Time flies, the years alternate like a shuttle, in the blink of an eye is a few years, and now it is the spring of the fifteenth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty.

In the original history, there was no major event in the Ming Dynasty this year, but its impact was extremely far-reaching. Hundreds of years later, a generation of historian Huang Renyu took this year as the title of his book and wrote a book on the gains and losses of the Ming Dynasty - "The Fifteenth Year of Wanli".

And at the end of this book, Mr. Huang is even more conclusive, thinking that after this year, the once glorious Ming Dynasty has completely slipped into the abyss, even if there has been an opportunity later, and countless people have thrown their blood and lives for this, but the number of Ming Qi has been exhausted, and it is difficult to have a way to return to heaven.

Because of the Ming Dynasty at this time, all kinds of ills have penetrated deep into the bone marrow, if you compare it to one person, it can be regarded as terminally ill, and it cannot be cured by medicinal stones. Moreover, the many chaos caused by those shortcomings have gradually become apparent, and the situation has become more and more serious with the wrong actions of the monarchs and ministers of the court, until a few decades later, the dynasty of more than 200 years has completely overturned.

But if Mr. Huang saw the current Ming Dynasty, he would not dare to make such a conclusion. Although the ills he identified were still visible, the weather in Korea and China was very different, and this was particularly evident in the military.

In the original history, the Ming army has long been rotten to the root because of the long period of peace, even if there are still a few teams that are enough to fight, it is just a drop in the bucket. What's even more terrifying is that those combat-effective armies are not even imperial court soldiers in a sense, but more of the private soldiers of the generals of the border towns.

Perhaps when foreign enemies invade, these Ma Shang will fight back in order to protect themselves, but if the imperial court really wants to mobilize them, it will be extremely difficult. As for the other officers and soldiers of the guards, they are nothing more than a group of poor people who are incapable of fighting and can only be exploited as cheap labor.

Today, however, the atmosphere in the military has been greatly improved. Because of Yang Zhen's series of behaviors in Northern Xinjiang a few years ago, those generals who stole military power and used power for personal gain were killed, even if they were retained, they had already clamped their tails and behaved, so they naturally did not dare to regard the soldiers and horses of the imperial court as their own private property.

The great victory over the Mongolian people greatly boosted the morale of the border army, and the imperial court then took advantage of the reward and reward credit to reshuffle the cards of all walks of life, so that the original kind of small groups with their own mountains were almost extinct in the border army.

So to be able to do all this so smoothly is still thanks to Yang Zhen's previous prestige. When the imperial court needs to make a transfer in the border army, it only needs to send people from the Jinyi Guard to supervise, and those generals dare not object, and as for their private actions, they can't escape the eyes and ears of the Jinyi Guard. The previous investigation and killing was too great a threat to the generals of the border army, even if it had been a long time, they still had lingering fears, and naturally they did not dare to fight against the imperial court.

After the improvement on the side of the border army, the other guard armies also had a reference target. Although it seems that the progress is still slow, and these teams that are not even soldiers still do not have much combat effectiveness, in the absence of foreign enemy intrusion, as long as they continue to rectify, there will always be a day when they will change.

Compared with the new look in the army, in the court, the changes in officialdom are not too big, and the people are still those people. However, the relationship between these courtiers and the Son of Heaven is not as contradictory as in the original history books. This naturally also has the credit of Yang Zhen.

Why can't the original Wanli really convince the officials? In addition to his own personality, the more critical reason may be his performance in the first ten years of succession.

At that time, as the Son of Heaven, he was crushed to death by a courtier, and almost all decisions had to be made by that person, even his own family affairs. Although that person was the leading politician of the Ming Dynasty in the past two hundred years, and his fame and power were rare in ancient times, he finally left an impression that the Son of Heaven was weak and bulliable.

Although after Zhang Juzheng's death, Wanli carried out a retaliatory counterattack, which also made the ministers fearful for a period of time, but that was only a temporary impact. When the time came, everything would return to its original position, and the Son of Heaven was still not much feared by the ministers.

But now Wanli drove Zhang Juzheng out of Beijing with the help of Yang Zhen, although there was no strong retaliation after that, but this act alone was enough to deter hundreds of officials.

This is actually very understandable, why the Pozi Emperor of the Braided Dynasty can be touted by future generations, and no one has dared to sing a word of opposition in his decades as emperor, but it is not because he is really wise and martial, to put it bluntly, he set a strong enough tone at the beginning. The mere fact that he ousted Ao Shaobao, the first powerful minister in the court, at the age of eight was enough to make the hundred officials feel frightened, and then they were in awe.

If he, like Wanli, puts the overall situation first, and does not take any risks to carry out any assassination in the palace, until that person dies naturally, he is afraid that his future life will be very difficult.

Of course, the characteristics between the two dynasties are different after all, and the autonomy and independence of the bureaucratic class of the Ming Dynasty is far above the pigtail dynasty after all, so even if Wanli behaved like this a few years ago, he still can't avoid being admonished by the hundred officials from time to time, and the hundred officials are not less angry with him. But at least his life was much better than the original history.

Among them, there is naturally the deterrent power of Jinyiwei. In the past few years, the tentacles of Jinyiwei have been everywhere, and no one dares to say how many officials' private interests they have mastered. And this is a force that can jump out of the existing framework and be directly responsible for the Son of Heaven, which is naturally even more terrifying.

With the interference of this layer of forces separated from the court, even if the ministers sometimes inevitably had problems and complained about the emperor, they did not dare to go too far. And in this way, Wanli, who is the Son of Heaven, is more powerful in terms of momentum, and he is not the Son of Heaven who has to hold his breath all day but has nowhere to vent.

Of course, not everything has changed, at least those evils in the officialdom have not been eradicated, which is the ills that will occur in every dynasty after hundreds of years, and the use of the imperial court has also risen vigorously, and the treasury even ran short again last year.

This is not only a manifestation of the increasing number of redundant officials, but also a reason why the imperial court's tax revenue is indeed much lower than in previous years.

No matter how great Yang Zhen's ability is, it is impossible to change natural phenomena. Today's Ming Dynasty is undergoing one of the biggest tests, not from the hearts of the people, but from Tianwei.

The climate of the Xiaoice River came as scheduled, and with it all sorts of head-scratching natural disasters, such as droughts, locust plagues, and the abrupt diversion of the Yellow River...... All this is almost a fatal blow to this agriculture-oriented country and its people.

Often, when a disaster occurs in a place, the imperial court not only can no longer collect taxes from there, but also has to put a large amount of materials and grain over to relieve the people there, which is naturally a huge loss to the national treasury.

However, in some parts of the south of the Yangtze River, the silk weaving industry that has been emerging has replaced agriculture that has been passed down for thousands of years, but it is thriving. However, because the Ming commercial tax has always been extremely light, although the merchants in these places have made a lot of money because of this, and even the officials there have gained many benefits, but it is difficult for the imperial court to get too many benefits from it.

In this regard, Wanli is also quite helpless. He proposed an increase in commercial taxes, but was blocked by many officials in the DPRK and China. As for whether they did this because of the ancestral rules mentioned in their mouths, what would be the status of merchants as the last of the four peoples, or because of other ulterior reasons, Wanli could not delve into it.

But seeing that there is such a gold mine, he can't get any benefits at all, and it is easy to understand Wanli's bad mood.

And there are two things that make Wanli feel even more headaches. One of them is that since the beginning of this year, some people have been asking him to reduce the number of nobles of the imperial court and reduce their salaries, citing the lack of the treasury as an excuse. But this is a major matter involving hundreds of thousands of people, and Wanli didn't dare to make any decisions casually, so he had to put it off for the time being.

As for the second matter, it made him even more upset, because just last year, the ministers brought up the old matter again, and once again made suggestions to him, hoping that he could make a prince as soon as possible.

It was useless to prevaricate the statement of the hundred officials at this time, because not only the emperor's eldest son Zhu Changluo is very healthy, but also the queen has not come out, that is the plan of the Ming Dynasty, and he, the son of heaven, should indeed set up a prince to settle the world.

However, Wanli has other ideas, his beloved Zheng Guifei has given birth to a prince Zhu Changxun for him last year, as the son of his beloved woman, the Son of Heaven naturally hopes that he will inherit his throne. It's just that the emperor didn't dare to say this idea, after all, this is very inconsistent with the Central Plains ritual law that has been passed down for thousands of years.

The only thing Wanli can do in this situation is to delay, hoping that there will be some variables in the delay.

This is now the fifteenth year of Wanli, although there are still many ills, although those problems that may eventually lead to the Ming Dynasty sliding into the abyss of destruction are still emerging, but many places are very different from the original point in time.

At this time, if Mr. Huang could personally appreciate it, he might not mention that sentence in his writings, the death of the Ming Dynasty began in the fifteenth year of Wanli.

However, the commander of the Jinyi Guard, who changed all this and created all this, is now Yang Zhen, the Marquis of Changping, is extremely low-key at this time, and it seems that all the disputes between the court and the central government have nothing to do with him......