Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 146: The Gentry in Jiangnan Admits

Now the entire South Zhili has police agencies from towns to prefectural capitals and county towns. These police agencies use military control and will kill anyone who disturbs public order or violates the law. This makes it impossible for the gentry's minions, those young scoundrels, to disrupt the normal social order of the people.

Some lawless people who wanted to follow these young scoundrels to rob and steal and cause trouble, when they saw that the imperial court organized people to maintain public order and directly take people's lives, they all went back home and honestly worked on the fields.

Even those peasants who were bewitched by the gentry and became bandits began to return to their hometowns to farm, especially after several bandit leaders were beheaded. After all, the cost of breaking the law was too high and it was not as practical as farming.

In general, most people hope for social peace. The imperial court has the legitimacy to rule, and organizing police soldiers based on the Jinyiwei to maintain local public order and replace the public service functions of gentry at the grassroots level is in line with the will of the people.

Therefore, the common people were still very welcoming. Even the large number of tenants who farmed the land for the gentry hoped to be able to farm in peace and that society would not be in chaos.

But for the gentry, they were clearly beginning to lose the power to rule the people at the grassroots level. Unless they could legitimately argue that the court's way of sending police soldiers to maintain public order was wrong and convince the people, they would not be able to stop the court from doing so.

At this time, these gentry realized that they were different from the aristocratic families of the Han and Tang dynasties. They had no army, no followers, only tenants and slaves. They had no way to mobilize the tenants and slaves to rebel directly, telling them that what the court was doing was wrong.

After all, the emperor at that time did not make the people live a miserable life, nor did he order them to shave their heads, change their clothes and stop worshipping their ancestors, nor did he impose additional taxes.

The imperial court could take advantage of this social unrest to directly establish a police department. Because the imperial court had the legitimacy to rule, it could recruit local people to organize police soldiers to maintain public order, which was legitimate and in line with the psychology of the people who wanted peace and stability.

The so-called treacherous ministers in power and even the cruelty of the emperor, naturally the common people did not feel it as strongly as the gentry. They had to farm, do business, and work, and you could not ask them not to work. You gentry could make trouble, but we common people could not.

Wei Du, a local squire in Yingtian Prefecture, watched as the police soldier brought his son back from the mountain and chopped off his head with a single click. He almost fainted from anger, but was helpless because he didn't dare to admit that the man was his son. After all, the people were cheering and saying that these bandits had done a good job of killing him.

In fact, the power of the gentry to rule the grassroots was given to them by the imperial court. It was the imperial court that granted its own power to rule the grassroots of society to these clans. Naturally, the imperial court did this to save administrative costs, but now the imperial court is willing to take up the courage to organize personnel to maintain local public order, and the gentry cannot raise any objection.

Gradually the gentry realized that they had made a mistake. They gave the imperial court a legal opportunity to interfere in local grassroots administration. Just as in the past the government would only intervene in criminal cases such as deaths, now because of the poor local security, the government has intervened again and will have to intervene for a long time.

This would mean that the gentry would only be able to manage the internal affairs of the clan and would not be able to control the entire village.

Even the power of these gentry within the clan began to be deprived by the police soldiers. In a village in Jurong County, several members of the gentry Liu family were arrested for disrupting public order. The patriarch of the Liu family wanted to handle the matter within his own clan, but the police soldiers followed the court decree and chopped off the heads of these members first.

The members of the Liu clan were extremely angry, but they could not deny that these clan members were innocent, nor could they deny that the court should not have killed these people, so they could only accept it.

Of course, some gentry directly mobilized clan forces to kill police soldiers and seize police stations on the grounds that the police department violated the law. A police station in Ren'an Town, Lishui County was massacred by the local gentry Lei Juren, and 50 police soldiers were killed, but this aroused the anger of the self-cultivating farmers and common landlords in the entire Ren'an Town, because most of the police soldiers were their clansmen, and now they were killed, they were naturally angry. You can't rely on your large number of people to violate the principles of morality, not to mention that these clansmen were organized by the court, which is legal and reasonable.

Therefore, the officials of Lishui County reported the matter. Zhu Houzhao finally dispatched a battalion of the Imperial Guards, which wiped out the entire Lei family on the grounds that the Lei family was scheming a rebellion. The Lei family's property was confiscated, and the land was distributed to local self-cultivating farmers and common landlords. The people all applauded.

The imperial court not only maintained public order on behalf of these gentry, but also took over their other public service duties.

Under the instructions of Zhu Houzhao, the governor of Southern Zhili also began to organize the government to repair and manage rivers on behalf of local gentry, took the initiative to gather refugees and implement work-for-relief, persuaded or forced businessmen to open businesses, set up government-run workshops and community schools to provide employment opportunities for the poor at the bottom, and proposed the concept of wages to absorb urban migrant workers who were refused by the gentry.

The gentry were good at organizing the people to maintain local stability. Local officials such as Wang Yangming were also born into gentry families and were scholars. They were just as good at organizing people to maintain public order, and it was more legal. The only thing that came with it was a rapid increase in the funds for maintaining stability. But it also made the gentry realize that they could survive without the court.

Now the third year of Zhengde is about to arrive, this year is the year of the imperial examination. The gentry in the south of the Yangtze River have begun to realize that the gentry in their area cannot shake the ruling position of the court. If they mess up their hometown, the court will send gentry from other places to maintain public order in the name of government.

That means that in the upcoming imperial examinations, the court will give more quotas for admission to the Jinshi degree to gentry from other places, while the gentry from Southern Zhili will have their quotas reduced because they do not cooperate with the court.

In fact, gentry from other places did begin to smell the opportunity here. Tang Renze, a member of the Household Department, submitted a memorial requesting an increase in the admission ratio of provincial and metropolitan examinations in Sichuan, Henan, Shaanxi, Huguang, Fujian and other places, and that the quotas be allocated according to regions instead of simply according to examination results. In addition, because of the recent unrest in Southern Zhili and the lack of interest of scholars in taking the imperial examinations, the number of quotas should be reduced.

It was precisely because of this that the gentry in Jiangnan began to become afraid. Unless they rebelled and established independence, they could only watch the court give benefits to gentry in other regions, and they, the gentry in Jiangnan, would suffer great losses, and they might not even have anyone to serve as an official in the court in the future.

As a result, some gentry in the south of the Yangtze River began to take the initiative to help the police department maintain public order, suppress bandits and arrest thieves, and even took the initiative to open markets. They also learned from the state-run workshops and began to recruit vagrants as workers. They even escorted lawbreakers within the clan directly to the government instead of dealing with them internally.

Cheng Jian, a great scholar who had served as a doctor in the Ministry of Justice, stood in the scorching sun one day to ask for an audience with the Prime Minister Ma Wensheng, in order to negotiate peace. Zhu Houzhao personally summoned Cheng Jian and asked him, "Mr. Cheng, why are you asking for an audience with the Prime Minister despite the scorching heat?"

"Your Majesty! I want to ask the Prime Minister to advise Your Majesty to abolish the warning period, return to the rule of law, establish tax laws and conventions, punish gentry who do not pay taxes, and reward those who assist the government and make contributions. In addition, I have called on all the Cheng clans to pay all the taxes owed before the first year of Zhengde. I only hope that Your Majesty will understand the hearts of the people in Jiangnan and not abandon them. The people in Jiangnan still think of Your Majesty and the Ming Dynasty! Woohoo! Long live our emperor! The holy monarch is in power, and the feast of prosperity is about to begin!"

As Cheng Jian said this, he knelt down and kowtowed three times and nine times to Zhu Houzhao.

Thanks to my book friend Ye Yu-Qing Kuang* for his 1800 Qidian coins reward. Thank you to my book friend Xi Li De Jin Zhe for his 500 Qidian coins reward.

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(End of this chapter)