Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 198 Prince Ning is ambitious

Zhu Houzhao had to carry out reforms in order to prevent the entire Chinese civilization from lagging behind the West.

The reformist civil servants had no choice but to follow Zhu Houzhao in reforming. Perhaps they were doing so for the sake of their own family's capital interests, or perhaps they were upholding the ideal of making the world a shared future for all and bringing peace to the world for all eternity.

Because of this, in the sixth year of Zhengde, the reform was still in progress and had entered a deep water period, which dealt a greater blow to the interests of the powerful gentry group.

Naturally, the powerful gentry will not tolerate their interests being damaged like this. They will try every means to engage in smuggling and evade taxes. They will even try to get rid of the emperor and reformist officials and secretly support some princes who want to seize the world.

In the summer of the sixth year of Zhengde, a memorial from Ning Wang Zhu Chenhao requesting an imperial decree to expand the guard establishment appeared before Zhu Houzhao. Ever since Yongle reduced the number of guards for the princes, thereby causing them to have no strong military power to confront the central court, the central court has always been very secretive about the memorials from the princes requesting the expansion of guards, and would even reprimand them severely.

But this time, after the memorial of Ning Wang Zhu Chenhao requesting the expansion of the guards was submitted to the capital, many civil servants chose to remain silent. Even the official Xie Ne, who was in charge of the imperial court, argued that Jiangxi was plagued by bandits and Nanchang was an important gateway upstream of the Southern Capital (Nanjing), and believed that expanding Ning Wang's guards could strengthen the Ming Dynasty's control over Jiangyou and avoid another large-scale civil unrest that could not be stopped.

Except for a few cabinet ministers and a few chancellors who raised objections, most civil officials did not say a word of opposition to the proposal of Xie Ne, the official of the Ministry of Education.

Zhu Houzhao knew that these civil servants had probably accepted money from Prince Ning and were unwilling to obstruct his request to expand his guards. He also knew that they were doing this to give Prince Ning an opportunity to rebel. As long as he, the emperor, was willing to allow Prince Ning to expand his guards, then Prince Ning could naturally use this opportunity to expand his troops and have the possibility of successfully rebelling.

However, Zhu Houzhao did not intend to investigate who accepted the bribe from Prince Ning, and he himself also accepted benefits from Prince Ning.

According to the eunuch Wei Bin's report, the business of the Royal Industrial Company was greatly taken care of by King Ning. Many of the products produced by the Royal Industrial Company were ordered by King Ning at a price half higher than the market price, which made Zhu Houzhao himself earn no less than one million taels of silver from King Ning since the second year of Zhengde.

Moreover, Prince Ning now orders or auctions goods at high prices from the Royal Industrial Company almost every year in the form of commercial activities, which makes Zhu Houzhao less willing to attack Prince Ning now.

Zhu Houzhao also knew that all the money of Prince Ning was exploited from the people. The people in Jiangxi had long been resentful of him, and even the civil unrest in southern Jiangxi was related to Prince Ning. However, if Prince Ning was not allowed to rebel, Zhu Houzhao would have no way to get rid of this vassal king.

In order to have a chance to get rid of this vassal king in the future and let the Ming Dynasty reduce the salary expenditure on the vassal king, Zhu Houzhao decided to indulge Prince Ning first. He promised to expand Prince Ning's guards, making Prince Ning feel that although he was keen on reform, he was a greedy emperor, and then bribed himself in various ways.

Therefore, Zhu Houzhao planned to wait until Prince Ning rebelled completely and then annihilate him, so that there would be one less vassal prince in the future of the Ming Dynasty. At the same time, he would also allow the central court to make a fortune by getting rid of another vassal prince.

Of course, in the process of gradually growing Prince Ning's ambition, Zhu Houzhao himself and the civil servants in the capital have begun to reap benefits.

In this way, he can benefit himself, all the officials can benefit as well, and it can also make the civil servants have the idea of ​​overthrowing his rule without thinking of using other means to fight against him. Why not do it?

Thus, under the instruction and deliberate connivance of Zhu Houzhao, everyone from the emperor to the important officials accepted the generous gifts sent by Prince Ning.

When Prince Ning learned that Zhu Houzhao agreed to expand his guards, he jumped up with joy. He had actually prepared himself for the possibility that Zhu Houzhao would not agree and would even reprimand him. However, he did not expect that Zhu Houzhao actually agreed to his request to expand his guards. In Prince Ning's view, this was equivalent to freeing him from the constraints of expanding his army, so he excitedly ordered immediately:

"Go and invite Mr. Li!" The Mr. Li that Prince Ning was referring to was the retired Left Censor-in-Chief Li Shishi. As a retired civil servant, he was extremely dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao's current governance practices, but he did not choose to endure like other powerful gentry, but chose to instigate Prince Ning to rebel.

It just so happened that Prince Ning also had this ambition. Of course, the fundamental reason was that they were all dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao's way of governing. They also believed that the gentry and powerful people in the world must be dissatisfied with Zhu Houzhao, and they thought it was a good opportunity to seize the world.

Now that Zhu Houzhao agreed to expand the guards for Prince Ning, Prince Ning believed that his rebellion was more likely to succeed. When Li Shishi arrived, he told Li Shishi that Zhu Houzhao agreed to expand his guards, and even said with a hint of contempt for Zhu Houzhao, "As you said, Zhu Houzhao is really greedy. Now I just bribed him with a lot of money, and he actually graciously allowed me to expand my guards."

"In this case, Your Highness should continue to offer him various rare treasures and beauties to numb his heart. After all, it is not enough for us to just expand our guards. We must immediately purchase iron war horses and stockpile food and grass. All of these need to be purchased from the court. This is the only way to make Zhu Houzhao not be vigilant!"

Li Shishi said.

"I know that Zhu Houzhao always pretends to be a wise ruler and boasts about his new policies to deceive the people, but in fact he is just like Yang Guang!"

Prince Ning sneered.

……

Although Zhu Houzhao supported Prince Ning to enrich himself, he was not without vigilance. Now that Jiangnan was relatively stable, Zhu Houzhao directly promoted Yan Song to the position of Governor of Southern Zhili, and Wang Yangming to the position of Governor of Jiangxi.

Prince Ning was not alert to Zhu Houzhao's transfer. He was even very happy because he had heard many times from the literati from Jiangnan that Wang Yangming was good at making money and was always hated by the gentry. In his opinion, Wang Yangming's governorship of Jiangxi would naturally make the Jiangxi gentry more supportive of him.

After Wang Yangming took office in Jiangxi, he kept a low profile, so low-key that the entire court, including Prince Ning himself, almost forgot about him.

Zhu Houzhao did not mention Wang Yangming much. When the cabinet chief Jiao Fang anxiously mentioned that Prince Ning must be guarded against, Zhu Houzhao just smiled faintly and said:

"Prince Ning is nothing to worry about. I have already made a move for him. With him here, no one in the south can disrupt our Ming Dynasty!"

It is worth mentioning that at the end of the sixth year of Zhengde, Ma Wensheng died of illness in Hetao. Although he was given nitroglycerin to prolong his life, he still only lived one year longer than the original history.

Zhu Houzhao was quite sorry about the departure of Ma Wensheng. After all, although Ma Wensheng had a gentle personality, he was responsible and dared to take the blame for himself. He could be regarded as a minister who took the overall situation into consideration and was a loyal minister. However, he was not tolerated by many civil servants nowadays. After Ma Wensheng's death, Zhu Houzhao suspended court for three days, but there were few expressions of grief in the court and the public.

For this reason, Zhu Houzhao simply conferred the title of Yunyang Marquis on Ma Wensheng posthumously on him, on the basis of conferring him the title of Yunyang Earl, on Ma Wensheng, citing his contribution in recovering Hami Wei and Hetao!

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(End of this chapter)