At Caishikou in the capital, a row of prisoners knelt on the ground. Beside the prisoners, an executioner wearing red clothes, a red scarf on his head, and holding a sword with a ghost head was waiting quietly.
"That person is Li Gao, the commander-in-chief of the South Route Army. The one who kills good people and takes credit. He is so audacious that he kills thousands of people in a small town overnight. A thousand cuts is not an exaggeration.
, Lingchi should be sentenced to death, it’s really easy to kill him with one knife.”
"Isn't that right? Such a dog officer should be killed. Fortunately, I originally thought he was a hero and could kill Tatars. I didn't expect that he turned out to be such a person and deserved to be killed!"
"Killing the three tribes is an advantage for him, and it is because of your mercy. Otherwise, the nine tribes should be killed."
"..."
Before the lunch market, countless people had gathered in Caishikou to watch the excitement. Emperor Hongzhi rarely used capital punishment since he came to the throne, and few people were beheaded in Caishikou.
Even in the last case of theft of official warehouses, except for a very small number of leaders, most of the people involved were not sentenced to death. They were basically exiled for three thousand miles. Emperor Hongzhi was considered very
of generosity and kindness.
But this time, Emperor Hongzhi had murderous intentions and wanted to kill people, not just one or two, but in batches, and the first one to start was this Li Gao.
As the commander-in-chief of the Southern Route Army, Li Gao committed many crimes such as withholding military pay, reselling military supplies, using domestic slaves for personal use, and so on. What is more serious is that he also killed good people and took credit for their crimes.
Someone pretended to be Tatars and massacred thousands of people in a small town overnight, and then disguised these thousands of people as Tatars to defraud huge rewards.
The crime of killing good people and taking credit for it, and killing thousands of people, was too serious, and it was enough to punish the nine tribes. However, Emperor Hongzhi did not involve too many people, and only ordered the execution of three tribes.
At this time, there were dozens of people from the three clans of Li Gao's family. They were all wearing prison clothes, with disheveled hair. The women were crying, and the men all had pale faces and dull eyes.
Li Gao, in particular, had just been conferred the title of Bo Bo not long ago and had been promoted. He could be said to have achieved great success, but who knew that in the blink of an eye, he was not happy for a few days, but he immediately became a prisoner and was also going to be punished by the three clans.
Life is like a play, and the changes are nothing more than that.
"Dog officer~"
I don't know who threw a rotten egg at Li Gao. Immediately, the people watching around me began to use the things in their hands to express their inner dissatisfaction.
Rotten eggs, stones, rotten vegetables, rotten radishes, smelly salted fish, etc., all kinds of things kept coming at Li Gao, making him extremely embarrassed, but he couldn't hide.
Now that he could end it with one blow, he felt lucky. With his crime, even betraying Ling Chi was nothing more.
On the other side, on the supervising platform, the people responsible for supervising the beheadings were Li Dongyang and Zhang Mao. At this time, both of them had expressionless faces and had no intention of stopping the angry crowd from throwing things to vent their anger.
Li Gao really deserved to die. Even if he died ten thousand times, someone would throw something at him and then give him a quick blow, which would be an advantage.
"When the time comes~"
"cut!"
Soon, three quarters to noon arrived, and Li Dongyang coldly threw down the token.
The executioners picked up a bowl of wine one after another, took a swig, and sprayed it on the ghost-head knife. Then they took off the tag on the prisoner's back, raised the knife and dropped it. Dozens of people fell to the ground, and blood flowed from the scene.
"Okay~"
"Good kill."
The people eating the melon immediately cheered, which was really satisfying.
The next day, it was the same place at Caishikou.
There were dozens of people again, this time they were from the East Route Army Liu Yu's family. Liu Yu also committed many crimes. In addition to not killing good people and taking credit for their crimes, he also set up private horse markets and private slave markets, and colluded with officials and businessmen.
, Trafficking The court strictly prohibited the selling of goods to the grasslands.
Any one of them is enough to make someone's head fall to the ground. All crimes added together, Emperor Hongzhi also directly punished him from the three tribes.
On the third day, it was still here at Caishikou. This time there were more people, hundreds of people. Among them were officials ranging from the minister of household affairs and the commander-in-chief of the border army to the officials responsible for supervising the manufacture of ordnance.
These people were convicted of corruption, bribery, theft of military pay, misappropriation of public funds and many other crimes. They were all sentenced to death by Emperor Hongzhi and executed together with them.
Hundreds of people, hundreds of heads fell to the ground, and the entire Caishikou place was filled with a strong smell of blood. The soil under the Caishikou guillotine turned red and black, with too much blood seeping into it.
On the fourth day, more people were executed on this day, thousands of them.
Most of the people executed in this batch were businessmen. Some businessmen were just reselling military supplies, and their crimes were relatively minor. Therefore, Emperor Hongzhi only executed executions and ransacked their homes.
Some merchants, such as the Shanxi merchants who were discovered this time, not only resold military supplies, but also colluded with the border troops to sell ironware, salt, tea, grain, etc. that were strictly prohibited by the imperial court to the grassland Tatars.
What is even more despicable is that some of these Shanxi merchants collaborated with the enemy and treason, spied on, sold military information to the grassland Tatars, and reported information to the grassland Tatars.
Of course, it's not just this time. In the past, when the Tatars went south, these Shanxi merchants also made a lot of money.
While informing the Tatars, they also did business with the Tatars. The gold, silver, jewelry, antique calligraphy and paintings, etc. robbed by the Tatars basically came into their hands, in exchange for food, iron tools, intelligence, etc. in their hands.
It can be said that in the past, the Tatars were able to go south repeatedly and succeeded every time. One of the important reasons was that these Shanxi merchants were treasonous and full of Tatar insiders. Sometimes they even directly helped the Tatars bribe the border troops and provided money to the Tatars.
The prince opened the country's gates and defenses, and let the Tatars in and plunder wantonly.
When these things were found out, Emperor Hongzhi was furious and directly sentenced these Shanxi merchants to be collaborators with the enemy and treason to destroy the nine tribes. Several large Shanxi merchant families, and hundreds of people in the entire family were arrested at once, and they were all sent to prison at this moment.
The guillotine.
Thousands of heads fell to the ground, and the entire Caishikou area was filled with rivers of blood. The strong smell of blood lingered for a long time, so that even the people who were eating melons were afraid to come and watch the fun. Too many people were killed.
However, this is not over yet, and Emperor Hongzhi's anger has not yet been extinguished.
In the entire government and the public, all the ministers were silent at this time, and everyone was afraid of being killed. No one thought that the good old Emperor Hongzhi, a good old man who could even forgive his own mortal enemy, would go on a killing spree.
In just a few days, thousands of people have been killed. Half of the officials from the Ministry of Husbandry and the Ministry of War were killed. In addition, Zhou Jing, the Minister of the Ministry of Hubu, and Ma Wensheng, the Minister of the Ministry of War, were also imprisoned in the sky prison.
, so neither the Ministry of Revenue nor the Ministry of War can operate normally.
In the past, many officials would have been exiled to Yunguang at most. Even if someone spoke for you, they could retire on their own initiative and return to their hometown to enjoy a happy old age.
But this time it was different. The murderous Emperor Hongzhi, as long as he was involved in the case, would be killed at the least, or his house would be ransacked, and at the most serious end, the three clans would be exterminated.
Above the court, Liu Jian, Li Dongyang, and Xie Qian also tried to remonstrate with Emperor Hongzhi, but even Liu Jian, the chief minister of the cabinet, was severely reprimanded by Emperor Hongzhi because Liu Yu was Liu Jian's fellow villager. After investigation by factory guards,
Liu Yu and Liu Jian are very important. He has given Liu Jian many gifts in the past. Liu Jian strongly recommended Liu Yu to be the trilateral president.
From this alone, we can see how wide-ranging the case is, with even Liu Jian, the chief assistant of the cabinet, being implicated.
If not for the fact that Emperor Hongzhi thought that Liu Jian was his teacher, had assisted him for many years, and had nothing to do with the case, Emperor Hongzhi might even have killed Liu Jian.
The ministers in the DPRK are all unclean, at least they are similar to Liu Jian. It is an unspoken rule that everyone in the officialdom accepts Xiao Jing, who is a subordinate official.
It would be fine in normal times, but at this time, everyone is in danger. No one dares to mess with Emperor Hongzhi at this time. But not everyone is like Liu Jian. They are all Liu Jian's teachers. Emperor Hongzhi will still read
Affection.
Several ignorant censors advised Emperor Hongzhi, thinking that Emperor Hongzhi killed too much and harmed the peace of the world. They even thought that Emperor Hongzhi would listen to them just like before, so they scolded Emperor Hongzhi severely.
.
Emperor Hongzhi decisively granted them permission and asked the factory guards to conduct a casual investigation. They easily found several crimes and sent them to the guillotine at Caishikou.
From then on, no one dared to say a word. Everyone was on tenterhooks, fearing that they would be implicated. No one dared to speak out. They could only watch the heads of people rolling around, constantly worried.
