Chapter 1050

"The legal code in my hand is the current code of the Holy Roman Empire, called the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina. The Ministry of Rites had merchants purchase it from the West at a great price, just to see if there was anything in overseas codes worth referencing."

"This code was promulgated 60 years ago and is still the law in force today. It has 179 articles in total, and not a single one of them is aimed at nobles, officials, knights, or feudal lords; they are all aimed at serfs."

"Any lord can subject the serfs and dependents under his name to ear-cutting, nose-cutting, eye-gouging, amputation of hands and feet, beheading, breaking on the wheel, burning, branding with fire tongs, or quartering by four horses."

"Believe me, you noble scholar-officials of the Great Ming absolutely do not want to know what kind of punishment branding with fire tongs is!"

Li Yashi took out a legal code, held it up in his hand, and displayed it to everyone—the current law of the Holy Roman Empire. He had Galileo bring the translated Constitutio Criminalis Carolina, and distributed them one by one to all the scholar-officials present.

After Li Yashi finished distributing the twenty-some copies of the code, he hurried back onto the stage. Standing in the center, he waited for these scholar-officials to flip through the code and intuitively feel what a feudal legal code is called.

Li Yashi held up the code in his hand and said loudly: "I dare assert! On this land, the legal codes from three thousand years ago are far more merciful and far more just than this code from sixty years ago!"

"Let me ask you, in the laws of the Great Ming, is there any article that allows local gentry and squires to arbitrarily inflict these shocking punishments upon the tenant farmers who work for them?"

"This is the feudalism you want! Feudalism that is like dog shit!"

Li Yashi's emotions were somewhat agitated. Sometimes, he really wanted to ask these Great Ming scholar-officials if their heads had been kicked by a donkey when they were young, that they would actually hope to use feudalism to counter the feudalization within local government offices.

The feudalization within local government offices is still ten thousand times better than feudalism.

"I must also tell you a fact!" Li Yashi said with agitated emotions: "In the West, every farmer must have a master! It could be a noble directly under the empire, a bishop, a monastery, or even a slave of a city! But there is no freedom!"

"Even so-called dependent farmers, who are the tenant farmers of the Great Ming, spend the vast majority of their time working on the master's manor; in the remaining time, they must use all their labor earnings to pay the following taxes:"

"The damned tithe collected by the Papal States, the land rent for the master's fields, the miscellaneous levies belonging to the city, the corvée labor stipulated by the empire, the crusade tax to take back the Holy City, the war tax of the city-state, the entry tax of the city-state, the sunshine tax, and the imperial tax to whoever knows whom!"

"These taxes are all clearly written in this legal code!"

"This is the feudalism you want! Feudalism that is like dog shit!"

Li Yashi's emotions were extremely agitated. He flipped through the code, guiding everyone to the chapter on taxes. Even the cruel officials of the Great Ming court, who were most skilled at inventing names for taxes, could not invent such taxes; sunshine, rain, and even windows were taxed.

It is even said that because of the cost of tax collection, the Great Ming Tax Audit Bureau would not tax peddlers, but the West basically adopted a tax-farming system. Tax-farming directly involves the interests of the tax collectors themselves, so naturally, they collect from everyone.

There is never a shortage of tax collectors being beaten to death, but tax collectors still come one after another because there is profit to be made.

Li Yashi returned to the stage again and said loudly: "Dependent farmers are already freer than serfs, but they are still slaves! Slaves, do you know what slaves are?"

"Whether they are serfs or dependent farmers, they all need to collect hay, strawberries, raspberries, and snail shells for their masters, drive away wild beasts for hunting, and chop wood for their masters."

"Have you ever farmed? When wild boars rush onto your land and wantonly trample the farmers' crops, in the Great Ming, you can use any means to drive these wild boars away. This is legal, reasonable, and you call it heaven-sent justice!"

"But in the West, when wild boars destroy a farmer's crops, the farmer cannot drive these wild boars away!"

"Because the hunting rights are in the hands of these damned masters. Once you launch an attack on the wild boars, the master can dispose of all your property without paying any price, including your wife, daughter, and son!"

"This is the feudalism you want! Feudalism that is like dog shit!"

Li Yashi was almost hoarse. His face flushed red as he pointed at the legal code and said loudly: "The light of the sun and moon will eventually shine upon the whole world! The thunder will eventually judge these sins! Judge all of this!"

Zhu Yijun watched this scene in silence. Ever since Ma Liang died a martyr, Li Yashi's mental state had been very unstable.

He hated himself for being a coward, hated himself for not daring to return to the West to bring the light to the West, and hated himself for being powerless against all this darkness.

He looked like a madman.

"Preaching in public, send him to the Songjiang Guard Command to calm down for ten days," Zhu Yijun instructed the Embroidered Uniform Guard Commander Luo Bingliang.

Preaching in public, no matter who he is, must be arrested, and then the punishment will be decided based on the specific circumstances.

Two Embroidered Uniform Guards quickly went onto the stage and dragged Li Yashi away.

Jiao Hong looked at Gu Xiancheng and asked after thinking for a moment: "After this farce, do we still want to discuss it?"

"No more." Gu Xiancheng hurriedly stood up, bowed to all sides, and left in a hurry, fearing that if he left late, he would be beaten by someone.

The Embroidered Uniform Guards going onto the stage let Gu Xiancheng know that the Emperor who loved to watch the excitement might also be at Luming Pavilion. If the Emperor heard his nonsense and threw him into the Imperial Prison, that would be a grievance he couldn't speak of.

Jiao Hong bowed to all sides and then followed the crowd out of Luming Pavilion.

Zhu Yijun sat in the private box and looked at Zhang Juzheng, asking blankly: "Is this feudalism really as Li Yashi said?"

"It should be, Your Majesty. I have never seen what feudalism looks like either." Zhang Juzheng thought carefully. He could not deceive the Emperor. To tell the truth, his understanding of feudalism was actually no different from the scholar-officials below the stage.

Until Li Yashi poked through that layer of window paper, everything became clear. So, this was feudalism.

Great Ming scholar-officials lacked imagination regarding feudalism because the Great Ming had been away from feudalism for too long, long enough for everyone to forget what it was supposed to look like. But fortunately, opening the seas gave the Great Ming practical examples to learn from, shattering the unrealistic fantasies of the scholar-officials.

Zhu Yijun's understanding of the two words "feudalism" was not much different from the scholar-officials; after all, he had never seen it with his own eyes either.

Actually, if you think about it carefully, you don't have to look as far as the West. For example, Lu Song and Annan are similar cases of enfeoffment. It is clear at a glance what kind of exploitation the barbarians in these places have suffered.

Qi Jiguang was silent for a long time. In his view, feudalism is inferior to the imperial system of prefectures and counties, which is also reflected in the combat effectiveness of the army and the cost of war.

The imperial system of prefectures and counties of the Great Ming can raise units like the battalion soldiers for offense, and can also raise the very cheap guard soldiers who combine farming and fighting in the border regions.

For offense, there are battalion soldiers who specialize in studying how to crush the enemy's will to resist; for defense, there are guard soldiers to garrison the borders. The cost is extremely low, and they can advance or retreat with a solid foundation. They can attack and defend, and are superior to feudalism in both combat effectiveness and cost.

Simply putting the Great Ming into the frame of feudalism is a shameless and ignorant act.

The Great Ming Emperor did not leave until after he had finished his lunch at Luming Pavilion. However, the singing and dancing performances after the gathering at Luming Pavilion made Zhu Yijun feel a bit emotional; he had somewhat misunderstood King Zhou.

In terms of enjoyment, the ancients were not inferior to the people of later generations at all. These dancing girls not only had wonderful performances but also provided full emotional value.

Zhu Yijun returned to the Huangpujiang Imperial Palace, watched the grain boats for a while, and prepared to process today's memorials. Before doing so, Zhu Yijun closed his eyes and pondered, thinking about what he had seen and heard today. He suddenly discovered a paradoxical fact.

The Wanli Reform, getting rid of the old and establishing the new, reform, reform—how can you reform without being radical? But the more the Great Ming reforms, the more conservative it becomes!

And this tendency of the extreme conservative faction is becoming more and more obvious.

After the Wanli Reform, the Great Ming no longer appointed any Tatars or barbarians as officials in the court. Let alone those above the fifth rank in the court, even in local county government offices, except for the appointment of San Niangzi in Suiyuan to appease the border people, almost no Tatars or barbarians became guests of the Emperor or officials with real power in the Great Ming.

This is actually very rare in all dynasties.

Even in the Great Ming, which was already very conservative, there were a large number of Tatar officials at the beginning of the dynasty.

For example, in the Tumu Crisis, the two brothers Wu Kezhong and Wu Keqin, the Dukes of Gongshun, died for the Great Ming. They were originally naturalized barbarians who finally died in battle for the Great Ming. To this day, the fifth-generation Duke of Gongshun, Wu Jijue, is still in charge of the Nanjing Central Military Commission in Nanjing.

By the time it reached the fifth generation, Wu Jijue, if anyone said to him, "You are a barbarian," they would probably start fighting on the spot.

Since the beginning of the Wanli Reform, the Great Ming has successively recovered Danning Guard, Suiyuan, reclaimed land in Liaodong, and Korea, but has rarely reused barbarians. After the nine victories in the Eastern Expedition, Li Shunchen was not even rated among the 132 stars, but was given the hereditary title of General of Martial Virtue of the fifth rank and served as the Tianjin Tianjin Weisuo Commander of Fushan.

Li Yashi, a favorite in front of the Emperor, is not even an official; he is just an interpreter in the Four Hu Ren Halls, which counts as a clerk.

This is actually not strange. All things are relative. The further one goes toward reform, the more extreme the conservative forces will become to prevent the extreme reformists from destroying the country.

The two factions are becoming more and more extreme, and eventually, the contradictions cannot be adjusted, and the struggles and conflicts will become more and more intense.

Zhu Yijun opened his eyes and began to process the memorials.

While the Emperor was busy processing memorials, this huge bureaucratic machine of the Great Ming was also turning, but this time, the rotation was the implementation of the Single Whip Law in the six prefectures, and the situation was not very optimistic.

"Such a clear and explicit imperial decree, it couldn't be written more clearly: take the population census of the ninth year of Wanli as the base, neither increasing nor decreasing, and spread all corvée labor among the fields, paying silver in lieu of labor."

"Taxes are divided into land tax and commercial tax; reduce land tax according to the system, collect commercial tax according to the revised 'Great Ming Collected Statutes: Commercial Tax', and prepare six books and one account for year-end auditing."

"Such a simple policy, what exactly are these prefecture and county magistrates asking about?" Zhang Xueyan looked at the dozens of official documents in front of him; these were the replies from each county after the imperial decree arrived.

In these replies, the questions were all over the place. One said to give them some time, and even the time limit for the Performance Evaluation Law had to be discussed with the Minister and Vice Minister of Revenue.

Hou Yuzhao looked at those official documents and shook his head, saying: "The 'delaying tactic'—each prefecture and county clearly intends to delay as long as they can."

"Delay what? If you delay, does it mean you don't have to do it? If you don't do it within the time limit set by the Performance Evaluation Law, everyone will get the lowest grade. Not to mention that there will be no hope of promotion, it would be good if you aren't stripped of your official status!" Zhang Xueyan said angrily.

Hou Yuzhao frowned and said: "If everyone gets the lowest grade, it actually means everyone gets the highest grade. The law does not punish the masses. If everyone really delays and doesn't do it, can the court replace them all?"

"They delay to see if there are any changes in the situation, delay to see if others will execute it, delay to see the results of others' execution, so as to avoid trouble. In short, delaying is a common practice for local prefecture and county officials. If everyone delays, this rigidity appears."

"Being stuck here is not a solution."

Zhang Xueyan thought of a lazy way: ask the Emperor to take action.

Of course, the result of asking the Emperor to take action is that the policy will definitely be implemented, but how the Emperor will take action is difficult to control. This matter was proposed by the Emperor, so it is reasonable for the Emperor to take action.

Once it gets out of control, the Emperor will definitely let the Northern Army garrison each prefecture. The Beijing Camp has a deployment mechanism. Once the Beijing Camp is deployed, they will never give up until a large number of local gentry and squires are killed.

The Beijing Camp has been holding back for these years, receiving so much salary from the Emperor. If they don't do something, they can't prove the value of the Beijing Camp's existence.

"Minister! Once a sharp sword is unsheathed, how can it not be stained with blood?" Hou Yuzhao looked at Zhang Xueyan's expression, his face changed drastically, and he stood up abruptly.

He guessed Zhang Xueyan's idea. Zhang Xueyan is getting older, and his way of doing things is not becoming more conservative, but more radical. He always thinks about overturning the table instead of thinking about getting things done within the framework of the system.

When executing land return and consolidating land return, the question Hou Yuzhao was asked most often was: Are the poor people the Emperor's subjects, but the local gentry and squires are not?

Admittedly, in the past, local gentry and squires evaded taxes and annexed land, leading to the deterioration of the situation, but the matters of tax evasion and annexation cannot all be blamed on them.

The Hongzhi period was the era when the Great Ming's annexation was the craziest. Emperor Xiaozong was fooled, and various policies favored annexation. With this orientation, local gentry and squires would naturally move with the wind.

Zhang Xueyan was silent for a moment and said: "I naturally know, but when similar things happen too often, in the end, we still have to ask the Beijing Camp Northern Army to garrison various places."

Sometimes, it is not that Zhang Xueyan is extreme; it is that he found that many times when policies were implemented, after tossing and turning, in the end, they all had to ask the Beijing Camp to take action. It is better to skip the intermediate steps and directly deploy the Beijing Camp.

Cut the Gordian knot and handle all these things cleanly.

"Minister..." Hou Yuzhao was silent for a while and said: "We must also understand the difficulties of local officials. They also want to be promoted, and they also want to complete the court's orders. The reason why they want to delay now is naturally because they have their own concerns. We must provide them with help, not push them to the opposite side."

"In my way of doing things, I have always put my position first. Although there are various problems, for so many years, I feel that I have done this without any mistakes."

"If we ask the Emperor for help in everything, doesn't it make us in the Ministry of Revenue look like a bunch of wine bags and rice sacks who only eat salaries and don't do work?"

"How about this, leave this matter to me. I will go to Suzhou Prefecture, go to Retainer, Changshu, and Wujiang to see the specific difficulties of these prefecture and county officials, and then make a decision."

"If I can't do it, then we will go and ask the Emperor."

Hou Yuzhao took full responsibility for this matter and decided to go to the prefectures and counties himself to ask about the predicament, instead of sitting in the six ministries' offices in the Huangpujiang Imperial Palace and making decisions by patting his head.

These prefecture and county magistrates are not all rebels; on the contrary, they are all officials appointed by the court.

"Okay." Zhang Xueyan pondered for a while, nodded in agreement, and handed the matter entirely to Hou Yuzhao.

After Hou Yuzhao left, Zhang Xueyan lay back on the soft rattan chair and showed a dubious smile. He was not passing the responsibility downward. At his age, he should retire; he was getting old and his energy was failing, and he was becoming less and less trusting of others. This state had already entered the difficulty of ending well.

The difficulty of ending well is not a catastrophe that only emperors and kings have to suffer. Death is very fair to everyone; everyone will die, everyone's physical strength will decline, everyone's control over their own body will get worse and worse, and their paranoia will get heavier and heavier.

The difficulty of ending well is something everyone has to experience, from princes and generals to peddlers.

After the implementation of the Single Whip Law in the six prefectures, Hou Yuzhao successfully completed it, and Zhang Xueyan planned to propose Hou Yuzhao to enter the cabinet. He was originally a walker in the Western Study and had been summoned by the Emperor many times.

As for Hou Yuzhao's preference for putting his position first, Zhang Xueyan thought it was not a problem. Sometimes, if the position is wrong, the more you do, the more wrong you are.

Hou Yuzhao went to Suzhou Prefecture in person. He stayed for a full half month before returning to the Huangpujiang Imperial Palace, and then a memorial was presented to the Emperor. The Emperor received the memorial and immediately summoned Hou Yuzhao and Zhang Xueyan for an audience.

"The two Ministers, please sit down. Eunuch Li, bring some good tea." Zhu Yijun was full of smiles, holding the memorial in his hand, and said with a smile: "Minister Hou is worthy of being a capable official, acting with vigor and speed!"

Zhu Yijun first praised Hou Yuzhao's style of doing things. He said he would go that day and set off in the afternoon. He visited the prefecture and county government offices in Suzhou Prefecture, even went deep into the countryside, deeply understood the problems, and gave practical and feasible solutions to the problems.

This time, the prefecture and county magistrates used the delaying tactic to delay the court's policies. This is the phenomenon.

The reason for this phenomenon is that the prefecture and county magistrates have their own difficulties, and the problem lies in the clerks of the prefecture and county government offices, who are controlled by the local gentry and squires. And these clerks themselves are the "local officials" in Gu Xiancheng's words; they themselves are the local gentry and squires.

During the half month of his visit, Hou Yuzhao found the key to the key problem, which is the embarrassing fact that the prefecture and county magistrates have no one to use. The few private secretaries they brought were of no use at all.

The method Hou Yuzhao gave was: retired officers from the Beijing Camp and the Navy, and junior officers, should be transferred to local positions, especially the heads of the three classes of yamen runners, who should all be served by these retired soldiers, expanding the scope and scale of retired personnel transfers.

Hou Yuzhao said with a heavy face: "They say a clever woman cannot cook without rice. The clerks under the prefecture and county magistrates are all people of the local gentry and squires, or even the local gentry and squires themselves. It is equivalent to saying that there is no rice and no clever woman."

"The prefecture and county magistrates have no one to use, no rice to cook, and are in a dilemma. But then, if they report to the prefecture, the three divisions, the governor, or the court, they will be scolded instead."

"What can they do if they can't do it? They can only cook the books."

"I went to Suzhou Prefecture and found that the land return in several places was just perfunctory. The land was returned, but these fields were actually still in the hands of these local gentry and squires through long-term leases. The court reduced the land tax, which was true, but it was all reduced on the fields of these local gentry and squires."

"Retired soldiers and junior officers have all read books, know characters, and most of them have even studied mathematics, so they can handle the six books and one account clearly."

When Hou Yuzhao arrived at the local area, he first communicated with these prefecture and county magistrates. These prefecture and county magistrates were also tight-lipped, just complaining bitterly, but they wouldn't say where the root of the problem was.

Because these prefecture and county magistrates had already suffered many such losses, and no one would solve it even if they told their superiors.

Hou Yuzhao had seen too many such officials and had long had coping methods. In three or five sentences, he got the words that these prefecture and county magistrates dared not say, did not want to say, and could not say, and finally formulated this transfer of retired soldiers to local positions.

"I also thought about transferring craftsmen, but there are not many official factories in local government offices. It was only allowed last year for local areas to build official factories themselves. Let alone craftsmen who can be transferred, the craftsmen in the official factories are not enough. Looking around, only soldiers can be used." Hou Yuzhao said why he thought of soldiers.

Soldiers and junior officers will be given a sum of money when they retire, ranging from thirty-five to one hundred and fifty silver, mainly depending on the length of service.

But according to Hou Yuzhao's understanding, these retired soldiers who have been soldiers and junior officers for five or six years, or even more than ten years, are seriously out of touch with society. They have spent their whole lives practicing killing skills, but killing skills are almost useless in society.

The resettlement silver given by the court will also be quickly cheated away by scammers.

Knowing how to kill does not mean a flexible mind, especially with the Great Ming opening the seas and the transformation of the commodity economy, various scams are emerging one after another. Ordinary people have enough vigilance against these, but the military camp management is strict, and they cannot come into contact with these scams, especially making them easy to be deceived.

Many junior officers, when soldiers retire, will say: Don't spend the resettlement silver randomly. If someone asks you to borrow money, just say it was snatched by the junior officer.

Retired battalion soldiers have always been a difficult problem for the Great Ming court, whether it was the disbanding of battalion soldiers in the early Wanli years or the current transfer of retired personnel.

"The dilemma is solved by itself," Zhu Yijun said with a smile.

So, Great Ming Emperor, what is the price?

It is that the local gentry, squires, and local officials will lose the power in their hands as the retired personnel are transferred, causing their interests to be damaged. At this time, local contradictions will intensify, but unlike in the past, the prefecture and county magistrates now have people they can use.

After Zhu Yijun communicated with Hou Yuzhao in detail, he decided to start with the six prefectures where the Single Whip Law was to be implemented.

In fact, Songjiang Prefecture had already tried it. This method is easy to use, but not that easy to use. It is easy to use because soldiers can read and write, but they cannot completely replace clerks.

Each county in Songjiang Prefecture still has to select usable people from the scholar circles, but on the whole, it is much better than completely using local officials in the past.

Zhang Xueyan let Hou Yuzhao leave first, and then told the Emperor about his plan. In the coming year, Zhang Xueyan would gradually transfer all the work in his hands to Hou Yuzhao, so that he, Zhang Xueyan, could retire in peace.

"At the beginning, the Senior Grand Secretary proposed to skip a group of people. Now, we old men have finished our twenty years of duty and haven't disgraced the Emperor." Zhang Xueyan felt a bit of infinite melancholy when he said this.

In the 29th year of Jiajing, the Northern Tatars broke through Gubeikou and went south. In the same year, Zhu Wan committed suicide. The forty-one Zhejiang guards restored by Zhu Wan were disbanded, four hundred and thirty-nine warships were all burned, and Lu Tang, Ke Qiao, and others who pacified the Japanese pirates were sentenced to death and waited for execution after autumn.

Since then, the country has declined. For a full twenty years, the country has been precarious. The group of people who grew up and passed the imperial examination during this time all have a bit of contempt for the court.

In the court, there was a phenomenon of long-term tenure. Zhang Juzheng served as Senior Grand Secretary for a full twenty years, Wang Chonggu also served as Junior Grand Secretary for seventeen years, and a group of ministers of the Wanli Reform such as Wang Guoguang and Zhang Xueyan were all old and frail.

In the local areas, there was a clear tendency toward rejuvenation. The Emperor had no choice but to abandon the imperial examination scholars of those years and appoint the imperial examination scholars and provincial graduates selected in the Wanli period, which caused some gaps.

More than twenty years have finally passed, and the old people in the court are constantly leaving. Only at this moment can one say that the Great Ming has finally walked out of the precarious mud.

"Yes, at the beginning, the Master told me that the first twenty years of the Wanli Reform were twenty years of paying off debts. I didn't believe it at first. As I governed for a long time, I realized that what the Master said was true. I also thank everyone for their dedication on behalf of all the people in the world." Zhu Yijun was also quite emotional.

Along the way, Zhu Yijun knew the difficulty. When doing it, he didn't feel it was difficult; it seemed that he just did things step by step.

But looking back, Zhu Yijun found that even he had not been easy, let alone the ministers who bore the infamy of clinging to power. According to the Great Ming convention, one should leave after nine years in the court; after all, it is easy to form cliques and attack each other after nine years.

But the matter of long-term tenure had to be done.

This is also one of the reasons why the Wanli Reform, which had been reformed for twenty years, became more conservative instead.

Zhang Xueyan bowed again and left the Huangpujiang Imperial Palace. Before retiring, he wanted to hand over all the work in his hands to Hou Yuzhao within this year, so that he could be the Great Ming's Minister of Revenue.

In fact, before the Emperor went south to garrison Songjiang Prefecture, Zhang Xueyan called Hou Yuzhao over when the treasury of Tonghe Palace was being stocked, and he already had this idea.

Hou Yuzhao is a battle-tested warrior of the imperial system of prefectures and counties, and his loyalty is unquestionable. It is a loyalty tested by the freezing cold of Liaodong and the complex struggles of Zhejiang. Zhang Xueyan also wanted to see his ability and character, especially his ability to deal with the attacks of the base scholars.

Hou Yuzhao likes to go against the current with others, or be gone against by others. This was originally a place Zhang Xueyan was more worried about, but after careful observation, Zhang Xueyan thought it was not a shortcoming, but Hou Yuzhao's advantage.