After finishing the business, Emperor Hongzhi breathed a sigh of relief, as if he had completed his mission.
For Emperor Hongzhi, he inherited the Ming Dynasty from his father when he was only eighteen years old. He has always been conscientious and diligent and did not dare to slack off at all.
At the beginning of his accession to the throne, he made great use of virtuous ministers, eradicated many shortcomings left over from the Ming Xianzong period, reversed corruption in the government, expelled traitors, worked diligently in government affairs, and worked hard to govern.
His father, Emperor Xianzong of the Ming Dynasty, had long disliked going to the morning court, so Emperor Hongzhi went to the morning court every day. He even convened important ministers for a small meeting after the morning court, and sometimes held an evening court in the afternoon.
I review a large number of memorials every day, even until late at night. I am very diligent, and I have been doing so for decades, and I have never dared to slack off.
The reason why he is so diligent is because he knows that the Ming Dynasty he carries on his shoulders is related to the hundreds of millions of people in the Ming Dynasty.
He is a responsible emperor who loves his people like a son. He has been working hard to create the prosperous age of Ming Dynasty and run the Ming Empire, hoping to make it prosperous.
In the first dozen years, although Emperor Hongzhi was very diligent and appointed many capable ministers, the situation in the Ming Dynasty did not change much.
Internally, land annexation is still becoming more and more serious, land conflicts are fierce, imperial tax revenue is increasingly collapsing, the national treasury is empty, border defenses are getting weaker and weaker, the military household system is extremely corrupt, it has long been eroded, and civilian officials are dominating, which is gradually gaining momentum.
Externally, the Tatars from the northern steppes went south to seize and plunder the country every year, the Jurchens in Liaodong were capricious, the Japanese pirates were rampant along the southeast coast, and the chieftains in the southwest rebelled repeatedly.
Faced with such a situation, although Emperor Hongzhi wanted to change it, he was always within this box and could not escape. Those civil servants were vested interests and would never allow the emperor to mess around any more. It was just an empty treasury.
If big things are not accomplished, no matter how diligent and hard we work on other small things, there will still not be much improvement in the Ming Dynasty, and we will continue to slide downhill.
Until the emergence of Liu Jin, Liu Jin began to be reused and supported in many aspects of reforms. The development of overseas colonization and capitalism also made the Ming Dynasty slowly begin to take a different path.
During this process, I also had several battles of wits with traditional civil servants, conservatives, salt merchants, grain merchants and the like.
In the end, the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty gradually came into being.
For Emperor Hongzhi, these forty long years were very tiring.
Every morning, every day's memorials, every day's national affairs, all continued for forty years. There were only a handful of times when Emperor Hongzhi was able to truly put aside his whole body and mind to take a good rest.
Anyone gets tired!
Emperor Hongzhi was really tired.
Now that the Ming Dynasty was in Zhu Houzhao's hands, he relaxed as if he had completed his mission.
"Father, I don't want to be the emperor. I just want you to get well soon."
Zhu Houzhao obviously didn't have any excitement or joy about becoming the emperor. Instead, he was crying like a child. He was about to run away. At this moment, he was holding Emperor Hongzhi like a child and crying.
Emperor Hongzhi lost his sight, and he didn't know what would happen to his body. He was really afraid of losing his father.
"Silly boy, everyone is subject to birth, old age, sickness and death, and my father will not do anything else."
"The country of the Ming Dynasty is now in your hands. You should be less stubborn in the future and focus more on governing the country and managing the country passed down by your ancestors."
Emperor Hongzhi touched Zhu Houzhao's head, feeling very happy in his heart.
"yes!"
Zhu Houzhao kept wiping tears.
"Go, go, let's all get busy."
"I'm tired!"
Emperor Hongzhi waved his hand, indicating that everyone should go to work and leave him alone.
When everyone heard this, they all retreated one after another, and at the same time they began to prepare for Zhu Houzhao's ascension to the throne.
The next day, Jinluan Hall.
Witnessed by the ministers, the invisible Emperor Hongzhi, with the support of the eunuchs, personally put the golden silk winged crown symbolizing the emperor's power on Zhu Houzhao, and at the same time handed the jade seal into Zhu Houzhao's hands.
This kind of succession was unique in all dynasties. Except for some ministers who wanted to usurp the throne and accepted the throne, there had never been such a smooth change of power.
Finally, under the witness of Emperor Hongzhi, Zhu Houzhao sat on the dragon throne step by step, and the ministers paid homage to the new emperor. The ceremony was completed.
"The emperor is destined to be carried by heaven; the edict says... Starting from next year, Jianyuan and Zhengde will be established!"
The Zhengde Dynasty has begun!
Liu Jin stood at the head of the ministers and looked at Zhu Houzhao on the dragon throne, feeling filled with emotion in his heart.
Who would have thought that Emperor Hongzhi would end his reign in this way. When he felt that he was not suitable to continue to be emperor, he decisively chose to pass the throne to Zhu Houzhao. This is also a very rare thing.
[To be honest, I have been using Yeguo to read and catch up on books recently. I can switch sources and read aloud with many sounds. www. Android and Apple are available.]
Originally, Liu Jin thought that he should be able to work in the hands of Emperor Hongzhi until his retirement. Emperor Hongzhi had always been in good health. Since the removal of the intestinal carbuncle, he had taken good care of himself and exercised.
Liu Jin thought that there was no problem for Hongzhi to live to be 70 or 80 years old, but he fell down once and lost his sight, and then chose to abdicate directly.
The historical Emperor Hongzhi died of illness in the 18th year of Hongzhi, and his successor Zhu Houzhao also died of illness in the 16th year of Zhengde. In total, it was only thirty-four years.
However, it is already the 40th year of Hongzhi. Emperor Hongzhi and Zhu Houzhao are both alive and well. History has changed a lot, a lot.
The new emperor has ascended the throne and has many things to be busy with.
First, as before, a general amnesty was granted to the whole world. Except for the heinous people, all others were pardoned. This was something that all dynasties had done.
The new emperor's general amnesty is also to extend favor to the people of the world, to let everyone remember the emperor's kindness, and to let everyone see the emperor's kindness.
Then it was complied with. In previous dynasties, after the old emperor died, the new emperor usually named his biological mother the empress dowager or something.
Now that Emperor Hongzhi has taken the initiative to abdicate, he will naturally abide by the title. Emperor Hongzhi will naturally become the Supreme Emperor, and Empress Zhang will become the Empress Dowager.
The next step is to canonize Crown Princess Xia as the Queen, and Zhu Zaicheng, the eldest son of Queen Xia, as the Crown Prince. This has been a long-standing tradition of the Ming Dynasty.
Under the eldest son system, only the sons born to the queen have the right to inherit. As for the sons born to other concubines, they cannot compete with the queen's sons no matter what.
Unless the queen has no sons or all of them died in infancy, the queen will inherit in order of age, first the legitimate son, then the eldest son, this is a system.
The prince Zhu Zaicheng, as the eldest son, has been highly valued since he was a child.
Zhu Houzhao had more than 200 sons, but he was the only one who received attention since childhood. Whether it was Emperor Hongzhi, his grandfather, Zhu Houzhao, or the ministers in the court, they all paid great attention and concern to him.
Because he is the future emperor of the Ming Dynasty and is the unquestionable first heir. No other prince can compete with him no matter what.
The education he received since childhood was also based on the standards of a prince. When he was very young, Emperor Hongzhi personally selected a good teacher to teach him.
Even Liu Jin served as his teacher. After teaching for a period of time, he was considered his teacher.
Of course, his main teacher was not Liu Jin, but Wang Shouren. From the time he was seven or eight years old until he was a teenager, it was Wang Shouren who taught Zhu Zaicheng for a long time.
This was also what Liu Jin personally recommended to Emperor Hongzhi. Wang Shouren, an outstanding person, taught Zhu Zaicheng, and the students he taught would not be any worse.
As for Liu Jin himself, he was just a dabbler and could only copy some things from later generations. If he really wanted to teach and educate people, he would definitely not be able to do it, let alone the future emperor.
Zhu Zaicheng is now eighteen years old, and has even married a wife and has children. In appearance, he looks nothing like Zhu Houzhao, more like Queen Xia. He looks very good, handsome, with sharp eyebrows and starry eyes.
In addition, he has been trained as a prince and future emperor since he was a child, so he has an extraordinary bearing.
This point is also completely different from European monarchs. European monarchs and nobles pay attention to the purity of blood. They are constantly marrying each other between nobles, and many times they even marry cousins.
As a result, European monarchs and nobles often have various genetic diseases, and their appearance is often terrible. For example, the Habsburg family has inherited large chins, all of them have protruding mandibles and tongues that are so big that they cannot speak.
, the appearance is naturally grotesque and horrible to look at.
In contrast, the royal family of the Ming Dynasty did not have these problems, because there was never a tradition of consanguineous marriage, and the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were almost the same in appearance.
When we arrived at Zhu Zaicheng, his appearance was even more handsome. Like his more than 200 brothers, all of them also looked good, and there were no genetic diseases in their bodies.
Liu Jin looked at Zhu Zaicheng again. The young Crown Prince was handsome and handsome. In history, Zhu Houzhao did not have a single son or daughter, but now he has hundreds of children, more than 200 sons, and now he even has a lot of grandchildren.
The royal family of the Ming Dynasty has truly blossomed and is no longer as depleted as before. The disadvantage is that how to arrange these sons in the future is a headache.
The advantage is that the empire of the old Zhu family is more stable and there are many princes. At least, the empire of the Ming Dynasty will not fall into the hands of Zhu Houcong no matter what.
Well, Zhu Houcong is probably still here in West Africa, worrying about the development of his own country.