Political struggles are rarely done on the fly. Most of the time, preparations, strict control, careful evaluation, and detailed planning are necessary before decisive action is taken. Therefore, being highly pragmatic cannot devote all his energy to it. The delay was caused by Liu Shouyou and Zhang Jing.
Gao Wuzhen is no longer "watching politics" and cannot go to the palace every day as he did in the past. Therefore, Zhang Jing's side is currently mainly watched by Huang Mengyu and Chen Ju.
According to normal circumstances, since Zhang Jing will soon take up the post of Royal Horse Supervisor, at least before he officially takes office, everything should be stable first, so as not to cause any trouble at this time.
Liu Shouyou's side is the key point. This person is not only the liaison between certain forces in Jiangnan and Zhang Jing, but also has a rather troublesome status as the Commander of the Jinyi Guards. Whether it is monitoring or investigating him, it is necessary to Be prepared for counterattacks to avoid backfire.
Huang Mengyu and Chen Ju had successively served or were serving as admirals of Dongchang. Naturally, they used Dongchang's power to control Liu Shouyou, and Gao Pragmatic had also suggested that Wang Zhizhen and Gao Wuben be involved.
At the same time, Gao Jingshi himself also stepped up the investigation of Liu Shouyou. Under his instruction, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Beijing established a special operations team led by Gao Mo himself to monitor, control and investigate Liu Shouyou. Evidence collection. Within two days, more than 20 capable servants of the Ministry of Internal Affairs traveled from the capital to Macheng, Songjiang, Ningbo and other places.
It is not necessary or impossible for Gao Pragmatic to do the next thing personally. In addition to discussing with Gao Guoyan and confirming the agency issuance of the first issue of Yunnan War Treasure Banknotes, he only needs to wait at his house for his disciples to come and pay him a visit. .
Of course, the Fang Master is a must-visit for new Jinshi scholars, but it is not certain whether the new Jinshi will regard their Fang Master as their future supporter in the officialdom.
For new Jinshi, in addition to the Fang Master, there is also a Zuo Master. If you can directly join the Zuo Master, in most cases it is actually better than joining the Fang Master.
The reason is very simple. The teacher is the examiner, and he is the bachelor of the day! Wouldn't it be great to be able to join the old family of the pavilion? It should be noted that most of the room masters are selected from the Hanlin Academy, and sometimes they are just editors. Even if there is hope of promotion in the future, how can they be as good as the cabinet elder who is already a highly respected minister?
Therefore, it is actually very common for the disciples selected by the master to be "cut off" by the master. However, no matter how "cut off" the relationship is, the teacher-student relationship between the student and the room teacher is still established, and no one dares to deny it.
Gao Pragmatic was not afraid that the three people he selected would be intercepted, because the examiner of this subject was Xu Guo. Mr. Xu Ge has a respected position and is a senior brother of Gao Pragmatic. It is naturally impossible for him to lose face and compete with his junior brother for disciples. What's more, Gao Pragmatic, the room master, has only ordered three people in total. Who has the nerve to do it again?
"Sir, the second-place master and the two Jinshi masters have come to pay their respects. This is their greeting card. Please take a look at it."
When Gao pragmatic heard this, he was basking in the sun under the small pavilion facing Shichahai in his house.
This year is the eleventh year of Wanli. Since there is a leap month in February, the March sunshine is already quite warm and gentle, shining slantingly on him.
There was a spring breeze blowing in the willows on the shore, and the water seemed to be surging with golden scales. It was rare for Gao Pragmatic to "steal half a day's leisure," so he chose to meet three new students here.
All that's left to be wonderful is the company of a beautiful woman and...a bottle of wine.
The companionship of a beautiful woman is just around the corner, and it should be possible after the Battle of Burma.
Wine is not impossible to obtain. After all, Jinghua's sea trade scale is already quite large. In terms of "private enterprises" alone, it must be ranked first in the Ming Dynasty.
But Gao Pragmatic is not willing to drink wine in front of outsiders. With his current status and reputation as a scholar, if he often drinks wine in public, it might start a trend and indirectly raise the reputation of "foreign wine". status, and may even reduce Ming's foreign trade surplus to a certain extent, which is not what Gao Pragmatic wants.
The Ming Dynasty is a global gold-absorbing black hole. It is best for this situation to continue for a while longer, so that more precious metals can be concentrated towards the Ming Dynasty to alleviate the so-called "money shortage" in history.
As for whether Ming Dynasty will alleviate the "price revolution" in Europe to a certain extent if it attracts too much money, he can't worry about this for the time being. In the original history, the European price revolution was caused by the Spanish Empire loading too much gold and silver from the Americas back to Europe, but now more of this gold and silver will be transferred to the Ming Dynasty than in history, which seems to be able to alleviate it...
"Invite them to come over." Gao Pingshi said, while sitting up slightly, he muttered in a low voice: "Maybe the Europeans should award me a big medal in the future."
Not long after, a middle-aged man came over with two young people.
The three of them were all wearing new Jinshi uniforms and followed the Gao family's servants quickly without looking away.
The man at the head looks to be in his forties, with a pale face and a serious expression. At first glance, he looks like an extremely serious person. In particular, his eyebrows are not only thick and black, but also the corners of his eyebrows are particularly upturned. Even if he is calm, He also looked a little murderous.
The man behind him on the left looks to be twenty-four or five years old. He has a Chinese character face and looks upright. Although he is not yet an official, he seems to be born to be one. However, although this person has a square face and is highly pragmatic, it can be seen from his eyes that are a little too smart even though he tries his best to hide them. He has a complicated mind and is by no means a straight person.
The last person seemed to be younger, maybe only in his early twenties, and he was also the most handsome. This person does not seem to be like the first two, one is really rigid and the other is fake. Although he is the youngest, he looks the most free and easy. When he comes to see the teacher, he is actually looking around and enjoying the scenery.
"Student Floating Bridge Li Tingji, pays homage to Mr. Entang."
"Student Fuqing Ye Xianggao, pays homage to Lord Entang."
"Student Deqing Fang Congzhe pays homage to Lord Entang."
All three of them were greeted with great gifts. Gao Pingshi stood up with a smile, stepped forward to help them up one by one, and said: "Okay, okay, they are all talented people. I am very happy to be my teacher."
Today is different from usual. On the one hand, I have to call myself "Master Endang" and on the other hand, I have to call myself "teacher" because this is the first time that the teacher-student relationship has been established.
Entang is actually an elevated title. As the governor of a town, Gao Pragmatic usually calls himself "Honbuyuan". Normally, it is more reasonable to call him "Entang".
The reason why the three disciples can call him "Entang" at this moment is because Gao Pingshi has already held the title of Right Minister of the Ministry of War, and the Assistant Minister is already the "Tang Shangguan" level of the Sixth Ministry - as for him, he is not actually a real Minister of the Ministry of War. Naturally, everyone seems to know nothing about Shangguan.
"Sir" is used here as an honorific to determine seniority. When paired with the pragmatic self-proclaimed "teacher", the seniority and title between them will be determined from now on.
In terms of age, Gao Pragmatic is a little younger than Fang Congzhe, the youngest of the three of them, and a full twenty years younger than Li Tingji, the oldest in his early forties. The master is the teacher, and age really means nothing.
The teacher is the teacher, and the grace hall is the grace hall.
The three of them each presented a copy of the manuscript, each of which contained an article written by themselves. The meaning of this action is generally "please give me advice." The article can be an old work or a new work. There is no limit to this.
Gao Pragmatic also accepted it with a smile, and would take a good look at it if he had time to say it.
Next, the three students gave gifts of thanks, but this was not a "teacher ceremony", but a thank you to Gao Pragmatic for selecting their papers as a room teacher.
As usual, the gifts were not expensive. Among them, Li Tingji's gift was the lightest, just a knife of rice paper; Ye Xianggao gave half a catty of Wuyi Mountain new tea, which Gao pragmatically estimated to be Dahongpao; Fang Congzhe gave a Hu pen, which was A specialty of his hometown Huzhou.
It is a coincidence that Gao pragmatically drew lots before this time and won the Nanban exam. As a result, the three selected Jinshi were two from Fujian and one from Zhejiang. Among them was Ye Xianggao, a man who was regarded as a scholar in history. The guy called "Senior Donglin" is really speechless.
However, Gao Pragmatic doesn't particularly care about this. After all, whether Ye Xianggao is considered Donglin in the original history is actually a bit controversial. In fact, judging from his actions, he probably hoped that he could be "neutral", otherwise he would not have recommended Fang Congzhe, a member of the Zhejiang Party, as his successor before taking office.
It’s just that I can’t stand the fact that in the original history, he was a concubine in Shen Shixing’s position. Later, he was recommended one after another by southern friends such as Guo Zhengyu and others who favored Donglin’s stance, which made Ye Xianggao’s debt of gratitude unfinished and the matter of “covering Donglin”. Just have to do it.
But the situation is completely different now. He has worshiped himself as his disciple. He will never be able to wash away his reputation as a "disciple of the Gao family" in his life. In the future, it will be obvious that he can only rely on the power of Gao Dang to move forward in the officialdom. Then he will become "Senior Dong Lin" naturally has nothing to do.
Fang Congzhe belonged to the Zhejiang Party in history, and was also the leader of the Zhejiang Party. However, he became the leader mainly because he offended the eunuch of the inner court long ago, and then he had no choice but to follow the example of Wang Anshi in the past and return to his hometown to support himself for many years. He had a high reputation among scholars. Not long after returning to the court, he became the chief minister, and then he became the leader of the Zhejiang Party.
Historically, Fang Congzhe has received a lot of criticism since he became the first assistant. Most of them thought that he failed to shoulder the responsibility of the first assistant and was too weak. However, Gao was pragmatic enough to feel that this statement was really biased.
The time when Fang Congzhe was the chief assistant was not in the early years of Wanli. Emperor Wanli at that time had already discovered a magical way to deal with civil servants - no matter what you say, as long as I don't like it, I won't respond.
This method may seem like a child's play, but it's actually very powerful: all of you civil servants are indeed eloquent, black can be white, dead can be alive, but I'm not afraid now - you say what you want, and so do I. If you don’t say anything against me, I just ignore you. What can you do to me? Bite me?
In fact, why bother with Fang Congzhe? Whoever served as the first assistant during that period was actually pretty much the same. Under the political system of the Ming Dynasty, as long as the emperor did not cooperate, you could not even make up for the vacancies in the central committee. Officials had no hope of promotion, and no one even approved their retirement. In this situation, even if Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng were resurrected, there would be no way. , not to mention that Fang Congzhe.
Ye Xianggao and Fang Congzhe were both people who had been "independent prime ministers" in the past, but the reason why Wanli allowed them to be independent prime ministers was not actually because they believed that they could rule the world on their own.
On the contrary, the emperor just felt that their ability was just at the level of "stabilizing the situation of the court", but did not reach the level of "ruling the world".
The Wanli Emperor in history had seen Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng who were in charge of the world. Especially Zhang Juzheng's "I am not an assistant, but a minister" had such a profound impact on him at that time that it was impossible for him to appoint any more "rulers". The first assistant to rule the world.
At this moment, the smooth and shrewd Ye Xianggao and the gentle and reserved Fang Congzhe were naturally the best choices for Emperor Wanli.
As for Li Tingji...
Gao pragmatic glanced at him and shook his head secretly: Unless you have the experience of a monarch and minister like my third uncle, your career will probably not go smoothly.
Gao Pragmatic does not judge casually. Just from the thank-you gifts given by the three disciples today, it can be seen that Li Tingji is not a very good person.
Ye Xianggao sent tea, which was a relaxed and casual style, but also practical; Fang Congzhe sent pen, which was both elegant and refined, and also showed that he was born in Huzhou, the place where literary style flourished.
In contrast, Li Tingji, who was ranked second on the list, only gave him a knife of rice paper and simply acted according to ordinary rules. His intentions were not felt at all, which was a serious loss of points.
Gao Pragmatic didn't think he had any objections to his endowment. He was simply too rigid and only followed the rules in everything he said and did.
This is because they don't know how to adapt. It stands to reason that if such people do not have the support of extremely powerful figures in the officialdom, they will definitely suffer. It is only a matter of time.
However, Li Tingji was quite lucky in history. He caught up with the so-called "Wanli negligent administration". No one was interested in targeting him as a "non-party person", and he was even allowed to serve as the chief minister.
But Li Tingji found that he, as the first assistant, could not do anything, so he insisted on resigning, but he could not resign. He was so angry that he donated his house to the poor, and asked the whole family to pack up and leave first, while he was left alone. People ran to the temple and settled down, concentrating on one thing: resigning.
Poor Li Tingji may not have known at the time that this idea caused him great harm. He lived in the ruined temple for five full years and wrote 123 resignation letters. As a result, he did not receive the emperor's approval, but instead He got the embarrassing nickname of "Miao Zhu Ge Lao".
In the end, Li Tingji completely collapsed and simply fired himself. He faced the charge of resisting the imperial decree and risked beheading, so he fired himself - forget it if you don't allow my resignation, I will go back to my hometown in Fujian. go.
Fortunately, Tangtang's chief assistant ran away and went home. At this time, Wanli didn't bother to pursue it and actually let him go. Four years later, the impoverished Li Tingji died of illness. Wanli was unusually diligent at this time and immediately issued an order to give him a Shaobao posthumous posthumous title of "Wen Jie" - this explains two things:
First, although Wanli did not approve of various things, it was not that he did not pay attention to the government affairs. In fact, he paid attention to it all the time; second, he believed that Li Tingji had "respect".
Gao pragmatically looked at the three different people in front of him, and a ridiculous thought suddenly came to his mind: How did I choose three people with completely different personalities, and by chance, I clicked on three "future chief assistants" at once. "of?
----------
Thanks to book friends "Cao Mianzi", "Wuyouwu k book", "The source of terror w", "1 optimistic and good young man 1", and "ASolaF" for their monthly support, thank you!
