Hanyang City, this place is under the jurisdiction of Hanyang Prefecture. It can be regarded as a prefectural city, but it is far inferior to Wuchang on the other side of the Yangtze River.
Wuchang is the residence of the contemporary Huguang governor. It is the political, cultural and military center of the Huguang region and has tall and thick city walls.
As for Hanyang, its political importance is less. It is basically used as a commercial port. It is also difficult to defend militarily. Therefore, the Ming Dynasty did not build a strong fortress in Hanyang City before. .
This is just an ordinary city. Luo Zhixue and his people settled in Hanyang City and were as busy as ever.
In addition to arranging and rectifying military affairs, various internal affairs also need to be arranged.
As the Baoxiang Army moved south and gradually took control of Anlu, De'an, Jingzhou, Hanyang, Huangzhou and other places, the territory controlled by the Baoxiang Army expanded rapidly.
Currently, under the rule of the Baoxiang Army, there are eight prefecture-level administrative regions alone, and even more prefectures and counties.
Such many local administrative agencies require a large number of administrative officials to maintain. Taking the newly controlled Anlu Prefecture as an example, there is not only one prefect in the prefect's yamen alone, but there are also fellow prefects and officials under the prefect. , directors and directors of various departments/bureaus, and there are various departments under each department.
Just a prefect's yamen would need at least a hundred administrative officials to survive.
There are five counties and two states under Anlu Mansion, and the yamen of these states and counties also need to make arrangements one by one.
Just appointing various mid-level and senior officials is enough for Luo Zhixue to be overwhelmed.
Not to mention that after the establishment of administrative agencies in various places, people's livelihood in various places needs to be restored in a timely manner.
Many places have been damaged by war. Whether it was the battle between the Baoxiang Army and the Ming Army, or the scourge of rogue bandits, the war has made people's livelihood in many places very difficult.
At the same time, Nanyang Prefecture and Xiangyang Prefecture are still facing drought.
There are a lot of bad things going on.
Before, Luo Zhixue was already so busy just managing the territory of two prefectures. Now he is directly managing the territory of eight prefectures, which makes Luo Zhixue even more busy. For this reason, Luo Zhixue also began to gradually delegate power, such as starting to Luo Zhixue no longer intervenes in the appointment of some mid-level officials.
Earlier, Luo Zhixue would personally handle even the appointment of county magistrates, but now Luo Zhixue no longer has any specific responsibility for the county magistrates in several southern provinces.
Luo Zhixue now only arrests the three chief officials in each prefecture's yamen, that is, the prefect of the fourth rank, the tongzhi of the fourth rank, and the recommended official of the fourth rank.
Luo Zhixue has completely delegated power in the appointments of other bureaus within the prefecture's yamen as well as the appointments of counties, including county magistrates.
Of course, this delegation of power is also hierarchical. Basically, the appointments of the seventh rank and below, that is, the appointments of town mayors and bureaus under the county government, are directly handed over to the county official affairs office as the overall coordinator.
Appointments from the sixth rank and above to the fifth rank, that is, county magistrates, county magistrates, chief registrars, government departments and bureau chiefs, prefecture magistrates, prefecture prime ministers, general judges, etc. are all appointed by the Prefectural Civil Service Department Responsible for overall planning.
The Ministry of Personnel Affairs is responsible for appointments from the fourth rank and above, such as magistrate, tongzhi, and official promotion.
By the way, many names of the local administrative agencies of the Baoxiang Army, as well as official grades and powers, may look similar, but in fact they are completely different.
The most obvious example is the county magistrate. In the Ming Dynasty, this was the seventh rank, but in the Baoxiang Army, it was the sixth rank.
Generally speaking, the current local political structure of the Baoxiang Army is based on the troika model.
That is, a local chief official who is in charge of the general direction and personally in charge of personnel power is paired with a second-in-command in charge of administrative affairs and a third-in-command in charge of judicial affairs.
Specifically, the government established prefects, co-prefects, and elected officials.
Among them, the magistrate is the fourth rank, responsible for the general affairs and personnel affairs. The civil affairs department of the prefecture is personally in charge of the magistrate.
Tongzhi is from the fourth grade and is in charge of administrative affairs.
Officials are promoted from the fourth grade to be in charge of judicial affairs.
The same goes for the states and counties under the government.
Zhizhou Zhengwu, who is affiliated to the state Yamen, is in charge of general management of personnel.
Zhou Chengcong five quality management administration
The general judgment shall be based on the five quality control laws.
The county magistrate under the county government office is in charge of personnel affairs, the county magistrate is in charge of administration, and the chief registrar is in charge of justice.
These three levels of local administrative agencies are relatively consistent and are typical troika agencies.
If nothing else goes wrong, when the Baoxiang Army establishes provincial institutions in the future, it will most likely still be done like this, with a governor, a chief envoy, and an inspector.
This structure is actually a slightly modified structure of the Ming Dynasty's provincial governors and the third division.
But the biggest change is that the military institution of the capital commander has been abolished. At the same time, the governor will not have any military command power.
This is to completely eliminate the possibility of civilian interference in military affairs and implement strict separation of military and political affairs.
In the political structure of the Baoxiang Army, only the General Staff Department can mobilize army forces, and only the Naval Staff Department can mobilize naval forces.
In addition to these two agencies, other agencies, including the Logistics Department, Ordnance Department, Military and Administrative Department, Cavalry Director, and Artillery Director, which are also military agencies, are not allowed.
Of course, Luo Zhixue himself is not within this restriction.
After the separation of military and political affairs, the powers of local administrative agencies are limited to administrative affairs. They do not need to worry about military affairs. That is the military's business.
At the same time, Luo Zhixue made a major change in the administrative system of the Baoxiang Army, which was to improve the grades of many official positions. For example, the county magistrate was upgraded from the seventh grade to the sixth grade, and Tongzhi was upgraded from the fifth grade to the fourth grade. This was to clarify the various positions. When he was doing his job, his deputy position was completely reduced to being dispensable.
This change in the administrative structure is also the result of Luo Zhixue's continuous exploration and improvement in the past few months. If he detects any problems in the future, he will continue to improve.
But for now, it's pretty good. On the one hand, it ensures the smooth progress of the administrative work, and Luo Zhixue's workload has been reduced a lot.
Anyway, for Luo Zhixue, if there is a problem in a prefecture, he can directly hold the three prefecture-level officials accountable, namely the prefect, the tongzhi, and the official.
How to do specific things is left to the prefects.
Not only was power decentralized in official affairs, Luo Zhixue was also decentralized in many other matters as his territory expanded.
During the Funiu Mountain period, Luo Zhixue was personally responsible for anything big or small, and don't mind it, being able to take charge of these trivial things is the embodiment of Luo Zhixue's power.
When he came to Xiangyang, Luo Zhixue stopped caring about trivial matters.
Now, Luo Zhixue has focused his attention on high-rise buildings and no longer interferes in the specific steps.
If I really want to take care of everything, I’m really too busy.
But now Luo Zhixue can delegate power to many things, but there is one thing that cannot be delegated, and that is the establishment of the emperor.
Since Luo Zhixue arrived in Hanyang City, the entire Baoxiang Army has entered a strange state of excitement.
On September 4, the day after Luo Zhixue arrived in Hanyang, Li Chengtong, the commander of the First Division who led the army to fight against De'an Prefecture, hurried back to Hanyang City.
Fei Bingqing, commander of the 4th Infantry Brigade, came to Hanyang with him. This man was supposed to stay in Yingshan City and be responsible for the defense of Yiyang Three Passes, but he left military affairs to the deputy brigade commander and other subordinates. He came over with the excuse that he wanted to find Luo Zhixue to personally report the development of the Fourth Infantry Brigade and other matters.
The next day, Xu He, commander of the 2nd Infantry Brigade who led troops in Huangzhou Prefecture, also hurried back to Hanyang.
On September 6, even Huang Dingquan, commander of the Northern Route Army who was stationed in Nanyang City, arrived in Hanyang by boat.
That night, Dong Mingjie, commander of the Third Garrison Division in Jiangling, also ran over.
When many generals used various excuses to come to Hanyang one after another, Luo Zhixue knew that the matter of proclaiming himself an emperor and establishing a country could no longer be postponed.
If you delay it any longer, I'm afraid people's hearts will break...
Besides, these many generals abandoned their troops and ran back to Hanyang. If something happens on the front line, and these military chiefs are not around, they can easily cause big trouble.
In fact, the reason why these military chiefs came back in a hurry was because they had received news one after another that the general would proclaim himself the emperor and establish the country in Hanyang.
Luo Zhixue naturally let out this news himself, but he would not admit it even if he was beaten to death.
In fact, they had already started to prepare for the establishment of the country and proclaimed the emperor when Zhong Xiang was there. Well, since he wanted to proclaim himself the emperor, he must have this dragon robe.
And the dragon robe cannot be conjured out of thin air. It has to be prepared in advance.
Although these preparations have not been made public, it is not a secret to well-informed senior officials.
Whether it is Wang Xiazi or Huang Dingquan, they have long known that they will proclaim themselves emperor in Hanyang, but they do not know the specific time.
Now as soon as Luo Zhixue released the news that he was going to establish a country and proclaim himself emperor soon after arriving in Hanyang, they would naturally rush over.
What to do?
Encourage me to come in!
You can't let Luo Zhixue brag and then shamelessly proclaim himself emperor.
Even if Luo Zhixue is really so shameless, he still has to be cautious about traditional etiquette, otherwise he will be slandered every minute as being unfair in his position.
At this time, the role of the ministers is reflected.
On September 7, after most of the heavyweight generals arrived in Hanyang one after another, many people seemed to have made an appointment and began to write letters asking Luo Zhixue to proclaim himself emperor.
Luo Zhixue declined in accordance with international practice.
The next day, the courtiers came to invite Luo Zhixue to proclaim himself emperor, but Luo Zhixue naturally refused.
However, when Luo Zhixue refused, the city continued to be decorated with lights and colorful decorations, and even the temporary Temple of Heaven was urgently built...
During this period, Luo Zhixue also discussed matters such as the country name and era name with a group of ministers.
This side refused to proclaim himself emperor, while discussing the name of the country and the year. This operation made a three-year-old child confused!
Are you proclaiming emperor or not?
When discussing the name of the country, the progress was very smooth. The candidates were just those few. In the end, Luo Zhixue chose the character "Chu" as the name of the country.
After all, the Baoxiang Army is based in the north of Chu, and will use the Chu land as the foundation to pacify the world in the future. Using Chu as the country's title is also considered a routine operation. Many dynasties in history have done this.
The country name is easy to choose, but the year name has a bit of metaphysics in it.
Guo Quanshu and other civil servants came up with more than a dozen candidate year names, most of which were Shunzhi, Shunping, Shun'an, Yingshun, Chengshun...
It's smooth!
Luo Zhixue was dumbfounded when he saw it!
Later, when I asked about it, I found out that a group of civil servants under his command actually engaged in feudal superstition. The reason why most of the candidate year names had a straight character was just because of the folk legend that Zhu Yuanzhang asked Liu Bowen to predict the fate of the Ming Dynasty. Liu Bowen said after the fortune telling One sentence: 'Stop when things go well'.
And this is most likely a joke made up by the people later. It was first recorded in Liang Yi's Zunwen Record during the Zhengde period, but it was later widely spread among the people.
After Luo Zhixue heard this story, he remembered that when we were discussing the country's name before, some people suggested using "Shun" as the country's name and creating a Dashun country.
Looking at a group of feudal and superstitious subordinates, Luo Zhixue looked down upon them and silently chose 'Chengshun' as his reign title...
Although it is a bit ridiculous to say it as a joke, Luo Zhixue feels that having a straight character in his reign name will not lose a piece of flesh.
As for the year number, why should it be used?
Ahem, the emperor of the new era is all about following his heart. I just like the word Chengshun, not because of feudal superstition!
