After finally killing half an hour while drinking tea and reading the morning newspaper in his hand, Wang Shanxi finally arrived and the carriage sent by the Hanlin Academy to greet him arrived!
But this time, Mr. Sun, the deputy section chief of the Immigration Department of Hanlin Academy, did not come. He came to greet him yesterday. It was already a high-level courtesy. Naturally, it is impossible to come to serve him every day. He is also busy.
The person who came to pick him up was Mr. Sun's subordinate, who also belonged to the Hanlin of the Immigration Department. However, since he was arranged to pick him up, it proved that his status in the Hanlin Academy was not high, and he was the lowest-ranking person in the Hanlin Academy.
Times, from the editor of the seventh grade, due to the limited establishment of the Hanlin Academy, there are only more than 200 officials in more than 20 departments, and there are only seven or eight people in ordinary departments.
However, because the Hanlin Academy is so important, the requirements for even ordinary clerks are high, so the most common clerks who serve there start from the seventh grade editorship.
Therefore, saying that this person's status is low is only relatively speaking. For most ordinary officials, this person, who is a seventh-grade Hanlin editor, is already a person with a bright future.
Following the clerk named Chen, he got on the carriage and headed all the way to the Royal Courtyard. On the way, clerk Chen carefully told Wang Shanxi some things to pay attention to after entering the palace.
Don't move around at will, don't talk randomly, don't look around!
When you meet His Majesty, you must pay attention to the etiquette of the monarch and his ministers. Although you are in military uniform and do not need to kneel down, your bowing posture must also be standard. When talking to His Majesty, your voice should not be too loud or too soft, but you should not use messy words.
Hometown dialect, otherwise how would the Holy Emperor know what you are saying?
In addition, when talking to the Holy Emperor, unless His Majesty tells you to say something, you cannot say anything you want.
In short, you must not be rude in front of the Holy Emperor! If you are disrespectful in front of the emperor, although the Holy Emperor treats his ministers very kindly and will not say anything, the officials outside will not be polite to you and will impeach you in a minute.
There are too many impeachments, even if they are all ignored by His Majesty, it is not a good thing.
After being given some advice by Chief Chen on the way, Wang Shanxi, who was already a little nervous, became even more nervous when he was about to arrive at the Royal Courtyard!
"We're almost there!" Officer Chen said while pointing to the huge building complex in front of him.
Wang Shanxi looked around, and the first thing he saw was not a huge group of buildings, but a large expanse of grass.
They are now located right in front of the Royal Courtyard!
The main body of the Royal Villa at the beginning was the Duke of Wei's Palace. There were many other mansions of nobles in the surrounding area, and there were also some private residences nearby. However, after this place was later chosen as the Royal Villa, the Duke's Palace of Wei was directly used as the main body, and many nearby mansions were included.
And residential houses are included in it!
The adjacent mansion was included in the Royal Villa as the main activity place for the royal family. This measure directly more than doubled the size of the harem to meet the increasing needs of the harem daughters.
Some of the buildings on the periphery are used as office spaces and serve as the front hall in the traditional sense. Li Xuan works in the front hall on a daily basis. As Li Xuan's private secretary agency, the Hanlin Academy's daily office location is also within the palace wall.
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Outside the front hall, most of the houses and streets were demolished, leveled, and planted with flowers and plants!
This is not for beauty, but for safety!
After all, the Royal Villa is not a palace. It does not have tall and thick city walls. The courtyard walls are also adjacent to the streets. This is a very severe adjustment for security work. Later, they simply expropriated the surrounding residential houses and then demolished them, leaving large tracts of open space.
, a simple palace wall was built around the open space.
Although this palace wall looks very high, more than six meters long, its thickness is only a pitiful two meters, which is not as thick as the walls of those county towns. Therefore, this palace wall can at most prevent ordinary people from entering, but if
When enemy troops besiege the palace courtyard, it is basically useless.
However, the main protection force of the Royal Villa has never been the thin palace wall, but the nearly 5,000 Guards troops stationed in the Royal Villa all year round.
According to relevant regulations, the Guards must dispatch an infantry regiment, an artillery battalion, and a cavalry team to garrison in the palace in turn, with a total strength of about 5,000 people. These troops rotate every six months.
Behind the seemingly thin palace wall, there were five thousand troops, more than 20 field guns and more shotguns. A huge basement was also dug out to store a large amount of ammunition and food.
In addition, there is a secret project in the palace courtyard, which is a secret tunnel, which is dug out from the palace courtyard and leads to the outside of the city. Top-secret people are stationed in the secret stronghold outside the city all year round, and horses are always on hand.
You can escape from Jinling City, or go to the dock where there is a secret and reserved special ship. Even the generals of the Guards don't know about this escape route.
These are all Li Xuan's many life-saving means.
He had never planned to rely on the palace wall to save his life!
Although the army is his foundation, he is always on guard. Although the conflict between the navy and the army is a struggle of interests, Li Xuan's deliberate arrangements are also indispensable.
Even within the army or navy, there are many factions.
Without the factions within the military to balance each other, Li Xuan would not be able to sleep peacefully at night.
Even so, he still used the Guards to defend the army or navy, making the Guards independent of the army and navy and used for containment.
He didn't even fully trust the Guards, so he asked Hantong's Guards to carry out extremely strict surveillance. Basically, every officer in the Guards could enjoy the benefits of being monitored by a dedicated person.
Of course, the subjects of Hantong's surveillance are not only the Guards. Basically, all officials are the subjects of their surveillance, regardless of civil or military. Military generals receive greater attention because they hold troops.
Ordinary officers are fine. Those generals, especially those with real power, such as division commanders and army commanders, are basically the focus of Hantong's attention. Every general is surrounded by Hantong agents.
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In addition, in the past two years, Li Xuan has increased his support for the Military Intelligence Department and made the agency independent from the Operations Department and placed it directly under the Privy Council, under the direct control of Li Xuan.
Although the Military Intelligence Department is an external intelligence agency, as an intelligence agency, many things are secret and not known to outsiders. The Military Intelligence Department has several more agencies to monitor some officials and generals, and no one knows.
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It is the two intelligence agencies themselves, also under Li Xuan's connivance, that have many conflicts. Because the division of powers is not too clear, parts of both parties can only overlap. Therefore, these two intelligence agencies actually monitor each other.
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The subordinate armies are hostile to the civilian officials. There are factions within the army, and there are factions within the civilian officials. There is an intelligence system for monitoring, and there are conflicts within the intelligence system. Many constraints and balances together constitute the current political ecosystem of the Tang Dynasty.
The checks and balances between many institutions are also an important guarantee for Li Xuan to control power!
Regarding these, most people in the court don't know, or they know it, but they can only pretend that they don't know. No one will stupidly jump out and say that this is wrong or that it is not good.
If you jump out, are you either stupid or harboring rebellious intentions? No matter which of the two, His Majesty will kill you in minutes.
Therefore, the officials clearly knew that Han Tong was monitoring them, and they would not forget to impeach Han Tong at ordinary times, which made Li Daobing and others hate him. However, in the past two years, no one dared to mention the harm caused by factory guards.
Something like wanting to abolish Hantong.
Why?
Because someone said this a few years ago, and then everyone was arrested by Li Xuan personally and charged with all kinds of messy charges, including death penalty, indefinite imprisonment, and exile, without any exception!
Therefore, the current attitude of the Tang Dynasty toward Han Tong is that you can impeach Han Tong for being unethical and demand punishment for Li Daobing, but you cannot say that Han Tong is to be abolished.
Li Xuan didn't care about the former, and would even sometimes deal with one or two black sheep of Hantong to appease the anger of the officials.
In the latter case, Li Xuan will kill someone.
After Wang Shanxi entered the Royal Courtyard, he followed Section Chief Chen directly to the office compound of the Hanlin Academy, waiting for an audience. At this time, the sword he was carrying was also taken away, and he was strictly inspected to ensure that he was not carrying any
arms.
This wait lasted for more than two hours. During this period, she didn't even dare to drink too much tea because Wang Shanxi was worried that it would be bad if she had to urinate urgently during the interview.
After waiting for two hours, he was taken to a waiting room by a secretary from the Hanlin Academy Secretariat. When he arrived, there were already several people waiting here, including civil servants and military generals.
Wang Shanxi glanced briefly. He didn't recognize any of them, but judging from their military ranks and badges, everyone was a big shot.
Judging from the official badges, one of the three civil servants is of the third rank, and two are of the second rank. If the third rank is placed at the local level, he is the chief envoy. If he is at the central level, he is a senior official at the level of director of each department, and if he is of the second rank, he is the chief envoy.
So basically they are ministers of various ministries or governors of provinces.
The remaining general was not from their army system, but from the navy. He had the rank of major general on his shoulders. He might be the commander of a certain squadron or something like that.
In front of these people, he was a small major and really had no presence.
Regarding his arrival, the four people inside even showed a strange look. The reason was that this man's military rank was too low, and according to the rules, he was not qualified to meet the Holy Emperor.
But Wang Shanxi appeared here, which naturally made them a little curious.
However, even if they are curious, we are all experienced and know very well that this waiting room is definitely not a place for conversation. Why, the Holy Emperor is right next door!
When they come to see the Holy Emperor, naturally each of them has a lot of things to do. They are all preparing for the upcoming audience. How can they be in the mood to chat with their colleagues!
After waiting for another half an hour, Wang Shanxi was finally called out, and then followed a secretary to the door of a huge office not far away. The secretary opened the door and asked him to go in on his own.
, he took a deep breath, and then stepped into the door. As soon as he entered, he saw a young and majestic figure sitting in front of a huge office desk.
At this time, he took another deep breath, then stood up and bowed and said, "I, the Deputy Chief of the Nanyang Station of the Military Intelligence Department of the Privy Council, Army Major Wang Shanxi, come to my emperor, long live, long live, long live my emperor."