In the 276-year history of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the sixteen emperors, there were many ministers who left their names in later generations. Most of the later generations remembered their names through the merits and demerits and influences of these people. Of course, there are also strange things that allow people to record their names through his special examples. Ministers of the early Ming Dynasty Ru Taisu should belong to this category.
The records of him in "History of Ming Dynasty" are considered to be a very interesting "joke", which still makes people laugh when they read them today.
Ru Taisu was from Zezhou, Jinning Road, Jincheng, Shanxi Province, today. During the Hongwu period, he served as the Minister of Revenue. He is very responsible and principled, loyal to the emperor and patriotism. His Ming Dynasty commented that he was "reputable to be fair" and "resist in a state of justice and indomitable manner."
It was this Ru Taisu who made a joke about writing nonsense "Medal of Ten Thousand Words" and getting annoyed by Zhu Yuanzhang's and being ordered by the dynasty to beat people with a board.
(Portrait of Ru Taisu)
During the ancient feudal emperors, the officials who worked in the court had to attend the morning court on time every day and go to the palace to worship the emperor. The emperor always listened to memorials and issued orders in the morning hall, and discussed and consulted major matters with the ministers. After the morning court was over, the ministers returned to their respective yamen to manage the ministers.
Historical materials introduced that Ru Taisu passed the provincial examination in Hongwu in the third year of the provincial examination and served as the supervisory censor. In the sixth year of Hongwu, he was appointed as the inspector of Sichuan . In May of the seventh year of Hongwu, he became the assistant minister of the Ministry of Justice and later served as the head of the Ministry of Justice.
Ru Taisu has read a lot of books since childhood and has a good writing style, but she is more verbose when expressing what she says. When he made a memorial, he wrote seven or eight thousand words, and the meaning was difficult. Every time Zhu Yuanzhang looked at his memorial, he seemed very impatient.
In a morning court in December of the eighth year of Hongwu (1376), Zhu Yuanzhang sat on the dragon chaise of Fengtian Hall of the Imperial Palace and his face was full of anger. The civil and military ministers arranged on both sides bowed their heads and said nothing. In the quiet hall, only slapping and painful screams could be heard from outside the hall from time to time. It turned out that Zhu Yuanzhang was ordering someone to blame a minister. The person who was beaten was Ru Taisu, the Minister of Justice.
Why Ru Taisu was beaten by the dynasty is quite ridiculous, because it was because she wrote a long memorial.
Around the eighth year of Hongwu under Zhu Yuanzhang's rule, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters occurred successively across the country. Folk legend says that Taibai Star has appeared in the air during the day. Zhu Yuanzhang believed that this was the warning from the Jade Emperor to him, so he issued an edict to ask the court officials and the people to write to discuss the gains and losses of the court's policies in order to correct them.
Ru Taisu, the assistant minister of the Ministry of Justice, was honest. When he heard the news, he did not care about it and wrote a memorial containing five suggestions. In theory, there is no fault in submitting a letter to make suggestions in accordance with the emperor's requirements. But Ru Taisu actually wrote more than 17,000 words.
Early this day, Ru Taisu respectfully presented the memorial. Zhu Yuanzhang took it and saw another thick book. I frowned and felt very unhappy. Because he repeatedly proposed that the memorials should be straightforward and opposed to being stingy.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang was too lazy to read Ru Taisu's memorial, he had already submitted it and it was not easy to read it. He handed it to the Secretariat Wang Min and let him read it. The Secretariat read more than 16,000 words. Zhu Yuanzhang had not yet heard the clue. He couldn't help but scold, "I'm very tired of it!"
There are historical materials that describe this story: It happened that the memorial he read at this time said, "The talented people have survived by chance in the past few years. Now they are all pedantic Confucian scholars or vulgar officials..." Zhu Yuanzhang waved his hand and asked him to stop. He called Ru Taisu to the front and asked, "You are the Minister of Justice, and there are more than 200 officials in the Ministry of Justice. Tell me which are corrupt scholars and which are vulgar officials?"
Ru Taisu was shocked by the emperor's question and muttered for a long time before saying, "I just said in general that the officials of the Ministry of Justice, and I don't know all of them."Zhu Yuanzhang was furious at this time and scolded him sternly: "Okay! Since you don’t even know people, how do you know that they are all corrupt Confucians and vulgar officials? "At this time, several ministers who were gloating came up and said to Zhu Yuanzhang: "Long live the revelation. Ru Taisu said in the memorial that the talented people in recent years had luckily left nothing left, which was clearly slandering the government and deliberately slandering the emperor, and should be punished. "These few words were like adding fuel to the fire, making Zhu Yuanzhang even more angry. He ordered the captain in front of the palace to drag Ru Taisu down the palace and beat the twenty boards.
This board beat Ru Taisu so hard that it was so painful.
(online picture)
When he was beating Ru Taisu, Zhu Yuanzhang saw the Hanlin Academy bachelor standing in front of him, and looked solemn, and asked: " Jinglian (Song Lian's name), what do you think? "
Song Lian hurriedly stepped forward and knelt down and said, "I think Ru Taisu wrote a letter to comment on the government affairs according to the edict, and was loyal to Your Majesty. Your Majesty is about to open up the road to speech, but Ru Taisu is not too guilty of being wrong. I hope the emperor thinks twice. ” Seeing that Song Lian was right, Zhu Yuanzhang was silent for a while, and his anger gradually dissipated. After the court was dispersed, Zhu Yuanzhang recalled the scene of Ru Taisu's slaughter and Song Lian's persuasion, and felt that what he did was indeed a bit too much. He issued an edict to ask the subjects to comment on the government affairs, but blamed the person who wrote the letter. And he didn't know what Ru Taisu finally wrote, so he punished the others. Thinking of this calmly, Zhu Yuanzhang asked someone to take Ru Taisu's memorial and read it carefully under the lamp. He was in the Secretariat Wang After Min read more than 16,000 words, he saw the topic.
Ru Taisu wrote a total of five suggestions. Zhu Yuanzhang thought about it and felt that at least four of these five things could be adopted and implemented. This is the case, as long as you only need to use five hundred words, Ru Taisu could clearly write it out, but it wrote nearly 20,000 words in empty words. It seems a bit too much to punish him for the punishment of the rod, but it can also serve as a warning to the ministers.
Although Zhu Yuanzhang was arbitrary in some matters, he was able to open up the channels of speech and adopt other people's advice and advice most of the time. On the morning court the next day after he punished Ru Taisu, he specially called the ministers who took the blame for Ru Taisu and scolded him sternly: "You are all ministers of the court. When you see something wrong with me, you should advise more. How can you act according to my expression and follow the words? If Jing Lian hadn't advised me, he would have almost misled the country's affairs and wronged the good people! "He said again: "I didn't finish listening to Ru Taisu's memorial, so I blamed him impatiently. This is my fault. In fact, people like Ru Taisu who do their best for the country are truly loyal ministers! "The ministers were so scared that they retreated.
(stills)
scattered. Zhu Yuanzhang asked someone to copy four things that could be adopted and implemented in Ru Taisu's memorial, and wrote a preface in front and sent it to the ministers of civil and military affairs. He also asked the Secretariat to use this example as a warning to formulate the format of the letter, limit the number of words in the memorial, and require conciseness, otherwise he would be punished.
From then on, Hong When the ministers of the Wu Dynasty wrote memorials, they were straightforward and only talked about things, and did not dare to talk nonsense anymore.
Ru Taisu was slapped by Emperor Taizu with a board, but this butt also made him famous. He was upright as an official, not afraid of power, and was ready to die. He became a very respected figure in the court and the country.
After Zhu Yuanzhang wrongly blamed Ru Taisu, he always wanted to make up for it and comfort him. At a banquet that invited him, Zhu Yuanzhang raised his glass and said to Ru Taisu: "Drink the golden cup with you, and the hand-to-hand sword will not be spared. "Tell him clearly that if you are loyal to me, we can raise the golden cup to drink together. But if you want to be disobedient, my sharp blade will never be merciless. Ru Taisu leaned over and bowed down, and raised her cup to answer, "The Dan is sincere in serving the country, and does not avoid the holy heart. "Tell the emperor that I am wholeheartedly dedicated to serving the country, and I am not afraid that the emperor will be unhappy, nor will I avoid the emperor's criticism.
Due to good performance, in the tenth year of Hongwu, Ru Taisu served as the political participation in Zhejiang, and in the eighteenth year of Hongwu, she was promoted to the Minister of Revenue.But soon, he was demoted to the censor for his mistake. Later, he was implicated in the matter of involving the important official of the "Lan Yu case", Zhan Hui and 12 colleagues went to court with their shackles, and eventually died of seizures.
Thank you to all friends for reading "Spring and Autumn in the Palm". If you like it, you can click the prompt "Subscribe" or "Follow" in the upper right corner of the column. We jointly appreciate historical interesting stories and recall historical events... (Statement: The pictures in the article are all from the Internet)
1
