amaotonovel Chapter 1010 Your Grand Commander's Mansion must be a bandit gang!
Chapter 1010 Your Grand Commander's Mansion must be a bandit gang!
Emperor Zhu glanced at Li Shanchang sideways.
Do you want to listen to what you are saying?
Why worry about money and manpower?
Damn it, if we're going to allocate houses to ordinary people, we have to spend money to build them.
We also need to set up a nursing home, a public sanatorium, and a pharmacy for the benefit of the people. Doesn't all of that cost money?
So how could we not have headaches about money and manpower?
Not to mention we also want to completely destroy Hu Yuan.
In other words, we can't do it. Otherwise, we would love to bring all the gold, silver and grain in the world to the Ming Dynasty and let the people of the Ming Dynasty live a good life overnight.
Emperor Zhu was internally grumbling, while Li Shanchang stroked his beard and said, "Has the new emperor forgotten that there are still more than twenty county magistrates from Ningyang County in the Yanyun area?"
"These twenty-odd county magistrates from Ningyang are not exactly honest men."
Honest people can't become officials.
Moreover, the old emperor set a rule that newly appointed scholars must first take turns interning in the six ministries for more than half a year, and only after obtaining a passing grade can they be officially appointed as officials.
The fact that Emperor Zhu was able to appoint these twenty-odd county magistrates from Ningyang County to the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun also speaks volumes about their abilities.
As for the audacity of these twenty-odd Ningyang faction magistrates?
Krupp Li Mingchen, who has now completely broken away from the civil service system and joined the ranks of the nobility, is a representative figure.
Li Shanchang continued, "I'm sure His Majesty has also seen the memorials of these county magistrates. They led their yamen runners to the prefecture to seize the people who were being relocated, they competed with the Prince Consort for the title of local specialties, and they competed with the Dengzhou Prefecture for laborers. These magistrates have done almost everything."
As soon as Li Shanchang finished speaking, Emperor Zhu and Liu Bowen burst into laughter.
Yu Mingli, the magistrate of Qingyuan County in Baoding Prefecture, submitted a memorial to the throne, arguing that donkey meat sandwiches were originally a local specialty of Baoding Prefecture, and that Ningyang donkey meat sandwiches were not the authentic ones.
Li Hui, the magistrate of Boye County, helped the magistrate of Yangjiang County, who was a fellow Jinshi (successful candidate in the highest imperial examination), come up with a suggestion: Yangjiang should raise alligators and then skin them to make shoes. The condition was that Yangjiang would help Boye find some barbarian laborers, thus ingeniously bypassing the labor market of Dengzhou Prefecture.
As for the case of Zhou Liangyu, the magistrate of Luan County, who directly obtained the new blast furnace technology for iron smelting from Dengzhou University, and Geng Xingming, the magistrate of Zunhua County, who recruited Mongolian tribes near the Great Wall to settle in the pass and then distributed land to them, these are all routine operations.
The twenty-odd smaller versions of Yang Dianfeng, when separate, would fight amongst themselves for benefits, but when united, they could also wreak havoc on Yang Dianfeng himself.
It can be described as infighting among fellow disciples and a falling out between teacher and student.
What made Emperor Zhu even more unbearable was that a certain scoundrel, relying on his mother-in-law's protection, had caused his father-in-law no end of trouble.
Now, those twenty-odd smaller versions of Yang the Madman also have their master's wives protecting them, and they've caused that bastard a lot of trouble.
This is the true cycle of karma, and retribution is inevitable.
Yes, Old Zhu is quite pleased with himself.
Emperor Zhu and Liu Bowen were secretly pleased. Li Shanchang also smiled and stroked his beard, saying, "Things like household registration statistics, mineral exploration, topographical exploration, and road planning, these minor county magistrates have almost all learned from the Prince Consort's methods."
"I suspect that those twenty-odd young men from Ningyang County may have already secretly adopted the Ningyang County system. What they lack now is the title of a pilot county."
"And that old bastard Wang Guangyang is no pushover either."
"Although there's not much activity on the surface, the population growth and road construction speed in Shandong Province over the past few years show that this old scoundrel has been causing trouble behind the scenes."
Emperor Zhu hummed in agreement, then bent his fingers and tapped the table lightly, one tap at a time.
Those twenty-odd county magistrates from Ningyang County must have copied Ningyang County's work.
That old scoundrel Wang Guangyang is the kind of person who does big things quietly. If you say he didn't copy Ningyang County's homework, even Brother Iron Pot probably wouldn't believe it.
The problem is that if you calculate it this way, things take a different turn—
Most of the twenty-odd county magistrates from Ningyang County were stationed in Beiping Provincial Administration Commission, with a small number stationed in Shanxi and Shandong Provincial Administration Commissions.
Adding Wang Guangyang from Shandong means we don't need to spend any money or consider any other messy issues. We just need to issue an imperial edict, and a large number of counties under the jurisdiction of the three provincial administrations of Beiping, Shandong, and Shanxi can be directly transformed into the Ningyang County model.
Just as Emperor Zhu was pondering this, Li Shanchang continued, "There's also the issue of manpower that Your Majesty just mentioned."
Li Shanchang stroked his beard and smiled, saying, "As far as I know, the literacy campaign in Ningyang County began in the autumn of the first year of Hongwu's reign, and the county school and community school also started in the autumn of the first year of Hongwu's reign."
"As for the county school, there's no need to say more. In the past few years, almost every year, Ningyang County School has had people pass the imperial examinations and become Jinshi, ranging from a dozen to three or five."
"What I want to talk about is the community schools—Ningyang County originally had eight community schools, but due to the continuous migration of people to Ningyang County over the years, the number of community schools has gradually increased to twenty."
"The oldest of the children who entered the community school were already seventeen years old, and even the youngest were at least fourteen."
“These children may not be suitable for official positions, but they are certainly enough to serve as clerks.”
"And those able-bodied men in Ningyang County, even if they don't know many characters, are still better than those who are illiterate. Why doesn't the higher-ups think of a way to get them all out to work as yamen runners?"
"..."
Before Li Shanchang could finish speaking, Xu Da said with a dark face, "Prime Minister Li is a bit late. More than a hundred able-bodied men from Ningyang County have been taken to the Eastern Palace by the new emperor. The rest are all promising talents that the Grand General's Office has temporarily placed in Ningyang County to cultivate."
WTF?
Li Shanchang looked at Xu Da with a bewildered expression and asked, "Explain to me what you mean by 'talents that your Grand Commander's Office is temporarily cultivating in Ningyang County'?"
Xu Da snorted and said, "The young men and women of Ningyang County have long been targeted by the Grand General's Office. It just so happens that the garrison is going to be reorganized this time, and the Grand General's Office is preparing to recruit five hundred young men and women from Ningyang County."
Li Shanchang's face immediately turned as black as the bottom of a pot.
Five hundred able-bodied men?
Damn it, there are only about five or six hundred able-bodied men in Ningyang County who meet the requirements for your garrison reform.
Xu Da, do you want to take the blame?
Just as Li Shanchang was about to start cursing, Xu Da preemptively said, "There's nothing we can do about it."
"The garrison needs to be streamlined and reorganized. In the future, the number of muskets and cannons will be gradually increased. And the use of cannons requires young and strong men who can read and do simple arithmetic."
Emperor Zhu rubbed his head and said, "It's not just the able-bodied men of Ningyang County."
“Even many of the able-bodied men in Dengzhou Prefecture were taken away by Tiande and his gang.”
“When Bo Ren was in Dengzhou Prefecture, he even cared about the students of Dengzhou University.”
Li Shanchang glanced at Emperor Zhu, then at Xu Da.
So?
I was still scheming here, but it turns out your Grand Commandery had already set its sights on the young and strong men of Ningyang County.
Damn it, your Grand Commander's Mansion must be a bunch of bandits!