I really don't want to be emperor at the end of Ming Dynasty

Chapter 421 Sun Chuanting’s Unexpected Disaster
Chapter 421

Lu Xiangsheng obviously could not understand the Spanish brain circuit, so he exchanged about three fertile lands in Sichuan and eighty-nine Henan for thousands of prisoners of war.

However, the problem is that Cheng Shijie understands the true intentions of the Spaniards very well. Their reactions and choices are actually similar to the intentions of Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing Dynasty. They would rather be with friendly countries than domestic slaves.

For the Spanish Empire, the Dutch, Portuguese and French who are now fighting them to death are all their domestic slaves. Now the Spanish Empire is gradually falling behind on the battlefield of Europe, especially the French Army. In order to find a way to restrain the Spanish phalanx, seeing that the basic territory of Europa cannot be saved, how can there be so much energy to take into account the interests of South America.

Now, under the banner of redeeming prisoners of war, the Spanish Empire gave the La Plata Plain to the Ming Dynasty and to Cheng Shijie. In fact, their purpose was not simple. When it comes to playing politics, the Spanish really have the means and methods. This is a piece of cake. The huge fat meat, but the Spaniards have no way to develop it because there are too few people.

Land that cannot be developed actually produces little value. However, Britain and France not only fought an all-out war with the Spanish Empire in Europe, but also competed for Spanish colonies around the world, especially in the Americas. Even if Spain did not give it to the Ming Dynasty, they would not be able to hold it. .

Giving it to the Ming Dynasty will not only allow the Ming Dynasty's army to resist the French and British in South America, but also have a perfect explanation for the country.

Lu Xiangsheng listened to Cheng Shijie's analysis of Spain's plan to kill two birds with one stone, and asked with some confusion: "Are you really prepared to release the prisoners of war in exchange for that plain as Ming Dynasty's overseas territory?"

Cheng Shijie nodded seriously and said: "Yes, yes, now is the best time. The Spaniards are not interested in the La Plata Plains, and the natives of the La Plata Plains were massacred and expelled by them. Now there are not many left. If you don’t occupy it now, when will you wait?”

Lu Xiangsheng sighed and said: "It's just... Isn't this too far? Even if we occupy it, it will be difficult to find people willing to immigrate there. Isn't this still in vain?"

"No one wants to immigrate there? Haha, is there really nothing we can do? What a joke!!"

Cheng Shijie thought for a while and said: "The people don't want to go there, so why don't we just exile them there?"

"Exile? Exile who?"

"We can build a big prison and exile 300 to [-] million people there, and that's it, right?"

Lu Xiangsheng was stunned: "Xing...xing the prison!?"

Cheng Shijie said confidently: "Yes, when the slaves came, how many people surrendered? These guys are all guilty! Not only are they guilty, but their guys will also be implicated, and they can also follow the clues and arrest all those who are involved. Come out and be exiled."

"Why are you so cruel?"

"What kind of cruelty is this? I'm just picking on people's wisdom!"

"Who picked it up?"

"Emperor Taizu!"

Cheng Shijie smiled disapprovingly and said: "The Hu Weiyong case, the Lan Yu case, the Guo Huan case, and the Kongyin case that Emperor Taizu dealt with back then, and the ten Zhulian clans that Chengzu dealt with, each one was playing better than the other, and the butcher's knife was directed towards it, and the blood was drawn. It flows like a river! I don’t kill people, I just exile them to South America, that’s kind enough!”

Cheng Shijie actually did not think about distributing those people forever. Instead, they were divided into three to five years according to their crimes. If they served their sentences, they could choose whether to come back or settle there. This was already very humane.It can be said that the crime is in the present time, but the merit is in the future.

Zhou Ning said: "Your Majesty, then I will make arrangements?"

"Arrange!"

Cheng Shijie said calmly: "By the way, organize an expedition fleet and send 3 to [-] thousand people over casually. We will occupy the territory first!"

"Yes!"

Zhou Ning stopped attending cabinet meetings. In fact, this cabinet meeting had little to do with the military.

This is the advantage of having more people. Nowadays, the prisons in Beijing and Shuntian Mansion are already overcrowded. The traitors who took refuge in the slave establishment were almost killed, but the problem is, those who follow the trend and those who have not yet had time to do evil are locked up. They are considered a minority, especially the officers who defected to the slave establishment.

Killing the culprit and not killing them as a backbone was merciful enough. Originally, Cheng Shijie planned to throw those people to Annan, but now that he had this land, he could use it to waste.

In fact, the Ming Dynasty has become much less populated and landless, and Cheng Shijie has recovered the abandoned Nurgan Dusi. However, Cheng Shijie's appetite is more than that small.

Cheng Shijie pulled Lu Xiangsheng and said, "I won't worry about the things over there, but this is where you should take action!"

Cheng Shijie punched the map of the Shibir Khanate. He pointed at the map and said: "This place is under the jurisdiction of a descendant of Taibuhua Beiji, but not after Jochi. Later, a khan of the Shaban family Ibak won the Qiuming and Khan thrones from his descendants. However, their khanate had perished more than 30 years ago. Later, their survivors here had to pay fur taxes to the Junggar Khanate. In other words, this place is now Or is it the territory that nominally belongs to the Dzungar Khanate?"

Lu Xiangsheng was a little puzzled: "The Ming Dynasty is vast and rich in resources. Although it is a bit stressful to usher in the peak period of population growth in the future, don't we still have many places that have not been developed? Huguang has not been fully developed, and Liaodi has not been developed at all. , these are all wonderful places with fertile wilderness..."

The direction of Cheng Shijie's finger is between the middle reaches of the Ob River and the Tobol River.The administrative center was Chengji-Tula (now Qiuming).Cheng Shijie said: "You don't know what kind of treasure land this is. Let's put it this way, there are countless timbers here, which are all natural forests. Together they are several times larger than our entire Ming Dynasty. You may not like the timber, but The problem is that there are gold, diamonds, iron, and copper here. Even if the coppers of ten Ming dynasties are put together, they are not as good as one copper mine here. Do you know what this means?"

Lu Xiangsheng's eyes widened: "So much copper?"

"It's more than just copper!"

Cheng Shijie did not tell Lu Xiangsheng that this place has huge natural gas, oil, and more than 100 kinds of rich metal resources.

Cheng Shijie said: "Of course, there is also the largest freshwater lake in the world. Our entire northern Ming Dynasty is short of water. We only need to dig a canal from here to divert the water to the north. Do you know what this means?"

Lu Xiangsheng said: "The general will definitely take this place down."

"In the future, the headquarters of the Anbei Governor's Palace will be built here, on the shores of Hanhai (Lake Baikal)!"

Cheng Shijie said: "Building slaves is out of date now, and you don't have to underestimate the enemy. There is another behemoth in the northwest of us. This country is extremely aggressive. The Anbei Governor's Mansion will definitely confront them. Their Cossack cavalry is still Very powerful, not weaker than Jiannu’s cavalry, it can even be said that Jiannu cannot defeat them!”

Lu Xiangsheng became interested instead: "This is interesting!"

"Get ready!"

Cheng Shijie said: "I will prepare enough food and equipment for you and start setting off at the end of February. You will need to walk for at least two or three months to get there."

When the Anbei Army led by Lu Xiangsheng would confront the Cossacks was less of a concern to Cheng Shijie. In fact, in the original historical time and space, as early as the ninth year of Chongzhen, the entire territory of Siberia had changed hands.However, what has arrived in Siberia now is only the Cossack cavalry, not the regular army.However, these things are no longer important. At this time, Cheng Shijie received the contents of the cabinet meeting resolution and gave three rectification opinions on land reform.

First of all, the first one is to definitely recognize that all gentry in the Ming Dynasty originally owned land, which means that we are not prepared to adopt a one-size-fits-all principle.

In fact, there is no way to adopt a one-size-fits-all principle. The gentry has the privilege of tax exemption, and many land-owning people will also take advantage of the policy to attach the land under their names to the gentry. If there is a one-size-fits-all approach, tens of millions of self-cultivators will be cut off. Since then, Ming Dynasty will definitely be seriously injured.

However, it was Song Xiance after all. He proposed that the gentry's land must be replenished for the taxes they had evaded and owed. In this day and age, no matter whether it was the gentry or the common people in the Ming Dynasty, who would not evade taxes as long as they had the means?How much tax did the Chongzhen Dynasty collect per year?Even if the three salaries were added together, it was less than half of the Wanli Dynasty.

Where did all that money and food go?Naturally, they will not disappear out of thin air, they just escape by exploiting policy loopholes. Everyone except ordinary people evades taxes.

Paying taxes according to the law is not only not a glorious thing, but also makes people laugh!Anyway, even if they don't pay taxes, the court can't do anything to them. If the court wants to touch them, there will be a large group of scholars who will speak for them and accuse the emperor of competing for profits with the people. This must not be done...

In the eyes of those unscrupulous people, the "people" are limited to scholars like them, as well as wealthy gentry and wealthy businessmen. As for the hundreds of millions of poor people, they are ignored.

In this case, why not evade taxes?

It's better now. No matter how much I owed before, I have to spit it out now. Although the taxes in the Ming Dynasty are actually very low, the accumulation of arrears year after year is quite scary.

The second article is for the military fields of the guards and the occupied military fields of the guards. We must also spit out the military fields of the guards. There are clear records of the military fields of the guards. The land registered by Song Xiance is not from the Chongzhen Dynasty, but from the Yongle period of Chengzu. In the dynasty, the number of fields for each guard was clearly recorded.

Through the first two, the household registration is checked. Only the people who are still in the local area will be registered directly, and the household registration will no longer be changed. Because they are escaping from the war, there are not many people left in the prefectures and counties of Northern Zhili. If the refugees from various places are allowed If they are sent back to their place of origin and the land is divided evenly, the land will definitely not be enough.

If we only count the current people, there should not be much problem with the fields.

Different from the Chongzhen Dynasty, the biggest characteristic of the Dingxin Dynasty was its execution ability. Emperor Chongzhen issued an imperial edict, which was of little use outside the capital, but Cheng Shijie's order would be implemented very thoroughly.

Because Cheng Shijie controls the army, there are bandits causing trouble?Destroy him!
Someone is making a loan shark?I think you are tired of living!

Are grain merchants raising grain prices?Damn it, my machete is so thirsty!

In less than a month, more than 160 underground banks offering loan sharks were dealt with. Dingxin Chao immediately launched a policy in a timely manner. The maximum annual interest rate must not exceed 20.00%. If it exceeds 20.00%, the borrower has the right not to repay the excess. part.

During this period, Cheng Shijie also signed his signature to approve the seizure and confiscation of more than 600 grain shops that were driving up grain prices, and killed more than 80 human traffickers.

As for how many were killed by the bandits?It's true that not much was cut. This time they were sent to South America. As for the bandits and bullies, their homes were confiscated and packed up, and they were sent to Tianjin to prepare for sailing out to sea.

Unknowingly, the first year of reform has officially arrived.

With the new year and new atmosphere, Cheng Shijie started two big moves.

The first major move was to establish a cabinet joint group. This leading group was composed of the Audit Department, the Taxation Department, the Agriculture Department, the Ministry of Civil Affairs, and the Finance Department to re-measure the land and audit the accounts.The gentry from all over the country must spit out all the fertile land of unknown origin and hand over the taxes and money they have owed for so many years.

As soon as this came out, the entire North Zhili, Liaoxi, Shandong, and Henan exploded. The Jin gentry were furious, almost pointing at Cheng Shijie's nose and shouting: "Go and ask others, sir, when did I pay taxes!" "

Cheng Shijie expressed his dissatisfaction with Lao Tzu's exclusive treatment.

After the original attack on the capital, the Ming Royal Army gathered in the capital totaled nine brigades, together with the reorganized Tianxiong Army and the remnants of the Liaoxi and Ming Northern Expeditionary Army, totaling eleven brigades with nearly 30 troops.

These soldiers immediately gathered in place, organized into companies and platoons, and dispatched as soon as the deadline was up. They went straight to the homes of major tax evaders, broke down the doors, arrested people, and ransacked the homes...

Now it's not as simple as paying the tax arrears. You have to bankrupt your family to save your life.For a time, the prisons in various prefectures were overcrowded, and the cries were loud. The popularity of Sun Chuanting, the leader of the joint leadership group, skyrocketed, to the point where he could stop children from crying at night!
The gentry were surprisingly angry: "Sun Chuanting, your uncle, there is nothing we can do about it, so Cheng Shijie has to endure it. After all, he is now the regent of the Ming Dynasty and supervises the country. It is very difficult to deal with gun barrels and silver coins. But you, Sun Chuanting, are considered to be the leader of some temple, and you actually dare to ride on top of my head and act wild? I can't bear it anymore!"

The memorials flew to the capital like a blizzard. There were so many memorials that it was more than enough to cremate Sun Chuanting's whole family. In the memorials, the gentry cried with tears and runny noses, complaining about Sun Chuanting's fault. According to them, even if Zhang Tang was cremated, All the famous cruel officials like Du Zhou and Du Zhou were invited, and they had to kneel down when they met Demon King Sun!
Cheng Shijie was not interested in reading these memorials. Instead, he directly made a plan and recorded the names of the officials who submitted the memorials to strictly check whether they had broken the law.

When the army cooperated with officials to jointly enforce the law and collect taxes, they also solved the household registration and land issues of the people. Although the gentry was very angry, the people were surprisingly silent. After all, they were a vested interest group.

Although the people have re-established their household registrations and obtained their own fields, the problem is that they still have one meal but no next meal. What should they do? It is difficult to deal with.

Cheng Shijie promulgated the second policy to rebuild official roads. On the basis of the original official roads, it was necessary to ensure county-level access and provide relief through work.This is undoubtedly a visionary decision. If you want to get rich, build roads first. It is only a matter of time before Cheng Shijie takes over the whole world. The world is about to usher in great development.

Under such circumstances, if there is a road, it is definitely not a good thing. People who have newly obtained land will build roads during the day and learn how to scientifically grow cotton, wheat, barley, sunflower seeds, corn, etc. in class at night. Sweet potatoes, potatoes and other crops.

Due to the drought in the Ming Dynasty, the official road has been used intermittently. It is said to be rebuilt. In fact, the amount of work is not very large. It can be completed in two months. The investment is small, the efficiency is high, and the spring plowing will not be delayed. These two Months of construction work can actually earn a lot of food and money. If you don't do it, you'd be a fool!
With the promulgation of Cheng Shijie's two decrees in the first year of reform, the Ming Dynasty began to collect taxes. Soldiers would arrest people if they disagreed, kill people if they didn't like it, and refused to pay taxes and return illegally occupied farmland. die!
Since then, Cheng Shijie has obtained great benefits at the smallest cost.

With the emergence of these two decrees, the gentry officials were collectively angry. Their rebellion was useless, because their tenants gradually obtained their own fields and were unwilling to farm their land.

Some gentry began to want to escape, but they could not escape. When they escaped, someone immediately reported the news, and the Ming Royal Army and cavalry were dispatched one after another to arrest people directly.

Put him in jail and wait to be sent to America.

Seeing Cheng Shijie acting haphazardly, the big bosses of Jiangnan's small court were so excited that they wanted to cry. If Cheng Shijie directly sent troops south, they would have no chance at all. However, under Cheng Shijie's actions, there were still many clever gentry officials who escaped. Arrive in Nanjing.

Of course, this was deliberately let go by Cheng Shijie. They ran to Nanjing to cry to Zhu Yihai about Cheng Shijie's atrocities and let Zhu Yihai make the decision for them.

In short, the logic of these civil servants and gentry is that the Ming Dynasty has always been kind to the scholars and gentry. It is not a big deal for them to seize fertile land and evade taxes. If they are willing to pay the tax, they will pay it, and if they are willing to return the land, they will return it. It doesn't matter if they are willing to pay it back or not. It is too much to arrest them or even behead them for this little land tax money.

Not only were the officials in the Southern Ming Dynasty making trouble, but scholars from various provinces in the Southern Ming Dynasty also jumped into trouble. Among them, the most violent ones were the scholars in Jiangnan. Jiangnan was a paradise for tax evasion. This was an increase in the salt tax and tea tax paid in a year. A magical place that costs less than 200 taels of silver!

Although Cheng Shijie has no control over them now, it does not prevent these Jiangnan scholars from jumping up, reciting poems and rhymes, writing articles, and criticizing Cheng Shijie's behavior with sharp words, vicious curses, and high ability to confuse right and wrong. , are all eye-opening.

Among them, Sun Chuanting took most of the firepower. Scholars kept coming to Nanjing to scold him, and vicious articles that could scold him to the point of annihilating his descendants also came flying in. He would be embarrassed to go out if he didn't receive one or two hundred articles a day. Say hello to people.

Although the order was given by Cheng Shijie and Sun Chuanting was only the executor, he suffered an unreasonable disaster.

(End of this chapter)