彥橚 Yànsù

Yansu

Yansu, courtesy name Wenchang, was a descendant of Prince Dao in the seventh generation. His grandfather Xunzhi appears in the Biographies of the Loyal and Righteous. Yansu passed the jinshi examination in the second year of Qiandao. While he was Sheriff of Yueqing a great drought came, and the magistrate prayed for rain as custom required, while pressing all the harder for the taxes. Yansu said, "Cutting the levies and stopping the pressure for payment is the way to bring harmony to the world; what use is praying?" Soon after, rain did fall. He rose through successive offices to Fiscal Clerk of Fujian Circuit. The subordinate counties owed tens of millions of cash in relief salt capital, which they had been unable to repay for years; Yansu put the case to his superior and had it remitted. Edit

At the beginning of Qingyuan he was Magistrate of Jinling County. In a year of famine Yansu managed the relief well, saving the lives of nearly two hundred thousand people. He also used surplus money to pay the taxes of the fifth-grade households on their behalf. Edit

He was promoted to Director of the Public Petitions Review Office. At that time Han Tuozhou was in power and the officials of the court all flocked to his door, which Yansu deeply deplored. He went out as Prefect of Ting Prefecture. A man of the prefecture surnamed Ye had gathered a band between Ting and Gan, and Yansu sent officers to catch and kill him. He was promoted to Judicial Commissioner of Guangxi. The prefectures sold government salt and handed six-tenths of the profit over to the fiscal commission, and this had been raised to eight-tenths. Yansu restored the old rate to relieve the people, and the court agreed. Edit

After Han Tuozhou's death, an edict made him Vice Minister of Revenue and concurrently Examiner of the Bureau of Military Affairs. The scholar-officials who had earlier taken part in the discussions about war were being charged as members of Tuozhou's faction and were all to be expelled. Yansu sighed, "Scholars have only just been dismissed for false learning, and now they are to be driven out over the war. If you want to bar scholars from office, you will never lack a pretext!" Whenever he saw the emperor he always spoke of how hard it was to find men of talent. Edit

He was promoted to Supervisor-General of Huguang. In the past, when soldiers died, the generals did not strike them from the rolls but kept their monthly pay for themselves. Yansu set up a separate register to check them. It was rumoured that there was grumbling in the army, but Yansu said, "The only ones unhappy are the commanders; what harm does it do the soldiers?" He kept this up for three years; more than thirty thousand empty names on the rolls were found, the quota was reduced by a million strings of cash, and the funds became ample. When he left there were seven million in surplus, while the accumulated arrears of the circuits still came to four million, all of which he remitted. Edit

He was Prefect of Pingjiang. Kunshan in the prefecture bordered the sea, and robbers came and went there, though they could be tracked. Yansu memorialized asking that half of it be split off to form Jiading County, with troops stationed to guard it. He was transferred to Edict Attendant of the Baomo Pavilion. He died in office, at seventy-one. Edit