"!"

Zhao Liben sneered, and said with disdain: "Does your kid have anything to do with purity?" ”

"Grandpa, did you say that about your grandson?" Zhao Hao was aggrieved: "I am still a child in every sense." ”

"That's sooner or later." Zhao Liben snorted and said, "Don't just think about hugging your thighs, the soft rice of the heavenly family is not as delicious as you imagined." ”

"Oh?" Zhao Hao immediately showed an open and teachable look, after all, in this matter, grandpa is the real king.

"Alas, in the past, I felt that you were still young and couldn't touch that level, so I didn't mention it to you. I didn't expect you kid to be so able to toss. If I don't tell you clearly, I'm afraid I'm going to cause a catastrophe. ”

Zhao Liben picked up the teacup, took a sip and said, "Let's talk to you today." ”

"Yes, Grandpa." Zhao Hao immediately sat upright and listened to the teaching.

"The Ming Dynasty is not the Ming Dynasty of the Second Ancestor Era. The supreme and murderous imperial power in the hands of the second ancestor has long been wrapped in layers of cocoons. ”

I heard Zhao Liben say expressionlessly: "That is, in these provinces in the north, because you still have to rely on the imperial court to resist border troubles, you can still feel the existence of imperial power." Back to our south, who still takes the one sitting on the dragon chair seriously? In the southeast, let alone the eldest princess, it is a holy decree, and sometimes it is no different from papyrus. ”

If you wipe your buttocks, surely the Holy Decree will be more comfortable. Zhao Hao complained in his heart, and put this matter on his bucket list in this life.

However, these words came out of the mouths of the two dignified Jinshi and the former Nanjing household servant, which is indeed enough to make people creepy.

"Is it really that exaggerated?" Zhao Hao's voice was a little astringent. He always thought that this was the Long Qing Dynasty, and the situation should be better......

"Hehe......" Zhao Liben smiled coldly and said: "What is imperial power?" Is it the big driving book in the Forbidden City? Or did the king call the minister die, and the minister had to die? It's all just to make the emperor happy and deceive the people into being obedient. ”

Zhao Hao was shocked when he heard this, and said that his grandfather did have wine.

"Don't worry, your grandmother's people outside are already optimistic."

Zhao Liben saw his worry at a glance, and teased: "You dare to slap Xu Ge Lao's face in public, are you afraid of listening to two gossip?" ”

"My grandson is really not very bold." Zhao Hao sneered: "That time in Lingji Palace, I was careful enough, but I didn't expect his old man to be really angry." ”

"Do you think that Xu Ge has always asked 'a hundred schools of thought contending', so he allows different voices to make a big splash on stage?" Zhao Liben laughed and said:

"The so-called Lingji Palace lecture is a dojo where he uses Wang Xue and his body to sanctify. As long as all the scholars in the world abandon science and believe in Wang Xue, then it doesn't matter if he, the spiritual leader of Wang Xue, is the prime minister or not. ”

Saying that, he kicked out of nowhere, kicked Zhao Hao's left buttocks, and said, "It's good for you to run to someone's field." In front of the boss, he made a lot of nonsense, saying that he would learn to manage himself, and leave the rest to science. ”

"Oh, the study of the mind can only cultivate one's self and the family, and the rule of the country and the world depends on your science?" Zhao Liben gave a thumbs up to his grandson and said: "It's my Zhao Liben's species, fierce enough, crazy enough!" ”

"The words of a family, the words of a family." Zhao Hao has basically figured out the old man's temper now, he just likes to play big, off-road and enjoyable, so respectful and honest all day long, but he doesn't please the old man.

Is it because he has been depressed all his life, and he always feels that he has not yet used his fists and feet, so he stepped down first to rest and panic?

Zhao Hao guessed randomly, and then said with a smile: "Grandpa, let's talk about the imperial power." ”

"In the future, you won't interrupt much, I don't know grandpa's age, did you say the last sentence to the next sentence?" Zhao Liben scolded with a smile before he continued:

"Imperial power is actually just two words, soldiers and taxes. If you don't have soldiers, you won't fart and you won't make a sound, and if you don't have money, you won't be able to raise soldiers. However, officials are needed to collect taxes, and strong men are needed to transport grain, build roads, and build water conservancy. Therefore, if you want to sit firmly in the country, you have to add two more words, official and Ding. ”

"Soldiers, taxes, soldiers, officials." Zhao Hao nodded silently. In this era, it can still be rudely said that taxes are grain, and grain is taxes. If there are soldiers and food, you can fight the world, and if you have officials and soldiers, you can sit in the world, and the old man is worthy of being a former deputy ministerial-level cadre, and he has a level to look at problems.

"So the imperial power is not what you think is in the middle, you have to look at these four words, whether you can play it." Zhao Liben took a sip of tea, sighed and said:

"Taxes, you can't collect them; soldiers, mobilized and immovable; Ding, can't be recruited; Official, it doesn't work. Such imperial power is a fart, and no one will take it seriously. ”

Zhao Hao took the old man's set to Daming, and he sweated when he landed-

Tax.

Obviously, the southeast region is rich and oily, and every year it is smuggled alone, and the silver flowing into from overseas is afraid to be hundreds of millions of taels, but Taicang is empty, and the country is in a serious financial crisis.

Soldier.

The guards and battalions were so rotten that the Tartars were like no one, and they were killed by the Japanese and cried for their fathers and mothers. At that time, more than 100 Japanese robbers were killed all the way to the foot of Jinling City, and the two or three hundred thousand defenders could not retreat. It was up to Qi Jiguang to re-recruit miners to deal with the Japanese invaders.

Fourth.

In order to escape the heavy forced labor, the common people either joined the powerful families as slaves, or left their homes to become homeless, and the government at all levels basically could not catch the strong men.

Official.

Not to mention. The officials of the Ming Dynasty did not take the emperor seriously at all.

This is unparalleled throughout the ages.

The reason for this, to a large extent, is caused by the selection of scholars in the imperial examination.

But it is not that the imperial examination system is too unsuccessful, as later generations have commented.

On the contrary, because it was so successful.

Although the relatively objective examination system, the mechanism of selection at various levels, and the strict system of invigilation and marking of examination papers cannot completely eliminate fraud, they are sufficient to ensure that the vast majority of the selected officials are the best.

But this has brought two serious consequences, one is the harsh and lengthy selection, which makes the candidates have to put in the absolute effort for many years. After failing again and again, they can only thank their own personal efforts and the examiners who chose them.

Although they said that the emperor's grace was immense, they did not admit that their success came from the emperor's gift.

Second, the overall quality is getting higher and higher, so that civil officials have the conditions to refine the governance of the country, make it legal, and more complicated. The threshold for government decision-making is getting higher and higher, to the point that the emperor, eunuchs, and military attachés are daunted.

This is the so-called 'expertise leads to industry monopoly'. Today, the Ming Dynasty was governed only by a clique of civilian bureaucrats, and these 'technocrats' formed a tight system responsible for keeping the state apparatus running.

In the absence of foreign invasion, the emperor became superfluous.

In fact, there is another consequence, which is caused by Cheng Zhu Lixue, the designated textbook for the imperial examination. This is a doctrine that seems to defend imperial power everywhere, but in fact isolates the emperor from specific government affairs.

In fact, it was a defense, compromise and restraint of the raison d'être of the imperial power when the gentry clique had achieved a clear advantage in the struggle against the imperial power, but had no intention of replacing it.

After all, Emperor Taizu read too little, and he could abolish the visible prime minister, but he was still ambushed by the scholars - he chose Cheng Zhuli to designate the textbook for the readers.

As we all know, textbooks are things that shape the three views of the educated group.

As a result, ostensibly respecting imperial power and secretly restricting and disintegrating imperial power has become the collective unconscious of generations of civil officials.

Even many officials have restricted the emperor for a lifetime, but they still firmly believe that this is a manifestation of their loyalty to the monarch and patriotism......

Of course, there are also people like Zhao Liben who have thoroughly learned and seen through, and naturally they will be like the old man, who has no reverence for the imperial power.

PS. This chapter recommends that you read it carefully, it can be regarded as a new harvest of my study of history in the past few years, and after reading it, you should be able to solve a lot of confusion about the Ming Dynasty.