The Prosperous Era of Longwan

"Sir, a letter has arrived from my uncle in Nanjing."

A few days later, after Chen Yiqin, Yin Shizhen and Zhu Heng were persuaded by Wei Guangde's memorial, the four of them jointly submitted the memorial to the emperor. However, Emperor Longqing was non-committal after reading it, and the memorial was also retained.

This news came from Chen Ju, who "happened" to be present when the memorial was reviewed that day.

When it comes to the safety of grain transportation, this was a national policy in the Ming Dynasty. There was nothing wrong with the emperor being more cautious. However, Wei Guangde felt that the emperor's memorial in residence might also be waiting for Gao Gong to officially return to the ministry.

In other words, it doesn't matter what the emperor's opinion is. He wants to listen to Gao Gong's opinion before making his own decision.

When he returned home that day, Wei Guangde heard that a letter had arrived in Nanjing, so he naturally knew what was going on.

"Are those people honest in Zhuangzi?"

Wei Guangde stepped into the house and asked in a low voice as he walked.

"I made a couple of noises at the beginning, but after I was dealt with, I became honest."

Zhang Ji replied softly.

"Be careful not to expose your identity. Throw the person out after a while."

Wei Guangde ordered in a low voice.

Some things have been done, but they cannot admit it and are unwilling to harm people's lives. The best way is to make them mistakenly think that they have been robbed.

It has to be said that the things stolen from Duke Wei's mansion this time are really valuable. The tens of thousands of taels of silver as a gift made Wei Guangde's eyes light up when he knew the value.

Of course, he did not hide this matter from his wife. In fact, everything was transported into the Wei Mansion in a big way, and Xu Jianglan counted it alone and put it into her private treasury.

It is said that the status of women in ancient times was low, but this is not something that can be taken lightly. In fact, it also depends on who they are facing.

In fact, in ancient China, the dowry items given to a woman were things given by her natal family according to the law at that time, so the dowry belonged to the woman personally and not to the couple, similar to pre-marital property.

These dowries can then be inherited by their children.

But if a woman has no children, the dowry can actually be taken back by her mother's family, but it does not belong to her husband's family.

Of course, small families don't have many things, so they just keep them to themselves, but large families often have a list of dowry items, detailing the name and quantity of the dowry items and signing them.

With this thing, even if the husband's family commits trouble in the future, as long as it does not harm the wife, children, or natal family, the dowry will not be confiscated by the government, but will be returned intact.

Therefore, the Wei Mansion's warehouse is actually divided into two. One is the Wei Mansion's warehouse, the public treasury, and Xu Jianglan also has a small warehouse for herself to store dowry items.

Xu Jianglan moved all the financial gifts from Nanjing obtained from this robbery into his small warehouse.

As for whether he would transport it back to Nanjing and return it to his brother in the future, Wei Guangde didn't bother to ask. The answer was obvious.

Xu Bangrui will have the entire Duke of Wei's palace by then, so he probably doesn't like these things anymore.

Yellow and white things are actually the most common things for such a noble family. What they value most is the title that can be passed down and the real estate and land that can be passed on to their descendants.

"Don't worry, sir. If you tell me when the time comes, I will arrange to stun the person and throw him into the mountains."

Zhang Ji lowered his voice and replied.

Wei Guangde was satisfied with his answer, nodded and entered the backyard.

Back at the back house, as soon as Wei Guangde came in and hugged the child, Xu Jianglan took out the letter from Nanjing, then asked the maid to take the child back. She brought tea to Wei Guangde and asked him to sit at the table and read the contents of the letter carefully.

"Can what you said last time really be accomplished?"

Xu Jianglan sat opposite Wei Guangde and asked in a low voice.

Wei Guangde knew what she was talking about, which was to recover the Zheng family's royal decree. Although her biological mother did not have a royal decree, her mother was suppressed by a person with a lower status. Both Xu Bangrui and Xu Jianglan were unwilling to accept it.

"It's a small matter. I have already informed the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Punishment. As soon as the files and confessions from Nanjing arrive, I will arrange for people to investigate the matter thoroughly. Then we can uncover Yan Shifan's operations.

Although Xiao Yan has been dead for many years, the imperial court still insists on a completely negative attitude towards the things that the Yan family did in the past, and whenever he is involved, it will be considered to be caused by bribery, and the memorial to recover the imperial edict will be submitted to the Ministry of Etiquette soon.

Therefore, there is no need to worry about new waves. "

Wei Guangde just smiled at this and didn't take it seriously at all.

"That's good. By the way, I have prepared the gift that Mr. Ouyang has asked him to bring back to Jiujiang. Can someone send it to him tomorrow or you can take it with you when you see him off the day after tomorrow."

Xu Jianglan remembered something again and asked.

"Let Zhang Ji send it there tomorrow, so it can be loaded into the car there."

Wei Guangde said.

Ouyang Yijing's memorial to resign has been approved, but others' memorials will have to wait for some time. The approximate time is tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, when the official's memorial to Yang Bo should be approved.

After all, this was Yang Bo's third begging memorial, and Emperor Longqing had no reason to stop it.

Wang Ting's third memorial has not yet been published, mainly waiting for the Nanjing matter to be understood.

Recovering the imperial edict of the Duke of Wei is a big deal, and the Imperial Procuratorate will have to send people to participate. Wei Guangde doesn't want to cause unnecessary complications, so he visited Wang Ting alone a few days ago and entrusted the matter to him.

After knowing the details, Wang Ting nodded and agreed. After all, this was not against the rules, but it was meant to bring order to the chaos.

According to the rules of the Zheng family in the Duke of Wei's mansion, Xu Pengju, the Duke of Wei, could straighten her up in the palace, but the court would not recognize her as the wife of the Duke of Wei, nor would it issue a royal decree.

Wei Guangde didn't care about the case in Xu Bangrui's letter, but he carefully read the description of interesting things that happened in Nanjing in recent days at the back of the letter. Of course, he was talking about the relationship between Governor Hai Rui of Yingtian and Mr. Xu Ge from Yeju. Something about fighting.

Officials of all sizes in Nanjing already knew the details, and knew that it was caused by dedication and a whip. Naturally, they were very concerned, because this situation existed to some extent in every family.

Hai Rui's handling of the case is likely to become a common practice in similar cases.

Wei Guangde knew that Hai Rui was already fighting with Xu Jie, but judging from the situation now, the news had spread, and many Jiangnan officials in the capital should know the news.

But I didn't hear anyone talking about it, so Wei Guangde always thought that the matter had not spread there.

Xu Bangrui's letter did allow him to get some useful information, that is, many people in Nanjing knew about it, and Beijing should also start to spread it.

Whether Hai Rui could not withstand the lobbying of Nanjing officials was still an uncertain question for other officials of this era, but Wei Guangde could roughly judge it.

If Hai Rui would give up on dealing with the Xu family due to pressure, then the name "Hai Qingtian" would not be passed down to future generations, and its scope of influence would not be so large.

If it was just to arrest Xu Jie's nephew, it was within Hai Rui's rights and responsibilities, so he could take action, mainly to see if the case would eventually involve Xu Jie.

If Hai Rui believed that Xu Jie was at fault in the case of occupying civilian land and wanted to hold him accountable, he would have to report it to the court and ask the emperor to make a decision.

This is the advantage of being in the cabinet. When it comes to punishment, it is not the local officials who can make the decision. They must be authorized by the emperor, even for officials like Xu Jie who have become official.

On the second day, not long after Wei Guangde entered the cabinet office, he was called to the duty room by Li Chunfang to talk.

After Wei Guangde came in, he saw that not only Chen Yiqin, Yin Shizhen and Zhang Juzheng were in the room on duty, but also Zhu Heng, the Minister of Industry, Liu Tiqian, the Minister of Household Affairs, and Xu Gang, Zhao Kongzhao, the ministers of the two ministries, were all in the room.

After saying hello, Wei Guangde sat in his seat and soon heard Li Chunfang start to talk about the purpose of this time.

"The Huaihe River has been dredged from Banzha to the mouth of the West Lake, but the inner mouth and other places are blocked again. Zhao Kongzhao, the governor's water transport minister, asked for money and food because the labor expenses were not paid. Your Majesty ordered us to discuss and come up with a way to get everyone there today. We are called here just to ask everyone to talk about what to do.”

Li Chunfang said, and after she finished speaking, she looked at Zhao Kongzhao, "Shilang Zhao, please tell us the construction opinions of the Ministry of Works. Let's discuss it."

"good."

Zhao Kongzhao stood up, bowed his hands to Li Chunfang, then looked around the crowd and said: "The gate to the mouth of the West Lake will be dredged, and the inner mouth and other places will be blocked again. The new river channel is closer to the Yellow River. If it is not dealt with early, it may cause the yellow water to divert the Huaihe River and flow into the sea. If this happens, the canal will be blocked and it will be difficult to recover.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry decided after research that weirs should be built for fifty miles along the Yellow River along the Qingjiang River to prevent the river from overflowing, and weirs should be built for more than seventy miles along the Gaojiajian River on the Huaihe River to prevent the Huaihe River from rising.

However, the scale of these projects is not small, and the price from the Ministry of Industry alone is not enough. It is necessary to ask the Ministry of Household Affairs for support. "

Zhao Kongzhao, the governor's minister of water transportation, briefly explained the situation and let everyone in the room know what happened today.

The Ministry of Industry wants to build a dam between the Yellow River and the Huaihe River to prevent the water on both sides from combining together and rushing into the Grand Canal.

In fact, since the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was built and opened, the biggest headache has been that water from the Yellow River poured into the canal, and yellow sand and silt blocked the river channel, which was very time-consuming and laborious to clean up.

In fact, the Huanghuai water area is crisscrossed by rivers, which is very convenient for flood discharge.

But because the Grand Canal passed through this, many river channels were used by the Grand Canal, so the imperial court had been trying its best to hope that the Yellow River water would enter the sea and not invade the Huaihe River waters.

The result of the Ministry of Industry's deliberations this time is still to build a bottom to protect the canal to ensure the smooth flow of the canal.

The Ministry of Industry had insufficient wages and was unable to support such a huge project, so the Ministry of Household Affairs had to allocate funds.

If you ask the Ministry of Household Affairs for money, you will naturally have to submit a petition for instructions. Only with the emperor's permission will the Ministry of Household Affairs give you money, and how much money you will give and how you will give it need to be discussed in detail.

This is one of the functions of the cabinet, to contact the six ministries for discussion.

If the Ministry of Works instead approaches the Ministry of Accounts, the Ministry of Accounts will try its best to delay the payment if they don't want to give money. As a result, the business will be delayed.

Although Wei Guangde was interested in the Ministry of Industry, he did not show it at the moment. He and Zhu Heng looked at each other and allowed the ministers of the two ministries to discuss the matter.

Liu Tiqian, like Zhu Heng, did not open his mouth to participate. Now is the time for the ministers to talk, and they will only end up talking at the end.

Although Wei Guangde was not paying attention at this time, he was still thinking about the situation there because he remembered several memorials he had seen before, which were sent by the Sizhou City government to request the imperial court to allocate funds for waterproofing.

As for why it is waterproof, it is not because the Mingzu Mausoleum is here.

In the eighth year of Hongzhi's reign, the entire Yellow River flooded, and the raging Yellow River water carried a large amount of sediment and impacted the coastal areas.

In order to prevent floods, the imperial court successively used Bai Ang, Liu Daxia and others to control floods and build Taihang embankment and other large-scale projects to prevent floods.

But the actual result is that it is blocked here, and it breaks out there, and after it is blocked again, it breaks out in other places. This is still the situation now. Not only has the Yellow River flood not only not been eradicated, but it has become more and more serious.

Moreover, under the influence of these projects, the Yellow River watercourse has been continuously raised, adjacent rivers have also been affected, and Hongze Lake, Huaihe River and the Grand Canal have also been continuously raised, resulting in the emergence of "hanging rivers above the ground."

Such a result not only fails to prevent floods, but also continuously increases the harm of floods.

Sizhou City and the nearby Mingzu Mausoleum are located on the edge of Hongze Lake and are constantly being eroded.

What Wei Guangde didn't know was that a hundred years later, in order to protect the canal and ensure the safety of water transportation, the water level was raised again, which directly caused Sizhou City and the Mingzu Mausoleum to be submerged in Hongze Lake for hundreds of years. However, by that time it was already the Kangxi era. towards.

As the emperor of the new dynasty, of course he would not care about places like the Mingzu Mausoleum.

In fact, in later generations, there were not many ways to deal with floods. Most of them focused on guarding the embankments, blocking wherever there was danger to prevent the embankments from breaking.

Even in order to protect some key cities and regions, flood discharge areas are planned to be found near rivers. In order to protect the dams, artificial openings are opened to divert floods to designated areas and reduce the harm to the surrounding waters.

However, in later generations, water can still be seen in the Yellow River except in the middle and upper reaches. Forget about the trickle in the lower reaches. It seems that there has been no news of floods in the Yellow River for many years.

Therefore, at this moment, Wei Guangde searched his memory and could not find any good way to solve the current flooding in the Yellow River.

Is it because there is too much water in the north at this time?

Of course not. In the late Ming Dynasty, long-term drought in the north triggered large-scale civil unrest, which ultimately directly led to the collapse of the dynasty.

After discussing for a long time, Li Chunfang finally became impatient and asked everyone to rest first and resume the discussion later.

Wei Guangde and Zhu Heng came together and asked about what they had told him last time about using Pan Jixun to control water.

"The ministry has sent an official letter to contact Mr. Pan, but we haven't received a reply yet."

Zhu Heng replied, "This kind of thing cannot be reported directly to the emperor. It must be approved by him in advance. Otherwise, it will look bad if Master Pan is unwilling to accept the order."

The task of water control is a heavy responsibility, and ordinary officials cannot hide from it.

This is different from the general Ministry of Works projects. With the current frequency of floods, the results will be known within three or four years. If you take over the job rashly and fail in the end, you will be held accountable.

"What we are discussing today is the idea put forward by Minister Zhao. What kind of dams should we build?"

Wei Guangde asked in a low voice.

Zhu Heng nodded.

Therefore, Wei Guangde told Zhu Heng what he had thought about later generations calling the Yellow River a "hanging river above the ground". The purpose was naturally to remind him of the dangers of continuing like this.

"The Ministry of Industry actually knows this, but there is nothing they can do about it. As the river continues to rise, what can they do if they don't build new embankments? Are they going to let the river flood?"

Zhu Heng replied helplessly.

"Okay, there's nothing we can do about raising the river course, but will the water level of Hongze Lake also be raised?"

Wei Guangde suddenly asked, "Where will the lake be in a few decades? There is Sizhou City and the Tomb of the Ming Dynasty over there. The Ministry of Industry must consider the location when building the dam."

Wei Guangde reminded that what he was afraid of was that one day the breach would flood the ancestral mausoleum, and Zhu Heng would not be able to bear the responsibility.