It was precisely because of Du You's persuasion that Guo Song's mentality towards more than 60 Guanzhong officials changed from being wary to wooing them. For this reason, Guo Song also released a lot of goodwill and wooed these officials who were regarded as traitors by the imperial court.
In addition to meeting these officials in batches, Guo Song also promoted them generally. Almost everyone was promoted from chief clerk to county captain or county magistrate, and from county magistrate to county magistrate. If he was already a county magistrate,
Then move up one rank.
Several of the officials also received special promotions, such as Xinfeng County Magistrate Lu Yiming was promoted to Wannian County Magistrate, Wannian County Magistrate Cui Ju was promoted to Jingzhao Prefecture Shaoyin, but the most eye-catching one was Yang Wanhua, Purun County Chief Secretary.
He was promoted to the position of governor of Tong Dynasty, from a lowly official of the ninth rank to a senior official of the fifth rank, directly crossing the two thresholds of the seventh rank and the fifth rank, which really shocked many people.
But the officials of Fengxiang Mansion were not very surprised. This Yang Tianhua had always been praised by the governor Li Shuguang, and this time he was received alone by Guo Song. Many people guessed that he would be promoted again, but they did not expect that he would be promoted to the governor of Tongzhou.
From a county official to a state official, it is not a short step. Generally, you have to go back to the imperial court to get a job, which requires at least five to ten years of qualifications.
As more than 60 officials returned to the counties happily, the Jin army's looting operation also kicked off. A total of 75 county officials faced the pursuit of stolen goods. Some of them were officials directly appointed by Zhu Si, and some were paid to buy officials.
A common characteristic of those appointed was that they exploited people in various ways and made a lot of ill-gotten gains.
Under the coercion and torture of the internal guards, many officials couldn't stand it anymore and told them where the stolen money was. Many officials knew that they would die, so they chose to commit suicide and leave the stolen money to their families.
Fuli Cabinet Shop in Yi County is the property of the consort Xiao Sheng. Xiao Sheng is dead, but this cabinet shop is still the property of the Xiao family and ranks among the top ten in Chang'an.
At noon that day, dozens of soldiers followed an official into the gate of the cabinet shop. The shopkeeper hurriedly came up to him and said, "What business do you have?"
The official raised his inspection badge and said: "I am Zhou Ya, the inspector of Suzhengtai. We are tracing the stolen property of the former county magistrate Jiang Wei. According to the clues we got, the county magistrate deposited part of the money in your cabinet.
I hope you will cooperate with the government in investigating the case and hand over all the money deposited by the county magistrate."
Jiang Wei, the magistrate of Xi County, has confessed that he deposited a large amount of money in Fuli Cabinet, but the receipt for withdrawing the money was in the hands of his son. His son had run away, so Suzhengtai could only withdraw the money by force.
.
The shopkeeper was in a dilemma because he gave the customer's money to the government without any receipt. What if his family came with the receipt?
But if he wanted to confront the government, the shopkeeper did not have the courage. He hesitated for a while and said: "Well... can you give me three days and I will ask the proprietor for instructions."
Zhou Ya shook his head and had a very tough attitude, "I'll give you half an hour at most. If you can't take it out after half an hour, we'll move it ourselves. How much is it?"
The shopkeeper was immediately anxious. He moved as much as he could, and that would not empty the shop of money. He hurriedly ran behind the counter to search for the account books, and soon found out that the entire No. 7 warehouse was Magistrate Jiang's money.
The shopkeeper sighed, and now he had no choice but to obey his authority.
"I found it. The money in Treasury No. 7 belongs to Magistrate Jiang. There are account books here. Please take a look!"
Zhou Ya stepped forward and looked at the account books, then turned around and said to the captain: "Go and move the warehouse No. 7, move them all!"
The shopkeeper led the soldiers into the warehouse at the back. He opened an iron door and said, "They are all inside."
The warehouse inside covers an area of about fifty square meters, and there are dozens of large boxes stacked inside. When you open the boxes, you will find that they are all ingots of silver and gold. According to the account books, there should be one hundred thousand taels of silver and ten thousand taels of gold stored here.
, this is only half of the tea and wine taxes and other corruption collected by the county magistrate Jiang Wei in the past few years, and the other half was transported back to his hometown. Also in Yi County, another army of a hundred people has rushed to Jiang Wei's hometown.
Zhou Ya quickly counted and found two thousand taels of silver in one box, a total of fifty boxes of silver and ten boxes of gold, which was consistent with what was recorded in the account book.
Zhou Ya ordered: "Move all the boxes in the room!"
.........
There is a small village called Zhou Village in Changhe Township, Huayin County, near the foot of Huashan Mountain. There are only a few dozen households in it, half of which are people named Zhou.
Before dawn, the new Huayin County Magistrate Zhang Wen led a large group of soldiers to the small village. Nearly a hundred soldiers surrounded a large house at the east end of the village.
Two strong soldiers kicked open the courtyard door, and a large group of soldiers rushed in...
This mansion is the old residence of Zhou Wei, the Prime Minister of Xinfeng County. Zhou Wei refused to hand over the stolen money during the interrogation. He committed a heinous crime and committed suicide in prison, knowing that he would not escape death. However, his family members have absconded and are in his official residence.
Only a few thousand dollars were found, which is obviously unreasonable.
The inspector quickly found Zhou Wei's old home, Zhoucun, Huayin County, where the money he collected was probably hidden.
Not long after, the soldiers arrested Zhou Wei's wife and three sons, and began a thorough search of the entire mansion.
But after a thorough search, only some jewelry and broken silver were found, and a large amount of stolen property was nowhere to be found.
Inspector Zhao He walked up to Zhou Wei's wife and said: "His Royal Highness the King of Jin has an order. If you tell the truth about the stolen property, you will not be punished as much as your family. But if you conceal the stolen property, the whole family will be executed. If you tell the truth, you and your three sons will be spared."
Life, or beheaded on the spot!"
Several big men held down their three sons in front of Zhou Wei's wife like chickens, and raised their machetes high. Zhou Wei's wife was so frightened that she almost fainted and cried: "I said! I said! Everything is there.
In the dry well in the backyard.”
Zhao He ordered: "Take her to search the dry well in the backyard!"
Under the guidance of Zhou Wei's wife, the soldiers finally found this extremely secret dry well. The wellhead was flush with the ground, sealed by a large stone slab, with a rockery on top and covered with dead grass.
If no one had pointed it out, I would never have thought that there was a dry well here.
The soldiers moved away the rockery and used crowbars to pry open a large stone slab weighing hundreds of kilograms. A gloomy wellhead appeared in front of them.
There were many iron boxes inside, which were very heavy. The soldiers did not pull up all the iron boxes until noon. No one could have imagined that a small wellhead was so big underneath that hundreds of iron boxes could be pulled out.
, most of them are copper coins, but there are also a lot of gold, silver, jewelry and jade articles. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 coins.
The search of Jiang County Magistrate of Yi County and Zhou County Magistrate of Xinfeng County is just a microcosm. Seventy-five search teams are busy in various counties in Guanzhong, searching for the stolen money of corrupt officials. The amount of money is huge, amounting to millions.
Except for a few who had clear victims, most of them were wealth exploited through various cleverly named taxes. Guo Song decided to use this wealth to dredge the Tianbao Canal, build docks, and build bridges and roads.
Entering December, there was a second heavy snowfall in Guanzhong, and Guanzhong became a snowy world again.
That morning, Guo Song, accompanied by Du You, came to Hanxiu Manor, twenty miles away from the West City. This was the manor of the rebel An Lushan. After the Anshi Rebellion was put down, this manor became an imperial manor.
The private manor of the Emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Hanxiu Villa, covers an area of about one thousand hectares. It is an extremely vast manor. It does not even have walls, but only a ditch and trench dug along the edge.
During this period, Du You was solely responsible for inventorying the land and property in Guanzhong, including major farms, houses in the city, etc. Du You led dozens of officials to be busy for almost a month before completing this tedious and complicated matter and compiled a thick
A thick book.
The main purpose of counting the fields and houses is not to take back the fields that have been divided by Zhu Si, but to find out the situation, how much fields and properties have been distributed, whose fields originally belonged to them, who they were assigned to, etc.
As for a confusing account.
In addition, when some ministers' Yongye fields were divided, Guo Song planned to compensate the original owners with part of the confiscated money.
At the same time, Guo Song also had the idea that some land could be given to existing farmers as private land, but its sale must be restricted, and the ownership of some of the land must belong to the government, which would be leased to the people for farming.
Today Guo Song mainly wants to go deep into the farmers' households and understand the thoughts of the farmers at the bottom.
A small village covered with snow appeared in front of them. Everyone got off their horses and walked towards the village along the path between the fields.