Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 152: Beheaded and Abandoned (Two in One)

The officials who initially invested in the Royal Bank have basically become important officials in the court over the years, and have also benefited from the Royal Bank.

Therefore, the proposal by Gong Shangwei, the right vice minister of the ministry, to shut down the Royal Bank has obviously aroused public anger.

Zhu Houzhao also saw this. This was the first time he saw most of the important officials in the court obey his wishes and demand punishment for officials who affected their interests.

Moreover, Zhu Houzhao had to admit that these civil servants were no more lenient than himself in dealing with civil servants who were unfavorable to him.

Zhu Houzhao knew that from now on, the atmosphere in the Ming Dynasty court began to change.

The civil service group has begun to split under the temptation of its own interests.

Zhu Houzhao also pretended to be very kind in order to show most of the court officials that he, as an emperor, was not so hateful. What was more hateful were those officials who did not support him.

Therefore, when Zhu Houzhao saw that these court officials unanimously asked him to kill Gong Shangwei, the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, he pretended to be hesitant and said, "But Gong Shangxin is the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, an important official of the court. It would be inappropriate to kill him rashly, right?"

"Your Majesty! Gong Shangwei betrayed his master, colluded with court officials, secretly formed a clique for personal gain, disrupted the government, and even intended to control Your Majesty. His crime is tantamount to deceiving the emperor. He must be killed. If he is not killed, it will not be enough to rectify the government!"

Liu Yu, who had replaced Dai Shan as the Left Censor-in-Chief, stood up and spoke.

"Yes, Your Majesty! Gong Shangwei is trying to sow discord among the cabinet ministers, and he intends to bring disaster to the Ming Dynasty. If we don't punish him, we won't be able to correct people's hearts!"

"Your Majesty! Gong Shangwei betrayed his master, which is unfilial! Secondly, his words were disrespectful to Your Majesty, which is disloyal! If we don't kill such a disloyal and unfilial person, how can we correct human relations!"

……

The important officials in the court were all filled with righteous indignation and indignation. Zhu Houzhao was not so angry when he saw this. Instead, he felt good about it. He only looked at Gong Shangwei:

"Gong Shangwei, the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, what do you have to say?"

Gong Shangwei's mood is very complicated now. He is angry and afraid. He is angry that these court officials would sit idly by and watch the Royal Bank seize the benefits of the people, and even try to kill him for their own selfish reasons. He is afraid that he did not expect so many court officials to oppose him. He can't help but wonder how much benefits the Royal Bank has given to these court officials.

But now, Gong Shangwei found that his only lifeline was the emperor whom he had always opposed. He looked at Zhu Houzhao and said, "Your Majesty! I am just, I am just..."

Gong Shangwei didn't know how to defend himself.

Upon seeing this, Zhu Houzhao said, "In this case, I will follow your advice and throw Gong Shangwei into the imperial prison for trial by the three judicial departments!"

"Your Majesty, Holy Might!"

All the courtiers present responded in unison.

Then, two Jinyiwei came in and dragged Gong Shangwei out. Gong Shangwei cursed anxiously:

"You, you are a bunch of shameless people! Jiao Fang! I have known you for nothing! I never thought that you would treat me like this! You shall not die well! All of you shall not die well! Your Majesty! Spare my life! I am only, only speaking for the people!"

Next, Zhu Houzhao did not ask anything about the execution of Gong Shangwei, the right vice minister of the Ministry of Rites, and directly left it to the civil servants to handle in accordance with the court's formal procedures.

Zhu Houzhao believed that the civil servants who were currently in power would not be too polite to Gong Shangwei.

As Zhu Houzhao expected, the three judicial departments quickly reached a consensus on the verdict of Gong Shangwei, the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, and the result was to immediately behead him!
Gong Shangwei wasn't even given a chance to recover.

Moreover, both the Cabinet and the Imperial Household Department passed it quickly, and no one raised any objections.

Zhu Houzhao knew that the court officials who had profited from the Royal Bank were using it to express their attitude to those officials who wanted to take away their interests. At the same time, he warned the officials that if they wanted to shut down the Royal Bank, they should look at what happened to Gong Shangwei. Even if he was the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, he would still be beheaded.

Zhu Houzhao was very satisfied with this phenomenon. Now it was not his turn to deal with the opponents who prevented him from carrying out reforms. He felt much more relaxed as a result, and it also allowed Zhu Houzhao to focus more on reform and the development of new technologies.

Of course, the gentry and dignitaries also discovered that the enemy they had to deal with was not just the emperor, but also a group of court officials.

Needless to say, the emperor, as he holds the status of a monarch and his subjects, cannot openly oppose. The other officials who oppose him are not to be underestimated. They all hold great power in the court, and the family influence behind them is enough to prevent most civil servants from easily offending them.

Even if they wanted to assassinate him now, they would not only want to assassinate Emperor Zhu Houzhao, but also want to kill all the officials who followed Zhu Houzhao to make profits.

At this time, Jiao Fang and other officials who shared the same interests with Zhu Houzhao also knew that while they were enjoying the huge profits allocated by the emperor, they had become completely in the same boat with the emperor. So if they wanted to hold power, if they wanted to continue to allow the Royal Bank to exist and benefit from it, they had to find a way to ensure that Zhu Houzhao lived longer.

Now, whether it was Liu Jin and others in the inner court or Ma Wensheng, Jiao Fang and others in the outer court, they were all extremely concerned about Zhu Houzhao's health. Liu Jin and others would personally inquire about Zhu Houzhao's daily food and clothing, and Ma Wensheng and others would also often ask Zhu Houzhao whether he was in good health.

However, Zhu Houzhao did not completely relax his vigilance against others. He knew that as the helmsman of the Ming Dynasty, if he wanted to keep the ship of the Ming Empire moving forward, he, the emperor, could not live comfortably. He also had to make more people choose to support him.

Most of the officials who received dividends deposited the money back into the Royal Bank. They had no choice but to keep the money in the Royal Bank according to their contract. Moreover, they could earn interest by keeping the money in the Royal Bank. As a result, it seemed that not much gold and silver flowed out of the Royal Bank.

Moreover, when Gong Shangwei, the Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites, was beheaded and executed for demanding the closure of the Royal Bank, the scholars and common people began to realize that the existence of the Royal Bank was irreversible. Whether they accepted it actively or passively, they began to consciously deposit their own gold and silver into the Royal Bank, not to mention that they could earn interest.

But the Royal Bank cannot keep saving money forever, as it will suffer losses.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao had to find a way to get the Royal Bank to release money, so that the Ming Empire and its people could spend the Royal Bank's money and revitalize the economic life of the entire Ming Dynasty. The court officials who participated in the shares also realized this.

Because of this, when the Minister of War Xu Jin submitted a memorial requesting the allocation of 3 million taels of silver to repair border towns and walls and to strengthen border defenses, the Cabinet and the Imperial Household Department directly approved it.

The Ministry of Revenue paid one million taels of silver on its own and borrowed two million taels from the Royal Bank and allocated it to the Ministry of Revenue, which ensured that after the second year of the Zhengde reign, the border towns of the Ming Dynasty were almost free from the slack of border defenses due to lack of silver.

Of course, the wool comes from the sheep. Zhu Houzhao knew that the money of the Royal Bank did not come from the ground, but was collected from the gentry and the people. The total wealth of the Ming Dynasty did not increase.

The people still don't get any benefits. The only significance now is that it has cultivated a few big capitalists.

Zhu Houzhao had to lead the external expansion and plunder to earn wealth, but external expansion naturally had to be achieved through war, and to wage war one needed a strong army to ensure the strength of the army.

To this end, Zhu Houzhao decided to establish the General Staff of the Guards, the General Political Department, the General Armament Department, the General Logistics Department, the General Military Law Office and the Military Court.

Originally, Zhu Houzhao wanted to directly reform the Ministry of War by reorganizing several of its Qinglisi, but he knew that such a reform would be difficult and troublesome, so he decided to directly establish a leadership organization in the Imperial Guards. From then on, the Imperial Guards would not belong to the Ministry of War, but only to himself, and the departments he established would be responsible for the Imperial Guards' military command, personnel organization, weapons storage and manufacturing, and logistics supply.

After all, according to Zhu Houzhao's idea, the Imperial Guards would be mainly responsible for foreign wars in the future. Therefore, the most urgent thing now is to separate the command, personnel and logistics equipment supply of the Imperial Guards from the Ministry of War.

It was not difficult to set up an institution. On the surface, Zhu Houzhao could decide on his own, but the problem was the appointment of officials after the institution was established and the political changes that might be caused by the appointment.

In the current Ming Dynasty, civil officials were mainly in charge of military command, military officers were responsible for execution, and eunuchs were responsible for military supervision. Basically, the civil officials were emphasized over the military, and checks and balances were emphasized rather than efficiency. Zhu Houzhao decided to change this situation in the Imperial Guards and improve the status of military generals, but that did not mean that civil officials would be excluded from the military system.

After all, according to the current situation of the Ming Dynasty, many civil servants have gained experience in leading troops after leading troops in border towns for many years.

Zhu Houzhao wanted to abolish the distinction between civil and military officials in the Imperial Guard. In later generations, there was no distinction between civil and military officials, only between military and political officials. Therefore, Zhu Houzhao decided to select officials who knew military affairs from the entire Ming bureaucracy to enter the leadership system of the Imperial Guard, regardless of whether they were civil or military officials, and only the talented would be selected.

In the end, Ma Wensheng served concurrently as the Minister of the General Staff, Xu Jin served concurrently as the Minister of the General Political Department, while Wang Qiong, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, served concurrently as the Minister of the General Logistics Department, and Zeng Jian, the Minister of the Ministry of Works, served concurrently as the Minister of the General Armament Department.

It seems that at the beginning, the leading members of the entire Guards Central Organ were still civil servants.

But there is no way around it. The phenomenon of emphasizing civil officials over military officials has existed for so many years, resulting in the fact that the only military talents in the Ming Dynasty who truly understand military affairs are now almost all civil officials. For a time, even if Zhu Houzhao wanted to use power to change the phenomenon of civil officials in charge of command, it was impossible, and he could only take it slowly.

Only when we have specialized military schools in the future may we have professional military personnel to be responsible for military warfare activities, and the distinction between civil and military affairs will completely disappear.

In fact, the court officials did not quite understand why His Majesty the Emperor changed the imperial guards and the Beijing camp into the Imperial Guards, and also set up a special leadership body. Only Zhu Houzhao himself knew that he wanted to change the military system of the Ming Dynasty and enable the Ming Dynasty to have a powerful army that could carry out external expansion.

The establishment of the leadership body of the Guards means that the Guards' institutions from top to bottom have been basically established and complete, and the next step is for these five leadership bodies to begin their respective work.

Among them, the General Staff is responsible for determining the combat missions of the Guards.

The court officials did not understand why a combat mission should be formulated when it was not a war period and the Royal Guards were the army of the capital.

But Zhu Houzhao's intention was to give the Imperial Guards combat missions and expand outward. In the end, the first combat mission established by Zhu Houzhao and Ma Wensheng was to recapture Hetao.

According to the previous rules of the Ming Dynasty, resolutions on such military affairs naturally had to be drafted by the cabinet and decided by the emperor. But now Zhu Houzhao changed this approach. Instead, the General Staff of the Guards drew up a combat plan and submitted it to him as the emperor for approval, without even going through the cabinet and the Imperial Household Department!
But because the cabinet and the Imperial Household Department only obeyed Zhu Houzhao's orders, they had no objections and did not stop Zhu Houzhao's actions. Zhu Houzhao knew that many political systems of the Ming Dynasty actually did not have a written rule. From a formal perspective, the emperor decided everything and made the final decision on everything.

When the emperor favors eunuchs, all power naturally belongs to the eunuchs, including military power.

When the emperor trusts the cabinet, all power belongs to the cabinet, including military power.

Therefore, this led to the situation that sometimes the eunuchs were in power and sometimes the civil servants were in power in the Ming Dynasty.

But Zhu Houzhao now decided to establish the political system of the Ming Dynasty in the form of explicit laws. This would prevent future monarchs and ministers from arbitrarily transferring the imperial ruling power, allowing eunuchs to monopolize power at one moment and civil servants to monopolize power at another, until the emperor could not even guarantee his imperial power.

To this end, while asking the General Staff of the Imperial Guard to draw up a battle plan to recover Hetao, he also convened a court meeting with civil and military officials of the fourth rank and above in Beijing, officials from various ministries, and censors to decide on the formulation of an "Outline of the Imperial Constitution", which mainly stipulates the power of the monarch and the rights and obligations of his subjects in the form of law.

Because Zhu Houzhao did not want the Ming Dynasty to become a constitutional state, in order to safeguard his own imperial power, the constitution he requested to be formulated was different from the constitutions of later generations. At least there was no restriction on the imperial power, and of course it did not simply emphasize and explain that the imperial power was granted by God. It only clearly stipulated the power and distribution of the emperor and the rights and obligations of the subjects.

For example, the emperor had the highest military command and personnel appointment power in the Ming Empire, as well as the powers of the Cabinet and the Imperial Household Department, the powers and obligations of the garrison troops and border troops under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Guard and the Ministry of War, and the procedures for initiating military wars.

Many court officials found this very new and meaningful. They also felt that it was necessary to clearly define the power of the imperial monarch and the rights and obligations of the subjects. They were also familiar with the word constitution. After all, there was a sentence in "Guoyu" that said "Rewards and punishments for evil are the constitution of the country." They all knew the meaning of constitution.

But many officials also criticized this.

Some officials discovered that once the "Imperial Constitution Outline" came out, it would only protect the imperial power and would not benefit them at all!
Because once all the people in the empire followed the "Outline of the Imperial Constitution" to perform their duties, they could no longer use ancestral rules, the words of sages, or the like of Yao and Shun to advise and admonish the emperor.

After all, the "Outline of the Imperial Constitution" clearly stipulates that the emperor has the power to make decisions on all military and political affairs of the Ming Dynasty, which means that as long as the emperor makes a decision, no one can stop him.

But in fact, according to the existing practice of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's decrees could sometimes be refuted. As long as the officials decided that the emperor's decrees were wrong, although they might pay the price of their lives, at least no one would say that what the officials did was wrong and violated the law.

But now, once Zhu Houzhao formulates and promulgates the "Outline of the Imperial Constitution", it means that no one can stop any decision made by the emperor, otherwise it would be a violation of the constitution.

Therefore, during the court discussion on the formulation of the "Outline of the Imperial Constitution", Ai Sheng, a member of the Ministry of Personnel, directly opposed it, saying, "Your Majesty! In all wise dynasties, filial piety was the way to rule the world! If we establish a constitution to rule the world now, it may go against human ethics!"

"How is establishing a constitution contrary to human ethics? Please explain it in detail!" Zhu Houzhao asked.

Ai Sheng was speechless for a moment. As a civil official, he had always been good at empty talk. Why bother asking the root cause? If he said it was contrary, it was contrary. Why did he need to explain it in detail?

But since Zhu Houzhao asked this, Ai Sheng had no choice but to answer, "According to the principle of governing the world with filial piety, the father should be the leader of the sons, and the ruler should be the leader of the ministers."

"The constitution is to explain and stipulate this specifically. I am the king, and the king is the leader of the ministers, so the constitution stipulates that the king has the highest decision-making power. Is this a contradiction? For example, the father is the leader of the son, and the constitution also stipulates that children should obey their parents. Isn't this all based on the concept of governing the world with filial piety?"

When Zhu Houzhao asked this question, Ai Sheng didn't know how to answer, and he couldn't deny the contradiction between what was stipulated in the Constitution and what he said.

"I am stupid, please forgive me, Your Majesty!"

Ai Sheng had no choice but to retreat, not knowing what to say for a moment, but he knew clearly that what he actually wanted to say was, Your Majesty, you should rule the world together with the literati and officials, and you should respect the opinions of the gentry when you become the emperor. However, these are unwritten rules. There was no law in the Ming Dynasty that said that the emperor and the literati should rule the world together. Even some of Mencius' words concerning the royal power were deleted by Emperor Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang.

But at this time, some officials also used Mencius's remarks to refute Zhu Houzhao's constitution. Du Long, the left assistant minister of the Ministry of Rites, said, "Your Majesty! The sage said that the emperor is the least important, the people are the most important, and the country is the second! The constitution should put the people first! The interests of the people of the world are the most important!"

Zhu Houzhao did not expect that Du Long would also put forward the idea of ​​"civil rights". He thought that just based on this sentence, he would become a Rousseau-level figure, so he said:
"Mr. Du is right. The people should be the most important. I have no objection. If so, let's add it to the constitution. From now on, no matter whether it is the princes, ministers or peddlers, they are not allowed to rob the people of their property or lives. The people of the Ming Dynasty have the right to life and property. Local officials who are close to the people are not allowed to beat and kill the people at will. If they kill the people, they must pay with their lives! If they injure the people, they must pay compensation! The crimes of the people of the world are only enforced according to the laws of the Ming Dynasty and the imperial edicts! The three courts of the Ming Dynasty will review and decide."

Zhu Houzhao knew that these officials wanted to limit the imperial power, so they proposed civil rights. Zhu Houzhao didn't mind this. You can ask me, the emperor, to respect civil rights. After all, this is also a kind of progress. But you, the gentry class, can't just ask me, the emperor, to respect civil rights. You don't respect civil rights.

"What do you think, Lord Du? As long as you and the courtiers present here feel that you can make officials, gentry, and even princes and nobles respect the rights of the people, I can also respect them!"

After Zhu Houzhao said this, Du Long was speechless. He naturally could not make all officials in the world respect the rights and interests of the people, not even himself.

"Your Majesty, I am just a scholar and my opinion has caused you to laugh at me. Please forgive me!" Du Long retreated with a red face.

Thanks to the book friend Hongjian for the 100 starting coins reward

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(End of this chapter)