Chapter 502 Supervising the military affairs of the four provinces
Logically speaking, this prince is the eldest son of Zhengde, so there should be no issue of heir. But why does Emperor Zhengde dislike him?
Zhengde doesn't like the prince. This is not because the prince is too ugly, nor because the prince wants to seize power, nor because of some other messy issues, but because their father and son have different views!
Why don't they agree? Because he, the prince, pays too much attention to the opinions of civil servants. Not only that, he also regards himself as a scholar every day. He just says a word of kindness when there is nothing wrong, and he doesn't care about it, but he actually does it.
, in the eyes of Emperor Zhengde, this kind of thinking is pure stupid behavior.
With such an idiot son, Emperor Zhengde once wondered if it was his own son!
I think Emperor Zhengde was so awesome. He personally conquered many times and left the ministers to play alone. Even when handling government affairs, he ignored the opinions of the courtiers!
Well, this is not a disparaging word, but a kind of praise. Emperor Zhengde is different from his father. His father is a rubber stamp, and he will do whatever the cabinet says.
But when it comes to Zhengde, the cabinet is a rubber stamp. Zhengde does what the cabinet says. When the cabinet is unhappy, he directly bypasses the cabinet and handles government affairs.
Therefore, no matter how good he is at governing the country with integrity, he has firmly controlled the power of the government for more than 40 years, suppressing a group of civil servants to death. He is much stronger than countless predecessors. Otherwise, people outside will not
It is said that he has served as the first minister of the cabinet many times, and the second ministers are all yes men.
There is no way. If you are not a yes man, you can't become a cabinet minister under Zhengde!
For such a powerful emperor, his successor was extremely submissive. He only read the Four Books and Five Classics every day, and regarded many of the theories of civil servants as governance. It is strange that such a successor would be liked by Emperor Zhengde.
Whenever he saw his prince, he thought of the unlucky Zhu Yunwen from a hundred years ago. If a prince like this who listened to civil servants and regarded their words as truth ascended the throne and became emperor after his death, this old man would
It is estimated that the Zhu family's world will be completely destroyed within a few years.
Zhu Yunwen is a lesson learned from the past!
So in the past three or four years, he has wanted to change the prince. As long as he is not the current prince, any of his other princes will be fine. For example, the third prince is fond of martial arts, which is like himself.
Although Lao Liu ostensibly interacts with civil servants, he knows his son better than his father. This Lao Liu is full of bad intentions. If he becomes the emperor in the future, he will probably torture these ministers to death.
The three adult sons under his knees, whether he is the third or the sixth, are much better than his eldest son, the prince. After becoming the emperor, he will not talk about expanding the territory, but he can still barely maintain the power of the old Zhu family.
However, a group of civil servants below disagreed and tried their best to protect the prince, saying that the foundation of the country should not be shaken easily.
The country is nothing. He, Zhengde, doesn’t know what these ministers are thinking. It’s just that they have suffered under his own hands for too long. In his dreams, he wants to go back to the time of the late emperor. Well, it was the era when the civil servants said what the emperor did.
!
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to great lengths to educate their prince in a crooked way!
Damn it, when he thinks about this, he feels extremely regretful. Why didn't he see through the vicious intentions of these civil servants in the early years? If he had known about it, he wouldn't have hired so many stubborn civil servants as teachers for the prince if he had been killed.
ah.
It's a pity that regret is useless. Although he has found many unfounded charges in recent years and killed all the teachers who taught the prince, the prince's three views have become complete and he has become a complete Confucian.
My son, I keep shouting about benevolence every day.
Benevolence is nothing, the world of our old Zhu family was not created by virtue, but was defeated with one knife and one shot. This kind of kindness is fine, just talk about it, don't be stupid and actually do it!
However, when he wanted to change the prince, the courtiers disagreed. He had killed many people over the years, but the civil servants who defended the prince were still like crucian carp crossing the river, killing hundreds of people.
pop up.
In order to avoid causing trouble, he endured it and just grounded the crown prince first. At the same time, he still didn't let the third and sixth sons go to the fiefdom and declare vassal status. He was just waiting for the day when the crown prince would be replaced!
Compared to the issue of heirs, the rebellion of the Puppet Tang Dynasty is nothing more than a trivial matter!
Zhengde sighed over the issue of his heir, and Zhang Yue didn't look good when he returned home. This time he went south. Not to mention whether he would suffer or not, he was just afraid that he wouldn't be able to come back!
The puppet Tang rebels made such a big fuss that after Zhang Yue left the palace, he read through all the memorials sent to the capital by officials from Guizhou, Guangdong and Guangxi. Although many of the contents in these memorials were contradictory, this does not mean that
It prevented him from slowly sorting it out and roughly judging the true situation of the puppet Tang rebel army.
Judging from the information compiled in many memorials, the weapons of the puppet Tang thieves were extremely sharp, with many heavy artillery weighing more than a thousand kilograms, and many battalions of heavy artillery weighing hundreds of kilograms. Moreover, the firecrackers used by their individual soldiers were also extremely sharp.
Sharp firearms were Zhang Yue's first and deepest impression of the puppet Tang bandits.
The second was to understand the true strength of the puppet Tang rebel army. He comprehensively judged that the puppet Tang rebel army did not have 100,000 troops in Guizhou and Guangxi, but it had at least 50,000 or 60,000 troops.
The third point is to have a detailed understanding of the senior officials in the Puppet Tang Dynasty, especially Li Ni himself and the senior generals in the Puppet Tang thief army.
Li Ni, the detailed information of this person, and even the three generations of his ancestors have been known to the Ming Dynasty for a long time, because in the early years, Li Xuan participated in the imperial examination and left many families in the government yamen.
As for the situation, Su Jiakang had already reported the situation when the puppet Tang bandits appeared.
But it is useless to know who Li Ni's ancestors are. It is useful to know what kind of person Li Ni is. However, the outside world's understanding of Li Ni is limited to hearsay and various rumors.
I couldn't find any detailed description of Li Ni, such as his personality.
The only thing that can be known is that although Li Ni is young, younger than the Crown Prince and His Highness the Third Prince, and only one year older than His Highness the Sixth Prince, he has personally led his army on many expeditions, and is a genuine member of the puppet Tang thief army.
core.
In addition to Li Ni, the information of several other senior civil and military officials in the Pseudo-Tang Dynasty was also uncovered by Zhang Yue!
Liu Bagou, the chief minister of the puppet Tang cabinet, was a Taoist priest!
Qian Mengjiu, a puppet minister of the Tang Dynasty, was a bandit master and was said to have superb medical skills.
Wang Wenhua, a minister of the puppet Tang Dynasty, was a private school teacher.
In Zhang Yue's view, these three cabinet ministers in the pseudo-Tang Dynasty were just a few ignorant people. They might recognize a few words, but they probably couldn't even write a complete article. That's it.
He turned out to be a cabinet boss of the Pseudo-Tang Dynasty?
Looking at these Zhang Yue shook his head, but then when he saw the list of many generals in the Puppet Tang Dynasty, he frowned slightly.
In this list of generals of the Puppet Tang Dynasty, the first one is Hao Bainian. Many officials in Guizhou and Guangxi mentioned him in the memorials and said that Hao Bainian was the most powerful general of the Puppet Tang Dynasty. He won with fewer troops and more strikes, and became the vanguard general of the puppet Tang rebel army who marched south to Guangxi, defeated Wei Yan and conquered Liuzhou.
Just looking at Hao Bainian's achievements and some rumors, we know that this person is definitely not someone to be trifled with. The memorial sent by officials from Guangxi even said that Hao Bainian was the left and right arm of the puppet emperor Li Xuan. If he could attack If you kill this beast, the false emperor Li Xuan will lose one of his arms!
In addition to Hao Bainian, Li Chunjing, Fang Xitong, Zeng Ziwen and other senior generals naturally cannot hide their presence from outsiders. Many people in Guizhou and Guangdong and Guangxi have heard the names of these senior generals of the puppet Tang rebel army.
However, the descriptions of these people are obviously not as exaggerated as Hao Bainian, most of them just say a few words!
However, Butcher Chen caught Zhang Yue's attention because he found the early memorials of Su Jiakang and Song Zhiwen, which said that there was a general surnamed Chen in the puppet Tang thief army. He was a butcher and was good at using pig-killing knives. Extremely brave, he has killed many of his own heroes in front of the battle line, and even a hundred men would be invincible!
After reading the introduction about the main tasks of these pseudo-Tang thieves, Zhang Yue was puzzled. How could such a group of chaotic people create such a big momentum?
Rebellion? He has seen it before and suppressed it many times, but he has never seen such a weird rebellion!
Gathering tens of thousands of troops is nothing. The key point is, where did these pseudo-Tang rebels get so many sharp firearms? Did they make them themselves? How did they know how to make these firearms?
And why are their firearms so powerful, even more powerful than the official army!
The more Zhang Yue read about the situation of the puppet Tang rebels, the more puzzled he became. In the end, he really couldn't figure it out and ran to Tianlao on the third day. He wanted to see Song Zhiwen and several other Guizhou criminals who were escorted to Beijing for questioning. official!
When Zhang Yue wanted to go to Tianlao to see someone, the people below him would naturally not dare to stop him. After all, he used to be the Zuo Shilang of the Ministry of War. This was the highest ranking official in the Ministry of War after the Minister. To put it bluntly, if it weren’t for him back then, If you don't go through the Hanlin Academy, if you stay in the position of Zuo Shilang for a few more years, if your luck breaks out, you will have a chance to join the cabinet!
But if you weren't in the Hanlin Academy, you wouldn't have much hope of joining the cabinet in this life. Being a minister would be your limit.
This time he was sent to the south to supervise the army and eliminate thieves. Emperor Zhengde was also afraid that he would not be able to control the situation, so he was promoted again, to censor of Youdu, governor of the military affairs of Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Huguang provinces.
Now he is a serious governor, actually the largest feudal minister in the Ming Dynasty!
Of course, in the official system of the Ming Dynasty, there was no such official system as a governor. His official position was the censor of Youdu, a second-rank official, which was a pretty awesome official position.
For such a high-ranking official, the people below him would not dare to stop him. Zhang Yue said he wanted to see Song Zhiwen and a group of Guizhou criminal officials, so naturally he could easily do so!