During his lifetime, Kangxi deeply resented the alliance of parties for personal gain, and for him himself it was necessary to strengthen imperial power, and for the country, cracking down on unscrupulous rulers was naturally conducive to social stability and normal development.
It is precisely because he can deeply understand this that from the beginning of pro-government to his old age, he has seriously dealt with such major cases many times.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="48" > eradicate Aobai</h1>
As we mentioned earlier, at the beginning of the pro-government period, although Kangxi was still young, he used a tough hand to eliminate the dictatorship centered on Aobai. Politically speaking, this was perhaps the most formidable enemy Kangxi had encountered in his lifetime, so it was handled with extreme caution.
Ao bai
In dealing with this case, although he once showed tolerance. Even to a certain extent, he was submissive, but eventually uprooted the political group with tough political means, laying the foundation for his lifelong political career.
In May of the eighth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Kangxi took advantage of the opportunity of capturing Aobai to begin a rectification and inventory of the entire imperial court. On the grounds that he "recommended impeachment and injustice" during the Aobai Auxiliary Administration period, he specially issued an edict to inspect officials, the scope of which was determined to be Manchu officials and local governors in the upper and lower departments of Jingsanpin, and they were screened and filtered one by one.
In just one month, with the approval of Kangxi, eighty-three of them were dismissed, demoted, and retired, including Shangshu. Senior officials such as Shilang, Zuo Du Yushi, Zuo Vice Du YuShi, and The Inner Three Academies, as many as a dozen local governors were dismissed, arranged for retirement, or walked with the flag.
Among them, Mo Luo, the governor of Shanxi, and Bai Qing'e, the governor of Shaanxi, were exempted from punishment by the emperor at the request of local civil and military officials and still held their original posts.
Kangxi's investigation and rectification provided him with experience in dealing with similar group crimes in the future, whether it was economic corruption of the group or political mutual attacks, Kangxi handled it with ease, so that those bureaucrats who usually acted as a powerful and blessed bureaucrat had to restrain their own illegal acts and purify the social air to a certain extent.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="50" > removed Mingzhu and Ledhun from their bachelor's degree positions</h1>
Once the important members of the imperial court formed a party, the harm was not only the country's economy, but also they would often influence the government, invisibly weakening the imperial power, making the emperor's will unable to be implemented, and even more unimaginable in serious cases.
On February 6, 2007 of the Kangxi Dynasty, Emperor Guoxuan impeached emperor for the collective illegal acts of scholars Mingzhu, Yu Guozhu, and others, listing eight counts of treason against the public, bribery for personal gain, and suppression of Kedao.
Film and television stills
Two days later, Kangxi immediately announced the punishment of the personnel concerned: removing Mingzhu and Ledhun from their posts as bachelors and handing them over to the minister of the interior of the imperial guard for use at his discretion; removing Yu Guozhu from his post as a university scholar; and ordering Li Zhifang, a university scholar, to retire and return to his hometown.
Of the five university scholars in the cabinet, four were removed because of the case at the time, and only Wang Zhao, who was not among them, was able to remain in office. This is a typical example of an overall violation of the law by the department.
This case involved not only one department of the cabinet, but also the Dismissal of the Manchu official Shangshu Kekun according to his original official duties, and the Manchu Household Department Shangshu Fulun and the Han Ministry of Works Shangshu Xiong Yixiao were also dismissed.
After handling this major case, Kangxi once again gave a lecture to the members of the imperial court, demanding that in the future, the staff members of the imperial court, such as courtiers and others, must consciously conduct a profound reflection, seriously examine their words and deeds, make up their minds to change their bad habits, be honest in performing official duties, clean themselves, fulfill the responsibilities and duties of a court official, and not betray his generous and loving feelings for his subordinates, which is also a political innovation, and hope that there will be no more similar violations of court discipline in the future.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="52" > handling Cai Yurong's embezzlement and anti-thief property case</h1>
According to the normal FengLu of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty initially paid different levels of salaries according to the rank of officials, but later saw that officials did not take this as the mainstay, embezzled public funds through various illegal means, withheld and exploited the salaries and grain of soldiers and civilians, so they added another item to raise incorruptible silver in order to satisfy their appetites, but the degree of corruption of some officials became more and more serious, which was also determined by the authoritarian nature of feudal society.
In the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty, there was a major case, which was cai Yurong's embezzlement and anti-theft of property, and in the process of handling this case, many important state officials were involved, and even the central law enforcement personnel were seriously punished because of the suspicion of harboring.
Cai Yurong was a Han army official, who served as the governor of Huguang during Wu Sangui's rebellion, and was later awarded the title of General of Suiyuan, responsible for commanding all the Green Battalion troops, and marching from Huguang to Yunnan in conjunction with the Dingyuan Pingkou general Bei Zi Zhangtai.
After conquering Kunming, the old lair of Wu Sangui in Yunnan, Cai Yurong privately occupied wu's family wealth that should be confiscated, and sent a large amount of property to Bei Zi Zhangtai and other ministers and officials to cover up his illegal behavior of embezzling public property.
Cai Yurong
Kangxi had actually heard about this for a long time, but it was inconvenient at the juncture of employment, and later he openly raised this matter with officials of the Ministry of Works: When Wu Sangui was used as a soldier in the past, Cai Yurong was mostly untrue in terms of writing off finances, estimating construction, and other matters, and the extra part was engulfed for himself, and many of the officials who participated in the Yunnan campaign probably got bribes from him.
The handling of Cai Yurong's embezzlement case was gradual, and in view of the complexity of the case, there was no clear evidence and the plaintiffs who dared to come out and expose it, only to stabilize the criminals first.
In October of the 25th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, Cai Yurong was transferred to the military department as a waiter. By December, Nartai, who had previously traveled to Yunnan on business, first denounced Cai Yurong for bribery, concealment of women who should be officials, and connivance with the party, and then Wen Dingguo, the former prefect of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, who had returned from Yunnan to Qiqi, and others.
So Kangxi seized Cai Yurong's handle and ordered Cai and his son Cai Lin to be removed from their posts, detained and interrogated strictly, and the facts of the case must be clearly implemented. Considering that the scope of Cai Sulfurong's bribery at that time was very wide, if it was investigated and handled in detail, it would definitely involve many senior members of the imperial court, including the great general Bei Zi Zhangtai, and even all the ministers were more or less involved, so it was inconvenient to deal with it in general, and there was a lot of resistance to the trial of this case, so it was impossible to punish Cai Yurong again.
However, Kangxi still punished Cai Yurong, and although he was spared punishment, his family property and household registration were confiscated, "he was shackled for three months, whipped for a hundred, and sent to Heilongjiang by his family."
Considering that in the course of handling the Cai Yurong case, the officials of the Punishment Department did not impartially interrogate Cai Yurong and other criminals, and the punishment was also inappropriate, and the situation of favoritism and protection was very obvious, Kangxi also gave punishments such as dismissal and demotion to the relevant officials without leniency.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="59" > comprehensively deal with the embezzlement of state assets by corrupt officials under the cloak of "legality</h1>."
In the process of economic crimes, some corrupt officials often do the work of embezzling state assets under the cloak of "legality", and local officials collude with the dignitaries of the imperial court, and even join forces to form a clique.
In the course of handling official affairs, they appeared in the guise of "official" official affairs, secretly colluded to carry out dirty transactions of bribery and bribery, and the money and grain were invisibly appropriated by the relevant officials for themselves. This kind of corruption is more hidden, the means are quite clever, and therefore more harmful.
The collusion between the Governor of Caoyun and the key officials of the household department to embezzle the wealth of the country was already commonplace at that time.
Cao Dou sold the monthly grain money of Cao Chuan at the price of one or two one cents per stone of wheat, and the Household Department believed that the price should be six yuan and five cents during the review, so that the grain was nearly doubled, and the money other than six dollars and five cents was embezzled by the Hu Department and the Cao Governor.
The Governor-General of Caoyun
After Kangxi learned of the sale according to the inflated price of one or two dollars, he immediately approved the cao governor and ordered that the excess part of the silver and silver be seriously recovered and reported to the household department. Nevertheless, after Cao Dou bribed the household department officials, he was still able to carry out "secret sales" at the price of one or two dollars.
On the issue of money and grain, local governors also continued to conduct covert transactions with households to facilitate their embezzlement of state property. The various money and grain of the tax department of each province need a total of about 20 million taels per year, mainly for the expenditure of soldiers' salaries, post stations, servants, and caoxiang, etc. These official expenses are reimbursed by the state, and the local governor first submits the title book of the reimbursement requested by the jurisdiction to the emperor, and after the emperor has passed the examination, the household department will examine and check, and then specifically implement the reimbursement.
However, when performing the reimbursement procedures, the household department often deliberately picks up the faults, so that it cannot be passed many times, obviously to the local meaning.
Therefore, the overseer had to make money from the household department inside and out, in order to achieve the purpose of eliminating wealth and disasters. In this way, after the overseer has made money, even if there is a loophole in the reimbursement, he can still successfully pass the task of completing the money and grain.
This has created a natural channel for the ministry and the local governor to collude with the local governor to pervert the law and open the door to further "cooperation" in other areas.
When other provinces send money and grain to the central authorities, if they do not reach the due amount, the household department has the right to order the relevant local departments to supplement the delivery, which is called Hanging Ping.
In order to enrich themselves, the key household officials often use their powers, regardless of the three seven twenty-one, to forcefully pretend that the amount of money and grain is insufficient, and order the localities to make up for it, although the number of this supplement accounts for only three or four percent of the total amount of money and grain sent, but it is an astronomical amount nationwide.
Having said that, the key to this is still to see the local moves, if the dispatching official explains to the household treasury in advance that every 100,000 taels of private envoy fees of 4,000 taels can be exempted from hanging flat. Through this method alone, the household department can earn an additional 300,000 or 400,000 taels a year, which is privately divided up by the relevant officials and entered the private pocket.
In the imperial court, it was not only the household department that had the convenience of collective embezzlement, but also the other ministries and departments that showed their own magic in terms of corruption. Kangxi found that whenever the river flooded, the first thing that came to mind was how to manage the flooded section of the river and work together to deal with the problem of people's disaster relief, but that the opportunity to profit from it had come again.
As a result, river officials wasted a lot of state assets in vain, but the river project was delayed for several years, and some officials did not even understand a little river affairs, only embezzlement and money. These rats are quite harmful to river affairs.
Kangxi searched for the root cause of the disease and believed that the most suspicious was the Ministry of Works. Under his personal auspices, after several years of investigation, it was finally confirmed that Shangshu of the Ministry of Works, Shilang, and even the officials of various sub-divisions were actually a large corrupt group. For these countries, Kangxi gave severe punishments.
Great Ministry of Purification
From a series of economic crime cases, Kangxi realized that the minister of the Ministry of Rectification is the foundation of the rule of officials, which is related to the normal operation of the entire state apparatus and is also a key part of the rule of officials, so he once said to Manchu officials such as Shangshu and Shilang: "The central and lower-ranking officials who keep orders are the direct dependence of the people of the world, and whether the orders are virtuous and clean is directly related to the local envoys and envoys; whether the envoys and envoys are virtuous or not depends mainly on how the local governors restrain them."
If the ministers of the ministries and procuratorates can really be just, then the county orders of foreign officials from the supervision down to the grass-roots level will naturally be honest and clean. ”
Officials colluded with each other to endanger the country and the people, which Kangxi deeply hated.
In the process of governing the government, he often found that even when Jiuqing would push and elect officials, he might not be able to judge from justice, not to choose people by virtue but to choose people; either he was sloppy and reckless, or he made a proposal to win, and strongly recommended his relatives, friends, protégés, and so on.
When dealing with the situation of officials violating the law and discipline, it is not uncommon for officials to form parties for personal gain and cheat, and it is not uncommon for officials to cover up crimes against each other, and the example of Shanxi Inspector Mursai is very typical.
This man is very greedy in governance, and can be described as full of evil and notorious. At that time, Kangxi once asked the university scholars and Jiuqing officials about Mursai's official character and personality, and the Manchu university Shile Dehong and others did not show their performances according to the actual situation, but instead covered up Mursai's bad deeds.
Kangxi was furious at this, and punished Ledhun and others with the punishment of demotion to the second level, the Manchu Jiuqing official Ke Kun and others to be demoted to the third level, and the main criminal Mursai was planned to be hanged and imprisoned and executed after the autumn.
In my opinion, Kangxi never compromised and was soft-hearted in punishing high-ranking officials and dignitaries with bad deeds and collective lawbreakers, and resolutely investigated and dealt with them, showing the heroic and promising style of a generation of kings.