Spoiling History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Don't say Xu Da regrets, Zhu Yuanzhang also regrets.

Although I don't remember writing such a letter to the third brother, there is nothing wrong with the description in it.

Since the first year of Hongwu, he crossed the Yangtze River and Huai River to pacify Qi and Lu, rolled Henan into Tongguan, expelled Yuan Jun and settled Youji, and recovered Jin and Ji to quickly win Hexi, and then Guanzhong returned to the heart and pacified the world.

The time spent before and after was only two and a half years, which can be said to be rare in ancient times.

And if he could really wipe out the remnants of Yuan in one go in the fifth year of Hongwu, he would have the confidence to brag about his martial arts even when he met Emperor Taizong of Tang.

It's just a pity that the high spirits when swearing the oath of allegiance were ultimately defeated by the wind and snow in the north. The continuous victories since the first year of Hongwu finally ended in Helin, breaking the undefeated legend.

Good horses and fierce soldiers were both damaged, so the situation that could have been solved once and for all was cut off.

Compared with Li Wenzhong's angry sigh and Xu Da's unwillingness, Zhu Yuanzhang's emotional fluctuations were not that great.

"I think the name of Tula River is very good. Thousands of years later, our descendants will also go to this river to pay tribute to the heroes of the Ming Dynasty who fought bravely on the riverside."

Then the emperor turned his head and looked at Xu Da:

"Even if it is just to keep the name of this river, brother Xu Da should also restore the Yuan Dynasty to achieve complete success."

At this moment, Xu Da thought of a lot of things, including his brothers who died young but passed down his reputation, the Tiger Guards who fought to the death after being defeated, the brave soldiers who died on the way back to the capital, and the mourning children in Beiping who pulled him to ask if his father was heroic.

So he finally stood up and said word by word:

"If the remnant Yuan Dynasty is not destroyed, Xu Da will not return."

The atmosphere in the Huagai Palace was a little solemn, and the meaning of the emperor and the general was clear. The Ming Dynasty was determined to destroy the remnant Yuan Dynasty.

Seeing this, the crown prince asked curiously:

"Since Daddy has such a great ambition, then there is no need to add to the "Record of Ancestors' Instructions", right?"

This sentence made Zhu Yuanzhang's expression of getting along with his subjects disappear instantly, and he said almost instantly:

"Absolutely impossible!"

Zhu Biao was a little anxious:

"The land of Mobei is not enough to supply, and the Hu people are not enough to obey orders, so how can we conquer it?"

Zhu Yuanzhang finally understood that his eldest son was waiting here.

In the past, when discussing polo in later generations, it was said that the words "the land is not enough to supply, and the people are not enough to obey orders" in the "Record of Ancestors' Instructions" prevented the Ming Dynasty from expanding abroad, and after the foreign threats were eliminated, the Ming Dynasty lost its martial spirit.

At the beginning of the 14th year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang remembered clearly that there was no such sentence in the "Record of Ancestors' Instructions" he personally compiled.

So the crown prince's intention was very simple, and it was a bit like using his own spear to attack his own shield.

Zhu Yuanzhang, who had figured out the key points, looked down on him:

"How can we lump the Hu Yuan and the vassal states together!"

Before Zhu Biao could figure out what was going on, he heard his fourth brother beside him say:

"Conquer all four hundred states of the Ming Dynasty..."

Then he saw his father's face change instantly, and he raised his hand as if he was going to say something.

But his fourth brother was straightforward and hid behind his mother, so his father's raised hand turned smoothly and pointed at him, Zhu Biao.

But perhaps he could not bear to blame his eldest son, so he put his raised hand down again and slapped the table beside him:

"We have fought all over the world, traveled north and south, and all we have seen and known are talents. In the end, we founded the Ming Dynasty. How could we not know how to benefit our Ming Dynasty!"

"The Japanese affairs are just a moment of ignorance. We will change our minds after hearing about them. Aren't all the thousands of words for the eternal foundation of our Ming Dynasty?"

However, as soon as he said this, he saw the expression on his eldest son's face that he wanted to say something but stopped. The emperor suddenly remembered that the Ming Dynasty's national destiny is no secret now, and that number has nothing to do with the eternal foundation no matter how you calculate it.

But it was neither appropriate nor realistic to criticize Zhu Biao verbally, so Zhu Yuanzhang turned his finger:

"Third brother, what are you laughing at?"

At this time, Jin Wang Zhu Yu, who had been concentrating on recalling his father's letter, looked up blankly:

"Ah?"

[After the defeat in Lingbei, Zhu Yuanzhang brought back the recommendation system, with a clear intention, which was to concentrate his strength in small steps and quickly recuperate and govern the world.

But objectively speaking, this decision also raised Hu Weiyong, resulting in the need to kill the chef Xiao Hu.

Some people believe that Zhu's contempt for the imperial examination in the early Ming Dynasty was precisely the result of his inadequate understanding of officials.

Since the birth of the centralized system, officials sent by the emperor to the local areas did not actually need to be able to govern the local areas. They were more like representatives of imperial power to ensure local obedience and achieve the ultimate goal: collecting taxes.

To put it bluntly, officials in the feudal era were more of a game of deterrence between the central and local governments:

I may not be able to accomplish a thing, but I can definitely make a thing fail.

Just like the three provinces and six ministries were tossed around after the birth of the three provinces and six ministries system, but the six ministries remained unmoved, the real support for local governance under the feudal imperial power was the officials, and all dynasties had always been very strict about this, resulting in "rectifying the administration of officials" becoming a familiar term.

In this context, officials are more like spokespersons for the local government. The struggle between the imperial power and the local government is essentially to strive for the personnel power of officials, so that local officials can become the absolute representatives of the imperial power.

From the entry of meritorious officials into the government in the early Han Dynasty to the use of the recommendation system by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to seize power, and then to the later nine-rank officials, the local government and the imperial power have always been a dynamic game process. It was not until the birth and maturity of the imperial examination system that the appointment and removal of local personnel could be truly controlled by the emperor.

There are also opinions that the imperial examination system is not easy, so the Jinshi are not grateful to the imperial power, and only think that they are named by their own ability, which may not be beneficial to the central government.

However, the emperor who implemented the imperial examination system should not care about this. After all, as long as the Jinshi do not thank the nobles, relatives, eunuchs, military generals, etc., as the ruler, it would be better for these imperial examination Jinshi not to thank anyone, and never thank anyone.

This is also the basis of the Yuan Dynasty's exile that we talked about in previous issues. The Mongolian nobles can use the official promotion law to appoint officials at will, and the officials who are appointed will naturally think that the nobles in front of them are the benefactors, which resulted in the Yuan Dynasty's political orders being difficult to issue from the central government.

From the point of view of the abolition of the imperial examination system in the sixth year of Hongwu, alienating nobles like Li Shanchang and reusing newcomers like Hu Weiyong can be seen as a prevention of the recommendation system to prevent the power center from shifting to the nobles, but the revival of such an ancient system in a new empire has a far greater impact than Zhu Yuanzhang estimated.

Here we directly borrow the data from "Research on the Recommendation of Old Officials in the Yuan Dynasty during the Hongwu Period in the Early Ming Dynasty".

During the Hongwu period, there were 422 officials of the third rank or above, of whom 197 were recommended, accounting for 46.9%.

Among the six ministers, 48.67% were recommended; and if we list them in detail, the Ministry of Personnel and the Ministry of Revenue had the lowest proportion of recommended officials, both not exceeding 30%; the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Rites were about the same, both around 50%; the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Works were both as high as 75%. 】