My father is Jiajing

Chapter 502 The Ability of Emperor Chenghua

After Xu Fan received the news that there was iron wood in the north, he hesitated for a while, but finally wrote a memorial about collecting the giant trees in the north and submitted it.

Of course, after this memorial was submitted, it did not cause much waves. Emperor Jiajing did not care about the issue of southern wood or northern wood, but his face.

And what kind of giant tree can best enrich the face?

There is no doubt that it is expensive and has a story.

Therefore, when Xu Fan wrote this suggestion about collecting huge trees that were fragrant and as hard as steel in the Far North, Emperor Jiajing neither said no nor said yes.

Anyway, this matter has been handed over to Xu Fan. As for whether he can accomplish it, that is his problem.

If the giant northern trees he gets in the future turn out to be ordinary wood, then don't blame Emperor Jiajing for being ruthless.

After all, the emperor's face cannot be trampled on again and again.

Therefore, the supervisory pressure on Xu Fan this time is enormous. If he can withstand the pressure, he is a good minister. If he can't, he is a traitor who is cunning and intends to deceive the emperor.

Therefore, although Xu Fan now seems to be favored, he is actually being 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 handle the situation under such heavy pressure.
If he can do the job, he will be promoted to the position of Prime Minister for a few days. If he can't, he will 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 court and would not easily break the balance in the court.

You must know that the first element of politics is stability.

Especially emperors like Emperor Jiajing, who had long lost the ambitions of their youth, generally tended to be conservative in their thinking. They wanted to spend their time in peace and transfer power to the next generation in a safe and secure manner.

However, this type of emperors also generally have a psychological problem, that is, the desire for power. They have an almost perverted obsession with it, and few of them will let go easily until the moment of death comes.

Moreover, if there are treacherous people around who instigate them, whether it is the witchcraft of Emperor Wu of Han or the Anshi Rebellion of Emperor Xuanzong, it is possible that it will happen at their most perverted and twisted moment.

Therefore, being an emperor for too long may not be a good thing.

If some emperors could die ten or twenty years earlier, it might be a good thing both for their historical evaluation and for the world.

But unfortunately, life and death never go as people wish. Sometimes regrets and unwillingness, and the various uncontrollable accidents, make history fascinating.

Of course, this fascinating price may be just a few lines of story in history books for future generations, but for people at that time, it may be a huge disaster or luck.

Inside Prince Yu’s Mansion.

The Lantern Festival is approaching and the court’s long holiday is almost over.

So now Zhu Zaigui had no time to relax and enjoy himself. The Tongzhengsi and Silijian moved the memorials accumulated during the New Year period to his house.

Zhu Zaigui looked at these memorials and sighed in his heart. No wonder there were so few diligent emperors in ancient times. With such a heavy workload, expecting people to always remain diligent and work like slaves is harder than climbing to the sky.

Fortunately, most of these memorials had been drafted and approved by the cabinet.

When Zhu Zaigui was reading it, he could quickly browse the important information and then focus on the cabinet's draft and the Silijian's approval.

Therefore, after this calculation, Zhu Zaigui's actual workload was not as heavy as imagined.

Zhu Zaigui was looking through these memorials, and he finally saw Xu Fan's memorial requesting that Jibei Tiemu be used to build a new palace for Emperor Jiajing.

The cabinet's draft opinion above is also ambiguous, and there is no specific statement on adopting Jibei Tiemu's suggestion. In addition, the Silijian's comments on it are also very interesting, with only one point.

It can be said that regarding this memorial, no matter in the cabinet or in the Imperial Household Department, neither group dared to express any opinion, and it all depended on the decision of Emperor Jiajing.

However, Emperor Jiajing did not make any move, which made Zhu Zaigui curious and couldn't help laughing.

He remembered that when he and Zhang Juzheng were planning the Dashun Tianfu, he mentioned that there was ironwood as strong as steel in the far north of Liaodong.

At that time, Zhu Zaigui remembered that what he meant was that if this kind of ironwood could be harvested, it could be used as a transition material for future railways to make up for the current shortage of steel production in the Ming Dynasty.

But unexpectedly, Zhang Juzheng actually told Xu Fan about this matter as another topic, and Xu Fan actually wrote this thing into a memorial to Emperor Jiajing for his review.

It seems that the giant trees in Yunnan and Guizhou are indeed difficult to cut down, otherwise how could Xu Fan be so obedient and write a memorial to Emperor Jiajing about the gossip told to him by Zhang Juzheng.

However, from these small things, Zhu Zaigui immediately made a new and cautious judgment.

In the history he knew, although the Yunnan-Guizhou region was relatively stable, the majority of the Shanyue people, led by the chieftains, were unwilling to obey the king's orders.

They hide in the deep mountains and forests of Yunnan and Guizhou, lead a nearly primitive life, and have their own management model.

Although the imperial court wanted to civilize them and get them out of the mountains to receive Chinese education and transform their production model.

However, these people were controlled by their own chieftains or lords. They had a primitive culture of combining politics and religion. They would not listen at all if you talked to them about principles, benefits and the future.

They even thought that the imperial court wanted to lure them out of the mountains and eliminate them one by one.

After all, from the Qin Shihuang period to the present Ming Dynasty, the attitude of successive Central Plains dynasties towards the Baiyue people in the south has been a carrot-and-stick education model.

Although this method can have a certain stabilizing effect over time, it can still easily lead to irreconcilable hatred between the Han people and the Baiyue people living in the mountains.

For example, during the reign of Emperor Xianzong and Emperor Chenghua, the Baiyue people in the south launched a large-scale rebellion, which almost shook the Ming Dynasty's rule in Guangxi and almost made Guangxi the next Annan.

The young Emperor Chenghua, who ascended the throne at a young age, was also very nervous facing such a crisis. You have to know that the Ming Dynasty was unstable both internally and externally at that time, and the mess left by his father, Emperor Baozong, was also quite terrible.

The Tatars and Wala in the north constantly invaded the Ming Dynasty's borders and even seized the Hetao area. The Jurchens in the northeast were also not idle and also rose up to make trouble. A large-scale civil uprising also broke out in the Jingxiang area, which almost swept across Shaanxi, Sichuan, Huguang and other areas.

The situation was so terrible that it was not so scary even when the cute Chongzhen ascended the throne.

But Emperor Chenghua seemed to be a man chosen by heaven to turn the tide. He not only quickly formulated a strategy to quell the civil unrest in various places, but also decisively blocked the disputes inside and outside the court. He used some old people from the Jingtai period against all odds to quell the civil unrest and banditry in the localities. Then he freed up his hands to deal with the Tatars and Wala in the north and took back the Hetao area.

He also accomplished the great feat of Chenghua Li Ting, which brought peace to Liaodong for more than a hundred years.

It can be said that if the cute Chongzhen could have the same level as Emperor Chenghua, he would not have ended up with his country destroyed and his family ruined.

You should know that Emperor Chenghua was less than 20 years old when he ascended the throne, which was almost the same age as the cute Chongzhen when he succeeded to the throne.

However, the political abilities and strategic vision demonstrated by the two men are completely on different levels.

Moreover, given the internal and external troubles at the time, Emperor Chenghua was facing a disastrous start, but the final result was that it only took Emperor Chenghua a few years to settle these issues.

In contrast, Emperor Chongzhen brought the empire to its knees. One should know that when Chongzhen ascended the throne, the biggest problem was the Jianzhou Jurchens. After Altan Khan paid tribute to the Mongols in the north, they almost stopped causing trouble for the Ming Dynasty. 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 unrests, they were not as massive as those in the early days of Emperor Chenghua's reign.

However, even such a situation collapsed within a few years of Emperor Chongzhen's operation. It must be said that Emperor Chongzhen was still capable, but unfortunately his ability was to cause destruction, not to turn the tide.

Let's talk about the Yunnan-Guizhou region now. The reason why Xu Fan couldn't get giant trees out of Yunnan and Guizhou, besides the fact that he didn't have Yan Shifan's ability, was also because the situation there was not peaceful enough.

Although Emperor Chenghua suppressed the "Tengxia Bandit Rebellion" in Yunnan and Guizhou, due to the majestic terrain and deep mountains and canyons everywhere, a single suppression could not bring about long-term stability.

Moreover, it was impossible for the imperial court to send a large army to garrison in the local area for a long time. After all, no emperor could afford such a costly act, even during the most prosperous period of the Ming Dynasty.

Therefore, the Tengxia banditry in the Yunnan-Guizhou region broke out twice during the reign of Emperor Jiajing, once in the seventh year of Jiajing and once in the eighteenth year of Jiajing.

The Tengxia rebellion in the seventh year of Jiajing was suppressed by Wang Yangming, a master of the School of Mind. The one in the eighteenth year of Jiajing was suppressed by Zhang Jing, the governor-general of Zhejiang and minister of war who had been killed by Yan Song and Xu Jie a few years ago.

Now, more than 20 years have passed, and the Baiyue people over there have apparently forgotten the pain and are starting to get itchy again.

Otherwise, why would Xu Fan, as the Minister of Works, be delayed when he sent a letter to Yunnan and Guizhou regions asking local officials to cut down the giant trees?

You have to know that this palace was not where Xu Fan would live, but was the new home of Emperor Jiajing. Except for Yan Shifan, a daring man who valued money more than his life, no one else had the courage to do so.

Therefore, from these clues, Zhu Zaigui could almost judge that these Baiyue people entrenched in the deep mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou might have colluded with the foreign natives in Myanmar.

If their collusion succeeds, then a protracted Ming-Myanmar war that would last for hundreds of years would begin.

Unfortunately, although Zhu Zaigui knew that the Ming-Myanmar War would last for hundreds of years in the future, with his current power and the Ming Dynasty's current national strength and military strength, he was still unable to carry out a thunderous military operation in the deep mountains of Yunnan and Guizhou.

After all, the terrain there is too complicated. When the army marches in, in addition to facing the invasion of snakes, insects, rats, ants and miasma in nature, they also have to deal with the elusive mountain bandits.

In such a combat environment, it is obviously not favorable to the imperial court. If one is not careful, one will fall into the quagmire of endless war, although such a war will not cause any accidents to the rule of the Ming Dynasty.

However, if the stalemate continues, the drain on Ming's national strength cannot be ignored.

Moreover, if we act too hastily and try to launch a major decisive battle by encircling and suppressing the rebellious areas with a large army, something unexpected may happen and the rebellious areas may repeat the past experience of Annan.

Therefore, if the imperial court wanted to fight this kind of mountain warfare, it had to be patient enough to engage in point-to-point guerrilla warfare with the rebellious Shanyue bandits and the Burmese bandits who had mixed in.

After all, the terrain there is really not suitable for large-scale military operations, and the baggage weapons cannot be lined up in a row and use firepower to suppress and win like the battle against the Tatars in the north.

In the war over there, apart from requiring patience, the rest is just the "carrot and stick" tactic that has been used countless times over the past thousands of years.

Only in this way could the Ming Dynasty maintain basic rule over the Yunnan-Guizhou mountainous area. Otherwise, if these mountain people, who were originally not united, were forced into a force, it would be a big trouble.

Zhu Zaigui put down the memorial from Xu Fan in his hand and immediately said to the clerks waiting in the study: "Gather all the memorials from Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong and Guangxi. I want to check them one by one."

These clerks were all talented people selected by Huang Jin from the inner study. Although they were all young, each 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 have the opportunity to become eunuchs of the Imperial Household Department.

At the very least, you can become a eunuch in charge of the palace. At worst, you can become a eunuch sent to a local area to guard the city, or a eunuch in charge of supervising the troops in the army.

Therefore, the eunuch administrative system of the Ming Dynasty was definitely the most hierarchical alternative administrative system in all dynasties. Their number and the things they were responsible for were definitely beyond imagination.

Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty was managing the world, it also used a dual-track system, which was somewhat similar to the model of the Party Committee and the government.

However, no matter how powerful the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were, when they were sent to the local areas, they were just one person and could not cause much trouble.

After all, the promotion path for civil servants does not have to be like that of later generations, where they have to move from the government system to the party and government system. They only need to follow the normal logic of officialdom.

Therefore, although the eunuchs who were sent to local areas had power, their influence was limited and they could not make local officials obey them directly.

So to put it bluntly, there is an inherent reproductive isolation between the administrative system of civil servants and the administrative system of eunuchs that prevents them from integrating with each other, and they cannot achieve a deep bond of "you in me and I in you".

The clerks didn't know what had happened, but since it was Zhu Zaigui's request, they did not dare to neglect it and immediately began to search through the memorials from the Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong and Guangxi regions in different categories.

After about a quarter of an hour, the clerks finally found all the memorials about Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong and Guangxi in Zhu Zaigui's study, and then respectfully presented them to Zhu Zaigui.

Zhu Zaigui said: "Simply extract all the contents of these memorials, remove the nonsense quoting scriptures and theories, and only keep the key contents to be reported."

The clerks replied respectfully again, and none of them had any complaints.

Because they also know that although their current job is simple, it is extremely important.

If Prince Yu could ascend to the throne one day in the future, the clerks working in Prince Yu's Mansion would most likely rise to the top and have the good fortune to soar to the sky.

Therefore, when doing their work in Prince Yu's Mansion, these clerks were very hardworking and attentive.

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Asking for a monthly ticket~~
(End of this chapter)