People in the Ming Dynasty are lawless

Chapter 690: The inertia of power makes people helpless
Of course, Chen Han also wanted to propose a better solution. He also hoped that the Ming Dynasty would not be in the current situation. The reason why officials and even ordinary people had such ideas was not because they deserved to die.

It is not because their idea is wrong, because to a large extent it is based on Zhu Yuanzhang's idea that the entire world is his own property.

Compared with other dynasties, the idea of ​​hereditary rule was more serious in the Ming Dynasty. The most direct manifestation of this was that the Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang regarded the world as his own property from the beginning.

Then he began to treat everyone as his slaves, whether they were officials or ordinary people, he treated them all equally.

In this regard, it can be said that he has the thinking of a true old farmer, because he has never thought about dividing the world with other people, and he has never felt that he should share power with others.

He looked down upon those who dispersed power to officials, so in his mind, no matter who wanted to share power with me or wanted to fight for your so-called rights from my world.

Your so-called human rights, your so-called interests, everything is against me. If I catch you, I will definitely punish you severely.

Because only in this way can such people disappear.

Only in this way can the people let everyone know that the world belongs to our Zhu family.

why?
It is because of my hard-working and simple lifestyle that I have gained power and the strength to compete with the world's heroes for the world, allowing me to seize the world in one fell swoop.

I won the world today through my own efforts. I did not receive any favors from the Yuan Dynasty, and I was almost welded to death by the officials under the Yuan Dynasty. So who dares to ask me for power?
If anyone wants to share my interests, then I will regard him as an enemy.

There is no way Zhu Yuanzhang would allow him to survive.

Although Zhu Yuanzhang's idea of ​​becoming emperor was a bit extreme and seemed stupid or even irrational, this was his idea.

Everyone would say that his idea is extremely extreme, but we have to admit that it is because the environment in which Lao Zhu lives is so extreme that his idea is extreme.

He lived in the dark era of the late Yuan Dynasty, so he felt that all officials in the world were not good people, and all good things must be in my hands so as not to lose them.

No one is trustworthy. Even the closest people may sometimes betray you, just like Zhu Yuanzhang's own nephew Zhu Wenzhen.

Back then, he trusted Zhu Wen Zheng so much that he sent him to guard Nanchang, and he did keep it. Zhu Yuanzhang at that time felt that if he appointed his nephew as a high official or something, it would make others feel unfair, so he asked Zhu Wen Zheng's opinion at the beginning.

Zhu Wenzhen might have been more humble at the time, thinking that he was comfortable and would definitely give himself a more satisfactory answer, so he was still humble at the time. However, he did not expect that Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy and felt that his nephew understood him very well.

As a result, Zhu Wenzhen was not given a very good official position, so he was very angry at that time. He felt that he was wronged, so he thought about betraying Zhu Yuanzhang and joining Zhang Shicheng.

Of course, this matter was discovered by Zhuge Liang. According to military law, he should have been executed directly. However, because he was his nephew, Zhuge Liang did not do so and simply imprisoned him.

But this incident was a huge blow to Zhu Yuanzhang, and he would never believe anything again. Wouldn't he trust his own nephew and still betray him?
It is under this kind of concept that he formed such extreme ideas and felt that no one would be trustworthy to him. It is also because of this that even if many ministers want him to change his mind, it is impossible because his idea is fixed, because he always feels that he has indeed been let down.

We can't blame Lao Zhu for this. We can only blame the environment at that time for shaped his character. Maybe this kind of character really shouldn't exist, but it happened like this in many situations and this is how people's fate is. Lao Zhu is just so unlucky.

Zhu Wenzhen was such a genius back then. Even though his personality was a bit exaggerated, he was definitely a military genius. But it is really sad that such a military genius nephew could not accompany him to the end.

This is also why he came up with the idea of ​​a family monarchy, because he was an old farmer, he had not received that much education, did not have that many ideas, and did not have that many grand concepts.

He may naively think that since he has conquered the world, everything in the world should belong to him and no one can snatch it from him. Anyone who dares to snatch it will be courting death.

Under the guidance of this idea, Zhu Yuanzhang became such a person. This is why a thinker named Huang Zongxi wrote a book called Mingyi Daifanglu in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, in which he sharply criticized this point.

Many of Huang Zongxi's thoughts were formed because he lived in the late Ming Dynasty and saw too many absurd scenes at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

After he retired to seclusion, he wrote this book, in which he sharply criticized the idea of ​​a hereditary monarchy.

In his opinion, it was precisely because the emperor, who was created by the family dynasty, wanted the whole world to worship him that his will influenced the whole world, leading to the emergence of many incompetent rulers and chaos in the world.

Therefore, he felt that the emperor should not be allowed to rule the world alone, and that a prime minister must be established to disperse the emperor's power. At the same time, the emperor and his ministers must govern the world together on an equal footing. Only in this way could the implementation of wrong policies be minimized as much as possible.

He even criticized the monarchy to a great extent.

He believed that the emergence of monarchy was one of the reasons why the world became corrupt.

It is very likely because he saw too many scenes of this kind in the Ming Dynasty, because the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, starting from the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, always treated the whole world as the property of the Zhu family.

Therefore, none of the later emperors could break away from this framework. This was because the personal influence and prestige of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang were so great. At the same time, the systems he established further strengthened this concept.

This meant that even if later emperors wanted to make changes, it would be impossible.

Because even if the later emperors read the books of sages and understood the truth in the imperial palace, they later discovered that they could not change it because the system had already been established.

Because Zhu's control over the world has caused all officials and people in the world to believe that the world of Zhu Yuanzhang or your Zhu family is like this.

In fact, it is very difficult to change it, because to fundamentally change this concept, one must rebuild the world.

Originally, Prince of Yan Zhu Di had such an opportunity. After all, he came to such a position by rebelling and seizing the world he had been longing for. But why couldn't he change it?
It was because the process of Prince of Yan Zhu Di becoming emperor was not legitimate. After he became emperor, if he created a path of his own, wouldn't it be telling the people of the world clearly that I rebelled and seized the world and founded a new dynasty.

If this is the case, then it is completely wrong. The reason why he was able to seize the world at that time was not only because of the incompetence of Emperor Jianwen, but also because he, the Prince of Yan, Zhu Di, was just a wind. In fact, the biggest reason for his success was that at that time, most people in the world thought that this was just a struggle within the Zhu family.

No matter who among you becomes the emperor, our status and our lives will not change, so most people just sit on the sidelines and watch the fight between the tigers, without really getting involved.

Since Prince of Yan Zhu Di took advantage of this convenience to seize the world, if he claimed to have created a new dynasty after seizing the world, what would the other princes think?
If other princes knew that Prince of Yan Zhu Di dared to say that he had founded a new dynasty, their positions would be very dangerous and they would have to rebel.

One thing is clear: if Prince of Yan Zhu Di believed that he had founded a new dynasty, then his brothers would lose their legitimacy.

If you don't rebel, then Prince of Yan Zhu Di will have to deal with you and others sooner or later. After all, you do not belong to the framework of this newly founded dynasty.

So he missed a great opportunity to change the concept of the Ming Dynasty as a hereditary monarchy.

On the contrary, in order to shape one's own legitimacy and rationality, one must strengthen this concept.

So on this wrong path, he can only go down this wrong path until the end. This is the irony of history.

There was no real disagreement among the descendants of the next Prince of Yan Zhu Di, also known as Emperor Yongle, so his ideas could be implemented all the time, that is to say, the pattern of the Ming Dynasty created by Zhu Yuanzhang was continued, which was a family-run dynasty.

Under such circumstances, there was no choice but to go down this path to the end, which is why Huang Zongxi criticized these systems of the Ming Dynasty.

Because if we look at it as a whole, in fact, among the unified dynasties, let alone the Qin and Han dynasties, the monarch and his ministers ruled the world together.

Of course, the king has always been restricting the prime minister's power, but the prime minister is still an important force.

During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the three-province and six-bureau system came into being in the true sense.

Dividing the prime minister's power into three parts restricted most of his powers, but during the Sui and Tang dynasties, the monarch did govern the world together with his court officials.

During the Song Dynasty, other methods were indeed established to divide the power of the image in order to avoid the emergence of tendencies, but once a strong image appeared, it could still form a strong political tendency.

This shows the power Wang Anshi had at that time.

Therefore, looking at the struggle between the power of the emperor and the power of the prime minister throughout the ancient dynasties, there was an increasing tendency to weaken the power of the prime minister, but the situation of the emperor and his ministers ruling the world together was still maintained.

It was not until the Ming Dynasty that the position of prime minister was truly abolished.

On the one hand, this is because Zhu Yuanzhang's thoughts are indeed somewhat like those of a farmer's son. He does not want a prime minister to fight against him, even though the power of these prime ministers may have been further diluted long ago.

But even so, he still didn't like it.

On the other hand, because the Ming Dynasty at that time inherited many political system traumas from the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang had to strengthen his military power in order to integrate the entire world, concentrate all power in his own hands, and ensure that the Ming Dynasty would not be counterattacked by the Yuan Dynasty.

In other words, Zhu Yuanzhang's abolition of the prime minister was not simply a prelude to his own concentration of power.

It was because the situation at that time forced him to do so. This is why, even in the Qing Dynasty, the prime minister system was not restored.

Because the Qing Dynasty achieved the entire system of the Ming Dynasty, and also inherited many of the political system traumas of the Ming Dynasty.

Now all Chen Han and Zhu Biao can do is to patch up this situation. When the two talked about this issue, they were actually silent. They really have no way to say now that they will immediately restore the prime minister system after the old man passes away.

Even though both of them actually understood that abolishing the prime minister system would definitely be a huge political trauma.

However, the current social atmosphere has already determined that if the prime minister system is really restored, even when Zhu Biao is emperor, he will still have great authority and be able to suppress the rebellion.

But when his descendants became emperors, there would inevitably be a backlash.

Why did the rebellion happen? Mainly because the civil officials wanted to take this opportunity to manipulate the emperor and gain more power.

In other words, it is because many officials may not be truly seeking restoration, and they do not think the prime minister system is particularly superior.

Instead, they want to stage a political show in order to have a say and to gather more power in their own hands.

Because they could use the excuse that one must be filial to the emperor and force the emperor to follow the ancestral system.

This is equivalent to political correctness, which will make it impossible to correct all vicious and harmful systems.

Because every emperor does not want to leave behind a bad reputation of being unfilial, and every emperor does not want everyone to use this name to ridicule him without knowing it, either openly or secretly.

This is political inertia.

So now Chen Han and Zhu Biao are facing such a difficult problem. Even if they find such a problem, there is no way to solve it easily...

(End of this chapter)