Chapter 407 Exile
Your Highness the Prince of Jing, are you going to lift it high and then put it down gently?

This was actually done intentionally by Zhu Houxuan. There was nothing he could do about it. All crows are black. If he investigated seriously, he would be able to send more than 80% of the officials to jail. However, punishing corruption was his means, not his ultimate goal.

His ultimate goal is to completely control the politics of Shuntian Prefecture!
If more than 80% of the officials in Shuntian Prefecture were sent to prison, the officials who came after him would also be equally dishonest...

In fact, all of the more than one hundred officials of high rank in Shuntian Prefecture had problems. But given the salary level of Ming Dynasty officials, if they were not greedy at all, their lives would surely be very tight. No one worked hard to become an official just to live this kind of life.

Therefore, Zhu Houxuan also expressed his understanding of this level of corruption.

Instead of sending them all in, it would be better to use this incident as a handle to arrest them and treat them as dogs.

Zhu Houxuan was planning to undermine the officials of Shuntian Prefecture, but he still had to be careful about his manners so that everyone would look good.

It has to be said that Zhu Houxun’s political tactics are becoming more and more mature.

This is why more than 60% of Shuntian Prefecture officials were retained.

Zhu Houxuan's attitude towards these officials was very simple. He welcomed them if they were willing to join him.

If you don't want to surrender, don't want to take sides, and want to keep a distance from him, that's fine too. Zhu Houxuan understands that too. After all, not everyone wants to be involved in the fight for the throne. All you have to do is cooperate with Zhu Houzhao's future policies in the te district of the capital, and just quietly and obediently serve as a rubber stamp.

As for the remaining 30% or more who were sent to the Ministry of Justice, it was because they had blood debts on their hands and had done things that were against the will of heaven and earth. Zhu Houxuan was disgusted even to have them as dogs, so he just sent them in and let the matter be.

This decision made the ministers in the court feel slightly relieved.

As for the clerks and runners who were annihilated, the ministers did not take them seriously. In their opinion, those clerks and runners were menial servants, so it was no pity to kill them all...

These clerks and yamen runners were wiped out and were also being cleaned up. If officials could theoretically remain honest by relying on their salaries, then clerks and yamen runners had no such possibility at all, because they had no salaries, and all their income was extorted from the people...

It is because of these corrupt officials that a Ming citizen has to pay several times more than normal taxes every year.
These corrupt officials also brought out some local tyrants and evil gentry, and Zhu Houxuan naturally dealt with them without mercy.
After the positions of these clerks and runners were vacated, the Royal Group employees who had been selected long ago filled them.
This move simply stunned the whole court. Although Zhu Houxuan had done this before, and had used the same method to replace the clerks of the Ministry of Revenue, it was the Ministry of Revenue after all, the Ministry of Revenue in charge of the household registration and finance of the whole country, so it was understandable that he spent so much effort to control it.
But why do you spend so much effort to control these counties? The ministers can also estimate the number of employees of the Royal Group mobilized by Zhu Houxuan. There are as many as three or four thousand people. One county needs about 150 people. There are more than 1,500 counties in the Ming Dynasty. If every county does this, how many people will be needed? And these people are not ordinary people, they are all young people who can write and count.
The ministers who were used to the fact that imperial power did not extend below the county level could not understand Zhu Houxuan's behavior.

In fact, it was a bit difficult for Zhu Houxuan to mobilize so many people. Although he had invested a lot in education in the capital over the past three years to build a complete education system, it was only three years after all, and it was not yet time for large-scale development and fruitful results. Qizhou, which had a more complete education system, had been continuously supplying suitable talents to the capital. It was these energetic young people who made Zhu Houxuan's idea possible.

When Zhu Houxuan completed this task in three months, the political power of the entire 24 prefectures and counties in the capital area from top to bottom was firmly in his hands.

However, this series of actions also produced a large number of prisoners. The officials were fine, but as many as three to four thousand clerks and yamen runners were arrested, and the same number of families were also involved.

As for the fate of these prisoners, Zhu Houxuan made a bold decision and sentenced those with slightly more serious crimes to exile!

During his time as regent, Zhu Houxuan also influenced the direction of Ming Dynasty's judicial decisions.
The direction of sentencing he insisted on was: "Severe sentences for medium crimes, light sentences for death sentences!"

Whipping, caning, imprisonment, exile, and death were the five types of punishment in the Ming Dynasty from lightest to heaviest. Zhu Houxuan's current principle was that judicial sentences should be sentencing to exile as much as possible!

Originally a prison sentence, it will be severely punished by exile, and a death penalty will be given a lighter sentence. Except for those death row inmates who have committed extremely heinous crimes and have had a very bad impact, the other death row inmates will be given a lighter sentence of exile.

The purpose is to increase the number of exiles.

If the Ming Dynasty wants to expand overseas vigorously, these criminals cannot be wasted but must be recycled and reused.

Opening up overseas is definitely not as beautiful and easy as imagined. It is not all blue sky and white clouds, sandy beaches and fruit trees. On the contrary, many places are poor and barren. There is no infrastructure at all. Everything has to start from scratch. It is also full of disease and death. The development of each overseas territory is very difficult, and the bodies of the pioneers are buried under each new overseas territory.
We must exile these criminals to the forefront of Ming's development to maximize their final value.
This is also the policy that Zhu Houxuan will adhere to for a long time in the future.

Including the more than 200 officials who were convicted before, Zhu Houxuan pardoned them from death penalty in order to exile them. After all, these officials had received many years of education. The overseas territories that the Ming Dynasty was now developing lacked people who could write and calculate. These convicted officials were also a beneficial supplement to the local area when they went to overseas territories. Even if they were to spread some of Confucius and Mencius's teachings and Confucianism, it would be worthy of their reading of the sage books for more than ten years.
Moreover, Zhu Houchun was not worried at all about what troubles these criminal officials would cause after being exiled to overseas territories. After all, when these criminal officials arrived there, they would have to face the poor and bad environment, the living conditions of sleeping in the open air and the barbaric and ferocious natives. Once these problems were overcome, if they still had the energy to seek revenge on Zhu Houchun, Zhu Houchun would accept it.

Of course, not all of these criminals were exiled to Southeast Asia. Liaodong Peninsula and the southwest of Ming Dynasty were also places of exile. However, these two places are now the places of exile for criminals with lighter crimes. For those with heavier crimes, they will be prepared to report to Southeast Asia.
(End of this chapter)

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