Capital, teahouse.
"Let's just say, it turns out that the emperor has no money at all?" An old man said after taking a sip of tea, "Those corrupt officials who were just beheaded, hey! They actually stole thousands of taels of silver. How much money do they get? "
The person sitting opposite him was eating melon seeds, "Anyway, ordinary people like us can't make that much money in our lives!"
The young man on the side also chimed in.
"I always thought that it was the emperor who collected so much tax from us, but after what the emperor said just now, it doesn't seem to be the case, right?"
"Definitely not! Think about it, the emperor is alone, but the officials below, just like Shuntian, need tens of thousands of people. Can he manage it? If the people below join forces, he, the emperor, is It’s really impossible for a dragon to see all these cats and dogs clearly!” said the old man.
A few people were drinking tea, eating melon seeds, and chatting under the afterglow of the setting sun.
"Looking at it this way, the emperor is quite pitiful!" The person opposite said softly, "Look, there are so many officials in the country. Even if one of them is greedy for one tael of silver, thousands or tens of thousands of taels of silver will be lost. And then the emperor is like this He doesn’t even know! He still foolishly thinks that the country is really poor!”
"That's right! And you see, the Forbidden City is such a big place, and it will be there for the rest of his life, and there are so many things in the country to worry about every day. No wonder the emperor is short-lived. No one can stand it, right? ?”
The old man smiled when he heard this, put down the melon seeds in his hand, stood up and patted his butt.
"Okay, after all this fuss today, our new emperor looks good, I just hope that taxes will be reduced in the future, hahaha..."
"Everyone go home, if it's any later it will be curfew!"
Imperial Palace, Qianqing Palace.
Zhu Zaijing, who had seen a human head fall to the ground for the first time, was vomiting crazily.
The eunuchs brought several basins of hot water and towels and were waiting on him.
Just when he had just beheaded three people, the blood spurted out for a long time and could not stop. Even if he was ten steps away, he could smell the disgusting smell and the heat of the blood.
"TMD, if I had known better, I wouldn't have acted like this, ugh..."
Feng Bao, who was waiting next to him, was confused.
What is force?
Why install it?
After vomiting for a while and spitting out all the steamed buns and fried shredded radish he had eaten for breakfast, Zhu Zaijing finally felt better.
But he was still not idle. He wiped his mouth, drank some hot water to calm down and said, "Feng Bao, where are the lists of palace maids and eunuchs that I asked you to compile yesterday?"
"Here, long live the Lord!"
Zhu Zaijing handed it over and looked at it.
Sure enough, there were many old eunuchs and maids in the palace, and they were all very old.
In addition to these, there are more than 6,000 people who will be laid off.
The total number of eunuchs and maids in the FMD palace is actually 14,500!
TMD has to pay salaries to so many people, no wonder the intrauterine expenses are so huge every year.
As long as more than 8,000 of these people are left behind, the rest are the old, weak, sick and disabled, and many of them even live in the palace!
The maximum number of eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty did not exceed 15,000, which was far from the 100,000 eunuchs recorded in "Records of the Qing Dynasty". But compared to previous dynasties, including the Han and Tang dynasties where the eunuch rebellion was serious, this data is still terrifying.
Among them, the Jiajing Dynasty had the most eunuchs and maids.
As we all know, Jiajing was obsessed with practicing Taoism and refining elixirs, and needed women's menstruation to be used as medicine to make elixirs. Jiajing was also the emperor who most frequently selected palace ladies among the emperors of the Ming Dynasty. He selected palace ladies nine times, totaling more than 1,100 people. Therefore, the 2,575 people during the Jiajing period should also be a peak period.
And because he was a homebody, he didn't trust ministers to do many things, so he let the eunuchs do it. This also led to a great increase in the number of eunuchs.
The Ming Dynasty died in Wanli, and the beginning fell in Jiajing!
"Okay! Just keep 8,000 people according to this number, and let the rest go out of the palace!"
"yes!"
In the other cabinet room, everyone sat on their chairs in astonishment.
There was a sense of shock in the air.
After this beheading, the emperor's previous image was completely reversed in their hearts, and no one regarded him as the mediocre and cowardly King Yu he was before.
What frightened them even more was what the emperor said to the people!
Originally, these were all things that everyone knew well, and everyone had a tacit understanding of the rules, but now the emperor made such a fuss and directly made these shameful things public.
Moreover, he stirred up conflicts between the common people and officials, and even said that he was a victim of corruption!
Among them, only Zhao Zhenji and Guo Pu looked disapproving, while the others were more or less in a daze.
Who worked in the Ming Dynasty and didn’t have any money?
Even Zhang Juzheng didn't look good at the moment.
Our Zhang Shentong is not such a tall person, and he is obedient to the unspoken rules of officialdom.
So this is why Zhu Zaijing was far less confident about him than Hai Rui. Hai Rui dared to offend the entire officialdom and betray all the civil servants. How dare you, Zhang Juzheng? He, Hai Rui, comes from an ordinary background. He dares to be penniless and even buy a piece of meat to be trending nationwide. How dare you, Zhang Juzheng, who comes from a famous family in Jiangling, be penniless?
But this is not Zhang Juzheng's fault. He has no worries about Hai Rui and does not have a huge family that requires him to mediate among all the forces, but Zhang Juzheng cannot do that.
However, everyone has their own suitable place. Zhu Zaijing did not want Zhang Juzheng's integrity, he wanted Zhang Juzheng to be in charge.
"Go back and have a good sleep today. Tomorrow the cabinet will be filled with all kinds of memorials!"
Xu Jie held his forehead and said, he looked exhausted.
He was really frightened by the execution ground just now.
On the other hand, he was afraid that the emperor would suddenly become so tyrannical.
On the other hand, he was afraid of what the emperor would say to the people.
On the one hand, they are afraid of the people's reaction. At least they have doubts about the officials in their hearts.
These three things have deeply stimulated the nerves of the civil servants, and as the leader of Qingliu, how will he face hundreds of memorials tomorrow?
The emperor would definitely not read these memorials. He would either keep them in his mind without publishing them, or he would pretend to have read them and return them to the cabinet.
Unexpectedly, the emperor was fine in the morning, and looked like a wise king for a while. Unexpectedly, he turned around and turned into a man who incited the people on the execution ground, watched the executions in person, and watched the living people die in front of him without any emotion.
If corruption, the hidden rule of officialdom, is made public among the people, it will definitely spread from one to ten, and from ten to a hundred...
This also means that the situation where the Jiajing Dynasty takes 60% for the emperor and 40% for the ministers will no longer exist!
This is a bit scary!
Which one is the true face of the emperor? This made me, who urgently needed to know the emperor's temperament, even more passive.
What's even worse is that the emperor seems to have no fixed personality and temper. He is always amiable one moment, but turns into a murderous tyrant the next!
Xu Jie pressed his temples tiredly.
"This guy seems to be more difficult to take care of than me!"
