On September 7, 1424 AD, the emperor Zhu Gaochi, who had been an intern for more than 20 years, finally became a regular official and became the fourth emperor in the history of the Ming Dynasty. However, Zhu Gaochi's body had already been crushed by more than twenty years of hard work and hard work, which led to his sudden death on May 29, 1425 AD.
What is surprising is that even though was in office for less than a year, Zhu Gaochi completed the historic achievement . Why is this? Not only that, later historians even evaluated the governance of Zhu Gaochi and his son Zhu Zhanji as "the governance of Renxuan" . Why is this?
The reason is very simple. During Zhu Gaochi's reign, he solved the four major problems of state management in the Ming Dynasty. It was Zhu Zhanji who continued Zhu Gaochi's management model that made the Ming Dynasty stronger.
These four problems are officialdom, internal affairs, redress of grievances, and social and people's livelihood .
Official atmosphere
One is the matter of regulating the official atmosphere . Among the three emperors before Zhu Gaochi, Zhu Yunwen had little impact on the Ming Dynasty, let’s not talk about it for the moment, but Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di can Neither of them were easy emperors to get along with.
Zhu Yuanzhang conquered the world with a common man carrying a three-foot sword . He understood the suffering of the people better than most emperors in history. Therefore, he hated official corruption . As long as corruption was discovered, he would be severely punished.
Not only that, as the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he knew that the throne was hard to come by and governance of the country was not easy . Once a minister uses his power for personal gain or threatens the Zhu family, no matter how many people he kills, it is not an exaggeration.
Descendants always say that Zhu Yuanzhang killed more than 15,000 people, Hu Weiyong case, case, more than 30,000 people, but with such a huge family fortune, other emperors could do better. ? To understand history is not to watch history, but to think about history from someone else's perspective .
Of course, regardless of the merits or demerits, working under Zhu Yuanzhang must be a very frustrating thing. If you do well, you should be punished. If you do poorly, you will be punished. Imperial power crushes ministerial power, and ministers dare to be angry but dare not speak . This makes the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty not very good.
After Zhu Di seized the world through the Jingnan Campaign, there was no improvement. All the ministers under Zhu Yunwen were sent to the frontiers. Such a punishment was definitely a heavy punishment in ancient times.
The power and domineering power of the two consecutive emperors directly overwhelmed the ministers of the Ming Dynasty, and what Zhu Gaochi did was to reduce the pressure on the ministers.
As the saying goes, If you want a horse to run, you have to make it eat more grass .
How can these ministers dare to devote their sincerity to the country if they don't give any benefits to the ministers? When everyone regards self-preservation as a special skill, this is not a country’s luck, but a country’s tragedy .
It was precisely because of Zhu Gaochi's changes that his ministers were gearing up and freeing up their hands to do practical and big things . The official atmosphere of the Ming Dynasty has taken on a new look. As long as his son Zhu Zhanji is not too ridiculous, he can safely lead the Ming Dynasty higher and further.
This is somewhat similar to the inheritance between the three emperors Kangxi , Yongzheng and Qianlong during the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi proposed the plan, Yongzheng improved the plan, and Qianlong implemented the plan , all in one go.
Internal Affairs Office
The second is the matter of Internal Affairs Office .
After Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system, established a "cabinet system" . However, this cabinet system was not achieved overnight. It was not gradually improved until Zhu Di was in power and Zhu Gaochi was supervising the country.
Originally, Zhu Gaochi had discovered the drawbacks long ago, but the power of the country was still in Zhu Di's hands, and he did not dare to mention it even if he wanted to. Many people may think that there is nothing bad to say about their biological son.
In fact, anyone could mention the idea of changing the cabinet system of the Ming Dynasty at that time, but Zhu Gaochi could not.
On the one hand, Zhu Gaochi had to avoid suspicion . The prince said that the emperor was wrong and slapped the emperor in the face. Wasn't he looking for a slap in the face?
On the other hand, it is the political management of the country. Changes to cannot be made just by proposing it. It requires the absolute support of the emperor. Zhu Di did not notice or care about this problem, and Zhu Gaochi made the change rashly. At a young age, it is for the good of the father, but at a large age, it is to seize power .
Once something like this happens, no matter whether Zhu Di likes Zhu Gaochi or not, or whether he is willing to pass the throne to Zhu Gaochi, the throne will have nothing to do with him.
Let’s talk again, the second child Zhu Gaoxu is still waiting to see the joke. Zhu Gaochi’s principle is not to seek merit, but to seek no faults . After Zhu Di's death and his successful succession to the throne, the cabinet management system could not be changed however he wanted. Perhaps this was Zhu Di's way of winning people's hearts, but I'm not sure.
So what exactly is the problem with the cabinet system of the Ming Dynasty?
Simply put, in order to prevent the cabinet from getting bigger and the imperial power falling away, Zhu Yuanzhang stipulated that the official ranks of cabinet members should be limited to the fifth rank. In this way, officials are small but powerful can manage officials without worrying about their many imperial powers.
It’s just that the ideal is very full and the reality is very skinny. This idea itself is not wrong, but if a group of fifth-grade officials supervise the first- and second-grade officials, how can others pay attention to them?
Under such circumstances, unless the emperor personally orders it, you will encounter various troubles in the process of handling many things.
For this reason, Zhu Gaochi made changes. Cabinet officials will work part-time with other official titles while their original official positions remain unchanged. To put it simply, he is a fifth-rank cabinet minister who also has the status of a second-rank minister. When handling related business, it is much simpler.
Jingnan was wronged
The third is to pardon Jingnan’s grievances . In the costume film and television work "The Ming Dynasty ", Zhu Di once said to Zhu Gaochi that those who were wronged in the battle of Jingnan will never be released. . pardoned them, doesn't it mean that he has done something wrong?
Zhu Di can admit his mistakes in anything, but if he lowers his head on the matter of Jingnan , he will never raise his head. So while he is accepting the infamy, he also hopes that future generations can win back people's hearts through this incident.
Two months after Zhu Gaochi succeeded to the throne, he announced the pardon of the so-called criminals in the Jingnan Campaign and allowed them to return to the capital to live. If you are willing to continue to serve as an official in the court, you only need to pass the review and assessment. For those who want to resign and return to their hometown, the court will also provide a salary.
Although everyone knew that this was Zhu Gaochi's compensation for them, no one would say it out loud, He would not hit the smiling man, and the mistakes Zhu Di had committed in the past were not something that the guilty party could redress..
In fact, not only the ministers and orphans of ministers who were wronged during the Jingnan Campaign, Zhu Gaochi was also very friendly to ordinary people..
In order to consolidate his rule, Zhu Di formulated very strict criminal laws.
While Zhu Gaochi mitigated the corresponding punishment as appropriate, he also summoned the main officials from the fifth government, the sixth ministry, the general affairs department, and the sixth division to participate in the trial of the case of the three judicial departments to avoid unjust, false and wrong cases.
What is even more exaggerated is that even though the death row inmates have been reviewed four or five times, Zhu Gaochi still requires officials not to miss any detail.
Under his governance, whether the bad guys will be let go because of tolerance is not discussed, but it is true that few good people are wrongly accused . As for some remnants of the party who had participated in the restoration of the old -jianwen system, Zhu Gaochi did not bother to punish them severely. He only sent them to other places for labor reform, and finally they still had a life to live.
social and people’s livelihood
Last and most important point, improvement of social and people’s livelihood.
Water can carry a boat or capsize it. If you don't do this well, it will be useless no matter how well you do the previous things.
After Zhu Gaochi succeeded to the throne, the first thing he did was to check how much pressure people had endured during Zhu Di's reign. Don't look at Zhu Di's military expedition to Mobei, and culturally let Zheng He sail to the Western Seas , but if you are not a family, you will not know that firewood, rice, oil and salt are expensive.
In the past when Zhu Di was in power, Zhu Gaochi often cried about poverty. Now that it is his turn to be the emperor, he should save a little bit.
During his short reign, first abolished the royal family's practice of requisitioning timber, gold and silver, and replaced it with fair purchases; then exempted natural disasters people's land taxes , giving the people more confidence in the country. . With these two decrees, in the later period of Zhu Di's reign, the problem of insufficient taxation was improved.
In addition, Zhu Gaochi also set up an inspection team to investigate the tax burden of the corresponding areas. This made many officials who tried to use their power for personal gain and enrich their own pockets give up on exploiting the people. This policy has been followed since Zhu Zhanji succeeded to the throne.
It can be said that the rule of Renxuan can become comparable to the rule of Zhenguan, which is completely inseparable from Zhu Gaochi's emphasis on social and people's livelihood. Without the persistence of the two emperors, Li Zicheng's peasant uprising would probably have been carried out more than a hundred years earlier.
It is worth mentioning that this emperor, who has always been known for his kindness, rarely lost his temper during a local disaster relief operation.
At that time, officials from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development got excited and even suggested to him that they lend food to the victims instead of distributing it for free .
Zhu Gaochi said angrily, people are already in such difficulty, how can the country still think of seeking benefits from them . But in the end, he did not severely punish these officials and only gave them verbal warnings.
Conclusion
Because of Zhu Gaochi's benevolent government, the national power of the Ming Dynasty finally stemmed from Zhu Di's late foreign power, and truly made the country rich and the people strong.
Later generations controversially believed that Zhu Gaochi was weak and gave up power to ministers. This led to the increasing power of civil servants in the late Ming Dynasty. The emperor had to support the eunuchs and civil servants to form a confrontation to ensure that the imperial power could be implemented unimpeded.
But was Zhu Gaochi really responsible for the subsequent changes in the Ming Dynasty?
If Zhu Gaochi was weak, how could he resist Li Jinglong an army of 500,000 people with only more than 10,000 defenders in the Battle of Jingnan? If Zhu Gaochi was weak, how could he contradict his father again and again and tell him that the country had no money?
As for the transfer of power, if there had not been the Tumubao Incident, the military generals of the Ming Dynasty would not have been damaged, and the civilian officials would not have been able to dominate one family. The merits and demerits of will be judged by future generations, but when making the evaluation, one cannot blind one eye to the other.
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