Chapter 031 The government and the people have their own problems
When giving advice to a governor, if he wants the other party to at least listen to what he has to say, the only thing he can rely on is his identity as Gao Gong's nephew. All other identities are useless, not to mention the newly acquired scholar, even the prince's companion.
practical significance.
Only "Gao Gong's nephew" could make Su Yonglu at least patient enough to listen to him.
Gao Pragmatic thought that he was not a military genius, so he was asked to make suggestions for military deployment. Not to mention Su Yonglu, even he himself had little confidence, so he did not plan to make many suggestions on military operations.
What he is good at is, after all, politics. At least he has had some exposure to the field of maintaining stability in his previous life, and he has relatively sufficient confidence to do this.
Gao's pragmatic suggestions were divided into several parts. The first was to explain to Su Yonglu: These refugee rebels are not even called an "army" in themselves. They are just that they really can't survive. A few leaders spontaneously emerged, with a group of leaders.
Just help others to rob places where there is food and clothing to make a living.
Su Yonglu basically agreed with this point of view, but he did not say anything. After all, anyone who is not a fool can see this truth - these refugees and rebels did not clamor for proclaiming themselves kings and changing dynasties.
After explaining this problem, Gao Pragmatic began to get down to the topic. He told Su Yonglu that since these people did not intend to cause chaos, the government did not necessarily have to kill them all. They should use both suppression and appeasement, and appeasement should be greater than suppression.
Su Yonglu frowned and said that it was not that he did not want to appease, but the key was that these people came directly to Guide Mansion. As the governor of a province, he had to eventually appease, at least the prerequisite was that they could not mess up the area under his control, otherwise
Where is the majesty of the imperial court?
In addition, Su Yonglu also said that a bigger problem here is that recruitment requires resettlement, and the imperial court has no money for resettlement, and Henan does not have the ability to do so - these are not hundreds or thousands of people, but hundreds of thousands, or even
Even if there are millions of people, the imperial court cannot spend so much money to appease them, let alone Henan?
After all, Su Yonglu was an ally of Gao Dang. Rounding it off, he was a member of Gao Dang. Therefore, he did not take Gao Pragmatic as an important figure in the next generation of Gao Dang. He told Gao pragmatically sincerely that he
We have already checked the Henan treasury, and at most we can find four to five million taels of silver for appeasement.
This little money is not enough!
Just imagine, if we average four to five million taels of silver, is it enough for each refugee to receive one tael of silver? Even if we allocate one tael of silver, even assuming that grain prices in Henan do not fluctuate, this tael of silver will be saved.
Just eat enough for a month.
You know, they are refugees. They have nothing. If they can survive this month with only one tael of silver, will they continue to drink cigarettes next month?
Therefore, it is basically useless to directly spend money to appease the people, unless Henan can spend not four to five million taels in one go, but four to five million taels.
This is nonsense. The imperial court cannot afford so much money, let alone Henan and the Netherlands.
Although Gao Pingshi knew Henan Fuku's family background for the first time, it was not important. It was almost the same as he had estimated, and it was not enough anyway.
So he was not shocked, let alone panicked, but just asked Su Yonglu calmly, what major projects were being done or planned to be done in Henan right now?
Big work refers to big projects. Of course, generally speaking, those that can be called big projects are basically ordered by the imperial court.
Of course Henan has big industries. It is located in the middle reaches of the Yellow River. It would be difficult to imagine without big industries.
What is the full title of Su Yonglu, the governor of Henan?
He was the governor of Henan and other places and also in charge of rivers and military affairs.
It is the duty of the "Governor of Henan" to governor Henan and other places. The main responsibility is to supervise local officials as the censor of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. Well, in Gao Pragmatic's view, this position is equivalent to a certain place in the Red Dynasty.
secretary.
The admiral of military affairs is a part-time job held by governors everywhere. As the name suggests, he is also in charge of local military affairs. The reason why the governors of the Ming Dynasty are called "military gates", but the governors of the Qing Dynasty do not have this term, is because of this - the Ming Dynasty
The governor of the Qing Dynasty also served as the admiral of the province, while the governors of the Qing Dynasty generally did not also serve as the admiral. The admiral was appointed separately, usually by a military general.
What Gao Wuchen is now focused on is the other of his two part-time jobs: managing rivers.
Water control has always been a very important task in ancient China, and the Ming Dynasty was certainly no exception. There is no need to give more examples of its importance. Just from the perspective of "concurrently managing rivers", it can be compared with "admiral military affairs", and even put it aside.
It can be seen before the admiral takes charge of military affairs.
Needless to say, is the importance of a job that can be handled personally by the governor of a province? Since it is so important, of course it cannot be done just in name. There must be serious and important things to do.
The big thing is the river construction.
The river is not just the Yellow River, but it does mainly refer to the Yellow River. After all, in ancient China, the rivers in the south were generally relatively honest, and the most dishonest was the Yellow River.
The Yellow River has hundreds of harms, but only one set of benefits. Let’s not talk about only one set of benefits. Anyway, the rivers are all lost. It is estimated that we will have to wait until he takes power in a pragmatic way. The current focus is on all harms.
It has become a "hundred harm", and of course it must be managed, so the imperial court has established a large number of related official positions. From the river chief who specializes in managing the Yellow River - Youdu censor and prime minister Hecao, to the local chief official who "also manages the river",
As well as all kinds of local military equipment and political participation, they have "managed both rivers" and "water conservancy." Even places such as Pizhou, where the embankments have been constantly bursting recently, have even set up special positions such as "Huai'an Prefecture River Director", who can
It all starts from this idea.
Due to its location, Henan has always been a key area for the imperial court - the Central Plains cannot be chaotic! Therefore, Mr. He is often stationed in Henan and will only go to supervise the situation in person when serious embankment breaches occur.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic suggested that Su Yonglu should immediately contact the new river chief Pan Jixun to suspend the collection of labor corvees for this year, and at the same time change the direct recruitment to "work instead of relief" and "work instead of pension".
To put it simply, these rebellious refugees were arranged to clear the river channels to replace those ordinary people or military households who would have been recruited to perform corvee service.
Gao Pragmatic explained to Su Yonglu that there are at least three benefits of doing so:
First, there are so many people in civil unrest, and in a place like Henan, the heart of the Central Plains, the population is already dense, and the land is almost impossible to be left without an owner. How can it be possible to resettle it? There are so many landless and moneyless refugees left with nothing to do.
Sooner or later there will be chaos, so they must be given something to do.
The second is that there are several big projects to be started in Hezong. Expropriating corvees is an employer, and using work instead of paying them is also an employer. And expropriating corvees will also lead to the misappropriation of civilian labor and increase the burden on the people. Why not put these idle people and can't live?
The refugees who went down climbed up, so that the common people, officials and people could use them.
The third is that these refugees can no longer survive now. Regardless of whether they had land or not, they are now poor and have nothing left except a small life. They only want a mouthful of food. They also have to manage the use of corvee labor.
Even now, many times people have to pay more or less wages. However, as long as these refugees are used to take care of the food, they even save wages. It is not only convenient for the government and the people, why not do it?
