Jiajing Chengming

Chapter 245: The butt is crooked? Then drag him out and behead him!

October 20th, the third year of Jiajing’s reign.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining. Inside Zuoshun Gate, all the ministers were gathering to attend the court meeting.

"Start your Majesty!"

"The Imperial Guards discovered that Zeng Quan, a deputy minister of the Ministry of Works, was poisoned yesterday, and the Pacification Office found arsenic in his servant's room, so they suspected that he was killed by his own servant. However, his servant refused to admit it, saying that it was the order of Lin Youfu, the deputy minister of the Dali Temple."

When Zhu Houcong was holding court on that day, Zhang Tong, the Jinyiwei in charge of the Zhenfu Division, reported to him about Zeng Quan.

Zhu Houcong pretended to be surprised after hearing this: "Is this really true?"

then.

Zhu Houcong asked, "Lin Youfu, the Minister of the Dali Temple?"

Lin Youfu stepped out and said, "I am here!"

"Did Zeng Quan get killed by you?"

Zhu Houcong asked.

"Your Majesty! I am innocent!"

"I have never had any grudge against Vice-Minister Zeng. Moreover, I don't have the guts to kill an official appointed by the imperial court. This must be the slander of that servant, or the Pacification Office deliberately framed me!"

"Your Majesty, please tell me clearly!"

Lin Youfu quickly prostrated himself on the ground.

Zhu Houcong said: "I will trust you for now!"

talking.

Zhu Houcong looked at Zhang Tong and said, "The Pacification Office must come up with real evidence!"

Zhang Tong bowed and said yes.

"But this matter needs to be further investigated. We cannot let an official of the imperial court die for no reason."

Zhu Houcong continued to give orders.

Zhang Tong continued to bow and nodded, with a slight smile on his face.

The so-called arsenic found in the servants' room was actually Wang Qiong's idea, who asked the Jinyiwei to forcibly place arsenic in Zeng Quan's servants' room, which was then discovered by the Jinyiwei.

According to Wang Qiong's idea, they had to prevent the party that actually killed Zeng Quan from throwing dirty water and saying that it was the Jinyiwei who forced Zeng Quan to death. Instead, they had to throw dirty water on the court officials who needed to be slandered first in order to clear themselves and prevent the court officials from attacking the Jinyiwei for killing Zeng Quan.

Therefore, Zhang Tong threw the dirty water on Lin Youfu, and he threw it on Lin Youfu just to show off in front of Yao Lai and others.

At the court meeting that day, precisely because the Zhenfu Division had reported this first, the court officials who intended to criticize the Zhenfu Division had to stop.

"His Majesty!"

"I have a report to make!"

then.

The Censor Luo Fu also attended the court session.

Zhu Houcong said: "Speak!"

"I accuse the Right Censor-in-Chief Yang Tingyi and the Left Minister Yi Hui of deceiving the emperor and scaring the people. They deliberately spread the threat of the Portuguese and created panic in order to appease your majesty's desire to build warships and go out to sea to search for pearls!"

"From what I have heard, most of the Portuguese only admire China and want to pay tribute and trade. Not all of them are like Pires and Coelho!"

"The Portuguese are just a small country. They can't swallow up the Ming Dynasty, and they won't be foolish enough to become enemies of the Celestial Empire. As for the few rebellious people, Your Majesty should just reprimand and appease them. There is no need to start a war with them. This will not only waste people's money and time, but also encourage their resentment, which is not conducive to the peaceful coexistence between our country and the foreign countries!"

Luo Fuyan said.

"His Majesty!"

"Luo Fu is from Dinghai, Zhejiang. He does not support your Majesty's tough approach to the Portuguese. He also believes the rumors spread by the Portuguese that your Majesty built warships to go out to sea to search for pearls. There is only one reason for this, that is, his family and the Portuguese must be suspected of smuggling!"

"I accuse him of colluding with the barbarians and being disloyal!"

At this time.

Xiong Jia, the Du Shizhong, stepped forward and expressed his views.

Luo Fu suddenly shuddered, glanced at Xiong Jia, and then denied it with a red face: "Your Majesty, I didn't!"

"If you didn't, how could you think that Your Majesty wanted to build a large number of warships to go out to sea to search for pearls, and not to strengthen the maritime defenses to prevent the Portuguese and others from arbitrarily plundering our seas?"

Xiong Jia asked Luo Fu back.

Luo Fu said: "Is that what everyone in the community says?"

"That's what people say, so you believe it?"

"Why do you not believe the rumors that the Portuguese are vicious?"

"It can be seen that you would rather believe in the Portuguese than believe that Your Majesty is a self-disciplined and righteous sage!"

Xiong Jia said loudly.

Luo Fu's heart tightened immediately after hearing this, and he knelt down hurriedly and said, "Your Majesty, I am innocent! I just heard that most of the Portuguese came here only for trade and missionary work!"

"Drag him out and chop him up!"

"Arrest his entire family and ask them for the crime of colluding with foreigners!" Zhu Houcong said lightly at this time.

Luo Fu was shocked and couldn't help but look up.

"Your Majesty, Holy Might!"

Xiong Jia immediately bowed with his hands clasped in greeting, a sneer on his face.

Zhu Houcong’s own imperial party also exists among the censors now.

Especially after Wang Yangming became the Minister of Personnel, he placed many military officials into the Kedao system.

of course.

Xiong Jia had been a member of the imperial party for a long time, and he joined Zhu Houcong during the Grand Ceremony.

And precisely because of this, in many cases, there was no need for Zhu Houcong to take action personally. For example, if he wanted to refute the claim that Luo Fu was colluding with the barbarians and was disloyal, he would have his own censors come out to refute it.

So Luo Fu was dragged away.

Luo Fu was terrified and shouted, "Your Majesty! I am truly innocent!"

After Luo Fu was dragged away, Zhu Houcong looked at the court officials and said in a deep voice:
"As Xiong Jijian said, although the censors can report things based on hearsay, they cannot be biased, especially those like Luo Fu, who would rather believe that the foreigners are good people than that I, the emperor and father, am a diligent and frugal ruler. How can I not treat such a minister who regards me as a bandit as well as a bandit?"

"If a minister is not discreet, he will lose his integrity. I hope that all the ministers will take this as a warning and not forget which country and which ethnic group they belong to!"

"Please keep this in mind!"

Some people who wanted to plead for Luo Fu did not dare to speak anymore.

Because of Xiong Jia's eloquent speech, and the fact that Your Majesty was building warships in search of Eastern Pearls and for personal enjoyment, and that the Portuguese should not be hated, it was equivalent to treating the emperor as a thief and foreigners as friends.

Although, many civil servants who came from the landlord class naturally had the characteristics of wanting to be compradors, they preferred to "be good at foreign things" and were unwilling to trust their own monarch and people.

But in the face of the righteousness between the monarch and his subjects, when the monarch and other ministers really start to argue, it is indeed not easy to say openly that praising foreigners is indeed better than praising the emperor.

After all, if you support foreigners, you can also unite with them to enslave the people.

You can praise the emperor. If the emperor is really a good emperor, then you will be forced by the emperor to be good to the people, and then you cannot criticize that this is wrong, because that is what the saints said.

Saying.

Zhu Houcong promoted the Portuguese threat theory and created a lot of hype for it, portraying the Portuguese as unforgivable criminals. Although this caused panic and anxiety among many scholars and civilians, it also made many bureaucrats and gentry from the landlord class very resistant and disgusted with this.

These people don't really like this kind of nationalist preaching.

This is because this kind of preaching is certainly helpful in uniting the people to resist foreign aggression, but if it goes too far, it will magnify their crime of colluding with foreigners to oppress the people.

More importantly, to promote this idea, we must benefit the common people of our ethnic group and treat them as human beings.

If so, everything from the ritual system to the criminal law and even orthodox thought must be reformed.

But such a change would mean that they could no longer be content with their status as landlords who "profit from the people".

Moreover, the main reason is that this kind of ideological propaganda has gone too far, which will make it difficult for them to surrender to foreign races with peace of mind when there is a change of dynasty in the future and foreign races may rule the Central Plains.

Therefore, they actually prefer to cede territory in exchange for peace or pay tribute in exchange for peace.

For example, during the Song Dynasty, some scholars and officials returned the strategic locations captured by the front-line generals to Western Xia, believing that this would be more conducive to peace.

In the history of the Ming Dynasty, Hetao and Hami Wei were almost voluntarily abandoned by those in power, and even in the late Ming Dynasty there were officials who advocated abandoning the Liao area.

This way.

There were civil servants who couldn't help but jump out to speak for the Portuguese, and some even brought their own dry food to speak for the Portuguese.

Many times, the Portuguese did not pay to bribe them.

Of course, the Portuguese themselves were also very opposed to the Ming Emperor doing this.

They did hope that the Ming would be friendly and tolerant towards them, tolerate their looting along the coast and even their occupation of some islands, rather than be hostile towards them, and satisfy their trade needs.

Now, after learning that the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty wanted to treat them as enemies, many Portuguese became quite panicked and began to run around bribing Ming officials, hoping that they would speak for them or even ask them to hide their whereabouts.

But how can there be such a good thing in the world?

Unless the emperor himself only wants to eat the flesh of his own people, as a conservative emperor, he may put the "rights and interests" of foreigners above the "rights and interests" of his own people.

of course.

Objectively speaking, although the landlord class is reactionary and conservative in nature, loves to be compradors, and only wants to eat up their own people, and even has the motivation to eat up their own people until there is nothing left, there are indeed some sober people among them.

Especially among the civil servants, many of them have fought their way out of thousands of troops, and are not entirely driven by personal interests.

Therefore, there were people like Su Xun in the Song Dynasty who wrote "On the Qin Dynasty", and there were ministers in the Ming Dynasty who had long seen through Japan's wolfish ambitions. As soon as Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea, they dared to strongly advocate to Emperor Wanli to spend huge sums of money to mobilize the country's elite troops for cross-border warfare.

Naturally, there were such sober-minded ministers in Zhu Houcong's court, and it was precisely because of such sober-minded ministers that they would take the initiative to serve as minions of this proactive and enterprising emperor, and some were even more radical than the emperor himself.

For example, Zhang Cong not only supported the emperor's construction of warships, but also hoped that the emperor would reform the tax policy.

Of course, people like Zhang Cong were even more hated by conservative civil servants of the same class.

Now, Zhu Houcong ordered the execution of officials who had obviously rebelled against Luo Fu, which made the court officials present who opposed the emperor's large-scale warship construction more certain that the emperor was determined to build large-scale warships and open up sea resources. They also believed more firmly that they could use this opportunity to make the emperor vent his anger on Zhang Cong and other sober people whom they truly hated.

Therefore, Wang Ju, a member of the Zhejiang gentry, who knew about the lottery of bamboo and wood in Zhejiang in advance, stood up and said:
"Your Majesty! I heard that Zhang Fujing, the Minister of Works and Right Censor-in-Chief, bribed the soldiers to burn the bamboo and wood to extract the large amount of bamboo and wood from the branch factory in order to change the ancestral law, causing great losses to the national treasury. I request that this matter be investigated immediately. If it is true, he should be severely punished!"

(End of this chapter)