Jinling City, in a two-story building inside the Chengtian Mansion Inspectorate.
Chen Lifu, who had caused a storm of public opinion, was standing in front of the window of a room on the second floor. He had never thought that one day he would live in the guest house of the Inspectorate.
The guest house of the Inspectorate has many uses. It is usually used to receive the staff of the Inspectorate. However, everyone in the official circles knows that the guesthouse of the Inspectorate also has a more important function, that is, as a reception for those who are questioned.
residences of officials.
Most of the officials invited by the Inspectorate to inquire are doing good things. If it is a good thing, the Inspectorate will not call you here.
Most of the people called by the Inspectorate were targets of their suspicions, either for dereliction of duty, bribery, or corruption. In short, it was not a good thing. And many officials often stayed in this guest house for a short time.
will be sent away!
Where to send it? The policeman’s detention center!
Some people may be innocent, or they may really just be assisting in the investigation, or they may simply have committed a crime themselves, but the Inspectorate cannot find any evidence, so they can only be released in the end.
But no matter what, these things will have a cause. At least the Supervisory Office suspects that you have a problem, so it will go to war and invite you here in the name of "assisting investigation", "routine inquiry", etc.
After being invited, they will live in the guest house of the Inspectorate under almost house arrest, and then cut off all contact with the outside world. The censors of the Inspectorate will inquire in various ways, and of course they will also use this period of time.
Time to collect various evidence from the outside world.
Once the Inspectorate considers that the evidence is enough for them to file a public prosecution, they will not hesitate to apply for an arrest warrant, and then lead the patrol officers to put the official directly into a detention center, followed by a public prosecution. Once the crime is convicted, it will naturally be thorough.
Ruined.
But Chen Lifu never thought that one day he would become a resident of the Guest House of the Inspectorate. He was under house arrest, and he had to accept various seemingly mindless problems every day, but he connected these problems together.
If so, it would not be difficult for Chen Lifu to guess that they called him here not because of any dereliction of duty, but because they suspected him of taking bribes!
Are you kidding me? The Chen family is a serious official family. The wealth accumulated over the generations is huge. Almost the entire Chen family village, whether it is the land in the east or west, is the property of the Chen family, and they also own multiple farms.
, the family has more than 3,000 acres of fertile land and many shops and industries.
And last year, he also took advantage of the spring breeze of supporting industry and commerce, allowing his family to invest and build a flour mill.
These properties, even after paying taxes every year, can still contribute at least fifty thousand taels of silver to Chen Lifu!
Not to mention anything else, the silver vault in his cellar alone contains more than ten thousand taels of gold and more than three hundred thousand taels of silver!
The account in the Royal Bank maintains a deposit of at least one hundred thousand taels of silver all year round. No matter where Chen Lifu goes to serve as an official, he always has the best food and the best accommodation. Even when he goes out to visit a brothel, it is...
Just go to the oiran directly.
Even when entering and exiting Jinling City, he always takes the VIP express lane, even if he brings a large group of servants with him!
Will Chen Lifu accept bribes?
Nonsense, am I the kind of person who is short of money?
However, Chen Lifu was not stupid. From the censor who questioned him, he had already deduced that the Inspectorate suspected that he had accepted bribes!
He knew better than anyone whether he had taken bribes or not. He had never accepted even a penny from anyone. When he went to inspect local taxation, he had never been treated to even a meal. When he went to a brothel to listen to music and drink, it was all at his own expense.
money!
But why would the Inspectorate suspect that he had taken bribes?
Also, who reported him?
Could it be that he offended someone when he was patrolling Jiangbei Road and Wanbei Road for more than half a year?
He had just completed his inspections in Jiangbei Province and North Anhui Province half a month ago. When inspecting Jiangbei Province and North Anhui Province, Chen Lifu's methods were still fierce and ruthless!
During the more than half a year of patrolling Jiangbei Road and Wanbei Road, he almost wiped out the Yangzhou salt merchants, uprooted the local snakes entrenched in Fengyang Prefecture, which were said to have thousands of acres of fertile land and countless properties, and also raided several other houses.
Ten gentry businessmen who evaded taxes.
Moreover, he also replaced half of the local tax department officials in Jiang and North Anhui provinces!
He kicked out many corrupt and bribed tax officials from the tax team, and then personally sent them to the guillotine. He also directly introduced many veterans, which to a certain extent changed the serious negative impression of the local gentry on the tax inspection team.
At the same time, the efficiency of tax collection is also greatly improved!
Not only that, the director of the Yangzhou Prefecture Taxation Bureau was dismissed because of his memorial.
Even the director of the Jiangbei Province Taxation Department was implicated, and was finally transferred back to the Central Taxation Department with a transfer order. Of course, he was not promoted, but was made a bench. If nothing else, the former Jiangbei Province Taxation Department
Director, it is impossible to get a chance to turn around in this life.
Unless Chen Lifu is unlucky and a bunch of people overturn many of his past decisions, there is no hope for him.
Such a bold and decisive person will inevitably attract the hatred of many people!
Especially the introduction of veterans into the tax inspection team that he promoted some time ago has caused quite a stir within the tax system!
In the first half of this year, he reorganized the local tax inspection team as usual, driving out the many green-skinned gangsters and other scumbags who were recruited in the early days of the tax inspection team's establishment, and then began to recruit veterans.
This is what he reported to Qian Zili at the time, saying that too many messy people were mixed into the tax team, which not only seriously aggravated people's negative impression of the tax team, but also continued to reduce the work efficiency of the tax team, and widely
There were serious incidents in which members of the tax team colluded with local gentry and businessmen to help conceal and omit the tax payable.
In order to change this situation, he suggested introducing veterans from the military, increasing the discipline and combat effectiveness of the tax inspection team, and turning the tax inspection team into a tax team with a tenacious style that had always been able to collect taxes, fight wars, and have a tenacious style in the Tang Dynasty.
!
Qian Zuili was very interested in Chen Lifu's proposal. Not only him, but even Liu Bagou felt that it could be carried out after hearing about it. If it was done well, he would vigorously promote it. Why, because the big guys in the cabinet
, not only Qian Zuoli, but almost all civilian officials, including Liu Bagou and others, hope that the cabinet or the civilian officials will have an army!
An army that takes orders from the cabinet!
So back then they always wanted to formalize the tax inspection team. What does formalization mean?
I just wanted to turn the tax inspection team into a real army, otherwise there would not have been any plans for a tax inspection team back then.
It is a pity that His Majesty has been strictly defensive and coupled with the strong opposition of the military, it was finally settled. However, their mentality has not changed.
We are not allowed to build an army, but we should be able to recruit veterans. We are not allowed to equip powerful field artillery, but we should be able to build two shotguns.
After Qian Zili's suggestion was approved, he began to try to recruit veterans from the tax inspection teams in Jiangbei Province and North Anhui Province. The military did not have much objection to this matter.
Because a large number of soldiers are now retiring every year, the Tang Dynasty King Division has clearly stipulated the service period, recruiting a large number of new soldiers every year, and also retiring a large number of veterans every year.
Although these retired veterans will become an important part of the military's reserve force, soldiers always need a livelihood after they retire. In the past, the military's arrangement method was to recruit them into the patrol force.
But now the patrol police have set up some kind of patrol school and started to train patrol police on their own on a large scale. The patrol police establishment in many places is also very tight. Later, the military began to arrange retired soldiers to enter the enterprises of the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises.
But to be honest, people would not be happy if veterans who had served in the military were allowed to work in factories as workers!
Because when I joined the army, even though I was doing high-risk things like fighting, the pay was good. When I was in the army, a soldier's salary could support a small family. But when I went to a factory, I worked fourteen hours a day.
I can only make ends meet.
In addition, according to the military's estimates, by next year, the Southwest Campaign will be almost over, and by then the military will usher in a relatively large-scale wave of retirements!
It is conservatively estimated that at least 50,000 to 60,000 soldiers will retire from active service by then, because these soldiers have basically reached the end of their service period. In order to maintain a large number of retired soldiers in peacetime for rapid mobilization and expansion of the army in wartime, these soldiers need to be retired.
, and then have new recruits take their place.
How to arrange for so many people?
They talked with Datang Western Company, which said that they could accept about two thousand people. If there were more, the company's finances would not be able to bear it.
They talked with the Patrol Department, and the Patrol Department said that accepting 20,000 people would be enough, and it would be difficult to arrange for more. After all, their own patrol school also has a large number of patrol major graduates who need to be arranged every year. Besides,
Well, the patrol department prefers graduates of the patrol major that it has trained. As for veterans, although their qualities are pretty good in all aspects, they are still a little behind when it comes to investigating cases.
And to be honest, many of today's retired soldiers are illiterate. Once the patrol department accepts them, they have to receive special training, which is more troublesome than recruiting young adults.
They also talked with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, who said that although many local yamen are short of personnel, the shortages are all officials. What is an official? In the simplest terms, even if you are a ninth-grade clerk, you must be a
You should be a scholar or graduate from middle school. Most of the veterans like you are illiterate, so it’s not easy to arrange!
Although the military has made some targeted plans for this, such as opening literacy classes, opening schools within the military, and organizing middle school-level examinations, etc., those are things for the future. Now, what are they doing for those few people?
Thousands of veterans are looking for homes!
That's when Chen Lifu appeared with his plan to recruit veterans for his tax inspection team!
Although the military was not happy with the expansion and formalization of the tax inspection team, in order to solve the urgent need, they still supported Chen Lifu's plan, and in the early stage, they arranged for nearly a thousand veterans to be transferred to Jiangbei and Wanbei.
Tax inspection team.
This move greatly strengthened the combat effectiveness of the local tax inspection team and laid the foundation for Chen Lifu's subsequent series of large-scale purges in Jiangbei and Wanbei!