I'm watching the gate in the jail

Under the iron-like evidence, Ma Shilang had no choice but to tell the whole story.

In his hometown, a Zhuangzi in Xincheng County, Baoding Prefecture, Ma Shilang secretly sent people to build a small workshop to produce lead-filled fake silver.

When Deng Xiang led people to search, the people there hadn't heard the news yet, a group of workers were working enthusiastically, they were caught right away, and they got all the stolen goods.

In order to get rid of the fake silver as soon as possible, the general thieves will not make complete silver ingots, but mostly broken silver.

But Ma Shilang is very courageous, because he is not afraid of these silver being used at all-theoretically, they should lie in the warehouse of the inner treasury for a long time, and they will not easily participate in the circulation.

As long as they can be successfully collected into the household department's treasury, things will be much easier afterwards.

It is true that the Ministry of Finance is the country's silver bag, but the treasury of the Ministry of Finance is actually divided into "inside" and "outside".In addition to silver, there are also various kinds of cloth, grain, treasures, etc., which are rich in variety.

The full name of "neiku" is "the various warehouses of the inner government". It is located inside the imperial city and is managed and controlled by eunuchs. It is used for supplies in the palace and rewards from the emperor.

The full name of "Waiku" is "Taicang Bank". It is located behind the Yamen of the Ministry of Households and is used for armaments and national material allocation. It is the so-called national treasury.

Among them, the "neiku" is basically the private property of His Majesty the Emperor.

And those fake silver made in Ma's Manor entered the imperial city grandiosely after the household department had their hands and feet exchanged.

The eunuch who was bribed by Ma Shilang knew all this well.

Nor was he at all afraid of being discovered.

As I said before, most of the silver in the inner treasury was used for rewards from the emperor.And these rewarded officials, after getting the silver, don't know how to use it at all, and dare not use it.

Usually, special courtyards and rooms are built in the home, and they are set up high to express gratitude to the emperor's kindness.

If real gold and silver are needed to spend on harem purchases or palace renovations, the bribed treasurer will naturally take out the real silver ingots stored in the inner treasury for spending.

The previous emperors of the Ming Dynasty were mostly frugal, and the inner treasury still has treasury silver marked with the symbol of the Yongle period.And Ma Shilang was not so frantic that he replaced all the silver ingots in the warehouse with fake ones, so for so many years, no problems were found with the silver ingots out of the warehouse.

This Ma Shilang climbed to his current position in the late Yingzong period. According to his confession and account books, this trick of "stealing the sky and changing the sun" has been carried out for at least three years, and the amount involved is as high as 200 million taels of silver.

What is the concept of 200 taels?

Today the new emperor ascended the throne and conferred the title of empress twice. The total expenditure of the entire inner court is only 200 million taels, and the country's military salary for a whole year is only 300 million taels!

In the past three years, Ma Shilang used this method similar to "mouse carrying rice" to eat away the internal treasury bit by bit, eating away the entire imperial palace's expenses for a year!

The reason why the incident happened this time was because the hearts of the people couldn't help swallowing the elephant. Although Ma Wei's nephew Wang Wenbao was in charge of the most important storage link, he got the least among the three of the Ma family when he divided the spoils.

Not reconciled, he bribed the workers in Baoding Zhuangzi, and secretly brought some fake silver products out.Then, through connections, he was sold to local hooligans in the suburbs of Beijing—even Ma and his son didn't know about this.

If it wasn't for the surname Hou who was caught by Wanda and Yang Xiuxian when he was cheating in the toilet of Linshuiju.This plan of "civet cat for prince" has lasted for three years, and it is not known how long it will last and how much money will be emptied from the internal treasury.

Seeing the memorial presented by Yuan Bin, Zhu Jianshen laughed angrily.

The officials of the household department and the eunuchs of the internal treasury were all in collusion, treating the emperor's money as their own money, and they were merciless in handling it.

Thinking of the meritorious officials that the father had rewarded in the last two years, the generals of the frontier army were actually holding fake silver... As the emperor, he didn't know what face he had to tell them the truth.

Maybe people have discovered it long ago, but they dare not say it because it is a royal reward.

This is not what makes Zhu Jianshen the most angry, the most important thing is...

The fake silver case that was discovered this time has already affected his next major event in preparing to use troops in Guangxi.

The Yao Rebellion in Guangxi has been a scourge for a long time, and it has become a thorn in the southwest corner of the Ming Dynasty, which has caused heartache for several generations of Ming emperors.

Since the reign of Hongwu, some Dong people in Dateng Gorge were dissatisfied with the oppression of the local natives by the imperial court, gathered crowds to kill the county magistrate, and took away the official seal and the imperial edict.Then the local natives of Xuanhua Prefecture attacked Nanning City.

In the 19th year of Hongwu, the Yao people of Dayengxia invaded the mountains and forests because of the imperial court's forced taxation.After the collective uprising, the chief envoy of Guangxi was killed.

Not long after, Tan Fu, a hundred households of the Zhuang nationality who came to suppress the rebellion, was shredded into pieces in public.

It is said that when the Tan family members came to collect the body, they couldn't find any bones and blood except for Tan Fu's nails.

In the reign of Yongle, Zhu Di, the great emperor of Yongle, was besieged and suppressed again, but he was still unable to win the Datang Gorge.

After the Xuande Dynasty, the power of the Datangxia rebels grew stronger.

In the orthodox years of Yingzong, there was even a hero of the Yao nationality named "Hou Dagou".

This Yao citizen who was born in Tiantou Village, Luoludong, Dayengxia has tens of thousands of soldiers.He integrated the originally scattered and disorderly rebel army composed of Yao, Dong and Zhuang into three armies of infantry, cavalry and sailors, and he was the commander of the three armies.

In more than ten years, Hou Dagou captured Liuzhou, Xunzhou and Wuzhou in Guangxi, killed court officials, and burned government offices.

After Zhu Jianshen ascended the throne, he didn't pay much attention to the young emperor who was almost far away in the sky.

Since last year, the Yao chaos has spread from Guangxi to neighboring provinces such as Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi.

The local inspector censor Wang Yuanshang played far away, imploring the emperor to send troops as soon as possible to quell the civil strife.

Zhu Jianshen, who was still the prince of Jian Guo at that time, decided to spend a year on the one hand preparing the army and raising military pay, and on the other hand sending spies from Jinyiwei and Dongchang to spy on the military situation in Guangxi.

Yang Xiuxian is one of them.

Originally, Zhu Jianshen planned to send troops to Dayeng Gorge in the first month of the new year to solve this confidant's trouble in one fell swoop, pull out this thorn for Ming Dynasty, and strengthen the country forever.

Last year, he convened the cabinet several times to discuss. Apart from the selection of the chief general, the most difficult thing was the military pay during the expedition.

Simply put, the treasury doesn't have enough money.

Zhu Jianshen had already made up his mind and decided to mobilize silver taels from the internal treasury to be used as military pay.

Then he was suddenly reported that his internal treasury was emptied of 200 million taels.

"Ma Wei, the right servant of the original household department, belongs to the Yi tribe."

Zhu Jianshen stood up slowly, closed his eyes tiredly, "The rest of you are waiting..."

kill!

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New Year's Eve

This is the last New Year's Eve of the Tianshun Dynasty. After the first day of the new year, Daming will start to use a new year name - Chenghua.

In the last days of the Tianshun Dynasty, the entire capital was immersed in blood and rain.

The case of Hubu Ma Shilang involved a series of officials involved in the counterfeit bank case. Tiqi from Jinyiwei and fans from Dongchang haunted day and night, and people all over the capital ransacked their homes and arrested people.

The Imperial Prison, the Ministry of Punishments, and the prisons in Shuntian Mansion were overcrowded for a while.

The wind inside and outside the capital is jittery, and the grass and trees are all soldiers.

Ordinarily, the twelfth lunar month should be the busiest time to buy new year's goods, but because of the mournful cries of the Jinyi guards all over the street and the people whose homes were ransacked, the common people dare not go to the streets casually, lest they bump into the police handling the case. , to find their own bad luck.

Ma Shilang's family was exiled from three tribes, and more than a dozen officials and family members involved were beheaded.

According to common sense, the Ministry of Criminal Justice will not use weapons before the new year, so as not to violate the peace of heaven, even if the head is beheaded, it will be executed in the autumn of next year.

But Zhu Jianshen didn't want this group of people to live until the Chenghua period, and ordered the Ministry of Punishment to kill everyone who deserved to be killed before New Year's Eve.

This led to the grand occasion of hundreds of people queuing up to be beheaded at the end of the year in Beijing.

Beijing West Market, located in Xisi Pailou, is the most prosperous commercial street in Beijing, and it is also a law place.In the past few days, the blood of the criminals has been flowing on the bluestone road for several days and nights, and a rush of blood can be smelled three miles away.

Even if there was a heavy rain a few days ago, it couldn't wash away the pungent smell of blood.

According to the usual practice, the severed heads are hung on the wooden stakes at the street crossings to show the public, and they are used to make an example to others. This is the origin of "Prisoners in the city".

In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the execution grounds for criminals in the capital city were one in Xishi and the other in Caishi Street, both places with the largest flow of people.

But you, as a common man, are happily carrying the money you have saved for more than a year at the end of the year, and you are going to the market to buy some new clothes, new shoes, rouge, gouache, and candy seeds.

As a result, before stepping into the street, you can smell the soaring blood. When you look up, hundreds of dried heads are fluttering in the wind like the preserved chickens and ducks hanging at your door.

You said you still don’t shop around, buy or not, are you happy?

The people of the capital are very unhappy, and the officials of the capital are also uncomfortable.

In July of this year, His Majesty the Emperor had already restored the "Ten Regiments of the Capital" system established by Yu Qian during the Jingtai period and revoked after the restoration of the former emperor.He even recalled General Guo Deng, who was deprived of military power by Emperor Jingtai and driven back to his hometown, back to Beijing.

At that time, His Majesty had already faintly shown signs of wanting to Zhao Xue for Yu Qian.

But the eunuch Niu Yu is still there. He is the witness of His Majesty Yingzong's last edict. He has witnessed how the current emperor swears to his father that he will never reverse the case for Emperor Jingtai and Yu Qian.

In August, Empress Wu was deposed, and the eunuch Niu Yu was driven to Nanjing to grow vegetables.

In December, just today, at the last court meeting on New Year's Eve.

Today's holy majesty announced that when the next year begins, he will issue an imperial edict for Yu Qianyu Shangshu Zhaoxue, and he is going to personally write a sacrificial oration for him.

All the ministers headed by Li Xian, the chief assistant of the cabinet, were all rejoicing, and some of them shed tears on the spot.

On the other hand, the "speaking officials" and "remonstrance officials" who tried to put the big hat of "three years without changing the father's way" on the head of the young emperor were blatantly "unfilial" and "humiliating the father" by the emperor. The behavior is so angry that it is out of anger.

Reminiscent of the previous behavior of the emperor abolishing Empress Wu, these ministers turned their heads and finally found the target of the attack-it was all Concubine Wan's fault!

That's right, in the final analysis, the massacre at the end of the year was also caused by Concubine Wan's younger brother, Jinyiwei Qianhu Wanda.

Concubine Wan, the demon concubine!

Wanda, this eagle dog!

The Wan brothers and sisters are two monsters who have brought disaster to the country and the people!

"These officials are sick, why are you scolding me? I just handled the case, they don't scold people who are greedy for money, what are they scolding me for?"

Wanda, who was cutting mutton at the Fusi dining hall in Beizhen, heard Qiu Zijin's words, put down the knife angrily, and yelled that he was wronged.

The point is, why does my sister get in the way of them?

It is true that people are sitting in the palace, and the pot comes from the sky.

"Isn't that what those officials do? It's just like the cook is the cook, and the watchman is the watchman. It's their duty to make trouble for the emperor and the people he likes. This is stipulated by the ancestors." .”

Qiu Zijin walked around the kitchen, taking a piece of meat here and a mouthful of soup here, making people wonder if he will be able to eat in a while.

Recently, for Ma Wei's case, their criminal department worked day and night, working in the dark, and finally got to know the case before the Chinese New Year.

Today is the New Year's Eve, and early in the morning, the big man next to Wanda walked to the secretary's office in the back hall of the Ministry of Justice, and informed him that Mr. Wan will hold a whole sheep banquet tonight, and asked him to go to Beizhen Fusi Take a trip.

He was so happy that he almost jumped up at that time, and the fatigue of working overtime for days was completely swept away.

"What are you mixing? So fragrant?"

After walking around, Qiu Zijin smelled a strange fragrance, and curiously approached Wanda and asked.

"I won't tell you yet."

Wanda smiled mysteriously, "This is the capital for me to make a fortune in the future."

"Thousands of households are still short of money? Your Majesty has given so many rewards."

Qiu Zijin was holding a stack of twisted dough twists, and asked with a crackling sound.

The case was handled beautifully this time, Zhu Jianshen's brother-in-law Long Xin was very happy, and with a wave of his hand, he rewarded Wanda with a few hundred taels of silver, which was not enough, and promoted his Jinyiwei Qianhu to hereditary Jinyiwei Qianhu.

In other words, Wanda's children and grandchildren will hold the royal iron rice bowl when they are born without any accidents.

Because he was not married yet, his mother was dead, and he had no wife or mother to confer rewards on, so Zhu Jianshen simply made Wanda's sister-in-law, Mrs. Zhang, a fourth-rank wife.

Anyway, a sister-in-law is like a mother.

"Hehe, until now, do you still think that I will use the money sent from the inner treasury?"

Wanda blinked and replied with a "pun intended".

Now all the fake silver in the inner library has been confiscated and destroyed collectively.

But in the past three years, no one knows how much of the money sent out to reward the officials is real and how much is fake.

Not to mention the former Daxing emperor, even after the new emperor ascended the throne, he also rewarded many ministers in just one year...

Zhu Jianshen decided to let it be like this. My father and I issued counterfeit banknotes. Anyway, you don’t dare to really spend them. Keep offering them at home!