Chapter 2766
Chapter 2766
Chapter 2766
Zhu Zian, who was born in Prince De's Mansion, also knows a thing or two about the long-standing gray area in the water transportation system.The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which runs from Hangzhou to Beijing, also has a rather long section in Shandong.Among the five grain warehouses built along the canal in the Ming Dynasty, two warehouses in Linqing and Dezhou are located in Shandong.
These two places are about [-] miles away from Jinan City, where Zhu Zian lives. Among the salaries that Prince De's Mansion and the County King receive from the imperial court every year, the rice grain totals [-] shi, and a considerable part of it is transported from the south by water. shipped.
Of course, by the time Zhu Zian could remember, due to the financial constraints of the imperial court, the stipulated salary could not be paid in full.Especially after the Qing army invaded Shandong in 1639, they burned, killed and looted the local area. Water transportation was interrupted for a long time, and two grain warehouses in Linqing and Dezhou were also looted.The large and small ships on the canal were also requisitioned by the Qing army as tools for crossing the Yellow River to attack Jinan City.
When the Qing army retreated, almost all these ships were sunk, and the grain inside and outside Jinan City was also looted to prevent the Ming army south of the Yellow River from launching a counterattack.For a long time after that war, the Grand Canal failed to resume normal water transportation, and the Prince De’s Mansion had no food sources, so they had to pay for their own money to organize people to go to Yanzhou Mansion in the south, which was not directly affected by the war, to buy food at high prices. .
However, after the gradual recovery of water transport, grain grain was still a rare commodity, and the price remained at the wartime level.This directly led to tens of thousands of hungry people fleeing from the war-affected areas to Terengganu, which is controlled by Haihan, in order to survive.
At that time, Zhu Zi'an had heard from his parents that a considerable part of the relief food that the imperial court collected from the south was embezzled by the Cao government in various names during the process of being transported to the north.This part of the grain was erased from the grain warehouse as a loss, and then sold at a high price in various markets.As for the whereabouts of the proceeds from the sale of these grains, it must not be the national treasury.
Zhu Zian still had doubts about this at the time. Could it be that the imperial court didn't notice the chaos in the water transportation?
His parents told him that the imperial court was not ignorant of the following small actions, but the food supply of the entire Gyeonggi region depended on water transportation. If we want to thoroughly investigate these matters, I don’t know how many officials will be involved, and it is likely to paralyze the entire water transportation system again.If it caused a shortage of food in the capital, who could take such a big responsibility?
In contrast, the losses caused by the embezzlement of food and enriching private pockets in the Cao Mansion Yamen are nothing more than trivial.As long as the water transportation system is still in operation, the imperial court will probably continue to turn a blind eye and will not investigate the various activities here.
At that time, Zhu Zian didn't quite understand the answer given by his parents, but in retrospect, it is not difficult to understand the deep meaning.Those who use the privilege of water transportation to fish for oil and water are like silverfish in the beams and pillars of houses. Although the homeowner knows that sooner or later the silverfish will eat the empty beams and pillars, causing the house to collapse, but if the silverfish is to be eradicated, the beams and pillars must be planed first. , and doing so may cause the house to collapse even faster.
Given the situation during the Chongzhen period, the beams and pillars supporting the country were already crumbling and could not withstand any major shocks. No one could be sure what kind of chain reaction would be triggered by a thorough investigation of water transportation.Since it hasn't collapsed for the time being, let's just close our eyes and live the day as a day.
Throughout the Ming Dynasty, it was obvious that they could not find a reasonable way to deal with it, so that when the dynasty changed, the silverfish in the water transportation system seemed to be intensified.
Zhu Zian secretly sighed, then looked down.Cao Kun transported this batch of grain all the way to Tianjin, and he encountered trouble when delivering the grain there.Because the grain that actually arrived there was nearly half of the amount collected by the imperial court, the officials sent by the Ministry of Household Affairs to the grain warehouse naturally refused to take responsibility and refused to sign for the seriously missing grain.
Of course, the Cao government was not unprepared. First, it was said that the government in the south of the Yangtze River did not do enough to collect grain and failed to complete the tasks assigned by the court. Later, it was also said that before the departure of the south of the Yangtze River, a certain amount of grain was forcibly confiscated by Haihan, and the Cao government negotiated. If there is no fruit, you can only swallow the bitter pill.
At present, there is only so much grain that can be transported to Tianjin anyway. If you want to be held accountable by the Ministry of Household Affairs, please go to the right master to trouble me. The Cao Mansion will not be responsible.
Seeing this, Zhu Zian already thought that if the Ministry of Household Affairs had to use such an excuse to deal with the superiors, it would be very difficult for the court to deal with it.
The imperial court bowed down to Haihan last year, and all the prefectures in Zhejiang have been annexed by Haihan. There is no obligation to continue to be loyal to the imperial court. It is already a benevolent act to continue to collect grain and transport it to the north.
Whether it is to punish the state capitals in the south of the Yangtze River for their ineffective collection of grain, or to issue a diplomatic document to accuse Haihan of obstructing it, these two choices will only put the court in an even more embarrassing situation.But if there is no response to this, the little bit of authority left in the court will surely disappear, and it will continue to encourage such a bad atmosphere.
The most appropriate way, of course, is to find a soft persimmon to punish, to make an example to the people below, and to be able to explain to the people above.
The Caofu yamen is rich and powerful, and even has an independent command of the armed forces, which is not something the Ministry of Households can handle.So in the entire water transportation system, the easiest to deal with are those folk corvees who have no formal official status, including grain chiefs.
Therefore, after consultation, the Ministry of Household Affairs and the Cao government reached a consensus that the loss of grain grain was quite large this time, and the reason was that the liberation personnel did not do a good job in damage management during transportation and should bear the main responsibility.The relevant persons were first arrested on the spot, and the Caofu Yamen sentenced them to hard labor as appropriate.Before the next time there is a grain collection mission, try to find a group of unlucky people from the local area to become grain chiefs.
Fortunately, there was a hundred households in the Cao army who had a personal relationship with Cao Kun, and secretly informed him of the news, telling him to slip away quickly.Of the more than ten food chiefs who participated in the liberation mission, Cao Kun was the only one who got the news and slipped away before the government took action.
Cao Kun had no relatives in the north, and was worried about being wanted by the Caofu Yamen, so he did not dare to go directly south by official road after fleeing from Tianjin.First, he made a big circle along the Bohai Bay, and then went to Terengganu, which was under the control of Haihan, and worked as a miner in the Fushan Copper Mine for several months.After saving some money, I took a boat from Zhifu Port and returned to the south before the Spring Festival this year.
Cao Kun was worried that the Cao Mansion was still chasing him, and he didn't even dare to go back to his hometown in Suzhou, so he came to Hangzhou to make a living.At this time, the East China Sea Region has fully taken over Hangzhou Mansion. No matter how powerful the Cao Mansion Yamen is, they dare not come to Haihan territory to arrest people at will, so this place is relatively safe for him.
Cao Kun knew that it would be useless to report this matter to the government of Daming, but he was unwilling to take the blame for it, so he went to the government of Haihan and told him all about his experience, hoping that Haihan could clear up his grievances.
(End of this chapter)
Zhu Zian, who was born in Prince De's Mansion, also knows a thing or two about the long-standing gray area in the water transportation system.The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which runs from Hangzhou to Beijing, also has a rather long section in Shandong.Among the five grain warehouses built along the canal in the Ming Dynasty, two warehouses in Linqing and Dezhou are located in Shandong.
These two places are about [-] miles away from Jinan City, where Zhu Zian lives. Among the salaries that Prince De's Mansion and the County King receive from the imperial court every year, the rice grain totals [-] shi, and a considerable part of it is transported from the south by water. shipped.
Of course, by the time Zhu Zian could remember, due to the financial constraints of the imperial court, the stipulated salary could not be paid in full.Especially after the Qing army invaded Shandong in 1639, they burned, killed and looted the local area. Water transportation was interrupted for a long time, and two grain warehouses in Linqing and Dezhou were also looted.The large and small ships on the canal were also requisitioned by the Qing army as tools for crossing the Yellow River to attack Jinan City.
When the Qing army retreated, almost all these ships were sunk, and the grain inside and outside Jinan City was also looted to prevent the Ming army south of the Yellow River from launching a counterattack.For a long time after that war, the Grand Canal failed to resume normal water transportation, and the Prince De’s Mansion had no food sources, so they had to pay for their own money to organize people to go to Yanzhou Mansion in the south, which was not directly affected by the war, to buy food at high prices. .
However, after the gradual recovery of water transport, grain grain was still a rare commodity, and the price remained at the wartime level.This directly led to tens of thousands of hungry people fleeing from the war-affected areas to Terengganu, which is controlled by Haihan, in order to survive.
At that time, Zhu Zi'an had heard from his parents that a considerable part of the relief food that the imperial court collected from the south was embezzled by the Cao government in various names during the process of being transported to the north.This part of the grain was erased from the grain warehouse as a loss, and then sold at a high price in various markets.As for the whereabouts of the proceeds from the sale of these grains, it must not be the national treasury.
Zhu Zian still had doubts about this at the time. Could it be that the imperial court didn't notice the chaos in the water transportation?
His parents told him that the imperial court was not ignorant of the following small actions, but the food supply of the entire Gyeonggi region depended on water transportation. If we want to thoroughly investigate these matters, I don’t know how many officials will be involved, and it is likely to paralyze the entire water transportation system again.If it caused a shortage of food in the capital, who could take such a big responsibility?
In contrast, the losses caused by the embezzlement of food and enriching private pockets in the Cao Mansion Yamen are nothing more than trivial.As long as the water transportation system is still in operation, the imperial court will probably continue to turn a blind eye and will not investigate the various activities here.
At that time, Zhu Zian didn't quite understand the answer given by his parents, but in retrospect, it is not difficult to understand the deep meaning.Those who use the privilege of water transportation to fish for oil and water are like silverfish in the beams and pillars of houses. Although the homeowner knows that sooner or later the silverfish will eat the empty beams and pillars, causing the house to collapse, but if the silverfish is to be eradicated, the beams and pillars must be planed first. , and doing so may cause the house to collapse even faster.
Given the situation during the Chongzhen period, the beams and pillars supporting the country were already crumbling and could not withstand any major shocks. No one could be sure what kind of chain reaction would be triggered by a thorough investigation of water transportation.Since it hasn't collapsed for the time being, let's just close our eyes and live the day as a day.
Throughout the Ming Dynasty, it was obvious that they could not find a reasonable way to deal with it, so that when the dynasty changed, the silverfish in the water transportation system seemed to be intensified.
Zhu Zian secretly sighed, then looked down.Cao Kun transported this batch of grain all the way to Tianjin, and he encountered trouble when delivering the grain there.Because the grain that actually arrived there was nearly half of the amount collected by the imperial court, the officials sent by the Ministry of Household Affairs to the grain warehouse naturally refused to take responsibility and refused to sign for the seriously missing grain.
Of course, the Cao government was not unprepared. First, it was said that the government in the south of the Yangtze River did not do enough to collect grain and failed to complete the tasks assigned by the court. Later, it was also said that before the departure of the south of the Yangtze River, a certain amount of grain was forcibly confiscated by Haihan, and the Cao government negotiated. If there is no fruit, you can only swallow the bitter pill.
At present, there is only so much grain that can be transported to Tianjin anyway. If you want to be held accountable by the Ministry of Household Affairs, please go to the right master to trouble me. The Cao Mansion will not be responsible.
Seeing this, Zhu Zian already thought that if the Ministry of Household Affairs had to use such an excuse to deal with the superiors, it would be very difficult for the court to deal with it.
The imperial court bowed down to Haihan last year, and all the prefectures in Zhejiang have been annexed by Haihan. There is no obligation to continue to be loyal to the imperial court. It is already a benevolent act to continue to collect grain and transport it to the north.
Whether it is to punish the state capitals in the south of the Yangtze River for their ineffective collection of grain, or to issue a diplomatic document to accuse Haihan of obstructing it, these two choices will only put the court in an even more embarrassing situation.But if there is no response to this, the little bit of authority left in the court will surely disappear, and it will continue to encourage such a bad atmosphere.
The most appropriate way, of course, is to find a soft persimmon to punish, to make an example to the people below, and to be able to explain to the people above.
The Caofu yamen is rich and powerful, and even has an independent command of the armed forces, which is not something the Ministry of Households can handle.So in the entire water transportation system, the easiest to deal with are those folk corvees who have no formal official status, including grain chiefs.
Therefore, after consultation, the Ministry of Household Affairs and the Cao government reached a consensus that the loss of grain grain was quite large this time, and the reason was that the liberation personnel did not do a good job in damage management during transportation and should bear the main responsibility.The relevant persons were first arrested on the spot, and the Caofu Yamen sentenced them to hard labor as appropriate.Before the next time there is a grain collection mission, try to find a group of unlucky people from the local area to become grain chiefs.
Fortunately, there was a hundred households in the Cao army who had a personal relationship with Cao Kun, and secretly informed him of the news, telling him to slip away quickly.Of the more than ten food chiefs who participated in the liberation mission, Cao Kun was the only one who got the news and slipped away before the government took action.
Cao Kun had no relatives in the north, and was worried about being wanted by the Caofu Yamen, so he did not dare to go directly south by official road after fleeing from Tianjin.First, he made a big circle along the Bohai Bay, and then went to Terengganu, which was under the control of Haihan, and worked as a miner in the Fushan Copper Mine for several months.After saving some money, I took a boat from Zhifu Port and returned to the south before the Spring Festival this year.
Cao Kun was worried that the Cao Mansion was still chasing him, and he didn't even dare to go back to his hometown in Suzhou, so he came to Hangzhou to make a living.At this time, the East China Sea Region has fully taken over Hangzhou Mansion. No matter how powerful the Cao Mansion Yamen is, they dare not come to Haihan territory to arrest people at will, so this place is relatively safe for him.
Cao Kun knew that it would be useless to report this matter to the government of Daming, but he was unwilling to take the blame for it, so he went to the government of Haihan and told him all about his experience, hoping that Haihan could clear up his grievances.
(End of this chapter)