Rebirth of the Ming Dynasty: Sixth Generation of Glory, I don't want it

Ming Dynasty, the tenth year of Yongle, November.

Zhu Di's southern tour continued to shock the imperial court.

It can be said that the places Zhu Di went to were beyond the imagination of even Zhu Gaochi, let alone the court officials.

After setting up the Provincial Administration Office in Guizhou, Zhu Di, for some unknown reason, visited the local prisons and death cells before setting out south.

So, it was another month of thunder, lightning and heavy rain.

Based on the principle of not wanting to wrong anyone, Zhu Gaochi refused to even give him an umbrella and had the chief eunuch read Zhu Di's roaring letter in court.

Don't tell me yet.

The effect is particularly good.

The court officials immediately came up with a solution to the problem that Zhu Di had seen of prisoners being implicated and many people being convicted by mistake in prison.

[Except for public crimes that are recorded and redeemed according to the law and crimes punishable by death according to the law, those with serious crimes will be punished according to the law.]

[For those whose crimes were relatively minor, the redemption money for beheading was 8,000 strings of cash, for hanging and death penalty according to the law was 6,000 strings of cash, for exile was 3,000 strings of cash, for imprisonment was 2,000 strings of cash, for caning was 1,000 strings of cash, and for flogging was 500 strings of cash. Those who had no money to redeem their crimes were sent to Tianshou Mountain to plant trees.]

From then on, in addition to being sent to mine by Zhang Xin, the prisoners also had a place to plant trees.

The imperial court drafted regulations and officially promulgated them.

Zhu Di and Xu arrived at Laizhou Prefecture in Shandong.

No one knows how they chose, but the emperor and empress went to a small county in Laizhou Prefecture - Ye County.

The old couple left two thousand guards outside the county town and strolled around the county town.

Xu loved listening to storytelling, so the two of them went to the only restaurant in the county.

When I came out, I heard a lot of complaints from the people.

According to the rules of the imperial court, salt could only be obtained in exchange for grain.

Although Ye County is not big, it can supply nearly 10,000 dan of rice to the imperial court every year just for the exchange of salt.

The harvest is poor this year and the people are short of food.

Although the imperial court had provided relief loans, it was only enough for everyone to survive.

Neither the imperial court nor the common people considered that salt had to be exchanged for grain in daily life.

Now that it is the end of the year, the places selling official salt have come into conflict with the common people.

Zhu Di really couldn't have imagined that such a thing would happen.

He called the local government officials over and wrote an imperial edict on the spot, ordering that the salt and grain payments for the disaster victims in Ye County could be converted into cash.

The letter scolded everyone for not doing their job, having grassroots ideas in their minds, and being careless in civil affairs. At the same time, it demanded that the salt and grain payment in cash be implemented nationwide.

Whenever the emperor slapped his head, the court officials would scratch their heads.

This is the salt administration. The salt industry is a monopoly of the imperial court.

Salt tax has always accounted for the bulk of national fiscal revenue.

If the whole country could use treasure notes to pay for purchases, the amount of grain collected in the national treasury would be reduced, which would bring about a series of reactions.

There are so many things that need to be considered in completing the details, and the six departments need to work together to discuss carefully so that the new policy can be drafted as comprehensively as possible to prevent local governments from taking advantage of loopholes.

This November is another month in which the court officials feel their lives are fulfilling and full of energy.

~~~

Ming Dynasty, the tenth year of Yongle, December.

The old couple, who originally planned to tour the south for half a year and would return to Beijing for the New Year, didn’t know whether they had enough fun.

In early December, Zhang Xin received a letter from Xu.

Let her host a series of New Year's duties as a queen.

Of course Zhu Gaochi could not escape and continued to serve as regent.

"My father failed to win the war, so he became an imperial envoy to satisfy his desire."

Zhu Gaochi felt depressed as if he was being dominated by the imperial envoy.

"Hehehe, isn't that good?"

Zhang Xin has prepared herself mentally.

Anyway, my father-in-law just can't sit still. In his last life, he led five expeditions to the northern desert in person, and I'm afraid he will have to make five incognito visits in this life.

"It's good, it's quite good, it can find out the shortcomings and fill the gaps, it's better than the imperial envoy."

Although Zhu Gaochi was depressed, he still agreed with his father's approach.

"These people in the Ministry of War really don't do any serious work! They are just eating up the salary and taking up the manpower. Humph, if you say there is no one to protect them, no one will believe it."

Before Zhang Xin set out from Zhu Di, he had thought that dirty things in various places would be discovered, so he was quite calm.

To be honest, sitting in the court and listening to the court officials singing praises or the censors making ten thousand impeachments is not as good as seeing it with your own eyes.

There are some ills that you cannot experience personally unless you see them in person.

With my mother-in-law accompanying them, I'm sure my father-in-law will see a lot of things that he would normally overlook.

She has been secretly adding private goods to Zhu Gaochi over the years, but it is not as efficient as the past six months when her father-in-law went out for a walk.

The above ones are still small matters.

Now when it comes to the military, only Zhu Di, the person in power, can make drastic moves without any scruples.

It has been more than ten years since the Yongle Dynasty.

The domestic economy is booming, and there are not as many wars as in the previous life. So far, the only places where troops have been deployed are Jiaozhi and Guizhou.

The remaining local rebellions were very small and were resolved by local armies without the need for large imperial troops to suppress them.

Compared to the previous life, the relaxation and corruption of local and imperial military and political affairs seemed to have come a little earlier.

Once the country stops fighting, it seems as if the entire country has entered a state of inexplicable peace. It was like this during the Xuande period in the previous life.

The daily military drills clearly lack spirit and energy.

Including the garrisons in the capital and the border areas of the capital.

Her elder brother Zhang Chang had been in the army, in charge of the defense of the capital. When talking about things in the army, he also felt pessimistic.

This is the case in the two capitals. What about the other places? As long as the generals are a little lax, the people below will become extremely disorganized.

"It can't be all their fault, but the Ministry of War has a big problem."

Zhu Gaochi sneered.

Zhu Di only brought two thousand men with him and traveled around the north and northwest. The long journey naturally required changing people and horses.

Shandong is a province with a large population, so Zhu Di planned to select one thousand people from Shandong.

He simply took the military order and ordered 20,000 men to be transferred over for him to select.

But who knows, even if the adjustment is 20,000, the result will still be rotten melons and jujubes.

Zhu Di simply reviewed the troops in various garrisons in Shandong and checked their deployment.

The results found:

The generals accepted bribes and did not recruit able-bodied men when conscripting soldiers, but instead used the weak to fill the vacancies.

There were soldiers who had been absent from the army for many years without being replaced, some who bribed the household officials and used the reason of extinction of their household to leave the army, and some who treated the ordinary soldiers under their command like their own slaves.

Some knights cannot draw bows, and some infantrymen cannot carry swords.

How could the Ministry of War be unaware of these things?

That's impossible!

Even if they do not have the power to deploy troops, the Ministry of War does not know how many people are in the army and what kind of soldiers there are. What is the point of having a Ministry of War then?

In Xu's words: Your father's beard was straightened by anger.

So Zhu Di started a killing spree.

Now this matter was kept secret. Zhu Di wrote a secret letter and asked all the Ti cavalry under Zhang Xin to go out and investigate the entire Ministry of War.

When Zhu Di comes back, another group of people will be beheaded.

Just like this, everyone may feel insecure again.