The main force of the Japanese army in southern Korea is brewing a huge gamble, and Gyeonggi Province in central Korea is not peaceful either. To be precise, Wang Jing and Hanyang should be in a situation where dark clouds are threatening to destroy the city.
The cause of the incident was the king's return to the capital - that is, the king of Joseon, Li Xin, returned to his capital, Hanyang, again. Although this king has come and gone in recent years, he has come and left, and he has come again... But no matter what, it is always a great joy to be able to return to the capital this time, but King Li Hao really can't feel any joy. Heart.
In fact, in his opinion, since Ma Gui officially sent troops south, the situation of "black clouds over the city" has already appeared, but no one was aware of the danger at the beginning.
At that time, Ma Gui went south, and one hundred thousand heavenly troops entered Pyongyang in a mighty manner, among which there were thirty to forty thousand armored cavalry alone (actually half-armed, as mentioned above, hereafter referred to as "armed" mostly from the North Korean perspective, so No further explanation), coupled with an artillery force of more than 10,000 people, dragging hundreds of artillery pieces of various sizes, it really shocked the entire city of Pyongyang.
The Koreans had never seen so many huge cannons gathered in one large army! Those hundreds of cannons were like giant black tigers squatting half-crouching, their black muzzles flashing with a cold light.
Coupled with the tall horses, lances and sabers of the Ming army cavalry, all the Koreans who watched the "entering the city" were overjoyed, thinking that the Japanese pirates were just around the corner. At the same time, they secretly glanced at the useless troops in their own court and subconsciously gave birth to A thought: If Ming Dynasty really wanted to use North Korea’s brains, would North Korea have the strength to oppose it...or even the courage?
No one dared to express their worries. All North Koreans in Pyongyang cheered and welcomed the Ming army into the city with seemingly the most enthusiasm, and then they began to be in a daze.
Because Ma Gui's first order was to take over the entire defense of Pyongyang, including the palace of the King of Korea, and the reason he gave was very simple: The admiral strongly disapproved of the capabilities of the Korean army, and Pyongyang's defense must be fully controlled by the Ming army.
Of course, North Korea raised objections to this. Whether it was Liu Chenglong, Yi Dooshou, or other high-ranking North Korean officials, they all found Ma Gui and Song Yingchang, who had not left at that time, hoping that Ming Dynasty could take back Cheng's life, and at least let North Korea to some extent. The army must participate in part of the defense, otherwise it will be too embarrassing.
However, this time they were not satisfied. First, Song Yingchang refused to receive any visitors on the pretext that he had received the imperial edict to return to the imperial court, and that his position as manager had actually been transferred to the high cabinet and that he had no right to interfere.
Then Ma Gui was even more direct. He listed countless incompetent performances by the North Korean army before and firmly refused the North Korean army to join the city defense system. He demanded that all North Korean troops withdraw from Pyongyang City and station outside the city or in nearby small towns. "Those who disobey the order will be punished." The heavenly soldiers are expelled!"
North Korea gasped and had no choice but to do the next best thing and once again asked Magui to say that at least the palace should be guarded by North Korean troops. However, Ma Gui didn't show much kindness. The only accommodation was that he could allow the King of Joseon to leave two hundred palace guards in the palace to guard the inner court, while the defense of the palace itself still had to be left to the Ming army.
Liu Chenglong, Yi Dooshou and others ignored their differences in stance and went to the door together hoping to persuade Ma Gui. Unexpectedly, after Ma Gui saw them, he directly threw out a letter, telling them that this move was based on the order of Jing Lue. It is impossible for a general to disobey.
Ma Gui said something to the stunned North Korean ministers: "I would like to teach you that in recent years, when the princes have commanded the army, even the emperor has never interfered. Therefore, no matter how you interfere with me, I will not interfere with you." I would never dare to disobey, so I had no choice but to take over by force... I guess your king doesn't want to see this either, right?"
At this point, there was no need to talk about it, and the North Korean side did not dare to wait for Ma Gui to "forcefully take over", so after hurriedly reporting to Li Hao, they had no choice but to swallow their anger and withdraw the North Korean troops from Pyongyang City. However, they refused to actually send these troops to the "nearby town". Instead, they ordered them to camp on the spot outside the city to avoid any accidents.
In Ma Gui's view, this move of the North Koreans was meaningless. Their troops in Pyongyang were only a few thousand at the time, and as a "soldier of 100 defeats", no matter what "accident" the Ming army had, they would not dare to stop it. Even more powerless to stop it. In Ma Gui's eyes, this kind of behavior is nothing more than Korean Yangban's self-comfort, and it is not worth a penny at all.
From that time on, the North Korean King Li Huo was already under the "tight guard" of the Ming army. Even if he met with two groups of important ministers, there would always be tall and majestic Ming soldiers standing at the door, so that later they They no longer dared to speak in the Chinese used by the upper class, but entirely in spoken Korean - but what they didn't know was that the Ming troops outside the door were all selected from the Liaodong Army, and they were all stationed in the Everyone in Shuangliancheng and other places close to North Korea can understand Korean.
However, no matter what, since there are no more Korean soldiers in the city, the only thing that the Korean King Li Huo can rely on is the "Liangban", and his "rule" of North Korea can only be achieved indirectly by relying on the Liangban. However, the question is, can North Korea's Yangban really be relied on?
If you have watched the Korean costume dramas of later generations, you will definitely find that there are often some male and female protagonists who seem to have their own aura. Whenever they come to the door, they say that they are "descendants of Yangban", with noble blood, and naturally superior to others, just like in Europe. They look like "blue-blooded aristocrats", and even their eyes and expressions are extraordinary.
Who is this "descendant of two classes" and why can he be so cool? In fact, the so-called "two classes" means "two classes for civil and military affairs." North Korea has long studied the Chinese system. When going to court, the monarch sits in the north and faces south, while the civil and military ministers stand in separate groups, with a few rows on the left and a few on the right. In the platoon, the literary class is called the literary class, and the martial arts class is called the martial arts class. Together they are two classes.
But if we look at the Korean Yangban directly as the civil servants and generals of the Ming Dynasty, it is different. The yangban in North Korea can be said to be the backbone of its ruling class. They have political privileges (qualified to be officials for generations) and economic privileges (free from land tax and free from corvee) that ordinary people would not dare to imagine. When ordinary people see them, they will respectfully call them "Yangbanni" (ni means master in Korean).
From Wang's Goryeo to Lee's Joseon, these people have always been truly important players in the ups and downs of the peninsula's political arena in the past millennium.
The term yangban first appeared in the Goryeo Dynasty of the Wang family. "History of Goryeo" records that in the first year of Taizu (AD 918), the Jiawu Articles said: "Learn the rituals in Zhuoting, and both civil and military affairs will be in place." Here, Yangban simply refers to civil and military officials. In the early years of the Goryeo Dynasty, the civil and military ranks were scattered, and the officials were all founding heroes and local powerful men. People outside them were called "commoners" and their official careers were restricted. Politics was basically monopolized by the "two classes" composed of these nobles.
These big guys wandered around in the court and engaged in a meritorious politics. They could not lose their tail. If things continued like this, they would certainly be a great threat to the royal power. So when he went to Seongjong of Goryeo, the grandson of King Taizu of Goryeo and the sixth king of Goryeo, he learned about China and established the imperial examination system.
Of course, the imperial examination here is not the kind of imperial examination that was widely carried out in the Song Dynasty, but the kind of imperial examination that did not shake the aristocracy in the Tang Dynasty. After all, reform must be based on stability, and we cannot risk our lives by taking too many steps.
Therefore, in fact, what they did was to allow the children of Goryeo nobles to "study privately" by entering the imperial examination cram school, so as to obtain good results in the examination, so they established the imperial examination. However, although doing so has increased pressure on the nobles, they are still the same people.
This is just like the children of the future generation. It is indeed difficult to compete with the children in the school district who have learned eight foreign languages from elementary school and attended ten cram schools.
But after doing this, there are still some benefits to the royal family, that is, the culture of Chongwen has been created. The imperial examination gave top priority to liberal arts, so the status of civil servants was greatly improved.
Similar to China, out of the need to maintain its own rule, the royal family continued to emphasize culture over martial arts, so the actual focus of the two classes was the "literary class." Later, the Goryeo Dynasty implemented a "civil and military casual title" system, and the status of civil classes was higher than that of generals. Later, the "Shibata System" was introduced, which was a hierarchical salary system for officials. Civilian officials were also much higher than military generals.
As a result, especially after a long time, the generals stopped doing it. I lead troops in wars and go through life and death, why can't I be compared to you, the powerless literati? So in 1170, the military general Zheng Zhongfu launched a coup, and Goryeo entered the era of military attache dictatorship.
Military men are good at fighting, but relatively inexperienced in running a country. But those men of letters have become enemies and can no longer be used. What should we do? Therefore, during the period of the military attache's dictatorship, a large number of local rural officials were promoted, and handymen were held in important positions. The threshold for the "two classes" of nobles began to be broken.
Later, Goryeo was defeated by the Yuan Dynasty and became a dependent state of the Yuan Dynasty, at the mercy of the Yuan Dynasty. From this time on, some low-status translators, medical officers, etc. were promoted to high positions one after another because of their close contacts with the Mongols.
In this way, the scope of the "Yangban" has actually been greatly expanded. Originally, only some nobles could become the Yangban. Now, a bunch of people who the nobles despised have all become members of the Yangban, and the Yangban has begun. It’s become a mixed bag.
To maintain the respect of aristocrats, what a noble wants is a high status. This status is best determined by blood, given by God, and cannot be interfered with by others. "Princes and generals should rather have their own kind." This is the banner used by "rebels" like Chen Sheng and Wu Guang. The rulers obviously cannot allow this situation that shakes the identity foundation of the ruling class to continue to exist.
Therefore, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, when Li Chenggui overthrew Goryeo and established the Lee Dynasty's Joseon, a major reform was carried out on the yangban system. What to do?
First of all, people with the status of township officials and subordinate officials must be eliminated from the two classes. In the eyes of the nobility, these technocrats could not be compared with the emperor and nobles like them.
The nobles in the literary class read the books of Confucius and Mencius, which talked about the principles of harmonizing the family, governing the country, and bringing peace to the world. Other people with specific technical jobs such as witch doctors, musicians, and white workers are no longer treated as two classes of nobles. It is also necessary to abolish the rural land outside the township officials, formulate a punishment law for the township officials, establish a hometown office to supervise the township officials, and strictly supervise them... and so on.
Secondly, it is to fully implement the imperial examination system that is beneficial to the two classes. For a class to have vitality, it must first have a sense of crisis. There is a catfish effect in later generations of management science. It is said that fishermen are afraid that the fish they catch will die, so they throw a few catfish into it to make the fish move around and exercise, so that they will be less likely to die.
Therefore, the Li Dynasty also implemented the catfish of strengthening the imperial examination to give you dudes a sense of crisis. The Li Dynasty stipulated that only the children of officials of third rank or above could be under the influence of the family. The rest of the people had to take the exam to become officials, so you should study hard.
But will the imperial examinations of the Li Dynasty cause social mobility, disintegrate aristocracy and enter civilian politics like the imperial examinations in China? Of course not.
The imperial examinations in Li's Korea were mainly divided into liberal arts, martial arts, and miscellaneous subjects. Among them, those who can become high-ranking officials and be promoted to the second class mainly study liberal arts. However, in the liberal arts examination, the imperial court first set up barriers in the identity verification. Children of rural officials must be "reviewed by the four ancestors" and "recommended by the two classes" to participate in the imperial examination. In addition, to participate in the liberal arts examination, they must also take an additional exam of "Four Books and One Classic", and With the approval of the county government.
Moreover, in the imperial examinations of the Li Dynasty, the so-called "concubines" - that is, sons born from concubines, sons born from second marriages, and illegitimate children were not allowed to take the imperial examinations for liberal arts, which greatly restricted the expansion of the two classes of nobles. As the saying goes, things are more valuable when they are scarce. Only when there are few people can the aristocrats become more expensive.
North Korea's imperial examinations seem to have no registration restrictions for ordinary people, but it is much more difficult for poor students to pass the examination than it was in the Ming Dynasty at the same time. Because the official schools in North Korea are basically aristocratic schools. The children of the two groups enter the school hall at the age of seven or eight, and then enter the Seoul Four Schools. After completing the student entrance examination, they enter Sungkyunkwan. After completing 300 dots (such as credit hours) in Sungkyunkwan, they can take the liberal arts examination. . How can ordinary people have the conditions to compete with these second-generation officials who grew up in elementary school?
This was not enough. In order to ensure the continuation of the identity of the two classes of nobles, North Korea also implemented a "don't try" policy. The formal imperial examination is held once every three years, while the "extraordinary examination" is held at an uncertain time, and is often notified suddenly a few days before the examination.
This is very funny, because ordinary scholars can't even rush to the examination room in time, and those who pass the examination are basically the students of the second class who have information. So as time goes by, there are more and more special examinations. In the original history, the Li Dynasty enjoyed nearly 600 years (until it was annexed by Japan in the late Qing Dynasty). There were only 163 main examinations, but there were actually 581 special examinations. It was unfair. It can be seen.
In this way, the imperial examination road in North Korea was basically monopolized by two classes of nobles. The situation in China of "working as a farmer in the morning and ascending to the emperor's hall at night" basically does not exist in North Korea.
Through this method, Lee's Joseon established a relatively stable upper-level ruling group, namely Yangban. The Li Dynasty essentially divided people into four classes: the first class was called the Liangban, the second class was the so-called middle-class people (that is, village officials and other miscellaneous workers), the third class was the good people (ordinary people), and the fourth class was the untouchables (the untouchables). slaves, prostitutes, etc.). It is very difficult for second- and third-class people to move up to the first class, while for fourth-class people there is no hope at all.
Needless to say, the dangers of class solidification are depressing to put it mildly, and stagnant to say the least. But once Li Huan was "protected" by Ma Gui in the palace, he could only rely on this pool of stagnant water to survive.
But the biggest question is not whether stagnant water can save people, but that "stagnant water" will also find that the situation is not right at this time and start to think about itself.
So, when Ma Gui led his troops to the south, but left 20,000 to 30,000 troops to specifically "protect" the King of Joseon and the Joseon court who were still in Pyongyang, some "backwaters" suggested: "The king is right, Joseon should be included in Ming dynasty."
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Thanks to book friends "Yun Fuyue Yu" and "Cao Mianzi" for their monthly support, thank you!
