Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 312 Anti-corruption and bribery?! Guards, escort the Emperor to the water!
After the Jin dynasty was established, the left and right provincial governors of Shanxi came. Taiyuan was a hub for officials; usually, the governor, the military commissioner, the provincial commander, and the provincial judicial commissioner were all concentrated in Taiyuan.

Therefore, after entering Shanxi, Zhu Youjian went straight to Taiyuan without stopping along the way, in order to wipe out the entire bureaucracy in Shanxi before they could react.

In the assessment report submitted by the Ministry of Personnel, Tang Simei and Sun Zhimian, the provincial governors of Shanxi, were considered to have performed quite well. However, the problem was that all twenty-eight provincial governors of the fourteen provincial administrations in the Ming Dynasty were doing a good job, and there were few incompetent officials in the prefectures and counties.

What Zhu Youjian saw was that the political clarity of the Ming Dynasty had reached an unparalleled level, with a truly just and righteous court, and the dynasty was firmly moving towards a great revival. But was it possible?

Zhu Youjian didn't exchange many words with the Shanxi Provincial Governor, lingering at the city gate for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, which he felt was already quite a delay. Zhang Honggong was dismissed from his post on the spot, and Cao Bianjiao led a large army into the city to take over the Taiyuan garrison and manage the city's defenses.

The focus of city defense should be on internal defenses, not external defenses; the goal was at least to seal off the city gates and the dog holes in the city walls of Taiyuan. Cao Huachun led 500 soldiers to garrison the Prince of Jin's residence in the northeast corner of Taiyuan and take over the residence's defenses.

Immediately afterwards, Zhu Youjian arrested all the officials, high and low, in Taiyuan without any reason. Zhu Youjian had ultimately become the very thing he hated; he was going to start fighting corruption, arresting first and then interrogating.

He wants to thoroughly investigate whether someone is guilty or not before deciding, but he also wants to purge the Shanxi officialdom first, so that he will have the confidence to do other things. In terms of national governance, governing the people is much more difficult than governing officials.

If anti-corruption efforts are carried out by officials like censors and imperial inspectors, they still need to work hard to gather evidence and face perfunctory supervision from local authorities. Even if all that is accomplished, they still have to face many complex issues such as factional struggles within the court and the emperor's trust and choices upon returning.

But with the emperor personally involved, these difficulties were reduced to a minimalist approach. This was a table-flipping, violent purge, which is why officials were so resistant to the emperor's southern tour.

In the early Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang established thirteen provincial administration commissions to replace the administrative system of the Yuan Dynasty. The term "province" was only used among the common people and would never appear in official documents of the court.

Each department has two commissioners. The Left Commissioner is the most senior and is responsible for the province's finances. Simply put, he collects money from the local areas and then transfers it to the central government, or, according to the government's orders, transfers it to nearby military towns. The Right Commissioner is mainly responsible for the province's civil affairs, such as building bridges and roads and providing disaster relief. In short, he is in charge of spending money.

Ultimately, Tang Simei, the Left Provincial Administration Commissioner in charge of collecting the money, passed the test. Only three hundred taels of silver were found in his official residence, which was the usual amount paid to his subordinates over the years. He neither refused to accept it nor took more than his share; this was a bad practice in the Ming Dynasty officialdom, and Zhu Youjian chose to tacitly approve of it. If even this were investigated, all the officials, including the senior and junior officials, and even figures like Hong Chengchou and Sun Chuanting, would have been imprisoned.

Zhu Youjian couldn't distinguish between the chicken and the egg problem either. The salaries of officials at all levels in the Ming Dynasty were the lowest in history. Inflation was an objective reality, but the salaries remained almost unchanged from the beginning to the end of the Ming Dynasty. Only during festivals would the emperor give out some bonus money as a subsidy, but such subsidies generally did not reach the hands of local officials.

If Zhu Youjian had been in that position, he probably wouldn't have been able to remain completely honest and upright either. After all, being an official has its own dignity, and you have a large family to support; not everyone is like Hai Rui.

Such idealism is ultimately a minority; most people are still very utilitarian. Zhu Youjian would at most declare the greater good of the nation and its people, but he would never waste a word on the private morality of officials. If he was determined, he would directly deal with them instead of holding meetings and shouting a few anti-corruption slogans.

Sun Zhimian, who was in charge of spending money, was doomed. Cao Huachun told Zhu Youjian that Sun Zhimian was Wei Zhongxian's man. If it weren't for the fear of his eunuchs becoming disloyal, Zhu Youjian would have already wanted to kill Wei Zhongxian.

As his power and position became more consolidated, Wei Zhongxian's role diminished, while his past debts were increasingly exposed.

However, Zhu Youjian could not kill Wei Zhongxian, otherwise the image of a benevolent ruler that he had painstakingly cultivated would collapse, and his callousness of abandoning his benefactors would become known to everyone, leading to disloyalty and the demise of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, Zhu Youjian could only hope that Wei Zhongxian would die of old age soon, thus completing a smooth transition.

Tang Simei clearly handled more money and grain, but he did not steal. Zhu Youjian released him, cleared his name, and gave him some imperial items to calm his nerves.

Sometimes, Zhu Youjian also felt that he was quite outrageous. Tang Simei was by no means the kind of honest official that the common people would think of under their simple values, but in the context of the late Ming Dynasty, he was indeed a rare good official.

He always stayed at the government office and did not own any property there. Sun Zhimian, on the other hand, owned a super mansion with seven courtyards in Taiyuan City, and the gold, silver, treasures, antiques, and paintings in his house were worth no less than 100,000 taels of silver!

The land and houses, among other immovable properties, amounted to seventy or eighty thousand taels. Zhu Youjian allowed Sun Zhimian to defend himself, and if he could prove that these were his ancestral properties, perhaps he could be lenient.

Unfortunately, he came from a poor family. His grandfather was a Juren (a successful candidate in the provincial civil service examination), but his father was not. It was only when his ancestors' graves were blessed that he passed the imperial examination in the Gengxu year and became a third-class Jinshi (a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination). He then attached himself to Wei Zhongxian and rose rapidly through the ranks.

This is what Zhu Youjian regretted the most. Logically speaking, officials from humble backgrounds should be more sympathetic to the common people of their class. The emperors consciously promoted these poor scholars to counter those powerful and wealthy families.

As a result, these officials who had achieved upward social mobility became even more eager to sever ties with their social class, fawning over their superiors without any scruples and going to great lengths to integrate themselves, while displaying even greater greed and tyranny towards their subordinates.

Sun Zhimian is merely a snapshot of the officialdom in Shanxi. It should be said that what happened in Shanxi was a systemic corruption, and very few people were spared. And isn't the situation in Shanxi a snapshot of the entire Ming Dynasty?
Zhu Youjian was truly bewildered. Slaughtering all the corrupt officials in the land wasn't impossible for him now; at most, he could lead the Nine Border Army to conquer the entire country again. But what would happen after that?! Would the newly selected officials be free of corruption? Would the old and new noble families be free of corruption?!
It's hard to say whether a civil government or a military government is worse, but in order to maintain their own rule, a civil government is obviously much more reliable than a military government. This can be seen from the fact that Zhu Youjian ascended the throne in accordance with the imperial edict rather than through the Xuanwu Gate Incident.

To avoid executing all officials in Shanxi, Zhu Youjian had to lower the standards and severity of punishments. According to rank, lower-ranking officials received 100 taels of silver, increasing by 50 taels for each rank above them, with the second-rank official receiving 850 taels. Corrupt officials receiving less than this amount were fined and placed on probation. People like Sun Zhimian, however, could not be spared, but whether to execute him or not was a difficult decision for Zhu Youjian. After much deliberation, Zhu Youjian felt that execution was permissible, but he shouldn't be the one to do it. The case should be transferred to the Three Judicial Offices for joint trial, thus shifting the responsibility for the execution to them. The Three Judicial Offices couldn't just sit idly by and do nothing.

The joint trial by the three judicial authorities, in accordance with the established criminal code, inevitably resulted in Sun Zhimian being sentenced to death. The laws of the Ming Dynasty have always been quite effective, but it is clear that legislation has never been the focus of the rule of law work!
Zhu Youjian's usual tactic was to want to kill someone but make the court take the blame. This may seem redundant, but it was actually very necessary. It could significantly divert hatred and reduce the level of panic among officials.

After all, if the punishment is unknown, the emperor's authority is unpredictable. Even if the emperor kills people at will, he cannot escape punishment. Everything must have a suitable and convincing reason and go through proper procedures. No matter what the officials do in private, at least no one is willing to admit to being a corrupt official in public.

Zhu Youjian left a way out for corruption, but human lives could only be paid for with human lives. This was a matter of principle. Those who oppressed the people could not be forgiven. It was most hateful for officials to force the people to rebel. In the end, Zhu Youjian took the blame for the bad things they did. Even a clay figure has some temper!
The upheavals in Taiyuan City provided ample entertainment for the city's inhabitants. The high-ranking officials and local ruffians all kept a low profile. With the officials in ruins, what chance did these social outcasts have? They feared being caught in the storm raging above, and if the city gates hadn't been locked, they would likely have already fled to the countryside for refuge.

Zhu Youjian was pressed for time, so he decided to stay in Taiyuan for five days to post notices and encourage the city's residents to sue officials. He couldn't concern himself with trivial matters; he only dealt with serious cases involving the loss of life. Corruption could be tolerated, but murderers and those who protected murderers were to be executed.

Zhu Youjian was about to play the role of a righteous official. In fact, most of the so-called upright officials in history were fictional figures created by the people in their own wishful thinking, just to find a spiritual sustenance in a life of hardship.

The common people knew nothing about the imperial court, and publications like the "Collected Statutes of the Ming Dynasty" were never distributed to the lower classes. The court's reasoning was that if ordinary people were familiar with the details of how the Ming court operated, some would inevitably exploit loopholes, which would be detrimental to governing the country.

The common people only knew officials; in their eyes, officials were the imperial court, and officials represented the emperor. The people had long suffered under the oppression of officials. Zhu Youjian's upholding of justice for the people was a release of pressure on Ming society.

At the same time, it is also necessary to let these people bear witness that the court's handling of corrupt officials is not really due to internal strife, that the Ming Dynasty still has hope, that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty still loves the people, that although life is very hard, there is no need to rush to change dynasties, and that the rebels and Jurchens are all wicked and despicable!

Due to limited resources, it was difficult to find physical evidence for old, trivial matters, so Zhu Youjian had to rely on the testimonies of the people. To avoid wrongful convictions, he allowed the accused officials to defend themselves. If they were proven to be murderers, they would be dragged to the marketplace and beheaded; if they were found guilty of wrongdoing, they wouldn't be beheaded, but their official positions would still be stripped, and the classic practice of confiscating their property was indispensable.

These were merely things Zhu Youjian did on a whim, not particularly noble. His main purpose was to make money, using legitimate means to do so.

Perhaps only a minority of the people were able to seek justice, while many more had already been murdered and their entire families wiped out. Without victims, there was naturally no way to seek justice. Some of the murderers might have escaped, but at least it had a powerful deterrent effect. When they had evil intentions again, they would have to consider whether the emperor would suddenly send down justice to settle scores with them, and whether they would be so lucky as to escape the net again.

After this incident, Taiyuan City may be difficult to conquer in the future. The Great Wall built of stones can never compare to the Great Wall built by the human heart.

Due to the collapse of the military garrisons across the land, the governing body above the garrisons, the Commander-in-Chief's Office, was left with no troops to manage and became an empty shell, with the position of Commander-in-Chief remaining vacant for many years.

In the Ming Dynasty, most military officers below the rank of Commander were hereditary, while the position of Commander-in-Chief was appointed by the imperial court. However, hereditary officers often failed to achieve hereditary succession for some rather absurd reasons.

For example, Li Chengliang, a pillar of the Ming Dynasty, could not inherit his father's military position because he could not afford the travel expenses from Tieling in Liaodong to the capital to complete the hereditary procedures. It was not until he was over forty years old that his talents were discovered by Li Fu, an imperial inspector who was passing through Tieling.

Seeing Li Chengliang's extraordinary bearing, Li Fu generously provided him with funds to travel to Beijing, enabling him to obtain the position of military commander of Xianshan Fort. This marked the beginning of Li Chengliang's rise to prominence. But was what Li Chengliang truly lacking simply travel expenses?

Gong Qiong, the commander of the Taiyuan Left Guard, was in a similar situation. Geng Ruqi took him to the capital to meet the emperor, Zhu Youjian, who tested him in horsemanship and archery. He then sent Ma Xianglin to assess him, and naturally, Gong Qiong failed the test.

However, considering the appalling state of Taiyuan Left Guard, he was allowed to inherit the position, albeit a demotion. He could forget about becoming a commander; even a chiliarch position would be a stroke of good fortune. There was no point in restoring Taiyuan Left Guard; it could only be downgraded to Taiyuan Left Chiliarch Office.

Zhu Youjian unearthed three million taels of silver and seized hundreds of thousands of shi of stored grain in the ancient city of Taiyuan, a gratifying haul. Meanwhile, temples, Taoist monasteries, and Hui temples within Taiyuan were dealt with in the same manner as in the capital. Yangqu County, the county adjacent to Taiyuan and the site of the Shuangta Temple massacre, was also thoroughly searched, leaving no stone unturned, from officialdom to religious shrines.

While winning the favor of the people, Zhu Youjian did not forget to bribe his base. Although many generals in the Taiyuan garrison were arrested, the junior officers and soldiers who escaped were all rewarded. You have to treat people well when you have them working hard!

Land in Taiyuan was not as easy to sell as in the capital region. The wealthy locals were terrified, cowering in fear and trembling, not daring to flaunt their wealth for fear of being massacred by the emperor.

Therefore, Zhu Youjian simply changed the land ownership to public land, which was not allowed to be bought or sold by anyone, including local officials. These public lands were mainly allocated to the local garrisons.

The garrisons that should be downgraded were downgraded. None of the three garrisons in Taiyuan were spared. They were all downgraded to thousand-household garrisons. Even with this number of soldiers, they could not gather enough troops. They could only let them slowly recall the deserted military households.

This land did not belong to the garrison; it was merely lent to the garrison for use. The reason the garrison's land disappeared was clearly because the garrison officers led the way in selling it off!
(End of this chapter)