As an emperor who has seen the ups and downs of a hundred years, Zhu Qiyu has a deeper understanding of the way of governing the country than previous emperors.
In his previous life, he thought about how to secure the throne and inherit the lineage. This cannot be said to be wrong, but it is too narrow-minded.
To this day, Zhu Qiyu is still not sure whether his hundreds of years of wandering was just a dream or whether he was going back in time.
But as every detail and every person he had never known or noticed appeared one by one, he became more and more convinced that even if it was Huang Liang's dream, it was also a dream given to him by his ancestors and gods.
In this case, his mission is not just to secure the throne, he is also responsible for the rise and fall of the Ming Dynasty.
Logically speaking, the rise and fall of dynasties has been unstoppable since ancient times. Zhu Qiyu knew this very well in his heart, but since his ancestors and gods gave him this opportunity, he would naturally do his best to change everything he saw.
Even if the dynasty cannot be prevented from collapsing in the end, it must at least be able to be passed on for a longer period of time, so that it can live up to its fate again.
As his ambitions arose, Zhu Qiyu considered more when doing many things.
It should be said that the Ming Dynasty was founded for more than a hundred years, and it should be said that it was still at its peak. Although there was a faint trend of decline, if it were not for the disaster of the civil war, the family would have been able to survive for a while.
But even so, many problems have begun to emerge. Although they are not serious, they will grow into serious troubles as soon as they appear.
The military camp is one of them, the civil and military imbalances are unbalanced, and the clan's generous salary is also one of them.
In addition, land annexation, Jingxiang refugees, official corruption, chieftain unrest, and even the rise of small tribal countries such as the Jurchen and Japanese countries were all the culprits that hollowed out the giant Ming Dynasty.
It is so complex that it is difficult to explain it clearly in one word.
In fact, since the moment Zhu Qiyu woke up from Prince Xi's Mansion and experienced a brief period of confusion, he has been thinking about what methods should be used to completely solve these problems.
But even from his perspective, after more than two years of thinking, he could only barely come up with an answer that was not an answer.
If there is no way to govern the world, the country will not follow the ancient laws!
There is no shortage of smart people in the Ming Dynasty, and there has never been a shortage of people who can solve problems. Not to mention Yu Qian, Zhang Juzheng, a high-ranking minister who can save the building from falling, and there are no other important officials in the court who can do the Qingqing. Those who have no outstanding talents.
However, they could not save Daming.
The reason is that the so-called ancestral law binds them. This ancestral law refers not only to the rules established by Taizu Taizong, but more importantly, there is an invisible imprisonment in everyone's heart.
Confucianism plays an unparalleled role in maintaining monarchy and social stability, but it has a fatal flaw, that is, it is conservative.
A century of changes has allowed Zhu Qiyu to see too many new things, new problems, and new changes.
From Chenghua to Hongzhi, from Jiajing to Wanli, too many new problems followed and new methods were needed to solve them. Unfortunately, many of the frameworks of the Ming Dynasty were already fixed when the country was founded.
Therefore, when encountering a problem, these Ming Dynasty's best and most talented people can only tinker with the existing framework. Due to various reasons, it is difficult to get to the essence of the problem.
Looking back at the rise and fall of the entire dynasty, especially after seeing a series of changes during the Long and Wan Dynasties, Zhu Qiyu looked back and unexpectedly came to a conclusion.
That is, without the heavy blow of the civil war, the orthodox generation should have been an era of change!
The country's power is at its peak, but various problems are increasingly exposed. Many of the old laws from Taizu's time are increasingly unsuitable for today's court and society. Although there is an imbalance in civil and military affairs, there is no serious gap. Although etiquette and law are great, the emperor The Supreme Being can still compete with etiquette and law.
Although the noble officials and scholars have shown signs of decay, they are still determined to forge ahead and do things that are not the same as those of the past.
At this time, it is an era brewing changes.
Even though Zhu Qiyu didn't have a very good opinion of Zhu Qizhen, he still had to admit that if Zhu Qizhen hadn't done something wrong, was too eager for quick success, was overjoyed with success, and trusted the wrong person, the hope in his heart would have been It is entirely possible that the motivation of his father's achievements will make him the initiator of this era of great change.
Unfortunately...he made the wrong choice...
The civil war completely interrupted this unfinished reform. On the one hand, it accelerated the momentum of civil and military imbalances, further worsened the border problems, and plunged the central court into a long-term struggle for the throne and endless turmoil. On the other hand, it also depleted the originally prosperous national power, forcing the entire country to enter a period of long-term recuperation.
Under this situation, any reform will only make things worse for the country.
From this perspective, it is no exaggeration to say that Zhu Qizhen is the sinner of the entire Zhu family!
However, Zhu Qiyu still kept him, not because of brotherly love, but because if he wanted to restart the momentum of Ming Dynasty's reform, he needed the stability of the government.
There are too many things he has to do, but no matter which one it is, it requires the stability of the government, the peace of the country, and the support of all people.
This is also the reason why he has been unwilling to use thunderous means to deal with Zhu Qizhen. Although it is disgusting to keep him, in the current situation of the court, with Zhu Qiyu's methods, he can no longer make any waves.
In other words, he can only stir up what he thinks are storms.
But if he is killed for no reason, the monarch and his ministers will be alienated and want to restart the reform process, and it will be far away.
After all, Zhu Qiyu is only one person. Even if he has thousands of strategies in his mind, he cannot implement them by himself.
Using authoritarian means to intimidate people will never really win people's hearts. It can only be like Jiajing, who is only feared and disrespected by others. In this way, all ministers flatter those above and bully those below. Any talk of reform is just empty talk.
Showing authority to all directions and transforming people with virtue is the right way!
If Zhu Qizhen wants to die, he is seeking death himself. It cannot be Zhu Qiyu who wants to kill him for his own selfish reasons. Otherwise, even if the throne is secure, he will definitely make the same mistake as Jiajing.
Therefore, for Zhu Qiyu now, Zhu Qizhen has to solve it, but it is not the most important problem.
If you want to deal with him, you only need to be willing to pay the price, but it's just a backhand. It's just that you don't have time. If you do it forcefully, you have to make up for it and delay it too much.
Even with the turmoil of the past few years, he couldn't afford to delay, and Ming... couldn't afford to delay either.
Therefore, for Zhu Qiyu, the biggest difference between him and other emperors is that from the beginning, he did not take the so-called ancestral law to heart.
It's not that he doesn't respect his ancestors, but he has seen it for hundreds of years. He knows very well that Taizu's system is suitable for Hongwu, Yongle's system is barely suitable for Yongle. As for Jingtai and later, the previous system is old and many frameworks are no longer suitable. In Sheji, even if there are some repairs, it will not solve the fundamental problem.
Zhu Qiyu once thought about designing a new set of regulations and implementing them to nip all the problems he saw in the bud.
In this way, although it requires a lot of energy, it does not take a long time. It is not difficult to delay Zhu Qizhen for a few years and solve it first.
But in the end, he gave up the idea.
Because the regulations he designed may be able to adapt to the Jingtai era, but in the end, after dozens or hundreds of years, they will eventually become obsolete.
It's nothing more than a new set of ancestral methods, which can no longer reverse the outcome.
Therefore, what he has to do is to continuously reform and make progress, and break down the ancestral laws on paper that are blocking everyone's face.
Until the end, the immutable shackles of the ancestral laws that lie in everyone's hearts are broken.
In this way, even if he dies, every generation will have new ways to solve the problems of every generation.
He could not guarantee that this would definitely allow the Ming Dynasty to last for a long time, but at least it was a completely different path.
In ancient times, there was a saying by the Shang king to strengthen the Qin Dynasty, saying that there was no way to govern the world and the country was not in compliance with the law. Now the belief that Zhu Qiyu wants to create is that there is no immutable method for those who want to benefit the country!
This is Zhu Qiyu's ambition, and it is also... everything he can do for the Ming Dynasty.
Of course, no matter how ambitious you are, you have to start small.
For example, the education of princes and daughters may seem simple, but in fact it is the most important.
Let’s not talk about the education of the prince, let’s just talk about the problem of the clan, which must be solved sooner or later. Therefore, starting from Zhu Qiyu’s generation, at least the newly named clan vassal kings will no longer be able to be trapped in the fiefdom and do nothing as before.
Emperor Taizu initially enfeoffed the kings in the hope that they would dominate the world like the Western Han Dynasty, but facts proved that this was not a good idea.
Not only did these vassal kings put great pressure on the imperial court's finances, but their excessive power also posed a threat to the central court that could not be ignored.
But when the Ming Dynasty was at the end of its rope, the role these vassal kings could play was minimal.
Without the management rights of their fiefdoms, no leadership of the army, and even no way out of the city gates, these vassal kings were of almost no use other than consuming the country's resources.
Therefore, this situation must change. It is good to prevent the feudal kings from usurping power and causing chaos, so that their own people can protect their own society, which is also good.
But it would be wrong to combine the two to create a code that is completely different.
Therefore, the vassal king must reform again. As long as the military system is perfect enough so that the vassal king cannot have access to military power, then the usurpation of power and chaos can be avoided.
Under this premise, the role that the vassal clan can play is definitely much stronger than it is now.
And if you want to achieve this, then you can't treat the education of the clan kings as usual. Zongxue is only the first step, and the education of the princes and princesses is the highlight.
After all, the past vassal kings have become accustomed to the old system. Even if they are reformed in the future, it will be difficult to eradicate many of their inherent concepts. Only these princes who have not yet become vassals are the new hope.
This is the biggest reason why Zhu Qiyu built the primary school next to the Qianqing Palace. Only if he can keep an eye on it can he ensure that the education these princes receive is what he wants, not the old ideas of the past.
Of course, the focus of this reform is the princes. If Zhu Qiyu's education for the princes is mixed with emotions, it is more out of political considerations.
Then, for the education of the royal daughter, it is the other way around. Emotions are the most important thing, with only a few political factors mixed in.
In the Ming Dynasty, although the princesses of the Ming Dynasty were beautiful, they were only in the period before getting married.
Things were better in the early Ming Dynasty. Many princesses married into noble families and lived a good life.
However, as time went by, the emperor's custom of only marrying concubines from small families was applied to princesses.
At the same time, these scholar-bureaucrats also applied the rule that the husband should be the guide of his wife to the princess. This resulted in that after the princess got married, she was subject to various restrictions and even had to meet her parents-in-law. If she could communicate with the people Women generally serve decoctions and are even more praised.
Later, the selection of a prince-in-law for the princess turned out to be a tool for the slaves below to make money. The prince-son-in-law selected often appeared to have no virtue and no conduct, and some even died of illness right after they got married. What's even more outrageous is that, just like this, The princess must also observe the rules and not marry again.
Zhu Qiyu had two daughters in his previous life. The younger daughter Qingdeng Gufo, who lost her ambition and refused to marry, spent her whole life with her mother. The eldest daughter was randomly selected to be married to a commoner family and never returned to the palace in her life. When Zhu Qiyu returns, When I heard the news about her, she was only forty-two years old when she died...
Thinking of the fate that the lively and noisy little girl would have in the future, Zhu Qiyu's heart suddenly burst into flames.
To put it bluntly, these ministers bullied and bullied the unfavored princesses. The former emperor had two sons and three daughters. Princess Yongqing died young. Princess Changde was the youngest of the three princesses, but she married into the Yangwu Marquis Mansion. The eldest princess of Shunde, who was born against Queen Hu, only married a son from a thousand households.
In this life, since he had it all over again, Zhu Qiyu naturally said that he would never make the same mistakes again.
But in this case, the teaching of Gu'an will have to be tightened. He doesn't want to wait for his daughter to get married in the future. Being bullied for nothing.
"I also think it would be good to read more books. Although Sister Hui's temperament is out of control, it is not a bad thing. Besides, she is a princess, so she doesn't really have to do any female work."
Seeing that Zhu Qiyu's face was not very good, Mrs. Wang was also a little surprised. She didn't expect that her husband, who had always been mild-tempered, would lose such a temper because of this, so she had to say.
"It's just that there is no precedent for this matter in the past. Moreover, even for ordinary families, when they reach the age of study, men and women go to school separately. Your Majesty allows the brothers and sisters to be educated together. Will anyone in the outer court gossip?"
"Just tell them to talk about it. My daughter, it is their turn to discuss it. You and the concubine just make arrangements. I will come to find the teacher."
"It's not the turn of outsiders to dictate matters in the palace."
This sentence reminded Zhu Qiyu that he originally thought that he would find some people from the Hanlin Academy to teach these two children, and he could just find more time to take care of them.
But now that I think about it, those people in the Hanlin Academy are still too corrupt. If they say something that shouldn't be said, or if they are biased when teaching, it will not be good.
It would be more appropriate to find some reliable ministers to teach...
Apart from this, Zhu Qiyu's eyes flashed, he pondered for a moment, and finally asked.
"Queen, you just said that it was the emperor's sister-in-law who mentioned this matter to the noble concubine, and she came up with the idea to discuss it with you. Then, the emperor's sister came to the palace, and you asked the emperor's sister again before she made up her mind."
"I always feel that there is something wrong with this matter. The emperor's sister-in-law is not a talkative person, so why would she suddenly mention this matter?"
