Emperor Zhengde

Chapter 232: Still want to fight after resigning?

More than one hundred civil servants resigned!
Among them, there were even high-ranking officials such as Shangshu, Shilang and Deputy Censor-in-Chief.

This phenomenon can easily affect the normal operation of the court's government.

This is also the reason why many civil servants threatened to resign in exchange for the emperor's support. They believed that the stable operation of the empire's ruling order was inseparable from them.

Fortunately, not all civil servants resigned.

Therefore, the court of Emperor Zhengde Zhu Houzhao was not greatly affected by the resignation of more than one hundred civil servants.

After Guo Dongshan was promoted to the position of Left Vice-Minister of the Imperial Censorate, he immediately began to arrange for the censors of the Censorate to submit memorials to impeach Dai Feng and Xue Fengming for their illegal activities.

Naturally, the Left Censor-in-Chief Hang Huai did not dare to stop it. He approved the impeachment memorial submitted by Guo Dongshan and formally presented it to the emperor. After Zhu Houzhao approved it, it was handed over to the Ministry of Justice for interrogation and conviction according to the procedure.

Xue Fengming and Dai Feng were taken to the Ministry of Justice's prison from the East Factory Inspection Office by people from the Ministry of Justice.

Because, according to the administrative norms of the new dynasty established by Zhu Houzhao, Zhu Houzhao only granted the Ministry of Justice the power to imprison officials and civilians and arrest and sentence them, and the East Factory Inspectorate could not detain officials and civilians for a long time.

The East Factory was only authorized by the emperor to question the loyalty of his subjects on behalf of the emperor and demand explanations of their problems.

It is equivalent to the organizational interrogation in later generations. To be precise, it is not a trial or conviction, and it does not interfere with the judiciary.

The Ministry of Justice interrogated Xue Fengming and Dai Guan, and it was an open interrogation. As the only central government agency granted the power to arrest and interrogate people by the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the Ministry of Justice could not arrest and interrogate someone at will. It needed the impeachment and prosecution of the Censorate to arrest and interrogate someone, and it also had to accept the review of the Dali Temple.

Therefore, the interrogation of prisoners by the Ministry of Justice must be open to the public and must be supervised by the Censorate and the Dali Temple.

Although the Minister of Justice Gu Lin had resigned, the cabinet and other officials had not resigned, so a court meeting was quickly held and Xu Hao, the Left Vice Minister of the Ministry of Justice, was quickly appointed as the Minister of Justice. Xue Fengming and Dai Guan were also quickly sentenced.

Because of slandering the ministers, Xue Fengming was beaten with 60 sticks in the court, fined 1,000 taels of silver, and demoted by the Ministry of Personnel to the position of magistrate of Kaohsiung County.

Prior to this, Zhu Houzhao had issued an edict to officially change Dongfan into Taiwan Prefecture, and Kaohsiung was the new county seat recently opened up by Sun Xi, the first prefect of Taiwan Prefecture sent by Zhu Houzhao.

Xue Fengming gloriously became another civil servant sent by the Ming Dynasty to develop Taiwan.

But Xue Fengming did not feel honored by this. He felt bitter in his heart, because everyone knew that going to Taiwan to be an official was equivalent to exile, and it was good enough to be able to come back alive!

Dai Guanze was beaten with 30 sticks in the court, fined 500 taels of silver, and demoted to the position of instructor of Shajing County for abandoning his post without permission.

Shajing County is the above-mentioned county newly opened up by the Imperial Guards in the south of the desert, a county where the magistrate Liu Gui said there were almost only Hu people and no Han people.

When Dai Guan went to Shajing County to be a teacher, he could only teach the Hu people the Four Books and Five Classics.

Hanlin scholar Li Shi, Hanlin editor Huang Fang, and Ministry of Rites deputy minister Shen Tao were also successively convicted and demoted.

The initial turmoil caused by the establishment of the National School of Administration has finally subsided.

But the impact it caused is still there. After hundreds of civil servants resigned, many of the civil servants who remained in the court held multiple positions and most of them were incapable of handling the duties. Therefore, the selection of new officials seemed quite urgent.

In the tenth year of Zhengde, not long after the Lantern Festival, the Ministry of Personnel officially determined the list of middle-level officials who needed to enter the National School of Administration for training, and reported it to Emperor Zhu Houzhao. With the approval of Emperor Zhu Houzhao, an official decree was issued to these middle-level officials selected to go to Beijing for training, ordering them to come to Beijing for enrollment after handing over their government affairs, and the enrollment date was also specified.

Among these officials who need to be trained, those in Beijing naturally don't have to worry, but for officials in local areas, they will inevitably have to go through the hardships of traveling.

But these officials all knew that once they were selected to study in Beijing, it would mean promotion. Therefore, after receiving the imperial edict to be transferred to the National School of Administration for study, these officials were still very happy and rushed to the capital without stopping.

The civil servants who came to Beijing were full of joy and triumph, while the civil servants who left Beijing were helpless.

The civil servants who resigned did not expect that they would be demoted to common people. They could not help but accuse those civil servants who were unwilling to resign and even tried to curry favor with the emperor to replace their positions. They scolded these civil servants for being opportunistic, despicable and shameless, and for being sanctimonious.

At the same time, these civil servants who resigned missed the emperor's kindness to them, the generous rewards during the New Year and Lantern Festival, and the year-end bonuses after completing their political achievements.

Fortunately, their emperor and father Zhu Houzhao had not forgotten them. Zhu Houzhao summoned Tang Bohu, the director of the attendant room, who was mainly responsible for cultural propaganda.

At this time, Zhu Houzhao summoned him naturally to discuss cultural propaganda and public opinion.

"Those officials who resigned may become commoners after they resigned, but they are still writing. Hire them all to work in the cultural field and use money and contracts to keep their mouths shut. In short, don't let them sit idle! Otherwise, they will write things that are detrimental to the government!"

"I understand that Lun Wenxu and Yan Hong are leaders in the literary world. I will not let them live on the streets!"

Tang Bohu replied with a smile, and then asked:
"However, what I am worried about is that after these officials who are dissatisfied with the government resign, there will be more and more newspapers and magazines that criticize the government and always think that the Yao, Shun, Yu and Tang periods were the real prosperous times. Will this be detrimental to the court?"

Zhu Houzhao also knew that after these officials resigned, many of them became public intellectuals of the Ming Dynasty and began to control public opinion.

After all, with the advancement of Ming Dynasty's printing technology, and Zhu Houzhao's decision to have local government offices open literacy classes and promote universal education, which led to an increase in Ming Dynasty's literacy rate, the paper media industry also rose rapidly, and Ming Dynasty entered an era of universal newspaper reading.

However, because of this, there are more and more public intellectuals who say, "I worked in the Ministry of Revenue", "I had a lot of fun chatting and laughing with the senior officials in the Cabinet", or "I was the top scorer in the imperial examination, the first place in the provincial examination, or the first place in the case".

However, the public intellectuals of the Ming Dynasty are different from those of later generations in that the public intellectuals of the Ming Dynasty always think that the moon was rounder during the Yao, Shun, Yu and Tang periods, and compare all kinds of things during those periods with things now. They often say sarcastic words like "the world is deteriorating, and people's hearts are no longer the same as before" and "how did Emperor Taizong Wei Zheng of the Tang Dynasty and Emperor Taizu Zhao Pu of the Song Dynasty perform the story of the relationship between the monarch and his subjects?"

Zhu Houzhao didn't think it was a big deal to say some sour words and fantasize about the prosperous times in ancient times. After all, everyone has the right to fantasize and can imagine that they are treated well.

However, like Tang Bohu, Zhu Houzhao was worried that these Ming Dynasty public intellectuals would mislead too many people and create more pedantic people who advocated and worshipped the past. In that case, the entire empire would become more closed, and modern people would become less confident and would only be able to return to the past but not to innovate.

But there is no way to refute it, because no one can go back to the past, and the common people don’t know that the older they are, the less rights they have. They also don’t know that they were slaves in the past, but now at least they are self-employed farmers who can own private property.

"It's okay. If they want to talk about Zou Ji's advice to the King of Qi, you can talk about the White-Haired Girl that I asked you to write. They focus on the relationship between the emperor and his ministers in the court, you can focus on the relationship between the scholars and the people. Then the people will understand who is right. The people's hearts cannot be deceived and cannot be fooled. Only those who want to take advantage, gain benefits, and become slave owners will be fooled and deceived. In addition, the right to interpret history cannot be in the hands of those old Hanlin scholars."

After Zhu Houzhao said this, Tang Bohu also nodded: "I understand. Zhu Yunming is expected to arrive in Nanjing soon. The opera theater he hosts will have a great impact on the gentry in Jiangnan."

Zhu Houzhao also nodded. It was his idea to let Zhu Yunming go to Nanjing to develop drama. After all, Jiangnan was still the place that the Ming court needed to control the most. Zhu Yunming went to Nanjing to get ahead of the gentry in Jiangnan and guide the thoughts of literate people through drama.

For those civil servants who failed in the court, they were indeed unwilling to lose their political power in this way.

Generally speaking, many people who fail in officialdom will seek success in the literary world, and these civil servants are no exception.

Yan Hong then found Lun Wenxu, who was a top scholar:

"Brother Bo Chou, although we are frustrated in the court and have to resign, this does not mean that we will sit back and watch the government be controlled by these treacherous villains! We must let the scholars and people of the world know the ugly faces of those treacherous villains in the court!

However, now newspapers such as Huangming Daily and Daming News are still speaking for those villains in the court, saying that they are truly loyal ministers who are truly concerned about the country, and that those of us who resigned are just being temperamental and are just bullied wives!"

"We cannot allow these newspapers to confuse right and wrong! Now that we are no longer court officials, we should use our pens to let the people of the world know who is a gentleman and who is a villain!"

After Yan Hong said this, Lun Wenxu also responded actively:

“What Zhong Zhou said is absolutely right. The court is just a struggle for power. Your Majesty is not a foolish ruler, and the country will not collapse. But it is these opinions from the people that are the real problem!
Nowadays, these popular opinions are not only reversing right and wrong, but are also disparaging the orthodoxy of Confucianism and promoting the opinions of various schools of thought. Even some scholars and officials have responded!
There are people like Tang Bohu and Zhu Yunming who only love brothels and wine shops, and they are even more in league with eunuchs and prostitutes. They say that the sins of the gentry are greater than those of the eunuchs! Isn’t it heresy to say such things? "

"Not only the self-degenerate literati like Tang Bohu, but also the famous scholars like Wang Shouren openly advocated their own original philosophy of mind and proposed the unity of knowledge and action;

Confucius said, "Know your destiny and follow your nature", but he wanted to combine knowledge and action. Wang Shouren is betraying the words of the saints! His crime is punishable by death!
And Xia Yan, this guy, actually spoke for Eunuch Sanbao, and said that he would carry on Eunuch Sanbao's will and promote the prestige of the Ming Dynasty on the sea! He even bewitched His Majesty to support him and allocated 100,000 silver to help him on his western tour! He was originally a member of the Confucian Academy, but he recognized a eunuch as a virtuous person! He is already a traitor to the Confucian Academy! "

Yan Hong also echoed and continued, "In this case, Brother Bochou, we will use words to let the people of the world and His Majesty understand what the right path is!"

"Lun will definitely try his best!" Lun Wenxu also became excited for a moment and responded quickly.

Thanks to my book friend Xiao Xiao Xiao Ke Ke for the reward of 100 Qidian coins. Thank you to my book friend Feng Wang Jian Zun for the reward of 300 Qidian coins. This chapter will show the struggle between the old and new forces in culture. Wang Yangming’s proposal of the School of Mind was a major progress in ideology and culture in the history of the Ming Dynasty. It directly led to the great openness of thought in the late Ming Dynasty and the emergence of many thinkers. I will not give examples. As a science student, I actually know very little in this regard. It is worth explaining that the historical Wang Yangming realized the School of Mind in adversity after being demoted for offending Liu Jin. The Wang Yangming in the book certainly did not have these adversities, because the protagonist is not that guy Liu Jin, but I can't let the School of Mind disappear, right? So I still let Wang Yangming propose the School of Mind. Why Wang Yangming could also propose the School of Mind? You can use your imagination. It can be understood that it was taught by the protagonist, or that Wang Yangming was influenced by the protagonist's modern thoughts and realized it himself. I originally wanted to write the influence of the protagonist on Wang Yangming in more detail, but I don't know why, I didn't write the sense of detail, maybe my writing skills are not good enough.

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(End of this chapter)