Chapter 14: The Tianqi Emperor Is Penniless

Seeing the Emperor wave for him to leave, Wei Zhongxian breathed a sigh of relief and departed as if pardoned from a death sentence.

After Wei Zhongxian left, Zhu Youxiao slowly sipped his tea. Normally, this kind of weather was best suited for warming one's hands with some roasted sweet potatoes.

After muddling through these past days, Zhu Youxiao discovered that being the Ming Emperor was actually quite easy.

Memorials from all regions first had to be sent to the Grand Secretariat, where the Grand Secretaries would write their suggested handling opinions, and only then would they be presented to the Emperor, who would decide the final course of action.

If the Emperor felt the Grand Secretariat's proposed solution was no good, he could skip the red endorsement and send the memorial straight back to the Grand Secretariat for the Grand Secretaries to draft another plan. Sometimes the Emperor couldn't even be bothered to do the red endorsement himself, and would delegate that task to the brush-holding eunuchs of the Directorate of Ceremonial at his side.

Liu Jin and Wei Zhongxian, whose power and prestige once overshadowed all others, were both brush-holding eunuchs who enjoyed the Emperor's trust. Because the emperors were indolent, these men were given the opportunity to usurp power.

Zhu Youxiao steadied himself, looked at the pile of memorials before him, and a meaningful smile curled at the corners of his mouth.

He figured that with Wei Zhongxian's trip back and forth, quite a few officials would be in for trouble. If Wei could purge some officials who were unfavorable to him, he could conveniently promote some who actually got things done. This era actually had no shortage of talent—it was just that people weren't being put to their best use.

Zhu Youxiao nodded slightly, and in his mind began calculating which minor officials to promote. Although Zhu Youxiao didn't know the abilities and loyalty of most civil and military officials, he did know most of the famous figures in history.

But as he thought it over, he realized one thing: after promoting talent, what exactly was he going to do with them? Furthermore, getting things done required money. Whether in his past life or this one, money was what truly worked—transmigrating wasn't all-powerful!

But right now, the national treasury probably didn't have much money. As for how much money he actually had, he truly had no idea—he could only ask his head steward, Wang An.

At that thought, Zhu Youxiao paused, set down his teacup, and shouted toward the door: "Go summon Wang An to see me."

Wang An these past days couldn't exactly be called busy, but he couldn't be called idle either—there were plenty of trivial matters to handle. He'd barely warmed the bench with his backside before being summoned by the Emperor to the Qianqing Palace again.

"Wang An, how much silver do I have in the treasury?" Zhu Youxiao asked, all the while muttering inwardly: Please don't tell me the national treasury is in deficit.

Wang An was slightly taken aback—this was a question he happened to know the answer to. When the Tianqi Emperor had ascended the throne, he, as the chief steward, had been ordered to audit the silver in the inner treasury.

He sighed and answered in a slow voice: "Reporting to Your Majesty, the inner treasury still holds 17 million taels of silver and 30,000 taels of gold." As for the national treasury—no need to even mention it, it was certainly empty.

Hearing this number, Zhu Youxiao was delighted at first—with this much gold in his past life, he could eat and drink worry-free for a lifetime, driving sports cars and living in villas.

After the excitement passed, he suddenly realized that he was now the sovereign lord of a great nation. If he rewarded ministers with great merit a few times with this money, he'd be left drinking the northwest wind.

Clearly, the Tianqi Emperor was a pauper! Zhu Youxiao wailed inwardly. After all, in the thirty-sixth year of Qianlong, the national treasury's annual revenue was 37 million taels of silver—and that was just one year's income!

"How much is the Great Ming's annual revenue?" Zhu Youxiao asked with a faint glimmer of hope.

"Reporting to Your Majesty, the annual revenue is roughly 5.21 million taels of silver."

Hearing Wang An's words, Zhu Youxiao was stunned—so little? He knew that the Ming's trade and capital at this time were far stronger than the Qing's, yet the annual revenue differed by so much...

The only reason was that many people didn't pay taxes. At that thought, Zhu Youxiao's heart bled, as if watching vast amounts of real gold and silver fly away, and he silently kept a vicious ledger against these people in his heart.

These people who schemed every which way to evade and dodge taxes—whose families didn't own thousands of acres of prime farmland and countless businesses? Most of these people said one thing and did another, their mouths full of benevolence and righteousness while they oppressed the common folk in their hometowns.

They annexed land, smuggled goods, and conducted maritime trade. Every one of their clans was dripping with wealth, yet they were always thinking about not paying taxes. So the Donglin Faction trumpeted "emphasizing" agriculture and suppressing commerce, claiming to "hide wealth among the people."

His cheap father, the Taichang Emperor, had misunderstood the policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce. Emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce didn't mean heavily taxing farmers—it meant reducing or even eliminating taxes on them. But the Donglin Faction had twisted this theory. According to their claims, agriculture was the main source of state revenue and should be heavily taxed, while merchants held low status and should be taxed less.

It was this very group of people who, over the years, had tampered with tax registers to evade massive amounts of taxation, and who always clamored for taxing the peasants. These people not only evaded and dodged taxes, but because their power was so vast, they grew even more reckless, doing just about anything.

At court, there were very few who truly wanted to do practical things for the common people. Most officials attacked others in the imperial court, squeezed out weaker officials in the provinces, and went along with the corrupt crowd, acting against their consciences.

Because the court constantly pressed local governments to meet their quotas, an increasingly heavy burden was shifted onto the peasants. They had neither wealth nor influence, and couldn't protect themselves from extortion. In the end, they were forced to face two unavoidable choices:

Sell their land to powerful gentry at pitifully low prices and become tenant farmers themselves, trading high rents for protection; or abandon their land and flee, hoping conditions elsewhere might be better. No matter which they chose, the land either lay fallow or fell into the hands of the powerful gentry. And the government's quotas still pressed down on the remaining peasants—this vicious cycle grew ever worse.

The burden of taxation became unbearable, not because the levies were high, but because many taxes had to be paid in silver, and silver was extremely difficult for peasants to obtain.

Many people who had no land or couldn't endure the exploitation of the great landlords became refugees—this was why so many people followed Xu Hongru's White Lotus sect uprising.

There was also the fact that the earth was in the midst of the Little Ice Age during this era, with natural disasters striking without end. The great drought in Shaanxi caused countless people to lose the land they depended on for survival. When officials forced the people to rebel, that gave rise to Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and others.

The peasant uprisings in Shaanxi became the last straw that broke the Great Ming's back.

It could be said that aside from external pressures, the Ming's downfall was mostly the fault of these tax-evading powerful gentry. If these people weren't eliminated, the Great Ming had no hope.

At that thought, Zhu Youxiao couldn't help but rub his temples.

Who said being Emperor was easy? Being a wise sovereign was hard!

If he wanted to clean up officialdom, the first step would be to smash the bureaucratic clique with an iron hand, and the second step would be reforming governance and trimming redundant officials.

However, there was one prerequisite: he needed to hold military power in his own hands. If he had no battle-ready troops, it would be impossible to clean up officialdom and reform the bureaucratic system with an iron-fisted policy.

Currently, the Great Ming had civil officials controlling the military. How could Zhu Youxiao possibly take back military authority and build up his own forces?!

That being the case, military power and such could wait for now. First, use Wei Zhongxian to make certain troublemaking officials at court feel sick, and then he could conveniently confiscate a few households' assets to fill the national treasury—that wouldn't be bad either.

After all, with money, things were easier to get done, weren't they?