"Are they still kneeling in front of Taihe Gate?"
"Your Majesty, you are still here, no one has left."
"Humph, let them continue to kneel!"
…
"Still kneeling?"
"Yes, Your Majesty, it's almost one day."
…
"Your Majesty, several elderly ministers have fainted. I think they can no longer hold on."
"Your Majesty, the Minister of the Ministry of Industry collapsed and was taken back by his family."
"His Majesty……"
"Take me to see them."
In the end, Zhu Zhanji couldn't help but watch his ministers fall to the ground one by one.
He came to the gate of Taihe and saw the ministers.
These courtiers still knelt in front of the Gate of Supreme Harmony and remained motionless from sunrise to sunset. Zhu Zhanji could even see that the bodies of several veterans were trembling slightly, and the clothes of several others were soaked with sweat and clinging to their bodies, looking extremely embarrassed.
But even so, these people had no intention of backing down.
This also shows how strong the determination of the civil servant group was this time. They would not allow the imperial power to expand like this.
Seeing the arrival of Emperor Xuande, they immediately said:
"Your Majesty, please stop the Western Ocean!"
"Your Majesty, even if I don't care about the bones in my body, I must lead your Majesty to the right path!"
"Your Majesty, if you don't agree, I will kneel down and die here, and I will plead for the lives of the people along the coast!"
They didn't look like giving up at all, and at the same time they spoke righteous words.
Seeing the confrontational appearance of his ministers, Zhu Zhanji also hesitated in his heart. He no longer had the determination he had before.
He returned to the palace again and began to think about the pros and cons of stopping his voyages to the West.
After all, he was not a powerful emperor like Taizu and Taizong.
The civil servant system, in fact, their resistance is very weak. Unless they encounter an existence that has reached the peak of civil servant power and can start to truly threaten the imperial power, otherwise their resistance is actually a kind of "moral kidnapping", a kind of "gamble".
Because public opinion among the people is controlled by civil servants, some moral systems are also formulated by civil servants, and the power of interpretation lies in their hands. What they can do is use these to force the emperor to compromise.
Do you want a good posthumous name? Are you willing that, despite your efforts, you will end up with a bad name among the people? If you don't want to, it's best to cooperate with us.
The civil service group is still very united. You can kill them, but the next group of people will still oppose you. Of course you can find your own Zhang Cong, but if you want to find ministers who support you and can handle government affairs well, there are not many. In the end, you still need to rely on them to govern the Ming Dynasty.
It is precisely because of this that sometimes it can be seen that the emperor, who is clearly supreme, still has to compromise with his ministers, because the ministers still have some ability to fight back.
But this kind of resistance is actually very fragile. In fact, the civil servants are "gamble" with the emperor with their own lives and futures, betting that he will not completely fall out. If you encounter a stupid person, you have to cool down.
During the great ceremony in later generations, hundreds of officials were in the palace, and they met the 18-year-old Emperor Jiajing. Zuo Shunmen killed seventeen people on the spot. The result of the bloody remonstrance of the officials was that they paid a heavy price, but they did not Can change Emperor Jiajing's determination.
To put it simply, in the final analysis, this still depends on the emperor. As long as the emperor is strong enough and "shameless", he can completely ignore the suggestions of the ministers, or even directly pull the butcher's knife.
The emperor himself has the power to break the rules and laws. He is willing to play with you within the rules, which is great; but the emperor insists on breaking the rules, and no one can stop him.
Unfortunately, Emperor Xuande was not such a person.
Zhu Zhanji sighed helplessly in the deep palace, and his tightly clenched palms slowly loosened.
He persisted for eight years. During these eight years, he always used rules to restrain the ministers and himself. As long as the ministers made no principled mistakes, he would not punish them.
It is precisely for this reason that officials in the Xuande Dynasty governed the Qingming Dynasty, officials dared to give advice, and soldiers and generals dared to die, because the emperor himself also abided by the rules and incorporated the Ming Dynasty into an orderly system.
This is a rule he has set himself, and he cannot break it.
Moreover, he attaches great importance to reputation and has a rather generous personality. Such an emperor cannot do things as directly as Zhu Yuanzhang.
In this case, he could only compromise.
Politics is the art of compromise. This was a lesson his kind father taught him, and he still understands it now.
Late at night, when the ministers were already kneeling unsteadily at the Gate of Supreme Harmony, an oral message finally came from the palace:
"Everyone, please get up, I agree."
When Li Chang was helped out of the palace, a smile appeared on his lips.
Emperor Xuande, you finally gave in.
The civil power of the Ming Dynasty officially raised its head at this moment.
——
"The Gate of Supreme Harmony incident is of great significance in the entire history of the Ming Dynasty. We cannot avoid it when studying the Ming Dynasty."
"Emperor Xuande was coerced by his ministers to stop his voyages to the West. This was the first time that the Ming Emperor compromised with his ministers on major matters. It also symbolized the complete rise of the power of his ministers."
"The root actually lies with Emperor Yongle. It was he who started using civilian counselors to oversee military affairs, and it was he who gave the cabinet the power to draft edicts. It was from him that the power of civilian officials gained momentum, but Yongle was strong, so he could suppress it.
"But Emperor Xuande's Gate of Supreme Harmony incident really made those civil servants see their own power. Hey, it doesn't matter if the emperor is unhappy, he still has to accept our opinions!"
"We can see that originally, when Emperor Hongwu and Emperor Yongle ruled, if you didn't obey me, I would chop your head off, right? At this time, the emperor was very powerful and the civil servants were very weak."
"But you see, since the Taihemen incident, this kind of situation has never happened again. At most, it's just a slap in the face. And it's only low-level officials who are beaten. The emperor doesn't dare to beat high-level civil servants. "
"I think it's more of a deterrent. The emperor uses these low-level officials to tell the heads of these civil servant groups: Be honest and don't go too far."
"In the end, he still has to compromise with the civil servants. This is the reality."
"You have to rely on them to govern the world."
"In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the power of civil servants continued to grow, which came from here. And the attitude of the heads of nobles who should have stood with the emperor, because of the large number of family members who joined the officialdom, gradually began to have ambiguous attitudes. This is even more This led to the unscrupulousness of civil servants.”
——Excerpted from a history lecture.
(End of chapter)
