An Xiyue said: "So, your father still distributed military rations to the people even though he knew it was a capital crime."
Fang Shan nodded, "Father has no choice. There is no food for sale even in Zhangzhou City. They have no choice but to run to places where there is food."
An Xiyue looked at Nangong Yuanyi and said, "I'm afraid someone deliberately forced Magistrate Fang into a desperate situation and forced him to use military rations."
Nangong Yuanyi said: "Where is the first batch of disaster relief food from the imperial court? When the disaster was not very serious, the imperial court sent a batch of food to Yuzhou and Zhangzhou."
"The grain allocated by the imperial court was indeed distributed to the people by Tu Taishou, but there were too many victims, so it was only a drop in the bucket. Many villages and towns did not know that the imperial court had allocated grain for disaster relief, so the grain was gone. For example, in Aunt Niu's family, Uncle Niu wanted to protect his family. She lived in the food supply, was seriously injured, and finally followed her to grab food and died. In that accident, she escaped with her two children."
Speaking of this, Fang Shan finally couldn't hold back his tears and said bitterly: "The main reason is that Tu Taishou did not distribute the grain to all counties, but gathered it in Zhangzhou City to distribute the grain in person, and also blocked the time for distributing grain. When the disaster was at its worst, people were scrambling for food."
"Originally, the officers and soldiers should have controlled the situation and tried to maintain order, but Tu Taishou allowed the situation to develop. People from several counties gathered in Yuzhou City, which made it even more chaotic. As a result, there were countless casualties among the people who were robbing food."
Unexpectedly, no one reported such a big thing to the court in Zhangzhou and deliberately concealed it. In this way, the snow disaster was both a natural disaster and a man-made disaster.
It's absolutely abominable.
Nangong Yuanyi said: "The purpose of his doing this is to let the people of Zhangzhou know that he has distributed the disaster relief food from the court to the people for the superiors to see, so he has an excuse to say that the number of disaster victims has been increasing." The number increased and we took the opportunity to put pressure on the court for food."
I'm afraid that Yuzhou and Zhangzhou both used the same method to ask for food from the emperor. It's the people's fault, not the government's fault, that they grab food.
The people's robbery of food caused riots, and the slaughter of the prefect and others were the real executioners.
He really knows how to separate things, and his method is very similar to that one.
"Did someone purchase a large amount of grain in Zhangzhou a few months ago?" Nangong Yuanyi asked.
Fang Shan shook his head, "I'm not sure. You might want to ask my father. It's normal for grain merchants to purchase grain from the people. The government generally doesn't pay attention to this."
"Huo's family probably did this secretly. It's normal for Fang Shan not to know." An Xiyue thought secretly.
"There seems to be a fire in this town. What's going on? Why do I feel that the villagers are afraid of outsiders?" An Xiyue thought of the reaction of the villagers in the afternoon and Fang Shan's vigilance.
"When the villagers fled here, it was burned down. I don't know exactly how the fire happened. If I find Mayor Zhu, he may know that Mayor Zhu didn't escape when the snowstorm happened, and later took refuge in Yangjiao Town. There are more and more victims, and people are robbing food in Zhangzhou City. I heard that Mayor Zhu’s family packed up and ran away overnight."
"As a parent and official of the people, he doesn't care whether the people live or die. It's really abominable."
"Half a month ago, a group of people came to Yangjiao Town. It was the time when the wind and snow were the worst. The villagers let them stay overnight out of good intentions. Unexpectedly, they robbed all our food and beat us. All the prey was robbed, so I stopped you from entering the town just now." Fang Shan felt a little embarrassed, and they took out all the food.
