Chapter 86 The Emperor Can't Get the Donation
The heads were sent over, but there was no response from the Jiading Mansion.
Mu Tiantao knew that he should still have seven or eight days of buffering time. He would not make any further moves until Uncle Jiading found out his true identity.
Planning and then acting is a good habit of many noble people.
They don’t care about killing, but they must find out the enemy’s details before taking action.
In this huge capital city, there are always some people who cannot be moved or touched.
In many stories, there are always playboys who offend people without caring about their family background. This is the most stupid thing. This is not the education Mu Tiantao received since childhood.
His mother and brother always told him that it didn't matter if he was bullied. He should first calm down and find out the details of the enemy. If there was some unexplainable relationship behind the opponent.
At this time, you must first complain, and then take action secretly...
If the opponent is really strong, then you must admit it and endure it. A gentleman will not take revenge for ten years. Night.
Of course, if the opponent is a fool without any reason, then he must be eradicated with thunderous means to show the majesty of Prince Mu's Mansion.
When Mu Tiantao was in Guanzhong, he learned about the occupation of Prince Mu's Mansion in the capital from his mother's letter.
Then... he begged his senior brother who worked in a certain key department to find out exactly how Prince Mu's Mansion was invaded at the cost of two bottles of good wine.
He had already thought of a countermeasure along the way, but when he arrived in the capital, before he could even sit down in his chair, he launched into action.
There is a reason why there is no room left.
Three months ago, the emperor, who really had no money, launched a fundraiser, hoping that officials and nobles could donate some money so that the Ministry of War could recruit more warriors who dared to fight to guard the city. The capital city where everyone depends for survival.
Chongzhen reigned for sixteen years.
"The military shortage was reported everywhere, and rogue bandits spread."
“The party situation of the ministers has been established, the material resources of the grasslands have been exhausted, the laws of the country have been broken, the fighting on the frontier has become severe, the country is beset with internal and external difficulties, the accumulated evils are difficult to reverse, and the current situation is irreversible.”
There has never been a time when the weather has changed. In addition to never ending military operations every year, we also need to deal with droughts, earthquakes, locust plagues, and epidemics that occur one after another in various places. To suppress rogue bandits, to provide relief to disaster areas, and to prevent border troubles, all of these are inseparable from one thing, and that is: money!
Given the current situation, a serious financial crisis is inevitable. Wanli's annual military expenditure was only more than three million.
In the Chongzhen year, the "suppression pay", "training pay" and "Liao pay" used only for military affairs reached 16 million.
The emperor naturally felt that the treasury was empty and money was tight. After passing this financial crisis on to the people, the result is that "the wages are increasing, but the fields are increasingly scarce, the conquests are urgent, and the people are becoming less and less", leading to a vicious cycle, worsening the situation of "extreme hunger, external strife and internal rebellion".
With no other choice, Chongzhen, who was the emperor, had no other choice but to sell iron, take out the gold and silver utensils in the palace for emergency, and even sell the old ginseng accumulated from the Wanli period, and the remaining We have to call on the emperor's relatives, civil and military officials to help pay, and adopt a fundraising strategy.
In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, Chongzhen approached Li Guorui, Marquis of Wuqing, a wealthy royal relative, and asked him to contribute 400,000 silver taels as salary to relieve the country's worries.
Seeing the huge amount, Li Guorui refused to pay out life and death, insisting that he could not afford so much money. However, Chongzhen also knew a little bit about his details, so of course he couldn't do it, and he pressed harder.
This Li Guorui simply acted like a rogue, and also came to sell iron. He put his own house up for sale, and took the household utensils and other items outside to sell them to show that he had nothing.
This move made Chongzhen furious, so he imprisoned Li Guorui and took away his title. Li Guorui could not bear this, and soon died of anger.
As a result, the relatives were in an uproar, complaining that Chongzhen ignored family ties, and even united to boycott the fund-raising.
Chongzhen himself also regretted it afterwards and made Li Guorui's seven-year-old son Li Cunshan a marquis. The 400,000 silver taels recovered were all returned in the end. Since the royal family repented, the officials would not be enthusiastic, and the fundraising matter would just go away.
However, this year, Li Zicheng had arrived in Shandong, and the capital was in danger. At this time, the capital was short of soldiers and food, and its defenses were weak.
Chongzhen had no choice but to raise funds again. He sent the eunuch Xu Gao to inform the father of Queen Zhou, the head of the country Jiading Bo Zhou Kui, and asked him to take the lead in advocating and setting an example.
Zhou "strongly thanked you" and refused. Xu Gao repeatedly stated his intention, but Zhou Ye was indifferent and didn't mind at all. Xu Gao "sobbed angrily and said: 'My father is like this, and the affairs of the country are over.'".
Seeing that Zhou Kui had said this, he was also afraid that Chongzhen would blame him, so he promised to donate 10,000 taels. Chongzhen thought it was less and asked him to contribute 20,000 taels.
Zhou wrote a secret letter to the queen, pleading for help. The queen agreed to help him pay five thousand dollars and advised him to meet the amount requested by Chongzhen as much as possible. The eunuchs in the palace were the richest with a king's heart, but they only offered ten thousand gold.
Wang Yongzhao and Cao Huachun donated 30,000 to 50,000 yuan.
The ministers and officials in the DPRK behaved in the same way, pretending to be poor and calling themselves poor.
University scholar Wei Zaode only spent a hundred gold, while Chen Yan, the chief minister of the cabinet who had been approved to retire, made a special trip to the palace to express his innocence during his tenure.
Some officials followed Li Guorui's example and wrote on their doors: "This house is for sale urgently", and then took out some worthless utensils and items and put them on the market for sale.
In the end, in order to achieve balance, we simply came up with a distribution, such as Zhejiang giving six thousand, Shandong giving four thousand and so on. The maximum limit for an individual was 30,000, but no one in the Manchu Dynasty reached the limit. Only Taikang Bo and Zhang Guoji reached 20,000.
In this way, this Jingguo fundraising finally came from the Shilu clan composed of the imperial relatives, scholar-bureaucrats and officials in the capital.A huge amount of money was raised: two hundred thousand.
If you have money but don't pay, the emperor at this time can't do anything to them except sighing. They had no choice but to change their approach and call on the powerful to contribute, asking everyone to send food and grass to supply the officers and soldiers, or to support the wives and children of the soldiers, so that the defenders of the capital would have no worries. However, the response was even more indifferent, and no one responded, so they had to give up.
The amount of this "huge sum of money" is so large that it is really hard to see how it will be used as military expenditure. Therefore, Chongzhen used all the 200,000 cash to reward and comfort the defenders of the capital.
On this day, ordinary people cried bitterly and donated money. Many people donated 300 or 400 gold. In just fifteen days, the donation amounted to 460,000.
For this reason, the emperor cried to Queen Zhou in the harem and said: The people are kind, and those who eat meat should be punished!
What Mu Tiantao learned at Yushan Academy was how to govern and how to lead troops.
While Yushan Academy was spreading these things as jokes, Mu Tiantao invited many intelligent people in the academy to have a discussion - the only topic was - how can the emperor get rid of these corrupt officials? Donations in hand!
In the end, everyone got a more reliable answer - cool official!
It is a shameful thing for the emperor to come forward to call for donations. It shows that the emperor has lost his grip on the political power!
The weaker the emperor appears, the more reluctant his officials will be to support him.
A senior fellow from the Secretary for Government Affairs said it very clearly - the strong have everything, the weak have nothing!
Mu Tiantao could imagine that if Yun Zhao asked the people, officials, and merchants to borrow money, he would definitely get an enthusiastic response from the people, officials, and merchants, and some would even break their homes. To support Yun Zhao, they only want Yun Zhao to praise him for all his contributions. Even if they give him a positive smile, they will be satisfied.
This is the strong one.
As soon as Emperor Chongzhen’s donation came out, even his father-in-law resisted and complained about poverty. In the end, he had to rely on squeezing the daughter of the queen to reduce his family’s losses.
Therefore.
Using cruel staff is naturally a no-brainer.
In peacetime, using this method would completely damage the imperial court.
However, in today's Ming Dynasty, the house is leaking from all sides, the beams and columns are crackling with insects, and is about to collapse. Do you still care about a group of pigs raised in the house at this time?
The best way at this time is to kill pigs and sell them for money!
The emperor originally had some cool officials. For example, in Dongchang, Jin Yiwei was an excellent candidate for the cool officials.
Once the emperor used these cruel officials to achieve his goal and killed two more Dongchang officials, the Jinyiwei people told these officials that Dongchang and Jinyiwei had done something wrong and they could easily get over this matter.
But - when the emperor first ascended the throne, he abolished these two units. The scene of everyone in court looked very nice, but he just didn't do anything.!
So, Mu Tiantao came to the capital not for some bullshit scientific examination!
He is here to be this cruel official.
The scientific examination is too slow. Even if he becomes the number one scholar, he will have to wait at least twenty years to achieve his personal revenge on the corrupt platform of Ming Dynasty.
He can’t wait any longer, and neither can Ming.
Since normal methods could not save the Ming Dynasty from fire and water, he wanted to try the bandit's method.
The bandit's method is very effective... In just the two thousand miles from Chang'an to the capital, he had more than a thousand loyal subordinates.
Now, it’s time to arm these people.
He once overheard a senior brother saying that in the fourteenth year of Chongzhen's reign, the county magistrate ordered the Lantian troops in the capital, Hebei, and Shandong to evacuate quickly, in order to leave a place for Emperor Chongzhen. The next fairer battlefield.
Of course, objectively it also opened the door for Li Hongji to enter these three places.
In the Secret Intelligence Department, the order for the men in black to evacuate these three places was extremely urgent. The people evacuated quickly, but a lot of equipment was left behind and was sealed in these three places.
Because these equipments are old, they are of little use to Lantian, who has already upgraded to the latest weapons, and can be bought and sold...
Therefore, Mu What Tian Tao has to do now is to find the spies in Lan Tian who stayed in the capital to check the direction of the wind, and then buy these weapons back from them.
When you arm your thousands of men, you will definitely have more money to buy the weapons that Lantian has sealed. In that case, you can arm more people.
Only in this way can he be qualified to fight when Li Hongji's million-strong army attacks.
"If I want to be a good boy, I will turn this world upside down. Only in this way can I live up to my name as Prince Mu's Mansion and my great name in Yushan Academy!
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Xia Wanchun, you have made great achievements in Hexi, let’s see how I can make a difference in the capital!”