The most reckless man in the Ming Dynasty

In the early years of Hongwu, there was a Grand Military Governor's Office, which was in charge of military affairs in the world.

The Grand Military Governor's Office also had the power to mobilize troops and manage garrisons in various places.

In order to strengthen the power in his hands, Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was unwilling to see his power divided, especially between the Secretariat and the Grand Military Governor's Office. He abolished the system of the Secretariat and the Prime Minister with the help of the Hu Weiyong case, and divided the Grand Military Governor's Office into five, becoming the Five Military Governor's Office.

The Five Military Governor's Office lost the right to discuss politics owned by the Grand Military Governor's Office and began to have to obey the emperor.

However, at this time, the status of the Five Military Governor's Office was still higher than that of the Ministry of War.

Because the management of military households in various garrisons, the training and management of garrisons in various provinces, and the promotion of generals in various places were all under the control of the Five Military Governor's Office.

During the Hongwu period, the Ministry of War, one of the six ministries, only had the right to mobilize garrisons in various places.

The Five Military Governor's Office had the power to command troops, while the Ministry of War had the power to mobilize troops. Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang's design was naturally to check and balance each other.

Therefore, the relationship between the Five Military Commandery and the Ministry of War was not harmonious, and they had been fighting openly and secretly.

On the surface, this was a power struggle between the two institutions, but in fact, it was a game between the military generals and nobles and the civil officials and gentry, a power dispute for the right to speak in the court.

At that time, although there were still struggles in the court, they were generally within the controllable range and were healthy and positive, ensuring that no one force would dominate the court and thus pose a threat to the emperor.

Until the Tumu Incident, when Emperor Jingtai came to power, the civil officials and gentry headed by Yu Qian and others took advantage of the great loss of power of the military generals and nobles and the heavy damage to the Five Military Commandery, and unceremoniously seized all the powers of the Five Military Commandery, and all of them were gathered in the Ministry of War and in the hands of Yu Qian, the Minister of War.

With the help of the Tumu Incident, the Ministry of War began to gradually intervene in the appointment and removal of military generals, the training and management of garrisons in various places, and firmly controlled these powers in the hands of the Ministry of War, cutting off all the meat of the Five Military Commandery piece by piece!

It was also from that time that the Five Military Governors' Office gradually came to an end.

A military organization that has lost all its power, what is the meaning of its existence?

Not to mention whether the Five Governors can still hold their current positions, even their titles have been abolished by civil officials and gentry.

During the reign of Emperor Chenghua Zhu Jianshen, the management rights of military households and military farms began to be assigned to the Ministry of War, so Emperor Chenghua began to resist, he wanted to take back his power!

How did the West Factory come about?

It was to deal with these increasingly domineering civil officials and gentry!

The first thing the West Factory did after its establishment was to take action against the descendants of the Three Yang Prime Ministers in a very short period of time, thus establishing its notorious reputation.

"In the first month of the 13th year of Chenghua, the emperor established the Western Factory, which was led by the powerful eunuch Wang Zhi, and the number of imperial lieutenants was more than double that of the Eastern Factory!"

"In the second month of the 13th year of Chenghua, the great-grandson of the late Shaobao Yang Rong, the commander of the Fujian Jianning Guard, Yang Hua, and his father Yang Tai were violent and killed people in the village. They were reported by their enemies, so they went to Beijing to bribe. They were discovered by Wang Zhi and imprisoned in the Western Factory Prison for torture and implicated many ministers. For a time, the Western Factory was "powerful and favored, and everyone looked at it with a frown"!"

Wang Zhi did a great job as soon as he took over the Western Factory on the political stage. He directly took action against Yang Rong's descendants, and successfully made all the gentry in the court see the determination of Emperor Chenghua!

However, the reaction of the civil officials was also very intense. After the father and son of the Yang family were imprisoned in the Western Factory, the civil officials began to fight back and impeached and reported the Western Factory many times. The reason was more interesting, saying that the Western Factory was too strict and made "officials have no money to live."

Shang Lu, the chief minister of the cabinet who won three first prizes in a row, joined the gentry of the court to submit a petition, saying that the Western Factory "had too many surveillances, too urgent laws, and too dense criminal networks", and joined the six ministries and nine ministers to request the dismissal of the Western Factory.

Emperor Chenghua saw that his goal had been achieved, and the civil officials and gentry did restrain themselves, and under the pressure of the situation, they had to agree to dismiss the Western Factory.

Compared with Emperor Taizu Gao, Emperor Chenghua was still a little indecisive. After all, Emperor Taizu Gao would never dislike the punishment as too severe, but would feel that it was too lenient. In his Hongwu era, that was the real "officials were in dire straits".

The Western Factory was forced to close. In order to suppress the civil officials and gentry and take back the imperial power, Emperor Chenghua not only set up a new spy agency, the Western Factory, to check and balance them from the outside, but also tried to divide and disintegrate the civil officials from the inside and cultivate his own civil official spokesperson power. This is the so-called "Chuanfengguan" system.

As the ruler of a country, the emperor is the master of a country. It is a basic operation to confer official titles and make wishes. However, after the Tang and Song dynasties, if the emperor wanted to directly bypass the Ministry of Rites and the Ministry of Personnel and directly confer official titles without going through the official examination or the selection process, it would be despised by the entire literati, because it was a violation of the rules and out of the control of the civil officials and gentry.

However, one thing is one thing, and it is despised. Anyway, Emperor Chenghua liked to do this. As an emperor, he often used the authority of "Zhongzhi" to promote people he liked to be close officials. These close officials were actually another representative of the imperial power of Emperor Chenghua. They had the trust of the emperor and were also the emperor's eyes and ears. Therefore, other civil officials were very dissatisfied, but they could do nothing about it.

It is worth noting that most of these officials were not disciples of Confucianism or children of famous religions!

In February of the eighth year of Tianshun, the newly enthroned Emperor Chenghua ordered the eunuchs of the Imperial Household Department to convey the imperial edict, promoting craftsman Yao Wang to the position of deputy envoy of the Wensiyuan. This position was deputy envoy, and according to the official system of the Ming Dynasty, it was only the ninth rank, so the civil servants did not care much about it at first.

In August of the first year of Chenghua, the situation began to become unusual. In accordance with the imperial edict, the eunuch Fu Gongzhuan was promoted to deputy envoys of the Academy of Wensi. Li Jinghua, Chen Ao, and Ren Jie were appointed as Zhongshusheren. This was the most noble seventh-grade official. As a member of the Zhongshu Sheshe, a group of craftsmen were assigned to hold the light and noble positions that even the Hanlin officials were vying for. There was no problem at all in saying that it was "insulting to politeness".

He was promoted to an official position, which completely angered the civil servants and gentry who controlled the government.

The civil servants and gentry were not soft persimmons, and they fought back very quickly. Similar to their opposition to Xichang, these civil servants and gentry had been opposing the Chenghua Emperor for a high-sounding reason. They said that if the emperor gave official positions indiscriminately, it would lead to the collapse of the world. Chaos will bring harm to the people, and most importantly, it will bring disaster. Anyway, if the emperor doesn't listen to them, the world's disasters will start from then on.

Emperor Chenghua ignored him at first, but the methods of the civil servants and gentry far exceeded his expectations. These guys concocted a series of so-called natural and man-made disasters, such as the death of a music official in the palace during the Spring Festival, and other examples of spying The demons in the Forbidden Palace, especially the "red light in the sky" in the 12th year of Chenghua, the "big star falling to the ground" in the 20th year, and the "red star traveling westward with a sound like thunder" in the 21st year...

Although these are not common in Tang Hao's eyes, they are considered normal natural phenomena, but in this Ming era, they are life-threatening things.

Because the visions sent from heaven were naturally intended to warn the emperor, this was the ideological concept that had been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people under the long-term rule of Confucianism's "influence between heaven and man".

Therefore, Emperor Chenghua panicked and ordered the officials of the Five Governments and Six Ministries, the Duchayuan, Dali Temple, the Tongzhengsi Hall, and the Sixth Section and Thirteenth Level Officials to speak sparingly. The emperor would punish anyone who did anything that was harmful to the administration or beneficial to the country's livelihood. Pick it up and use it to return it to God's will.

The civil servants and gentry had been waiting for his words for a long time. They were as excited as chicken blood. They wrote letters one after another stating that this was retribution and a warning from God. So Emperor Chenghua gave in and whipped a large number of ministers and sent them away. I am too lazy to fight with civil servants and gentry anymore.

Regardless of whether it was Xichang or Chuanfengguan, they were actually measures taken by Emperor Chenghua to suppress the civil servants and gentry and take back the power of the emperor. The literati had pens in their hands, and they wished they could demote Emperor Chenghua to the same level as his father Zhu Qizhen The emperor of the Ming Dynasty has been repeatedly criticized in unofficial historical novels for a long time in history.

However, in Tang Hao's view, Emperor Chenghua's personal ability was enough to rank third among the sixteen emperors of the Ming Dynasty. As for who the top two were, he knew who he was.

After Chenghua, the Fifth Army Governor's Office completely became a vacuous military institution. It mainly provided an opportunity for the children of the military generals' honorary group to fake their salaries and eat empty wages. From then on, they were completely far away from the core circle of power.

At first Tang Hao even had some doubts as to whether this was a ridiculous agreement reached between military generals and civil servants!

The civil servants and gentry asked for the power to command the army of the Governor's Mansion of the Five Armies, while the noble military ministers asked for benefits from them, allowing their nephews to enter the "Kyoto Hades" of the Governor's Mansion of the Five Armies and pretend to receive their salary and empty wages!

Anyway, both parties are happy, and the only people who are worried may be the emperors of the Ming Dynasty!

But the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty didn't have to worry about it. You see how happy Emperor Hongzhi was. He was coaxing his wife and two uncles when he had nothing to do, or he was building superstitious rituals and spending money to support his hobbies. As for the power of the court, He wouldn't care if it was in the hands of civil servants and gentry!

After playing happily all his life, didn't he finally get the reputation of being the "Lord of ZTE"? !

Emperor Hongzhi is just like the former Song Dynasty monarch. He did not choose to take back the power of the emperor and fight with the civil servants and gentry like his father Chenghua Emperor. Instead, he chose "the emperor and the scholar-bureaucrats rule the world together" and chose to fight these civil servants. Let Jinshen live happily together!

So Emperor Chenghua was a faint king, but Emperor Hongzhi was a holy king!

When Chenghua Liting was in power, no one praised Emperor Chenghua's civil and military skills.

During the great victory at Helan Mountain, all the gentry in the court wanted to lift Emperor Hongzhi to the sky and kneel on the ground to lick his boots.

The master of bullshit ZTE is so ridiculous!

After Hongzhi, the Ministry of War had completely emptied out the Fifth Army Governor's Office, and the civil servants and gentry group had completely emptied out the military generals and noble groups.

For example, during the Jiajing, Longqing, and Wanli periods, the governors and governors of various places in the Ming Dynasty, as ministers of the Ministry of War or ministers of the Ministry of War, controlled the generals in various places. The promotion, appointment and dismissal of local military generals were all a matter of a word from these governors. .

By the end of the Ming Dynasty's rule, a model in which civilian officials controlled military generals basically emerged. For example, the governors of the imperial court, governors, and governors in various places were all civilian officials. Even if military generals had achieved military exploits and wanted to be promoted, they had to pay tribute to these governors. The gentlemen are acting like dogs, flattering and fawning over you and asking for bribes!

Therefore, in this Zhengde dynasty, it was the time when the civil servants and gentry began to exert their efforts and firmly control the military power in their hands.

What Tang Hao has to do now is to rebuild the Fifth Army Governor's Mansion and regain the authority of the Fifth Army Governor's Mansion!

When Tang Hao was questioned by Tianguan Ma Wensheng before, he was still a newbie at that time, so he did not dare to answer the question and chose to remain silent.

However, the current Marquis of Zhongshan is the leader of the Ming Dynasty's military honors, the admiral of the Beijing army in charge of the military power of the Beijing army, and the number one person in charge of the navy!

Not to mention that there are still available talents such as Qiu Yue, Tang Mu, An Guo, Chang Kuohai, etc., which is completely enough to support a Fifth Army Governor's Mansion!

"how?"

"The ancestral law of Emperor Taizu Gao?"

"Do you really dare to deny it?"

Tang Hao looked at the livid-faced Manchao Jinshen and asked sharply again.

This time, no one dared to look him in the eye.

Yang Yiqing turned his head away. Wang Ao remained silent. Fei Hong lowered his head. Wang Jianzhi, Li Shan and others were even more silent.

It seemed that at this moment, the person they were facing was not the arrogant and domineering Zhongshan Marquis, but the Emperor Taizu Gao who lashed the world!

The laws established by our ancestors, do you recognize them or not?

The rules set by me, Zhu Yuanzhang, do you recognize them or not?

If you don't recognize them, the so-called benevolence, filial piety, loyalty and righteousness will become a joke.

If you recognize them, the Ministry of War will be divided away from half of its power, and the rise of military generals and nobles after the reconstruction of the five prefectures will be unstoppable!

In such a situation, no civil officials or gentry came forward to deal with it.

As the leader of the gentry, Yang Tinghe had already reached an exchange of interests with Tang Hao, so he chose to remain silent.

Just as the hall fell into a deathly silence, someone finally spoke.

Ning Wang Zhu Chenhao sneered and sarcastically said: "Oh, it's really interesting!"

"You civil officials and gentry have been shouting the ancestral laws all day long. Now that Zhongshan Hou has clearly pointed out the ancestral laws, you don't recognize it!"

"Is the ancestral laws in your eyes really the rules set by the three Yang ancestors?"

Facing the angry eyes of the gentry in the court, Zhu Chenhao stepped forward and suddenly shouted: "I would like to ask you, who is the world of this Ming Dynasty?"

"Is it the world of my old Zhu family, or the world of you gentry?"

"I think the people who really want to rebel and usurp the divine weapon are you!"

As soon as this was said, the whole court was in an uproar.

Civil officials and gentry would not rebel.

But they did usurp the divine weapon, and they have been doing it!

In the end, Yang Tinghe couldn't help but speak.

"Times have changed, and sticking to the old rules is not desirable."

"In the past, the Ministry of War did not steal the power of the five ministries, but because of the Tumu disaster, all the military heroes died, and the Wala Grand Master Yesen was leading a large army to attack the Ming Dynasty with great momentum and approached the capital!"

"Under this premise, the Minister of War Yu Qian and Yu Shaobao were ordered to take full responsibility for planning the defense of the capital in order to protect their homes and defend their country. The Ministry of War and the five ministries had unclear powers, but the overall situation was important. Yu Shaobao reformed the Beijing camp and brought it under the direct jurisdiction of the Ministry of War. It seemed to be an act of usurpation, but the facts proved that he was right to do so!"

"Because Yu Shaobao won the battle to defend the capital, Yu Shaobao saved the country of our Ming Dynasty, which is an indelible achievement for anyone!"

Without Yu Qian, the Ming Dynasty would have chosen to flee south and live in peace in a corner when Yesen attacked the Great Wall!

The meaning of Yang Tinghe's words was, first, to show his loyalty to His Majesty the Emperor. Civil officials and gentry would never have the intention of treason and rebellion, which was inconsistent with the Confucianism they had learned all their lives. Second, it was to tell the world that civil officials and gentry might have the suspicion of usurping the power of the divine weapon, but that was for the sake of the overall situation, otherwise the Ming Dynasty would have perished long ago!

What ancestral law? If it weren't for Yu Shaobao's decisive decision to gather all the troops and change the Beijing Camp into the Twelve Regiments Camp, and successfully win the defense of the capital, it would be another matter whether the Ming Dynasty still existed!

"Yu Shaobao's achievements should be remembered!"

Tang Hao took over the conversation and said: "But now is different from the past, and the ancestral system of Taizu cannot be forgotten."

"The person who arbitrarily changed the ancestral law was not Yu Shaobao, but the civil officials and gentry after Yu Shaobao. Once they took control of the power, they were reluctant to give it up, and even used the power in their hands to suppress military generals and nobles to ensure the stability of their position!"

"Facts have proved that the consequence of your doing so is that the military and civilians of the world are poor and the people are poor and the Ming Dynasty is increasingly corrupt and declining, and there are signs that its fate is about to end!"

If it were someone else, if they dared to openly say these treasonous words, they might be exterminated.

But Tang Hao dared to say so, because he asked himself if he was telling the truth, and His Majesty the Emperor had long understood this.

So even if the faces of the ministers were ugly, no one dared to refute it.

The military and civilians of the world are in hardship, and the people are poor and the people are poor. This is the fact, and it is even from the mouths of Li Dongyang and Liu Daxia.

Knowing that this is the truth, knowing that the Ming Dynasty is not far from its demise, what should we do?

Are we just going to watch it happen?

His Majesty the Emperor on the Dragon Throne finally spoke.

"The Ministry of War can mobilize troops but cannot command them, and the Five Governments can command troops but do not have the power to mobilize them!"

"The Ministry of War has no right to inquire about the affairs of the Five Military Governor's Office, and the ancestral system does not allow outsiders to know about the Five Military Governor's Office in advance!"

"Rules are rules. Since it is the ancestral system of Taizu, we must recognize it!"

Zhu Houzhao looked around at the ministers with cold eyes and said in a cold voice: "In the past, when you used these ancestral rules to persuade me, I at least gave you some face. I listened to what I should listen to and what I shouldn't listen to."

"Now, I also hope that you will be more sensible and keep some respect for each other, otherwise I will learn from Taizu Gaohuangdi and how to whip the world!"

Be more sensible!

Keep some respect for each other!

These threatening words of His Majesty the Emperor made the civil officials and gentry feel cold.

As expected, he still firmly stood on the side of the Marquis of Zhongshan. As expected, he still wanted to support military generals and nobles and suppress civil officials and gentry!

Introducing the power of the royal family was not enough. He also wanted to support military generals and nobles. Wasn't he really afraid that the scholars of the world would be disappointed?

The civil officials and gentry looked at each other, all of them were full of grief and indignation.

But Zhu Houzhao ignored all this and directly issued an order.

"Immediately, order the Marquis of Zhongshan to preside over the reconstruction of the five prefectures, and he can mobilize all the generals and military meritorious officers. The Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of War shall not interfere. Those who violate the order... will be killed!"

Clan!

The clan shall be destroyed!

At this moment, the civil officials and gentry finally saw the determination of His Majesty the Emperor!

Tang Hao slowly knelt down and received the order in a loud voice.

"Your Majesty is wise!"

"I will obey the order!"

The civil and military officials in the court had completely different expressions when they saw this.

Zhang Mao, Zhu Hui and others were inexplicably excited and cried with joy.

Wang Ao, Yang Yiqing and others were lost and sad.

Zhu Chenhao had a blank expression on his face, but he could vaguely see satisfaction, because his deal with the Marquis of Zhongshan was completely reached.

Only Yang Tinghe remained expressionless, and took in the performance of these people with cold eyes.

When his eyes touched Zhu Chenhao, Yang Tinghe smiled contemptuously.

The military generals and nobles have risen.

But it also sounded the death knell for you, a fool!