In May of the fourth year of everything, the national draft begins. It is different from the old rule of selecting from civilian families in the Northern Zhili region. In this draft, the imperial court sent a total of 15 imperial envoys to select virtuous, gentle, beautiful and beautiful ladies in the two capitals and 13 provinces in accordance with the four basic qualities of "De Rong Yan Gong", and civil servants of the imperial court who were below the fourth grade and above the seventh grade. His daughters are also among the candidates.
The ability to break the ancestral system of choosing civilian daughters this time is the result of Zhu Yijun and the two palaces' vigorous efforts. Zhu Yijun summed up the lessons learned in the Ming Dynasty when it was difficult to raise a prince in the palace, which made it difficult for the emperor to have an heir. Taking Emperor Hongzhi as an example, he urged the two empresses Chen and Li on the necessity of choosing the daughter of an official.
The most difficult thing for a prince in the Ming Dynasty was that of Emperor Hongzhi. Because his biological mother Ji was the daughter of a rebellious chieftain and had no status or fighting skills in the palace, she was ordered to have an abortion by the favored Concubine Wan Guifei when she was just pregnant. Later, under the protection of the eunuch Zhang Min, Zhu Youtang survived.
Because the Ji family did not dare to keep their own son by their side, Zhu Youtang ate in the palace as a child and experienced nine deaths before he grew up safely.
Emperor Xianzong later learned about this son and made Zhu Youtang the prince. Immediately afterwards, Ji, who had just been named Shufei, and Zhang Min, the eunuch who protected Zhu Youtang, died suddenly. Both of them were killed by Xianzong's favorite Concubine Wan Guifei.
Xianzong's mother, Empress Dowager Zhou, was worried that Concubine Wan Gui would attack the prince, so she personally raised Zhu Youtang in Renshou Palace until Emperor Hongzhi grew up and later founded the "Hongzhi Zhongxing".
Zhu Yijun changed part of the ancestral system in the draft because it was true that ordinary women were limited by their education since childhood, and their vision and scheming skills could not compare with the daughters of officials - although he was confident that there would be no such thing as a noble concubine in his harem. But for the sake of future generations, it would be better to break through the ancestral system.
The two queen mothers, Chen and Li, were both daughters of common people. Based on their own personal experience when they first entered Prince Yu's palace, they were all moved by Zhu Yijun. But Queen Mother Li had some political qualities after all, and reminded Zhu Yijun to prevent his relatives from getting bigger.
Of course, Zhu Yijun had to guard against this. The draft edict clearly stipulated that once selected as a concubine, the immediate family members of the family above the concubine within three generations should not exceed the fourth rank in civil and military life, and they were not allowed to lead troops.
In order to make up for the loss in the officialdom of the relatives' family, once a beautiful girl is a concubine or above, her father or brother will be awarded the second rank of Zhengfeng Dafu; if she is selected as a concubine, her father or brother will be given the first rank of Zide Dafu; if If she becomes a queen, she will be granted the title of earl and issued a world certificate.
As the saying goes, "the entrance to the palace is as deep as the sea", the ancient royal draft was deeply hated by the people. In draft years, a large number of early marriages often occur among the people. Those who really did not have the conditions to get married early would quickly get engaged and submit the engagement to the government for registration.
However, as soon as this draft decree came out, it also had great temptation for officials and officials below the fourth rank and wealthy businessmen. The fourth grade was the glass ceiling for civil servants in the Ming Dynasty, and there were many difficulties to overcome. The treatment that the third-grade senior officials don't care about, but the fourth- to seventh-grade officials still feel itchy.
The wealthy businessmen, who have money but no status, are eager to have official protection and protection, and their enthusiasm for participating in the draft is higher than that of the middle- and lower-level civil servant groups.
...
Because Emperor Longqing injured his kidneys during his early years of sexual indulgence, he struggled to recuperate his body during the fight with his younger brother to give birth to Zhu Yijun, which stabilized Emperor Jiajing's heart. Empress Dowager Li was under great pressure at that time, and she was also frightened by the difficulties of Zhu Zai's heir.
In the system of the Ming Dynasty, below the empress, there were twelve levels: imperial concubine, concubine, concubine, concubine, Zhaoyi, Zhaorong, Jieyu, beauty, talented person, nobleman, selected attendant, and lady.
This national draft was held on a grand scale under the strong support of the psychologically shadowed Empress Dowager Li and the foreign court. First, five thousand women were selected locally and brought to Beijing together with their parents.
After arriving in the capital, the royal family will send internal officials and imperial envoys to select 300 people from 5,000 people to enter the palace. After entering the palace, the Queen Mother will also organize a series of assessments, and then select fifty people from three hundred beautiful ladies to prepare ladies and select attendants.
Among them, the most outstanding nine girls will be named the ninth concubine from the beginning. Then select the best among the nine concubines and make her the queen.
Zhu Yijun originally did not want to waste people and money so much, but Empress Dowager Li, the representative of the harem, and Zhang Juzheng, the representative of the imperial court, both disagreed with the emperor making his own decisions in such matters and lowering the standards for the number of draftees.
After all, the empress of the mother-in-law world will be selected from these five thousand people. Everyone in the court, inside and outside the palace, criticized Zhu Yijun for his wrong idea - Zhu Yijun could not be the general trend. In addition to agreeing on the needs of selecting the empress and the ninth concubine Apart from his opinions, there is no room for him to comment on other draft activities.
...
July at Zhuang's Qixia Village in Suzhou is the time when the sun is scorching hot. The noisy cicadas did not bring tranquility to the garden dotted with strange stones and bamboos. Only the occasional breeze blowing through the clear pond brought a touch of coolness to the people in the Linshui Wooden Pavilion.
In the wooden pavilion, there are green clouds and clouds in the sky. Zhuang Jingjia, who is wearing light green gauze and a lavender horse-faced skirt with flower mother-of-pearl waist, is holding a book and drinking iced sour plum soup to relieve the heat.
When she put down the azure Ru kiln soup bowl and gently shook the fan like a jade catkin, its graceful beauty was reflected in the gauze shadow in the pavilion, and paired with a pot of blooming gardenia on the small table in front of her, this girl Just like it can only exist in the spring dreams of princes, princes and grandsons when they toss and turn, the beauty is unreal, but it makes this summer garden intoxicated.
And on the gravel road under the weeping willows by the pond, a little maid ran over in the hot sunshine with a big lotus leaf on her head. When she entered the wooden pavilion panting, one sentence called Jingjia out of the book.
"Miss, I heard from the Jiangying beside the master that you are going to enter the palace!"
Jingjia was slightly surprised at first and opened her mouth. Her beauty made the caring maid Lu Yi beside her jump in her heart. In her shallow culture, where she only knew a few words, she didn't know that two thousand years ago, someone had already described the beauty of her young lady like this: her teeth were like rhinoceros, and her head was slender and its eyebrows were furrowed.
Then Jingjia put the book on the small table and said with a smile: "My father loves me so much, why can he still let me enter the palace? You silly girl, you must have been deceived by Jiangying."
Lu Yi heard her affirmation and said a little uncertainly: "Miss, our family is not what it used to be - maybe someone in the family wants to become rich and powerful in the royal family."
After hearing this, Jingjia smiled quietly and shook her head: "My father loves me the most, and he won't agree."
In the Tingyu Pavilion of the manor, Zhuang Yunchang, the actual helmsman of the Zhuang family, was frowning and meditating on the recliner. In the breeze brought by the banana fan gently swayed by his concubine Jiangxi, his heart was like the noisy cicada outside the pavilion. , a mess.
The Jiangnan Zhuang family all originated from the Mi surname of King Zhuang of Chu, which originated from Hubei. Zhuang Yunchang is not from the same clan as the famous Pilingzhuang family in later generations. He is the descendant of Zhuang Ji, a master of Ci and Fu in the Western Han Dynasty, who spread his roots in Wuxian County, Suzhou and other places, and has been passed down for more than 1,600 years. But in the Zhengde, Jiajing and Longqing generations of the Ming Dynasty, the family had not produced a Jinshi for many years, and the highest academic qualification was Juren.
At this time, the eldest son of the family, Zhuang Yunchang, whose courtesy name was Shouchang, passed the provincial examination in the 37th year of Jiajing's reign. He was an early-stage candidate and was only nineteen years old at that time. However, under the golden list, there are all tears. Until the second year of Wanli, Zhuang Yunchang still suffered repeated defeats in the examination room. At this time, he was thirty-seven years old and still a civil servant.
In the third year of Wanli, Zhu Yijun used Xu Jie's family in Jiangnan as a breakthrough point and cooperated with the newspaper as a big killer. He killed several monkeys, and the banker was among them.
Although Zhuang Yunchang is not the leader of the clan, he is definitely a smart man. At first, due to information asymmetry, he did not understand the emperor's intention to deal with Xu Jie, thinking that it was still the aftermath of the struggle between Xu Jie and Xi Jinping during the Longqing period. However, as soon as the newspaper came out, his mind immediately returned to his sobriety.
Then he tried his best to persuade the elders in the clan to give up their land, wealth and reputation, and successfully avoided the family's trouble. After Wang, Dong, Gao and Zhou's family were broken into, Zhuang Yunchang's status in the clan was like a rocket, soaring into the sky.
After this incident, as the eldest son of the eldest son, he has gained the actual leadership over clan affairs in addition to the matters of field sacrifice and clan sacrifices that he was originally responsible for.
He got married after winning the imperial examination and had a son who unfortunately died in infancy. Later, at the age of twenty-three, I got a legitimate daughter, whom I fell in love with like the apple of my eye. After that, although his wives and concubines gave him three more sons and two daughters, none of them were as favored by him as his eldest daughter.
Zhuang Jingjia's name was taken from the Book of Songs - "It tells peace, Bian Dou Jingjia", describing the girl's cleanliness and beauty, and Zhuang Jingjia lives up to her name. Although she was raised in a boudoir and was unknown to anyone, she was known to all the relatives and female family members she met. Her appearance is as shy as a flower closing in the moonlight, as if a fish is sinking and a goose is falling.
Jingjia was already fourteen years old at this time, so she should have made an engagement long ago. But Zhuang Yunchang, dominated by the emotion of reluctance, always wanted to find a husband for his legitimate daughter who was impeccable in all aspects. After his daughter's reputation gradually spread, Zhuang Yunchang didn't like any of the handsome young men who came to the banker's house to propose marriage, whether they were wealthy, handsome or both.
Last year, the emperor's pen tip gently circled, although it saved the banker from disaster, it also sounded a deafening alarm to Zhuang Yunchang. Regardless of whether you have a family that has accumulated good deeds for thousands of years, or people who are famous for their poetry and prose, they are of no use to the imperial power.
Even if you become the leader of the literary world, if you make a mistake once, you will be in a state of eternal destruction. Isn't Wang Shizhen the most obvious example?
But in the Ming Dynasty, there was a kind of person who, as long as he did not rebel and rarely participated in the army and politics, he could live with the country and enjoy the wealth and honor he had inherited for many generations. That was honor and nobility - and the queen's family must be granted the title of earl. This was also an iron rule. The recent draft edict that reached Jiangnan also proves this point.
Therefore, Zhuang Yunchang, who was reminded by the government to report his daughter's information, fell into confusion and entanglement - for the sake of his family, did he really want to push Jingjia, whom he regarded as a treasure, into a deep palace that eats people without spitting out their bones? Or should he quickly choose one of the backup son-in-laws he has already chosen and sign the marriage book first?
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