Because he had just become emperor not long ago, Zhao Buxi paid special attention to the attitude of officials towards him and repeatedly reprimanded officials who behaved inappropriately in order to establish his authority.
After all, he was an emperor elected by everyone. He had no close followers or soldiers. He only relied on everyone's recommendation and the situation to sit on the throne. The throne was not actually that stable.
Zhao Buxi didn't have much idea before he took the throne. After he took the throne, he didn't know why he paid special attention to other people's attitudes towards him.
In the past two months, more than a dozen officials have been scolded by him and punished because of their improper attitudes.
So Chen Yongyan panicked and quickly knelt down.
"I dare not be disrespectful to Your Majesty. I am just bothered by state affairs and worried about the destiny of the country. At this critical moment, the national treasury is empty and cannot come up with money. This is a fatal thing for any country. If even the officials How can the imperial court maintain its integrity if it is alienated from others?"
Zhao Buji looked at Chen Yongyan for a while, then sighed deeply and put away his anger.
"Get up, why don't I know what you're talking about? It's just that the current situation really doesn't allow me to do whatever I want. If that's the case, how could I not be willing? People in the world don't worry about having few, but worry about not having enough. Who doesn’t understand the principle of equality?”
"So……"
"But in life, you can't help yourself."
Zhao Buxi sighed: "Taxing large households in Sichuan and Shu will make the large households in Sichuan and Shu feel dissatisfied, violently resist, and become enemies of the imperial court. The imperial court is beset with internal and external difficulties and cannot have more enemies. Therefore, the imperial court must not tax large households in Sichuan and Shu." Taxation, in this way... we can only tax the common people."
Chen Yongyan was stunned for a moment, and then he was shocked.
"Your Majesty, the taxes borne by the common people of Sichuan and Sichuan are already very heavy. If they continue to be levied, they will not even have enough food rations to feed themselves! Back then, King Xiaobo Li Shun of Sichuan and Sichuan rebelled. If the common people are forced too much now... then it will not only be in the towns. Jihu is causing trouble."
"But if we don't do this, the court will be gone before they cause trouble."
Zhao Buyi looked gloomy and said: "It is helpless to choose the lesser of two evils. If there is no other way, I would not be willing to do it, but the court is the most important, the Song Dynasty is the most important, we are The last group of people are still insisting on upholding the orthodoxy of the Song Dynasty."
"But……"
"Okay, don't say any more, just follow my orders and don't question them."
Zhao Buxi waved his hand and stopped listening to Chen Yongyan's persuasion.
Chen Yongyan sighed and walked out of Zhao Buxi's "palace" with his head lowered.
"If you drink poison to quench your thirst, even if you can survive for a while, you will eventually die of poisoning. The story of Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun is not far away. Kings of all dynasties have remembered it and dare not forget it. They dare not blame the Shu people too much. Now that everything has returned to the original point, wouldn't it make the Shu people alienated from morality?" ?Does it really make sense to have a court here?”
He shook his head and left.
The next day, Chen Yongyan submitted his resignation to the Chengdu court.
He couldn't convince himself to do something that he knew would lead to irreversible consequences.
The conscience in his heart and the fear of the future prevent him from looking at the present instead of the future no matter what.
And more importantly, he knew that the Ming Dynasty had a liquidation policy to pursue war criminals.
If he does this, if the Chengdu court fails in the future, he will become a war criminal wanted by the Ming Dynasty, and he will face tragic consequences. Instead of regretting it then, it is better to resign now and escape from this sea of fire. .
At that time, maybe you can still have a reputation as a conscientious person. It's better than being buried with the Chengdu imperial court, isn't it?
After Chen Yongyan's resignation was submitted, Zhao Buxi was very unhappy at first and refused to agree to Chen Yongyan's resignation and asked him to continue working.
Chen Yongyan once again petitioned to resign, but Zhao Buji refused again. Chen Yongyan still submitted his resignation, and Zhao Buji sternly asked Chen Yongyan to start working.
Chen Yongyan was always unwilling to obey the imperial edict.
After repeating this three times, Zhao Buxi finally realized that Chen Yongyan would not stay to serve him, even if he killed him. As one of Ma Yongkang's cronies and an important member of the civil servants sent to other places, Chen Yongyan Killing them is tantamount to destroying the Great Wall.
Faced with this situation, Zhao Buxi had no choice but to compromise.
He finally approved Chen Yongyan's resignation and let him go home.
Although he said he was going home, Chen Yongyan was from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Now that the road out of Sichuan was blocked, he couldn't go home at all. He could only find a house to live in Chengdu or the counties around Chengdu and wait for the situation to change.
Either the Chengdu court fought out of Sichuan and Shu, or the Ming army and the Jiangnan army fought into Sichuan and Shu.
There is no doubt that the latter is ten million times more likely to occur than the former.
There are people who are willing to do things that Chen Yongyan is unwilling to do.
There are smart people in this world, but there are also stupid people.
Of course, there's no shortage of silly and bad stuff.
Chen Yongyan's former deputy Jiang Fu accepted Zhao Buxi's order at this time and decided to help Zhao Buxi with his affairs. Zhao Buxi was very happy and immediately appointed Jiang Fu as the Minister of Household Affairs, taking over Chen Yongyan's position.
Jiang Fu didn't care about so much, he was a typical Confucian bureaucrat.
Serve his superiors, serve his leaders, and serve those who can provide him with promotion paths and other benefits.
As for the people at the bottom...
hehe.
It's just a stepping stone for him to climb up and reach the peak of power.
Therefore, Jiang Fu accepted all Zhao Buxi's orders and carried them out without making any modifications. He resolutely implemented them to the end. Some people raised concerns that such a harsh attack would have a huge impact on the people and may cause huge disasters. Influence.
Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's uprising have never been forgotten by the Shu people!
But Jiang Fu convinced them, or in other words, convinced them with just one sentence.
"Who promoted you to become officials? The court, the emperor, or those unruly people?"
Bureaucrats from the Ministry of Household Affairs looked at me and I looked at you. They couldn't say anything except a long sigh.
Despite this, the new policy promulgated by Zhao Buji after research still frightened them.
His new policy was actually to cancel all the preferential treatment policies for the Sichuan area in the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, and then start to increase taxes. All kinds of tax subjects that he had heard of and never heard of were added, a fierce wave of leeks.
Yes, special preferential treatment policy.
To be honest, the Song Dynasty's rule over Sichuan had special preferential treatment at the national level.
Ultimately, this special preferential treatment policy was not a change of temper due to their outpouring of mercy, but originated from the Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun uprising during the reign of Zhao Guangyi, who greatly shocked the Song Dynasty.
With the simple ideal of equalizing wealth and poverty, Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's rebels punished the powerful landlords in Sichuan, robbed the rich and helped the poor, which was equivalent to using force to completely redistribute interests in Sichuan and Sichuan.
This uprising not only broke the high intensity of land annexation left over from the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, eradicating a large number of powerful landlords, but also dealt a heavy blow to the Song Dynasty's punitive predatory policy in Sichuan.
The rule in Sichuan in the early Northern Song Dynasty really did everything except personnel matters. No one from the military officers to the civil servants did anything good.
The army that defeated Shu, commanded by Zhongwu Army Jiedushi Wang Quanbin, had no military discipline at all. As soon as the Song army entered Chengdu, Wang Quanbin and other leaders feasted day and night, ignored military affairs, and allowed the soldiers to plunder the children and property of Chengdu people. There were even incidents. The bad incident of a Song military general who cut off the breasts of civilian wives and killed them.
It only took sixty-six days for the Song army to destroy Hou Shu. Hou Shu surrendered without resolute resistance and did not cause a lot of casualties to the Song army. However, the Song army was able to treat the Shu people with methods close to massacre.
To say that they come from the underworld is to praise them. They completely treat Sichuan as a colony instead of treating Sichuan as their own land.
Military officers used physical means to directly harm the Shu people, while civilian officials used policy means to torture the Shu people.
The Kaifeng court led by Zhao Kuangyin and Zhao Guangyi treated Sichuan extremely harshly. Not only did they plunder Sichuan's wealth and go to Kaifeng, they almost emptied Sichuan for more than ten years. Later, they also set up various monopoly policies.
Sichuan's pillar economic industries, such as salt, tea, and silk, were all included in the monopoly and were not allowed to be operated by private parties. Only the government could operate them. As a result, a large number of industrial and commercial people lost their jobs and went bankrupt. They were desperate and all the good businesses they had done before were ruined.
It happened that natural disasters occurred frequently at that time, agricultural production suffered a cruel blow, and the Song Dynasty's agricultural taxation of Sichuan and Shu was also quite strict.
It means that the industrial and commercial people and the farmers of Shu have reached a dead end together. The right time, place and people broke out together, so the uprising of Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun seemed logical.
Although this uprising failed in the end, it greatly shocked the Song rulers. It almost overturned the Song Ting's rule over Sichuan and destroyed the Song Ting's bureaucracy in Sichuan.
A large number of Song court officials were killed in the uprising, and their deaths were extremely tragic.
After the failure of the uprising, due to Sichuan's special geographical location and the persistent and strong anti-Song sentiment among the people, the Song rulers felt fearful under strong pressure and had to make compromises.
They could no longer treat Sichuan as a colony, so they could only continue to send officials with a reputation for integrity to Sichuan to attack unjust officials and soldiers in order to appease the people of Sichuan and re-establish the image of the Song Dynasty.
For example, after Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's uprising broke out, Zhao Guangyi appointed Zhang Yong, who had a reputation for integrity, as the magistrate of Yizhou. Zhang Yong had a special conversation with him before setting off, telling him that he should be slightly biased towards the Shu people and do something to protect their interests. matter.
After Zhang Yong arrived in Chengdu, he lowered the price of salt so that the people could afford it, exempted and exempted taxes, and reduced the burden on the people. He also severely punished officials, officers, and soldiers who plundered people's wealth.
This wave of measures has somewhat appeased some people.
However, the people of Shu suffered too much damage and were still seriously dissatisfied with the Song court. Moreover, the nature of the Song government as a feudal government could not fundamentally change. There were still many things that made the people dissatisfied in the land of Sichuan and Shu.
So much so that almost sixty years after the failure of Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's uprising, the people of Shu still shouted a slogan similar to the slogan of the Yellow Turban Uprising: "At the age of Sino-Japanese War, there are changes in Shu."
This slogan constantly reminded people of Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's uprising. After it spread to Kaifeng, it frightened Song Renzong so much that he couldn't sleep at night, and the entire Kaifeng court was worried about a fire in the backyard.
So in the fifth year of Huangyou, one year before the Jiawu Year, Song Renzong, who was worried about changes in Sichuan and Shu, sent Cheng Kan, who had a good reputation in the court, as the governor of Yizhou, and then issued an edict to rectify the administration of Shu. Deal with those who are corrupt, harsh, harmful to the people and obstruct affairs.
In the next year, while the Song Dynasty cracked down on unscrupulous officials in Sichuan and Sichuan, it also successively issued policies to benefit the people of Sichuan, such as lowering tax rates, inspecting salt wells, reducing or exempting silk supplies, etc.
Through a series of means, the Song Dynasty transformed Sichuan from a high-tax area in the early Northern Song Dynasty and an area with the most severe imperial monopoly to a low-tax area, which was equivalent to giving it the status of a special economic zone. Problems such as salt were also improved. To prevent Wang Xiaobo and Li Shun's uprising from happening again.
This wave of actions finally prevented another chaos in Sichuan. Although there were still rumors that Nong Zhigao was trying to launch a counterattack with the help of Sichuan and Shu forces during the Nong Zhigao uprising, it did not come true after all. That year was considered a surprise. The danger passed.
Since then, whether it is agricultural taxes, commercial taxes, or even salt prices, Sichuan has been lower than other regions.
This policy made the economic conditions of Sichuan and Shu far better than other regions, and it continued until the Southern Song Dynasty. A considerable part of Sichuan's taxes could be retained for its own use, and the rest was handed over to the court.
Unlike other places where almost all the tax revenue was taken away by the imperial court, the local government was in a state of semi-incompetence. Not only could it not resist foreign enemies, it could not even deal with some thieves.
From this point of view, it is not without reason that Sichuan became the most intense area and the strongest fortress against the invasion of the Jin and Mongolia.
Therefore, there have been almost no peasant uprisings in Sichuan and Shu since Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty. The pressure on the people living here is relatively small compared to the Song people in other areas.
Therefore, only through struggle can we survive.
Feudal rulers will never give up their interests easily. They are greedy, cruel and extremely selfish. If they adopt a non-coercive policy or even make concessions somewhere, it must be due to the heroic struggle of the local people.
They only concede benefits to groups they find intractable and difficult to deal with.
Mr. Qingtian will never appear in front of obedient people. The more obedient he is, the more corrupt officials he will attract.
Lord Qingtian will only appear in areas where struggle and resistance are the most intense, and he will lower his profile to seek reconciliation from the angry strugglers, making them mistakenly believe that the court can be reasonable.
The fruits of the heroic Sichuan people's determined struggle and bloodshed have been enjoyed by their descendants for hundreds of years.
Originally, if there had not been the Ming-Song War and the establishment of the Chengdu imperial court, this achievement would have continued until the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, making Sichuan a strong fortress against the Mongol and Yuan invasions, and the struggle continued.
However, historical changes have made it impossible to continue on this route.
Zhao Buxi's Chengdu court lost an important source of taxation, and the court's expenses increased sharply. It could no longer sustain it. If no more taxes were imposed, the Chengdu court would be doomed.
Although they know that drinking poison to quench thirst will kill people, the fear of immediate death is still greater than slowly dying from poisoning. In order to survive, they will do whatever it takes.
With an order from the Chengdu court, the Southern Song government's original policies to benefit the people in Sichuan and Sichuan were cancelled, tax rates were increased, salt prices rose, and taxation subjects that were not previously available were launched one after another, and tax collectors were immediately arranged to go to the countryside to collect taxes.
You have almost enjoyed the century-old grace of the country. Now it is time to serve the country. Hurry up and dedicate all your property to the court!
This is probably what Zhao Buxi really thinks.
Of course, this is only for the civilian peasant class in Sichuan.
The Chengdu court did not hesitate to take action against this soft persimmon that seemed to be easier to bully.
As for the large households in Sichuan and Sichuan, Chengdu not only did not increase taxes, but also promoted tax reduction policies to appease people's hearts and make up for the losses of the large households.
