Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 805: A Cold Butt

Zhu Di sat back between his brothers with a dazed look on his face. He was greeted by different looks from his elder and younger brothers. Even Zhu Zhen had a look of worry between his eyebrows.

The second brother Zhu Chong winked and patted his shoulder.

Although the third brother Zhu Gang said some comforting words, the corners of his mouth that were raised high were more noticeable.

The fifth brother Zhu Su was as reliable as ever. He gave a brief account of what had just happened in the light curtain. Since his father had said so, there was obviously no need to hide it from his fourth brother.

After the simple whole story was explained, Zhu Di's face was full of shame, and he found it difficult to even open his mouth to Zhu Biao.

Instead, Zhu Biao took the initiative to pat his fourth brother on the shoulder like Zhu Chong did:

"Brother, listen to me. A wise man in the world is like a needle in a bag. The end is immediately visible. My brother is no exception."

"And the things I just described are still nearly twenty years away. Those... things have not happened yet. As you said, how can we kill them without teaching them? And as Dad said, we will stay in the capital for a while."

Hearing his elder brother repeating what he had just said, Zhu Di wanted to find a hole in the ground to crawl into.

No wonder my brother looked like that, and no wonder my father never mentioned Lan Yu’s name from beginning to end.

If he had thought it was Lan Yu's fault and suggested killing him first to eliminate future troubles, would Daddy... I dare not think about it.

Wiping the sweat off his forehead, Zhu Di sat upright, staring intently. From now on, he was his brother's good younger brother and his father's good prince!

……

In Yecheng, everyone who had gathered here to celebrate the New Year and the victory suddenly felt a little bored.

Liu Bei finally sighed:

"This Emperor Hongwu is really good at tactics."

This short sentence also expressed what everyone was thinking.

Although the situation may have been chaotic at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was certainly the problem of Hu Feng's influence on Han officials.

But in any case, tens of thousands of people were killed and both new and old nobles were destroyed. A rough calculation of the number of people who might be implicated made Liu Bei and others feel a little horrified.

From the perspective of a minister, Zhang Fei even felt angry for a moment:

"Those who are corrupt or not, those who work or not, those who fight wars or those who govern the people, none of them can escape. Emperor Hongwu must be afraid that his descendants will die of exhaustion."

"You speak as if no one wants this crappy throne."

As soon as Zhang Fei said this, he saw Liu Xie turned his head and looked at him, so he quickly waved his hand to make amends:

"Your Majesty, just pretend you didn't hear it. That's not what I, Old Zhang, meant..."

After a speechless look, Liu Xie turned his head away. He knew that General Zhang Fei was outspoken.

Besides, from his own experience, he quite agrees with this statement. Sitting on the throne may not be a good feeling.

But this was of course not appropriate to say, so I changed the subject:

"The Emperor Hongwu of the Ming Dynasty may have his difficulties... The issue of the mixed residence of Han and Hu people has always been difficult to deal with." "I hope that my uncle and Mr. Zhuge... can come up with a good plan to govern the northern desert and help the Han people in Hebei break this barrier."

After many years of twists and turns in the turbulent times, Liu Xie also had his own thoughts, and the strategy of controlling the Hu was one of them. After all, if you think carefully, the bandits who overthrew the Han Dynasty were the beneficiaries of the strategy of controlling the Hu.

This is not to blame any one party, but because he has been living under someone else's roof for a long time, he can see more clearly the conflicts between the forcibly migrated Hu people and the common people.

Liu Bei and Kong Ming looked at each other, then bowed and agreed together. After all, this was one of their wishes and plans.

[As we said before, the Hu-Lan case lasted throughout the entire Hongwu Dynasty.

Although the names are Hu Weiyong Case, Lan Yu Case, Collaboration with Japanese Aggressors Case, Li Shanchang Case, etc., in fact, these can all be classified into one and called the Meritorious Noble Case.

Starting from the changes in the Secretariat in the third year of Hongwu and ending with Zhu Yuanzhang's death, the context of Zhu Yuanzhang's changing attitude towards the founding heroes is very clear.

From being favored and reused at first, to suspicion and distrust, then to restriction and control, and finally to complete eradication, this was basically the fate of the nobles during the Hongwu period.

However, if we analyze this major case that lasted for more than 20 years from the perspective of the noble case, it is unexpectedly simple.

To put it bluntly, the imperial power has been strengthened generation after generation. In fact, the supreme nature of the imperial power has become very obvious. The emperor is noble and the ministers are humble. The ministers can only obey the emperor's orders and there is no need to resist. Life and death, honor and disgrace are all in the hands of the emperor. This is a fact that has been established since the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

As far as this matter is concerned, except for a very small number of people, most of the nobles in the early Ming Dynasty were not sensitive enough to this change.

There is no need for modern analysis on this point. Tan Qian in the late Ming Dynasty had already made it very clear when he wrote "Guoqie": The old heroes who crossed the Yangtze River were all fishermen, and the lord and minister were not determined, and they looked at each other like barbarians. Seeing that he held the military power alone, he could not help but do whatever he wanted.

To put it bluntly, the old heroes who crossed the Yangtze River were the Huaixi Party. For them, what they identified with more was not Zhu Yuanzhang's identity as an emperor, but his identity as the leader of the Huaixi Group which was determined in the early days of his career.

But with the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang also changed from the leader of a local group to the supreme ruler of a national regime. This position constrained him to consider long-term stability and establish a stable ruling order.

The best embodiment of this responsibility is still the words in the conversation between Zhu Yuanzhang and Liu Sanwu: "The emperor treats everyone equally, there is no distinction between them." It clearly recognizes that the emperor cannot be mixed with regional attributes.

After all, the history books have written this very clearly. How many years have the local and central governments been fighting? It is normal for the two sides to fail to reach an agreement on their interests.

Faced with this problem, Zhu Yuanzhang's initial proposal of the Red Book of Iron Certificate was obviously a wishful thinking. He hoped to wash away his local attributes as a noble through such generous treatment, and work hard for the Ming Dynasty together with his Zhu family from generation to generation.

But this kind of operation, to put it bluntly, is like trying to get a cold shoulder. After all, if you want to stop the landlord class from annexing other lands, that is no different from asking for their lives. So in the end, the two sides fought each other, and ended up with the collective destruction of the nobles.

Compared with this two-in-one noble case, the other two of the four major cases are somewhat unworthy of their names.

A typical example is the Empty Seal Case, which was not even recorded in the Veritable Records of Ming Taizu. Some people speculate that the reason is that Fang Xiaoru's father, who compiled the Veritable Records, was convicted and died because of the Empty Seal Case.

Fortunately, this case is not complicated. To put it simply, a group of officials came to Beijing with empty account books with stamps on them to file taxes and discuss with the Ministry of Revenue how to fill in this year's bills. In modern times, anyone who has received nine years of compulsory education would think this kind of thing is complete nonsense.

Later, the officials involved argued that it was because of losses in the transportation of tax grain, and if the numbers didn't match, they would have to send it back for re-checking, which was difficult to do given the long journey.

But what about the officials involved? Zheng Shiyuan was the deputy provincial governor of Huguang; Fang Xiaoru's father, Fang Keqin, was the prefect of Jining. These two places were definitely not far from the capital.

The biggest significance of the Empty Seal Case was probably to put a accusation on Zhu Yuanzhang. Fang Xiaoru said that hundreds of people were imprisoned, while the History of Ming Dynasty said that the person in charge of the seal was executed and the accomplices were exiled.

But in modern times, it turned into that tens of thousands of people were killed in the Empty Seal Case. The origin of this statement should be the sentence "70,000 to 80,000 people were killed in the Empty Seal Case and the Guo Huan Case" in "The Biography of Zhu Yuanzhang".

This Spring and Autumn method is more like shooting an arrow first and then drawing the target, which is a footnote to the conclusion in the biography that Zhu Yuanzhang was "cruel and bloodthirsty, and punished corruption with severe punishments."

(End of this chapter)