My father Liu Xuande

Chapter 410 The Early Formation of the Shogunate
The first to arrive were the scholars who had settled in Wu County.

This included Bu Zhi, Wei Jing, Chen Jiao, Xu Xuan, Qin Song, Chen Duan, Du Ji, Jia Xi, Yuan Huan, Yuan Ba, Yuan Min, Du Xi, Zhao Yan, Fan Qin, Yan Xiang, Yan Jun, Lü Dai, and others.

In addition, scholars such as Wu Fan, Wei Teng, and Gao Dai were also on their way north.

Liu Feng directly announced the plan he had been pondering for a long time: he wanted to reorganize the Left General's staff.

The shogunate originally had one chief secretary, one military officer, two assistant directors, two clerks responsible for advisory duties, one a temporary clerk responsible for salary, and the other a military clerk responsible for weapons. In addition, there were twenty-nine subordinate clerks and thirty-one clerks.

Liu Feng felt that these positions were clearly insufficient. He had already decided to follow Cao Cao's hegemonic model, and his staff positions would become the most coveted positions in the world. How could so few be enough to accommodate all the talented people in the world?
Therefore, Liu Feng made a bold move and launched a large-scale recruitment drive.

First, the chief secretary and military officer of the shogunate were expanded to one chief secretary and five deputy chief secretaries, for a total of six chief secretaries and six military officers.

In addition, there was no objection to reorganizing the various clerks into the five ministries of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, Justice, and War.

However, the Ministry of Works needs to be reorganized and temporarily split into the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Engineering, and the Ministry of Resources. At the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Water Resources, the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Human Resources, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Internal Security, and the Ministry of Audit will be added.

The Ministry of Personnel was equivalent to the Ministry of Organization, the Ministry of Revenue was equivalent to the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Rites combined the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, the Ministry of War was the Ministry of National Defense, and the Ministry of Justice was naturally the Ministry of Justice.

Liu Feng wanted to improve technological productivity, so he split the Ministry of Industry into two, making industry a separate ministry and creating a new Ministry of Science and Technology to encourage technological innovation.

At the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture, which encourages mulberry farmers, promotes agricultural technologies, and plans and reviews the quantity, type, yield, and planting status of farmland, is also listed as a ministry.

The Ministry of Health was a department that Liu Feng had long wanted to establish, but he had never had enough resources or funds to push it through. Now it was time to set it up to deal with the rampant infectious diseases and poor sanitation in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

As for the Ministry of Water Resources, it was established specifically because it saw the benefits of the recent renovation and construction of water conservancy projects in Jiangbei, and it was also a department to promote the renovation, construction, and planning of water conservancy facilities throughout the Liu family's sphere of influence.

The Ministry of Transport was naturally responsible for roads, and at the same time, it would work with the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Engineering to train engineering talents, cultivate professional engineering teams, compile them into examples, and promote and popularize them. The ultimate goal was to lay the foundation for the complete abolition of the most terrible, stubborn, and insane evil policy in China's feudal period—corruption.

Of course, it is impossible to achieve this with just a few engineering teams; the most important factor is the development of technological productivity.

Only by using gunpowder on a large scale to open up mountains and dig roads, and increasing the proportion of mechanical power in engineering projects, can we completely solve the ancient practice of relying on manpower and ultimately eliminate the conditions for forced labor.

The Ministry of Human Resources was actually a department split off from the Ministry of Revenue, used to count the population. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, population and taxes were almost synonymous.

Strictly speaking, the poll tax was much higher than the land tax.

Even if we disregard the land tax system of one-fifteenth of the total tax in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and even include the additional taxes levied by the Eastern Han court and corrupt officials, it would still be much less than the poll tax.

In order to restrain the Ministry of Revenue, Liu Feng carved out this area and made it a separate ministry.

The Ministry of Manpower was responsible not only for the poll tax but also for the census and population statistics, in order to ensure Liu Feng's control over the population within his territory.

Objectively speaking, this seems redundant, but the problem is that Liu Feng currently has many talented people but few official positions. County-level official positions are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of these talents, but there are not enough prefectural governor positions, not to mention that Liu Feng wants to establish a powerful government. Therefore, the separate establishment of the Ministry of Human Resources is clearly more beneficial than harmful.

As the name suggests, the Ministry of Public Security is a necessary part of a qualified national system, where the military and police systems must be separated. Liu Feng attempted to transform the yamen runners into public security officers, but he was not in a hurry and was determined to proceed slowly.

The final audit department and internal security department are the internal audit and execution departments.

In this way, the shogunate had a total of eighteen ministries, with the chief secretary in charge of the overall affairs and the deputy chief secretaries divided into five groups, each in charge of two or more ministries.

As for the six Sima, they were prepared for the generals who commanded the outer armies.

Subsequently, Liu Feng immediately issued appointments, appointing Zhong Yao as the Chief Secretary of the General Staff (in official history), Dong Zhao and Chen Qun as Deputy Chief Secretaries, and leaving the other two positions vacant for the time being.

The Ministry of Personnel, being the head of all ministries, was undoubtedly the most important.

Liu Feng favors Chen Qun for the position of Cao Yuan (equivalent to a minister) in the Ministry of Personnel and has already asked his father for the position. However, Chen Qun is currently serving as the governor of one of the three commanderies of Langya, so a replacement needs to be sent first before he can be transferred to Jiangdong.

Many people feel that Chen Qun's establishment of the Nine-Rank System was a sign of his subservience to the aristocratic class, a reactionary move, and a step backward in history.

In reality, these people only know one side of the story and not the other.

In historical circles, the Nine-Rank System is widely recognized as a progressive policy.

If you think he's outdated, you have to compare him to the imperial examination system. Besides, Chen Qun's Nine-Rank System and the Nine-Rank System of the Jin Dynasty are completely different things.

For example, Chen Qun's Nine-Rank System focused on proposing an objective standard for evaluating talent in order to regulate the increasingly abused recommendation system at the time.

However, in order to usurp the Han throne, Cao Pi relinquished some power, which led to the Nine-Rank System going astray. A few decades later, the Sima family usurped the throne and had to relinquish power to the aristocratic families in order to win their support.

By the time Sima Yan came to power, the Nine-Rank System, though still a name, was completely different from the system implemented during Chen Qun's time.

It's completely unreasonable to pin all the blame on Chen Qun.

Rather than saying Chen Qun was a sycophant of the aristocracy, it would be more accurate to say that he was an enemy of them.

Chen Qun's original intention in establishing the Nine-Rank System was to compete with local authorities for public opinion.

What is public opinion?

Simply put, it refers to local voice or influence.

As is well known, the recommendation system during the Han Dynasty was the most important path to becoming an official, and the criteria for recommendation were your character and filial piety; ability was secondary.

In this situation, it was a chaotic scene where everyone was trying to be the best at filial piety, and the difficulty was getting higher and higher, to the point that a mythical act of filial piety like Wang Xiang lying on ice to catch carp for his dog was produced.

At this point, problems arise.

The first problem is that we're almost at the end of the road, and we've already gone so far as to lie on ice to catch carp; what's next? Are we going to try to reach for the moon?

The second problem is that the burden is too heavy. As the filial piety is expressed, the difficulty increases, the cost naturally increases sharply, and it is also easy to backfire and be exposed.

These two problems made the aristocratic families feel that this path was unreliable, too difficult, and they could no longer continue down this path.

Otherwise, you might lose your life before you even get the official position.

Thus, the clever and resourceful aristocratic families discovered an even better path: mutual flattery.

Elders praise younger generations, younger generations praise elders, and friends praise each other. All it takes is a string of words to make someone famous, and there's no chance of it backfiring—it's practically a godsend.

This kind of mutual flattery is called public opinion.

From its inception, public opinion was controlled by the aristocratic families, so there was no need for Chen Qun to act as a sycophant and establish the Nine-Rank System.

Many people are unaware of just how terrifying the influence of public opinion was in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.

At that time, there were two famous scholars in the Central Plains: one was Li Ying, a famous scholar from Runan, and the other was Guo Tai, a famous scholar from Taiyuan.

Guo Tai was skilled at critiquing people, and he and Xu Shao were collectively known as Xu Guo. When Guo Tai went south to Luoyang to visit Li Ying, thousands of carriages in Luoyang saw him off before he left.

Just imagine, if someone goes to Beijing to visit a friend, and thousands of luxury cars see them off when they leave, how influential would that be?
The reason why Emperor Huan of Han launched the "Party Prohibition" was closely related to this enormous influence.

No emperor could tolerate the loss of power over personnel appointments. A famous scholar could simply open his mouth and say a few good words about another person, and that person would gain fame and be recruited by other scholars to serve as an official.

If things continue like this, what's the point of having an emperor?
Chen Qun's Nine-Rank System was actually based on Cao Cao's personnel management philosophy. His core idea was to centralize the power of public opinion from the local level to the state, so that the state could arrange and select talents. In essence, it was a patch to the recommendation system.

Even if the Nine-Rank System were to gradually decay, it would not have deteriorated to the extent it was in history.

The key point is that Cao Pi and Sima Zhao, in order to become emperors, directly returned the power of public opinion to the aristocratic families.

This caused quite a stir. Although the right to public opinion was held by local gentry, it was ultimately just a local power of public opinion and had no legal effect.

Simply put, it was a practice where local celebrities would flatter each other and gain fame, but whether they could become officials depended on whether the officials would accept this flattery and recognize their status.

After going through all this trouble, Cao Pi and Sima Zhao essentially returned the power of public opinion, which had been brought under central control and had already acquired legal effect, to the aristocratic families.

This means your reputation is legally endorsed; regardless of whether officials recognize you personally, they have to give you an official position. Moreover, apart from the Grand Justice in charge of evaluation, even your superiors cannot decide your promotion.

This led to the complete loss of authority of superiors. All officials who wanted to be promoted had to curry favor with the Grand Justice and the Grand Justice. As a result, the aristocratic families in the central government only needed to control the power of the Grand Justice to easily monopolize the official career.

So stop criticizing the Nine-Rank System as rotten; the real rotten ones were Cao Pi and Sima Zhao.

If Cao Pi's transfer of power was merely a temporary measure, and he began to suppress the aristocratic families and reclaim power after usurping the Han throne, then Sima Zhao simply gave up, selling off his entire fortune before even becoming emperor.

Sima Zhao was far inferior to his father and brother.

Chen Qun was not only the founder of the Nine-Rank System, but also the founder of the Wei Law. He was extremely talented and good at summarizing and organizing the thoughts of his leaders into legal provisions.

In Liu Feng's eyes, such talent was no less valuable than that of a royal advisor.

Therefore, Liu Feng preferred to leave the Ministry of Personnel vacant for the time being, waiting for Chen Qun to take office. In any case, with Zhong Yao as the chief clerk and himself as the general, there was no need to worry about the department not functioning properly.

The second most important department is naturally the Ministry of Revenue, which is equivalent to the Ministry of Finance. It controls the expenditure authority and funds, and is undoubtedly one of the most crucial departments.

Liu Feng originally had a candidate in mind, but now he changed his mind and actually appointed Yang Xiu as a clerk in the Ministry of Revenue.

Yang Xiu had an excellent memory, and during the journey south, Liu Feng also discovered that Yang Xiu was quite good at mathematics, making him more than qualified to serve as a clerk in the Ministry of Revenue. Moreover, the Ministry of Revenue was a department with few secrets and many complicated matters, especially those involving numbers, which were quite demanding.

Liu Feng felt no pressure at all about squeezing Yang Xiu out of his power.

For the position of clerk in the Ministry of Justice, there was a ready-made candidate: Du Ji.

Du Ji's ancestors were experts in law, and Du Zhou and his son Du Yannian are even more famous in history, leaving their names in the Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han.

Du Ji himself was also very skilled in law, and Chen Shou praised him as being both lenient and strict, benefiting the people.

Liu Feng was good at recognizing and utilizing talent, so naturally he wouldn't leave Du Ji aside.

The position of Clerk in the Ministry of Rites is temporarily vacant, awaiting a suitable candidate.

Subsequently, Zhao Yan was temporarily appointed as the Minister of War.

Zhao Yan is almost entirely absent from the novel, but in historical records, his talent, ability, virtue, and status were extremely high, on par with Man Chong.

When Zhao Yan died, he was Minister of Works, while Man Chong died, he was Grand Commandant. In addition, Man Chong's fief was larger than Zhao Yan's, so Man Chong had a slight advantage. However, the two were still roughly the same level of bigwigs in Cao Wei.

Unlike Man Chong, Zhao Yan was not a former official of Yanzhou. He only came to join Cao Cao after Cao Cao seized the emperor and used him to command the other warlords.

He rose to prominence during the Battle of Guandu, where he helped Li Tong stabilize Runan and opened up a large rear area for Cao Cao.

After that, Cao Cao promoted Zhao Yan to the position of military advisor, and Zhao Yan quickly demonstrated abilities that exceeded Cao Cao's expectations.

Indeed, Zhao Yan's greatest strength was not strategy, nor tactics, nor bravery, but rather reconciliation.

Zhao Yan was able to get Zhang Liao, Yu Jin, and Yue Jin, generals who were hostile to each other and rarely communicated or cooperated, to temporarily set aside their disputes and start cooperating under his mediation.

Don't underestimate this point. Putting aside everything else, if the Second Master had had Zhao Yan assisting him in Jingzhou, who was in charge of mediating among the generals, then Mi Fang and Bo Shi Ren would most likely not have betrayed him.

Zhao Yan was skilled in military administration, adept at mediating conflicts, and generous in helping his generals, making him a very suitable candidate for the position of Assistant Clerk in the Ministry of War.

Next, the Ministry of Agriculture appointed Du Xi; the Ministry of Water Resources appointed Yuan Min; the Ministry of Industry appointed Zhuge Jin; the Ministry of Engineering appointed Lü Dai; the Ministry of Resources appointed Yan Jun; the Ministry of Public Security appointed Xu Xuan; the Ministry of Internal Security appointed Jia Xi; the Ministry of Science and Technology appointed Yan Xiang; the Ministry of Transport appointed Bu Zhi; the Ministry of Audit appointed Yuan Huan; the Ministry of Health appointed Hua Tuo; the Ministry of Commerce appointed Chen Jiao; and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security appointed Qin Song.

Chen Duan was appointed as a temporary clerk, and Wei Jing was appointed as a military clerk.

Yuan Ba ​​and Fan Qin were appointed as Attendant Physicians.

In addition, Liu Feng set up an agency called the Cabinet, whose task was to assist Liu Feng in handling government affairs. The temporary members were Zhuge Liang, Lu Xun, and Pang Tong.

After the chief secretary and other officials of the shogunate compiled the report, they submitted it to the cabinet, which then approved it and made it effective.

At this point, Liu Feng's Left General's headquarters had begun to take shape.

(End of this chapter)