Chapter 124 Winning the Hearts of the People
Li Yuanyou and his entourage traveled non-stop for five days before finally arriving at Weizhou, the heart of the disaster relief efforts in Hebei Province.
Upon entering the city, the scene before them surprised everyone.
Although the streets were not as bustling as they used to be, they were still orderly. The pedestrians looked pale and sickly, but they did not appear flustered. The atmosphere was peaceful and stable.
But no one has forgotten the terrible things that happened along the way.
The fields along the way had long since dried up; not only were there no crops, but even the wild grass had withered and died.
Everywhere along the roadside, one could see refugees with their families, dressed in rags and looking emaciated.
Even worse, some people collapsed on the roadside, their empty eyes staring blankly at the sky.
Even the usually carefree Li Yuanyou was shocked by the shocking scene and remained silent the whole way.
The Prefect of Weizhou was already waiting at the city gate with a group of officials. When the convoy appeared, he was as excited as if he had seen his deceased mother and kowtowed repeatedly to Li Yuanyou.
"Your subject pays respects to Your Highness, Prince Cheng! With Your Highness's personal presence, the people of Weizhou are saved!"
Li Yuanyou, however, gave him no kind look, dismounted, and immediately launched into a scathing interrogation.
"I see that Weizhou City is relatively peaceful, and the people seem to have enough food. But why are there so many displaced people along the way? They are dragging their families into the city, but they are stopped by the officials outside the city. Why is that?"
The prefect's smile froze instantly, and he quickly got up to explain, "Most of the residents in the city are local officials, wealthy families, and rich merchants. They have always stored grain in their homes. Although grain prices are high in the city now, there is still grain for sale, so everyone can buy grain."
"Moreover, the government set up soup kitchens in the city center every day to provide soup to the poor people in the city, so it seemed to be relatively stable."
"If you have grain, why don't you care about the refugees outside the city?" Li Yuanyou interrupted him, his tone even more somber. "When I entered the city, I saw clearly that the officials were blocking the city gate with swords, refusing to let them in no matter what! Do you know that those people outside the city are already starving and barely clinging to life? If you don't take care of them, they'll just be waiting to die!"
The prefect's face turned bright red, and he was sweating profusely with anxiety.
"Your Highness! I have no choice! The relief granaries allocated by the court are already empty, and the grain reserves in the city can only last for three more days at most. Even the people in the city are almost unable to afford food. If we let tens of thousands of refugees from outside the city into the city, there simply won't be enough food to go around, which will definitely cause looting. If the situation gets out of control, I'm afraid there will be a peasant uprising!"
Seeing this, Huang Wei quickly stepped forward to smooth things over, his tone tinged with helplessness.
"Your Highness, what the Prefect said is true. In order to maintain the operation of the local area, the granaries of each prefecture are located in the city. In years of famine, when the imperial court opens the granaries to provide relief, it usually prioritizes the stability of the city to prevent the people from rioting due to lack of food. The villages outside the city are scattered and the transportation is inconvenient, so it is difficult to deliver disaster relief funds to every household of disaster victims quickly. This is a dilemma that has been difficult to solve in all dynasties, and it is not just the fault of Weizhou."
Li Yuanyou frowned even more deeply upon hearing this. "Are we just going to watch those people outside the city starve to death? Those wealthy households and merchants have grain in their hands, why not let them use it to help in this emergency?"
The prefect glanced at him, his eyes full of helplessness.
Just as rumored, this second prince was neither knowledgeable about politics nor aware of the hardships of the common people.
Huang Wei sighed softly and patiently explained, "Your Highness, merchants are profit-driven. With grain prices soaring, they would rather hoard grain and wait for prices to rise than sell it at a low price. Even if the court provides funds, they will use the excuse of having no grain to sell to secretly resell it. There's simply no way to deal with them."
Li Yuanyou was speechless for a moment. He had never imagined that disaster relief would be so complicated. It was not something that could be solved by simply opening granaries and distributing grain, nor could it be quelled by scolding a few officials.
Huang Wei also stood to one side, his brows furrowed, deep in thought.
He never expected that Weizhou, where the official granaries of the three prefectures were located, would also have empty granaries.
Is this a case of officials privately reselling and lining their own pockets, or is it a case of falsified accounts and misappropriation of funds?
If the people in the city and even the refugees outside the city were to learn that even the government granaries were out of grain, it would likely cause chaos in an instant.
He reacted swiftly, immediately ordering General He to lead his personal troops to take full control of all the granaries and strictly forbid anyone from leaking the news.
They then announced that the imperial court's disaster relief supplies would arrive soon, and that they were currently inventorying the granaries and coordinating their distribution in order to temporarily reassure the people.
Immediately afterwards, in the name of the Second Prince, he urgently summoned local gentry, wealthy merchants, and grain merchants, asking them to lend him grain for emergency use, and promising that the court would compensate him afterwards.
At the same time, he arranged for Cui Dalang to return to the Cui family in Qinghe to retrieve grain, and also dispatched fast horses to neighboring unaffected prefectures and counties to urgently allocate grain stored in official granaries for emergency use.
Huang Wei's actions were swift and effective, earning him not only the admiration of his accompanying officials but also the respect of Li Yuanyou.
However, some local officials felt insecure.
The grain stored in these official granaries had long been sold off by them, and the accounts were riddled with loopholes.
Now, I fear that if Vice Minister Huang were to conduct a thorough investigation, he would drag them all down with him.
Although the situation has been stabilized for the time being, Huang Wei knows that this is only a temporary measure.
Although those aristocratic and wealthy families gave the Second Prince some face, they were all extremely stingy.
The donated grain was mostly old rice and stale grain that had been stockpiled for years. Some even mixed moldy and rotten grain with sand and bran to make up the difference.
Even so, all this grain was just a drop in the ocean, enough to provide porridge for five days at the soup kitchens inside and outside the city.
If no new grain arrives, the current order will likely collapse in an instant.
Now he can only pin his hopes on whether Cui Dalang can return with the grain in time.
On the other hand, because of Li Yuanyou's "compassion," although he did not allow the refugees to enter the city after being persuaded by Huang Wei, he also agreed to set up a soup kitchen outside the city gate and distribute thin soup once a day at Chenshi (7-9 AM).
These refugees were finally able to temporarily alleviate their hunger, and they expressed their gratitude to the Second Prince.
Therefore, in order to curry favor with the second prince and take the opportunity to gain credit from Prime Minister Cui, the prefect of Weizhou embellished the matter in his memorial and sent it to the capital by fast horse.
The memorial lavishly praised the Second Prince for "caring for the disaster victims and showing compassion for the people," and detailed the scene of "the refugees being settled and the order being maintained" after the addition of soup kitchens. It even praised the Cui family for their virtues of "opening granaries to help with disaster relief and being loyal to the emperor and loving the country." The entire memorial was full of praise.
The Emperor was overjoyed upon seeing this report and immediately praised it publicly in the court.
"Yuan You's trip has lived up to my expectations; he has demonstrated the qualities of a benevolent ruler!"
"The Cui family is a model of righteousness and justice, worthy of being called upon by all civil and military officials!"
Cui Shiliang was already overwhelmed by the conflict between the Cui and Lin families, but now that he heard that the Second Prince was popular in Weizhou and that even the Emperor had personally praised the Cui family, he finally felt relieved.
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