Chapter 042: Great Cleansing, Great Change of Blood
The first year of the Apocalypse, early summer.
The temperature began to recover completely, but Zhu Youxiao no longer attended court, but was still reviewing memorials sent by the cabinet. Ye Xianggao, who belonged to the moderate party of the Donglin Party, was relatively safe in handling government affairs.
Zhu Youxiao didn't even look at the memorials. Ye Xianggao would do whatever he wanted. The memorials that could be sent to Zhu Youxiao were related to military and natural disasters.
Zhu Youxiao didn't want to be a desperate man like Chongzhen. He just needed to grasp the most important thing. Military failures would cause a sharp rise in the country's finances, and natural disasters could cause civil unrest.
As long as the military and the situation in the north are stabilized, the Ming Dynasty will not perish.
Sun Chengzong had sent several memorials to report the situation in Liaodong to Zhu Youxiao. The Liaodong area has basically fallen. Now the Ming army retreated to Guangning and built the first line of defense on the west bank of the Liaohe River east of Guangning. Another line of defense was built in the middle, while Guangning formed the third line of defense.
Sun Chengzong, who was the governor of Liaodong, decided to remove the Liaohe defense line after taking office and requested a report to Zhu Youxiao. The reason was very simple. The Ming army was depressed at this time and the army was scattered. The Liaohe defense line could not block the Later Jin army. Zhu Youxiao immediately agreed to Sun Chengzong's decision and let the Ming army retreat to Guangning and strengthen the Guangning defense line.
Sun Chengzong immediately began to rectify the Ming army. After some investigation, he arranged personnel appointments and divided the labor. At the same time, he ordered the military generals Man Gui to conquer the Mongolian tribes in the remote suburbs of Ning in the rear in order to arrange for the people to settle the land.
Liaodong was rich, but there were wasteland everywhere. The Mongolians shed horses in the suburbs of the Ming army's rear city, which was simply intolerable. After receiving the order, Man Gui led the five thousand Ming army and quickly swept the surrounding Mongolian tribes, and easily defeated these loose-structured Mongolian tribes, and then recruited the Mongolians and arranged for them to produce and grazed.
Then, according to the strategy agreed by the monarch and his ministers, Sun Chengzong began to transfer all the people on the front line to the rear, and arranged for the people in western Liaoning and those who escaped from Liaodong to reclaim land. In any areas that were easily plundered by the Later Jin army, the people would be transferred to the front lines outside Shanhaiguan, Ningyuan and Jinzhou.
At the same time, the troops were rectified, the defense line was strengthened, the military rations were hoarded, the city was guarded, and the military camps were launched to strengthen the Ming army's ability to be self-sufficient.
Zhu Youxiao gave Sun Chengzong absolute trust and command power, which allowed Sun Chengzong to abolish officials who did not cooperate and lacked ability.
Under the command of Sun Chengzong, the Ming army began to revive in an orderly manner in the western Liaoning region, and the situation began to develop in a favorable direction.
Yuan Keli, the governor of Denglai, had also arrived in the Denglai area. With the military expenditure given to him by Zhu Youxiao, he began to train the navy in Denglai to restrain the situation in Liaodong at sea.
Speaking of which, Luo Sigong was ordered to take the Jinyiwei to Liaodong for a thorough investigation. Luo Sigong made a lot of gains in Liaodong. The officials who were caught by him had bribed him one after another. Luo Sigong had his belly round and symbolically caught a few minions, and then took his people back to the capital to report to the emperor.
Luo Sigong had just returned to the capital with a group of dog legs down, and his butt was not hot at home! Suddenly, the left governor of the Jinyiwei, Tian Ergeng, rushed in with a group of Jinyiwei, and directly arrested Luo Sigong to prison.
A great purge is brewing.
The news of Luo Sigong being arrested and imprisoned soon reached the ears of the Donglin Party, but the Donglin Party was very helpless towards the emperor at this time and could not rescue Luo Sigong at all.
The emperor did not see them at all at this time, and soon the Jinyiwei found a large amount of money from Luo Sigong's home, with 180,000 taels of cash alone.
Luo Sigong has been the commander of the Jinyiwei for so many years. This position of being a tiger-skinned person is the most suitable for plundering money.
In addition to cash, the value of assets such as land, houses, utensils and other assets was estimated to be around 100,000 taels, which was simply a huge greed.
With the disclosure of the investigation of assets, a group of Donglin parties were speechless.
For Zhu Youxiao, he slaughtered another fat pig.
With Luo Sigong's fall, the left governor Tian Ergeng was soon promoted to the commander of the Jinyiwei by Zhu Youxiao. The Jinyiwei Jianshi Xu Xianchun was promoted to the deputy commander of the Jinyiwei.
Soon a major cleaning began quickly.
Tian Ergeng and Xu Xianchun basically changed all the senior personnel inside the Jinyiwei, some were arrested and investigated, while others were idle at home.
The East Factory also launched a major cleaning. Before Li Jinzhong took over the East Factory, the cleaning was not complete. This time, Li Jinzhong almost changed all the senior staff of the East Factory.
After the major cleaning, there will be a major change. The vacant positions are first optimized in structure. All vacant personnel will be promoted from the grassroots level and then systematically instilled in thought.
The deterioration of Jinyiwei and Dongchang is because senior personnel have their own ideas, which will deceive the emperor and deceive the emperor. The grassroots personnel have relatively simple thoughts and are easy to brainwash. At the same time, because they are promoted, their loyalty is much higher than the original personnel.
The reform is still continuing, and the biggest change is that Zhu Youxiao has increased the salaries of the Jinyiwei and Dongchang, and his salary has increased by a large margin.
The ordinary Jinyiwei and the East Factory spy have a monthly salary of three taels of silver and one stone of rice, so they basically have no worries about food and clothing. The monthly salary of senior spy is generally dozens of taels and hundreds of taels.
In terms of funding, in addition to the emperor's funding, 10% of the funds can be left in the future search activities of Jinyiwei and Dongchang as funds required to pay salaries and increase benefits.
After all, Dongchang and Jinyiwei are spies departments and require professional skills. Therefore, Zhu Youxiao has set up a training class to study and summarize, train information collection, lurking, interrogation, arrest and other aspects. Every Dongchang and Jinyiwei secret agent will receive training and assessment.
After a major change and reform, the atmosphere of Jinyiwei and Dongchang has changed drastically.
Such a large-scale purge also quickly spread to the army. Zhu Youxiao soon launched a blood exchange operation in the Tengxiang Cavalry Division, the Wuxiang Cavalry Division, and the Beijing Camp, and began a large-scale brainwashing education.
It’s just that the cleaning in the army is much gentler. After all, the ideological problems of the army are not that serious. Therefore, some inappropriate officers are sent to the military camp.
The Ministry of Political Science and Education has trained a batch of seeds, which sprouted and grew rapidly, spreading brainwashing education to the Dongchang, Jinyiwei, and military camps.
Thoughts began to be unified quickly and their cohesion was greatly enhanced.
Especially in the army, a large number of ordinary soldiers with high ideological awareness were promoted to form a grassroots officer system. The military quality naturally needs to be improved, but those grassroots officers were not necessarily much smarter.
The Beijing Camp is basically an army with no combat experience. No matter how it is cleaned, it will not cause a decline in combat effectiveness, because it is really bad.
The most urgent task is to train the Beijing camp.
"Your Majesty, the military factory reported that the craftsmen have developed more than a dozen flintlock rifles. Your Majesty, have you gone over and take a look?" Yang Guang reported to Zhu Youxiao.
Zhu Youxiao was stunned, slightly confused: "More than a dozen?"
Chapter completed!