grandmaster will make the decision for us and severely punish this man!"

Wang Yangming was now the governor of Nanzhili, and also the director of education in Nanzhili, so the students from Suzhou Prefecture directly called him the Grand Master.

Wang Yangming took the petition.

However, Wang Yangming could naturally guess why these students from Suzhou Prefecture wanted to sue Pan Duan, the county magistrate. He did not hesitate to ask directly, "Do you have any evidence to prove your case against Pan Duan, the county magistrate?"

"Reporting to the Grand Master, there is solid evidence. He beat to death three students from our county, including Di Lou, and that is the solid evidence!" Tan Qingshan replied.

"Did Di Lou and others owe taxes to the court, and the amount is more than 500 dan, and they have not paid it for three months?" Wang Yangming asked coldly.

Qin Qingshan did not answer this question. He was a good friend of Di Lou and naturally knew that Di Lou owed taxes to the court. Therefore, he chose to change the subject and said, "Grandmaster, no matter what, Di Lou and others are not guilty of death. They are scholars. Please, Grandmaster, make the decision for us scholars!"

Wang Yangming did not answer, but ordered his men to look through the Suzhou Prefecture's unpaid tax files, and then he slammed the gavel:
"I will naturally make the decision for you, but I will not cover up for you to evade taxes at will. Students like Di Lou owe more than 3,000 shi of taxes. According to the imperial decree, they should be stripped of their titles, and the government can compulsorily recover three times the amount. They deserve to be beaten to death! Therefore, Di Lou and others were beaten to death because of their own fault. I am deeply saddened by this, but I will never let them disrupt the imperial court's rules! Get out of here!"

After all, Wang Yangming was a civil servant and he still had a kind heart towards these students. Therefore, he did not think of blaming them for accusing their superiors. He just explained the situation and let Tan Qingshan and other students leave.

However, Tan Qingshan and other Suzhou students did not seem to be willing to give up. Tan Qingshan still knelt in front of the hall and said, "If the Grand Master is unwilling to make a decision for us and punish Pan Duan, we will kneel down forever!"

"Students will kneel down and not get up!" The other students also responded.

Wang Yangming was quite angry when he saw this. He didn't expect that these Suzhou students would dare to threaten him in court. He couldn't help but shout: "Aren't you afraid that I will revoke your honors?!" "Reporting to the Grand Master, we are of course afraid, but we don't want to see corrupt officials running rampant in the countryside. Today's petition is jointly submitted by 120 students from Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture. It is based on the will of the people of Suzhou and asks the Grand Master to make decisions for the people! If the Grand Master is unwilling to follow the will of the people, then please ask the Grand Master to revoke the honors of these 120 students! However, I want to ask, does the Grand Master really want to kill 120 students for a corrupt and cruel official?!"

Tan Qingshan was quite eloquent and immediately refuted Wang Yangming so much that he didn't know what to say. He could only bring up Pan Duan's evaluation of the plan:
"Since Pan Duan took office as the magistrate of Wu County, he has never increased the fire consumption by half a cent. He has made achievements in academic research and river repair. Your grandfather, Tan Qingshan, who was once the governor of Huguang, Tan Changli, even wrote an article to praise him. And you were even selected as the first in the county by Pan Duan.

Now Pan Duan is only recovering the arrears of taxes and acting in accordance with the imperial court's order. How come you have suddenly turned him into an unforgivable criminal in your mouths? "

"Pan Duan is such a traitor, he deceived us all! He deserves to die! He didn't respect us gentry and scholars, so he deserves to die miserably!"

At this time, a student with a more irritable temper started yelling.

However, Qin Qingshan did not answer, but just raised his head proudly and looked at Wang Yangming.

Wang Yangming found himself in a difficult situation. On one side were almost all the students in Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture, and on the other was Pan Duan, the county magistrate who collected taxes for the court. He could only choose to support one side, and to support one side he had to severely punish the other.

Wang Yangming looked in the direction of Purple Mountain, where the Ming Emperor Zhu Houzhao and the chief minister Ma Wensheng and others were. He knew that if he wanted to carry out the grand plan and the decree to recover the unpaid taxes on behalf of the higher-ups and if he wanted to gain a foothold in Jiangnan, he had to be decisive and ruthless at this moment.

"Bring me my seal! One hundred and twenty students including Tan Qingshan from Wu County, Suzhou Prefecture, did not take their studies seriously, interfered with government affairs, and even threatened court officials. This shows that they are not virtuous. Such rebellious people are accepted into the literati circle only to insult the way of the saints. Now their reputations must be revoked! Report to the Ministry of Rites and send to the Cabinet for His Majesty's review!"

After Wang Yangming said this with his fist clenched, he waved his sleeves and left the hall.

Tan Qingshan and others in the hall were shocked. They didn't expect that the governor Wang Yangming would dare to revoke their titles. They were angry, hateful and a little regretful at once.

"It's true that officials protect each other! Ugh!"

Tan Qingshan cursed and left the governor's office with a group of dismissed students. However, Tan Qingshan was unwilling to give up. Moreover, he had lost his academic title, so he shouted loudly:
"Everyone! Now the Grand Master is also protecting the evil official Pan Duan, which shows that these officials are all in cahoots with each other and are in collusion with each other. We cannot sit idly by and watch the world be corrupted by such corrupt officials, nor can we tolerate our lifelong learning being destroyed by such evil people. Today, the emperor is in Nanjing, let's go to the palace to write a letter!"

“Yes, books on the bus!”

Other students also responded, but there were also some timid ones who asked, "But what if something like what happened in the capital happened again? At that time, Yang Tinghe led the Jinyiwei to massacre almost all the students of the Imperial College in the capital."

"What are you afraid of? Are there any officials in Nanjing who dare to do what Yang Tinghe did? Moreover, if the court approves the expulsion of our honors after today, all our life's hard work will be wasted. So, we might as well take a chance!"

After saying this, Qin Qingshan walked towards Hongwu Gate first, and the other expelled students followed him.

However, by the time Tan Qingshan arrived here, the entire Hongwu Gate of the Nanjing Palace City was already crowded with people, because not only Tan Qingshan and others, but also gentry from Yingtian Prefecture and other prefectures came to ask for justice. However, they knew better than Tan Qingshan and others in Suzhou Prefecture that Wang Yangming, the governor of Southern Zhili, was not a good person, so they came directly to Hongwu Gate and forced Zhu Houzhao to do justice for them.

……

Zhu Houzhao was also standing on the palace wall watching all this, and asked the cabinet chief, Ma Wensheng: "Do these people really not know the majesty of the court? How dare they come here to demonstrate?"

"Your Majesty! They are not unaware, but they think the court will definitely forgive them. After all, since the Song Dynasty, the emperors have always treated scholars with favor. I have to admit that they are too arrogant, but as the saying goes, all scholars are arrogant. In my opinion, it is better not to fight. I am willing to go and persuade them in person!"

Ma Wensheng, the chief minister of the cabinet, replied.

"How can you persuade them? Promise them to return their lost honors? Or return the unpaid taxes to them? Then where will the dignity of the court be? Will the court be unable to accomplish anything in the future just because of their commotion?"

Zhu Houzhao said unhappily that he had originally wanted to use this opportunity to demote a large number of Jiangnan gentry to commoners and reduce the number of privileged classes. If he allowed them to regain their fame and honor now, wouldn't it be a waste of time?

Ma Wensheng didn't know how to answer and could only sigh.

At this time, Wang Yangming also came here and reported to Zhu Houzhao the complaint filed by Tan Qingshan, a student from Suzhou Prefecture.

Zhu Houzhao looked at the sea of gentry outside and just smiled, then shouted: "Guo Rong! Take the Jinyiwei out! Disperse them according to the method I give you! In addition, arrest the dozens of leaders kneeling in the front and bring them to justice! Let the governor judge!"

Thanks to my book friend, Mo Ran Xiang Zi, for the reward of 100 Qidian coins. Thank you to my book friend, Bei Hai Lai Ke, for the reward of 100 Qidian coins.

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(End of this chapter)