Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 46 The Quantification of Political Achievement (Part [-])
This night's discussion did not come to a conclusion. Although Gao Yushi knew that Gao Gong had indeed compromised and transferred Hai Rui once in history during this period, he was not sure whether Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng's discussion would still be the same now. old history.

Even if Hai Rui was still transferred, it didn't mean that he really gave up. In the original history, a few months later, Gao Dang reversed his previous strategy and attacked Xu Dang again. The struggle between the DPRK and China became more obvious.

What Gao Yushi still couldn't figure out was what happened in the months between the first and the second wars, which caused Gao Dang, who had already given up attacking the Xu Party, to finally choose to go to war.

If you really can't figure it out, you can only let it go, pay attention to observation at all times, and respond immediately if the situation changes.

In addition to discussing the two major issues that night, the students also talked about a few "small matters". It would be too abnormal for a child like him to be very familiar with the specific ministries. There needs to be a process, so he basically just listened and didn't express any opinions.

But there was a small episode in it that attracted Gao Pragmatic's attention. It was Tu Menggui who mentioned that Zhao Zhenji first avoided welcoming him when his teacher came back, and then had private meetings with Li Chunfang several times. It didn't take long for Zhao Zhenji to take charge of the Metropolitan Procuratorate on the recommendation of Li Chunfang. There may be some connection between this.

Zhao Zhenji also had the responsibility of leading the Metropolitan Procuratorate in the past, but that kind of leadership is different from "in charge of the Metropolitan Procuratorate". However, the "Control of the Metropolitan Procuratorate" is equivalent to the deputy mayor concurrently serving as the director of the Public Security Bureau, and the difference is actually very big.

Tu Menggui thinks there may be some conspiracy here, and Li Chunfang may have actually sided with Zhao Zhenji.

Gao Wushi agreed with this inference in his heart, otherwise it would not be able to explain why Li Chunfang was in a state of panic after Zhao Zhenji's resignation in history, and finally resigned in succession and finally returned to his hometown.

In fact, some historians in later generations put forward this idea after studying the cabinet in the later period of Longqing, but Gao Yushi was not clear about it. He inferred from another aspect: Li Chunfang's original political stance was close to Xu Jie's, and Zhao Zhenji was also from Xu Jie's faction. Mingqi in the imperial court, so it is reasonable for Li Chunfang and Zhao Zhenji to get close or even unite.

There are currently five cabinet ministers in the cabinet. Gao Gong and Zhang Juzheng have always had similar political views and can be counted as one faction. Once Li Chunfang and Zhao Zhenji get close, they can be counted as another faction, and Chen Yiqin can be regarded as a neutral faction if they do not help each other.

Is it possible for Li Chunfang to get close to Zhao Zhenji?Of course there is.

Although Li Chunfang behaved like a good gentleman, no matter how good his temper was, he did not have the power and status of the chief minister in front of the cabinet, so he would definitely not be happy. However, Li Chunfang, the chief assistant, is somewhat deterrent to the talents of all officials.However, because Zhao Zhenji was suppressed too hard in the past few years, he suddenly entered the cabinet this time, and his foundation is naturally insufficient. Therefore, he needs the political resources left by Xu Jie to lay a solid foundation, and Li Chunfang, the chief assistant, to help him grow up. flag, cover.

Li and Zhao have a solid basis for unity and a need for unity.

Thinking of this, Gao Wushi suddenly realized: If Gao Gong attacked Xu Jie's party, wouldn't he be attacking Zhao Zhenji's political foundation?Then Li Chunfang will definitely refuse, so it makes sense for Li Chunfang to go to Shuli to protect Xu Jie-not because he just wants to be a good man, but because once Xu Jie falls, then Zhao Zhenji will probably fall too, once Zhao Zhenji falls Well, he Li Chunfang is really just a nominal chief assistant. As for him pleading for Xu Jie but was directly slapped back by Hai Rui, it was Hai Gangfeng who was too good and there was nothing he could do about it.In addition, Li Chunfang also knew that Chen Yiqin would not jump out and confront Gao Gong in this matter, because Chen Yiqin was also dissatisfied with Xu Jie's original actions.

Combining the original history, Gao Yushi is very clear that Chen Yiqin has always insisted on "gentleman not party", but the problem lies in this: his insistence has a very difficult point now, he and Gao Gong are colleagues in Yufu, but He is also from the same town as Zhao Zhenji, no matter which side he leans on, the world will think that he is in the same party.

Unless Chen Yiqin changes his basic principles of being an official, he can only be neutral.

Then the cabinet becomes two against two, and it looks like a deadlock.

But Gao Yushi knew in his heart that there were two unstable factors in this so-called stalemate.

The first unstable factor lies in Zhang Juzheng, who seems to have always stood by Gao Gong's side, and even this time Gao Gong recovered, and he made great efforts in it.However, the reason why he made great efforts to restore Gao Gong was that he wanted to use Gao Gong to deal with Zhao Zhenji.In fact, Zhang Juzheng was Xu Jie's favorite student, and Xu Jie's political resources had always been regarded as part of his own power by default. However, Zhao Zhenji's entry into the cabinet split this power, which made Zhang Juzheng very dissatisfied.Perhaps Xu Jie's original intention at the time was to let Zhao Zhenji cooperate with Zhang Juzheng in the cabinet. Unexpectedly, Zhao Zhenji relied on the old to sell the old, regarded Zhang Juzheng as a younger generation, bossed him around, and even called Zhang Juzheng "Zhang Zi" in public (Wufeng Note: It is roughly equivalent to calling someone a "Xiao Zhang"), Zhang Juzheng has always been ashamed of others, of course it is unacceptable.

So Zhang Juzheng stood on Gao Gong's side and encouraged Gao Gong to become the vanguard against Zhao. The root cause was not that he sincerely respected Gao Gong as the leader, but that he used Gao Gong's character and Gao Gong's holy family to defeat the opponents within the faction for himself.Once Gao Gong successfully completes this mission, Zhang Juzheng will definitely turn around and deal with Gao Gong every minute-this is what he did in history.

The second unstable factor is Gao Gong's holy family.The current cabinet is two against two. In fact, Gao Gong must actually have the upper hand. This advantage is the holy family: the emperor obeyed Gao Gong's words.However, only Gao Wushi knew in the whole world that Emperor Longqing only had two years to live...he was only 35 years old when he died.

If Emperor Longqing was present, regardless of whether Gao Gong was in the position of Chief Assistant, he would be the actual Chief Assistant.If Emperor Longqing dies, this kind of holy family will disappear immediately: No matter the little emperor Wanli or the Empress Dowager Chen and Empress Dowager Li in the harem, they will not have the kind of trust in Gao Gong that is close to family affection. On the starting line, the ones the harem really trusts are the eunuchs—the harem doesn't understand the cabinet ministers, so they have to trust the eunuchs.However, trusting the eunuch does not mean trusting the handprint eunuch Meng Chong at this time - he was recommended by Gao Gong, and he is not close to the empress dowager of the two palaces.The Empress Dowager Chen had no intention of doing politics, let alone talk about it. Because the emperor's son was underage, the Empress Dowager Li couldn't do it if she wanted to. But to do politics, she had to be in charge of the Supervisor of Rituals, so it was almost an inevitable choice to replace Meng Chong with Feng Bao by her side.

However, in history, the biggest reason why Gao Gong refused to allow Feng Bao to be the chief inspector of ceremonies was because Feng Bao was the concubine Li Guifei's confidant and the prince's "big companion". Once the prince ascends the throne in the future, Feng Bao might become the next Wang Zhen .

Gao Gong's "prejudgment" is of course not unreasonable, because Wei Zhongxian followed the same path later.As the chief assistant of the leader of civil servants, suppressing eunuchs is his normal choice, especially powerful eunuchs like Wang Zhen, which in the eyes of civil servants is absolutely unacceptable.But what Gao Gong didn't expect was that because Feng Bao was a close confidant of the Empress Dowager Li, and the Empress Dowager Li was too strict with Wanli, Feng Bao could only act as a strict supervisor, and did not establish too close a bond with Wanli. As a result, after Wanli came to power, apart from whipping the corpse of Zhang Juzheng, the first thing he did next was to exile Feng Bao-the exile might be because of the face of Empress Dowager Li.

(End of this chapter)