Chapter 495: Nangong and Xuanwu Gate

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 People will always grudge their whole lives for what they don’t get.

For Mrs. Wu, she has been cautious for half her life. Even though she once rose to prominence and was respected as the Queen Mother, her past regrets and unwillingness can never be made up for.

When she saw Hang, it was as if she saw herself in the past. She had tried hard but could not get results. She looked around and saw that no one, and no one, could help her.

Deep in the palace, an unfavored concubine, with an equally unfavored child, endured hardship. Innocence and longing became the strongest protective colors in my long journey to the palace.

At that time, she didn't have the ability to change everything, but now, she can!

Zhu Qiyu can understand these complicated emotions.

Because it's the same for him.

The unpopular prince always stands beside the prince in the background, trying his best to please, but what he gets is indifference.

The fate of their mother and son is roughly the same.

Therefore, he could not refute even one word from Wu, so he could only bow his head and admit his mistake.

The atmosphere was a bit stagnant. After an unknown amount of time, Empress Dowager Wu finally calmed down and asked.

"You just said that you went to Cining Palace? What did you talk about?"

This topic that had stuck in the throats of both mother and son was finally brought to light, and Zhu Qiyu breathed a sigh of relief.

After pondering for a moment, he told everything that happened in Cining Palace exactly as it was.

After listening, Wu also frowned and asked.

"It's just a palace servant. If you have to arrange it yourself, it will make everyone look bad if you cause trouble. However, do you really want to leave the Habayashi guard to them?"

Although it is difficult to do anything with a mere Beijing Guard, it is the Forbidden Army after all, and there are four to five thousand people.

If Empress Dowager Sun really took control of it, Wu would certainly be worried.

Zhu Qiyu, on the other hand, smiled and said: "Don't worry, concubine, the Yulin Guards are the Forbidden Army after all, and the Imperial Guards are directly under the imperial guard. No matter which branch of the Beijing Guards it is, if a single commander can command it like an arm, then I don't know how many times I will be outnumbered."

That’s it.”

All Imperial Guards, with the exception of the Jinyi Guards, have strict regulations on patrol locations and defense change times. Under normal circumstances, they only need to follow the rules.

Once there is a situation where the imperial guards need to be mobilized, an edict from the emperor is required.

If anyone, including the commander of the guards, mobilizes more than 300 people from the capital without an order, Officer Zuo Er can kill him on the spot.

This is called the emperor's personal army!

Therefore, at least for the Ming Dynasty, it was difficult to completely control a Imperial Guard.

This cannot be accomplished by buying one or two key positions.

In the absence of an edict, if you want to completely control a Jingwei team, you need to start from the commanders and infiltrate down to the lowest level governors, and bribe them all.

However, how could such a big move go unnoticed?

Moreover, there are twenty-six guards in the top who are not subordinate to each other. Controlling only one guard has no meaning at all.

Thanks to the painful lessons of the Tang Dynasty and the mature experience of controlling the army in the Song Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty basically eliminated the possibility of military rebellion from the institutional perspective at the beginning of its founding.

In particular, the twenty-six guards who guarded the palace were so firmly entrenched in the system that they could only be mobilized by the emperor.

Of course, there is a loophole in this.

That is, once the emperor is seriously ill and unable to issue an edict, no one can mobilize the entire imperial guard. They can only stand by and guard each gate step by step, instead of privately recruiting reinforcements everywhere.

This was actually the most important reason why the Nangong Restoration was successful in the first place.

Throughout the dynasties, if one wanted to seize the throne by force, the first step was to invade the palace and control the emperor.

This is the case with the most famous Xuanwu Gate Incident.

At that time, Li Shimin led his army to kill the two brothers Jiancheng and Yuanji at Xuanwu Gate, and then went all the way to Wude Palace to force Li Yuan to abdicate.

This is a real mutiny!

At that time, the Qin Prince's Mansion Army to which Li Shimin belonged had a real battle with the imperial guards guarding the palace city, and broke into the imperial palace through the Xuanwu Gate.

However, the Nangong Restoration was not like this.

Strictly speaking, when Zhu Qizhen was restored, there was no real attack on the palace city, but only the Donghua Gate, the outermost palace forbidden area, was broken.

In fact, if he followed the example of the Xuanwu Gate and wanted to march all the way to the Qianqing Palace, there would be no chance of him succeeding.

Because at that time, Shi Heng and others did not have a real army in their hands, but only 3,000 private troops put together by various governments.

The main force among them was the private soldiers raised by the three families of Shi Heng, Cao Jixiang, and Zhang Fu. In total, there were almost a thousand people. The remaining two thousand people were servants, domestic slaves, and guards of each family's mansion.

With such a mob, it is simply impossible to break through the heavily guarded palace restrictions.

So they chose another path.

At that time, Shi Heng and others used the Supreme Emperor as a shield. They first broke through Donghua Gate, then turned around and went to Neijinshuiqiao, surrounding all the ministers who were preparing to go to the morning court.

They had no intention of confronting the Praetorian Guards at all, but wanted to forcibly establish the fact of restoration and then control the Praetorian Guards in turn.

This road is extremely risky, almost gambling with your life.

This is completely a bet on how long Zhu Qiyu will be unconscious.

Once Zhu Qiyu was able to wake up before their restoration was completed, an edict was issued, and the imperial guards would immediately kill their three thousand mob on the spot.

But it was a pity that Zhu Qiyu woke up too late.

On that day, Shi Heng and others broke into Donghua Gate, coerced the ministers and went straight to Fengtian Palace, forcing the cabinet scholar Chen Xun to draft a restoration edict.

Then, he forced all the ministers to bow down and performed the enthronement ceremony on the spot. Then he detained all the ministers and sent people out of the palace to convey the restoration order to every yamen.

At the same time, in the name of restoring the new monarch, he ordered the imperial guards everywhere to lay down their weapons and hand over control of the imperial city.

The whole process lasted from early morning to evening, a full day.

It should be said that the Imperial Guards were dedicated to their duties. They had been waiting for the emperor's orders all day long and guarded various palace palaces in abiding by their duties.

However, they never waited for the edict that ordered them to quell the chaos.

Therefore, in desperation, they had no choice but to lay down their weapons and accept the "new king's" order.

When Zhu Qiyu woke up, everything was too late.

The ministers had already recognized the restoration of the Supreme Emperor under duress.

All the government offices in the capital knew that the Supreme Emperor had been restored to power.

All the commanders of the Imperial Guard were under guard, and the imperial city was controlled by the three thousand mob brought by Shi Heng.

And he, the emperor who had "abdicated", could only sit back and wait for death.

It should be said that there were many important reasons for Nangong's restoration.

For example, Zhu Qiyu abolished the Yidong Palace and did all kinds of things to alienate the emperor and his ministers. When the courtiers faced the restoration, no one resisted too much.

For example, people were in panic at that time, and everyone was thinking about who should be appointed as the new king if the emperor did not hesitate, so they did not dare to take drastic actions.

For example, some of the Jinyi Guards were still in the imperial city at that time. Although they were not enough to fight against Shi Heng and others, if Yu Qian was determined to use these people to break through the palace restrictions and mobilize troops to the capital camp, it would be completely late.

The Jingying camp is different from the Jingwei one. As the Minister of the Ministry of War, Yu Qian is responsible for saving the world, and he is able to mobilize part of the army without worrying about being blamed afterwards...

But among all the reasons, the core is actually only one.

That is, Zhu Qiyu was in a coma at that time, and the imperial guards were tightly imprisoned at various palace gates.

The guardian palace has enough restraints, but without an edict, no one dares to leave their post without permission to put out the "rebellion".

This is the loophole of the Beijing-Satellite System, and it is also the advantage of the Beijing-Satellite System.

Therefore, Zhu Qiyu is not worried about the person who hands over the command to the Queen Mother Sun, because under this system, as long as he is still alive and awake.

Then no matter who the commander is, he must obey his orders.

Although Empress Dowager Wu knew a little about military matters because of her early experiences, she didn't know much.

Seeing that Zhu Qiyu was confident, she stopped worrying and asked instead.

"Then, what happened to the crown prince's enlightenment, and you agreed so easily? Also, what is the reason for the draft? Are you thinking that you want to find something to do after the prince comes back?"


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