Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 192: Let the Disobedient Civil Officials Go Mining
It was now October of the fifth year of the Zhengde reign, and the little prince and the Prince of Anhua had all been escorted to Beijing one after another.

The Ming court held a grand ceremony to present captives.

But Zhu Houzhao did this not to show off to foreign enemies, but to show off to those courtiers in the court who were unwilling to acknowledge the emperor's glorious achievements.

Deeply influenced by Confucianism, the civil servants, who were kind to the outside but cruel to the inside, had to grit their teeth and acknowledge Zhu Houzhao's military achievements.

Zhu Houzhao also asked each of them to write a congratulatory letter praising the achievements of destroying the little prince and recovering Hetao, especially the officials in the Hanlin Academy who compiled history. Zhu Houzhao required them to use a lot of space to record this matter.

Most civil servants could only grit their teeth and write many corny words of praise for the sake of their official positions.

Of course, there were also some civil servants who disliked Zhu Houzhao's vanity and tried to persuade him. Zhu Houzhao was not polite and demoted all these officials to the Hetao area on the grounds that he did not know the severity of the crimes committed by the little prince against the soldiers and civilians in the border towns.

Anyway, the Hetao region has just been recovered and needs a large number of temporary officials to govern it.

Zhu Houzhao also took the opportunity to exile those civil servants who still adhered to the Confucian philosophy of governing the country and attempted to restrain himself to Hetao.

For the civil servants, this was even more painful than killing them.

After all, everyone knows that the area outside the Great Wall is a cold and bitter place. Even though the Hetao is known as the "Jiangnan on the Great Wall", since the Ming Dynasty lost the Hetao area to the invasion and destruction of the Tatars, the Hetao area is now a barren land. Exiling people to these places is equivalent to freezing to death or dying of illness.

"Let me go to Dongsheng to be the county magistrate! It would be better to kill me!"

Liu Meng, who was demoted to the magistrate of Dongsheng County for misreporting military reports, is thinking the same thing now.

As a high-ranking official who had already become a governor, he could not bear, firstly, to bow to his former superior of lower rank; secondly, he could not bear to be a figurehead magistrate in the desolate frontier with no people and no land.

Therefore, Liu Meng did not go to the Ministry of Personnel to receive the imperial edict, but went back home directly.

Civil servants in the Ming Dynasty were usually like this. If they were dissatisfied with the court's appointment or the government, they would simply resign, completely ignoring the court's rules.

This has to do with the arrogance of the literati and the court's traditional preferential treatment of literati.

But according to the laws of that era, an imperial edict was the emperor's order. If the emperor appointed you to be an official and you did not take up the post, it would be tantamount to disobeying the emperor's order.

Therefore, Liu Meng's behavior has constituted a crime in this era.

Of course, Liu Meng also knew that he was disobeying the imperial order, and other civil servants knew it too. However, these civil servants were not afraid of death. In their minds, being killed for disobeying the imperial order was not shameful, and it could even be considered loyal and unyielding.

After all, in history, many such stories of literati who refused to be recruited by the monarch and disobeyed orders or even were killed have been passed down as good stories.

"Either you dismiss me directly, or even demote me to a commoner, or even kill me, but you must not insult me ​​and make me a county magistrate in the frontier, managing a group of barbarians!"

Liu Meng shouted at the officials of the Ministry of Personnel at this time. He felt that he was very tough and had a lot of backbone, and he was very proud of it.

Of course, he also knew that if he was not killed but was directly dismissed from his post or demoted to a commoner, he would be able to return to his hometown with the money he earned from his decades of official career and become a wealthy man. He could use this opportunity to train his family members and gain benefits for his family members.

If he was killed, he would leave a reputation of being upright and unyielding in history books, and his family would also be respected among the scholars.

If one goes to the frontier to serve as a county magistrate, he will not be promoted to a high official quickly even if he does a good job. If he does a bad job, he may even be demoted and punished. He also has to worry about dying of illness or freezing to death. Even if he can make some money, he cannot live a good life. Even if he dies in the line of duty, he will easily be forgotten in history books.

Zhu Houzhao also knew what Liu Meng and other civil servants were thinking. After learning that Liu Meng was unwilling to take up his post, he directly issued an order: "Disobeying the order! You should be put to death. Considering that he has done one or two things that benefit the people's livelihood, I sentence him to 60 years in prison, deprive him of his rights as a citizen stipulated in the Constitution Outline, and send him to Yulin to mine. If he dies, his sons and nephews will be made to pay for his crime!"

After the Imperial Constitution Outline was finalized after nearly a year of debate, its content was very different from later constitutions in many aspects. The first difference was that it still protected the imperial power. Another difference was that it still contained content on collective punishment.

Therefore, when Zhu Houzhao decided to exile Liu Meng to Yulin to mine for sixty years, he stated that if Liu Meng died, his sons and nephews would continue mining until the sixty years were up.

After Liu Meng returned to his hometown, he did not care at all about his refusal to take office outside the Great Wall. For civil servants, refusing to be an official was not a big deal, and he even took a concubine. He was over fifty years old and had just married a 17-year-old girl. He was excited to be a bridegroom again when the soldiers of the Shandong Censor came to his door and read out the imperial edict issued by the cabinet.

Liu Meng was shocked when he heard this: "What! You want me to mine for 60 years! Your Majesty, you might as well just kill me!" "Take me away!"

The officers and soldiers of Shandong Censorate dared not be negligent, because once the court knew that the criminal Liu Meng was not taken to Yulin City to serve within the specified time, all the officials of Shandong Censorate would be severely punished. Therefore, Liu Meng, who had just become a groom and had not had time to enter the bridal chamber, was taken away.

After Liu Meng was taken to Yulin City, his mining career was naturally miserable. If he had obediently chosen to go to the frontier to be a county magistrate, although he would have to bow to his former subordinates, he would at least still be an official. But now he can only do high-intensity mining work every day like those criminal Mongols, and he would also be beaten by supervisors.

Less than three days after serving, Liu Meng could no longer bear the feeling of being driven to work like an animal, so he knelt in front of the county government of Zhang Cong, the magistrate of Yulin, and begged for an audience: "My Lord! I beg you, please help me write a petition to Your Majesty, saying that I know my crime! I shouldn't disobey your orders! I shouldn't break the rules! I am willing to go to Dongsheng to be the magistrate! Or you can let me teach people to read like other Confucian scholars!"

Zhang Cong is very busy now, so naturally he has no time to deal with an ordinary prisoner serving his sentence.

Liu Meng was no longer the powerful official he once was. Not long after he knelt and cried in the county government office, he was dragged out by the bailiffs.

At the same time, the supervisor who discovered that he had not yet gone to serve appeared at this time and whipped him directly: "You bastard! Who told you to come to the county government? Why don't you go back to work! Who do you think you are! Only the citizens of the Ming Dynasty have the right to come to the county government to seek justice, and you are no longer a citizen of the Ming Dynasty. You are a serving criminal! Go back to work!"

The cracking of the whip made Liu Meng cry for his parents, but he was unable to resist and could only return to the mine and continue working.

The newly recovered areas of the Ming Dynasty are short of labor, so many criminals are now exiled to Yulin City, relying on these criminals to complete mineral development, official road construction and farmland reclamation.

Therefore, civil servants who were unwilling to take up posts outside the Great Wall like Liu Meng were basically all sent to mine outside the Great Wall on the grounds of disobeying the imperial order, until they were exhausted to death and their bodies were dumped in the wilderness. Even if they were released after serving a short sentence, they basically had no blood in their veins and were as numb as walking corpses.

Some civil servants who were arranged to take up posts outside the Great Wall and took up their posts obediently felt fortunate that they had obeyed the court's order to become officials after seeing the fate of those civil servants who were unwilling to take up their posts and were sent to the Great Wall to mine. Otherwise, not only would they not be able to become officials, they would not even be able to become civilians.

Of course, some civil servants also complained about this after learning about the miserable conditions of being exiled to the frontier to mine, so they submitted memorials to the court to advise them that the court should treat the literati well, and used the fact that the officials should not be punished as an excuse.

Zhu Houzhao naturally did not agree with the view that officials should not be punished. He refuted the fallacies in the memorials of these civil servants on the grounds that the Imperial Constitution Outline did not stipulate that officials should not be punished. He also stated that the punishments of these civil servants were in accordance with the Constitution Outline, and that they were punished because they were guilty, not because they were framed and harmed without reason.

Those civil servants who wanted to persuade Zhu Houzhao not to be too ambitious did not dare to do so. After all, they were afraid of being exiled to the frontier to mine.

in fact.

The current civil servants found that they seemed unable to persuade Zhu Houzhao not to be too ambitious and allow the empire to continue to follow the Confucian governance model of benevolence to the outside and strictness within.

Because, with the emergence of the Huang Ming Bao, and the deliberate promotion of the Second Secretariat under the instruction of Zhu Houzhao, the people of the empire already knew about this matter when the civil officials were unwilling to publicize the Ming Dynasty's achievements in destroying the little prince.

Over the years, the Imperial Ming Newspaper has let the people of the Ming Empire know who the little prince is, how he plundered the people of the Ming Empire, and what crimes he committed;

Even the people in the Second Secretariat specially invited the common people who had been bullied by the Tartars to come to the capital and other important towns to hold crying meetings.

Therefore, the people of the Ming Dynasty were no strangers to the little prince's crimes.

Therefore, when the people heard that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty sent cavalry to defeat the little prince and captured him alive, they were all very excited. For the first time, they had some good feelings towards the court and the official army that had only oppressed them in the past. They knew that the court not only knew how to collect taxes, but also protected them and would help them eradicate evil.

"The people can be made to act, but they cannot be made to understand. How can the life and death of the common people be mentioned in the same breath with the safety of the Ming Dynasty? If we attack the prince because he killed the common people, if he loses, it will damage the country's wealth and people's strength. If he loses, it will also damage the country's wealth and people's strength! How can the common people understand the truth? They only think that the victory of the Ming Dynasty is a good thing, but they don't know that victory is the same as defeat! Even worse, if the tribes on the grassland take revenge because of this, and the war continues, it will only harm the people more!"

The civil servant He Maozheng could not stand the trend of the people discussing politics after the appearance of Huangming Newspaper, because he found that this would only lead to all civil servants losing their advantage of controlling public opinion through speech, and even make himself and other civil servants supervised by the people;

In fact, because the Huang Ming Bao made public the shameful deeds of some guilty scholars and officials, the people finally realized that many so-called saints and wise men were nothing but hypocrites, and they no longer had any respect or fear for the scholars.

Therefore, the civil servant He Maozheng directly submitted a petition requesting the court to stop publishing the Huang Ming Bao and even prohibit private newspapers. He also requested to prohibit the people from discussing politics, saying that it was actually an act that undermined social order. The people should farm and weave and perform their duties, and discussing politics was the responsibility of the literati.

Zhu Houzhao naturally did not comply with He Maozheng's request to stop publishing Huang Ming Bao. He even asked the cabinet to issue an edict to encourage private individuals to publish newspapers, and ordered schools, teahouses and taverns across the country to write a couplet, namely "The sounds of wind, rain and reading are all pleasant to the ears; family affairs, national affairs and world affairs are all of concern."

In Zhu Houzhao's view, although the Donglin Party was not very good in history, the couplet it created was still quite good.

Thanks to the book friend Chao Xue Chi for the reward of 100 Qidian coins

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(End of this chapter)