Before and after the founding of the Ming Dynasty, many of the people executed outside Zhongdu were princes and nobles of the Jin Kingdom. Their executions broke the shackles in people's hearts.
The leaders of the Kele tribe and the Qiyan tribe who were executed under the walls of Zhongdu some time ago shattered people's fear of the powerful enemy from the north.
Now that Ren Dejing was executed under the walls of Zhongdu, it established the Ming Dynasty's brilliant external record and established the impression that the Ming Dynasty was extremely powerful in people's minds.
Every prison sacrifice ceremony and beheading ceremony will bring about such changes.
The residents of China, who have been divided and unable to unify for hundreds of years, finally admit in their hearts that a great moment is about to return, and a great era is about to come.
But from Su Yonglin's point of view, at this time in history, along with the glory and prosperity, there is still a cold temperature that has not changed for thousands of years.
The lives of the people at the bottom only got a chance to breathe, but there was no fundamental improvement. They just had to eat glutinous rice bran to fill their stomachs and avoid death. That was the prosperous age.
This is true in the so-called prosperous times, let alone troubled times?
What Su Yonglin wants is a truly prosperous age full of warmth, not a "prosperous age" that ordinary people can praise by eating chaffy vegetables and chewing sweet potatoes.
It was the prosperous age of emperors and generals, the prosperous age of gentlemen, the prosperous age of literati, and the prosperous age of superior people.
Rather than the prosperous days of cattle and horses facing the loess and turning their backs to the sky.
In order to usher in a warm and prosperous age, Su Yonglin is determined to carry out his revolutionary actions to the end.
However, when it came to the most fundamental situation, Su Yonglin's sense of urgency became stronger and stronger.
The reason is very simple. Starting from the second half of the second year of Hongwu, with the efforts of the Audit Department, the Ministry of Law, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the Tianwang Army spies, the anti-corruption campaign within the Ming Dynasty was proceeding in an orderly manner. With the anti-corruption As the operation progressed, many corrupt officials surfaced.
Their appearance is not without reason. They do not appear out of thin air or emerge from the cracks in the rocks, but gradually appear with the implementation of the large-scale construction plan promoted by the central court.
In order to repair the dilapidated and devastated land of the Central Plains, Su Yonglin led the Ming court to use the wealth seized from the upper classes in the war to start a large-scale construction plan. Transportation, water conservancy, city walls, houses, and various construction plans were fully launched.
A large amount of money flowed into the private sector, a large amount of materials entered the construction site, and a large number of farmers during the slack season entered the construction site as laborers, starting a vigorous revitalization and construction operation.
In this process, the allocation of large amounts of money and the flow of large amounts of materials are inevitable. The main people responsible for handling are mostly central and local officials. Under their arrangement and coordination, project construction in various places can be carried out in an orderly manner.
In the process, corruption emerged.
Corrupt officials gradually lost control of their hands and began to reach out to project funds and project materials. Some directly embezzled project funds, while others resold project materials.
Correspondingly, the Ministry of Justice, the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and the Audit Departments of various departments led by the Renaissance Association also exerted their power at this time. Through rigorous review and calculation, they gradually uncovered these corrupt officials.
Regardless of their origins, these people are distributed everywhere regardless of local or central government. After the audit department found out the clues, they were severely interrogated by the officials of the Ministry of Justice, their mouths were opened, and they were found guilty.
As a result, three officials in a row were dismissed, either executed or imprisoned. Su Yonglin punished the officials who committed the crime severely and never treated them lightly.
Moreover, Su Yonglin strictly enforced the regulations. The descendants of three generations of criminal officials were not allowed to take part in the imperial examination, were not allowed to join the army, and were not allowed to be employed in government departments, in order to increase the punishment.
At the beginning, the corrupt officials who were arrested were basically a large number of old officials and staff left over from the Jin Kingdom that could not be replaced for the time being.
At the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Su Yonglin could not train so many of his own people, and he could not replace them, so he could only continue to use them.
So they brought into play the fine traditions left over from the Kingdom of Jin.
It is not unreasonable for them to be corrupt in the Kingdom of Jin, because the finances of the Kingdom of Jin were chaotic and tense, and petty officials sometimes did not receive salaries from the court and found it difficult to live. Some people corrupted to support their families.
But after the habit became natural, corruption also became natural, and it continued under the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
Of course, the salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty cannot be compared with those of mid- and high-level officials in the Southern Song Dynasty. The salary treatment of mid- and high-level officials in the Southern Song Dynasty was like a scorpion's tail, and the salaries of officials in the Ming Dynasty were far less than that.
However, the salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty was practical. It was never in arrears and paid in full. Money, food and security could ensure the stability and prosperity of officials' lives.
Under such circumstances, these officials still continued the old rules left over from the Jin Kingdom, plucking the feathers of wild geese.
When large sums of money came from the court, they would draw large sums from them. When small sums of money came, they would draw small sums. When the materials for construction projects arrived at the construction site, they took a look at them, picked out the good ones, divided them, and sold them. Make a fortune.
They didn't seem to take the imperial court's audit department and the gradually expanding local judicial bureaus as the same thing. They felt that this was a new atmosphere in the new dynasty, with heavy thunder and light rain, gongs and drums beating on top, and singing and dancing below, no problem.
That was true at first.
Although Su Yonglin set up very strict targeted measures to deal with possible corruption situations, due to lack of manpower, the local departmental structure set up by the court could not be improved for a while.
To put it simply, there are a lot of departments set up and fights have started, but there is no one.
People need to be trained, and Zhongdu’s political and legal schools did not have time to train so many talents in one go. They could only roll it out slowly and implement it step by step, so that many local judicial branches and Fuxinghui branches were set up, but there was no one.
As a result, no one can do many key judicial and government affairs, and the actual power is still in the hands of local bureaucrats. At the local level, there is a situation where administration trumps everything else.
Of course they can do whatever they want, because no one can restrain them. If their conscience is still there, they can manage the place well. If selfishness suddenly arises, it will be difficult to say.
However, as time went by, more and more trained officials from the central government went to the local areas and took over the local powers that were previously controlled by the county and state governments. The local judicial departments gradually became flesh and blood, gained vitality, and then began to operation.
It was time to audit, it was time to investigate, and it didn't take long for these old officials to figure out something wasn't right.
While we were having breakfast here, officials from the Justice Bureau kicked open the door and came in to take someone away.
Over there, I was having fun with my wife and concubine, when officials from the Justice Bureau kicked open the door of my house and came to take someone away.
The iron ropes and wooden shackles were put on them directly and taken to the Justice Bureau.
The judicial officials were serious and indifferent, and showed no care for them. They interrogated them strictly and punished them without any explanation.
Many corrupt officials simply couldn't stand the punishment, and some of them were punished before the instruments of torture were even put on them.
Therefore, after the local judicial institutions were gradually improved in the second half of the second year of Hongwu, more and more cases came to light, and a large number of local corrupt officials were uncovered and uprooted.
Such a situation has occurred in Yanyun, Hebei, Shandong, Hedong, Henan, and even Liaodong.
If it was just the old bureaucrats who committed trouble, Su Yonglin didn't care and had no sense of urgency. He just thought it was a good thing because he could eliminate the old bureaucrats faster and replace them with his own people to shoulder the responsibilities.
However, among the corrupt officials investigated by the Audit Department and the Bureau of Justice, the names of Fuxing members suddenly appeared in the files of February of the third year of Hongwu.
