It's not just Gao Pragmatic and the people around him who are worried. The Xin School, the Practical School, and the Neutrality School are all worried because of the emperor's "order" yesterday. With today's meeting between the emperor and the cabinet ministers, the first One boot has already landed, but everyone is obviously waiting for the second sound of the boot landing.
"Boots Falling to the Floor" is a fable that was often seen in various media before the pragmatic spirit passed through the Ming Dynasty. This story tells that there used to be a young man living above the bedroom of an old man. The young man often returned late at night. After entering the room, he took off his boots and threw them heavily on the ground. There was a bang, which shook the whole house, and woke up the old man downstairs from his dream. Then there was another bang, and the other boot hit the ground again, and the old man tossed and turned again. Rediscover the dream.
Over time, the old man developed a conditioned reflex and had to wait until two sounds were heard before he could fall asleep. Once the old man couldn't bear it anymore and went upstairs to protest to the young man. Only then did the young man realize that his arbitrary behavior had hurt others, so he promised to correct himself in the future.
The next night, the young man returned to his room late at night, and there was another "bang" sound, and a boot fell to the ground. The old man suppressed his anger and waited for the other boot to fall, but after waiting for a while, there was no more sound, but he did not dare to sleep peacefully for fear of a sudden "bang" coming unexpectedly.
But this sound never occurred to him. The old man stayed up until dawn and had insomnia all night. When he went upstairs to inquire with suspicion, he found out that it was the young man who dropped one boot according to his old habit. Then he suddenly remembered the old man's protest and quickly put the second boot gently on the ground without making a sound, but unexpectedly it turned out that It caused the old man to lose sleep all night.
In later generations, after many major government decisions were made, the media often used the term "boots on the ground" to describe it. What does it mean? In fact, "waiting for the boots to drop" is an eager, wait-and-see mentality.
Before a new policy or economic indicator is introduced, people already have expectations for the policy or performance. For example, the most sensitive thing is that it is reflected in the financial market, that is, the early buying and selling of securities, causing the early release of the effects. Since then, after the New Deal is officially introduced, it may cause policy or economic results to deviate from the theory on which the policy is based.
At present, the officials of the imperial court are waiting for their boots to fall. They can simply take a look at the front and back:
At the very beginning, the emperor suddenly announced the establishment of the Dingnan Protectorate in the form of a decree without consulting the cabinet. There are two biggest problems with this matter: First, the decree itself bypasses the cabinet, causing huge embarrassment to the cabinet - please note that this is not just a cosmetic embarrassment, in fact it represents a serious shakeup of the cabinet's status.
Why do you say that? Because if we understand it from another angle, it is that the imperial power is trying to bypass the de facto highest political body of the civil service group and directly issue top-level administrative instructions.
So what does it mean if it succeeds? This means that the cabinet has been completely eliminated by the imperial power, and it means that the civil servant groups actually led by the cabinet, large and small, will no longer have any degree of "deliberative power" - let alone decision-making power. They will only have executive power.
As we all know, the civil service group did not have much political power during the founding of the Ming Dynasty. Almost all major issues were decided by the two powerful emperors Taizu and Chengzu. After a long period of fermentation and a series of changes, the civil service group gradually fought for to a certain level of political power, as well as the right and status to exercise decision-making power in place of the imperial power in very specific periods (such as when the emperor was young, extinct, etc.).
It should be noted that China’s monarchy under Confucianism has never been and should not be controlled by the imperial power. This issue has already been explained, so I won’t go into details. A simple statement is: the most perfect system under Confucianism is for the emperor and the scholar-bureaucrats to share the world - you, the emperor, cannot really be a "lone husband".
Therefore, the civil service group will never tolerate this situation. And this is the reason why for the first time in recent years, all members of the cabinet, regardless of faction, resigned and threatened the emperor. Similarly, this is the reason why Gao Pragmatic had to resolutely reject even imperial orders.
What does "no one can betray his own class" mean? That's it.
You are not the emperor, so if you betray your own class and empathize with the emperor, are you sick? But more importantly, it doesn’t matter if you are sick. The problem is that if what you do harms everyone in your class, then you are alienating yourself from the “people”!
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic refused to accept the order on the spot, so the cabinet collectively knelt down and resigned.
Should the Dingnan Protectorate be established? unimportant! At least not the most important thing. The most important thing is that everyone in the government and the public believes that the emperor cannot bypass the cabinet and issue orders!
The former is just a specific matter, or even just a "foreign affairs" that does not involve the "two capitals and thirteen provinces" in the core area of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, it does not matter whether it is the establishment of a Protectorate, a Dutong Envoy, or a Jiedu Envoy. At least in the face of the fundamental matter of "the emperor and the scholar-bureaucrats share the world", it is not worth mentioning!
Fortunately, although the emperor refused to meet with the ministers of the cabinet that day, the next day, that is, this morning, he still accepted the meeting of the cabinet ministers. It is said that he listened carefully to the advice of the cabinet ministers and expressed his willingness. Take back your life.
Is this the end of the matter? No. Because the emperor was not willing to go back on his word, his actual attitude at the time was: he understood that the cabinet refused to endorse it, and that the six subjects rejected the imperial edict.
Eh? This seems to be the same thing. Isn’t it that all orders are withdrawn and orders are invalidated?
Otherwise, it's completely two different things. If the emperor himself withdraws the decree, it means that he admits that he, the emperor, did something wrong in this matter, so he had to withdraw it voluntarily.
But he did not do so. He only expressed his understanding that the cabinet refused to endorse it and suggested that the Sixth Section could reject the edict. What does this approach mean?
It means that the emperor still attaches great importance to the ancestral system. You see, the ancestral system allows the cabinet to refuse to endorse an imperial decree if it disagrees with it. Now that the cabinet has done so, I will accept it, right?
You see, the ancestral system has given the Sixth Section the privilege to refute the imperial edict. Now that the Sixth Section has done so, do I admit it?
I respect the ancestral system very much, and I respect the ministers and workers of the world very much!
In this way, he not only avoided the behavior of changing orders day by day, breaking his own words, and damaging his prestige as an emperor, but also expressed his understanding and respect for the civil service group. It was a perfect operation.
However, precisely because the emperor was able to operate perfectly under the huge political pressure of all the cabinet ministers, all the officials in the capital became more and more nervous. Because this means two things: first, the emperor has already planned, has already anticipated the reaction of the cabinet, and has already prepared a countermeasure; second, the emperor has become proficient in these political methods that the civil servant group is best at.
So based on these two points, and considering the emperor's character, the officials immediately realized: This is not the Mu Temple, but the return of the World Temple.
The late Emperor Longqing was a "bullying" emperor, although he laid the foundation for many major events during his reign and completed feats such as Anda's tribute and the opening of sea switches. However, in terms of his ruling style alone, he is "easy to bully", and the civil service group has never considered him to be a threat to them.
Yes, he relied heavily on the Shi School and Gao Gong, but whether it was the Shi School or Gao Gong, they were also part of the civil service group! The Mu Temple still delegates power to the civil servants to rule as the civil servants wish!
But Jin Shang's current behavior is different. When he came up with the matter of "establishing the Dingnan Protectorate", even the intended Protector Gao Pragmatic himself didn't know the news, and he had already anticipated the reaction of the cabinet and Gao Pragmatic himself. He calmly accepted the moves that followed from the ministers, and in the process achieved all the goals he wanted to achieve.
He didn't really intend to set up the Dingnan Protectorate now, but it turned out that the Dingnan Protectorate failed. However, through this matter, he clearly made a mark for Gao pragmatism in front of the whole world.
In theory, this cake is absolutely in line with the ideals of the civil service group: reward for merit and reward.
However, things are not that simple. The civil servant group is indeed united when faced with the pressure of the imperial authority, but when the emperor favors a certain party, it will arouse the jealousy of others. Because of jealousy, you will object. Even if your objection fails, you will always keep an eye on it, ready to find fault.
In other words, after the emperor did this, everyone knew that the emperor was going to "confer" the entire Southern Xinjiang to Gao Panggang. It's hard to say what other members of the Practical School think about this situation, but it's obvious that the Heart School will never be happy, and the other Neutral Schools may not be happy either.
If you are not happy, then you have to find faults and look for trouble, and the premise of these is to implement tighter surveillance of Gao Pragmatic's every move, and even strengthen surveillance of every move in southern Xinjiang, striving to discover question.
As a result, Gao Pragmatic had to be more cautious, and Southern Xinjiang did not dare to make any rash moves, but the emperor completed control of the overall situation without spending a single soldier.
At the same time, he "recovered his life" in a way that was completely in line with the ancestral system, minimizing the loss of his prestige - in fact, it was not even reduced, because it was common for the emperors of the Ming Dynasty to even be criticized, except for the "second ancestor" In addition, how many emperors have not been denied the Holy Will by the Cabinet, the Sixth Section, etc.?
But in doing so, he went back to solve the fundamental reason why the cabinet threatened him, that is, the emperor did not follow the ancestral system, ignored the cabinet, etc.
This emperor already had the same political skills as Emperor Shizong Jiajing, and the cards in his hand far exceeded those of Emperor Jiajing in the early stage of his succession. How big a threat is this to the civilian clique?
It's hard to estimate, but at least Wang Xijue believes that the emperor will not end in an anticlimactic manner. This time the application of tactics must have a more obvious and clear direct result, and this result... he thinks that it will most likely fall on himself, or the Heart School. On the head.
His own family knew his own affairs, and the emperor was unwilling to "rectify the country's foundation as soon as possible," but the Xin School was the main force in calling for "the country's foundation as soon as possible," so the emperor was definitely dissatisfied with the Xin School in this matter.
Of course, Wang Xijue knew very well that when the Practical School—especially Gao Dang of the Practical School—controlled most of the important affairs of the court, it was almost impossible for the emperor to suppress the Xin School to the end, but he would definitely retain the airs of the Xin School and communicate with others. They have some important supervisory powers to ensure that the real school does not get out of control and the court does not become a single-spoken hall of the real school.
However, as one of the two pillars of the Xin School, he still has to constantly test the emperor's bottom line, that is, the emperor's standard for judging the "balance between the DPRK and China", because only in this way can the Xin School gain more rights.
As for his insistence on early rectification of the country's foundation, this matter is not as superficial as Zheng Huanggui and his concubine thought. In fact, Wang Xijue's personal benefit to the early establishment of the country's capital was not great. What was remarkable was that he gained some prestige at that time.
The real reason why he did this was to meet the political needs of the Xin School: Xin Xue is a practical study of morality. If you don't insist on moral correctness, you will be doomed! Can trees with rotten roots still survive?
This is just like if the Practical School cannot do things, or the things they do cannot change anything, and the court should be poor or poor, and should win or lose the war, then wouldn't the Practical School also be doomed?
What is political correctness? That's it. Political correctness has existed in all periods throughout history and is by no means exclusive to future generations.
Doesn’t Midi Baizuo know that indulging certain ethnic groups will lead to many serious social problems, as well as economic, cultural, political, military and other aspects of problems? Of course they know, but if they don't continue to stick to the Bai Left and the Holy Mother, they themselves may be finished first! A dead Taoist friend is not a poor Taoist. The threat of opposing parties is greater than the threat of national decline - just look at the Donglin Party in the late Ming Dynasty to understand this truth.
A regime that is about to fall has always had similar troubles, that is, "I know what the problem is, but I can't change it, because once I change it, first of all I will be finished."
This principle was summed up by later scholars as "what cannot be done" under the entanglement and suppression of interest groups. Just like the "Jiangnan gentry's tax resistance (not necessarily violent tax resistance)" in the late Ming Dynasty in the original history, it could not be solved at all in the late Ming Dynasty because a large number of people in power were members of Jiangnan interest groups.
In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, this matter achieved a temporary result, but the reason was that the upper Tatar ruling class at that time did not have much interest entanglement with the Jiangnan gentry. Jiangnan's failure to pay taxes was their interests, so they could not be polite. Ground pressure. A certain second-place finisher was deprived of his honor simply because he failed to pay a penny in back taxes, so that the world said, "The second-place finisher is not worth a penny."
Then what? In the middle and late Qing Dynasty, the Jiangnan tax resistance once again became the mainstream, and the rescue was declared ineffective: because at that time, the interests of the upper ruling class and the Jiangnan gentry had been tied up, and it was impossible to use the knife on themselves.
The reason why the Real School was able to forcibly clear land in Jiangnan was partly because of Hai Rui's blessing, and partly because Gao Gong was not the chief minister from Jiangnan. The reason why commercial taxes can be levied in Jiangnan is the same - Gao Pragmatic leads the Northern Business Alliance, not the Southern Business Alliance, and he has no psychological pressure to suppress the wealthy gentry and wealthy businessmen in the south.
And he is highly pragmatic. As a time-traveler with a relatively limited sense of belonging in this era, he values national interests much more than anyone else in this era, so he took the lead in paying a large amount of taxes.
After weighing the pros and cons, other northern business giants found that even if they paid taxes, they would still earn more by being more pragmatic, so they had no choice but to agree to pay taxes. In this case, the legitimacy of the southern business gangs' refusal to pay taxes almost disappeared.
Therefore, to be able to complete so many reforms when the Ming Dynasty has been founded for more than two hundred years and various interest groups are complicated, to put it bluntly, whether it is Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng in history, or Gao Gong and their generation in this era , it can only be a beginning, and most likely it will not be complete.
Only Gao Pragmatic has this ability, because he can not only lead others to create and harvest more wealth, but also give up some of the benefits that he could have obtained on his own at a level that transcends the limitations of the times. If it were anyone else, they would always be unable to do one of these two things, and then they would have to give up halfway.
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Thanks to book friends "Cao Mianzi", "Dou'er 852", and "Yun Fuyue Yu" for their monthly ticket support, thank you!
PS: In the past half month, I have carefully studied some of the world economic history of the Cold War and post-Cold War periods, as well as the historical development process of the United States leading to the current situation, so that this chapter almost went off topic... but to be honest , the current situation of the Midi Empire is really very similar to that of the late Ming Dynasty. My personal opinion is that they are basically hopeless (this chapter actually has a metaphor) - even though they are still very strong now, who would think of the Ming Dynasty before Sarhu? Not strong?
