On March 15, the seventh year of Guangde, more than 360 tribute scholars from the north and south gathered in the Wenhua Hall of the Forbidden City in Nanjing to participate in the triennial palace examination.
On March 15th, Emperor Guangde Liu Kan took time out of his busy schedule and rushed to the Wenhua Palace in person to serve as the invigilator for the palace examination.
This year's three strategic questions were also formulated by Liu Kan himself.
Emperor Guangde proposed three examination questions to these future bureaucratic elites of Da Qi:
First, disasters persist, the people are uneasy, thieves are rampant, there is movement on the border, (Da Qi) has plenty of money and enough food, why is this so?
It is still doubtful whether the Qi State has enough money and food at the moment, but "the people are uneasy, thieves are rampant, and there is movement on the border", but it is a fact that is happening. Even the rotten scholars who have no ears to hear what is happening outside the window have heard about it. of.
While Emperor Guangde was presiding over the spring palace examination, thousands of miles away in Liaodong, farmers who had been annexed and bankrupted by the landlords, combined with the laid-off soldiers, were launching an unprecedented rebellion in Liaodong. Their city We conquered the land, robbed the local tyrants and evil gentry of their frivolous wealth, killed the civil servants sent by the imperial court to Liaodong, equalized the land, exempted them from corvee service, restored the old system, and restored the "Qi Dynasty Land Acquisition System" from the era of the Supreme Emperor.
Before the rebellion in Liaodong was put down, the chieftains in Sichuan and Yunnan also began to take advantage of the fire. They saw the opportunity and frequently harassed Hubei and Hunan, plundered Dingkou and robbed property.
The regiments stationed in the two lakes had just undergone disarmament. At this time, their morale was low and their troops were stretched thin. They had to run around. The Qi army became increasingly unable to deal with the successive chieftain rebellions. The local tyrants and evil gentry who had been liquidated in the Lianghu area took the opportunity to change their appearance and re-emerged in the name of Tuanlian. With the tacit approval of the imperial court, these local snakes sprung up and grew wildly. They soon occupied areas beyond the control of the imperial court and became The vanguard against the southwestern chieftains.
In just two years, Daqi was pacified from all directions and fell into continuous war.
However, Emperor Liu Kan of Guangde believed that all rebellions were just scabies and nothing at all. As long as one or two main troops were dispatched, the rebellion could be completely suppressed.
What really troubled Emperor Guangde was that the original intention of formulating the New Deal was to benefit the people and free them from the tyranny of the Supreme Emperor's era. Unexpectedly, after the New Deal was launched, it was resisted and opposed by people everywhere.
When his father was still alive, he said that the truth is often in the hands of a few people, and Liu Kan now increasingly recognizes this truth.
The people can follow it, but they cannot know it.
Even if you try your best to think about the people, these unscrupulous people will not appreciate it.
Overnight, Emperor Guangde found that he had too many problems to deal with. The court now needed people everywhere and needed to send capable forces to the provinces to implement the new policy. There were too few officials like Kang Jingxiu.
Relying solely on your current team is far from being able to cope with the current dangerous situation.
Today's situation is that the customs of scholars and people are not ancient, and there are many cunning women. Therefore, Emperor Guangde's second policy is:
"Today's people's customs are not good, and they want to see the shortcomings quickly. I want to rectify the people's customs and restore the Taoism. How can I do this?"
The meaning of this question is that the folk customs in Daqi are not right now. The people are eager for success and greedy for petty profits, without considering the long-term plan of the court. Therefore, revitalizing the folk customs and allowing the people to return to their original nature is a major issue at the moment. So how can this be achieved?
Like the first test question, this question also has no solution.
If the first two policy questions are somewhat tricky, then the third question is a proposition.
The difficulty of the eight-legged essay is that you must first read the "Four Books" thoroughly, because the third question of Emperor Guangde's test is a passage directly cut out from the "Four Books".
The topics are as follows:
"The king hastened to issue an order to rebel, the king of Yan resorted to military violence, and Emperor Wu tried his best to make the country rich and powerful, but what good would it do to the people?"
This passage comes from "Mencius": If the king sends out orders quickly, he will counterattack Ni, stop his important weapon, and plot against the people of Yan. If he puts the king in charge and then goes away, he will still be able to stop it. "
The general idea is that the king quickly issued an order to send back the captured old people and children, stop carrying Yan's treasures, discuss with the Yan people, and elect a new king.
After evacuating Yan State, there is still time to prevent other countries from mobilizing troops.
The reason why this question is called a proposition is because if you are not careful, you will get the wrong answer.
Fortunately, the Gongshi who participated in the imperial examination are all well-read poetry, otherwise they may think that the test question is saying "The King ordered you to rebel." If you answer the question according to this idea, it is not simply a question of whether you can pass the Jinshi examination. It’s hard to say whether we can save everyone’s lives.
After Emperor Guangde came to power, he fully restored the imperial examination system. Compared with the previous generation, the most important innovation of the scientific examination in the Guangde Dynasty was that the scope of the scientific examination was limited to the "Four Books", and all examination questions ranged from "The Great Learning", "The Analects", "Mencius", Select from "Golden Mean".
It is said that this is for the sake of fairness. Families that can read more books and receive a more comprehensive education must be rich or noble. In this way, children from rich families must have an advantage in scientific examinations. In order to bring everyone to the same starting line, so Choose just these four books.
Of course, facts have proven that Emperor Guangde still thought too much. Since most of the scholars studied the Four Books and Five Classics and had basically no economic knowledge reserves, the countermeasures they proposed for the imperial examination questions tended to be general.
The countermeasures of Liu Lishun, the number one scholar, captured the focus of Emperor Guangde. In his reply, he criticized some ungrateful and cunning female officials who did not want to repay the court's kindness and only wanted to let the court continue to waste money and food. Raise them and let them continue to be lazy people and continue to live in camps, workshops, and schools, even if the Daqi treasury is no longer sustainable.
Liu Lishun advocated that these cunning female officials should be strangled resolutely, because these female officials were extremely vicious and were no longer the emperor's ministers and no longer worthy of being called human beings.
Therefore, we should attack Liaodong, the southwest, and all the states and counties that have rebelled against the emperor. The army should press forward and leave no chickens or dogs behind. If we want to rule the world, we must first "set the people's minds" and use thunderous means to show your majesty's bodhisattva heart.
