Chengqian Palace.
"Your Highness, those two are here."
After receiving the good news, Li Wen came to Zhao Ming as soon as possible to report the good news.
When Zhao Ming heard this, he immediately became happy and asked quickly: "Where is the list? Have you got it?"
Li Wen smiled and took out two booklets from his arms and handed them over respectfully.
"Your Highness, as soon as I got the news, I went to get the list. Now that the witnesses and material evidence are all there, I can give those scholars a drink!"
Zhao Ming took the list and hurriedly opened it and looked through it. However, after flipping through both lists, the smile on his face slowly faded away.
Li Wen saw it and said puzzledly: "Your Highness, is there anything wrong with this list?"
Zhao Ming shook his head and then asked: "Have you seen this list?"
Li Wen shook his head: "I brought it to you as soon as I got it. I haven't opened it yet."
Zhao Ming nodded, then sighed and said: "The list is true. Who took the money at what time and where. It is clearly recorded on this list. With just a little investigation, we can keep track of it." Ten caught the evidence.
The problem is, the fish are too small! "
"The fish is too small?" Li Wen wondered.
Zhao Mingdao: "There are many civil servants in this list. It can be said that everyone from the six ministries has a share, but there is only one thing. It is absolutely impossible that Prime Minister Zhang He did not intervene in this matter, but he is not included in this list. .
Even among the three ministers whose hearts belong to Lao Wu, only Wu Yuan, the minister of rites who just took office, is on this list.
But the ministers of the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Punishment were also absent.
This is like we made a lot of troubles and finally caught only one big fish, the Minister of Rites.
Still a useless big fish! "
Zhao Ming sighed, and Li Wen had an angry look on his face.
"Your Highness, could it be that those two people were hiding something and didn't give us the most important list? I'm going to interrogate them again now. I will definitely get the list of the Ministry of Punishment, the Ministry of Works, and Zhang He!"
Zhao Ming waved his hand and said:
“Okay, no need to waste your efforts, this list is probably all there is.
As for Zhang He and the others, how could those cunning and cunning people let their leverage fall into the hands of others.
I take it for granted that old treacherous ministers like them who have been in court for many years must be cautious enough.
Otherwise, they would have fallen long ago. It is indeed unreasonable to try to drag them into the water based on this matter alone. "
"Then...what should we do now?"
Li Wen's claws were numb.
Zhao Ming threw the single item in his hand to the ground and said coldly:
"Catch people! Small fish are also fish. Since you have eaten my bait, then give up your life.
If I can't catch the big fish, I will first remove all the small fish around the big fish. Next time I catch the big fish, there won't be so many miscellaneous fish blocking the way. "
Li Wen suddenly understood and nodded heavily: "I understand, Your Highness!"
After saying that, Li Wen turned around and left immediately.
Soon, the Imperial City Division was ordered by the prince of the prison state to arrest the Hedong army for embezzlement of salary and ink, which caused an uproar in the entire capital.
Nearly a hundred officials were involved in the case from all six departments of the imperial court. These days, the Imperial City Division was arresting people everywhere non-stop. Soon the dungeons of the Imperial City Division were full, and they even had to use the Prison Department's jail.
Originally, Li Wen thought it would be troublesome to borrow a prison cell from the Ministry of Justice. After all, the Minister of the Ministry of Justice belonged to the fifth prince.
But when the Imperial City Division passed by, the Punishment Department only checked the official documents to confirm that all the procedures were complete, and then directly lent the Punishment Department's prison.
During a visit to the Ministry of Punishment, the Imperial City Division also arrested a dozen officials from the Ministry of Punishment and imprisoned them directly in the jail of the Ministry of Punishment.
In just four days, one hundred and thirty-seven officials, big and small, involved in the case, ranging from Wu Yuan, the new minister of the Ministry of Rites, to an ordinary official in a certain department, were all arrested and brought to justice.
On the morning of the next day, Zhao Ming read out the charges of these people directly in front of the public, and all the witnesses and material evidence were included.
These officials involved in the Hedong army salary embezzlement case were sentenced to dismissal from office, ransacked their homes, and were exiled to the northwest of the three tribes for thousands of miles.
The criminals themselves were all beheaded.
Wu Yuan, the Minister of Rites with the highest official position, was directly punished by one level because of his official position.
Not only was he dismissed from office and beheaded, but his family members also directly barbarized the three tribes. All members of the nine other tribes outside the three tribes were deprived of all honors and were not allowed to participate in the imperial examination for three generations.
It can be said that this Minister of Rites, who had just taken office not long ago, single-handedly ruined the future of the entire family.
Before he had time to live a good life with his new minister, he was implicated in the blink of an eye.
After hearing the news, the tribesmen other than the Wu Yuan clan felt nothing but grief and anger, only special emotions that were as hard to describe as a sunken dog.
This big move by the imperial court directly led to vacancies in many departments of the Six Ministries, which directly affected the operation of the imperial court, which was naturally unacceptable.
But in this world, everything is lacking, except for people who want to be officials. After the prince and a group of civil servants headed by Prime Minister Zhang He pushed around for three days, the vacant position was occupied by the two of them with a 50% share each. Divided up.
The prince's power in the court once again increased on a large scale.
However, he is still at a disadvantage.
This loss of manpower is nothing more than a temporary pain for Zhang He, who has been up and down in officialdom for decades.
Now the seats are given out, but it's hard to say whether those people can sit firmly under their buttocks.
In this court, as long as he is not united for a day, getting as many party members as possible is just a waste of effort.
After various departments gradually resume operations, an important and urgent matter is placed on everyone's desk.
The border troops in Hedong are still arguing about their pay.
More than ten days have passed since I received the news.
I think all the generals who came to Hedong have been surrounded by Da Tou Ai for at least half a month.
If we don't solve it, we may starve to death in our own mansion!
Finally, after deliberation, the court sent Li Wen as the imperial envoy, ordered the Imperial City Military Department and sent 3,000 forbidden troops to escort the new army along the way to the border to distribute military pay to appease the border soldiers.
As for where the new military pay will come from, you have to ask the more than 100 officials whose homes were confiscated.
Many of these officials were from the southeast, and their families were already rich. In addition, half of the military pay was already embezzled. After the last raid, Zhao Ming discovered that after taking out the new military pay, he still had more than one million taels left. Money goes into your own pocket.
Of course, it was obviously paid into the emperor's internal funds, because a large part of the military salary was lent to the national treasury from the emperor's internal funds.
Now that these people had embezzled and confiscated the money, they would naturally return it to the internal funds. Originally, the officials did not agree, especially the Minister of the Ministry of Revenue.
But when Zhao Ming took out the documents documenting the money borrowed from internal funds by the Ministry of Household Affairs over the years, everyone shut up.
Today, the emperor's internal funds are the biggest creditor of the Ministry of Revenue.
If it weren't for the emperor's internal funds, how could the Song Dynasty's tax revenue, which was getting smaller and smaller year by year, support such a huge country.
The biggest impact of this pay dispute was not only on the civil servants, but also on the border troops. The same was true for the Ding family. Many of the Ding family members, most of whom were military generals, were surrounded.
Some of them were even killed directly by the angry pay soldiers, but it is not known whether these pay soldiers were really that angry.
This time, the Ding family also suffered a lot of losses due to the pay riot.
…
(End of chapter)
