During each court meeting, there are a few people who cannot speak during the meeting because they are "meeting minutes takers" and are responsible for recording the speeches of the monarch and his ministers throughout the process.
There was no need to write in the morning session today, as all the time was spent listening to the imperial edict being read out by the minister of Honglu Temple.
The minister of Honglu Temple is called Yu Ben, Wang Yuan's former roommate, and the most popular scholar in Wang Yuan's class. This man is honest and upright, but unfortunately a bit nerdy. He is responsible for etiquette and diplomacy in Honglu Temple, which is considered reliable.
One person attained enlightenment, chickens and dogs ascended to heaven, and many of Wang Yuan's fellow villagers, classmates, and classmates were promoted.
The minister of Honglu Temple unfolded the edict: "Heaven carries the emperor, the edict says..."
Suppressing gangs and eradicating evil is just the beginning. Wang Yuan's real move is to reform the system.
From now on, Jinyiwei and Dongchang will not interfere in judicial affairs unless they receive the emperor's order, unless it is a major case such as treason.
The Military and Horse Departments of the North and South Beijing were upgraded from the original sixth-rank yamen to the fifth-rank yamen.
The commander and deputy commander of the Five Cities Military and Horse Division are the fifth-rank officers. The military attachés from the fifth rank cannot be directly held by nobles. They must be promoted from military generals from other places, and they must be a martial arts scholar.
The city inspection court was upgraded from the original seventh-grade Yamen to the fourth-grade Yamen.
The chief officer of the City Patrol Yuan is the Censor of Youqiandu, who has the power of preliminary judicial review of civil and criminal cases in the two capitals. There are five Censors of the City Patrol (increased to seven after the expansion of the city wall), who are in charge of various areas of the capital.
of judicial power.
What does it mean?
The Xincheng Procuratorate is the Beijing Intermediate Court, and its branch is the Primary Court.
From now on, the Wucheng Military and Horse Division will only have law enforcement power. After arresting criminals, they must be sent to the City Procuratorate for trial. Ordinary cases in Beijing and central China will be resolved by the City Procuratorate on their own, while major cases will be transferred to Dali Temple and the Ministry of Punishment.
The City Patrol Procuratorate and the Five-City Military and Horse Division can only enforce the law within the city and are not allowed to interfere with the affairs of Daxing County and Wanping County. Cases in Daxing and Wanping counties are resolved by the magistrates themselves, and the magistrates of these two counties are upgraded to the fifth grade.
, and can directly connect with the Ministry of Justice, otherwise it will be impossible to suppress the powerful people in the suburbs of Beijing.
In addition, the yamen of various ministries in the capital, including Dongchang and Jinyiwei, are not allowed to interfere with the affairs of the city inspection bureau, and are not allowed to dispatch the military and horse departments of the five cities to do work.
Why don’t the Wucheng Army and Horses Division do their job?
Because they can't do it.
Originally responsible for public security, fire protection, transportation, sanitation, urban management and other matters, the Wucheng Military and Horse Division was already short of manpower.
Dongchang and Jinyiwei also asked the Military and Horse Division to do things from time to time. This was nothing. The Ministry of Punishment, the Ministry of Works, the Ministry of Household Affairs, and even the Ministry of Rites could also command the Military and Horse Division.
The Ministry of Punishment asked the Soldiers and Horses Division to help arrest prisoners, examine corpses, and help execute family division lawsuits. The Ministry of Revenue asked the Soldiers and Horses Division to collect taxes inside and outside the capital, and help inspect salt affairs. The Ministry of Industry asked the Soldiers and Horses Division to repair bridges and pave roads, and help recover atonement materials.
.The Ministry of Etiquette hosted royal weddings and imperial examinations, and the Soldiers and Horses Division was also used as responsibilities.
Because there were too many things to do, the Five Cities Military and Horse Division could only outsource the work, and it was free of charge. They organized the people in the capital into armor, and once there was something to do, they sent them out to serve, seriously disrupting social order.
These phenomena must be corrected.
First of all, environmental sanitation, transportation, and urban management work were all transferred to Shuntian Prefecture and managed by Shuntian Prefecture officials. They were no longer affiliated with the Wucheng Military and Horse Department, and the required expenses were directly allocated by the Ministry of Household Affairs.
The Five Cities Military and Horse Division will only be responsible for public security and firefighting from now on.
Dali Temple is equipped with legal officers (bailiffs, tax police), who are responsible for urging the payment of tax revenue in the city and executing the judgment results. In order to prevent law enforcement from breaking the law, when the legal officers perform official duties, the Dali Temple Shaoqing must sign an order.
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Wang Yuan's actions added a large number of officials, clerks and servants, and the related administrative expenses were five times as much as before.
Taking the opportunity to reduce the number of soldiers in the Beijing camp again, we selected 3,000 young men from those who had nothing to do, to make up for the gap in the service, and directly converted the families of these people from military households to civilian households.
It seems that administrative expenses have increased fivefold, but military expenditures have been significantly reduced. In addition, these military expenditures used to go into the pockets of nobles, and soldiers were used by the powerful for free, and their living conditions were very poor.
Once the edict was announced, no one raised any objections.
The civil servant group was able to gain benefits and usurped the basic judicial power of the capital from the nobles. The Metropolitan Procuratorate, the Ministry of Punishment and the Dali Temple all gained more powers, but the only unlucky ones were the nobles.
Not only were the civil servants overjoyed, but the Beijing soldiers whose whole families were converted into civilian households also regarded Wang Yuan as a great benefactor. Even though most of them became the families of civil servants and their descendants lost their qualifications for the imperial examination, they were finally able to live a normal life. Before, they could only live a normal life.
He can be used as a cow or a horse for the powerful.
Wang Yuan originally wanted to open up the path to promotion for political officials, but all members of the cabinet opposed it, so it was difficult to force it through for the time being.
Then we should increase the wages of civil servants and civil servants, and raise the collective salary by two levels. In the past, civil servants were not divided into grades. Now, according to the situation of civil servants, grades are also set for civil servants.
As long as a civil servant does his job well and passes the basic cultural examination, he can be promoted to a civil servant, and his descendants will be eligible for the imperial examination.
He also reiterated that local governments are not allowed to hire officials for free. Once discovered, all officials in the yamen will be dismissed!
Then, the cabinet issued an administrative order to implement a whip law in Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong, Huguang, Sichuan, Henan, and Shanxi. The north and south were directly under direct control to speed up the land clearing. If there were powerful people who obstructed it, they would seize the title or dismissal from office!
In order to set an example, the young emperor Zhu Zaiyi announced the cancellation of all imperial shops and stores across the country.
The Huangdian property is handed over to the Ministry of Household Affairs for auction, and the money gained belongs to the internal treasury.
Huangzhuang's land property was assigned to a full-time censor and distributed to military households free of charge. The whole family of a military household that received land was converted into a civilian household. Officers from more than 100 households were not allowed to participate in the distribution of land.
After many streamlining efforts by Yang Tinghe and Wang Yuan, Huangzhuang was now used to divide the land, and all the redundant soldiers in the capital were eliminated.
In the whole of Beijing, there is no such thing as the Shenji Battalion. There are three thousand battalions. The capital guards have all been cancelled, leaving only 12,000 newly trained troops. Except for the artillery, even the cavalry are all equipped with muskets.
Of course, this does not include the four guards of Tengxiang and the soldiers guarding the city.
The four Tengxiang guards were the emperor's personal soldiers, and the city guard sergeants were directly under the command of the rear army governor's office. Wang Yuan did not change them in order to avoid suspicion.
The problem of redundant troops in the central government was completely solved.
At the same time, Wang Yuan was still clearing out redundant officials. Taking the capital as an example, he cleared out more than 400 high-ranking officials at one time, while adding more than 50 new official positions and expanding the academic research department of the Hanlin Academy.
In the end, only more than 200 civil servants were idle waiting for appointment, and the remaining officials who were laid off had other arrangements.
The elimination of redundant officials and the streamlining of departments once again aroused opposition, with a large number of neutral officials complaining.
Take the Six Ministries as an example. According to the system, there was only one left and right minister. However, by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were actually a large number of ministers added, that is, each ministry had one left minister and several right ministers.
Wang Yuan made a stipulation that from now on, the number of ministers in the six ministries can be increased by at most two. That is, each ministry can have a maximum of three right ministers, and the rights and responsibilities must be clear, and there must be actual work in charge. If there is no work in charge, no additional ministers can be added.
The same is true for the Metropolitan Procuratorate. The Metropolitan Procuratorate can only have at most two right censors.
This series of actions by Wang Yuan is tantamount to a sudden acceleration of reforms, which has brought about mixed praise and praise.
However, the little emperor was praised by everyone. Zhu Zaiyi was the first monarch since the founding of the Ming Dynasty to voluntarily give up all his palaces and stores.
Holy Lord!
Many officials have been kind and respectful, please give Empress Dowager Gu an additional badge.
Because Empress Dowager Gu also accounted for a large part of those imperial estates that were abolished, and they were the inheritance left to his wife by Emperor Zhengde.
She had to be flattered and praised, so the full name of Empress Dowager Gu became: Chongren Zhaoyi, Kangzheng Ci'an, and the Queen Mother of the Holy Mother.
In the eyes of countless officials who were dissatisfied with Wang Yuan, the emperor was a good emperor and the queen mother was a good queen mother, but it was a pity that the chief minister of the cabinet was a bastard!
Wang Yuan didn't care about this. As long as he didn't jump out to obstruct the reform, he didn't bother to argue with those civil servants.
The palace examination has ended, and Wang Yuan still has to review the examination papers. It is up to him to decide the number one scholar this year. As usual, the emperor only needs to nod.
By the way, that unlucky Guizhou scholar actually passed the examination with a bruised face and an arm hanging from his arm. He is also the only one from Guizhou in this year's Jinshi list.