Chapter 280 The Sword Points at Japan (Thirty-five) The stagnant waters are making waves
The main force of the Japanese army in southern Korea is brewing a huge gamble, and Gyeonggi Province in central Korea is not calm either. To be precise, Wang Jinghanyang is in a situation where dark clouds are overwhelming the city and it is about to be destroyed.
The cause of the matter was when the king returned to the capital - that is, the king of Joseon Li Xin returned to his capital Hanyang again. Although this king has come and gone in recent years, he has come and gone.
Here we go again... But no matter what, it is always a great joy to be able to return to the capital this time, but King Li He really can't feel any joy.
In fact, in his opinion, since Ma Gui officially sent troops south, the situation of "black clouds over the city" has already appeared, but no one was aware of the danger at the beginning.
At that time, Ma Gui moved south, and one hundred thousand heavenly troops entered Pyongyang in a mighty manner, among which there were as many as thirty to forty thousand armored cavalry (actually half-armed, as mentioned above, hereafter referred to as "armed" mostly from the North Korean perspective, so
No further explanation), coupled with an artillery force of more than 10,000 people, dragging hundreds of artillery pieces of various sizes, it really shocked the entire city of Pyongyang.
The Koreans had never seen so many giant cannons gathered in a large army! Those hundreds of cannons were like giant black tigers squatting half-crouched, and the black muzzles shone with a cold light.
Coupled with the tall horses, lances and sabers of the Ming army cavalry, all the Koreans who watched the "entering the city" were overjoyed, thinking that the Japanese pirates were just around the corner. At the same time, they secretly glanced at the useless troops in their own court, subconsciously giving birth to
A thought: If Ming Dynasty really wanted to use North Korea’s brains, would North Korea have the strength to oppose it... or even the courage?
No one dared to express their worries. All the North Koreans in Pyongyang cheered and welcomed the Ming army into the city with seemingly the most enthusiasm, and then they began to be in a daze.
Because Ma Gui's first order was to take over the entire defense of Pyongyang, including the palace of the King of Korea, and the reason he gave was very simple: The admiral strongly disapproved of the capabilities of the Korean army, and Pyongyang's defense must be fully controlled by the Ming army.
Of course, the North Korean side raised objections to this. Whether it was Liu Chenglong, Yi Dooshou, or other high-ranking North Korean officials, they all found Ma Gui and Song Yingchang, who had not left at that time, hoping that Ming Dynasty could take back Cheng's life, and at least let North Korea to some extent.
The army must participate in part of the defense, otherwise it will be too embarrassing.
However, this time they were not satisfied. First, Song Yingchang refused to receive any visitors on the pretext that he had received the imperial edict to return to the dynasty, and that his post of manager had actually been transferred to the high cabinet and that he had no right to interfere.
Pat your butt and leave immediately.
Then Ma Gui was even more direct. He listed countless incompetent performances by the North Korean army before and firmly refused the North Korean army to join the city defense system. He demanded that all North Korean troops withdraw from Pyongyang City and station themselves outside the city or in nearby small towns. "Those who disobey the order will be punished."
The heavenly soldiers expel!"
North Korea gasped and had no choice but to do the next best thing and once again asked Ma Gui to say that at least the palace should be guarded by North Korean troops. However, Ma Gui did not show much kindness, and the only accommodation was to show that the palace was
The king of Korea could be allowed to leave two hundred palace guards to guard the inner court, but the defense of the palace itself still had to be left to the Ming army.
Regardless of their differences in stance, Liu Chenglong, Yi Dooshou and others went to the door together hoping to persuade Ma Gui. Unexpectedly, after Ma Gui saw them, he directly threw out a letter, telling them that this move was based on the order of the manager.
It is impossible for a general to disobey him.
Ma Gui said something to the stunned North Korean ministers: "I would like to teach you that in the past few years, when the princes have been commanding the army, even the emperor has never interfered. Therefore, no matter how you interfere with me, I will not interfere with you."
I would never dare to disobey, so I had no choice but to take over by force... I guess the king of your country doesn't want to see this scene either, right?"
At this point, there was no need to talk about it, and the North Korean side did not dare to wait for Ma Gui to "forcefully take over", so after hurriedly reporting to Li Huan, they had no choice but to swallow their anger and withdraw the North Korean troops from Pyongyang City. However, they refused.
Instead of sending these troops to a "nearby town", they were ordered to camp on the spot outside the city to avoid any accidents.
In Ma Gui's view, this move by the Koreans was meaningless. Their strength in Pyongyang was only a few thousand at the time, and as a "soldier of 100 defeats", no matter what "accident" the Ming army had, they would not dare to stop it.
Even more powerless to stop it. In Ma Gui's eyes, this kind of behavior is nothing more than Korean Yangban's self-comfort, and it is not worth a damn.
From that time on, the North Korean King Li Huo was already under the "tight guard" of the Ming army. Even if he met with two groups of important ministers, there would always be tall and majestic Ming soldiers standing at the door, so that later they
They no longer dared to speak in the Chinese used by the upper class, but entirely in spoken Korean - but what they didn't know was that the Ming troops outside the door were all selected from the Liaodong Army, and they were all stationed in the past.
In Shuangliancheng and other places close to North Korea, everyone can understand Korean.
However, no matter what, since there are no more Korean soldiers in the city, the only thing that the Korean King Li Huo can rely on is the "Liangban", and his "rule" of North Korea can only be achieved indirectly by relying on the Liangban. However,
The question is, can North Korea’s Yangban really be relied on?
If you have watched the Korean costume dramas of later generations, you will definitely find that there are often some male and female protagonists who seem to have their own halo. Whenever they come to the door, they say that they are "descendants of Yangban", with noble blood, and naturally superior to others, just like in Europe.
They look like "blue-blooded aristocrats", and even their eyes and expressions are extraordinary.
Who is this "descendant of Yangban" and why can he be so cool? In fact, the so-called "Yangban" means "Civil and Military Liangban". North Korea has long studied the Chinese system.
Sitting north and facing south, the civil and military ministers stood in separate teams, with a few rows on the left and a few rows on the right. The civil ones were called the Wen class, and the martial arts classes were called the Wu class. Together they were two classes.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! But if you look at the Korean Yangban directly as the civil servants and generals of the Ming Dynasty, it is different. The Korean Yangban can be said to be the ruling class of the Ming Dynasty.
They are the backbone of the force. They have political privileges (qualified to be officials for generations) and economic privileges (free from land tax and free from corvee) that ordinary people dare not imagine. When ordinary people see them, they will respectfully call them "Liangbanni" (Ni, that is,
The meaning of "master" in Korean).
From Wang's Korea to Lee's Korea, these people have always been truly important players in the ups and downs of the peninsula's political arena in the past millennium.
The word yangban first appeared in the Goryeo Dynasty of the Wang family. "History of Goryeo" records that in the first year of Taizu (918 AD), the Jiawu Article said: "Learn the rituals in the ball court, and the civil and military classes will be completed." Here the yangban is still simple
Refers to civil and military officials. In the early years of the Goryeo Dynasty, the civil and military official ranks were scattered. The officials were all founding heroes and local powerful people. People other than them were called "common people" and their official careers were limited. Politics was basically governed by these
Monopolized by the "two classes" composed of nobles.
These big guys were wandering around in the court and engaged in a meritorious politics. If they continued like this, they would certainly be a great threat to the royal power. So they went to Goryeo Seongjong, the grandson of Goryeo Taizu and the sixth king of Goryeo.
Then he learned from China and established the imperial examination system.
Of course, the imperial examination here is not the kind of imperial examination that was widely carried out in the Song Dynasty, but the kind of imperial examination that did not shake the aristocratic politics in the Tang Dynasty. After all, reform must be based on stability, and we cannot take too long to get ahead of ourselves.
Therefore, in fact, what they did was to allow the children of the Goryeo nobles to "study privately" by entering the imperial examination cram school, so as to get a good score in the examination, so they opened the imperial examination. However, although this increased the pressure on the nobles, people still
That group of people.
This is just like the children of the future generation, who have to compete with the children in the school district who have learned eight foreign languages from elementary school and attended ten cram schools. It is indeed a bit difficult.
However, after such a move, there were still some benefits for the royal family, that is, a culture of worshiping literature was created. The imperial examinations focused on liberal arts, so the status of civil servants was greatly improved.
Similar to China, out of the need to maintain its own rule, the royal family continued to emphasize civility over martial arts, so the actual focus of the two classes was the "Literary Class". Later, the Goryeo Dynasty implemented the "Civil and Military Dispersed Titles" system, and the Literary Class also had a higher status
For military generals. Later on, the "Shibata System" was introduced, which was the graded salary system for officials. Civilian officials were also much higher than military generals.
As a result, especially after a long time, the generals stopped doing it. I led troops to fight through life and death, why can't I be compared to you, the powerless literati? So in 1170, the military general Zheng Zhongfu launched a coup.
From then on, Goryeo entered the era of military attache dictatorship.
Military men can fight wars but have relatively no experience in running a country. But those literati have become enemies and cannot be used again. So what should we do? So during the dictatorship of military attaches, a large number of local rural officials were promoted, and handymen were held in important positions. "Liangban"
"The threshold of the nobility began to be broken.
Later, Goryeo was defeated by the Yuan Dynasty and became a vassal state of the Yuan Dynasty. It was at the mercy of the Yuan Dynasty. From this time on, some low-status translators, medical officers, etc., who had close contacts with the Mongols, were also suppressed.
They were reused and promoted to high positions one after another.
In this way, the scope of the "Yangban" has actually been greatly expanded. Originally, only some nobles could become the Yangban. Now, a bunch of people who the nobles despised have all become members of the Yangban, and the Yangban has begun.
It has become a mixed bag.
To maintain the respect of aristocrats, what aristocrats need is a high status. This status is best determined by blood, given by God, and cannot be interfered with by others. "Princes, generals, Xiangning, etc. have their own kind" This is Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's "
The rulers obviously cannot allow this situation, which shakes the foundation of the identity of the ruling class, to continue to exist.
So, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, when Li Chenggui overthrew Goryeo and established the Lee Dynasty's Joseon, he carried out a major reform of the yangban system. How to do it?
First of all, people with the status of rural officials and subordinate officials must be eliminated from the Yangban. In the eyes of the nobles, these technocrats cannot be compared with them, the emperor's nobles.
The aristocrats of the literary class read the books of Confucius and Mencius, which talk about the principles of regulating the family, governing the country, and bringing peace to the world. Other people who work in specific technical jobs, such as witch doctors, musicians, and white workers, are no longer treated as aristocrats of the two classes.
It is necessary to abolish the rural farmland of township officials, formulate a punishment law for township officials, set up a hometown office to supervise township officials, carry out strict supervision over them... and so on.
Secondly, it is to fully implement the imperial examination system that is beneficial to both classes. For a class to have vitality, it must first have a sense of crisis. Later generations of management scholars talked about the catfish effect, which is that fishermen are afraid that the fish they catch will die, so they throw them in
If a few catfish scurry around, let the fish move around and exercise, it will be less likely to die.
Therefore, the Li Dynasty also implemented the catfish of strengthening the imperial examination to give you dandy boys a sense of crisis. The Li Dynasty stipulated that only the children of officials of third rank or above can be under the influence of the family, and the rest must take the exam to become officials, so just you
Have a good time reading.
But will the imperial examinations of the Li Dynasty cause social mobility, disintegrate aristocracy and enter civilian politics like the imperial examinations in China? Of course not.
The imperial examinations in Li's North Korea were mainly divided into liberal arts, martial arts, and miscellaneous subjects. Among them, those who could become high-ranking officials and promoted to the second class were mainly liberal arts. However, in the liberal arts examination, the court first set up cards in the identity verification, and the children of rural officials
Participating in the imperial examination must be "reviewed by the four ancestors" and "recommended by the two classes". In addition, taking the liberal arts examination requires taking one more subject of "four books and one classic", and must be approved by the county government.
Moreover, in the imperial examinations of the Li Dynasty, the so-called "concubines" - that is, sons born from concubines, sons born from second marriages, and illegitimate children were not allowed to take the imperial examinations for liberal arts. This greatly restricted the expansion of the two classes of nobles. The so-called
Things are more valuable when they are scarce, and only when there are few people can the nobles and aristocrats become more expensive.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click the next page to continue reading the exciting content! North Korea's imperial examination seems to have no registration restrictions for ordinary people, but it is much more difficult for poor students to pass the exam than in the Ming Dynasty at the same time. Because of the official education in North Korea
, it is basically an aristocratic school. The children of the two classes enter the academy at the age of seven or eight, then enter the Seoul Fourth School, pass the entrance examination for students, and then enter Sungkyunkwan, where they complete 300 dots (such as class hours)
Only later can you take the liberal arts exam. How can ordinary people have the conditions to compete with these second-generation officials who have grown up from elementary school?
As if this was not enough, in order to ensure the continuation of the status of the two classes of nobles, North Korea also instituted the "non-examination". The formal imperial examination was held every three years, but the "non-examination" was at an uncertain time, and was often notified suddenly a few days before the exam.
This is very funny, because ordinary scholars can't even get to the examination room in time, and those who pass the examination are basically the two classes of students who have information. So as time goes by, more and more people do not take the exam. The original Li family in history
During the nearly 600 years of the dynasty (until it was annexed by Japan in the late Qing Dynasty), there were only 163 official examinations and 581 special examinations. The injustice is evident.
In this way, the imperial examination road in North Korea is basically monopolized by two groups of nobles. The situation in China where "you serve as a farmer in the morning and ascend to the emperor's hall at night" basically does not exist in North Korea.
The Lee Dynasty used this method to create a relatively stable upper-level ruling group, namely the Yangban. The Li Dynasty essentially divided people into four classes: the first class was the Yangban, and the second class was the so-called middle class.
People (that is, village officials and other miscellaneous workers), third-class people (ordinary people), and fourth-class people are untouchables (servants, prostitutes, etc.). It is very difficult for second-class and third-class people to move up to the first class, but it is basically impossible for fourth-class people.
hopeless.
Needless to say, the harm of class solidification is depressing to say the least, and the point is that it is a pool of stagnant water. As soon as Li Fang was "protected" by Ma Gui in the palace, he could only rely on this pool of stagnant water to survive.
But the biggest problem is not whether stagnant water can save people, but that "stagnant water" will also find that the situation is not right at this time and start to think about itself.
So, when Ma Gui led his troops to the south, but left 20,000 to 30,000 troops to specifically "protect" the King of Joseon and the Joseon court who were still in Pyongyang, some "backwaters" suggested: "The king is right, Joseon should annex
Ming dynasty."
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