Chapter 1647 The subjugation of the country and the subjugation of the world
Bai Xiaowen thought to himself, Sister Chen Rong, you are worrying too much.
Interfering in the affairs of the mortal world will make the Taoist mind become dusty and make it difficult to progress in cultivation?
For aboriginal ascetics, this is indeed the case, but for evolvers like Bai Xiaowen, this is not always the case.
The Song-Mongolian War should be the main line of the dynasty's struggle for hegemony in Shao's position. If you join in it, you will have the opportunity to trigger a large number of tasks, and the task means understanding the light ball.
Now that you have the light ball of enlightenment, are you still afraid that your cultivation will not improve?
Putting aside the gains in cultivation for the moment, if Bai Xiaowen can control an empire, he can draw a steady stream of huge resources from it, and truly use the power of the entire plane world to help the development of the White Phoenix Territory.
The income from the above two aspects is enough for Bai Xiaowen to lead the four kings under his command to participate in the historical situation of dynastic hegemony.
Of course, as an upright young man with ideals and ambitions, Bai Xiaowen could not answer Chen Rong like this. Fortunately, aside from the income theory, his reasons were still sufficient.
Bai Xiaowen turned around and said: "I'm not worried about the demise of the Song Dynasty. I don't have any special affection for the Zhao Guan family. It doesn't make any difference to me if the world's surname is Zhao, Li or Wang."
Chen Rong frowned: "Then why did you..."
Bai Xiaowen said: "I'm not worried about the Song Dynasty's subjugation, I'm worried about the Han people's 'subjugation of the world'!"
Facing Chen Rong's confused gaze, Bai Xiaowen said slowly:
"The fall of the Han Dynasty, the Sui and Tang Dynasties, was just a change of surnames in the court, which was a change of dynasties. The political, legal, scientific examination and other systems are all inherited from the same origin. It can be said that they are the continuation of the Han people's clothes.
"However, it is different when the Mongols destroyed the Song Dynasty. The Mongols are a nation on horseback. After they take over the Central Plains, they will introduce the backward system on the grasslands to the world, causing a devastating blow to the cultural inheritance of the Han people! It will make China
There is a gap in civilization. This is the ‘destruction of the world’.”
What Bai Xiaowen said was not nonsense, but well-founded.
In the history of the earth, Chinese civilization has always been ahead of the West. Why did it later be overtaken and have a history of humiliation in modern times?
Because starting from the Mongolia (Yuan Dynasty), Chinese civilization started to go backwards.
First, there was a significant decline in the thinking of the rulers.
Fang Tingshi, the censor of the Southern Song Dynasty, once warned Song Gaozong: "The world is the world of China, the world of the ancestors, the ministers, the world of all surnames, and the three armies, not the world of your majesty." In other words, the officials of the Song Dynasty believed that the emperor only replaced the people of the world.
To govern the world, one must always reflect on himself in order to be a good emperor.
However, the rulers from the Mongolian grasslands brought the concept of grasslands to the Central Plains, treating the population, land and other wealth as their own private property, and even began to implement the backward feudal system! This was reflected even in the Ming Dynasty.
Secondly, there are strict and rigid class divisions that are insurmountable. The Yuan Dynasty abolished the recruitment system of the Song Dynasty and divided the people according to occupation into military households, craftsmen households, salt households, Confucian households, etc. The status was inherited from generation to generation and could not be changed for life.
This reversal of history also affected the Ming Dynasty.
There is also the degradation of property rights: officials in the Yuan Dynasty could "confiscate" people's property (including family members) at will, while the confiscation system was strictly restricted and rarely used in the Song Dynasty.
There are also punishments that have become harsh again: corporal punishment, which was abolished during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han Dynasty, has revived.
The judicial system was severely damaged: the Dali Temple was abolished, the legal studies were cancelled, the criminal law examination was cancelled, and even the "Ju Jian Branch" (separation of trial and sentencing) and "Translation and Transfer Investigation" (prisoners who overturned their confessions must be retried), etc.
Excellent systems have also been completely abandoned...
What did this series of reverses lead to?
The Chinese Empire, which had the sprouts of capitalism economically and had some "Renaissance" trends culturally, fell into a deep sleep.
A hundred years later, the Renaissance began in the West, but the Chinese civilization fell into a dark regression that lasted for hundreds of years due to the arrival of barbaric rulers.
Scholars in the Ming and Qing dynasties could only imagine the noble character of the scholar-bureaucrats of the previous generation from Tang poetry and Song lyrics.
The Mongols captured Changsha, and hundreds of scholars at Yuelu Academy all died heroically in battle; when the country was destroyed in Yashan in the Southern Song Dynasty, the minister first drove his wife into the sea with a sword, and then jumped into the sea with the little emperor on his back. In the Song Dynasty, all the subjects jumped into the sea to die for their country, "
The floating corpses of more than 100,000 people emerged from the sea.”
And when Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty hanged himself? There was only one eunuch by his side.
The reason is that the ruling class after the Yuan Dynasty was brutal (the Ming Dynasty was also brutal due to the influence of the barbarians), ignored the value of life, and suppressed thoughts. In the face of foreign aggression, most Han people were insensitive and had their spiritual backbone stolen.
Bai Xiaowen couldn't say much to Chen Rong. After all, there was no way to tell about the historical development process after the Yuan Dynasty.
Chen Rong is also difficult to understand, as she does not have Bai Xiaowen's broad vision.
Bai Xiaowen then said: "Master Chen, you come from a weaving family in the south of the Yangtze River, and your cloth is sold all over the world, right?"
Chen Rong nodded: "This family business is possible thanks to the pioneering efforts of four generations of the Chen family."
Bai Xiaowen said: "If one day, the eunuch takes a fancy to the Chen family's property and arranges a random charge, he can sentence all the Chen family's money to be confiscated as an official, the men to be slaves, and the women to be sent to the prison... The Chen family will still have something like this.
Do you want to be motivated to actively explore and expand your family business?"
Chen Rong said in confusion: "This...is this impossible? For such a big matter, a prefect cannot cover the sky with one hand. Even if he is found guilty, it is not his turn to make the verdict. If the Chen family wants to overturn the case, there is Dali.
As for the temple. Unless the prefect and the Dali Temple collude, will the local officials and the capital officials collude like this?"
Bai Xiaowen said: "You are thinking too much. If the Mongols destroyed the Song Dynasty, and those barbarians from the grasslands ruled the Central Plains, not to mention a prefect, even a county magistrate could make people destroy their families. To say the least, the Mongols are cruel
Killing, I like to massacre cities the most. Whether the Chen family can survive until the end of the war is hard to say. Maybe the Mongols will not allow the Han people to continue farming and weaving, and they want to turn all the farmland in the Central Plains into pasture."
After a pause, Bai Xiaowen concluded: "Changing the surname to another name is called the subjugation of the country. It is full of benevolence and righteousness, but as for leading the beasts to eat people, and people will eat each other, it is called the subjugation of the world." (Gu Yanwu's "Rizhilu")
Bai Xiaowen started with Chen Rong's family, and finally made Chen Rong realize the difference between the so-called "subjugation of the country" and "subjugation of the world." She also seemed to understand why Bai Xiaowen wanted to join the mortal world and reverse the general trend of the world.
For Bai Xiaowen, even if the Shao plane is not orthodox history, it cannot be equated with the earth. Changing the historical process of Mongolia's destruction of the Song Dynasty here has no meaning to the history of China that has already happened on earth and cannot change anything.
But positioning Shao was meaningful to Bai Xiaowen.