"Old Dai, what happened?" Su Hao walked into the workshop and asked Dai Qi.
Seeing Su Hao come in, the government officials were too embarrassed to lie down to the window to peek, so they all returned to their seats. Someone quickly brought Su Hao tea and waited for Su Hao to sit down.
Dai Qi came close to Su Hao and asked in a low voice: "Master Su, did you just talk to those two Jinyi guards? What did they say to you?"
Su Hao said: "They said that some kind of Eunuch Chang is talking to Mr. Han, and no one should disturb him. Could this Eunuch Chang... be a eunuch?"
Dai Qi patted his thigh and said to Xie Sizhi, the government servant next to him: "Old Xie, you see I was right, it is indeed Eunuch Chang!"
"Oh, it's so hard!" Xie Sizhi sighed, "We in Fengcheng are in dire straits."
The other yamen servants also sighed, looking miserable, as if the person coming to the county yamen was not Mr. Chang, but some black and white impermanence.
Su Hao asked: "Why, do you know this Eunuch Chang and what he does?"
"Master Su, you don't know, ah..." Dai Qi said half a sentence, then stopped, just shook his head and sighed.
Su Hao didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and asked: "Dai Qi, what are you trying to do? Is there something you can't talk about openly?"
Dai Qi then put aside his pretense and said, "Master Su, have you ever heard of the mine supervisor?"
"Mine supervisor?" Su Hao thought for a while and said, "I think I heard someone say that he is a eunuch sent by the imperial court to be responsible for mining, right?"
"Yes, that's right." Dai Qi said. "This Eunuch Chang is the mine supervisor sent by the imperial court to Jiangxi. Ah, no, it should be said that he is the deputy envoy of the mine supervisor. This envoy is Eunuch Li.
Dragon. This Eunuch Chang is called Chang Wu. Some people read his name upside down and called him Wu Chang."
An impermanent person really came to the county government office. Su Hao couldn't help but feel proud of his foresight. However, Su Hao still couldn't figure out how a mine supervisor could become an impermanent person.
"Master Su. Master Han invites you."
Before Su Hao could ask Dai Qi for further confirmation, Li Xing, the yamen servant, appeared at the door of the workshop and said to Su Hao. Everyone turned their heads and looked outside, only to see that the two Jinyi guards in front of the lobby door had disappeared at some point.
That Chang Wu had already finished talking with Han Wen and left.
Su Hao followed Li Xing to the second hall of the county government office. In addition to the county magistrate Han Wen, there were three people in the second hall: the county magistrate, the chief secretary, the dianshi, and the official master Fang Mengjin. After Li Xing sent Su Hao through the door, he left.
After going out, Su Hao saluted everyone. Han Wen pointed to a seat and said to Su Hao: "Change it. Sit down."
"Thank you, Lord County." Su Hao agreed and sat down.
"Colleagues, everyone knows what Eunuch Chang came to say just now, but Gai Zhi is still unclear about it. Wu Hui, please introduce it to Gai Zhi," Han Wen said.
Fang Mengjin nodded and asked Su Hao: "In other words, when you entered the county government office just now, did you see two Jinyi guards?"
"The students have seen it." Su Hao said.
"Do you know why they came?"
"Students don't know."
"They came with Eunuch Chang, the deputy director of Jiangxi Mines. Have you ever heard of Eunuch Chang?" Fang Mengjin asked.
Su Hao said: "Students have never heard of this person before. But just now I heard Secretary Dai say in the workshop that this person's name is Chang Wu, and someone also gave him a nickname, called..."
When Su Hao said this, he stopped talking. He didn't know if it was appropriate to give a eunuch a nickname in front of all the officials. The county prime minister Wang Qi said it for him: "His nickname is
Impermanence is the one who specializes in taking care of life."
"This is what students have heard. But students don't know why his nickname is Impermanence." Su Hao replied.
Lord Bo Wang Fengshao said: "The eunuch sent by the imperial court to Jiangxi has two persons, the chief and the deputy. The chief eunuch is Eunuch Li Xing, who is a kind-hearted man. The deputy eunuch is Eunuch Chang, a smiling tiger. He often goes directly to the eunuch.
If all the prefectures and counties go to urge mining and tax collection, life will be devastated wherever they go."
"Why is this happening?" Su Hao asked in shock. The word "life is in ruins" is not just thrown around casually. How can a mine lead to the end of life in ruins?
Fang Mengjin saw that Su Hao really didn't understand, so he introduced it to him in detail.
The system of the emperor dispatching mining supervisors to various places began in the Longqing period. The reason for this was that the treasury was becoming increasingly empty and the emperor urgently needed to increase fiscal revenue to maintain various expenditures. The earliest duties of the eunuchs sent by the emperor to various places were
Supervise the collection of industrial and commercial taxes and mining taxes to prevent local officials from engaging in corruption for their own benefit. Since these eunuchs are tasked with increasing income, they must do everything they can to find out what is wrong with the local officials.
, to extract more wealth from the local area.
In the financial system of the Ming Dynasty, land taxes and industrial and commercial taxes were relatively fixed, and it was difficult for eunuchs to make a difference. However, mining taxes were an additional income. As long as more mineral deposits could be found to be mined, generous sums could be collected.
Taxes are used to complete the tasks assigned by the emperor.
In this way, the supervisory eunuchs sent by the emperor gradually transformed into professional mine supervisors. Their task was to force local officials to find and mine mines, and then collect mining taxes. At the beginning, the mine supervisors were relatively reliable in their work, basically
Taxes were collected based on the mines, and no mines were collected if they could not be found. Later, the mine supervisors became more and more arrogant, and they only focused on collecting money, not mining. Everywhere they went, they issued quotas for collecting mining taxes to the local officials.
They don't care whether there are any local mines or whether they can collect taxes.
Among the two mine supervisors sent by the imperial court to Jiangxi, Li Long was a more principled person and did not do any random things. But Chang Wu, the deputy envoy, was different. He often went to various prefectures and counties under clever pretexts to urge local officials to open mines.
Tax. If you don't pay the tax, then he will harass you endlessly, and even bring in royal guards to arrest local officials on various trumped-up charges.
Because local officials were afraid of Chang Wu's power, they had to find ways to raise money to pay taxes. In the end, these taxes naturally could only be distributed to local merchants and farmers. In order to avoid arousing public resentment, local officials often also
Part of the government's own expenses had to be diverted to the so-called mineral tax, which affected the income of the officials in the government.
Su Hao just saw in the workshop that all the officials were dejected because they had a premonition that the money in their names was going to be looted by Chang Wu.
"So that's it." Su Hao suddenly realized, but there was still something he didn't understand, so he asked: "Master Fang, there are so many prefectures and counties in Jiangxi, why did Chang Wu focus on our Fengcheng County?
Is there any reason for this?"
Han Wen smiled bitterly and said: "If you want to talk about this, I have to blame you for changing it. It's all because you are so capable that you have caused so much trouble for this county."
"Uh... County Lord, are you saying this?" Su Hao broke out in cold sweat. What the Korean said was not about him opening a coal mine, right? As for building telescopes, this matter belongs to the military. I guess Chang Wu has not yet
Too clear.
Han Wendao: "Since April this year, there has been a severe drought across the province. Although various prefectures and counties have worked hard to dig wells, it has not been able to help. Farmers have failed to harvest at least 50% of their crops. Famine has occurred in many places, and the people are miserable.
Only our county, Fengcheng County, was able to survey wells and dig wells smoothly, and had the best crops, so it avoided the famine. At this time, when Eunuch Chang wanted to come down to collect taxes, wouldn’t he choose our Fengcheng County?
?”
"This can be regarded as the Chu people are not guilty, but they are guilty of possessing a jade, right?" Su Hao learned what he had learned and practiced it, and used what others had just said to him to describe what was happening in front of him.
Jiangxi was hit by a severe drought, and people in many counties had problems eating. Under such circumstances, Chang Wu certainly could not exploit him, otherwise he would not be able to bear the consequences of civil unrest. In this case,
Under the circumstances, Fengcheng became a fat man in Chang Wu's eyes because of Su Hao's meritorious service in digging wells. There were no major disasters in the drought years and the people were able to eat. The Korean text said that this trouble was caused by Su Hao.
Come, that's right.
"What request did Eunuch Chang make?" Su Hao asked.
Han Wendao: "Eunuch Chang said that when he was in the capital, he heard that Fengcheng was a place of great wealth and abundant mineral deposits, so he hoped that the county would organize more people to explore for minerals and pay mineral taxes to relieve the court's difficulties."
"This is a high-sounding request." Su Hao said, "If it is such a request, the county magistrate does not need to worry. There are many coal deposits in Fengcheng. Students should work hard to explore more coal deposits and open more coal kilns.
Just pay the taxes to Eunuch Chang, that’s all.”
Han Wen said: "I don't know what the change is. What Eunuch Chang wants is not the coal mine tax. He wants this county to open a gold mine."
"It's really a shame that this gold mine can be opened at will. I have been in Fengcheng for several years and have never heard of any gold mines in Fengcheng. Isn't this an obvious blackmail?" said the County Prime Minister.
Qi Ann said. He was also present when Chang Wu came to talk to Han Wen just now. He knew Chang Wu's request.
Han Wen said: "Actually, Eunuch Chang probably knows this too. The so-called opening of a gold mine is just an excuse. His request to the county is to hand over 2,000 taels of gold a year, which is equivalent to 10,000 taels of silver. If he pays
If not, the county will have to borrow from other places and raise 10,000 taels of silver to give him."
"Ten thousand taels of silver..." Su Hao muttered. This was not a small amount. If divided among the merchants in the county, it would be enough to drive more than half of the merchants into bankruptcy. Because of the huge profits he made from making telescopes, he could actually spend some money on it.
Ten thousand taels of silver come, but this money cannot fall on him alone, right?
"If it really doesn't work, we can only persuade the wealthy businessmen in the county to donate." Dian Shi Wang Yixue said, "This is really an unreasonable disaster."
Several officials also shook their heads, saying that this might be the only way. But Han Wen turned his attention to Su Hao, and after a while, he slowly asked: "Change this, this county knows that you have geodesy."
With regard to mining capabilities, in your opinion, can gold mines be found in this county?"