There is no such thing as the Kangxi and Qianlong eras

Chapter 392 The Bundlings

Nanjing.

Nie Yu has received a reply from the Guangzhou government; the Portuguese in Macau have compromised.

With the signing of the Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Macau, the Han Chinese regained all rights to Macau, but did not expel the Macanese Portuguese.

Although the Han Dynasty has officially opened its seas, and the status of Guangzhou Port will rise rapidly, it does not mean that Macau Port will become useless immediately.

In the early stages of the opening of the sea route, the Port of Macao will certainly continue to serve as a connecting port to the new port of Guangzhou, diverting some of the overseas trade cargo ships from the Port of Guangzhou.

Even in modern times, there are still 20,000 to 30,000 Macanese people who hold Chinese citizenship and are legally Chinese citizens. They can speak Cantonese, Portuguese, and Parthian (a dialect unique to Macanese people).

"After Macau, it's Qiongzhou Prefecture and Nan'ao Island." Nie Yu put down the reply memorial from Guangzhou and looked at the map of the Han Dynasty's territory and power on the wall behind him.

Qiongzhou Prefecture was still under the control of the puppet Qing Dynasty. It was different from Taiwan Prefecture. Although both were large island prefectures in the open sea, Qiongzhou Prefecture was developed earlier and had a larger Han population.

In Taiwan Prefecture of Fujian, the Han Chinese population is still less than one million, and the area is not fully developed. There are also many unincorporated savages. In contrast, the Han Chinese population of Qiongzhou Prefecture is at least several million.

The reason for such a big difference is that Taiwan Prefecture was indeed isolated overseas. Even though the Qing Dynasty relaxed immigration restrictions on Taiwan Prefecture in the mid-to-late period, it was still not easy for ordinary people to go to Taiwan.

Qiongzhou Prefecture is different. It has some connection with the mainland. Although you still have to take a boat, the distance is very close and it is not as dangerous as crossing the ocean.

After capturing Qiongzhou Prefecture, the Han Dynasty had already decided on a plan: first, to block all sea routes around Qiongzhou Prefecture, and then to send ships to the island to deliver a proclamation urging surrender.

It would be best if they were willing to surrender, but it doesn't matter if they don't. It just so happens that Cai has transferred Liang Yong's naval forces to Guangdong, which can be used to transport Han troops to the island to fight.

Nan'ao Island is different from Qiongzhou Prefecture. It was a key coastal defense town set up by the puppet Qing Dynasty between Fujian and Guangdong.

Geographically, it was under the jurisdiction of Guangdong Province, and militarily, it was under the control of the Fujian Naval Commander-in-Chief. It was the only general under the puppet Qing dynasty to be under dual jurisdiction across provinces.

Fujian has been blockaded by the Han army, with checkpoints set up at every turn on land, and the transport of salt and grain is completely prohibited. On the sea, Cai Qian's fleet is out patrolling every day. He does not confront the Fujian navy directly, but instead drives away ships coming to Fujian from the outside world and prevents ships that attack Fujian from leaving.

Fujian Naval Commander Li Nanxin was a brave man, but he was too old. Several times he tried to go to sea to fight Cai Qian, but he exhausted the people and wasted money. He couldn't capture Cai Qian at all, and in the end, he fell ill.

With Li Nanxin, the only capable naval admiral, falling ill, the Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang, Jue Luo Changlin, was completely afraid to fight and could only shrink the defensive line, forbidding the navy from launching any offensive.

To be honest, given the current situation, it's only a matter of time before Fujian is taken over by the Han army. Jue Luo Changlin really wants to surrender, but he really doesn't dare to!

He had heard about the fate of the Manchus in Hangzhou. All Manchu men over the age of ten were killed and turned into mounds of corpses, while Manchu women were all forced to marry Han men as concubines. The surviving Manchu children were sent to orphanages to be raised.

Moreover, everyone was given Han names and surnames, and was no longer allowed to use Manchu language or script, nor to refer to themselves as bannermen or Manchus.

It wasn't a complete extermination, but it was even more terrifying than that, because it completely annihilated the Manchu and Banner peoples as ethnic groups.

The Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang, Jue Luo Changlin, retreated to the interior of Fujian and dared not go out to sea to fight. Even the Taiwan Prefecture, which was on the outer sea defense line, was half abandoned. Fujian had basically no hope left.

Shen Xuan, the commander-in-chief of Nan'ao, who oversees both Fujian and Guangdong, currently has no clear allegiance. He is from Gui'an, Zhejiang, and the entire province of Zhejiang has long been taken over by the Han. If the puppet Qing dynasty still controls Guangdong and Fujian, he would certainly be dismissed and left idle.

However, eastern Guangdong has now been captured by the Han army, and Chaozhou Prefecture is being conquered by Zhu Wu's army. Fujian is temporarily safe, but with its land and water routes blocked, and Governor-General Jue Luo Changlin holed up in the open, its fall is only a matter of time.

Therefore, General Shen did not surrender immediately, but instead focused his forces on Nan'ao Island and waited for the situation to develop.

In plain language, he'll vote for whoever arrives at Nan'ao Island first.

Nie Yu put down the report from Guangdong and casually wrote in red ink: "Read. Put the people first, there is no need to be too hasty."

The Han army has no problem taking over the entire Guangdong province. The problem is that the army and officials are too eager to make a name for themselves, which may leave the people with a negative impression of the Han dynasty's oppressive rule.

The approved memorials were set aside, and then the next one was randomly drawn.

Upon opening it, I found it was presented by the newly established Dali Temple. After quickly glancing over it, I immediately felt a strange expression on my face.

The memorial mentioned two cases.

The first incident occurred in a small restaurant in Hangzhou. A few ordinary diners were eating and chatting when, somehow, the conversation drifted to the now-defunct Mancheng. Then, a drunken diner at a neighboring table overheard them talking about Mancheng and said that what they were saying was all wrong and completely fabricated.

The people at that table who were bragging were incredibly polite. They asked this guy if he was looking for trouble, and how he knew they were just making things up.

The drunk man claimed to be a Manchu, so how could he not know the situation in Manchu City?
Then, he was reported.

The magistrate of Qiantang County took the matter very seriously and immediately arrested people for investigation. If they were indeed Manchus, this would be a major case, indicating that some of those who had escaped the net during the beheadings and the construction of the Jingguan in Hangzhou were still brazenly staying in Hangzhou.

Unfortunately, the magistrate of Qiantang County, with the mindset of solving a major case, only discovered after much trouble that the drunkard was neither a Manchu nor a Bannerman, but simply a Bannerman slave or bondservant from the former Hangzhou Manchu city.

The case should have ended there.

Although the magistrate of Qiantang County was somewhat indignant and regretful, he did not risk killing innocent people to claim credit, and released the man after giving him fifteen strokes of the cane.

After all, this could be considered disrupting the order in the city, and falsely claiming to be a Manchu was itself a suspicious offense.

But after the beating was finished and the person was released, suddenly a number of banner slaves who had been released after the city was razed to the ground ran out.

These banner slaves, who had only regained their civilian status because of the arrival of the Han army, actually petitioned the county government in a joint letter, requesting that their previous status be restored.

What status?
Of course, they were bondservant slaves.

Good heavens, this move completely baffled the magistrate of Qiantang County. He originally wanted to use the power of the government to drive them away, but unfortunately there were too many petitioning "lackeys," so many that even the county government was struggling to cope.

The magistrate of Qiantang County could not solve the problem on his own, so he had to report it to the prefect of Hangzhou. The prefect of Hangzhou was also stunned when he received the news.

The news was reported up the chain of command, eventually reaching the Zhejiang Provincial Governor.

Zhejiang currently has no governor, only a provincial treasurer, who was promoted by Zhao Zhijie, the prefect of Hengzhou. As a veteran of the Han Dynasty, he certainly has the qualifications.

Although he was only the prefect of Hengzhou before, the local bureaucratic system of the Qing Dynasty in Zhejiang was already rotten. Nearly half of the officials were released just because of the anti-drug campaign, resulting in a serious shortage of officials. There were no provincial governors or provincial judges left.

Nie Yu simply promoted Zhao Zhijie from among his old guard in Hubei and Hunan. Zhao Zhijie was one of the few with a clean background who wasn't involved in the joint petition incident from years ago. He was always diligent and conscientious in his work, and while his achievements weren't outstanding, he never made a mistake.

It was already quite remarkable that there were no mistakes. When Zhao Zhijie left office, the people even spontaneously presented him with a "Ten Thousand People's Umbrella" as a gesture of goodwill.

When Zhao Zhijie, the Zhejiang Provincial Governor, received this outrageous case from Qiantang County, he did not treat it hastily. Instead, he presented it as a secondary case and directly reported it to the central government in Nanjing.

The Ministry of Justice believed that this was absolutely unacceptable. The Han Dynasty had abolished the slave system; how could there still be slaves? The ignorant "commoners" who had jointly petitioned should be immediately expelled, and those who colluded with them should be fined silver and stripped of their land. The Court of Judicial Review, however, argued that these "commoners" who wanted to revert to slavery could no longer be considered commoners. The Han Dynasty had given them a second chance to be human, but they didn't cherish it and instead wanted to continue being slaves. Therefore, a strong crackdown was needed; all the petitioning "commoners" should be exiled to mines and wilderness to mine and cultivate the land.

This is not a time of peace and prosperity, but a chaotic era of vying for supremacy. We cannot forget that there is still war going on outside just because the emperor and court of the Han Dynasty are considerate and love the people.

In times of chaos, severe punishments are necessary; leniency and magnanimity are qualities that should be present in times of prosperity.

In summary, the Ministry of Justice was relatively conservative, advocating lenient punishment and that the law should not punish the masses, while the Court of Judicial Review was more radical, believing that the law should be strict and severe, and that the law should hold the masses accountable.

The Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review had conflicting opinions, so the Court of Judicial Review reported the matter to him.

After reading the report from the Court of Judicial Review, Nie Yu thought for a moment and then summoned Dai Yi, the Minister of Justice, and Tian Ming, the Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, and asked them, "What were you two thinking, arguing so fiercely over the report and bringing this matter to my attention?"

A mere bunch of spineless sycophants who want to be lackeys could not possibly allow the powerful officials of the two major judicial systems to actually fight a war of words, let alone make a scene before the emperor.

Their true aim was to seize control of the new dynasty's judicial system.

The Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice are theoretically on the same level.

However, the Ministry of Justice was one of the earliest institutions established by the Han Dynasty. Even before the emperor became king, the Ministry of Justice already had its staff. The Court of Judicial Review, on the other hand, was only established at the beginning of the new dynasty and was separated from the Ministry of Justice. Not only did it take away the power of the Ministry of Justice, but it also took away many of its officials.

Tian Ming, the current Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, was promoted from the former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Justice.

How could Dai Yi tolerate this?

Even if Dai Yi could tolerate it, the Ministry of Justice under his command could not simply do nothing after losing so much real power.

Engaging in verbal battles with the Court of Judicial Review on minor cases does not affect the actual political situation. It can both convince the people and let the emperor know that there is no lingering connection or collusion between the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice.

Nie Yu, of course, could see through this, so he simply summoned the two men and gave them a symbolic reprimand: "I know this case is difficult to handle, but for such a minor case, the results from the Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review are completely contradictory, which is going too far. Just like the case of Wang Wengong and Sima Zi's Ayun in the Northern Song Dynasty, that case was also repeatedly debated and remained unresolved for a long time. I do not want my new Han Dynasty, which should be thriving, to see a similar situation occur!"

"The minister obeys the order!"

Upon hearing the emperor's rebuke, Dai Yi and Tian Ming broke out in a cold sweat and quickly responded in unison.

They all understood what the emperor meant: competition was fine, but it couldn't be brought into actual work.

There was no way around it; the "Ayun Case" of the Northern Song Dynasty was simply too famous, to the point that it would be recorded in history.

The details of the "Ayun case" are very simple. A 13-year-old girl named Ayun was married off by her uncle to an old bachelor in the village after her mother died. In exchange for a few bushels of rice, Ayun was unwilling and impulsively went in with a knife in the middle of the night to kill him. However, in her panic, she only managed to cut off one of the old bachelor's fingers.

From a modern perspective, this would be considered attempted murder, though the circumstances weren't particularly egregious.

Because the young girl Ayun was forced into marriage by her uncle, the county magistrate who was presiding over the case believed that this was "murder of her husband," which was punishable by death. After the case was classified in the county, it was sent to the prefecture. Coincidentally, Xu Zun, the prefect of Dengzhou at the time, was upright and incorruptible and familiar with the law.

Xu Zun believed that according to the law, since A-Yun was still in mourning and could not marry, it could not be considered murder of her husband. She could be punished, but not sentenced to death.

This was considered a strict enforcement of the law, with sound reasoning and evidence. However, when the case was reported to the imperial court, the Dali Temple raised objections, arguing that it was not only murder of one's husband but also marriage during mourning, thus adding to the severity of the crime.

The case was transferred from Dali Temple to Dengzhou. Prefect Xu got angry and argued back, believing that since A-Yun had surrendered herself, her sentence should be reduced and she should be spared the death penalty according to the laws of the Song Dynasty.

The case was then reported to higher authorities, and the Dali Temple upheld the original verdict.

Prefect Xu was now out of options. He had upheld the original verdict twice and had no reason to push it back. But just then, he was promoted to the position of Minister of the Court of Judicial Review.

As a result, he became the highest-ranking official in the Court of Judicial Review and directly sent the case back to the court, rejecting the previous rulings of the Court of Judicial Review against the rebels.

Upon hearing of this case, the censor impeached Xu Zun for "perverting the law".

At this point in the case, nothing else mattered anymore, because the investigation had failed to yield any results. The Court of Judicial Review and the Censorate were arguing, and according to the rules, the case should be transferred to the Hanlin Academy scholars for discussion.

Among the Hanlin scholars, two prominent figures, Wang Anshi and Sima Guang, also argued fiercely over this case.

Wang Anshi strongly supported Xu Zun, believing that he should be treated leniently, while Sima Guang insisted that A Yun should be executed.

The case dragged on for years, driving Emperor Shenzong of Song to his wits' end, prompting him to issue a special decree to pardon A-Yun. However, this was met with joint opposition from Sima Guang and Wang Anshi. Sima Guang argued that the emperor was disregarding the law, while Wang Anshi believed that the emperor was making a mountain out of a molehill and that the case was likely to become an exception.

after that……

Wang Anshi implemented reforms and gained power. Ayun was given a lenient sentence and was able to leave alive, where she married and had children.

When Wang Anshi's reforms failed and Sima Guang regained power, he immediately arrested A-Yun, who already had children, and had her convicted and executed.

Nie Yu specifically summoned the two of them and explained the "Ayun case," which made his meaning quite clear: he did not want the competition to extend to their work.

Seeing that both of them understood, Nie Yu was relieved and then brought up the handling of the cases in the memorial: "The Hangzhou slave case is not comparable to the A-Yun case. If we were to discuss it, it would be simple. The Ministry of Justice believes that a fine should be imposed, while the Court of Judicial Review believes that exile should be imposed. In that case, let's just punish them together!"

Upon hearing this, Dai Yi and Tian Ming were both somewhat confused. What did it mean to punish them together?
Nie Yu continued, "Since these lowly bastards are so eager to become slaves, then I will grant them this favor. I will have the Ministry of Revenue immediately re-register them and stop making them into household registers as Han Chinese. Instead, I will register them as slaves or bondservants!"

"I hereby grant special permission to establish a separate group of bondservants in addition to the Han, Yao, and Miao ethnic groups. Their full name will be bondservants. All bondservants are allowed to study, but they are not allowed to participate in the imperial examinations, nor can they enjoy the tax reductions under the new policies. Furthermore, the land they cultivate will be subject to an additional 20% tax."

"Furthermore, the descendants of bondservants also follow this rule. To be freed from the status of bondservants, they must intermarry with Han people for three generations before they can become Han people again. However, if a bondservant's daughter intermarries with a Han person within two generations, she can become a Han person again."

"Of course, I can also grant them additional favors. If they do not want to return to being Han Chinese, they can continue to be bondservants. In addition to paying taxes on their land, bondservants must bring their own food and bear all the government's corvée labor without pay."

Good heavens, these policies have stunned Dai Yi and Tian Ming.

That emperor is really ruthless!
Although it seems that no one was killed, no one was fined, and no one was exiled or arrested, the implementation of these policies was even more ruthless than killing these people.

It's easy to imagine that if these policies continue to be implemented, these spineless sycophants who want to be slaves will simply not be able to tolerate it.

It wasn't just a matter of increased taxes and forced labor; they also faced criticism and gossip. Moreover, this combination of policies effectively reduced them to the same status as Manchu and Manchu women.

Manchu and Manchu women could marry Han men to cleanse their bloodline, but for these bondservants, it was almost impossible for men to find wives except through intermarriage within the same community.

If one cannot marry a Han Chinese woman, one's bloodline will never be truly clean.

Add to that the daughter of a bondservant, and the bloodline can be cleansed in two generations.

This is forcing the bondservant men to only have daughters, making their lineage extinct!
(End of this chapter)