I want to be emperor

Chapter 360 Jiangnan Freshmen
In the third year of Chengshun of the Great Chu Empire, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival.

Since it was captured by the Chu thieves last winter, the city of Jinling, which has been calm and depressed, has finally recovered a little bit of fireworks.

In order to celebrate the Lantern Festival, it is also to celebrate the army's capture of northern Zhejiang, and completely captured the entire Pan-Jiangnan area.

After deliberation, the monarchs and ministers of the Great Chu Empire decided to temporarily lift the curfew of Jinling City, allowing the people to go out to enjoy the lanterns and fireworks that night, and also officially prepared a number of temple fairs for the people to enjoy.

The next day, on the [-]th of the first lunar month, the curfew was lifted in some urban areas where ordinary people were more concentrated and there were fewer official institutions.

Since then, in Jinling City, except for some important areas, the curfew has been completely lifted in other outer Guocheng districts, and only the inner city district is still within the closed range.

This made the people in the city who had been living under curfew for several months, especially the surviving gentry, finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Since the killing of the Chu thieves last year, the lives of ordinary people in Jinling City have been affected, but in fact, it will not be too big. Even if the Great Chu Empire began to forcibly expropriate all the areas of Dongcheng District, Nancheng District and some of the North District, These ordinary people will also be given monetary compensation, and new residences will be built for them in the Waiguo City area.

But the powerful and gentry are really in bad luck!

In order to make money, the tax department of the Great Chu Empire can do anything, and it is much more ruthless than the army.

When the Chu army entered the city, the army did not attack the ordinary dignitaries and gentry in the city. Their combat targets were always the remnants of the Ming army in the city, some officials and dignitaries in the Ming court, and some recalcitrant elements.

It doesn't pay much attention to the powerful and gentry who don't resist.

Subsequent Army clearance operations also basically followed this principle.

The military is still very pure, only attacking the enemy!

But the tax department is different. When the tax officials in the tax department enter the city with a group of vicious armed tax policemen, they will go door-to-door to collect taxes from the big gentry directly in the photo area.

But many gentry don't have the concept of paying taxes, and now asking them to take money out of the money can make them feel extremely distressed.

And there is another illusion: they don't think it's a big deal for them to deliberately say that they have less assets and pay less taxes. At worst, they will make up for it if they are discovered.

Some people also think that if there are so many gentry in the city, if everyone does not pay, it is impossible for the Chu thieves to punish them one by one. After all, the law does not punish the public.

Some even think that the Chu thieves are now proclaiming the imperial system, and they have taken down Jinling City and even the entire Jiangnan area. No matter how bad the follow-up is, they can still occupy half of the country. After that, they must rule the country.

And governing the country is inseparable from their scholars, and they cannot be separated from their gentry.

Many people think that even though the Chu thieves were brutal in the past, after moving the capital to Jinling City, scholars like them will definitely be reused, and gentry like them will be relied on to rule the world.

Otherwise, just rely on that group of mud legs to rule the country?

What a Huayi joke!
From now on, since the thief of Chu is begging to come to the door, it doesn't matter if the tax is not taxed. They have all become officials, and they will be their own people in the future. There is no reason to pay taxes...

After all, it has been a centuries-old tradition to treat gentry well, and the Chu thieves will definitely do the same.

If it doesn’t work, I can still stir up the people, for example, those weavers are making trouble, and then the scholarly public opinion will force it...

In short, it is impossible for Lao Tzu to pay taxes!
Then, the armed tax police came directly to the house with artillery and ransacked the house and exterminated the family...

The tax department and its efficient work efficiency, through a series of measures such as zoning, setting tasks, and high intensity, ransacked more than half of the homes of the gentry in the city within a very short period of time...

If they weren't so cruel, they wouldn't have been able to make enough cash worth more than 3000 million taels and all kinds of floating wealth in a short period of time.

Of course, the tax department's workshop is so extreme that the outside world fears it like a tiger. Even within the Great Chu Empire, many people are very dissatisfied with the tax department's brutal style.

Even those with vested interests, that is, the military, also euphemistically proposed to the tax department: money needs to be made, but can the means be more tactful and more popular?
After all, we have established our country in a serious way, can we save some face?

In the end, Chen Xingkai sprayed it back: "Can face be used as military expenses?"

"If your army can reduce the military expenditure to less than 500 million, I guarantee that you will be polite when collecting taxes, and you will never hurt the gentry."

Immediately afterwards, in an internal meeting of the Senate, Chen Xingkai snarled at a group of civil and military dignitaries: "A bunch of bastards, eating the money and food collected by me, and then saying that my tax department is too popular?"

"Those who don't know, think that the money and food collected by our tax department are all spent by ourselves!"

"Do you want to be famous? You are a fool, and the gentry are not stupid. If you don't kill a person, you expect them to pay for it obediently?"

"There are so many gentry in Jiangnan, but few pay taxes. The situation in Huguang is much more serious. If we don't set an example in Jinling City and suppress those gentry, do you expect so many gentry in Jiangnan to pay taxes honestly? "

"Or do we allocate an additional several million dollars to our tax department every year, so that our tax department can recruit 10,000+ tax officers to investigate all large households one by one before collecting taxes?"

As soon as these words came out, the heads of other departments shut up. As for the army, they didn't even dare to say a word of nonsense?

Forget it, anyway, we are the ones who spend money, and we are not the ones who are scolded, so let the tax department love it so much!
As for His Majesty Luo Zhixue, although he received a bunch of memorials impeaching the tax department every few days, he usually kept them and ignored them.

If you meet a few who speak harshly, you will be fined immediately, and if you are a department head, you will directly deduct the department's funds...

None of them can see...

If the tax department wasn't so cruel, it would still charge a fart tax.

You can't collect taxes, you can't get money, you don't even have a salary...

How to say gentle means...

It's okay to be gentle, but the cost of tax collection will increase significantly, which is not worth the candle.

Taxation is costly.

With the current technical capabilities of the Great Chu Empire, the efficiency of its tax collection is actually very low. Rao, the tax department of the Great Chu Empire already has a lot of staff, but it is impossible to fully cover it.

Most of the time, in fact, when the tax department collects taxes, the big gentry households are still required to take the initiative to declare, and only then will the gentry with problems conduct in-depth investigations.

It is not generally difficult for the gentry to declare their own taxes.

Without strong and powerful means, it is impossible to do.

Therefore, from the very beginning, the taxation department took an extremely tough approach to send a message to the outside world: the cost of tax evasion and tax resistance is very high, as big as the kind of extermination...

To put it bluntly, the tax department is nothing more than killing chickens and monkeys, threatening the gentry with bloody knives: pay taxes honestly, or they will raid your house and destroy your family.

-

The army first carried out a purge operation, and the tax department ransacked the house again, except for some dignitaries in the city who had surrendered to Dachu in advance, such as Li Yuankui and others.

The rest of the dignitaries were wiped out, and no family was missed. The Duke, Marquis, Earl, and any senior civil and military officials, including those eunuchs, either died or were thrown into a prisoner-of-war camp. Iron mines.

After a preliminary survey in the Dangtu area, the Ministry of Industry of Dachu determined that the iron ore reserves here are huge, and the ore is not bad, and it is close to the Yangtze River for easy transportation. Therefore, Dangtu Mining Bureau has been established in Dangtu. Ironworks to mine iron ore and smelt steel.

The mine is newly opened, and the demand for free prisoners of war is naturally very large.

In addition to these dignitaries, those ordinary gentry big households were also cleaned up five or six out of ten because of their stubbornness, harboring thieves, or tax evasion.

Of course, those gentlemen who are honest, don’t mess around, and pay taxes in a regular manner, so that the people in the tax department can’t find an excuse. Although the people in the tax department of the Great Chu Empire think it’s a pity, they won’t mess around for nothing. They ransacked their homes for no reason.

The Great Chu Empire is still a very well-behaved country.

As long as you don't mess around, you can rest assured to live under the rule of the Great Chu Empire, and for ordinary people, you can live better.

After the Great Chu Empire moved into Jinling City, due to large-scale requisition and demolition, although the lives of the people in the city were affected to a certain extent, it also provided a lot of job opportunities.

The Great Chu Empire did not enforce the recruitment of civilian husbands and make the people serve corvee like traditional feudal dynasties, but employed the method of employment.

After all, the Great Chu Empire even treated the refugees with work-for-relief, providing a job for the refugees, let alone ordinary people.

Under the large-scale construction, many low-level people in the city have obtained job opportunities, increased income, and ensured the living needs after the war.

At the same time, as a large number of civil and military officials and soldiers of the Great Chu Empire, as well as a large number of craftsmen and their families moved to Jinling City one after another, it also supplemented the shrinking consumer market due to the demise of a large number of Ming court dignitaries and gentry classes.

After the changes of the elites at the upper echelons, and even ordinary people being sent to relocate with compensation, there are actually not many ordinary people in the inner city of Jinling City.

The entire inner city now has a population of tens of thousands, a considerable part of which are garrisons, and the rest are officials from the Great Chu Empire and their families who have migrated over one after another.

On the contrary, the number of people in Waiguo City has not decreased but increased, and there are about [-] people.

Now that Wai Guocheng City has been completely sealed off, Jinling City has recovered its prosperity at a speed visible to the naked eye.

As the new economic center of the Great Chu Empire, a large number of personnel and materials in the area under the control of the Great Chu Empire continued to gather towards Jinling City.

Especially at present, the Great Chu Empire has fully controlled the Pan-Jiangnan area, and a large amount of money and food from the Jiangnan area, northern Zhejiang area, southern Anhui area, northern Jiangxi area, and Huguang area are constantly gathering towards Jinling City.

This quickly restored the economic vitality of Jinling City.

Moreover, not only a large amount of money, food and materials were gathered in Jinling City, but also a large number of scholars.

To be precise, he is a scholar who aspires to the Great Chu Empire.

Because the Great Chu Empire is about to hold a test in Jinling City!

Since the year before last, that is, the eighth year of Chongzhen and the first year of Chengshun.

The Great Chu Empire began its own imperial examinations after it took control of the Northern Chu area. Naturally, the scope of the imperial examinations held in the Northern Chu area was not very large, and there were not many scholars who came to participate, and it was not considered a system. Complete.

It was not until the second year, that is, the second year of Chengshun, that the Great Chu Empire began to improve the imperial examination system on a large scale.

In order to avoid turmoil, the Great Chu Empire still implemented the traditional imperial examination system in the imperial examination system, and established examinations at various levels of county examinations, government examinations, courtyard examinations, township examinations, general examinations, and palace examinations.

However, in order to recruit the talents Luo Zhixue really wanted to acquire, the Great Chu Empire was not like the middle and late Ming Dynasty.

In terms of content, there are initially three main subjects: Jinshi, Legal Affairs, and Gewu.

The Jinshi subject is naturally modeled after the traditional Jinshi subject, and it is also the main subject for scholars to apply for.

The Legal Affairs Division, in fact, is the Ming Law Division, which mainly relies on the law to select talents for the judicial system. After being selected, they will work in the Patrol Department, Judicial Yuan, Procuratorate, Court of Justice and other departments.

The subject of Gewu integrates the arithmetic of Mingshu subject, plus basic physical chemistry, astronomy, geography and other knowledge.

These three subjects are initially set up, and candidates can choose and apply for the exam by themselves. As long as they pass the exam, they will be awarded corresponding honors and selected as officials.

However, due to tradition, the vast majority of scholars apply for Jinshi.

Luo Zhixue did not intervene too much in this matter. After all, it takes time to change the concept of traditional scholars, and it also takes time to popularize various science knowledge, and you can't even have the corresponding teaching materials. It is not for students to take physical chemistry exams.

Luo Zhixue intends to set up a title first, and then gradually increase the weight of science, such as reusing scholars with backgrounds in Gewu, and eventually reverse the atmosphere of the entire society.

Scholars, it is very realistic, what they learn to be an official, what they can learn to stand out.

Tang and Song Dynasties learned poetry to be officials, so they learned poetry.

If you can be an official if you learn Stereotyped Shiwen, they learn Stereotyped Shiwen.

Later generations have to get good grades in all subjects to pass the key points of the exam, so they bury themselves in all sciences.

Therefore, Luo Zhixue didn't need to make long speeches to persuade scholars to study science. He only needed to reuse talents with science backgrounds, and the latter scholars could break their heads to study science without anyone's persuasion.

In the second year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire began to conduct imperial examinations at all levels in the areas controlled by itself, mainly in the northern and southern areas of Chu.

In some areas, due to lack of time, the time is not uniform. For example, in Chizhou Prefecture and other areas under the governor of Anlu, the county and government examinations began to be held in October last year, and the rural examinations of the year were held directly in December.

In the Jiangnan governor's area, it was even later. In December, the intensive county and government examinations were launched one after another, and finally the hospital examination was held.

As for the provincial examination in the Jiangnan governor's jurisdiction, it is still over, and a total of more than 300 new imperial examination candidates have been admitted.

In Zhejiang, it will be even later, because time is tight, and the local rural examination is expected to be completed in February, and these new imperial examinations will be rushed to Jinling City immediately to participate in the examination.

In order to better recruit talents, the Great Chu Empire also allowed scholars from the Puppet Ming Dynasty to directly participate in the provincial or general examinations.

What's more interesting is that although the Jiangnan governor's area is the last area actually controlled by the Great Chu Empire, the number of applicants who signed up for the exam scheduled to be held in March is the largest, reaching more than 1000 people.

Among them, the new imperial examination candidates recruited by the Great Chu Empire on their own are actually only more than 300 people, and the remaining five to six hundred people are all candidates from the Ming court.

Although the general examination will not start until March, many scholars have already set off for Jinling City to prepare for the examination.

Sun Qinian of Suzhou Prefecture is one of them.

Not only him, but also several fellow countrymen of the same year are also preparing to set off with him.

When they were preparing to set foot on the boat to Jinling City with expectations, they had already forgotten that only two months ago, when they discussed the current situation, they used to say Chu thief on the left and Luo Ni on the right!

——PS——

There will be an Easter egg chapter later, which is the control area and military deployment map I simply drew on a rainy day, so that everyone can read the book more intuitively.

(End of this chapter)