Chongzhen sat on the dragon throne, quietly watching Song Quan and Li Banghua confront each other in the court.
He is thinking...
Why did Song Quan target Li Banghua everywhere?
They even dug up a scandal from twelve years ago to suppress him.
There is no personal grudge between the two of them, so there is no need to pursue this matter.
Besides, Li Banghua is not responsible for this incident. He is just taking the blame.
The one who fired the cannon and hit Man Gui was someone led by Wu Weiying, the Marquis of Gongshun.
The governor of the Beijing camp at that time was Xiangcheng Earl Li Shouqi (Li Guozhen's father).
This responsibility must be borne either by the person involved or by the person in charge.
In the end, it was Li Banghua, the second-in-command who was not very capable, who took the responsibility.
It's just... magical.
Seeing that the quarrel between Li Banghua and Song Quan was getting louder and louder, Wang Chengen suddenly said, "Both of you should keep your voices down. This is not a street quarrel where whoever is louder is right. This is a court, and we need to use reason and evidence."
"I request Your Majesty to dismiss Li Banghua from his positions as Minister of War and Prime Minister of the Cabinet, and hand him over to the Pacification Office for conviction." Song Quan said unwillingly.
Li Banghua argued: "These are all false accusations. Your Majesty, please help me and put the false accusers in jail and convict them."
The court returned to silence again.
Chongzhen's brain was working rapidly, thinking about the truth behind this matter.
If Song Quan's behavior was just to intimidate Li Banghua and prevent him from getting too proud of himself.
Not only would Chongzhen not stop it, he would also strongly support it.
After all, the prime minister cannot have the final say in the court, let alone have a one-man show.
Within a reasonable control range, a hundred schools of thought contending with each other is the situation he wants!
It was obvious that Song Quan did this not to intimidate Li Banghua, but for other purposes.
Um...?
Chongzhen suddenly remembered a famous saying: See the essence through the phenomenon!
In the second year of Chongzhen, Li Banghua did two main things while serving as the governor-general of the Beijing camp military affairs management.
The first is training troops.
The second is to deal with the old drawbacks of the Beijing Army.
The first thing was nothing, but the second thing offended many nobles and officials.
The Beijing Army has too many drawbacks.
Servants of nobles and nobles occupied labor and falsely claimed the title; officials used horses illegally, public funds were overspent, generals were promoted illegally, etc...
Li Banghua's new military policy touched upon the interests of nobles and officials, and he was retaliated against by them.
So Man Gui’s troops were bombarded!
Li Banghua was immediately removed from his post.
The person who succeeded Li Banghua gave up the new policy in order to keep his official position, so the Beijing camp returned to the old track.
Nothing like this has happened since then.
In the 17th year of Chongzhen, Li Banghua served as the Minister of War and the Chief Minister of the Cabinet.
What is he doing?
Let the Minister of War Wang Jiayan deal with the old malpractices in the Beijing camp.
Wang Jiayan is deeply trusted by Li Banghua, so if you want to move him, you have to move Li Banghua.
So the nobles and officials decided to go all out and overturned Li Banghua's desk.
Twelve years have passed since then.
Li Banghua and the nobles have not forgotten this incident.
Interesting, really interesting!
When Chongzhen understood these principles, he found that Li Banghua's eyes were full of determination.
He has never forgotten what happened twelve years ago!
The sad thing is...
Something that should have been resolved twelve years ago has been delayed until now.
Almost dragged the Ming Dynasty into the abyss!
"Ahem," Chongzhen coughed lightly, attracting everyone's attention.
"What has Lord Li been busy with recently?" Chongzhen asked.
After hearing this, Li Banghua secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
The Ming emperor had apparently found the sun through the clouds.
"Your Majesty, I have been rectifying the problems in the Beijing camp recently."
"How is the situation in the Beijing camp?"
"Your Majesty, this is horrific and shocking."
"Tell me about it."
"Yes." Li Banghua took out a book from his arms and began to read in front of everyone.
"The three major camps in the capital require a full complement of 170,000 people. Before the bandits besieged the city, the three major camps in the capital had 80,000 registered soldiers, but the actual number of soldiers was less than 30,000."
"Except for the 10,000 soldiers who left the capital to pursue the bandits, there are about 40,000 soldiers who are not paid."
"These empty salaries were embezzled by a number of nobles including Li Guozhen, the Earl of Xiangcheng, Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chengguo, Xu Yunzhen, the Duke of Dingguo, and Xue Lian, the Marquis of Yangwu."
As soon as these words were spoken, the entire court was in an uproar.
Especially those civil officials.
What does it mean to have 40,000 empty salaries?
Their monthly military pay plus food allowance amounted to 100,000 taels of silver.
That’s 1.2 million taels a year.
Those civil servants lived in fear and worked themselves to death to be greedy.
He could only embezzle a mere tens of thousands of taels of silver in a year.
The nobles, on the other hand, embezzled enough silver in one year to last them several years or even dozens of years.
How can this be tolerated?
So when Li Banghua said this number, the entire court was filled with criticism of the nobles.
"It's so infuriating, he must be severely punished!!!"
"Yes, punish them severely and give an explanation to the court and His Majesty!"
"It's so hateful, these people deserve to die!"
After the voices of the other people in the court became quieter, Li Banghua continued, "In addition to those who do not work, the situation of occupying labor service and selling leisure is also very serious."
Zhan Lao meant that soldiers took public money and did private work for their generals.
The meaning of selling leisure is equivalent to selling official positions, except that the targets of the sale are not officials, but ordinary people.
When there were vacancies in the Beijing Camp, the people were allowed to sign up. In order to enjoy the treatment of the Beijing Camp, many old, weak, sick and disabled people paid money to bribe the recruiters to enter the camp.
"There are more than 3,000 people in the three camps, and about 10,000 people who came in through selling their leisure time."
"Also," Li Banghua continued, "the quota of war horses for the Beijing camp was 26,000, of which 8,000 were registered, but less than 2,000 were actually used. All of them were borrowed by officials in the name of work and inspection. Some officials even bought the horses at a low price, causing losses to the court's assets."
"In addition, the expenses of the Beijing Army were huge. It was fine to reimburse the officials for their meals and water. Some even reimbursed the money for their wives' eggs during their confinement. It was simply shameless."
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