I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 366 Comic Strip

On the sixteenth day of the twelfth lunar month in the eleventh year of the Zhengde reign, Emperor Zhengde issued an edict to reward the officials who had made contributions in the battle of Yingzhou.

Among them, the mighty general Zhu Shou was conferred the title of Duke Zhenguo, Jiang Bin was conferred the title of Marquis of Yanqing, Datong general Wang Xun was conferred the title of Marquis of Yunchuan, Jiang Jiangong was conferred the title of Earl of Weiyuan, and other generals of the Royal Guards were either conferred titles, promoted, or given salary increases, or were granted favors. It can be said that they were all great honors for their meritorious officials, and even ordinary soldiers of the Royal Guards were rewarded with silver, money and cloth.

In addition, an imperial decree was issued to officially change the name of the new army to the Imperial Guards.

For a time, there was a lot of discussion in the court and the country, and the cabinet was powerless to stop Zhu Houzhao, who was winning a great victory.

Now the Battle of Yingzhou has been promoted as the greatest victory of the Ming Dynasty over the Mongols in the past hundred years.

In fact, there is no big problem with such publicity, because the Battle of Yingzhou fully qualifies for this.

But other propaganda made the civil officials somewhat uneasy. People directly regarded Zhu Houzhao as the first person to achieve the best results against the Mongols after Emperor Taizu.
Although the saying goes "As long as you add more adjectives, you can be the first in everything", ordinary people don't care so much. If we round it off, it means that Zhu Houzhao is the first in military merit after Taizu.
Not only did ordinary people think so, but under the Royal Group's pervasive propaganda, even many scholars began to think so.

Peng Ze was now completely numb. The newspapers controlled by the Royal Group were now publicizing everywhere what he had said in the Fengtian Hall, which became the most powerful footnote to Zhu Houzhao's victory.

Now people who don't understand the situation have begun to regard him as a flatterer.

People who understood the situation were afraid of being implicated and distanced themselves from him.

This made him very helpless. He had no way to deny what he said in the Fengtian Hall at that time. Although he was questioning Zhu Houzhao's military achievements and the Royal Group's propaganda was misinterpreting his meaning, he had no way to make his words clear, as that would make him seem very stupid. People who did not understand the situation would easily regard him as an erratic villain.

So Peng Ze is now completely speechless and can only swallow his anger.
The benefits of such propaganda were enormous. The most obvious change was that Zhu Houzhao's prestige was higher, the ministers were more cautious about his opinions, and the civil officials were reluctant to make irresponsible remarks on military-related affairs. Many things that had previously been resisted became free of resistance after the great victory.
The Guards did not return to Tongzhou, and the barracks in Tongzhou had already begun recruiting new soldiers.

The Guards are in a closed military camp next to the capital. One of their main tasks here is to conduct some parade-related training. After all, there are two different effects of training and not training.

The military parade was scheduled to be held on the 16th day of the first lunar month in the 12th year of the Zhengde reign, and was the finale of the Yingzhou victory celebrations.
Although the rewards for the Battle of Yingzhou had ended at the official level of the court, from Zhu Houzhao's level, the rewards for the Battle of Yingzhou had not yet ended.

On the 20th day of the 12th month of the 11th year of the Zhengde reign, a ceremony to award honors to heroes of the Yingzhou battle was held at the Royal Grand Theater.

Today, the Royal Grand Theatre was brightly lit and bustling with people. A total of 1,500 people crowded into the Royal Grand Theatre, which had only 1,000 seats. Among them were not only meritorious personnel of the Guards, but also border army officers from Datong Town, Xuanfu Town and Yansui Town. They all participated in the Battle of Yingzhou to a greater or lesser extent, directly or indirectly, and were also among those who were awarded medals.

Zhu Houzhao has always had political skills, and this incident is a good reflection of that. Although he now looks down on the old-style border troops, he also respects the fact that these old-style border troops exist. He is also willing to win over talents in the old-style troops and give them channels and opportunities to get closer to him.

Zhu Houzhao also knew clearly that in the future, replacing the old with the new would be the general trend in the Ming army. He also needed to constantly stabilize the hearts of the people in the old army in this process. The best way to stabilize their hearts was to give them opportunities for advancement.

In addition, there were many civil servants attending the meeting, including the cabinet ministers and the nine ministers, and they also wanted to observe the awarding ceremony up close.

This awarding ceremony was only the first one. The battle of Yingzhou had great results and many people had made contributions. Zhu Houxuan originally thought that Zhu Houzhao only needed to personally award the medals to the higher-ranking officers, but Zhu Houzhao thought that he should personally award the medals to every meritorious person.
Zhu Houzhao was not interested in dealing with memorials, but he really enjoyed doing this kind of thing.

Zhu Houxuan didn't know what to say about this. The only thing he could say was that Zhu Houzhao was really good at winning people's hearts.

Therefore, after this awarding ceremony is completed, there will be several more awarding ceremonies for lower-ranking officers and even ordinary soldiers.

With so many people pouring in at once, the Royal Theatre seemed a little small, but there was nothing to be done. In an era without sound amplification equipment, this was already the limit to ensuring that everyone could hear.

Backstage at the Royal Opera House.

"Royal brother, I see that everyone in front is almost here, let's get ready to go on stage," Zhu Houxun said to Zhu Houzhao.

"Don't be in a hurry. Wait until I finish looking at this album. No, I want to finish looking at all the bad paintings." Zhu Houzhao was holding a small booklet and reading it attentively.

"Haven't you already read it twice?" Zhu Houxun said helplessly.

"I don't care how many times I've read it. I'm almost done reading it." Zhu Houzhao muttered somewhat dissatisfiedly.

Zhu Houxuan had no choice but to wait patiently for Zhu Houzhao. Fortunately, the comic book was not thick, and Zhu Houzhao quickly finished reading it for the third time.
"It's really wonderful!" Zhu Houzhao smacked his lips with some satisfaction, "The Emperor Zhengde in it is so handsome!"

Zhu Houxuan listened in silence.

"Is this the only one? Are there any others?" Zhu Houzhao asked anxiously.

"We are planning to publish a series. This book has been released now, and the others are still being drawn and engraved. They will be released gradually in the future," Zhu Houxuan explained.

What Zhu Houzhao is holding in his hand is a series of comic strips about the Battle of Yingzhou issued by the Royal Group. It is part of the publicity plan for the Battle of Yingzhou. This series of comic strips introduces the entire process of the Battle of Yingzhou in detail, and of course some embellishments are made in this process.

Zhu Houzhao is the most important character in the comic book series and has contributed many highlight moments. Moreover, this series is not entirely in the style of later comic books, but also incorporates some Japanese comic elements, so you can't stop reading about Zhu Houzhao.

The appeal of pictures is better than words in some aspects. In this era of low literacy, its ability to spread is far beyond that of simple words, so this comic strip came into being...

I got up very early, but it took me more than an hour to get into the state, so I haven’t finished writing the second chapter, so I’ll post the first chapter first

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(End of this chapter)