My Daming New Empire

Page 576

In order to prevent bad guys from causing trouble, although they were divided into three teams, each team had dozens of people and two hundred naval soldiers guarding them.

But Yu Qian led most of the troops and went straight to Yanzhou along the land road.

Yanzhou is only [-] miles away from Jining, and there is a wide concrete road. Everyone arrived in Yanzhou in the afternoon by carriage.

Fang Cheng, the magistrate of Yanzhou, and Yan Shutong, the magistrate of Qufu County, were originally arrested for boycotting the Nanyang grain transportation.But later it was found out that Fang Cheng was not serious, and Shandong officials couldn't catch him all at once, so he released him later.

However, Yan Shutong was found to have seized many farmlands. In addition to Ma Dezhong's case, he is still detained in Yanzhou Prison, waiting to be escorted to the capital.

After Fang Cheng came out, he muddled along. Even though Yu Qian and the others were imperial envoys, he only greeted them coldly, not enthusiastically.

Yu Qian never thought that he could learn too much information from him. When he came to Yanzhou, he sent Jinyiwei and the officials of the Ministry of Punishment to go straight to Qufu to catch the two side branches of the Confucian Mansion. case officer.

When he was in Jining, he still felt that Zhao Huai was a little alarmist, because of his grievances with the Confucian government, his words seemed extreme.

But when he learned about the Confucian Mansion's deeds from various populations and levels, he really felt that the three views were ruined.

The Confucian family has a great career, but it is not like the common villains in the countryside who become rich and commit crimes, take bribes and pervert the law.

But their actions are more harmful than these, because they have become the actual emperors here.

Just according to Jin Yiwei's investigation, it was found that the Confucian Mansion occupied more than one million mu of fertile land in various parts of Shandong, and most of these lands were not registered.

In the early years of Hongwu, Shandong was the main battlefield, with ten rooms and nine empty houses, and the land was seriously abandoned.

The Confucian Mansion has not been greatly affected, and has occupied a lot of fertile land from the very beginning, hiding its acres.

Over the past few decades, every time natural disasters and man-made disasters have caused people to be displaced and their children to eat, the Confucian government will do some charitable deeds.

But behind the good deeds, the number of their land has risen sharply.

Although Yu Qian is a literati, he is also a literati with a conscience.In the Jianwen Dynasty, it was he who proposed to limit the area occupied by individuals, but Zhu Di abolished this system after he came to the throne.

The abolition of this system gave the Confucian Mansion an opportunity to expand. Today, a Confucian Mansion covers an area of ​​more than one million mu, with more than [-] tenant farmers. These people and these lands have not contributed one or two taxes to the court.

If Daming was such a big family, how could the imperial court still have the money to fight the Siyi!

He also checked the case files of Ma Dezhong suing the Confucian government. This case seems simple, but the problems exposed are even more astonishing.

The government dug up the tombs of Ma Dezhong's parents because they built the aqueduct for the Confucius family.

Ma Dezhong fled famine at the age of nine. No one thought that a nine-year-old child could survive in troubled times, so no one cared about this grave at the beginning.

After the small official in charge of the project found out about this, he also inquired about the situation of the Ma family, and in the name of the Kong family, he gave the other members of the Ma family two taels of silver as compensation.

When the Ma family got the money, they agreed to this matter by default, and they didn't even bother to take a look, let alone collect the bones.

However, all these affairs are done by the government, and even the construction of water canals is done with government labor.

This is using government conscripts to build canals for private individuals and enclose fertile land. Even the feudal kings dare not do it so directly!

To Yu Qian's regret, Ma Dezhong didn't dare to stay in Qufu for a long time because he wanted to return to Jiaodong to return to his command, so the case was put on hold temporarily, and he didn't meet the navy general.

Although the Confucian Mansion did not oppress the people, and sometimes even distributed food to help the people, in Yu Qian's view, this kind of big evil is more hateful than that kind of small evil.

At this time, he also understood Zhao Huai's words, this matter still depends on the determination of the emperor and the others.

If you only rely on the things done by the Kong family, there is no great evil, but you have been earning fame for yourself with small favors.

But in less than 50 years, the family's land has increased tenfold, and the fertile land occupied far exceeds that of any vassal king. This kind of behavior of enslaving the people can be called treason.

But with the sign of a saint, as long as the emperor didn't intend to punish the Kong family, no minister would dare to provoke trouble.

Yu Qian didn't dare either.

This is the Kong family!

Although he didn't dare to directly pick up the incident, his conscience would not allow him to ignore it, so he copied all his knowledge and let the navy soldiers quickly pass it back to the capital.

Jiang Wanli was the chief general in arresting the two offshoots of the Kong family this time, and this time he volunteered.

As one of the four Jinyiwei Qianhu who first followed Zhu Zhanji, Jiang Wanli, who is good at intelligence analysis, has always been the most inconspicuous one.

Yang Zhangde was ruthless and resolute in his actions. During the Eastern Expedition to Dongying, he made great achievements and was promoted to command.

Of the remaining three, Feng Xiaonian was sophisticated, Chu Song was slick, but Jiang Wanli, who was good at internal affairs, was not as conspicuous as them in any aspect.

But after returning from the West, seeing that Yang Zhangde, who was originally at the same level, has become the number one powerful figure in Jinyiwei, the impact on the three of them is very huge.

If you want to get ahead, you have to risk your life to gamble.

Feng Xiaonian took the initiative and proposed to investigate the major grain case.

Chu Song was also sent out to do errands because of his slick faces.

Because Jiang Wanli stayed at home for a few more days, he lost the opportunity. By the time he realized it, there was nothing else going on with him.

But he also figured it out, and decided to risk his life for a fortune.

Arresting Kong's family members was regarded as hard work by others, but he knew that as long as the case was handled well, he would surely succeed.

That's the Kong family!

What's more, it turned the Kong family upside down in the end. He would take his family out to sea at worst. No one in those barbaric lands believed in Confucianism.

He believed in the ability of His Highness the Grandson even more. In these years, no one has been able to hurt the person His Highness wants to protect.

In the afternoon of that day, he led two hundred sailors from Yanzhou to Qufu, forty miles away, on horseback, and spent the night outside the city.

As soon as the city gate opened on the second day, he led people into the city, joined Jin Yiwei's spies in the city, and directly let two hundred naval officers and soldiers surround Kong Gongdao and Kong Gongde's family.

However, he didn't let people do it hastily, he just surrounded the house and stopped letting people in and out.

Later, under the leadership of Jin Yiwei Neijian, he only brought two Jin Yiwei general banners, and came to the Confucius Mansion in the city.

Today's Confucian Mansion has four to five hundred houses, occupying half of Qufu County.Not everyone can break into this main house rashly.

Two years ago, when Duke Yansheng's title had not been removed, even if the chief envoy from Shandong came, he could only come in and out obediently through the side door.

Jiang Wanli came to the gate, seeing the austere aura, he was also terrified in his heart.

If you enter today, you will stand in a completely opposite position with the vast majority of civil servants in Ming Dynasty.

But since he had already chosen this path, he couldn't help but regret it at this time.

Think about Yang Zhangde, if he came, he would definitely give it a go.

There were quite a few guests who came to the door early in the morning, but the flying fish suit on Jiang Wanli still attracted a lot of attention.