People in the Ming Dynasty are lawless

Chapter 701 Everyone Misunderstood Zhu Yuanzhang

The funniest thing about this incident is that some people, after reading a few history books, think they understand an era very well and even understand why these people did what they did and why these emperors governed in that way.

Chen Han may not know why Zhu Yuanzhang had to do this back then, but after coming to the Ming Dynasty, he discovered a big problem, that is.

Many times, Zhu Yuanzhang had to do this in order to clean up the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty.

What is "read"? It's very simple. In fact, if you separate the relationship between the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty and think that the Yuan Dynasty is the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty is the Yuan Dynasty, then it is completely wrong. It shows that you don't understand history at all and you don't know how to look at history.

Because this itself cannot be viewed separately. It's a very simple truth that although the Yuan Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty were two dynasties, there were many inheritance relationships between them.

For example, in terms of laws, systems, and customs, you cannot regard the Yuan Dynasty as a dynasty established by nomadic people who simply left after being defeated. You have to consider that the Yuan Dynasty ruled for nearly a hundred years.

Their governance strategies and their influence on the Central Plains dynasties have long been deeply rooted.

Even though they were a nation that came from the far north, after arriving in the Central Plains dynasty, they had already brought about subtle changes to the common people through their policies, customs, and their habits of transforming the environment.

Most of the time, these nomadic generals or nobles of the Yuan Dynasty would use their own habits of living in the grassland tribes to make some specific changes they wanted to the thoughts and behaviors of the people of the Central Plains dynasty.

Under such circumstances, ordinary people could only accept it passively. If the first and second generations were still a little reluctant to accept it, by the time the third generation came around there was actually no choice but to accept it, because there was no hope and they could only live in this despair.

This is still a more pleasant way of saying it. To put it bluntly, every common people just wants to live. No matter who is the emperor above you, whether you are a Han emperor or a foreigner, as long as they get what they want and live a good life, they will not have any objections.

To put it more bluntly, it is much better to be a dog in prosperous times than to be a human in troubled times.

It is precisely because of this that the common people do not have so many thoughts. They just want to survive for a while, even if the organizations above them have been replaced by foreign races and barbarians whose civilization is far inferior to that of the Central Plains people.

But who can blame them for having more military force? After they defeated your Central Plains dynasty, they stole your emperor's throne. Then you can only listen to them, because that is the only thing you can do, because the common people have no ability to resist. Even the upper-class nobles, those of you who should really resist, cannot resist.

Do you want us, the common people at the bottom of society, to complete this impossible task for you?

This is itself a kind of compulsion, this is itself unreasonable, and this is itself full of absurdity and ridiculousness.

So the common people are actually the most innocent and they are the most passive in accepting all this. They don’t want to, and they may want to preserve some traditions of the Han nationality in the Central Plains dynasty. They also want to always be firm in their inner choices. They also want to drive the nomadic peoples away. Do they want to live under the iron rule of the nomadic peoples?
That's not called living, that's called surviving.

So don't think that because you are a modern person, you can judge the ancients with your own modern concepts. Don't think that the common people are united together, like a particularly solidified cement slurry that can be pasted anywhere and connected together.

Not to mention that in the ancient times, it was difficult for ordinary people to connect with each other under the transportation conditions. Even if you could connect with an ordinary citizen holding a carrying pole, a hoe, a pickaxe, or a shovel, could you defeat the soldiers in iron armor fighting on the battlefield?

Not to mention that those officers and soldiers may have horses. They are very good at riding and shooting, and their horses are very fast. How can you compete with them?

Since we can't beat them, are we still willing to make unnecessary sacrifices?
Is there anyone who can see the meaningless sacrifices you make?
Can these meaningless sacrifices definitely change anything?

Since they cannot change their fate, ordinary people have no choice but to live in misery.

Therefore, under this system, they could only slowly accept it, and they could only accept the living habits left over from the Yuan Dynasty. But one thing must be understood, the reason why the Yuan Dynasty was called a barbaric dynasty was that it only lasted for more than 90 years before fleeing to the northern desert.

It is because of this barbaric dynasty that their level of civilization is not as high as that of the Han nationality. During the ruling stage, they can only be highly dependent on the Han nationality. Once they encounter some uncertainties, even a small blow, they may not be able to bear it and their physique will collapse.

Because they were barbaric, they were able to conquer some dynasties with less powerful military force for a while, but they could not rule for a long time a civilization that blossomed much earlier than theirs.

The reason why the Yuan Dynasty collapsed was not only because of their incompatible living habits and their rule, but also because they often relied too much on the Han people, and then failed to eliminate some of the Yuan Dynasty's internal ethnic groups' ambitions of those individuals who wanted to enjoy themselves and control the Han people for a long time.

When their ambitions cannot be achieved, they can only be eliminated.

The more important reason is that during the Yuan Dynasty, something suddenly happened that was so serious that they had no way of facing it head-on. That was the arrival of the Little Ice Age. So there were only a few signs, so it was not as serious as in the early Qing Dynasty. But once such a thing happened, it would be a chain reaction.

For example, there are more and more flood disasters, droughts, and frequent changes in weather.

For a nation whose ruling ability is already very weak, encountering such an incident will definitely lead to a more serious chain reaction, causing the people to rebel and overthrow their dynasty.

However, after the overthrow, the establishment of the Ming Dynasty did not immediately eradicate the evil legacy brought by the Yuan Dynasty.

In fact, many people think that why Zhu Yuanzhang had to abolish the prime minister was because of his personal desire for power. He wanted to concentrate power in his own hands. However, it should be explained that the urban-rural system at that time was no longer the prime minister system of the Han Dynasty, which was said to be the emperor's deputy and the leader of all officials. It was not like this, because after the transformation of the Yuan Dynasty, it had become a separate system similar to the civil service warlord system.

Their administrative systems were completely different. In other words, the prime minister system of the Yuan Dynasty was actually just a skin of the prime minister system, and internally it was still the same kind of rule that the Yuan Dynasty had on the grasslands.

In fact, the rights of the emperor and the prime minister are not just a simple contradiction. On the contrary, sometimes the prime minister can override the emperor, because the original system of the Mongolians is not that I, the emperor or the boss, have to govern the world.

Instead, they have a system of military power, and the boss must be full of martial virtues and must lead the tribes and soldiers under him to charge into battle, kill, and rob.

But after you kill people and rob things, whether it's the distribution of the stolen goods or making plans for the next killing, robbing, and robbing, you need someone who is sensible and at least knows how to communicate to help you plan these things.

If the boss is a very powerful person, he has a clear mind, he knows how to plan, and he can kill the enemy on horseback and plan on foot, then it is easy to deal with. If not, he can only find someone like this.

So why? When Kublai Khan wanted to seize the throne, he had to rely on the Han people, because the Han people's literati were particularly good at doing these things, especially good at sorting out logistics, especially good at communication, and especially good at making plans.

Therefore, Kublai Khan was jokingly said to have brought a group of Han people to kill the people of his own ethnic group in his hometown and seized the throne. So why is it said that the Yuan Dynasty he created must be the dynasty of the Chinese nation, rather than the so-called colonial invasion?
It was because Kublai Khan obtained this position with a group of Han people, so he had to rely on the Han people, because he had no reliable people from his own ethnic group, as they were all killed by him, and the people of his own ethnic group did not trust this emperor at all.

Because of this, there was a tradition in the Yuan Dynasty that the emperor might not directly participate in political management, but the prime minister, or another system born from the previous Mongol Empire, managed the government affairs of the world.

This system is the prime minister system of the Yuan Dynasty. However, if the Yuan Dynasty was destroyed and the Han people were restored to be emperors, an irreconcilable contradiction would arise, because the Han emperor originally wanted to centralize power.

Since Qin Shi Huang unified the Central Plains and founded the first unified feudal dynasty, there was a contradiction between the power of the emperor and the power of the prime minister, so the left and right prime ministers were established at the beginning to make the two prime ministers have conflicts and contradictions so that the emperor can balance the left and right.

The three-province and six-bureau system of the Sui and Tang dynasties also separated the power of the prime minister because too much power of the prime minister would restrict the emperor.

By the time of the Song Dynasty, it seemed that the king and the literati ruled the world together, but the Song Dynasty had stricter defenses for the entire city. Not only could one team not communicate with another, they even came up with a magical system that separated the official title for which you received a salary from the official title for the specific matter you were responsible for.

The purpose is to avoid the occurrence of the whole process, so this inertia will definitely be extended to the Ming Dynasty, because the Ming Dynasty was ruled by the Han people. After so many years of baptism, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty would definitely want to centralize power. Centralization of power will conflict with the power of the prime minister.

But a contradiction occurred at this time, that is, why was Prime Minister Hu Weiyong different from other prime ministers?

That is because Hu Weiyong's position as prime minister was formed under the institutional framework inherited by the Ming Dynasty from the Yuan Dynasty. In other words, if the prime minister wanted to perform his duties, he had to sideline the emperor.

Therefore, we can see that Hu Weiyong is often found in history books. This prime minister often handled things without consulting the emperor, and he handled them by himself, even many so-called military and national affairs, such as taxation and personnel appointments and dismissals, Hu Weiyong dared to ignore the existence of the emperor.

Many people explained that it was because Hu Weiyong was too arrogant, swelled, conceited, and blind, but in fact they overlooked one point, that is, as a scholar, Hu Weiyong actually grew up in the Yuan Dynasty, and the system of the Yuan Dynasty was that the prime minister could handle some matters bypassing the emperor.

So after Hu Weiyong became the prime minister, he naturally felt that he could bypass the environment to handle some things, because that was how the Yuan Dynasty operated.

It is precisely because of this that so many bizarre and seemingly unreasonable things happened. Even many modern people would wonder how a person like you, Hu Weiyong, could do such things in this position. You, Hu Weiyong, should be very smart in this position. Why did you dare to bypass an emperor like Zhu Yuanzhang to do things?

But in fact, it was because of a lack of understanding of the Yuan Dynasty's systems that they forcibly grafted the prime ministers of the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty onto the positions of the prime ministers of the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

However, we ignore the fact that the prime ministers of the Yuan Dynasty and the early Ming Dynasty were actually prime ministers in name only, but they actually did the work of powerful ministers.

Moreover, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang is so similar to the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty. Zhu Yuanzhang started out as a small soldier and then grew up step by step to become a warlord.

He started out by leading people to chop and kill, then became a king, and then an emperor.

This process is just like that of the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty. He is responsible for leading his brothers to rush out, kill, rob and seize territory, and then the logistics and personnel management are all handed over to the literati.

Why did Zhu Yuanzhang say that Li Shanchang was the first meritorious official in his conquest of the world? Because although Li Shanchang did not charge into battle and offer advice on the front lines, he ensured that the soldiers brought by Zhu Yuanzhang had food to eat in the rear.

He ensured that Zhu Yuanzhang had a steady supply of troops, which was the most basic thing.

So when it came to Hu Weiyong, he had this inertia and felt that he could do these things too, because he felt that Zhu Yuanzhang was no different from the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty, who were responsible for fighting and killing outside.

Then all the national affairs will have to be shouldered by me, the prime minister. What do you, Zhu Yuanzhang, know?

But Zhu Yuanzhang was a Han Chinese emperor, not a Mongolian. Zhu Yuanzhang had a deep-rooted ideology that he was the master of his own house and would not allow others to interfere, so Hu Weiyong ended up in tragedy...

(End of this chapter)