Chapter 592
A Gentleman's Character
Chapter 592 A Gentleman's Character
Sun Zhixie, with pig bristles on his head and dog hair on his back, was chained in a cage and placed in front of the Confucian Temple for seven days.
His tragic situation also deeply shocked the gentry in Zichuan.
Gu Xianshou, the newly appointed county magistrate of Zichuan, Daming, just arrived from Fengtian, and the gentry and landowners in the county lined up to see him. He thought he was here to give gifts, so he told his followers to get rid of bad rules and old customs. There is no need to send it to Ren Li.
"My lord, those people are here to pay back the arrears, return the annexation, and sort out the land."
Gu Xian was confused and full of doubts.
He is Tianqi Juren, from Kunshan.
Now the seals of the Military Division of the Court of Remonstrance are given to Gu Yanwu, who is his nephew and five brothers. At the end of Xianzheng and Chongzhen, he was elected as an official in Yan'an Prefecture, and Xianjian was appointed as the county magistrate of Qiantang. In this turbulent situation, he ran to save the country and raised his troops to revolt.
Gu Xianshou is now only the county magistrate. In fact, it's not that he has made little contributions. It's just that he was implicated in a case before, which made this fifth-rank official demoted several levels in succession to be the county magistrate of Zichuan.
Gu Xianshou changed into a green official robe and asked his entourage to invite these local gentry and elders in.
As soon as these people came in, they were very polite to Gu Xianshou, and they scrambled to speak, and wanted to hand over the arrears accumulated over the years, and also wanted to return the occupied fields and so on.
"Don't worry, talk one by one, one by one!"
It took a while for Gu Xianshou to understand that Sun Zhixie's death had deeply stimulated these Zichuan country gentlemen, and Sun Zhixie's death was too tragic.
These days, Sun Zhixie screamed in front of the Confucian Temple for seven days, especially at night, the sound was even more miserable. None of the respectable country gentlemen in the city slept well, and they had nightmares all night long.
They approached Wen Hu, wanting to make up the debt and refund the occupation. The problem is that Wen Hu doesn't care about these things, he is just a general of the imperial camp and does not interfere with local affairs.
They could only wait anxiously for Gu Xianshou to arrive.
"The Holy Emperor has a decree that all debts in previous places will be exempted. For newly recovered places such as Shandong and Henan, the land and silver will still be exempted this year, and will be collected from next year."
Gu Xianshou told everyone about the benevolent government of the emperor.
But these people are not forgiving.
"My lord, we didn't want to owe it before, but for some reason, we did owe it. It was our fault. Now we are willing to pay it back, and pay it in silver, and make it up."
Gu Xianshou stroked his beard, "The sage has a benevolent government, so the previous ones will be avoided."
"That can't be done. Farming the land and receiving food is a matter of course."
"Yes, yes, we really shouldn't accept donations and postings before. Now we are all awakened and willing to rectify immediately. The fields that have been concealed and the fields that have been under-reported should be re-measured and registered by the county lord. , We will make up what we owed before, ten years at a time.
"We have already sorted out the occupied official land and military farmland. Please ask the county lord to look over it, send someone to check it, and take it back."
"We don't dare to occupy an acre or a centimeter anymore."
What Ren Guzhi said, these people are determined to take the initiative to clean up all the taxes they owe, the occupied fields, etc., and even ask to start immediately, and they have already checked themselves, and now they are waiting for the county to arrange It is enough for people to check and receive.
They have also prepared silver money for the money and food owed, which can be converted into silver and handed over, and they are willing to bear the fire consumption.
After finally sending away these gentry and powerful men who were like ants on a hot pot, Gu Xianshou was a little bit dumbfounded.
"That Xie Qian made such a Sun Zhixie who is not as good as a pig or a dog, it seems that it is really shocking."
Several officials, including the county magistrate and chief secretary who came to take office, couldn't help sighing, "That Sun Zhixie looks really miserable. If he makes it like this, he might not be reincarnated after going to hell, and he can only enter the animal realm in his next life." , who is not afraid.
And you don’t know the county magistrate, that Xie Qian is really ruthless, he killed more than 300 members of Sun Zhixie and Han Yuan’s family, young and strong, castrated all the young boys, and sold all the women Enter the brothel as a prostitute, and all unmarried young women must be sent to the palace.
The two local clans, this is almost extinct. "
Xie Qian's approach is not about beating local tyrants to grab money and food. This is a family that destroys people. In the end, the ancestral graves of the Sun and Han families were dug up. The bones of the ancestors of all generations were thrown out and exposed to the sun. After leaving, they even got a lot of black dog blood and feces to water the ancestral graves of the two families in the end.
It's not as good as killing people.
The most frightening thing is that Xie Qian, the white-robed society who did these things, was actually recommended by Shence General Wen Hu, and was decreed by the emperor to specially award Xie Qian to be the Shandong regiment training Zichuan battalion officer, and to be a guerrilla fighter. Awarded as a defense, the White Robe Society formed a white horse battalion of [-] riders.
Now it is still stationed at the foot of Mount Santai.
The killing gods were recruited and turned into guerrillas, and the Baipaohui, which specialized in attacking local tyrants and killing landlords, became a white horse battalion.
Who is not afraid?
Han Yuan is now in Beijing and the officials are still involved, but so what, his family has been confiscated, everyone has died, and the little boys whom the families hope for in the future have all been castrated.
The Sun and Han families, once the local leaders, were uprooted in this way, leaving no room for them.
I used to think that no matter who is in charge of the world, these gentry and landlords will never change, so when Dashun came, they surrendered, and when the Qing army came to surrender, I thought it would be a big deal for the Ming army to return to the Ming Dynasty.
But now that Xie Qian is doing this, no one is frightened.
After thinking about it, there is only this kind of loyalty and begging to let it go.
"My lord, I feel that this is not a bad thing. Since they take the initiative to clear the payment and return the encroachment, then it's better to go with the flow."
Gu Xianshou flipped through the notebooks left by each family, which recorded in detail the amount of arrears reported by them over the years, the amount of occupied and concealed fields, etc.
It is indeed amazing.
Zichuan is not a plain area with a lot of fields and a lot of land. It is surrounded by two big mountains. The narrow and long river valleys brought by the Xiaofu River and Fanyang River in the territory are generally narrow and crowded.
During the reign of Chongzhen, there was not much land here, and more than half of it was occupied by Prince Heng's Mansion in Qingzhou and King De's Mansion in Jinan, and most of the remaining land was occupied by powerful families such as the Kong family.
Even the official land under the name of the county in the past has all been occupied.
Although Zichuan does not have much land, its geography is not bad. It is located in an important traffic road, especially when you leave Zichuan to the north, it is the Qibei Great Plain with a flat river, and to the west, it reaches Jinan directly. The main road of the river valley leads to Qingzhou, Tai'an and other places.
In addition, there are many coal and iron mines in the mountainous area, and the porcelain industry is also quite developed, so this is a pretty good place.
It’s just that at the end of Ming Dynasty, land annexation was too serious, and the land was basically concentrated in the hands of the royal family, gentry, and tyrants, and there was basically no tax, let alone industrial and commercial taxes and mining taxes.
Therefore, the local gentry are powerful and rich, but the yamen cannot collect taxes, so they can only apportion and persuade donations, and finally they are pressed on the heads of the people.
When those gentry came over just now, they not only had to make up for the outstanding grain and taxes, but even said that they would truthfully pay mining taxes, industry and commerce, tariffs, tax, etc. in the future.
At this time, those people feel that money is really something outside of the body.
"Mingfu, if we want Zichuan to quickly restore stability, we need money, more food, and some fields, otherwise it will be difficult to start. We have to recruit refugees, cultivate fields, and even resume business and mining. Now the local It’s just right that these people cooperate so well.”
"Yeah, while Shence Army and Xie Qian are still there, we should get things done quickly, otherwise when they leave, these people will probably repeat themselves again."
These few officials are all from Fengtian, some of them are from Juren, and some are just from scholars, but more or less they all have experience in local positions before.
Nowadays, the Ming Dynasty has very high requirements for officials. Although the requirements for family background are not high, the evaluation of political performance is extremely strict, and there are requirements one by one. They must meet the standards, otherwise this official will not be long.
Generally, county magistrates in remote counties are elected every three years, and in the interior every five years. Now the Ministry of Officials in Shaotian requires officials to have a small test every year and a big test every three years. Officials have to write their own work reports every year. Bosses and subordinates also have to write his reports.
In short, the assessment is extremely strict, and it is impossible to fool around.
Not only can't be corrupted, but you must have political achievements and ability, otherwise you will also be eliminated and dismissed.
Everyone finally found a real vacancy, so naturally they wanted to make some achievements in order to get promoted.If you do a good job, it won't take three or five years.
Now this opportunity is rare, taking advantage of the enthusiasm, accepting these gentry's payment and return of land, etc., this will immediately open up the situation, and it will even directly be a major political achievement.
"The sage has a decree that all the debts accumulated in the past will be forgiven, and there will be no further investigation."
"My lord, let's change the title. Don't talk about clearing up the debts, can't we just say that it's a tribute? Anyway, we didn't ask for it, and it fell into our pockets. All the money will be in the account at that time. It should be turned over to the national treasury. The reserved place should be handed over to the province, what are you afraid of?"
Seeing that everyone was so enthusiastic, Gu Xianshou felt somewhat interesting.
He was demoted from the fifth rank to the seventh rank magistrate. In fact, it involved a clique formation case in the court.
In fact, he didn't wrong him for the fact that the party was fighting against the dissidents. Although the emperor repeatedly emphasized that it is not allowed to form a party for personal gain, and the party fights to attack, but this kind of thing is impossible to prohibit.
Gu Xianshou is a member of the Donglin Party. He and some officials of the Donglin Party who were originally from Fushe formed a poetry club in private, and then attacked Ruan Dacheng and Ma Shiying together, which seemed to be entangled.
The emperor also warned him, but he would not stop.
In the end, Hong Chengchou impeached him for forming a party, and the emperor asked the third division to open a case for investigation. The case was quickly investigated and closed, without much expansion, and dealt with very quickly. The members of their poetry club were all demoted. out of Beijing.
Gu Xianshou, who was originally a doctor of the fifth rank, was suddenly demoted to a seventh rank magistrate.
He also wanted to make some achievements and return to court.
Agree to this now.
The next day, all the officials in the Zichuan County Yali came to visit together, and then took out something for Gu Xian to accept. The officials of each house actually expressed their willingness to take the initiative to take responsibility and make up for the shortfall.
Looking at these official lists, many of them are local hereditary official lists, controlling various aspects of a county's taxation, justice, etc., and often even empty some chief officials such as county magistrates who do not understand political affairs.
Now, these people took the initiative to come over, expressing their willingness to make up for the previous deficit, and also handed over the real account book.
"Very good, as long as the deficit is cleared, I will not pursue the past matters, you can continue to do your job well, and do it well!"
The officials were relieved, breathed a sigh of relief, and retreated gratefully.
Gu Xianshou sat alone with those lists for a long time, and finally called a few subordinates, "This is all thanks to the Shence Army and Xie Qian, and we still have to be very grateful. Now that the owed payment has been made up, the deficit has also been filled It’s settled, and the treasury is full, so let’s reward the army with some salaries.”
"Should be." Several officials also know that the credit belongs to them. "Just talk to them later, and ask them to help our county to set up regiment training and Baojia. Otherwise, when they leave, we won't be able to afford it." There is no force at all."
"Indeed, it would be nice to have some weapons, etc."
"It would be best for Xie Qian to stay in Mount Santai all the time."
Several people chatted and laughed, and agreed to take out some food and silver to thank Wen Hu and Xie Qian, and planned to buy some vegetables and meat to send.
Military and civilian fish and water, military and civilian families are close.
(End of this chapter)
Sun Zhixie, with pig bristles on his head and dog hair on his back, was chained in a cage and placed in front of the Confucian Temple for seven days.
His tragic situation also deeply shocked the gentry in Zichuan.
Gu Xianshou, the newly appointed county magistrate of Zichuan, Daming, just arrived from Fengtian, and the gentry and landowners in the county lined up to see him. He thought he was here to give gifts, so he told his followers to get rid of bad rules and old customs. There is no need to send it to Ren Li.
"My lord, those people are here to pay back the arrears, return the annexation, and sort out the land."
Gu Xian was confused and full of doubts.
He is Tianqi Juren, from Kunshan.
Now the seals of the Military Division of the Court of Remonstrance are given to Gu Yanwu, who is his nephew and five brothers. At the end of Xianzheng and Chongzhen, he was elected as an official in Yan'an Prefecture, and Xianjian was appointed as the county magistrate of Qiantang. In this turbulent situation, he ran to save the country and raised his troops to revolt.
Gu Xianshou is now only the county magistrate. In fact, it's not that he has made little contributions. It's just that he was implicated in a case before, which made this fifth-rank official demoted several levels in succession to be the county magistrate of Zichuan.
Gu Xianshou changed into a green official robe and asked his entourage to invite these local gentry and elders in.
As soon as these people came in, they were very polite to Gu Xianshou, and they scrambled to speak, and wanted to hand over the arrears accumulated over the years, and also wanted to return the occupied fields and so on.
"Don't worry, talk one by one, one by one!"
It took a while for Gu Xianshou to understand that Sun Zhixie's death had deeply stimulated these Zichuan country gentlemen, and Sun Zhixie's death was too tragic.
These days, Sun Zhixie screamed in front of the Confucian Temple for seven days, especially at night, the sound was even more miserable. None of the respectable country gentlemen in the city slept well, and they had nightmares all night long.
They approached Wen Hu, wanting to make up the debt and refund the occupation. The problem is that Wen Hu doesn't care about these things, he is just a general of the imperial camp and does not interfere with local affairs.
They could only wait anxiously for Gu Xianshou to arrive.
"The Holy Emperor has a decree that all debts in previous places will be exempted. For newly recovered places such as Shandong and Henan, the land and silver will still be exempted this year, and will be collected from next year."
Gu Xianshou told everyone about the benevolent government of the emperor.
But these people are not forgiving.
"My lord, we didn't want to owe it before, but for some reason, we did owe it. It was our fault. Now we are willing to pay it back, and pay it in silver, and make it up."
Gu Xianshou stroked his beard, "The sage has a benevolent government, so the previous ones will be avoided."
"That can't be done. Farming the land and receiving food is a matter of course."
"Yes, yes, we really shouldn't accept donations and postings before. Now we are all awakened and willing to rectify immediately. The fields that have been concealed and the fields that have been under-reported should be re-measured and registered by the county lord. , We will make up what we owed before, ten years at a time.
"We have already sorted out the occupied official land and military farmland. Please ask the county lord to look over it, send someone to check it, and take it back."
"We don't dare to occupy an acre or a centimeter anymore."
What Ren Guzhi said, these people are determined to take the initiative to clean up all the taxes they owe, the occupied fields, etc., and even ask to start immediately, and they have already checked themselves, and now they are waiting for the county to arrange It is enough for people to check and receive.
They have also prepared silver money for the money and food owed, which can be converted into silver and handed over, and they are willing to bear the fire consumption.
After finally sending away these gentry and powerful men who were like ants on a hot pot, Gu Xianshou was a little bit dumbfounded.
"That Xie Qian made such a Sun Zhixie who is not as good as a pig or a dog, it seems that it is really shocking."
Several officials, including the county magistrate and chief secretary who came to take office, couldn't help sighing, "That Sun Zhixie looks really miserable. If he makes it like this, he might not be reincarnated after going to hell, and he can only enter the animal realm in his next life." , who is not afraid.
And you don’t know the county magistrate, that Xie Qian is really ruthless, he killed more than 300 members of Sun Zhixie and Han Yuan’s family, young and strong, castrated all the young boys, and sold all the women Enter the brothel as a prostitute, and all unmarried young women must be sent to the palace.
The two local clans, this is almost extinct. "
Xie Qian's approach is not about beating local tyrants to grab money and food. This is a family that destroys people. In the end, the ancestral graves of the Sun and Han families were dug up. The bones of the ancestors of all generations were thrown out and exposed to the sun. After leaving, they even got a lot of black dog blood and feces to water the ancestral graves of the two families in the end.
It's not as good as killing people.
The most frightening thing is that Xie Qian, the white-robed society who did these things, was actually recommended by Shence General Wen Hu, and was decreed by the emperor to specially award Xie Qian to be the Shandong regiment training Zichuan battalion officer, and to be a guerrilla fighter. Awarded as a defense, the White Robe Society formed a white horse battalion of [-] riders.
Now it is still stationed at the foot of Mount Santai.
The killing gods were recruited and turned into guerrillas, and the Baipaohui, which specialized in attacking local tyrants and killing landlords, became a white horse battalion.
Who is not afraid?
Han Yuan is now in Beijing and the officials are still involved, but so what, his family has been confiscated, everyone has died, and the little boys whom the families hope for in the future have all been castrated.
The Sun and Han families, once the local leaders, were uprooted in this way, leaving no room for them.
I used to think that no matter who is in charge of the world, these gentry and landlords will never change, so when Dashun came, they surrendered, and when the Qing army came to surrender, I thought it would be a big deal for the Ming army to return to the Ming Dynasty.
But now that Xie Qian is doing this, no one is frightened.
After thinking about it, there is only this kind of loyalty and begging to let it go.
"My lord, I feel that this is not a bad thing. Since they take the initiative to clear the payment and return the encroachment, then it's better to go with the flow."
Gu Xianshou flipped through the notebooks left by each family, which recorded in detail the amount of arrears reported by them over the years, the amount of occupied and concealed fields, etc.
It is indeed amazing.
Zichuan is not a plain area with a lot of fields and a lot of land. It is surrounded by two big mountains. The narrow and long river valleys brought by the Xiaofu River and Fanyang River in the territory are generally narrow and crowded.
During the reign of Chongzhen, there was not much land here, and more than half of it was occupied by Prince Heng's Mansion in Qingzhou and King De's Mansion in Jinan, and most of the remaining land was occupied by powerful families such as the Kong family.
Even the official land under the name of the county in the past has all been occupied.
Although Zichuan does not have much land, its geography is not bad. It is located in an important traffic road, especially when you leave Zichuan to the north, it is the Qibei Great Plain with a flat river, and to the west, it reaches Jinan directly. The main road of the river valley leads to Qingzhou, Tai'an and other places.
In addition, there are many coal and iron mines in the mountainous area, and the porcelain industry is also quite developed, so this is a pretty good place.
It’s just that at the end of Ming Dynasty, land annexation was too serious, and the land was basically concentrated in the hands of the royal family, gentry, and tyrants, and there was basically no tax, let alone industrial and commercial taxes and mining taxes.
Therefore, the local gentry are powerful and rich, but the yamen cannot collect taxes, so they can only apportion and persuade donations, and finally they are pressed on the heads of the people.
When those gentry came over just now, they not only had to make up for the outstanding grain and taxes, but even said that they would truthfully pay mining taxes, industry and commerce, tariffs, tax, etc. in the future.
At this time, those people feel that money is really something outside of the body.
"Mingfu, if we want Zichuan to quickly restore stability, we need money, more food, and some fields, otherwise it will be difficult to start. We have to recruit refugees, cultivate fields, and even resume business and mining. Now the local It’s just right that these people cooperate so well.”
"Yeah, while Shence Army and Xie Qian are still there, we should get things done quickly, otherwise when they leave, these people will probably repeat themselves again."
These few officials are all from Fengtian, some of them are from Juren, and some are just from scholars, but more or less they all have experience in local positions before.
Nowadays, the Ming Dynasty has very high requirements for officials. Although the requirements for family background are not high, the evaluation of political performance is extremely strict, and there are requirements one by one. They must meet the standards, otherwise this official will not be long.
Generally, county magistrates in remote counties are elected every three years, and in the interior every five years. Now the Ministry of Officials in Shaotian requires officials to have a small test every year and a big test every three years. Officials have to write their own work reports every year. Bosses and subordinates also have to write his reports.
In short, the assessment is extremely strict, and it is impossible to fool around.
Not only can't be corrupted, but you must have political achievements and ability, otherwise you will also be eliminated and dismissed.
Everyone finally found a real vacancy, so naturally they wanted to make some achievements in order to get promoted.If you do a good job, it won't take three or five years.
Now this opportunity is rare, taking advantage of the enthusiasm, accepting these gentry's payment and return of land, etc., this will immediately open up the situation, and it will even directly be a major political achievement.
"The sage has a decree that all the debts accumulated in the past will be forgiven, and there will be no further investigation."
"My lord, let's change the title. Don't talk about clearing up the debts, can't we just say that it's a tribute? Anyway, we didn't ask for it, and it fell into our pockets. All the money will be in the account at that time. It should be turned over to the national treasury. The reserved place should be handed over to the province, what are you afraid of?"
Seeing that everyone was so enthusiastic, Gu Xianshou felt somewhat interesting.
He was demoted from the fifth rank to the seventh rank magistrate. In fact, it involved a clique formation case in the court.
In fact, he didn't wrong him for the fact that the party was fighting against the dissidents. Although the emperor repeatedly emphasized that it is not allowed to form a party for personal gain, and the party fights to attack, but this kind of thing is impossible to prohibit.
Gu Xianshou is a member of the Donglin Party. He and some officials of the Donglin Party who were originally from Fushe formed a poetry club in private, and then attacked Ruan Dacheng and Ma Shiying together, which seemed to be entangled.
The emperor also warned him, but he would not stop.
In the end, Hong Chengchou impeached him for forming a party, and the emperor asked the third division to open a case for investigation. The case was quickly investigated and closed, without much expansion, and dealt with very quickly. The members of their poetry club were all demoted. out of Beijing.
Gu Xianshou, who was originally a doctor of the fifth rank, was suddenly demoted to a seventh rank magistrate.
He also wanted to make some achievements and return to court.
Agree to this now.
The next day, all the officials in the Zichuan County Yali came to visit together, and then took out something for Gu Xian to accept. The officials of each house actually expressed their willingness to take the initiative to take responsibility and make up for the shortfall.
Looking at these official lists, many of them are local hereditary official lists, controlling various aspects of a county's taxation, justice, etc., and often even empty some chief officials such as county magistrates who do not understand political affairs.
Now, these people took the initiative to come over, expressing their willingness to make up for the previous deficit, and also handed over the real account book.
"Very good, as long as the deficit is cleared, I will not pursue the past matters, you can continue to do your job well, and do it well!"
The officials were relieved, breathed a sigh of relief, and retreated gratefully.
Gu Xianshou sat alone with those lists for a long time, and finally called a few subordinates, "This is all thanks to the Shence Army and Xie Qian, and we still have to be very grateful. Now that the owed payment has been made up, the deficit has also been filled It’s settled, and the treasury is full, so let’s reward the army with some salaries.”
"Should be." Several officials also know that the credit belongs to them. "Just talk to them later, and ask them to help our county to set up regiment training and Baojia. Otherwise, when they leave, we won't be able to afford it." There is no force at all."
"Indeed, it would be nice to have some weapons, etc."
"It would be best for Xie Qian to stay in Mount Santai all the time."
Several people chatted and laughed, and agreed to take out some food and silver to thank Wen Hu and Xie Qian, and planned to buy some vegetables and meat to send.
Military and civilian fish and water, military and civilian families are close.
(End of this chapter)