Jiajing Chengming

The rebellion in Jiangxi did not have much impact on the capital.

Except for the Ministry of War which was a little busy, Emperor Jiajing and his ministers continued to live their lives as before.

Moreover, for middle and lower-level officials in the Ministry of Personnel such as Fu Hanchen, this incident did not affect their good mood at all in moving into the government-funded housing.

After nearly a year of construction, the residence built by the Ministry of Personnel for its officials was finally completed.

Many middle and lower-level officials in the Ministry of Personnel moved in ahead of time.

Only the officials of the Ministry of Personnel and some officials from wealthy families did not move, under the pretext of giving the place to those who needed it more. In fact, they were mainly unwilling to live in this government-assigned small courtyard without a sedan chair hall and a large garden.

Because many of them have hundreds of servants, it is indeed not appropriate for them to live in a small courtyard.

In any case, for a poor official like Fu Hanchen, he was indeed impressed by the emperor's grace. On that day, he bought some delicious food and fine wine from famous restaurants in the capital, asked his family to prepare some home-cooked meals, and hosted a banquet for several good friends from the same department and hometown at his home.

Li Xueshi, a fellow townsman and friend of Fu Hanchen who was serving as an official in the Ministry of Revenue, was envious of Fu Hanchen after he came to his house. He could not help but sigh as he looked at the eaves of the mansions:

"Your Majesty is truly a benevolent monarch that has never been seen in history. The kindness you show to me is rare even in the annals of history."

"That's right!"

"Although your majesty is harsh and decisive, he is not ungrateful. A loyal and filial minister will naturally be happy to meet such a king and will serve him wholeheartedly to ensure peace for the people and prosperity for the country."

Fu Hanchen agreed with a smile, and then frowned and said:
"But those in the powerful families who are disloyal to the country are unwilling to let Your Majesty truly become a benevolent and holy monarch. They have to create chaos for the reform of military households, and are determined to make the military households worse than slaves!"

"But to be honest, if the military households cannot live like human beings and are willing to fight for the country, today's prosperity will be difficult to maintain!"

"Your Majesty can build public houses for us small officials to live in, can continuously hold special examinations to recruit talents, and can exempt many miscellaneous taxes, all because the profits from maritime trade return to the country, and at the same time, it can also open up foreign profits, and all of this is based on the strong military and horses of the court!"

When Fu Hanchen came to this point, he poured a glass of wine for Li Xueshi and continued:
"And if we want the imperial army to become stronger and stronger, and even to continue to be strong, we must revive the military system and reform the military households!"

Because Fu Hanchen saw that the court's external expansion had greatly increased annual revenue and greatly improved his personal life, and he no longer had to worry about sacrificing his spiritual and moral pursuits for the sake of increasing material wealth, he became a supporter of the court's military household reform.

Li Xueshi nodded.

He hoped that the court's annual revenue would continue to increase greatly and that the emperor would continue to show great favor to him.

Because these small officials in the Ministry of Revenue have not yet enjoyed the treatment of small officials in the Ministry of Personnel!

Therefore, Li Xueshi also supported continuing reforms and supporting the reform of military households to make the court's military stronger and thereby gain more wealth from abroad.

But for this reason, when Li Xueshi thought of the rebellion in Jiangxi, he said with some resentment: "Those powerful and wealthy families who rebelled are really stupid and evil to the core. They rebelled in such a prosperous time, and the only fate they will have is to be crushed to pieces!"

"This clown is actually a good opportunity for the imperial court to destroy a number of powerful families and settle more refugees."

Fu Hanchen followed up.

Li Xueshi smiled after hearing this and said, "That's exactly the point!"

For Li Xueshi, he now only hopes that the emperor's pace of reform will not be affected by this war and that he will continue to favor middle and lower-level officials and gentry.

Because Jiajing used the money increased from the reform to show favor and win over many groups while carrying out the reform, instead of just keeping the money in the national treasury and the inner treasury, the middle and lower-level officials in the court now have little resistance to the military household reform, and many are even quite supportive of it.

For example, Fu Hanchen and Li Xueshi now.

The middle and lower-level officials, as the cornerstone of the bureaucratic system, are the capillaries that make the Ming Dynasty's state machine run. They do not have much resistance to the military household reform, which means that the bureaucratic system will not go against their will at the execution level.

As for the upper-level officials, as long as they are not stupid and blinded by greed to the point of losing their reason, they will understand whether now is the time to act against the emperor.

Therefore, Zhu Houcong was not worried that senior officials would confront him at the decision-making level.

Zhu Houcong did not slow down his pace of reform because of the rebellion.

The palace school has opened as scheduled, and its specific location has been chosen near the Ten Kings' Palace.

Some royal family children with good academic performance were selected by princes from various royal palaces and local governors, and were admitted to the palace school, becoming the first group of royal family children to enter the palace school.

In order to enable these royal family members to have extensive knowledge and to develop a greater interest in scientific research, Zhu Houcong ordered the establishment of an encyclopedia exhibition hall inside the palace school, and asked some orphans who were trained in Xingming Academy and were good at various subjects to serve as tour guides and operators.

"This is a prism. It can create a rainbow!"

Wang Zhi, a young man from Xingming Academy, was standing next to an operating table at this time, holding a prism and talking to the royal family members who came to watch the exhibition.

"really?"

Zhu Qifeng from the Tang Palace in Henan couldn't help but ask.

Wang Zhi nodded. Seeing that it was the day when the winter sun was shining warmly, he took Zhu Qifeng and other clan members to the snow outside the house, took out the prism, and showed it to them on the snow.

Soon, Zhu Qifeng and other royal family members were shocked when the prism produced seven colors of light.

When Wang Zhi changed the position of the prism and converged the seven colors of light into a single color, the royal family members who had gathered around him were even more astonished.

Zhu Qifeng asked with great insight: "Is light composed of seven colors?"

Wang Zhi started to explain. "This is a watertight compartment!"

"What's written here is calculus knowledge."

"This is a microscope. You can see many invisible moving things through it."

"This is an instrument for measuring air. It can tell us that when a fire is burning, oxygen in the air is consumed."

"This is a copper-zinc battery. Zinc is the white metal taken from the furnace wall when smelting lead. They are soaked in salt water and can generate electricity."

at the same time.

There are also other tour guides explaining other scientific knowledge.

The royal family members who came to the palace to study were greatly enlightened by this, and many of them who were interested kept asking questions.

Zhu Zai Zeng, the son of Prince Chongren, also wrote to his father, Prince Chongren Zhu Houxuan, because of the rebellion in Jiangxi:
"If you don't come to the palace school, you won't know. Once you come to the palace school, you will know that there is so much knowledge that you can't learn from your teacher at home!"

"Let's not talk about anything else. It turns out that there are microorganisms in the world that we can't see with our naked eyes. Many of them can cause disease and can only be seen with a microscope."

"Father, I guess you don't know what a microscope is. It's made of glass! It's an instrument that can see organisms that are invisible to the naked eye. People in Xingming Academy call it an instrument."

"Also, father, you must not join the rebellion, because the imperial court cannot be overthrown. I also came to the Imperial Academy and looked at the mineral distribution map of the world. I found out that there are a lot of copper mines in Luzon, a place called Golden Continent with a lot of gold, and a continent in the south with a lot of iron mines!"

"Not to mention the arable land, there are still so many plains outside. If we plant food on them, I don't know how many people we can feed. So, as long as Your Majesty is not confused and complacent, there is no way you can let the rebels succeed!"

In fact, not only the royal family members who came to the palace school were greatly enlightened, but also the great scholar Luo Qinshun who was in charge of the palace school was greatly enlightened.

This forced Luo Qinshun to rethink his understanding of Li and Qi.

Apart from Wang Yangming, the other great Confucian scholars of our time who no longer adhered to Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism but began to deny some of its theories and re-establish their own new knowledge were Luo Qinshun.

However, Luo Qinshun took a different path from Wang Yangming. He opposed Wang's teachings of "heart is reason" and "reaching conscience", and believed: "How can we say that heart is reason, and that exploring reason is the same as exploring this heart?"

However, Luo Qinshun advocated that "principle is the principle of qi" and "principle must be recognized on the basis of qi, but recognizing qi as principle is not correct."

Luo Qinshun's thought is considered materialistic thought. He began to believe that reason is not a spiritual entity, but the law of material movement.

Originally, he planned to use the opportunity of managing the palace school to publicize his own knowledge, which was different from Wang Yangming's, to the royal family and nobles.

But now, he himself was the first to be influenced by the various novel things exhibited in the Palace Encyclopedia Exhibition Hall.

In any case, Zhu Houcong not only changed the Ming Dynasty in terms of political system reform, but also in terms of cultural education.

The fact that he was able to change the Ming Dynasty in this way and still be safe and sound was closely related to the fact that he had been using economic interests to ensure safety within ten steps.

Because he did not reform the financial situation by cutting court expenses in accordance with the traditional way of wise rulers, but instead reformed the financial situation by expanding external resources.

Therefore, there were almost no complaints from his inner court from top to bottom.

The two Empress Dowagers were also very harmonious.

Zhu Houcong also got along very well with his concubines.

Even the royal family members had a good impression of Zhu Houcong because they often received rewards.

"Promise Auntie that you can't have this candy after you eat it, okay?"

When Zhu Houcong went to Kunning Palace after court that day, he saw Princess Yongchun coming to see the eldest prince and daughter again.

Princess Yongchun, who was about to get married, had always had affection for everyone in the palace because Zhu Houcong had never been harsh on her and the people in the harem since he ascended the throne. This was especially true for Zhu Houcong's children. Most of the time, it was Princess Yongchun who took them out to play.

After Princess Yongchun finished talking to the eldest prince and princess, she saw Zhu Houcong coming and ran over happily, bowing and saying, "How are you, my brother?"

"I am safe!"

Zhu Houcong replied with a smile, then held the two children who were running over.

Princess Yongchun also laughed, then looked at the eldest son and daughter of the emperor, and said to Zhu Houcong: "Sister is about to give birth, does the emperor know?"

Zhu Houcong nodded: "I know!"

Then, Zhu Houcong couldn't help but smile, and looking at the flying snow, he said: "In a blink of an eye, my sister is going to have a child, and you are going to get married. Time flies!"

When Princess Yongchun heard that she was also going to get married, she couldn't help but blush, and then frowned.

Zhu Houcong knew why Princess Yongchun was frowning. The reason was simply because he, the Jiajing Emperor, had carried out reforms and let the prince consort be in charge of reviewing the land survey, which was resisted by the local powerful families. As a result, not many talented people were eligible to be selected as the prince consort. Basically, those who signed up were all ugly and ugly. As a result, the matter of selecting a prince consort for Princess Yongchun was delayed until the winter of the sixth year of Jiajing and had not been completed yet.

But Zhu Houcong already had a solution, which was to choose a son-in-law directly from the orphans adopted by the royal palace. Such a son-in-law would be more loyal, not to mention more serious in reviewing the land survey, but it would also be more convenient for him to work for him because he had no relationship with the clan.

However, Zhu Houcong had not yet told the ministers outside the court. He only asked Huang Jin to select a good young man from Xingming Academy first, and then send him to the Ministry of Rites to register and go through the procedure of selecting a son-in-law.

By then, Zhu Houcong would let the world know that as long as the emperor had money, everything would be fine. He could choose a husband for his own young girls, or raise a young man for himself. (End of this chapter)