Chapter 502 The Ability of Emperor Chenghua
After Xu Fan got the news that there was ironwood in the north, he hesitated for a while, but finally wrote a memorial about collecting giant trees in the north and submitted it.
Of course, after this memorial was handed over, there was not much fuss. What Emperor Jiajing cared about was not the issue of Nanmu or Beimu at all. What he cared about was his face.
And what kind of giant tree can best enrich your face?
There is no doubt that it is expensive and has a story.
Therefore, when Xu Fan wrote this suggestion to collect giant trees that are fragrant and as strong as steel in the far north, Emperor Jiajing was neither sure nor sure.
Anyway, this matter is left to Xu Fan. As for whether he can accomplish it, that is his problem.
If the giant northern trees he gets in the future are just ordinary wood, don't blame Emperor Jiajing for being ruthless.
After all, the emperor's face cannot be trampled to the ground again and again.
Therefore, the pressure on Xu Fan's supervision this time can be said to be huge. If he can withstand the pressure, he will be a good minister. If he cannot, he will be a traitor and a traitor who intends to deceive the emperor.
Therefore, Xu Fan seems to have received favor, but in fact he was roasted on the fire by Emperor Jiajing.
Of course, the person being roasted was not Xu Fan himself, but his father Xu Jie.
Emperor Jiajing just wanted to see if Xu Jie could still do anything under such heavy pressure?
When he is able to do the job, let him become a full-time employee and work as the chief assistant for a few days. If he can't do it, then he can continue to be Yan Song's follower.
The reason why Emperor Jiajing could still tolerate Yan Song's old age and distraction was because Yan Song could at least play a role in stabilizing the situation in the court and not easily break the balance between the court and the central government.
We must know that the first element of politics is stability.
Especially emperors like Emperor Jiajing who have long lost their youthful ambitions, their thoughts are generally conservative, and they want to spend their own time smoothly and safely transition power to the next generation.
However, this type of emperor also has a common psychological problem, that is, his desire for power is almost abnormal, and few of them will let go easily until the moment of impermanence comes.
And if there are any more provocations from traitors around them, whether it's Han Wu's witchcraft or Xuanzong's Anshi, it may happen at their most perverted and twisted moment.
Therefore, being emperor for a long time is not necessarily a good thing.
If some emperors could die ten or twenty years earlier, it might be a good thing for their historical evaluation and for the world.
But it is a pity that life and death never follow people's wishes. Sometimes regrets and unwillingness are so full of all kinds of uncontrollable accidents that make history fascinating.
Of course, the price of this charm may be just a few lines of stories in history books to future generations, but to the people at that time, it may be a huge disaster or good luck.
Inside Prince Yu's Mansion.
The Lantern Festival is coming, and the long imperial holiday is coming to an end.
So now Zhu Zaijing has no leisure to continue to enjoy. The Secretary of General Affairs and the Supervisor of Liturgical Affairs moved the memorials accumulated during the New Year period to his house.
Zhu Zaijing looked at these memorials and sighed slightly in his heart. No wonder the ancient emperors were less diligent in their duties. With such a heavy workload, they still wanted people to maintain their diligence and work hard as cows and horses. It was simply It's harder than climbing to the sky.
Fortunately, most of these memorials were approved and approved by the cabinet.
When Zhu Zaijing was reading, he could quickly browse the important information, and then focus on the cabinet votes and the approval of the Supervisor of Ceremonies.
Therefore, after such calculation, Zhu Zaijing's actual workload is not as large as imagined.
Zhu Zaijing looked through these memorials, and he finally saw the memorial written by Xu Fan requesting Emperor Jiajing to use ironwood from the far north to expand the new palace.
The cabinet's voting opinions above are also ambiguous. There is no specific explanation of the proposal to adopt the Northern Ironwood. In addition, the ceremonial supervisor's criticism above is also very interesting, with only one point.
It can be said that this memorial, whether in the cabinet or the Supervisor of Ceremonies, neither group of people dared to express a single opinion, and it all depends on the decision of Emperor Jiajing.
However, Emperor Jiajing did not make any move, which made Zhu Zaijing curious but also unable to help laughing.
He remembered that when he and Zhang Juzheng were planning the Dashun Tianfu, they mentioned that there was iron wood as strong as steel in the far north of Liaodong.
At that time, Zhu Zaijing remembered that what he meant was that if this kind of ironwood could be harvested, it could be used as a transitional material for future railway tracks to make up for the current shortage of steel production in the Ming Dynasty.
But unexpectedly, Zhang Juzheng actually treated this matter as another topic to talk about to Xu Fan. Xu Fan actually wrote this thing into a memorial to Emperor Jiajing.
It seems that the giant trees in the Yunnan-Guizhou region are indeed difficult to harvest. Otherwise, how could Xu Fan be so obedient and write a memorial to Emperor Jiajing about the gossip Zhang Juzheng told him.
However, from these small things, Zhu Zaijing immediately made a vigilant new judgment.
From the history he knew, although the current Yunnan-Guizhou region was relatively stable, most of the people in Shanyue, led by the chieftains, were not worthy of being kings.
They hide in the deep mountains and old forests of the Yunnan-Guizhou region, live an almost primitive life, and have their own set of management methods.
Although the imperial court wanted to civilize them, it wanted them to come out of the mountains and accept Chinese education and changes in the production model.
However, these people are controlled by their respective chieftains or lords. They have a primitive culture of integrating politics and religion. If you talk to them about big principles, benefits and the future, these people will not listen at all.
They even thought that the imperial court was trying to trick them out of the mountains and eliminate them one by one.
After all, from the time of Qin Shihuang to today's Ming Dynasty, the attitude of the Central Plains dynasties towards the people of Baiyue in the south has been a carrot and stick education model.
After this method has been used for a long time, although it can have a certain stabilizing effect, it is still easy for the Han people to form irresolvable grudges with these Baiyue people living in the deep mountains.
For example, during the reign of Emperor Xianzong Chenghua, a large-scale rebellion occurred among the Baiyue people in the south, which almost shook the Ming Dynasty's rule in Guangxi and almost made Guangxi the next Annan land.
When Emperor Chenghua, who ascended the throne at a young age, faced such a crisis, he was also panicked. You must know that the Ming Dynasty was not stable both inside and outside the Ming Dynasty at that time. The mess left by his father, Emperor Baozong, was also quite terrifying.
The Tatars in the north continued to invade the Ming Dynasty border fortress and invaded the Hetao area. The Jurchens in the northeast were not idle either and wanted to cause trouble. Large-scale civil uprisings also occurred in the Jingxiang area, which almost swept the country. Shaanxi, Sichuan and Huguang and other places.
Such a terrifying situation was not so scary even when the little cutie Chongzhen ascended the throne.
But Emperor Chenghua seemed to be the one chosen by nature to turn the tide. He not only quickly formulated a strategy to quell civil unrest in various places, but also acted decisively to block the right and wrong inside and outside the court, and against all objections, he launched the He recruited some old people from Jingtai and put down the local civil unrest and bandits. Then he freed up his hands to clean up the Tatar Oala in the north and took back the Hetao land.
And he also completed the feat of plowing the court in Chenghua, which stabilized peace in Liaodong for more than a hundred years.
It can be said that if the cute little Chongzhen could reach the level of Emperor Chenghua, he would not end up with his country and family destroyed.
You must know that Emperor Chenghua was less than twenty years old when he ascended the throne, which can be said to be almost the same age as Chongzhen's little cutie when he succeeded to the throne.
However, the political ability and strategic vision displayed by the two men are not at the same level at all.
Moreover, according to the internal and external troubles at that time, Emperor Chenghua also faced the collapse of the sky, but in the end, it took Emperor Chenghua just a few years to settle these things.
In contrast, Emperor Chongzhen brought the world to ruins. You must know that when Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, the biggest problem was Jianzhou Jurchen. The Mongols in the north almost stopped causing trouble to the Ming Dynasty after I paid tribute. , Li Zicheng was still working as a postman in a public institution in Shaanxi, and Zhang Xianzhong was still farming in his hometown.
Although there were civil unrest, they were not as massive as in the early days of Emperor Chenghua's accession to the throne.
But such a situation, under Emperor Chongzhen's operation in less than a few years, everything collapsed. It has to be said that Emperor Chongzhen is still capable, but it is a pity that his ability is the ability to cause destruction, not the ability to turn the tide.
Let’s talk about the current Yunnan-Guizhou region. Xu Fan couldn’t get giant trees from Yunnan-Guizhou. Apart from the fact that he didn’t have Yan Shifan’s ability, the biggest reason was because there wasn’t enough peace there.
Although Emperor Chenghua pacified the "Tengxia Bandit Rebellion" that occurred in the Yunnan-Guizhou area, due to the majestic landforms and deep mountains and canyons everywhere, a single pacification could not achieve long-term stability.
Moreover, it was impossible for the imperial court to send large troops to garrison the area for a long time. After all, even in the heyday of the Ming Dynasty, no emperor could afford such a waste of money.
Therefore, the Tengxia Bandit Rebellion in the Yunnan-Guizhou region broke out twice during the Jiajing Emperor's reign, once in the seventh year of Jiajing and once in the eighteenth year of Jiajing.
The Tengxia banditry in the seventh year of Jiajing was put down by Wang Yangming, a master of psychology. The eighteenth year of Jiajing was put down by Zhang Jing, the governor of Zhejiang Province and the Minister of War, who was jointly killed by Yan Song and Xu Jie a few years ago.
Now more than twenty years have passed, and the people from Baiyue over there have apparently healed their scars and forgotten the pain, and are starting to feel itchy again.
Otherwise, when Xu Fan, as the minister of the Ministry of Industry, sent a message to the Yunnan-Guizhou region to ask local officials to cut down giant trees, how could he be delayed?
You must know that Xu Fan does not live in this palace, but in the new home where Emperor Jiajing will live, except for Yan Shifan, a daring man who wants money rather than his life, no one else has the courage to take eye drops.
Therefore, from these clues, Zhu Zaijing can almost judge that these Baiyue people entrenched in the mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou may have hooked up with the Fangwai natives in Myanmar.
If their blending succeeds, then a protracted Ming-Myanmar war that has lasted for hundreds of years will begin.
But it is a pity that although Zhu Zaijing can know that there will be a Ming-Burma War in the future that will last for hundreds of years, with his current power and the current national and military strength of the Ming Dynasty, he is still unable to carry out a war in the mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou. A military operation like thunder sweeping holes.
After all, the landscape there is too complex. When the army marches in, in addition to facing the intrusions of snakes, insects, rats, ants and miasma in nature, they also have to face the elusive mountain people and thieves.
In such a combat environment, it is obviously not conducive to the imperial court. If you are not careful, you will fall into the quagmire of endless wars, although such wars will not cause accidents to the Ming Dynasty's rule.
But if the stalemate continues like this, the consumption of Ming's national power cannot be ignored.
Moreover, if we act too hastily and want to carry out an important decisive battle with a large army to encircle and suppress it, and something goes wrong, it is very likely that the troubled area will be replicated in the past in Annan.
Therefore, if they want to fight this kind of mountain warfare, the imperial court must have enough patience to engage in point-to-point guerrilla warfare with this group of Shanyue thieves and the Burmese thieves who have joined in.
After all, the terrain there is really not suitable for large corps operations, and the baggage weapons cannot be lined up in a row and used to suppress the victory like the Tatars in the north.
In addition to the need for patience, the war there is also the "carrot and stick" tactic that has been used countless times for thousands of years.
Only in this way can the Ming Dynasty maintain its basic rule over the Yunnan-Guizhou Shanyue region. Otherwise, if these originally disunited mountain people are forced into a force, it will be a big trouble.
Zhu Zaijing put down the copy of Xu Fan's memorials in his hand, and he immediately said to several clerks waiting in the study: "Collect all the memorials in Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi, and I want to check them one by one."
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These clerks were all good candidates selected by Huang Jin from the inner study room. Although they were not very young, all of them had talents that were not inferior to those of Hanlin scholars.
Therefore, they are also important talent reserves in the Forbidden City. If they do well in the future, they may also have the opportunity to become eunuchs and eunuchs in the future.
He could become a eunuch in charge of the palace, or he could become a guard eunuch assigned to a local area, or a military eunuch responsible for supervising the army in the army.
Therefore, the eunuch administrative system of the Ming Dynasty was definitely the most hierarchical alternative administrative system in the history of the dynasties. Their number and the things they were responsible for were absolutely beyond imagination.
Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty managed the world, it also used a dual-track system, which is somewhat similar to the model of party committees and governments.
However, no matter how powerful the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were, when they were sent to the local area, they were just one person and could not cause much trouble.
After all, the promotion path of civil servants does not have to be from the government system to the party and government system as in later generations. They only need to act according to the normal official logic.
Therefore, although those eunuchs who were dispatched to local areas had power, their influence was limited and they could not make local officials obey directly.
So to put it bluntly, the administrative system of civil servants and the administrative system of eunuchs are born with reproductive isolation that cannot be integrated with each other. They cannot achieve the deep binding of "you have me, and I have you".
The clerks didn't know what happened, but since it was something Zhu Zaijing requested, he didn't dare to neglect it, and immediately began to search for the memorials in Guangdong, Yunnan, Guangxi and Guangxi by categories.
After about a quarter of an hour, these scribes finally found all the memorials about Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi in Zhu Zaijing's study, and then respectfully presented them to Zhu Zaijing together.
Zhu Zaijing said: "Briefly excerpt all the contents of these memorials, remove all the nonsense of quoting scriptures and arguments, leaving only the key contents of the memorials."
The clerks responded with a respectful yes, and none of them had any complaints.
Because they also know very well that although their current work is very simple, it is extremely important.
If Prince Yu can visit Dabao one day in the future, the scribes working in Prince Yu's Mansion will most likely rise to great heights, and they will immediately get good luck that can skyrocket to 90,000 miles.
Therefore, these secretaries are also very hardworking and attentive when handling errands in Prince Yu's palace.
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(End of chapter)