The reason why Gao Jingshi was willing to consider taking action against a respected Duke for Liu Xian's affairs was because he knew Liu Wei's future role, so he considered it for the sake of the Ming Dynasty. There were also two main reasons.
The first reason is that Xu Pengju's life was short-lived. According to history, he was about to die in February of the fifth year of Longqing. 1" It can be seen that this record is wrong. ], this time has only been about a year, and Emperor Longqing has not been seriously ill during this year... With Longqing's trust in Gao Gong, as long as Gao Gong is willing, Xu Pengju, even the descendants of Xu Da, the dignified Duke Wei, The Commander-in-Chief of the Central Army of the Nanjing Governor's Office and the honorable ministers of the Nanjing garrison should be criticized as they should be, and they should be punished as they should be.
Think about it, wasn't it true that Liu Xian, the mighty commander-in-chief of Langshan, was informed by a mere Tongzhou government official?
These days, the status of military ministers is really so low in front of civil servants. Even Gao Gong does not have to speak in person. At present, his disciples such as Song Zhihan, Han Ji, Tu Menggui, Cheng Wen, etc. in the capital are all Ke Dao officials. Any one of them can stand When Xu Pengju came out to "hear something," he was accused of "being a distinguished minister of the Nanjing garrison but corrupting the Nanjing Guards." Definitely can't run away.
The second reason is that Xu Pengju has another big mistake that has not been exposed yet, but Gao Pragmatically calculated the time and knew that it would be soon.
The original history of this incident was like this: Xu Pengju's wife, whose surname was Zhang, did not have a son and died early. So Xu Pengju had no legitimate sons, but he still had several sons from concubines, the eldest of whom was named Xu Bangrui. According to the Ming Dynasty's principle of "only direct descendants can establish direct descendants, but no direct descendants can establish elders", Xu Bangrui should be the heir to Wei Guogong.
But here comes the problem. Xu Pengju likes another younger son, Xu Bangning, whose biological mother is his concubine Zheng. Zheng was deeply favored by Xu Pengju. In order to improve Zheng's status, Xu Pengju even went so far as to lie and obtain the title of Imperial Lady for her.
According to the system of the Ming Dynasty, if the children of honorable ministers and generals want to inherit the titles of their ancestors, they must first receive education. Xu Pengju tried his best to train Xu Bangning and wanted to send him to study at the Nanjing Imperial College. When Liu Cai, the Minister of War in Nanjing, heard the news, he reminded him that if you continue to act like this, you might cause trouble.
As mentioned earlier, the Minister of War in Nanjing was actually the number one official in Nanjing, so after being warned by him, Xu Pengju did not dare to make mistakes, so he had to send his eldest son Xu Bangrui to school instead.
But of course Xu Bangning would not give in, so he prepared a generous gift and invited Liu Bowen's descendant and sincere uncle Liu Shiyan to visit Jiufeng Temple together, quietly offering gifts and asking him to help him. After Liu Bowen, Liu Shiyan was naturally a leader among the ministers and had great power in Nanjing's "Founding Clan", so he went to Nanjing Imperial College to offer wine to Jiang Bao and asked him to help Xu Bangning with this "small favor". Zheng Rujin, an assistant teacher at Nanjing Imperial College, guessed that she had something to do with this matter, so she also spoke for Xu Bangning in front of Jiang Bao.
Jiang Bao may not have thought carefully about how involved this matter would be. After listening to Liu Shiyan's words, he decisively refused Xu Bangrui's admission and prepared to transfer Xu Bangning to him. However, the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty attached great importance to the ancestral system, so this incident aroused dissatisfaction from the Nanjing Ministry of Rites, and the matter became serious.
Seeing that the situation was not good, Liu Shiyan knew that everything would be difficult once civil servants were involved, so he quickly defended himself. He refused to admit that he helped Xu Bangning, and said that he had fallen out with Xu Pengju in the early years, and it was impossible to take care of Xu. Family affairs - This statement is somewhat confusing, because Liu Shiyan did have a very unhappy relationship with Xu Pengju due to some things in his early years. The two could almost be said to be incompatible. This situation was unknown to everyone in Nanjing official circles.
When the matter reached this point, the first result was not very serious: Zheng Rujin was dismissed, Xu Pengju was fined a month's salary, regained the title of Zheng's imperial wife, and Xu Bangning and others also received some punishment. . It's just that Liu Shiyan's attitude has always been very tough. Nanjing officials also considered that this matter was not a good thing after all, and in fact, the civil servants could not get much benefit from it, so they didn't bother to mess with him and planned to let it go.
However, it was not enough for them to just give up, because Zheng Rujin, who was dismissed, was very angry about this punishment. He probably thought that he, Zheng, was not considered the "first offender" but was dismissed, and the real "first offender" went unpunished. Thinking that he, Mr. Zheng, was also a Jinshi who passed the examination of the Eight Classics, and was still the pride of heaven, how could he tolerate such birdiness? So they complained everywhere, and finally the riot reached Beijing, and even Emperor Longqing knew about it. There are no details in the history books about how the imperial court discussed it. Anyway, in the end Longqing ordered that Sun Zhi, the Shangshu of the Ministry of Punishment of Nanjing, Jiang Bao, the Jiujiu of the Imperial Academy of Nanjing, and Liu Shiyan, the Bo of Chengyi, all returned to their hometowns to listen to the investigation.
After this turmoil, Xu Pengju, who was already young, did not dare to make any more troubles. In the end, the title of Wei Guogong was passed to Xu Bangrui in the order of eldest and youngest.
People say it is easy to add icing on the cake, but difficult to provide help when the time is right. Gao pragmatism is not much better than ordinary people in this regard. If he is asked to risk his own family or offend someone he shouldn't offend for no reason to do a good deed in times of need, he will ask himself that he has not yet realized it.
However, if it is something that you know is just the icing on the cake, but the other party thinks it is a timely help, Gao Pragmatic will be very interested in getting involved.
What's more, there are two obvious benefits here: First, helping Liu Xian will not only gain Liu Xian's gratitude in the next ten years, but also sell a big favor to Liu Wei. Although the status of military generals is low now, even if the highly pragmatic "saving the Ming" plan goes smoothly in the future, he still needs capable generals to implement some of his military plans and plans in the future. Selling Liu Wei now is a good way to pave the way for the future.
Secondly, if we start with the case of assaulting a noble, then it doesn't matter at all to attack Xu Pengju. Firstly, Xu Pengju was at fault and was unable to resist; secondly, he was about to die of illness and had no ability to cause trouble. Liu Xian's matter could be used as an addendum to the case to give Xu Pengju a " Several crimes shall be punished at the same time.”
There is even another advantage to doing this, that is, if Gao Gong also takes a stand in this matter, or even plays a role, it will almost have the effect of setting the tripod, and the future Wei Guogong Xu Bangrui will have a better view of the Gao family. manner.
Like the Xu family, the leader-level family of the "founding lineage" of the great ministers, no matter how hard we hit them, it is just a matter of replacing Wei Guogong, and the eldest brother is replaced by the second son. It is impossible to destroy the inheritance of Wei Guogong. In this case , winning over and guiding is probably more effective than attacking. In the future, some high-pragmatic plans will be implemented. If the Xu family can be brought in to talk, it doesn't have to be of much effect, but it will definitely be much better than the Xu family jumping out to sing the opposite.
Gao Pragmatic's attitude towards doing things is very clear: without overly affecting one's own interests, everything must serve the overall future.
So when it came to Liu Xian's matter, Gao Jingshi decided to help him after he understood the truth.
