Volume 1: Birth! Seven time travelers Chapter 004: The Ancestor Who Tricked His Descendants
"Grandson greets Grandpa Huang."
"Haha, no need to be polite, just get up quickly. Come here and let grandpa take a look. Oh, my grandson is so handsome."
Time passed quickly, and in the blink of an eye, four years had passed. According to the custom of that era, the children of officials and officials who had the conditions would start to learn at the age of three or four. So when Zhu Youdong turned four, Wanli took him to the palace.
A lot has happened in these four years.
The first thing was the follow-up cleanup work of the dispute over the national foundation , which was quickly completed after Emperor Wanli made up his mind.
In the 28th year of Wanli, when Zhu Changluo was named the crown prince, the third son of the emperor, Zhu Changxun, was named Prince of Fu. In the 31st year (1603 ), the 18-year-old Prince of Fu was ordered by Wanli to leave Beijing and become a vassal, which basically cut off the thoughts of Concubine Zheng and her party. But after all, Concubine Zheng was his beloved woman - after all, the emperor was also a human being, and he also longed for relatively equal spiritual exchanges and flirting interactions with his lover. These, there were so many concubines in the deep palace, but only Concubine Zheng could give Wanli. So in order to compensate him, Wanli not only sealed Zhu Changxun in Luoyang, the heart of the Central Plains. The allocated royal fields and various rewards were also far beyond those of ordinary princes.
The second was his biological mother in this life, Crown Princess Guo, who gave birth to another child for Zhu Changluo in the 32nd year of the Wanli reign, but this child was a girl. Emperor Wanli named her Zhu Huijuan.
Then, as the status of the crown prince was clarified, Zhu Changluo's treatment was significantly improved. Not only did he move to Ciqing Palace, the official residence of the crown prince, but his maids, eunuchs, guards, teachers, and various daily expenses were much better than before.
The most important thing is that people are snobbish. The clarification of the prince's status has significantly improved Zhu Changluo's position in the power field of the Ming Dynasty. This feeling is the most pleasant.
Of course, some things happened and some things didn't happen.
Because Zhu Youdong was born with such a big fanfare, after Emperor Wanli made the decision to make Zhu Changluo the crown prince, although Concubine Zheng had a big fight with Emperor Wanli, people of this era still had a basic fear of the strange phenomena in the world. Therefore, unlike the original plane of history, where Zhu Changluo was made the crown prince but still shaky, in this plane, the position of the East Palace is very stable.
Not only that, because the crown prince's position was stable, the second demon book case did not happen as expected in the original historical plane. As a result, Zhu Changluo's teacher Guo Zhengyu was not imprisoned. The famous firearms expert Zhao Shizhen did not die of depression...
In short, due to the birth of Zhu Youdong, the situation of Zhu Changluo and many people around him improved a lot.
Moreover, from the day of the canonization of the crown prince, Wanli consciously let Zhu Changluo familiarize himself with and understand various government affairs. After all, the Ming Dynasty had been in operation for more than 200 years, and various problems had emerged one after another. If he did not spend several years or more than ten years to slowly train the crown prince, if he was handed over the country to him in the future, I am afraid that the empire would collapse in no time.
Unfortunately, the longer this training lasted, the more annoyed Emperor Wanli became!
This son of mine doesn't understand the fundamental purpose of my creating the dispute over the foundation of the country. Instead, he keeps talking about the good things of bastards like Jiang Yinglin and Shen Jing. Hey, how can you see clearly that these ministers are ostensibly fighting for the position of crown prince for you, but in fact they are harboring evil intentions!
Therefore, this prince is truly beyond salvation.
So, what about this grandson?
"Dong'er, how old are you this year?"
"To answer Grandpa Huang's question, my grandson is four years old this year."
"Well, have you learned anything at home?"
"My grandson started learning Chinese last year. In one year, he has read through 300,000 words. He is now studying the Analects of Confucius."
"Huh? Ah! You really are worthy of being my good grandson!"
Four years ago, the baby in the cradle was living in the soul of an adult, and this soul knew how much fanfare the ancestor had created for its birth soon after it was born. Therefore, Zhu Youdong himself had no intention of keeping a low profile from the beginning: the B-level of the strange phenomenon in the world was so high, how could you make people keep a low profile? Besides, the mission of this time travel is to dominate the whole world within a hundred years! Is a hundred years a long time?
Moreover, at this time, Daming was already ill, and very seriously ill.
In terms of GDP, the Ming Dynasty of this era is undoubtedly number one in the world.
In terms of population, there is no doubt that it is still the first in the world.
However, the problem of this country is that wealth is too concentrated in the hands of officials and wealthy businessmen, and the national finances have always been in a state of deficit. At the same time, a large number of farmers are constantly going bankrupt. As a result, the income of the already poor national finances is decreasing year by year.
If the state has less money, it will not be able to effectively support officials, which will aggravate the overall corruption of officials. If it cannot support soldiers, it will accelerate the privatization of the army by generals. If the people go bankrupt in large numbers, the possibility of large-scale peasant uprisings will increase rapidly.
If a country loses the loyalty of officials, soldiers and people, is it still a country?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of this country, experienced long years of war when he founded the country. Therefore, the business in the early Ming Dynasty was extremely depressed. In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang always disliked businessmen. Therefore, he set a tax of about one twentieth to one tenth of the annual output for farmers at that time. The business tax for merchants was one thirtieth. At the same time, it was stipulated that the children of farmers could participate in the imperial examinations, but the children of merchants could not participate in the imperial examinations, which reflected the emphasis on agriculture and the suppression of commerce.
This arrangement... uh...
If merchants cannot take the imperial examinations, they cannot become officials and control the court? Then what about the word agent?
In short, over the past two hundred years, due to the almost no commercial taxes, the merchants' wealth has accumulated to an extremely astonishing level. However, due to the limitations of the system and political status, the merchants' wealth has not been transformed into funds for expanding production, but has become deposits in cellars, unlimited expansion of manors, and more bribes to officials at all levels, investments in scholars who have not yet entered officialdom, etc.
More and more merchants' agents are becoming officials. Especially the agents of the wealthy merchants in Jiangsu and Zhejiang have gradually formed in the court and among the people - this group is the Donglin Party. Especially after these guys occupied the moral high ground through the dispute over the national foundation, in the subsequent political struggles, they were invincible just by quarreling. If any minister who really wanted to do something wanted to increase the court's income and collect business taxes, he would definitely be impeached by the Donglin Party and his whole family would be buried alive!
Therefore, being born in the Zhu family in 1600 was really not a good thing.
Oh, my ancestor, the gods actually chose such an era as the result of their discussion? If it could be arranged to the Wenjing period of the Western Han Dynasty or the prosperous Tang Dynasty, wouldn't my task be much easier?
However, it seems that no matter how bad my situation is, it is better than that of my neighbor to the east.
Over the past four years, Zhu Youdong has begun to understand the meaning of the Big Dipper map hidden behind him.
My natal star is the sixth star of the Big Dipper, Kaiyang.
Outside Kaiyang, he could clearly feel that the seventh star, Yaoguang, was not far from him in the east.
Secondly, further to the south, Yuheng’s sensation is also very strong.
Secondly, the sensitivity of Tianquan in the southwest direction was obviously weakened.
As for the remaining three stars, Tianji, Tianxuan and Tianshu, they could only sense that the other party was still alive, and it was difficult to even locate them specifically.
Before Zhu Youdong participated in this "game", as a history enthusiast, he had some knowledge of the Ming Empire of this era. He also learned a little about Japanese history because he liked various games of An Rong in his early years. For the rest, he was quite clueless.
In his opinion, after the Battle of Sekigahara, the political structure of Japan had become stable. The daimyo and the ordinary Japanese people were tired of the Warring States period that lasted for hundreds of years. In short, except for a few ronin who lost their territories in the chaos, no one wanted to fight anymore.
Especially in the Three Kingdoms War between China, Japan and Korea from 1592 to 1598, the Japanese daimyo were really hurt and scared. It would be extremely difficult to mobilize an army to invade Korea again in a short period of time.
Moreover, Japan at this time was really a scum compared to the Ming Dynasty in terms of national strength.
However, that was all. Although I didn’t graduate from world history before traveling through time, and I wasn’t very familiar with the global situation of this era. But anyway, the Spanish Empire in the Christian world was extremely powerful at this time, the Netherlands was seeking independence, and Britain was gradually rising after the rule of Elizabeth I. And what about the Middle East? The Ottoman Empire was still in its rising period, and it was still some distance away from its peak.
Therefore, my time is really very tight. I can't help but keep a low profile at this moment. The only choice is to do things in a high-profile manner! Integrate into the core power circle of Daming as soon as possible!
