Brother Zhu Youxiao

Chapter 227 Reforming the Five Armies Governor's Mansion

"Ugh!!"

In the middle of the night on the tenth day of November, when the shrill screams sounded, the entire Gongshunhou Mansion was lit up with flames.

A large number of soldiers and horses from Wanping Camp and Daxing Camp, under the leadership of Jin Yiwei, poured into Gongshunhou's Mansion, sealed all the gates, and then began to search the property.

Since Wu Yuncheng, the first Gongshun uncle, surrendered and took a few sons to expand the territory for the Ming Dynasty, he has enjoyed it for two hundred years now, and the family has multiplied seven generations, with more than a hundred people and thousands of servants.

It's just that yesterday's prosperity was shattered today. When everything was confiscated by Jin Yiwei, and more than a hundred members of the Wu family were driven into a small courtyard, and chained and sealed by Jin Yiwei, everyone recognized that Cleared up a reality.

Gongshunhou Mansion... is gone...

Outside the gate, the guards in Jinyi were confiscating their homes in full swing, while the hundreds of family members of Wu's children in the courtyard were pale and their limbs were limp.

While they were waiting, Wu Ruyin, who was going to Yanshan Camp, was also opened the door and pushed in.

Just when the two brothers Wu Weiying and Wu Weiye were about to step forward to inquire, they didn't want Wu Ruyin to suddenly see Wu Weihua who caused this incident.

Without waiting for others to stop him, Wu Ruyin tore off his jade belt, and then slapped Wu Weihua fiercely on the back, causing him to howl incessantly.

"Father! Father! What's wrong with me...ah!"

Wu Weihua tried to dodge, but was beaten by Wu Ruyin with a heavy jade belt, his back started to turn red after only three or five strokes, and the people beside him were even too frightened to step forward.

Wu Weihua's biological mother wanted to step forward to stop her, but was pushed down by Wu Ruyin, then chased and beat Wu Weihua, and shouted ventingly:
"This son deserves to die! This son deserves to die!"

Like a lion getting angry among the lions, everyone dared not move, but when Wu Weiying and Wu Weiye reacted and pulled Wu Ruyin away, Wu Weihua had already been beaten and vomited blood, and kept crawling towards the door .

"Father?! What's wrong with you?! Why did Jin Yiwei come to raid the house?!"

The eldest son Wu Weiye yelled at Wu Ruyin like crazy, disregarding etiquette, but at this moment Wu Ruyin collapsed on the ground as if he had lost his soul.

It's over... It's too late, the two hundred years of favor and prosperity will disappear, Wu Ruyin only hopes that His Highness King Qi's decision during the day is already the final decision.

Confiscated home, exiled to Yunnan...

Is it miserable to copy the house?awful!But compared with ordinary house raids, the treatment that Zhu Youjian personally agreed to for Wu's house raids in the daytime is already extrajudicial.

Ordinary people think that the punishment of ransacking is just confiscation of property, but in fact the "home" of ransacking refers to property and family members.

The wives, children, family members, livestock, and properties of the ransacked persons were all confiscated into officials.

Young women who were treated well were sold into brothels, and those who were poorly treated were sent directly to military camps. It was even more common for young women to be used as military prostitutes for soldiers to play with.

One of the main sources of prostitutes in ancient times was house raids. Boys, young girls, and young women would be sold to brothels. Such treatment was the most tragic among house raids.

But Wu Ruyin was lucky, because Wu Ruyin was not as miserable as the Liao merchants who were doing things in Liaodong before.

Regarding him, Zhu Youjian only said that he ransacked his home and exiled him in Yunnan, but did not say that he ransacked his family and exiled him to Yunnan.

There is a difference between two words, but the treatment is very different. At this moment, he only hopes to save the last bit of face of the Wu family. As for that unfilial son Wu Weihua, he no longer cares about it...

"Father! What did the third brother do?"

At this moment, Wu Weiye and Wu Weiying were still questioning Wu Ruyin, but Wu Ruyin managed to raise his spirits, and laughed sadly:
"What did you do? Ask him yourself! What did he do! It ruined my Wu family's reputation for more than two hundred years!"

Thinking of what Wu Weihua had done, Wu Ruyin became angry again, grabbed the blood-stained jade belt, stood up abruptly and walked towards Wu Weihua, who was seriously injured and crawling.

In front of hundreds of members of the Wu family, he waved the jade belt as if venting.

Once... twice... three times...

At first Wu Weihua was still able to cry out in pain, but later on he stopped moving.

Until Wu Ruyin's hair was messed up, Wu Weihua had become a corpse, and Wu Weihua's biological mother also rushed up madly at this time, hugged Wu Weihua's body, and cried bitterly.

Wu Ruyin seemed to have exhausted all his strength and fell to his knees on the ground.

However, when he knelt on the ground, the chain outside the door made a sound, and then the chain was opened, and the fire appeared.

Wu Ruyin couldn't see who was coming, so he quickly crawled forward and said in a panic:

"All superiors, please let me see Your Highness again! See Your Highness again!"

"..." No one answered, only then did Wu Ruyin look up.

At this moment, a eunuch from the inner court was standing under the eaves of the door, Wu Ruyin looked intently, but it was the eunuch Liu Ruoyu who should not be here.

"Eunuch Liu! Help me to ask Long Live..."

Wu Ruyin thought that the savior was coming, and was just about to call for help, but saw Liu Ruoyu directly drop a fist-sized cloth bag.

"Long live, I have said that the matter of honor and nobility is left to His Royal Highness King Qi. What's more, Wu Weihua smuggled arms and secretly funded the northern captives. The Gongshun Houfu should be punished like this."

"Everything in this cloth bag is the last gift that Long Live gave to Lord Hou."

After finishing speaking, Liu Ruoyu turned around and left, while Wu Ruyin, who had a dark red mark on his head, just stood there in a daze, at a loss for what to do.

It was at this time that the hundreds of people in Gongshunhou's mansion knew exactly why they ended up being ransacked.

Armament smuggling and illicit communication with northern captives, any of these two crimes are enough for the barbarians.

Everyone came to their senses, but Wu Ruyin picked up the cloth bag in a daze, opened it, and found that there was heavy gold and a piece of folded oil paper inside.

Wu Ruyin knew it was a land deed and ten taels of gold just by looking at it, and when he unfolded the land deed, the five hundred mu written on it immediately moistened Wu Ruyin's eyes.

His eyes were not moistened because of the five hundred acres of land, but he felt ashamed of the emperor's behavior and his son's disloyalty and disfilial piety.

It's just that it's too late to say anything now...

--------

"how……"

Not long after Wu Ruyin accepted his fate, Liu Ruoyu, who was sent out of the palace, returned to Kunning Palace and met Zhu Youxiao after the dragon case.

Not far from the dragon case was Zhang Yan who was lying down and asleep, and she was going to give birth in the past few days, Zhu Youxiao dared not leave even an inch.

It was precisely because of this that he did not go to see Wu Ruyin in person, or he was worried that he would not be able to help keeping Wu Ruyin.

"Things are done, according to the follow-up Jin Yiwei, Gong Shunhou seems to have cried a lot, and Wu Weihua was also beaten to death by him with a jade belt..."

Liu Ruoyu lowered his head to report, but Zhu Youxiao just frowned after listening, and then said:

"Do the other ministers who have returned to the government have any comments?"

"No..." Liu Ruoyu shook his head and replied, "I don't know what His Highness said to them, but even the old Duke is unwilling to express his opinion."

"It seems that I'm afraid..." Zhu Youxiao said the answer meaningfully, and the next second the maid outside the door walked into the hall and knelt down and said:
"Long live, Cao Bing asked to see Long live, saying that he brought His Royal Highness's memorial."

"Xuan..." Zhu Youxiao said without thinking, and the maid also retreated.

After a while, Cao Huachun came in with a memorandum, knelt down and saluted before standing up, handing out the memorandum with both hands:
"Long live, this is His Royal Highness's memorial to the five armies' governor's mansion and guards, and the innovation of nobles..."

"Well..." Zhu Youxiao responded, and Liu Ruoyu also took over the memorial and handed it over to Zhu Youxiao.

When Zhu Youxiao opened the memorial, what caught his eye was Zhu Youjian's self-report of what he did during the day today.

Zhu Youxiao didn't like his behavior and aggressiveness, but he had to admit that it was very effective.

"It seems that my brother is not as weak as I thought..."

After reading Zhu Youjian's self-report, Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but sighed, and then continued to look down.

Among the three kinds of problems that need to be solved, Zhu Youjian's first point is the innovation of Xungui.

In the memorial, Zhu Youjian listed the land occupied by nobles from the north and the south, as well as some descendants of officials who had received Yu Yin.

This data is not too detailed. According to the search by Fusi of Nanbei Town, only one data of more than [-] million mu was estimated.

Of these land acres, only two-thirds of them are paying land taxes in a serious manner, and the other third are evading land taxes and miscellaneous taxes.

Among other things, the escaped [-] million mu alone represents more than [-] million shi of land tax, which is more than [-] million taels of silver after the color is folded.

This is just the land tax, in addition to the land tax, there are also salt and tea gifts bestowed by the emperors of the Ming Dynasty.

These salts and teas were used as a cover by Xungui to secretly smuggle three thousand or even tens of thousands of teas with three hundred teas.

Just for this, Daming lost hundreds of thousands of taels.

That is to say, the taxes concealed by the descendants of officials Xungui and Yu Yin evaporated at least two million taels of silver from Daming's tax revenue, which is almost [-] cents of the total tax revenue of Daming's six ministries, five temples and the Imperial Horse Supervisor. one.

This is just a cover-up by the descendants of officials Xun Chen and Yu Yin. If the local powerful gentry is added, how much tax can Daming really receive?Nobody knows.

"..." Looking at Zhu Youjian's rough statistics, Zhu Youxiao fell silent.

He was no longer dissatisfied with his younger brother's actions, but understood.

He continued to look down, and the next page was about the abolition of the Tianxia Guard.

In the memorial, according to Zhu Youjian's theory based on the past inspections of military farmland, the number of [-] million mu of military farmland in the Yongle period may have exceeded [-] million by now. If they can reclaim new fields, the fields belonging to the guard will only increase, not decrease.

However, it is precisely because of Zhu Youjian's estimation that according to the model of the Yumajian, the contribution of the [-] million mu of military farmland can probably contribute [-] to [-] million shi to the Ming Dynasty.

The data given by Zhu Youjian made Zhu Youxiao's hand holding the memorial tremble uncontrollably.

No one knows better than Zhu Youxiao what this [-] to [-] million Shi Tianfu represents.

If these grains were delivered to Taicang, then Ming Dynasty could maintain three battles with [-] troops in three places, and there was no need to levy additional taxes in the country, and the salaries and military salaries of hundreds of officials and soldiers could also be guaranteed.

But without waiting for Zhu Youxiao to be happy, Zhu Youjian added that since the military farms are going to return to the attributes of civilian farms, what they need to do now is to gradually reduce their taxes.

Zhu Youjian's suggestion is that Tianqi will start in the first month of the fourth year, and then [-]% of the land tax will still be collected in October, but it must be reduced to [-]% in the fifth year of the Tianqi, [-]% in the sixth year of the Tianqi, and directly reduced to [-]% in the seventh year of the Tianqi.

As for other private fields, the government will abolish all miscellaneous and miscellaneous taxes. After the students in Yanshan study, the tax system reform will be carried out gradually from the fifth year of Tianqi.

Finally, the agricultural tax will be completely fixed, and the reform will be carried out in which the gentry is divided into mu and the gentry is one of the errands and one of the grain.

The stalls are allocated to the mu, the gentry is one of the errands, and one of the grains...

Zhu Youjian specifically explained the nature of these two policies.

Generally speaking, the main tax of the feudal dynasty was the head tax, which is commonly known as the "Ding tax", followed by land tax and various taxes.

The actual tax rate of land tax in Ming Dynasty was very low. The tax rate of [-] in [-] was beyond the reach of almost all feudal dynasties, and it could be called the lowest land tax.

But Zhu Youjian is very clear that the bulk of the burden on farmers in ancient times was never on regular taxes, especially in the Ming Dynasty.

If you only look at the tax rate of the Ming Dynasty, and compare it with the tax rate of [-]-[-]% or even half in Europe, then Ming Dynasty is a very benevolent government.

But besides taxes and land rent, farmers also have to pay corvee, which is voluntary labor that allows you to bring your own dry food for several months.

Once the farming season is delayed, the burden will suddenly increase, and the "consumption" that is several times higher than the regular tax will be borne.

In addition, the people also need to bear in disguise the apportionments sent by officials from all walks of life, as well as the questionable tariffs when going to the market.

Not only that, the monetary system of the Ming Dynasty was also poor. Farmers had food and various agricultural and sideline products, but no silver.

This kind of social and economic model leads to the usual collection of taxes in kind, but for example, when the Chongzhen government increases the three salaries and collects cash from the people, the burden on the people will be even heavier.

The reason is simple, as a farmer, you cannot exchange for silver in time, because those profiteers will drive up the price of silver at this time, so the actual burden of the farmer is several times more than the three rates on the book.

There are also various other miscellaneous items that are often pressed for cash. Usually, it may be five hundred cash per stone of grain, but when paying taxes, it often takes two stones of grain to exchange for five hundred cash.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that the ancient tax collectors went to the countryside to fly around, because in this taxation model, you do not simply take out the money from your wallet and hand it over to him. The high price of grain is exchanged into silver and then paid. Only the suffering farmers and profiteers who have made money know how much extra cost there is.

In addition, since Daming has a monsoon climate, the monsoon climate is good because it rains and heats at the same time, but it is bad because it is unstable.

This has led to the fact that in most areas, within three years, there is basically drought, one year of flood, one year of good weather, and one year of good weather.

In an agricultural society, it is likely that there will be a large-scale reduction in production in two years out of three years, and a bumper harvest in one year, which is barely sufficient.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian wanted to simplify the taxation. The simplest way is to first determine the amount of the appropriation per mu, change the poll tax from household to land, and then set the land tax at 10%.

As for the reform of gentry and gentry working together on errands and paying grain together, it means that "officials and landlords must also pay taxes", that is, the privilege of tax exemption for officials and landlords is abolished.

As long as their privileges are abolished, Daming's more than 10 million mu of land, even if only [-]% of each mu is collected, can still collect hundreds of millions of grains.

But if so much grain is to be stored, there are simply not enough Changping warehouses and official warehouses in various places in Daming, so it is necessary to collect taxes more simply.

It is necessary to change from a tax in kind to a tax on silver and money, and Ming Dynasty does not have so many copper coins and silver to carry out the inventory of converting physical objects into silver money, so currency reform is imminent.

Silver and copper coins must be produced, but the denominations must not be too large, because once the denominations are large, there will be a lot of shoddy counterfeit money all over the country.

The reason why paper money is not used is that Zhu Youjian is taking the blame for his ancestors.

The treasure banknotes were discarded by Zhu Yunqi, and the people of Ming Dynasty avoided the paper treasure banknotes as if they had seen poison.

Therefore, only coins stamped with metal can guarantee the basic acceptance of them by the common people.

But it is useless to solve the problem of people's acceptance. The currency must be circulated, and how to circulate it?This is the time for Huangdian to play a role.

Chai, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea, basic necessities...

All these things are related to the common people, and the easiest way to promote the flow of money among the common people is to monopolize these things by the government, leaving only a small part of the market to compete with the imperial stores.

The dominance of a family often dies of corruption, and only the resistance of the division can survive for a long time.

Zhu Youjian doesn't need to eat the entire market, he just needs the common people to spend coins in the imperial shop, and then let the coins circulate.

After a long time, coupled with the crackdown on counterfeit money, the people will naturally accept this new currency.

As for the anti-counterfeiting of currency, it is possible to avoid the red copper with large reserves, so as to choose a small amount of brass, phosphor bronze, white copper and other copper mixed with silver and tin to mint coins.

In short, the memorial submitted by Zhu Youjian was apparently talking about the reform of the guard, but in fact, it used the reform of the guard to involve the issues of currency and the tax system of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Youxiao was very fascinated, and he was thinking about Zhu Youjian's reform of the guard and the possibility of reforming the tax system.

I have to say that Zhu Youjian's idea is very perfect, although not perfect, but at least it is perfect.

Fixed land tax to ease the difficulty of tax collection and reduce taxes.

And Zhu Youxiao's policy of allotment to the mu and the gentry's one-off payment of food and one-off errands is even more familiar to Zhu Youxiao. He only thinks this policy is like an extension of Zhang Juzheng's whipping method, but it needs to be more perfect.

As for the final currency innovation, it is to use the method of selling goods in the imperial store and paying land taxes to let the people accept the new currency, and use the imperial store to collect all the copper coins circulating in the market from past dynasties into the national treasury.

This entire set of procedures is very clear, the only problem is the need to operate such a system, which requires a large number of manpower and officials.

According to Zhu Youjian's meaning, things will start in the fifth or sixth year of Tianqi, and by then the number of Yanshan students graduating will exceed [-].

With [-] subordinates and hundreds of thousands of troops to help, such mobilization ability is enough to initially implement the policy.

Later, with the passage of time, more and more Yanshan students graduated, so this policy will start to go smoothly with the number of people and the exchange of personnel in each yamen.

In other words, Zhu Youjian has already thought through the whole thing, the only thing lacking is time and Yanshan students.

Therefore, Zhu Youxiao was very satisfied with the issue of the abolition of military households and the land tax of the army, and looked at his brother's opinion on the "renovation of the five-army governor's mansion".

In the memorial, Zhu Youjian made it very clear that he would directly separate the functions of the Ministry of War and the Governor's Office of the Five Armies.

As long as the military household system is completely abolished, then the Five Armed Forces Governor's Mansion will be reformed immediately.

The five-army governor’s mansion was changed from the former army governor’s mansion, the left army’s governor’s mansion, the right army’s governor’s mansion, the central army’s governor’s mansion and the rear army’s governor’s mansion to the Northern Army, Eastern Army, Western Army, Southern Army, and Navy in the form of geography. and up straight.

The Governor's Mansion of the Eastern Army controlled the three provinces of Liaodong, Shandong, and Zhejiang.

The Governor's Mansion of the Southern Army controlled the three provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Fujian.

The Governor's Mansion of the Western Army controlled Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou.

While controlling Shanxi and Shaanxi, the Governor's Mansion of the Northern Army divided the area to the west of Longyou in Shaanxi and set it as the Hexi Province, thus forming the land of the governors of the three provinces.

As for Shaanxi, after the recovery of Hetao, the Hetao area south of Yinshan Mountain will be handed over to Shaanxi for management.

In this way, Shaanxi has restored the strength of Guannei Dao in the Tang Dynasty. Without the Quartet threatening Qinchuan, which is eight hundred miles away from Guanzhong, Shaanxi can rest and recuperate with peace of mind.

The Naval Governor's Mansion is dominated by the sea, with eight guards of sailors and four guards of infantry, and the last Shangzhi Dudu's Mansion is under the jurisdiction of the Great Governor above the five armies.

The Shangzhi Dudufu needs to control the two capitals and three provinces of Beizhili, Nanzhili, Henan, Huguang, and Jiangxi.

These five places respectively represent the three major granaries and one big taxation place of Daming, as well as the source of the most elite Shangzhi soldiers.

The most important thing is to go straight to the governor's mansion. Zhu Youjian's suggestion is that it is best to let the emperor's most trusted person be the governor.

As long as there is no problem with the Shangzhi Governor's Mansion, no matter how powerful the East, West, North, and South Four Armies are, they will not be able to destroy Shangzhi.

In addition, Zhu Youjian also specially drew a picture of going out of the fortress, in which the Northern Army mainly deals with Mobei and the Western Regions, and the Central Army and the Western Army cooperate.

The southern army was fighting against the countries in Southeast Asia and the Indochina Peninsula, and the western army and navy cooperated.

The Western Army mainly deals with the Uzang and U-Tibet directions, and is also responsible for assisting the Southern and Northern Army to defend the forces from the Western Regions and Indochina Peninsula.

As for the Eastern Army, it is mainly to attack the Jianlu in the northeast region, monitor North Korea and Japan, and at the same time cooperate with the Shangzhi Governor's Mansion to clear the northern captives in the Monan, Modong, and Mobei regions.

Shangzhi mainly attacked Monan, Modong, and Mobei, and defended the two capitals at the same time.

The final navy mainly controls the South China Sea and Daming Sea (East China Sea), Xiaodongyang (Western Pacific Ocean), Banggala Sea (Bay of Bengal), and Xiaoxiyang (Arabian Sea).

The Governor's Mansion of the Five Armies will control the Shangzhiwei Army, Shangzhigongwei Battalion, and Outer Gongwei Battalion within its jurisdiction, and finally form a situation of [-] troops with [-] Guards and [-] Gongwei Battalions.

However, under such a situation, the normal annual payment of [-] million taels of silver and the luggage of more than [-] million taels of silver are required.

In the end, what Daming needs to pay is the annual standing expenses of [-] million taels of silver.

This is a terrifying sum, even if Zhu Youxiao saw it, he couldn't help but hold the memorial tightly.

The eloquent memorabilia made Zhu Youxiao seem to have witnessed the rise of a ZTE dynasty with his own eyes.

Of the [-] troops, except for the [-] battalions and more than [-] troops that will be left behind in the two capitals and [-] provinces in the future, the remaining [-] troops will go out to fight.

At first glance, this kind of military strength and force makes people feel fascinated, but everything needs to be based on one problem.

That is, Zhu Youjian's tax reform must be successful, so that Daming can achieve at least [-] million taels of financial revenue before he can provide [-] million taels of silver to support this powerful military monster...

"Brother, you played a good game of chess..."

After closing the memorandum, Zhu Youxiao sighed, but did not directly make a decision, but prepared to think about it for a few more days.

In the final analysis, what he experienced was reality. Once one step is wrong, the world may fall into chaos, so he must be more cautious...

(End of this chapter)