Chapter 25 Chapter Eight Family Life III. A Life of Hard Work

Zhu Yuanzhang used all his energy and time to manage the Zhu family dynasty he created. Government affairs, large and small, must be handled personally.Entrusting others to do it, of course, can save energy and time, but first, he is not at ease, not only afraid that others will not be as dedicated as he is, but also afraid that others will cheat for personal gain; This person not only wants to monopolize great power, but also monopolizes small power.In this way, I get up before dawn to work and review official documents until late at night, without rest, without holidays, and never pay attention to cultural entertainment to adjust the spirit.According to the habit, all government affairs are dealt with, and officials' suggestions and reports are written in written documents. He reads documents all day long, and sometimes he feels bored.In particular, some pedantic and economical, lengthy and inaccurate, said a lot of reports that don't make sense, and after reading it for a long time, they still don't understand. How can they make people not get angry and angry?

In the ninth year of Hongwu, Ru Taisu, the head of the criminal department, wrote a book of ten thousand characters. After he asked people to read 6,370 words, he still hadn’t heard any specific opinions. a meal.The next night, I asked someone to read it again. After reading 16,500 words, I came to this topic. I suggested five things, four of which were advisable and feasible. Yuan Zhang immediately ordered the competent department to implement it. .At the same time, he pointed out that these five things can be explained clearly in more than 500 words, but he rambled on 17,000 words. Praise Ru Taisu as a loyal minister.In order to educate the officials and the people of the whole country, he personally wrote an article about the incident and published it, and stipulated the format of the suggestion. The article said:

In the ninth year of Hongwu, I saw all kinds of disasters and disasters, and I was at a loss, so I made a special announcement to my subjects, promising to make mistakes.Therefore, Ru Taisu, the chief minister of the Ministry of Punishment, spoke five things. His book was 17,000 words. Survivors are unique, but the answer is set.It is also said that most of the people in office are pedantic Confucian and vulgar officials.As far as this is concerned, I haven't seen the five facts, and I mean it's a lie, so I call to ask: You are an official of the Ministry of Punishment, and there are more than two hundred officials in the Ministry of Punishment.Those who make a point but are ignorant of the person, so rush at it.

In the middle of the next night, I was lying on the couch and had people recite his words. After 16,500 words, there were five facts, and the words of the five things were only five hundred and zero.I have heard so far, and I know that among the five things, four things are feasible.In the early morning of the same day, the imperial edict was written on the Yushitai of the Dufu.Wow, it's hard!Today, I am tired of listening to complicated texts and refute my loyal ministers, which is a fault of the alliance.A minister like this can be called loyal. Because of this, the law of writing and stating words is established to show the world.If the officials and the people have something to say, they are allowed to present the facts, but no complicated words are allowed. If they are too formal, ask them.

After this rectification, the memorial only presents the facts. Since then, he has saved a lot of energy and time in reading documents, and his work efficiency has improved.After the abolition of the Ministry of Education, the six ministries were directly responsible to the emperor, and the government affairs became more and more busy. Taking the documents received in September of the seventeenth year of Hongwu as an example, from the 14th to the 21st, within eight days, various internal and external departments reported All one thousand six hundred and sixty things, totaling three thousand three hundred and ninety-one things.On average, he has to read or listen to more than 200 reports and deal with more than 400 things every day.

In his early years, he lived a poor life of lack of clothing and food. In his middle age, he spent time in the army, in the life of soldiers and horses fighting fiercely and fiercely. After the age of forty, he devoted all his energy to handling state affairs. After the age of 2, his physical strength could no longer support him, and he suffered from a disease of rapid heartbeat. Song Lian advised him to be pure-hearted and ascetic.He had a high fever from time to time, was fond of fantasies, and had strange dreams, in which he saw fairy palaces in the sky.Sometimes moody, rage to the point of losing normalcy.What made him feel particularly painful was the conflict between the family and between father and son that affected his mental and physical strength.

Yuanzhang's eldest son, Crown Prince Biao, was honest and loyal. He received Confucian education for a long time and was raised to be a Confucian-style figure.After the old emperor was fifty years old, his energy was a bit exhausted, so he asked the crown prince to help with general government affairs.One is to divide the labor, and the other is to take advantage of this to train the ability of the next generation of emperors to handle affairs, hoping that his son will be Han Wendi, not Han Huidi.However, father and son have different backgrounds, different educations, and different life practices. One grew up in a hard struggle, and the other grew up in a peaceful environment, so their thinking and style are naturally different.The old emperor advocated governing the country with violence, and used court, prison, spies and death penalty to deter the officials and the people, making people fearful and unpredictable, but the crown prince talked a lot about the way of Zhou Gong and Confucius, benevolent government, kindness, and the less murder the better; The old emperor wants to use all his strength to eliminate internal hostile forces and consolidate the royal rule, but the crown prince has to take care of the great achievements of the generals, relatives, brotherhood, intercession and disputes with his father, one is harsh, the other is lenient, and the other is from real political struggles. Starting from one's own personal feelings, the differences between the father and son are gradually widening, and sometimes conflicts are inevitable.

According to unofficial historians in the Ming Dynasty, Song Lian was offended, and the crown prince cried for his teacher's help. Yuan Zhang was angry and said: "When you become the emperor, forgive him!"The crown prince was terrified and committed suicide by throwing himself into the water, so he went left and right to save him.He also said that the crown prince remonstrated with Yuanzhang: "Your Majesty has killed too many people, and he is afraid of hurting his peace."Yuan Zhang was silent.The next day, he deliberately put a stick of thorns on the ground and asked the crown prince to pick it up. Wouldn't it be nice.All the people I killed were bad people in the world. Only when the internal affairs are cleared up can you be the family.The crown prince said: "Above are the kings of Yao and Shun, and below are the people of Yao and Shun."It means that there are as many subjects as there are emperors. Yuanzhang was so angry that he picked up a chair and threw him at him. The crown prince had to run away.Although these two stories are not necessarily true, they reflect part of the conflict between their father and son.

Yuanzhang tried his best to create many bloody cases and cleaned up all the thorns on the stick, but another accident happened, and the crown prince died of illness in the twenty-five year of Hongwu.The sixty-five-year-old emperor suffered such a severe blow and was so sad that his body became weaker day by day, and his hair and beard turned white. After the death of the crown prince, Li Yunwen became the grandson of the crown prince, only sixteen years old. The character of the emperor's grandson is very similar to that of his father. Yuanzhang worried that he would not be able to cope with this situation, and that the generals and ministers would not accept his dispatch in the future.They had no choice but to cut off the thorns again, and Fu Youde and Feng Sheng, the few remaining heroes and veterans, were also killed.

Yuanzhang learned the historical lessons of the Yuan Dynasty and believed that succession to the throne was the fundamental system to maintain the safety of the dynasty, and strict rules must be stipulated so as not to cause disputes among families and cause coups in the palace.The best way is the succession system under the feudal patriarchal system.After the crown prince was established, in order to keep the kings in peace and protect and maintain the Dazong, in the fifth year of Hongwu, he ordered the officials to collect the good and evil deeds of the vassal kings since the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty as admonitions, and compiled a book called "Zhao Jianlu", awarded to the kings, for patriarchal education.After the emperor's grandson was established, he compiled another book called "Yongjianlu".In the 28th year, the "Emperor Ming Zu Xun" was promulgated, which listed in detail what all emperors, vassal kings and ministers should abide by and what they should not do.And it is ordered that if someone in the future generations wants to change the ancestral precepts, they will be killed without mercy as treacherous officials.It is hoped that by means of political education, with the constraints of the system and the law, the vassal princes and ministers can faithfully obey the future little emperor, the patriarch of the Zhu family dynasty.

However, Yuanzhang failed, his arrangements and painstaking education did not work, and the struggle for power caused deeper conflicts between brothers and between father and son.The second son, King Qin, had many faults in the domain and was not good at virtue. He was called back to the capital in twenty-four years.The third son, King Jin, was intelligent, arrogant, and lawless in his country. Someone accused him of conspiracy. Yuan Zhang was furious, and the crown prince rescued them.The two kings were unreliable, so Yuanzhang sent the crown prince to the pass to inspect Shanxi and bring the Jin king back to the court. After admonishing them painfully, the two kings promised to correct their mistakes before returning to the feudal domain.After the death of the prince, King Qin died in the 28th year, and King Jin died in the 31st year, both before Yuanzhang.Soon after the emperor's grandson became the emperor, he used various methods to reduce the power of the vassal kings, and a struggle between the dynasty and the vassal kings began. In the fourth year of Jianwen (1402 A.D.), he occupied Nanjing and established himself as emperor. He was Ming Chengzu.It has been less than five years since the death of the old emperor. In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, Yuanzhang was already seventy-one years old.He fell ill in May, lay in bed for thirty days, left the dynasty he created, and died peacefully.Buried at the foot of Zhongshan Mountain outside Nanjing City, it was named Xiaoling Mausoleum, posthumously called Emperor Gao, and the temple name was Taizu. There is a passage in the will: I have been entrusted with the destiny for thirty-one years. I have been worrying about dangers and working hard every day, so as to benefit the people.Nai started from humble beginnings, without the profound knowledge of the ancients, and he is fond of goodness, but it is not far away.The eight characters of worrying about dangers and working hard, and working hard every day, describe his hard-working life, and also describe his state of mind in the fierce struggle within the ruling class. Yuanzhang's appearance is not very decent, he has found many painters, the portraits are very realistic, the more realistic the title, the more dissatisfied he is.Later, there was a clever painter who painted similar faces and outlines, but with a friendly face and looked very kind, so he passed down many books and distributed them to the kings.There are copies of these two different portraits. Compared with all the feudal emperors in history, Zhu Yuanzhang is an outstanding figure.His merits lie in unifying the country, ending the 20 years of war in the late Yuan Dynasty, and enabling the people to live a peaceful and stable life; he was able to accept the lessons of history, made some concessions to farmers, vigorously encouraged agricultural production, built water conservancy projects, and promoted cotton The planting of jujube and mulberry fruit trees, in the northern areas where there are many people and few people, allows farmers to try their best to reclaim land, which is their own business, which greatly increases the number of self-cultivating farmers. It liberates slaves and changes the backward situation of a large number of slaves owned by nobles and bureaucrats in the Yuan Dynasty. To increase the labor force for agricultural production is to vigorously clear the acres of land and make atlases, which correspondingly reduces some uneven tax burdens; to protect commerce, to cancel the taxation of books and field utensils, to prosper the market, and to stipulate foreign policies. , drawing lessons from the failure of the Yuan Dynasty's foreign wars, concluded that on the one hand, foreign aggression must be resisted, and on the other hand, offenders are not allowed to be taken lightly. This lies in severely punishing corrupt officials, changing the bad political atmosphere in the late Yuan Dynasty, and changing the artisan household system of the Yuan Dynasty. Most of the craftsman households can freely produce most of the time, which partially liberates the labor force of craftsmen households and promotes the production of folk handicrafts; it is because they do not believe in auspiciousness, do not seek longevity, pay attention to frugality, and do not engage in things like Qin Shihuang, Han Wudi, and Song Zhenzong. The stupid things I have done are to limit the number of monks and Taoists, reduce the parasites that eat without work, and correspondingly increase the labor force of agriculture and industry. These measures are conducive to the development of agricultural production and the advancement of society. Yes, it laid the foundation for the prosperity and stability of the early Ming Dynasty, and it should be affirmed. However, he also has many shortcomings. First of all, he was originally the leader of the peasant revolution. The purpose of participating in the revolution was to overthrow the joint rule of the Mongolian and Han landlords and to oppose the rule of the landlord class. However, due to the traditional forces of the old society and the reception and adaptation of a large number of landlord troops and Military officers, due to the participation of a large number of Confucian scholars from the landlord class, and because they unconsciously inherited the ruling mechanism of the Yuan Dynasty, gradually deteriorated, and finally rebelled against the peasant revolution, grabbed the fruits of the victory of the peasant revolution, and went from opposing the rule of the landlord class to becoming a landlord himself. The leader of the class, the protector of the interests of the landlord class, in turn suppressed the peasant revolution. This serious crime cannot be justified under any circumstances. Secondly, his policy of governing the country with violence, excessive use of spy organizations, caused many bloody cases, brutal and cruel punishments, and massacres, to the point where there is no distinction between good and bad, and good and evil.Many outstanding generals and literati were brutally murdered for no reason; Jinyiwei and Tingzhang, two poor governments, had extremely bad effects throughout the Ming Dynasty's reign, and they were all initiated and established by him. . Third, political measures must be changed with changes in society and times.However, Zhu Yuanzhang set the emperor's ancestral precepts, and laid down many methods for his descendants' rule one or two hundred years later, and he was not allowed to change. This constrained and restricted any subsequent political innovations and hindered the progress of the times. Fourth, the stereotyped essay system he stipulated only allowed parrots to learn what the ancients said, but did not allow intellectuals to have their own thoughts and opinions, which seriously played a harmful role in suppressing new ideas and destroying scientific and cultural progress. Fifth, although he himself doesn't believe in gods or retribution, in order to convince his subjects, he plays many absurd miracles, deceives and poisons the people. This method is also very bad. As mentioned above, Zhu Yuanzhang has many achievements and many shortcomings. Compared with his achievements and shortcomings, his merits outweigh his shortcomings.He played a role in promoting the development of social production and the advancement of society, and is a historical figure that should be affirmed.Among the feudal emperors of all dynasties, he is a relatively prominent and outstanding figure. In addition, he is also an excellent military strategist, and his military command ability is tempered from the practice of war.Two prominent battles: one was the war against Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng. He fought Chen Youliang first and then Zhang Shicheng, changing from passive to active, avoiding the military crisis of fighting on two fronts, and defeating each of them; the other was the Northern Expedition, taking Luyu first. , blockade Guan and Shaanxi, cut off their branches and leaves, and then take Dadu directly, without a fight.It has written a glorious page in military history. His military success can also be summed up into several experiences. The first is that he has relatively strict military discipline; the second is that he has a base area rich in grain; The enemy's investigation and research, intelligence work is done very well, and he knows himself and the enemy, so he can win every battle and consolidate and expand his victories. This is the reason why his contemporaries have failed one after another. Rewritten on February 1, 1964, finished on April 2