When things have reached this point, the power struggle in the form of the palace renovation project has entered garbage time on a factual level.
The great unity of the Heart School that Shen had always expected has indeed been realized, but he thought that the nobles of the Jingnan Clan could firmly align with the Heart School for the sake of the years of "cooperation" between the two parties, forming a situation where the two factions would join forces to fight against the encirclement and suppression of the Real School. A great situation, but this one was a complete failure.
Although the source of power for both nobles and officials is the emperor, their methods of obtaining power are completely different. These hereditary nobles obtain power based on their ancestors' merits and personal conduct. For example, Xu Hongji's ancestors are Xu Da, he was his father's eldest son, so he was born to attack the Duke of Wei. As long as he did not seek death, the Duke of Wei could not escape him.
The situation is different when you are an official. No matter how great your ancestors are and how much merit they have made, as long as you cannot pass the Jinshi exam, everything will be in vain - unless you are willing to be kind to those idle officials who are dawdling around.
What can I say about Enyin officials? There are some who are doing well and are not far from the central government. For example, Gao Jingshi's younger brother, Gao Gong's heir Gao Wuguan, his Yin official is the sixth-rank Shangbaosi Sicheng. This is the civil servant Yin official The highest standards, but you don't have to think about getting promoted in this life.
Originally, there were Shangbaosi Shaoqing and Shangbao Siqing above Shangbao Sicheng, but these two positions belonged to Shangbaosi's "Tang Shangguan" and could not be appointed by Yin officials, but only by Jinshi. .Therefore, no matter how well Gao Wuguan does, or how powerful his brother Gao Pangshi is, Gao Wuguan cannot be promoted. His pinnacle is Shang Bao Sicheng or other ministerial officials at the same level.
Of course, if he resigned and went to southern Xinjiang, the situation would be different, but there is no need to go into detail.
In short, hereditary nobles are "born nobles". As long as the emperor doesn't feel that if you don't deal with it, the world will be in chaos, then your life will not be bad. Although you have the ceiling of a certain governor of the Fifth Military Governor's Mansion, you The lower limit is high! Therefore, as long as the nobles are not confused, it is usually impossible to argue with the emperor.
On the contrary, they dared to argue with anyone other than the emperor. For example, Zhang Weixian, the seventh-generation British duke who was granted the title in the middle and late Wanli period, dared to completely ignore Wei Zhongxian, who was said to be nine thousand years old. Wei Zhongxian heard the report from the following people that the British duke publicly After losing his face, he murmured for a long time, and finally he could only say forget it - as long as people don't rebel, no matter how powerful you are, you can only stare at them. This is the power of your ancestors.
However, although nobles have their own dodge BUFF, they do not dare to fight against the civil service group. For example, when Gao Pragmatic was still serving as the Minister of Rongzheng in the Ministry of War, the nobles were very polite to him. This was not because of the Minister of Rongzheng. Guan Jingying was so pragmatic that he was awesome, but it was because Gao was already the well-known leader of the pragmatic school at that time.
Nobles are not afraid of pragmatic individuals, but they are afraid of the pragmatic school, a large group within the civil service, coming up to fight. If dozens of memorials are impeached in a day, no one of you can live with it. Even if you may not lose your title, you will definitely be summoned by the emperor. It's hard to tell what the outcome will be if you rebuke him, so it's better to do less than to do more, and it's always right to be polite to Gao Pragmatism.
Speaking of civil servants, civil servants are not too afraid of nobles. Instead, they are easily restricted by eunuchs who are particularly favored by the emperor. This is actually a triangle relationship: the emperor needs military officials to serve as the sword that shocks the world, and he also needs civilian officials to restrict military officials.
In order to prevent your strength from threatening the imperial power in turn, it was necessary to create another force to restrict the civil servants, so eunuchs were introduced as white gloves to specifically attack the civil servants.
Since the "natural mission" of eunuchs is only to attack civil servants, the emperor will not tolerate them blindly attacking the nobles, so the nobles can in turn regard the eunuchs as slaves... As soon as this cycle is completed, the emperor himself will be removed
Now, you can balance the balance of power between the three at any time, allowing you to always be in the most transcendent position and become the final arbiter.
Let the three of you play the game of biting the tail. Whoever wants to gain the upper hand must come to me. This is the basic logic of this power game. That is, the British prince can ignore Wei Zhongxian, but the nobles of the Jingnan family must.
The reason why Baba tries to please Gao Xiang is pragmatic.
Of course, there are some great people who break this logic. For example, when Chongzhen came to power, he not only supported Wei Zhongxian, but also directly supported the eunuchs, a power faction, so he had no choice but to rush to the front line. He killed so many civil servants that it was almost unbelievable.
Chasing Zhu Yuanzhang was of no use, except that the civil servants gradually began to be in Cao's camp and their hearts were in Han. Once the situation was unfavorable, they would switch to Li Zicheng or even the Qing Dynasty. The holy king of Chongzhen did not get anything good.
Therefore, although Jiajing had many faults, he got one thing right: you ask him what is Tao? "I'll ask, Wu Yu said, the clouds are in the sky and the water is in the bottle." That is to say, you can do whatever you are in.
, which is what is said in "Zhouyi·Gen" as "cannot think of its position".
Chongzhen just didn't understand this truth and insisted on breaking the logic of power operation. Therefore, thoughtful people in the world had no choice but to reset the logic of power operation through physical means.
Although there are many highly pragmatic reform measures, they are all implemented within a system in which power operates normally. For example, when he was the Minister of Rongzheng, he carried out Beijing-based reforms, and when he was the Minister of Household Affairs, he carried out fiscal reforms.
As the first assistant, he began to adjust the political structure of the court... When he was taking the imperial examination, his textbook was the "Book of Changes", so he naturally knew the principle of "not thinking about his position", but he often did it under the framework of "not thinking about his position"
Just do it for the best.
The Nanjing Imperial Palace renovation project is essentially a highly pragmatic attempt to use a project fraud to adjust the political structure. The purpose is to use the remaining power of the Confucius Temple incident caused by the emperor to completely suppress the school of thought and form a general trend of pragmatism dominating the government in the court, and then pave the way for the final
Reform paves the way.
In the eyes of outsiders, Gao Pragmatic's actions are nothing more than to monopolize the government affairs. Although this is correct, it is not correct. Monopolizing the government affairs is only a means, not an end. What he wants is to continue reform, and it is not a specific
reforms—including the reform of the imperial examination.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! Any specific reform cannot be regarded as a high and pragmatic ultimate goal. Its fundamental purpose is so big that people of this era cannot see it, nor can they imagine it, or even
Even if Gao Pragmatic tells them face to face, they may not be able to understand.
What does he want to do? He wants to change the endless cycle of "ruling just for the sake of rule" in previous Chinese dynasties and replace it with the infinite extension of "ruling for the sake of social development".
Later generations often say that the only thing the feudal dynasty cared about was how to continue its rule. All dynasties would draw lessons from the previous dynasties for this purpose, but they often fell into a similar cycle of chaos. For example, Qin fell to Yan, then Han fell to Kuan; Tang fell to
vassal town, so the Song Dynasty died due to weak soldiers...
Although overall, the political system has indeed made some progress over time, since the fundamental purpose is wrong, it cannot escape this rut. When the highest goal of a dynasty is to continue its rule, it will inevitably be afraid of any changes.
Even when encountering certain situations, they will choose to go back to ancient times - such as Zhu Yuanzhang's enfeoffment system among the various disciples.
However, in Gao Pragmatic's view, there is no way out. His classic is the "Book of Changes", and the core point that can be read from the "Book of Changes" is actually one sentence: The world is always changing, so people must constantly change themselves to adapt to the world.
change.
However, the truth is easy to understand, but the things are difficult to handle. How do you observe the changes in the world? What has changed in the world and how much has it changed? How do you change yourself and how much do you change to adapt to this change?
Of course Gao Pragmatic has thought a lot, and his final point of view is: the above problems are difficult, so it is better to let "I" be the biggest change. I change first, so others have to change with me.
In terms of governance in the imperial court, if I continue to reform and develop, then I am the biggest force of change, and all countries in the world can only follow my changes and adapt to me.
This principle is like the British Industrial Revolution. Productivity began to crush all countries in the world, so all countries could only follow suit one after another and began to compete for the "right to change", thereby promoting the world to develop faster and faster.
However, in Gao Pragmatic's view, Britain is actually very "morally unmatched". This country lacks moral integrity and is small in strength and has a small population. In fact, it is not enough to form a solid world structure. It relies on industry
The power of the revolution and the blood and tears of the vast colonies have maintained hegemony for two hundred years (not four hundred years), but they will eventually come to an end and disappear among the nations.
To truly form a stable world system, its core countries must require three prerequisites: vast land, giant clan, and unity.
In human terms, it is: rich in resources, large in population, and the whole country has the same desire.
Not to mention what will happen in later generations, when Gao pragmatically looks around the world today, the only country that can have this foundation is actually the Ming Dynasty. The so-called three treasures of the world in later generations: North America, Europe, and East Asia. Let’s not talk about how they were gradually formed, let’s just talk about this moment——
Europe is accustomed to division, and there is no possibility of unification; in America, the colonists have just arrived, development has just begun, and the population is extremely sparse.
On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty was the pinnacle of the agricultural era. The average grain yield per mu was more than three times that of Europe, and the population was four times that of the entire Europe. [Note: This is the mainstream view in Western academic circles, that is, the total population of Europe at the beginning of the 17th century was about
The population was 61 million, while the total population in the late Ming Dynasty at this time was "more than 200 million"; the European grain yield per mu was 40-80 kilograms (units have been converted), and the Ming Dynasty grain yield per mu was 200-250 kilograms.]
Under these conditions, and the highly pragmatic early reforms had basically been successfully completed, he began to think about how to "treat China and govern all nations." Is there any problem with this?
In his opinion, as long as the imperial court changes its thinking, starts to regard development as the correct path to continue its rule, and continuously promotes the progress of social productivity, then the Ming Dynasty will be the true "Chosen Country", and there is no "one".
A few days later, as the investigation deepened, more and more officials involved were revealed. Most of these officials belonged to the Xin School. They were either actively involved or passively involved in the Nanjing Imperial Palace renovation case, but without exception there were differences.
A matter of degree.
After careful review and discussion, the court finally decided to classify and deal with these officials involved in order to serve as a warning to others. The treatment plan is roughly divided into four levels:
Demoting to the Western Regions: For officials who are deeply involved but still useful, they will be demoted and transferred to the Western Regions to participate in local construction and management. Although these people have made mistakes, considering their abilities and their contribution to the court
contributions and give them a chance to make a new start.
To live idle: For officials who are involved in a moderate degree but are no longer suitable to continue to hold their original posts, they are deprived of their official positions, retain their honorary "crown belt", and are ordered to go home and live idle. Although these people have made mistakes, their mistakes are
It is not serious in nature and should be given a chance to reflect and retreat.
Removal from office for the people: For officials who are involved to a serious extent and have no need to continue serving as officials or even retain their reputation, they will be directly dismissed from their official positions and demoted to civilians. These people have obviously made mistakes, and the nature of the mistakes is serious, causing certain consequences.
Harmful, the imperial court no longer retains his official status.
Never to be used again: For officials who are deeply involved and of extremely bad nature, not only will they be removed from their official positions, but they will also be blacklisted and will never be used again. The nature of these people's mistakes is serious and has caused great harm to the court.
Big damage must be punished severely.
According to statistics, there are a total of forty-one officials of seventh rank or above involved in this case, of which eight were demoted to the Western Region, 12 were given idle status, and 15 were dismissed to work for the people and will never be used again.
There are six people.
The result of this handling caused great shock in the government and the opposition. Although the Forty-One said it was a lot less, it seemed that it was not much, but you must know that this was just a construction fraud case, and the scope was not large. If it were normal,
It's enough to deal with three or five people. However, this time, instead of dealing with a few people, all the officials involved were wiped out, and the priorities were clearly divided. This shows that the court attaches great importance to the case and the level of response is high.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! After dealing with these officials involved, Gao pragmatic was summoned to the Palace of Qianqing again. Zhu Yijun fully affirmed his handling, and also reminded that it would be a long time before he left Beijing.
, I have received many memorials urging me to return to Beijing.
Gao pragmatic originally thought that Zhu Yijun rarely left Beijing, so he would want to stay in Nanjing for a long time, and even take the opportunity to visit other places. Unexpectedly, he actually took the initiative to mention returning to Beijing, which was quite unexpected. However, Gao pragmatic
After all, he was not a sycophant, so he immediately stated that the emperor could return to Beijing at any time, and the cabinet would quickly make corresponding arrangements.
Afterwards, Gao Pragmatic quietly approached Chen Ju to understand the situation. Chen Ju seemed a little embarrassed and finally said a few ambiguous words. Gao Pragmatic understood that the dragon's body was not in good condition... Listening to Chen Ju's description, it seemed that the climate in Nanjing was more likely to give the emperor gout.
relapse.
This time the case was solved. Gout is indeed more likely to occur in the south than in the north, and the degree of pain during the attack is also far greater in the south than in the north. Zhu Yijun originally suffered from gout and had attacks from time to time in Beijing. Now that he has come to Nanjing, he must be suffering from old sins.
.
As for why Chen Ju didn't say it clearly, it's simple - the emperor's physical condition is a highly sensitive issue, and in principle it cannot be leaked at will. The reason why he can still tell Gao Jingshi is because, as the chief assistant, Gao Jingshi cannot comment on it.
Nothing is known about the emperor's physical condition.
As the investigation and handling of the Nanjing Palace Renovation Case gradually came to an end, and while Shengji was preparing to return to the north, the court's attention once again turned to the situation in the Western Regions. The army commanded by Liu Wei had already launched a counter-insurgency operation in the Western Regions, and Gao Pragmatic
We are also actively preparing logistical and financial support to ensure the smooth progress of counter-insurgency operations.
At the same time, Gao Pragmatic did not forget to rectify the officialdom in Nanjing, eliminate the influence of the Xin School, and ensure the dominant position of the Practical School. In this process, he also did not forget to communicate and coordinate with the nobles in Nanjing to ensure that they
Loyalty to the imperial court and support for the large-scale transfer of officials from the Real School to the south.
With Gao Pragmatic's efforts, the situation in Nanjing gradually stabilized, and the counter-insurgency operations in the Western Regions were also advancing steadily. Zhu Yijun affirmed Gao Pragmatic's work many times and gave more and more food, but at the same time he also urged
Arrangements for urging people to return to the north.
About half a month later, on the day before Shengjia returned to the north, Gao pragmatically wrote an essay called "Please Guangyong Juren to Consolidate the Western Regions". The full text is as follows:
I am a pragmatic and sincere minister:
I heard that when the emperor was on the border, he was like a defensive leader, and there was no one who did not first establish the rule to calm the people. Now that the Western Region has entered the territory, and rebellions have begun, the people's hearts are not at peace, and this is what worries the temple. I think it is
, apart from military warfare, civil affairs and governance are particularly urgent, so I dare not die to speak and pray for your majesty's favor.
Since the restoration of the Western Regions, the imperial prestige has spread far and wide. However, there are few officials and poor governance, which is the reason for this chaos. I foolishly thought that if I want peace in the Western Regions, I must first establish the foundation of governance, but the foundation cannot be established by virtuous officials.
No.
Looking at today's situation, there is a huge shortage of officials in the Western Regions, especially those with practical skills. Because the border areas are bitterly cold, those who are not ambitious will not go there. Therefore, I dare to ask Your Majesty to open up the road to appoint people to officials, and encourage people with lofty ideals to go to the border areas.
Being an official is to fill the gaps of the bureaucracy and to consolidate the foundation of governance.
I would like to request your Majesty to issue an edict to all those who wish to work in the border areas. The imperial court will give preferential treatment to officials. Moreover, those who serve in the border areas will have better chances of being transferred than those in the central areas. This will not only relieve the urgent shortage of officials, but also inspire scholars.
With the heart, we cultivate the Qiancheng of the country.
The minister also requested that the imperial court should increase the cultural wealth in the Western Regions, build schools, promote education, promote the change of people's customs, and reduce the causes of chaos.
I know that it is not easy to implement this proposal, but I firmly believe that with His Majesty’s holy judgment, and with everyone working together, there will be no difficulties that cannot be overcome and no achievements that cannot be achieved.
I am a pragmatic and pragmatic minister who is sincere and frightened. I bowed my head and bowed a hundred times, and I would like to listen to the memorial.
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PS: This chapter was written yesterday. Because I sprained myself during a night run last night, I took a shower and went to bed first, so I postponed it until today, but I have updated it a little bit more...