Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 12 Young Monarch
In the sixteenth year of the Zhengde reign, April, Guiwei (the second day of the first lunar month).

On this day, Zhu Houcong formally bid farewell to his mother, Concubine Jiang, after bidding farewell to King Xingxian, and set out for Anlu to take office as emperor in the capital.

Jiang naturally watched Zhu Houcong leave with tears in her eyes, and her eyes could still not hide her worry for her son.

After all, her son Zhu Houcong was only fifteen years old and was a local vassal who came to Beijing without any roots in the capital.

Therefore, she still couldn't help but ask herself, can her son defeat those cunning and treacherous people in the court?
Unlike Jiang, the local people of Anlu had full confidence in Zhu Houcong and believed that Zhu Houcong could make their lives better.

Even the lowest-level tenant was full of hope for Zhu Houcong.

The Han people have always been optimistic and are full of beautiful fantasies about heroes among the upper class.

Even in later generations, many people will have high expectations for newly appointed leaders, believing that they can make their lives better.

The people of Anlu are naturally no exception. They all have expectations for Jiajing, believing that Jiajing will clear away corruption in the world and establish a new and beautiful era.

What's more, Zhu Houcong had done a lot of things to benefit the people over the years and established an image of a man who loved the people like his own children, which naturally made the people more willing to believe that Zhu Houcong would be a good emperor.

That's why.

On the day when Zhu Houcong was leaving Anlu, many Anlu citizens lined the streets to see him off, kneeling earnestly on the ground, glancing at Zhu Houcong in the ivory carriage with hope in their clear eyes.

Zhu Houcong was a young man with a handsome face and clear eyes, which made it easy for people to like him.

Older people often think of their own youth and believe that Zhu Houcong should be as high-spirited and ambitious as they were when they were young, and have the ambition to save the world.

The young people were filled with envy and awe, thinking that Zhu Houcong, a young man of noble birth and destiny, was far superior to a nobody like themselves, and would undoubtedly make the whole world submit to him.

Not to mention the women and children who were hiding under the doors and windows and peeking. Beautiful boys have always been their killer weapon, let alone a boy from a royal family. They are naturally strong and will be full of infinite fantasies about Zhu Houcong. They either want to give him their motherly love or give him their offspring.

In short, the scholars and common people of Anlu are now full of hope and goodwill towards Zhu Houcong.

"Just by looking at his face, I know he will be a wise ruler in the future!"

Zhang Youtian, an elder who was not far from the carriage, smiled and said something to his relatives and neighbors who came with him with tears in his eyes when the carriage was coming towards him.

"Since you said so, I think it's not wrong. When he was the crown prince, he reduced our rent. When he becomes the emperor in the future, he will only reduce rent and taxes more!"

His close neighbor Liu Gui also immediately agreed because he thought of the rent reduction for the state farmland he rented from Xingguo.

"Good days are finally coming."

Another close neighbor, Wang Houde, also sighed with joy after the two said this, because he thought of the natural disasters and man-made disasters in recent years and the stories of Prince Xing helping the poor and the needy. When the carriage got closer, he took the initiative to kneel down.

Very pious!

Zhang Youtian and others all knelt down.

Zhu Houcong looked down at the scene where the people were kneeling to see him off, and it seemed as if the people of all Kyushu were kneeling to him.

This made him feel proud.

At the same time, Zhu Houcong also knew that his efforts to benefit the people over the years were not in vain, and the people of Anlu finally had high expectations of him.

Because Zhu Houcong believed that the arrogant civil servants would not go to the extent of organizing and mobilizing the people to see him off in order to please him, the future emperor, and thus make him bear the name of flattering the emperor and father. Nor would they let the future emperor really see the will of the people and his popularity, and thus make the future emperor of the Ming Dynasty have too many ambitions and begin to question the authority of their literati.

In Zhu Houcong's view, civil officials would only be willing to mobilize the people to see them off when they left office, and they were only willing to show their reputation among the people to the world.

Therefore, Zhu Houcong could be sure that the people of Anlu came to see him off voluntarily, rather than being organized by local civil officials.

And he really accumulated some initial popularity in Anlu.

This will be beneficial for him to establish his new imperial power base in the future.

This also gave Zhu Houcong more confidence to face the next challenges.

"It is a blessing for the country and the people that the successor is so popular among the people!"

Among the ministers who welcomed the emperor, Liang Chu was also very moved after seeing this scene, and expressed his feelings to the Minister of Rites Mao Cheng.

He also knew that no local civil servant would flatter the emperor by organizing the people to kneel and send off the successor at this time, unless the civil servant wanted to have a bad reputation among the arrogant scholars.

Therefore, Liang Chu understood that it was probably due to Zhu Houcong's good deeds in the past that he was so popular among the people. In Liang Chu's view, even if Zhu Houcong loved the people for the sake of his reputation, it was truly a blessing for the country and the people.

Mao Cheng also nodded, also shocked by the scene before him, and hoped in his heart that perhaps the successor emperor Zhu Houcong, for the sake of the people of the world, would change his recognition of Emperor Xiaomiao as his emperor father, practice strict frugality from then on, and not engage in military operations or major construction. It should not be difficult, and the successor emperor should also gladly accept the advice of his civil officials, follow the example of Emperor Xiaozong, observe etiquette and diligence, and bring peace to the world.

After all, through the scene before his eyes, Mao Cheng had to admit that the successor monarch really cared about the people at that time, which was why he was so popular among the villagers of Anlu.

The common people were very happy, happy that the Ming Dynasty would welcome a holy emperor who was born and raised in their Anlu.

No matter how busy the Holy Emperor is in the future, he will at least promote Anlu to a prefecture, and even pay more attention to disaster relief. Liang Chu, Mao Cheng and other ministers who welcomed the emperor were also very happy, happy that they welcomed a Holy Emperor who loved the people and was kind to the capital.

This is good for them and the people of this country.

They also knew that such a benevolent and wise emperor who loved his reputation would naturally not forget their contribution in welcoming him to the throne.

But Zhu Houcong's old ministers in the vassal state were unhappy.

Because the prince, whom they regarded as a treasure, was taken away by someone from the capital!

They lost the opportunity to stay with Zhu Houcong.

They thought that if the Crown Prince became emperor, those around him would also rise to fame. However, they now find that they seem to be losing even the opportunity to be close ministers in the present, let alone greater wealth and honor in the future.

Huang Jin, Zhu Houcong's frequent companion, could only sit outside the ivory carriage. The eunuchs Wei Bin and Zhang Jin, who came from the capital, were the eunuchs who sat inside the carriage and took orders from the heir to the throne.

Captain Lu Bing, who grew up with Zhu Houcong, could only follow behind the carriage.

Luo An, a captain of the palace guards, also had a gloomy face as he watched the chief officer leading the troops to escort the elephant carriage, who turned out to be Yang Tingyi, the right vice minister of the Ministry of War. The soldiers surrounding his prince were all government troops from the capital, and they all obeyed Yang Tingyi's orders.

In Luo An's opinion, if his prince suddenly fell into the water like Emperor Zhengde, he would not be the first to rush to rescue him.

Zhu Houcong himself was not happy with the people around him being forcibly isolated, so now he was almost surrounded by people from the capital, except for Yuan Zonggao, the chief secretary and teacher who stayed by his side on the pretext of asking for advice when needed.

When he saw people like Huang Jin and Lu Bing out of his sight, he couldn't help but frown and purse his lips.

As the saying goes, clothes are never as good as new and people are never as good as old.

Zhu Houcong still wanted his old friends to stay by his side.

Because only old friends understand him best, are most compatible with his habits, and have the closest feelings for him, otherwise they would not have stayed with him for more than ten years.

What's more, those who had been with Zhu Houcong for more than ten years were all reliable people carefully selected by him.

If he didn't have these people around him, not only would he have trouble eating and sleeping, he wouldn't even dare to speak freely.

But now the ministers from the capital who came to welcome the enthronement, claiming that the old people in the princely mansions did not understand the royal rules as well as the old people in the Forbidden Court, replaced the old people around Zhu Houcong with the eunuchs who came with them. Zhu Houcong had no reason to refute for the moment, so he just asked the old people around him to go to the capital with him to learn the rules, and took them away.

However, since it is about learning the rules, it is important who has the right to interpret whether the rules have been learned well or not.

If Zhu Houcong wanted to take the right of interpretation into his own hands, it meant that he must first firmly grasp the imperial power and make himself the most powerful person.

In order to strengthen his power, he cannot rely solely on his status as the heir to the throne, he also needs greater reputation.

For this reason, after leaving Anlu, Zhu Houcong began to think about how to accumulate his own reputation and strengthen his power.

Fortunately, since the 15th year of Zhengde, when 15 prefectures in Huguang suffered from disaster, they have not yet recovered. In addition, although the Zhengde Dynasty had made great progress in the military, it neglected people's livelihood too much and even increased the oppression of the people. After all, Liu Jin, Qian Ning, Jiang Bin and others did too much to amass wealth with the connivance of Zhengde. Therefore, the number of refugees in the world is increasing day by day, and there are many hungry people waiting for relief, and the situation in Huguang is even worse.

In addition, the officials at that time also intended to let Zhu Houcong see the refugees so that he would know how miserable people's livelihood was when Zhengde was emperor, so they deliberately let many refugees appear in Zhu Houcong's field of vision.

Of course, they did not think that the high and mighty Zhu Houcong would really care too much about these refugees.

After all, the rulers of this era believed that refugees were not tenants or farmers, and at most they would just pay lip service to them but would not really do anything for them.

But for Zhu Houcong, this was an opportunity to accumulate reputation and undermine the authority of the upright civil servants in power.

Therefore, when Zhu Houcong saw starving people in the wild and skeletons on the road as soon as he left Anlu City, he summoned Grand Secretary Liang Chu and Shangshu Mao Cheng to come over, and on the chariot, he pointed at the skeletons of the starving people and sighed:

“These are all my people!”

When Zhu Houcong said this, Liang Chu, Mao Cheng and other ministers who came to welcome him were all stunned.

How could the heir notice these hooligans?
In this era, rogue does not mean a rogue, but an unemployed person.

But what they didn't expect was that the successor Zhu Houcong not only noticed these hooligans, but also put his hands behind his back, with a look of pity on his face, and said:
"Others passing by may ignore the suffering of the people, but I am the heir to the throne, how can I turn a blind eye?"

then.

Zhu Houcong said to Liang Chu and others: "You should provide relief to the people along the way and not let them die violently in the wilderness."

Liang Chu and Mao Cheng were horrified.

They are upright officials who talk a lot about how to enrich the people and strengthen the country. Naturally, they are positive, but how many of them really dare to do practical things to ensure the people's safety?
After all, the benefits of the world are limited, and keeping the people safe means redistributing benefits and forcing the big guys to make concessions. They only wanted to use etiquette and laws to restrict the emperor's reforms and redistribute benefits, so how could they be willing to make an exception for these hungry people at this time?

Therefore, asking them to pacify the people now is almost like asking them to go against their own will, but if they refuse, their true nature will only be seen through, and their moral reputation will be damaged.

Of course, they really didn't expect Zhu Houcong to be so kind and care about these humble refugees.

(End of this chapter)