My father is Yongzheng, and I am Qianlong?

Chapter 365 The Crown Prince has made the people terrifying; I am not alone!

Liu Tongxun's face lit up with a look of sudden enlightenment: "Your Highness is right, I was overthinking it."

"I heard your family also weaves cotton?"

At this point, Hongli asked about Liu Tongxun.

Upon hearing this, Liu Tongxun suddenly contracted the muscles on his face, and then replied, "I dare not hide it from Your Highness. Ever since my late father served as the prefect of Ningqiang and taught the local people to grow cotton, the cotton has been collected by the major silk weaving households in my hometown to weave cotton clothes for sale."

Hongli nodded: "Then I will also send people to your house to purchase the goods, and at the same time, your house will distribute them to the villagers on my behalf to spread my reputation."

Upon hearing this, Liu Tongxun immediately bowed his head and said, "On behalf of my hometown, I thank Your Highness for your great kindness!"

"Get up."

Hongli smiled faintly and then said, "But I have one request: your cotton must still be purchased only from the barren lands of Shaanxi and Gansu, and you must not purchase it from the Jiangnan region, which has always been a major cotton-growing area."

Liu Tongxun immediately understood Hongli's purpose and bowed, saying, "Your subject dares not disobey the Crown Prince's benevolent wishes!"

"That's good."

Hongli then looked at Songshou: "Since I wish to distribute wealth and spread benevolence, I cannot neglect to benefit the Manchus as well."

Upon hearing this, Songshou was in a state of utter confusion. Before Hongli could finish speaking, he prostrated himself on the ground.

Hongli smiled and said, "Your father once served as Minister of Works and had close relationships with many Han merchants. You can contact Han merchants for me and buy more rice and charcoal from them to help the lower-class Manchu people who are suffering from hunger and cold."

Songshou immediately kowtowed: "This servant obeys the decree and kowtows on behalf of the Manchu people to Your Highness for your great kindness."

"You should get up too."

"I didn't do this just to save face; I genuinely wanted to reduce the number of people of all races who would freeze to death."

"This will also encourage more Han merchants to mine coal in Mongolia, so that the Mongols can also have enough to eat and wear, and not have to flee because of the limited output of grazing and the excessive exploitation by the local princes."

As he spoke, Hongli walked outside the palace, reached out and caught the snowflakes fluttering down his face, and said with his back to the two men, "However, whether they are Manchus, Han Chinese, or even Mongols, since they have received my favor, they should not be ungrateful."

"I may not expect any reward from them, but I should at least do more to show loyalty and filial piety."

"In this way, my money as the crown prince will not have been wasted."

"To benefit the people is precisely to make them know etiquette when the granaries are full."

Hongli turned around and sat down in the chair by the fire: "Do you understand?"

"Slave understands!"

"I understand!"

Tears welled up in their eyes.

They then realized that the Crown Prince possessed great filial piety, which was why they were moved by him.

Hongli then picked up his teacup and said, "You may leave. The roads are slippery due to the snow. Please proceed with caution!"

"Your Highness, I thank you for your concern!"

Before we knew it, it was the twelfth month of the tenth year of the Yongzheng Emperor's reign.

In many prefectures and cities of Henan, posters exposing the deeds of corrupt gentry continue to appear and even increase.

Some gentry also considered stopping it, and together with the government and even personally contributed money and manpower, they arrested some people who posted the notices.

However, these people all confessed that they were instructed to do this by outsiders, and that they had to do it in order to gain benefits, without knowing the contents of the notice.

Yin Jishan also received instructions from Emperor Hongli to prioritize the well-being of the nation and its people, to be an impartial official, and to strictly prohibit local governments from detaining unsuspecting people without cause, demanding their release within a specified period. He even dismissed several county magistrates for this, on the grounds that they had condoned the gentry's misbehavior or had disturbed the people too much.

As a result, local officials who were close to the people dared not act recklessly and could only arrest and release the people, which in turn prevented the bad deeds of the local gentry from being spread far and wide.

However, Yu Hongtu still approached Yin Jishan and said, "Your Excellency, could you please allow the villagers in various places to arrest a group of outsiders and interrogate them properly? Otherwise, if this continues, the reputation of the scholars in this province may be ruined!"

"In a civilized and educated place, how can one take people away without cause?"

Yin Jishan refused without hesitation.

"Besides, if you are upright, you have nothing to fear. As long as it is slander, no matter how outrageous the fabrication, the people of this village will not believe it and will not cause any trouble. They may even unite against the enemy. At that time, I will have no choice but to allow the arrest of outsiders because of public opinion."

"Besides, you should know that the root of this matter is that this place has been slandering the Crown Prince, which has damaged the foundation of the country. If we go against the foundation of the country and prevent these accusations from appearing, then we are not showing consideration for the higher authorities!"

Yin Jishan bowed to the north as he finished speaking.

After hearing this, Yu Hongtu asked, "But what if, if this scandalous affair continues to spread, and some people stir up trouble, what if a situation like the peasant uprising against Dong Zhuo and the eunuchs that occurred in the late Ming Dynasty happens again?"

"First of all, our government cannot be lazy and negligent, and fail the country and its people. We must impeach and arrest any corrupt officials with solid evidence! This way, the rioters will have no chance!"

After saying this, Yin Jishan's expression turned serious.

Yu Hongtu felt a chill run down his spine and had no choice but to take his leave from Yin Jishan's place. Thump!
But when he returned to the school administration office, he heard a series of gong sounds on the way.

Yu Hongtu lifted the sedan curtain in frustration to see what was going on.

"By order of the Crown Prince, new cotton-padded clothes are to be distributed to benefit the people and promote education. Anyone who comes to this teahouse to listen to storytelling can take home a cotton-padded coat according to their household ticket!"

Before long, Yu Hongtu vaguely heard that a bondservant from the Imperial Household Department was standing outside a teahouse in Guide Prefecture, surrounded by many commoners wrapped in tattered cotton-padded coats.

These people all came out to buy necessities, so they were all carrying baskets.

Meanwhile, the servant was loudly proclaiming that the Crown Prince was going to distribute new cotton-padded clothes, and that these people had to go inside and listen to a story before they could receive the clothes.

Yu Hongtu naturally knew what the Crown Prince Hongli meant by "education"—it was nothing more than letting the people hear things like Sheng Mingkun raping and murdering his aunt.

"Speaking of the Guide Sheng family..."

At this moment, inside the teahouse, a storyteller was indeed reciting this passage.

"A sin!"

Yu Hongtu simply said this with a gloomy face, and then ordered a detour, not to disturb the teahouse where Hongli was educating the people.

……

Meanwhile, in Zhucheng, at the Weihe River wharf.

Liu Yong stood behind a flat-bottomed boat loaded with cotton-padded clothes, a smile on his face, watching his servants greet the passing people and shout some words.

"Time to get your cotton-padded coat! Follow me and me to memorize the twelve-character mantra that the Crown Prince used to persuade the people to be polite, and you can get a cotton-padded coat with your household registration certificate!"

The young Liu Yong was deeply moved by Crown Prince Hongli's act of kindness, feeling that the current Crown Prince was truly benevolent and loving towards the people, generous with his wealth, and would surely become a wise ruler in the future!

This inspired him to study harder and to serve the court in the future.

Because if he succeeds in the imperial examination and becomes an official, he will most likely enter officialdom after Hongli, the crown prince, ascends the throne.

Throughout the Qing Dynasty, there were still quite a few Han Chinese scholars who did not fully agree with the Qing government.

After all, the Qing court treated the scholar-officials too harshly and refused to promote Confucianism as the foundation of governance and to prioritize civil officials.

Therefore, many scholars who instinctively believed that they, as members of the scholar-official class, were the better men than soldiers, were not so eager to enter officialdom if they did not have a strong desire to become officials.

But things are different now. The performance of Crown Prince Hongli has made Liu Yong, who is young and naive, very optimistic about the future political climate, as he believes that scholars are the most moral and capable people.

Therefore, Liu Yong took the initiative to follow his father's instructions in the letter, wrote many posts, and posted them all over the city to publicize the Crown Prince's virtuous act of generosity and benevolence.

Moreover, in order to support the Crown Prince's actions, the Liu family did not price their own cotton-padded clothes high.

Of course, they didn't dare to make too much money off Prince Hongli.

Therefore, the Liu family was able to help Crown Prince Hongli distribute a lot of cotton-padded clothes, which also made many people who made a living along the river aware of Crown Prince Hongli's benevolence. Furthermore, the reputation of Crown Prince Hongli's benevolence spread to the Grand Canal area and then southward along the Grand Canal.

After reciting the "twelve-character motto" of Crown Prince Hongli, the two brothers Zhang Youtian and Zhang Youcai proudly put on their cotton-padded coats.

Having grown accustomed to the cold, the moment they put on their new cotton-padded coats, they felt as if a ball of fire had gathered around them. They looked at each other with joy, while carefully touching the coats with both hands, as if they were handling a fragile piece of porcelain.

The newcomers, seeing that the two brothers and other people had actually put on cotton-padded clothes because they had memorized the "Twelve-Character Proverb," ​​also came to participate. Some of them, even those who were not good at memorizing, were still scratching their heads and gritting their teeth as they memorized it.

Emperor Hongli spent so much money to send cotton-padded clothes, but his demands were not high. He just hoped that his "twelve-character motto" could be spread to the common people through the canal, so that his image of benevolence could bypass the gentry class and reach the grassroots directly.

Capital.

In the twelfth lunar month of that year, major rice and coal shops suddenly began providing free rice and charcoal to the local Manchu people on a limited-time basis.

Many Manchus also received rice and charcoal as a result, which greatly reduced the number of Manchus who died of freezing in the capital.

But these Manchus didn't take it for nothing.

Those who received the coal were Manchu bannermen who were mobilized to put their fingerprints on some proclamations, supposedly on the orders of the Crown Prince, calling on all Manchu bannermen to perform more acts of loyalty and filial piety.

These notices all contained praise for Emperor Yongzheng, stating that "When Emperors Wen and Jing were in power, they not only maintained order in the court but also helped the common people."

Many such proclamations appeared in quick succession, mainly because they were covered with numerous handprints, making them far more eye-catching than the previous proclamations that denounced Emperor Yongzheng as a tyrannical ruler.

"Fourth Brother, the style of these posts has changed a lot recently; many of them are praising you."

"All those who slander you are therefore almost as if they did not exist."

Yunli also presented some invitations to Yongzheng and began to speak to him with a smile.

At that moment, Emperor Yongzheng looked with tears in his eyes at the many handprints on a petition and exclaimed, "I am not alone!"

Then, Yongzheng said to Yunli and other Grand Councilors, "This is actually all thanks to Hongli. He used a lot of money to benefit and educate the people."

(End of this chapter)