Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 194: Jurchens and Military Farming

Guo Shi, the son of Guo Xun, Marquis of Wuding, was sentenced to death by hanging by the Shuntian Prefecture for raping a woman to death.

Therefore, Wuding Hou Guo Xun wrote a memorial to the Zhengde Emperor Zhu Houzhao, hoping for a retrial, on the grounds that he should not be punished so harshly after his meritorious service.

Zhu Houzhao directly asked the cabinet to draft the memorial of Wuding Hou Guo Xunzhi and sent it to Dali Temple Minister Zhang Zilin, who made the decision.

The reason is that the Constitution stipulates that the Dali Temple has the highest judicial power in the Ming Empire.

Because Zhu Houzhao did not support Guo Xun to interfere in the judiciary, Guo Xun had to go to Zhang Zilin, the Minister of the Dali Temple, himself.

"Ming dynasty law stipulates that rapists should be hanged! Marquis Wuding, there is nothing wrong with the case judged by Shuntian Prefecture!"

Zhang Zilin, the Minister of Dali Temple, was always upright and showed no mercy to Guo Xun, the Marquis of Wuding.

"That can't be the verdict! My son is the descendant of a noble family. He just humiliated a commoner girl to death. Why should he be executed? You, the Dali Temple, are making a wrong judgment!"

Guo Xun slammed the table and started yelling.

Zhang Zilin also responded bluntly: "The Dali Temple has the power of final adjudication, which is stipulated in the Constitution! If Marquis Wu Ding feels that the Dali Temple's trial is unfair, he can directly report it to His Majesty and ask His Majesty to dismiss me! But as long as I am the Minister of the Dali Temple, this case must be judged this way!"

constitution?

Guo Xun did not expect that Dali Temple Minister Zhang Zilin would use the "Constitution" to refute him. He thought that he could use his status as a noble to force the Dali Temple to make concessions and give his son a lighter punishment, but now the Constitution was suddenly brought up, and he did not know how to fight back for a moment.

This was also a change in the imperial politics after Zhu Houzhao promulgated the Outline of the Imperial Constitution. The officials of the empire began to inadvertently use the constitution as the basis for exercising their power, instead of breaking the rules at will based on the circumstances at the time as before.

For example, now, if there is no constitution, Dali Temple Minister Zhang Zilin has no way to stop Wuding Hou Guo Xun from interfering in criminal cases, because although the Dali Temple Minister has the authority to make final judgments on all cases, in fact, the final power of judgment only belongs to the emperor.

If the emperor is lazy, the Dali Temple can have the highest judicial power; if the emperor is diligent, the Dali Temple can have no power at all. To put it bluntly, the Dali Temple was just an agent of the emperor in criminal trials in the past.

However, now the Constitution clearly stipulates the power of the Dali Temple. Therefore, Zhang Zilin, the Minister of the Dali Temple, can legitimately prevent Guo Xun from interfering in the judiciary, and he is not even afraid of offending the emperor because the emperor can replace him if he is not satisfied, but he cannot deny his powers and responsibilities during his tenure.

Guo Xun, the Marquis of Wuding, was met with a cold shoulder and could only watch his son being executed for breaking the law.

Many court officials, like Zhang Zilin, the Minister of the Dali Temple, began to clarify their powers and responsibilities with the emergence of the constitution, and used it as a weapon to prevent some powerful people from interfering in government affairs.

Of course, while the civil servants discovered the beauty of the Constitution, they also felt the constraints it brought to them, because the Constitution also touched upon the rights of ordinary people, making it impossible for them to excessively oppress the people or ignore their demands. For example, there is no way to prohibit the people from discussing political affairs.

But they cannot allow Zhu Houzhao to abolish the constitution now.

Because the constitution was formulated from the very beginning by court officials of the fourth rank and above and officials of the third rank and above in other places.

Even nobles, relatives of the emperor, and royal family participated, as well as several gentry and elders from Zhili in the north and south, as well as common people from the countryside.

It took more than a year of arguing to come up with it.

This constitution was a product that was relatively acceptable to all classes of the empire. Although it was generally beneficial to the court but not to the people, no one dared to deny it except Emperor Zhu Houzhao, who had the ability to do so.

After all, most of those who signed the constitution were bigwigs in the court. If you want to abolish the constitution, it would be equivalent to going against the entire group of civil servants, nobles, military generals and even the emperor.

Even if amendments are to be made, two-thirds of the representatives who participated in the first drafting of the constitutional outline must be persuaded to jointly submit a memorial to the emperor, and the emperor must agree to the amendments.

After the amendment, the emperor still has a veto power.

Therefore, it is very difficult for civil servants and other powerful people to abolish the constitution or even amend the constitutional outline.

What's more, Zhu Houzhao still abides by the outline of the Constitution.

Everyone else, whether civil servants or other dignitaries, can only obey the rules set out in the constitutional outline.

Confucianism made the Ming Dynasty an empire with strict hierarchical and ethical order. From the emperor to officials to the people, from the country to the family, there were moral codes and hierarchies.

Everyone follows the rule that sons obey their fathers and subjects obey their rulers.

Precisely because of this, in a Confucian society, whether it is a dynasty or a family, one can only hope that the monarch is wise and the head of the family is intelligent in order to make the family and the country prosperous. This kind of society has very high requirements for the monarch and the head of the family.

Moreover, the monarch or the head of the family therefore has the power to make rules, but they must be required to abide by the rules themselves. Once they do not abide by the rules, the rules are equivalent to nothing. Now, Zhu Houzhao has taught the rulers of the Ming Dynasty to learn to make their own social rules, and no one dares to obey these social rules, including the emperor himself.

Although this social rule still bears the shadow of Confucianism, it is more in line with the interests of the emperor and officials.

But at least it can let the strong people of the empire know that they can establish social rules for everyone to abide by through negotiation, rather than blindly following the words of saints.

Zhu Houzhao hoped that if there was no foreign invasion, the newly emerging political forces could distribute benefits with the old forces by re-establishing rules and avoid war, or avoid the division of the country due to war that would make each other unforgivable and intolerable enemies.

Foreign invasion is the biggest external factor that has repeatedly pushed Chinese civilization back to its starting point. As the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Houzhao must prevent the empire from experiencing such external factors again.

The little prince was sentenced to death as a warning to foreign enemies who committed crimes against the Ming Dynasty.

Hetao is now back in the hands of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Dynasty's military depth has been extended and its military defense capabilities have been enhanced. Even if handled properly, the Gengxu Incident that occurred during the Jiajing period would not occur again.

What's more, Mongolia has not been unified by the little prince as in the past history, and is still divided. If Zhu Houzhao can make some further reforms and assimilation, he will be able to eliminate the threat of Mongolia permanently.

In fact, Mongolia had already begun to decline during this era, and Zhu Houzhao was not worried that Mongolian forces would rise again. After all, after being baptized by Confucian culture and with changes in their combat methods, this nation could no longer rely on cavalry and archery to conquer the world.

However, Zhu Houzhao still had to reform them to prevent them from becoming accomplices in the rise of other ethnic groups in the future in history.

What Zhu Houzhao was really worried about were the Jurchens, especially the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Of course, the Jianzhou Jurchens were still relying on fishing and hunting for a living. It was not until Nurhaci’s great-grandfather Fuman inherited the governorship of Jianzhou Guard ten years later that they settled in Hetuala and began to transform from a fishing and hunting civilization to an agricultural civilization.

Of course, it was also from that time that this inconspicuous Jurchen tribe would continue to grow in strength as it transitioned to an agricultural civilization. Finally, with the connivance of Li Chengliang, it unified the Jurchens during the Wanli period and eventually became a military force that threatened the Ming Dynasty.

It can be said that if Zhu Houzhao was willing now, he could easily wipe out this Jurchen tribe by sending an army.

However, Zhu Houzhao had to admit that it was easy to wipe out this Jurchen tribe, but he could not guarantee that under the influence of the Ming Empire, other surrounding ethnic groups would grow stronger due to the progress of civilization and eventually rise to become an ethnic force that the Ming Empire could not ignore.

Nurhaci can be eliminated in advance, but there is no guarantee that a person like Nurhaci will not appear.

The root cause of the Ming Dynasty's demise by foreign races was the Ming Dynasty itself. If the Ming Dynasty itself had not been in decline, foreign races would not have easily replaced the country.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao is still trying his best to transform his Ming Empire. As for the Jianzhou Jurchens, he has no intention of touching them. He wants to let them continue to develop according to their original history. At least they are a foreign race that Zhu Houzhao is familiar with, so even if they rise, he will be more confident in eliminating them.

But Zhu Houzhao was certain in his heart that if he was about to die one day, he would stipulate in his will that future rulers should first eliminate the Jianzhou Jurchens, or he would eliminate the Jianzhou Jurchens in his last few years.

The Ming Dynasty's current external military strategic center is still on Outer Mongolia. This force left over from the former Yuan Dynasty is still the alien race that the Ming Dynasty needs to guard against the most.

However, because they had ruled the Central Plains before, although they had committed many sins in the process, they were also influenced by the Han culture to varying degrees. Therefore, Zhu Houzhao felt that it would not be difficult to transform Mongolia. He was confident that if he allowed them to continue to assimilate to the Han culture, they would eventually become a historical term like the Huns and Turks.

However, the real pressure came from within the Ming Empire.

After the recovery of Hetao, Ma Wensheng reported to the court the need to formulate a strategy for defending Hetao, and also provided opinions, saying that what was most needed now was not soldiers and horses, but food and fodder.

After all, after the Ming Dynasty regained Hetao, it could not let the border troops go to other border towns like the Mongolian cavalry and rely on looting their own people to replenish supplies.

The problem of whether there was enough food was not a big issue. The territories of the Han and Tang empires were so vast that the grain output of the inland agricultural society could still be supported and create a glorious era of prosperity.

The Ming Dynasty can naturally do it as well.

But the big problem is that the cost of transporting grain will drag down the central government’s finances.

Previous dynasties mostly adopted the method of military farming, and the Ming Dynasty also used this method.

However, one disadvantage of military farming is that it is easy to turn professional soldiers into professional farmers. Although the empire's financial pressure will be reduced, its national defense strength will be sharply reduced, and its ability to expand externally will also be reduced.

Ma Wensheng didn't understand why the emperor hadn't issued an edict to allow him to cultivate land in Hetao. If he didn't do that, he would have to withdraw with his border troops and voluntarily give up the Hetao area. He no longer had any more money to mobilize more grain to Hetao.

He was worried that once the Ministry of War recruited more soldiers to strengthen the border troops next year, the financial pressure on the empire would increase a lot. If the Hetao area could not be made self-sustaining by the military settlements, he knew how much financial resources would be needed to continuously supply food to the border troops in the entire Hetao area as he had served as the Minister of Revenue.

Thanks to my book friend Mo You La Jiao for his 1000 Qidian coins reward. Thank you to my book friend Desperate Lover for his 2000 Qidian coins reward. Thank you to my book friend Ye Shi Qiu for his 100 Qidian coins reward.

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(End of this chapter)