As the dust of the Lianghuai Salt Case settled, officials from the Inspectorate, Dali Temple, and the Ministry of Punishment once again felt the long-lost joy of working overtime. A group of business backbones who had been trained in the "hard crackdown" were like an assembly line, sorting out files based on the materials handed over by Jin Yiwei, interrogating criminals and making judgments. The six subjects were reprimanded by the emperor, and they were no longer "obstructed", and the re-examination was also very fast. Ge Shouli, Li Youzi and Wang Zhigao all received awards and rewards from the emperor.
Although Zhu Yijun knew that the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Department and Nanjing Wei Guogong's government had been colluding for many years, it was not appropriate to expand the scope of the Lianghuai Salt Administration this time.
After discussing with Zhang Juzheng, I also asked Empress Dowager Li for her opinion. Finally, a decree was issued to warn other salt transportation departments and reiterate the disadvantages of remaining salt. At the same time, an order was issued to reprimand Xu Bangrui, who succeeded the Duke of Wei in the sixth year of Longqing.
The unlucky child Xu Bangrui has been raised as a picked-up child by his biological father, the old Duke Xu Pengju. His father used to dig holes in the house and wanted to dethrone the eldest son and establish a young son, and make his youngest son Xu Bangning the heir apparent.
But Xu Pengju was too stupid. He asked two people to do the same thing. The second clerk was also stupid and asked around, but finally the first one found out. Jiang Bao, the first official from the Ministry of Etiquette who was entrusted by him, saw that the matter was not confidential, so he turned his back and read a copy of Xu Pengju's book, which was a surrender and a report.
Xu Pengju was severely warned and fined by the court. The imperial concubine of Wei Guogong, Xu Bangning's biological mother Zheng's wife, was deprived of her royal title by the court, and Xu Bangning was convicted.
Xu Bangrui's face was torn when he saw it. He was afraid of being plotted, so he stayed in Beijing as an intern at the Ministry of War and waited until Xu Pengju could no longer go home.
After finally surviving his father's death, Xu Bangrui inherited the Dukedom of Wei in the sixth year of Longqing. Less than three years after this, a stern edict almost scared him to death.
The most important sentence in the imperial edict is: "The Duke of Wei received the country's favor without thinking of repaying it, protected rats, corrupted the salt administration, and regarded the court's strict laws as nothing. Does your family regard my sword as harmful?"
Although the imperial edict was still raised high and gently put down just like the previous emperors did to Wei Guogong's family in the end, he just let Wei Guogong deal with his family by himself, shut himself up for a month, and fined him a year's salary as punishment.
But the murderous sentence in the imperial edict still made Xu Bangrui cry in front of Wei Chao, the official who delivered the edict.
After all, Yang Bing, Li Huan and other pickled heads had just passed through Nanjing. At that time, Xu Bangrui, as the boss of the Nanjing military, took everyone to observe and gave a brief "alarm bells ringing" report.
Although he was too cowardly in front of the Wei Dynasty, Xu Bangrui turned around and put a bucket of shit on his relatives and younger brothers who had been fighting with him over the family property in the past few years, and blamed them for colluding with the Lianghuai Salt Division. All packed up.
This was not entirely an injustice to them, because Xu Bangrui had been an intern at the Ministry of Military Affairs of the capital for many years in order to avoid his father's murderous hands. It was true that he did not start these silly things, and almost everyone had a share in being dealt with.
The Wei Dynasty who was delivering the decree made his family's two lifetime expenses during his first business trip. He is someone close to the emperor, so Xu Bangrui must be able to get into trouble. Ten thousand taels of gold were suddenly thrown down, and the Wei Dynasty returned to the capital in a daze and fear.
Only after asking his godfather Zhang Jing did he know what to do with this matter - 8,000 taels would be dedicated to the emperor, half of the 1,000 taels would be spent on five hundred taels to buy gifts for the empress dowagers of the two palaces, and the other half would be given to Zhang Jing's faction in the palace. The remaining one thousand taels belong to the Wei Dynasty.
Originally, the Wei Dynasty wanted to give Zhang Jing five hundred taels, but at this time, Zhang Jing didn't care about this small amount of money. The more serious thing was to win over his godson, who was by the emperor's side. He smiled and asked him: "Have you told the emperor how much Duke Wei gave me?"
Wei Chaodao: "How dare I say anything before asking my godfather."
Zhang Jing nodded and said, "Then how much can you say?"
Wei Chao thought for a while and said: "My son will tell the emperor that it is ten thousand taels." Zhang Jing clapped his hands and laughed and said: "Well, my good son, you have left the army."
...
Xu Guogong escaped the disaster, but Zhang Bangli, a third-rank official and the envoy of the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Department, did not have such a good life. He was sentenced to hanging for corruption, his home was ransacked, and all his property was confiscated. Zhu Yijun still showed mercy outside the law, and his family members were not sent to the Jiaofang Bureau.
The remaining more than 800 officials and salt merchants ransacked their homes and were sentenced according to the law to execution, hanging, exile, removal of family background, dismissal from official position, or demotion.
Because there was a serious shortage of officials familiar with the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Department, under Zhang Juzheng's suggestion, the first batch of civil servants in the Wanli Dynasty were born who had committed crimes and sought merit. Huang Qing, the director of the Lianghuai Salt Transportation Department, and more than a dozen criminal officials were forced to After accepting bribes, he was convicted of Dai Liu's crime of seeking merit. His rank was reduced by three levels, but he remained in his original position.
With this precedent, Wang Guoguang, who was in the cabinet, also bore the title of "despite his sins and seek merit". He did not appear in the Fengyue venue in the capital for more than a month in a row, and he was a bit disgraced.
After searching their homes, both Zhu Yijun and Zhang Juzheng felt that they could live a prosperous year. ——The wholesale price of billions of kilograms of surplus salt every year is four official dollars per kilogram. Before this salt reaches the hands of salt merchants, about 550,000 taels of profits in the front-end chain are secretly shared by officials of the Salt Administration Department every year.
Salt merchants sell surplus salt in nearly six provinces of Huaihe and Huaihe Rivers. The price ranges from ten to thirty cents per catty, with the average price being about fifteen cents per catty. Each year, more than one million taels of silver were divided between local officials and salt merchants.
After Zhu Yijun settled the accounts for Zhu Xixiao and others, Jin Yiwei went to check. Although a lot of money was exchanged for fields, antiques and other items, a lot was squandered. However, 4.6 million taels of cash were still copied - one and a half times the amount of silver in Taicang in the first year of Wanli.
Zhu Yijun now somewhat believes the historical rumor that Li Zicheng could scrape out 30 million taels of silver by torturing officials of the Chongzhen Dynasty in Beijing - the Ming Dynasty was full of fat pigs, and they could kill a lot of them in bad years.
Of course, we can only think about this matter in our hearts, and have a hard time - whether this is anti-corruption, we need to solve the problem from the system. Besides, there is no rush to confiscate the houses. We will wait until the new army is trained and the inner court and the outer court are further straightened out.
Zhu Yijun's instructions to Jin Yiwei were that no one tael of stolen money should be retained, and all stolen money should be put into the inner treasury as usual. But he couldn't stand Zhang Juzheng's insinuations, from constant hints to direct inquiries. In the end, Zhu Yijun was finally annoyed by him.
In desperation, Jin Yiwei returned 500,000 taels of case-handling funds, and the remaining more than 4 million taels were added to the inner treasury and the imperial court. Zhang Juzheng was so excited that his beard trembled when he heard that the emperor said that he would give two million to the court.
With tears in his eyes, he said: "Your Majesty, your Majesty, since the founding of our dynasty, the imperial court has been replenishing the internal treasury. The emperor's actions today will be praised by all generations. - The imperial court can control the river."
Zhu Yijun's two million yuan didn't even keep warm in his pocket for a few days before Zhang Jing took it away.
Because, as the dust of the Lianghuai Salt Remaining Case has settled, the Ministry of Revenue will auction the Tianxia Salt Works License—according to Zhu Yijun’s plan, the royal family will account for 50%. This move is not only intended to prevent the salt farm from being monopolized by big capital in the future, but is also of great significance to greater reforms in the future.
Zhu Yijun was ripped off by Zhang Juzheng and Zhang Jing, and his hands were empty again. He said fiercely in his heart: "The landowner's family has no food left - you have to kill me. Well, I'd better go to Nanyuan and fight some martial arts students to relax."
