My Pen Pal Zhu Yuanzhang

Chapter 432: Three Ways to Maintain the Integrity of the Kingdom

"When a war breaks out, each lord will lead his own knight troops and fight together under the king's call.

Regardless of other national governance issues, just talking about the military, can you see any problems, Mr. Zhu?"

What's the problem? Zhu Yuanzhang snorted coldly. This is a huge problem!

Within one country, each place is an independent country. Isn't that the Zhou emperor during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period?

It can be replaced at any time!
Not only did the nobles collect taxes privately, they also used the taxes to support their own armies. What is this called in the Ming Dynasty? It's called raising private soldiers, and it's a serious crime of treason, with the lighter punishment being death by beheading and the heavier punishment being the extermination of the entire clan!

The European countries are playing the game this way, aren't they afraid of getting themselves killed?
"Of course, with your knowledge, you can see at a glance that this form of government is extremely loose and unstable. This is one of the reasons why several major countries and nations in Europe have common ancestors but have not yet been unified.

In order to maintain the stability of his country, the king adopted two methods. The first was to grant fiefdoms to his own blood relatives, using blood to ensure the integrity of the country; the second was to form alliances through marriage.

Use marriage to maintain the integrity of the territory and gain more support from the nobles, especially military support."

As for marriage alliances, this is easy for us to understand. I have done it before, and many times. It was just to win people's hearts.

In that case, the Makaros captured by Zhu Laosi and the Xu family boys was the one that the Kingdom of Aragon chose to marry the princess to in order to gain the support of their family?

A political marriage is a union of two people for the sake of economic, military and political interests.

"The feudal system in Europe also exists in many places, such as Japan. Although there is an emperor on the surface, the real power is held by the feudal lords. However, the Japanese system is more similar to the Warring States Period in China.

Well, there are many more forms of political power in the world, such as the tribal form in Africa, which can’t be called a political power, but a clan.

In addition to the feudal system, there is of course another important form of political organization - the imperial system.

Simply put, any empire that can be called an empire and whose supreme ruler is an emperor is an imperial state, and the Ming Dynasty is no exception. Of course, the Ming Dynasty is quite special, and there is only one such empire in the world. We will talk about this later."

When Zhu Yuanzhang saw that Lao Li mentioned the Ming Dynasty, his curiosity was immediately aroused. Wow, I wonder what Lao Li thinks of me?

“The greatest feature of the imperial system is that the emperor holds the military and political power, and the emperor sends officials to manage the local areas, rather than relying on royal relatives and nobles to maintain rule.

It does not mean that the feudal system must be strictly distinguished from the imperial system. The feudal system also exists in imperial countries. For example, the Mongol Empire, the several khanates under it were basically independent.

Why do I say that the Ming Dynasty is the most unique in the world? Because the concentration of imperial power in the Ming Dynasty is the highest in the world. In addition to this, China also has a unique system for selecting civil servants in the world - the imperial examination!
The existence of scientific examinations allows ordinary people to fully participate in the exercise of state power and greatly increases the opportunities for people to move up.

For example, if you are a peasant in Europe, you can only farm for your whole life, and you will not be able to join the army. The ceiling for your career advancement is to be a squire for a knight. If you are really lucky, such as saving the king who is out hunting, you may be granted a small noble title, but this chance is very slim.

What about the peasants in the Ming Dynasty? As long as they were not born into a poor family, they could take part in the imperial examinations and thus change their destiny.

It is precisely because of this effective civil servant selection system, combined with the imperial power, that the administrative efficiency of the Ming Dynasty has far surpassed that of other countries in the world at the same time!"

Zhu Yuanzhang smiled so much that his beard twitched, and he felt extremely happy. He knew that our Ming Dynasty is unique!
“Of course, the Ming Dynasty’s system is not perfect, but compared to other countries, it is already at the ceiling level.

After understanding the organizational form of the political power, we can conclude that today's Europe is composed of a group of countries that are combined by blood ties and marriages. Although they are called countries, in fact, most European people have no concept of the country at all. What they identify with more is the lord above their heads.

In addition to blood ties and marriages, there is another way that the king uses to maintain the aristocratic fiefdoms and prevent them from splitting up. This is the most important force on the other side of Europe - the Roman See!
This is what we mentioned before, theocracy!"

Finally, we are talking about divine authority! Zhu Yuanzhang was very excited. He was very curious and did not understand why the secular monarchy could share power with the religious sects. This was totally inconsistent with his values.

To him, religion is just a tool, and they can do whatever they want within the circle they have drawn. It is harmless for devout believers to chant Buddhist scriptures and eat vegetarian food, but if they try to interfere in government affairs, don't blame the Jinyiwei for taking drastic measures!

Zhu Yuanzhang thought of more, why China has never had the phenomenon of theocracy completely overwhelm the imperial power, well... Zhang Jiao in the late Han Dynasty does not count, that was a rebellion, the same nature as the White Lotus Sect, and it is completely different from this!

There are probably two main reasons for this. One is that after the Zhou Dynasty came to power, the Zhou rituals replaced the Shang Dynasty's worship of ghosts and gods.

The second and most important reason is that the rise of Confucianism became the absolute orthodoxy in the Han Dynasty, and Confucianism advocated that "a man should not talk about strange things, supernatural powers, or gods..."

In history, there have been great scholars like Fan Zhen, whose work "The Theory of the Extinction of God" has a considerable influence on today's scholars. In other words, the mainstream of the literary world is not to believe in God, let alone to believe in religion.

As a result, religion has not actually been able to gain prominence in China, and religion has hardly had any influence on the foundation of the political power.

Therefore, theocracy in the Ming Dynasty is a joke.

Zhu Yuanzhang felt that his analysis made sense, and he could discuss it with Lao Li later, but he decided to first see how Lao Li explained Europe.

"Theocracy naturally comes from the belief in God. The God they believe in is called Jehovah in translation, and later also called God. This God is described in their scripture, the Bible, as the god who created everything and is the only true God in the world. Other gods of faith are regarded as false gods or demons by them.

Around the belief in "God", there were Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism. The most important and influential one was Catholicism, which was also called Catharism or Catholicism in Ming Dynasty.

Tsk tsk, this "God" is so domineering, Zhu Yuanzhang sighed. He naturally knew what Catholicism was. After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, he drove away those Catholics.

This Catholic religion was widely preached in the Central Plains during the previous dynasty and had a close relationship with the Yuan court. Moreover, most of the believers were Semites. If we don't drive them away, we would be very unfair to the people who suffered during the previous dynasty!
(End of this chapter)