In the third year of Chengshun of the Great Chu Empire, on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, it was the Lantern Festival.
Ever since it was captured by the Chu bandits last winter, the city of Jinling, which had been calm and depressed, finally regained some of its sparkle.
In order to celebrate the Lantern Festival, but also to celebrate the army's capture of northern Zhejiang and the complete capture of the entire pan-Jiangnan region.
After deliberation, the monarchs and ministers of the Chu Empire decided to temporarily lift the curfew in Jinling City and allow people to go out to enjoy the lanterns and fireworks that night. They also officially prepared a number of temple fairs for the people to enjoy.
The next day, the 16th of the first lunar month, the curfew was lifted in some urban areas where ordinary people were concentrated and where there were relatively few official institutions.
Since then, in Jinling City, except for some important areas, the curfew has been fully relaxed in other outer city areas, while only the inner city area is still within the scope of the ban.
This allowed the people in the city who had been living under curfew for several months, especially the surviving gentry, to finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Since the Chu thieves arrived last year, the lives of ordinary people in Jinling City have been affected, but in fact it will not be too big. Even if the Chu Empire begins to compulsorily expropriate all Dongcheng District, Nancheng District and part of Beicheng District, These ordinary people will also be given monetary compensation and new residences will be built for them in the Waiguo City area.
But the powerful gentry are really in bad luck!
In order to make money, the Taxation Department of the Dachu Empire would do anything, and it was much more ruthless than the army.
When the Chu army entered the city, the army did not attack the ordinary dignitaries and gentry in the city. Their combat targets were always the remaining Ming troops in the city, some officials and dignitaries in the Ming court, and some recalcitrant elements.
The powerful gentry did not pay much attention to those who did not resist.
Subsequent army purge operations basically followed this principle.
The military is still very pure and only attacks the enemy!
But the tax department is different. When the tax officers in the tax department enter the city with a group of fierce and armed tax police, they directly collect taxes from the gentry and wealthy households door-to-door according to the photo area.
But many gentry have no concept of paying taxes, and it would be extremely heartbreaking for them to have to pay for it now.
And there is another misconception: they don’t think it’s a big deal if they deliberately say they have less assets and pay less taxes. At worst, they will make up for it if they are discovered.
Some people also think that there are so many gentry in the city, and if everyone refuses to surrender, it is impossible for the Chu thieves to punish them one by one. After all, the law does not punish everyone.
Some people even think that the Chu thieves have now proclaimed themselves emperors and taken over Jinling City and even the entire Jiangnan region. No matter what happens next, they will still be able to occupy half of the country. From now on, they will definitely rule the country.
And governing the country cannot be separated from their scholars and gentry.
Many people feel that even if the Chu thieves were cruel in the past, after moving the capital to Jinling City, they will definitely use them as scholars and rely on them as gentry to govern the world.
Otherwise, just rely on a bunch of idiots to govern the country?
What a Huayi joke!
From now on, since Chu thieves are coming to ask for help, then it doesn’t matter whether they pay taxes or not. They have all become officials, and they will all be their own people from now on. There is no reason to pay taxes...
After all, treating the gentry well has been a centuries-old tradition, and the Chu thieves will definitely do the same.
If that doesn't work, I can still encourage the people, such as the weavers, to cause trouble, and then some scholarly public opinion will force them...
In short, it is impossible for me to pay taxes!
Then, the armed tax police came directly with artillery to confiscate homes and exterminate families...
The Taxation Department and its efficient work efficiency, through a series of measures such as zoning, setting tasks, and high intensity, confiscated more than half of the homes of the gentry in the city in a very short period of time...
If they hadn't been so cruel, they wouldn't have been able to get more than 30 million taels worth of cash and all kinds of miscellaneous wealth in a short period of time.
Of course, the tax department's work workshops are so extreme that the outside world is afraid of them. Even within the Dachu Empire, many people are very dissatisfied with the tax department's brutal style.
Even those with vested interests, that is, the military, tactfully proposed to the tax department: Money must be made, but can the method be more tactful and popular?
After all, we have established a serious country, can we save some face?
As a result, Chen Xingkai yelled back: "Can face be used as military expenses?"
"If your army can reduce military expenditure to less than five million, I guarantee that you will be polite when collecting taxes and will never hurt the gentry even a hair."
Immediately afterwards, in an internal meeting of the Senate, Chen Xingkai snarled at a group of civil and military officials: "A bunch of bastards, eating with the money I collected, and in turn saying that my tax department is so popular that it's too ugly?"
"People who don't know, think that all the money collected by our tax department is spent by ourselves!"
"Do you want to be popular and look good? You are stupid and the gentry is not stupid. If you don't kill a person, you expect them to pay for it?"
"There are so many gentry in Jiangnan, but only a few pay taxes. The situation is much more severe than that in Huguang. If we don't set an example in Jinling City and suppress those gentry, do you expect so many gentry in Jiangnan to pay taxes honestly? "
"Or should we allocate an additional several million dollars to our tax department every year so that our tax department can recruit hundreds of thousands more tax officers to investigate all the big households one by one and then collect taxes?"
As soon as these words came out, the heads and heads of other departments shut up. As for the Army, they didn't even dare to talk nonsense?
Forget it, it’s us who spend the money anyway, and it’s not us who get scolded. That’s all the tax department likes!
As for His Majesty Luo Zhixue, although he received a bunch of memorials to impeach the Ministry of Taxation every three days, he usually ignored them and pretended not to have seen them.
If you encounter a few who speak harshly, you will be fined and banned directly. If you are a department head, department funds will be deducted directly...
None of them can see...
If the tax department wasn't so cruel, they would still be collecting shitty taxes.
You can't collect taxes, you can't make money, you don't even have a salary...
What else can you say about gentle means...
It's okay to be moderate, but the cost of tax collection will increase significantly, which is even more detrimental than gain.
Taxation has costs.
With the current technical capabilities of the Dachu Empire, its tax collection efficiency is actually very low. Even though the Taxation Department of the Dachu Empire already has a lot of staff, it is impossible to fully cover it.
More often than not, when the tax department actually collects taxes, they still ask the wealthy gentry to declare their taxes on their own initiative, and only then will they conduct in-depth investigations on the gentry with problems.
It is not unusually difficult for the gentry to declare taxes on their own.
Without strong means, it is impossible to achieve anything.
Therefore, from the beginning, the tax department adopted an extremely tough approach to send a message to the outside world: the cost of tax evasion and tax resistance is very high, even as high as genocide...
To put it bluntly, the tax department is nothing more than killing chickens to scare monkeys and threatening the gentry with bloody knives: Pay taxes honestly, or else they will raid your home and destroy your clan.
——
The army first carried out a purge operation, and the tax department ransacked the houses. Except for some powerful people in the city who had surrendered to the Chu in advance, such as Li Yuankui and others.
The rest of the dignitaries were swept away, and no one was left out. The princes, marquises, earls, and other high-ranking civil and military officials, including the eunuchs, either died or were thrown into prisoner-of-war camps. What awaited them next was Dangtu. Iron mine.
After a preliminary survey in the Dangtu area, the Dachu Industry Department determined that the iron ore reserves here are huge and the ore is not bad. In addition, it is close to the Yangtze River for easy transportation. Therefore, the Dangtu Mining Bureau has been established in Dangtu. Ironworks are used to mine iron ore and refine steel.
With the newly opened mines, the demand for free prisoners of war is naturally very high.
In addition to these dignitaries, fifty-six out of ten ordinary gentry and wealthy households were also eliminated because of their stubborn resistance, harboring criminals, or tax evasion.
Of course, those gentry who are honest, do not cause trouble, and pay taxes in a disciplined manner, so that the people in the tax department have no excuses, although the people in the tax department of the Da Chu Empire feel it is a pity, they will not do it for nothing. Their homes were confiscated for no reason.
The Dachu Empire was still a very rule-based country.
As long as you don't mess around, you can rest assured to live under the rule of the Chu Empire, and for ordinary people, life can be better.
After the Chu Empire moved into Jinling City, large-scale expropriation and demolition affected the lives of the people in the city to a certain extent, but it also provided a large number of job opportunities.
The Great Chu Empire would not forcefully recruit civilian husbands and make people perform corvee like the traditional feudal dynasty, but would all use the method of employment.
After all, the Great Chu Empire even treated the refugees by providing them with work-for-relief, providing them with a job, let alone ordinary people.
The large-scale construction projects also provided many lower-class people in the city with job opportunities, increased their income, and ensured their post-war living needs.
At the same time, as a large number of civil and military officials and soldiers from the Chu Empire, as well as a large number of craftsmen and their families, moved to Jinling City, they also supplemented the consumer market that had shrunk due to the demise of a large number of Ming court dignitaries and gentry.
After the replacement of the upper-class dignitaries, and even ordinary people being compensated and sent to relocate, there are actually not many ordinary people in the inner city of Jinling City.
The entire inner city now has a population of tens of thousands, a considerable part of which are garrisoned, and the rest are officials from the Chu Empire and their families who have migrated here one after another.
On the contrary, the number of people in Waiguocheng District has increased instead of decreasing, and there are about 200,000 people.
Now that the Waiguo City District has been completely sealed off, Jinling City has regained its prosperity at a speed visible to the naked eye.
As the new economic center of the Great Chu Empire, a large number of people and materials from the areas under the control of the Great Chu Empire are constantly gathering towards Jinling City.
Especially now that the Chu Empire has fully controlled the pan-Jiangnan region, a large amount of money and food from the Jiangnan region, northern Zhejiang region, southern Anhui region, northern Jiangxi region and Huguang region are constantly flowing towards Jinling City.
This quickly restored the economic vitality of Jinling City.
Moreover, what was gathered into Jinling City was not only a large amount of money, food and materials, but also a large number of scholars.
To be precise, he is a scholar who loves the Chu Empire.
Because the Great Chu Empire is about to hold a trial in Jinling City!
Since the year before last, which was the eighth year of Chongzhen and the first year of Chengshun.
The Great Chu Empire started its own imperial examination after taking control of the northern Chu area. The scope of the imperial examination held in the northern Chu area was naturally not very large, and there were not many scholars who came to participate, and it was not considered institutionally. Complete.
It was not until the next year, the second year of Chengshun, that the Chu Empire began to improve the imperial examination system on a large scale.
In order to avoid turmoil, the Chu Empire still implemented the traditional imperial examination system in its imperial examination system, and established examinations at various levels including county examinations, government examinations, hospital examinations, rural examinations, general examinations, and palace examinations.
However, in order to recruit the talents that Luo Zhixue really wanted to acquire, the Chu Empire was not like the middle and late Ming Dynasty, which only focused on Jinshi subjects and ignored Ming Jing, Ming Suan and other subjects.
In terms of content, three main subjects are initially set up: Jinshi subject, Legal Affairs subject, and Gewu subject.
The Jinshi subject is naturally modeled after the traditional Jinshi subject, and it is also the main subject that scholars apply for.
The Legal Affairs Department, in fact, is the Ming Law Department, which mainly relies on laws to select talents for the judicial system. After being selected, they will work in the Patrol Department, Judicial Yuan, Supervisory Yuan, Trial Court and other departments.
The Gewu Ke combines the arithmetic in the Ming Suan Ke, plus basic physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography and other knowledge.
These three subjects are initially set up, and candidates can choose and apply for them on their own. As long as they pass the exam, they will be awarded the corresponding honors and selected as officials.
However, due to tradition, the vast majority of scholars apply for Jinshi.
Luo Zhixue did not interfere much in this matter. After all, it takes time to change the concepts of traditional scholars, and it also takes time to popularize various scientific knowledge. And you can't just directly do it without the corresponding teaching materials and colleges. Asking students to take physics and chemistry exams is not.
Luo Zhixue planned to set up a project first, and then gradually increase the weight of science, such as reusing scholars from the Gewu Department, and ultimately change the trend of the entire society.
As for scholars, it is very realistic. They should study whatever they want to become an official and what they want to get ahead.
In the Tang and Song dynasties, people who studied poetry could become officials, so they studied poetry.
It is clear that if you learn the Eight-legged Eight-legged Classical Style, you can become an official, so they learn the Eight-legged Eight-legged Classical Style.
Later generations had to have good scores in all subjects to pass the key points in the exam, so they immersed themselves in various sciences.
Therefore, Luo Zhixue did not need to make long speeches to persuade scholars to study science. He only needed to reuse talents with a background in science. Those scholars who followed him could break their heads and study science on their own without anyone persuading them.
In the second year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire began to launch various levels of imperial examinations in the areas under its control, mainly in the northern and southern areas of Chu.
In some areas, due to lack of time, they are not held at the same time. For example, in areas such as Chizhou Prefecture under the jurisdiction of Governor Anlu, county examinations and prefecture examinations were held successively in October last year, and the township examinations were held directly in December.
In the Jiangnan governorate area, it will be even later. Intensive county and prefecture examinations will be carried out in December, and finally the college examination will be held.
As for the rural examination in the Jiangnan governor's jurisdiction, it is still over. A total of more than 300 new imperial examination candidates have been admitted.
In Zhejiang, it will be even later. Due to time constraints, the local provincial examination is not expected to be completed until February. These new imperial examination candidates will have to rush to Jinling City to participate in the joint examination immediately.
In order to better recruit talents, the Chu Empire also allowed scholars from the Puppet Ming Dynasty to directly participate in the provincial examination or the joint examination.
And what is very interesting is that although the Jiangnan governorate was the last area actually controlled by the Chu Empire, the number of people who signed up to participate in the examination scheduled to be held in March was the largest, reaching more than a thousand people.
Among them, the new imperial examination candidates admitted by the Great Chu Empire were actually only more than 300 people. The remaining 500 or 600 people were all candidates from the Ming Dynasty during this period.
Although the examination will not start until March, many scholars have already set off to Jinling City to prepare for the examination.
Sun Qinian from Suzhou Prefecture is one of them.
Not only him, but several fellow villagers of the same year are also preparing to set off with him.
When they were preparing to board the ship to Jinling City with great expectations, they had already forgotten that just two months ago, when they were discussing the current situation, they were talking about Chu thieves on the left and Luo Ni on the right!
——PS——
There will be an Easter egg chapter later, which is a simple drawing of the control area and military deployment map by myself on a rainy day, so that everyone can read the book more intuitively.
