Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 350 Is Romulus Korean?
For the vast majority of people in the entire civilization, they hope that those in power can perform their duties as much as possible. If not, it would be better to replace them with another person.

But for those in power themselves, they really don't want to change people, and even hope that their family can rule forever.

These two desires are bound to conflict.The hereditary monarchy is not so much the concentration of power, but the result of mutual compromise between different classes.

Excessive militarization and organizational capabilities higher than the historical norm have put the Central Plains regime in a state of overload all year round.To put it bluntly, it is this kind of unified dynasty that should not have appeared under this productivity and technical conditions. It was forced by the entire society to force "overclocking".

This form of organization has very high requirements for decision-making efficiency, so everyone actually has no choice but to do so.

In this environment, the best explanation for the source of power, as mentioned above, is to tell everyone directly, "I am here to lead you to better deal with disasters, defeat the enemy, and let everyone live a better life." In fact, The emperors also knew this very well, and whenever they had the opportunity, they would preach that they ruled peace and tranquility, He Qing Haiyan.Because this is the best persuasive evidence.

As long as you can answer this question head-on and give everyone a similar answer, ordinary people will often not be too entangled.In this case, a ruler like Yongzheng can also cooperate with the "regional theory" to persuade everyone to accept his management.

But the main problem is that he can't just think about himself, he has to think about the whole family.In other words, to convince everyone that even if their descendants are not good enough, everyone has to let him hold the highest power.

Moreover, this requirement was at the heart of dynastic power.As an emperor, he had to meet this condition, even if he didn't have such selfish intentions and didn't care whether his own son ascended the throne or not.

This reason can be seen from the end of Ming Dynasty.

At the beginning, when the news that Emperor Chongzhen had hanged himself spread to the south of the Yangtze River, a slave riot broke out in the local area immediately.The domestic slaves of the gentry rebelled one after another, tortured and even killed their masters.Because in their view, the death of the emperor and the end of the dynasty also meant the collapse of the previous order as a whole—there would be no monarchs and ministers in the future, and naturally there would be no masters and servants.

This principle is actually similar to the situation in the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties.The existence of order is a whole network from top to bottom.When the emperor's military dictatorship was destroyed, the Jiedushi's military dictatorship was also destroyed; in the same way, when the emperor's personal control was destroyed, the gentry's personal control was also destroyed.

As a result of this incident, the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River were greatly shocked, and they took action one after another, inviting the Qing army to go south as soon as possible to calm the situation.Obviously, in the face of this situation, the distinction between Hua and Barbarians has become a dispensable rule again.

Therefore, the emperor's maintenance of the hereditary system was not only for himself, but also for the royal family, and even for all the scholar-bureaucrats and squires in the world.

Even if the emperor does not allow his son to ascend the throne, it is not impossible to choose an adopted son as the heir-this has happened more than once.But as long as you want to be an "orthodox" dynasty, you have to take this path.Because for the gentry, there must be someone who sits on the throne and maintains this order. If the emperor dares to touch this red line, he will also be abandoned.

Therefore, even if some dynasties did rise to power because the previous dynasty was too tyrannical and raised troops to overthrow the previous dynasty, they could not take this reason as the main part of their legitimacy.Even the Han Dynasty, which can be called the most legitimate unified empire, had to find a bunch of prophecies and the like to modify it, so as to avoid the embarrassing situation of "the theory of horse liver".

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the legitimacy narrative of the traditional unified empire had actually reached the end of its strength.This point can be discovered from Li Zicheng and others before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs.

Li Zicheng not only failed to transform himself, but there were no people like Zhu Yuanzhang and Liu Xiu among his subordinates, and he couldn't even "pioneer for the king".One of the reasons may be because at this time, the traditional thinking has come to an end.

He was also born at the bottom, but Li Zicheng did not cut off from the peasant army like Zhu Yuanzhang did; nor did he make a series of statements such as nostalgia for the previous dynasty and claiming that he did not deliberately rebel, but played the banner of "suppressing the soldiers and calming the people".At this point, Zhu Yuanzhang has gone a few steps forward.

Of course, the result of this is that he has never been supported by the gentry.

On the other hand, although the gentry did not support Li Zicheng and others, they failed to support a "Liu Xiu" by themselves.They finally took refuge in the Eight Banners of Manchuria, but they could only serve as slaves to others, and could no longer become "partners" of the dynasty as before.This signal also seems to indicate that their era is drawing to a close, and their strength has declined significantly.

Some people in later generations felt that the civilization of the Central Plains did not seem to have the monarchy restoration stage that is common in other places, so they thought that this place was more suitable for a republic, and once they were inspired by new concepts, they immediately discarded the original outdated concepts.But from the perspective of legality theory, in fact, the entire Qing Dynasty can be regarded as the "restoration era" of the civilization of the Central Plains.

The legal system of the Ming Dynasty was already very complete, and even used the slogan of national righteousness that might not appear until modern times in other places.But after the Ming Dynasty couldn't hold on, the traditional legal construction could no longer produce more new things.

At this time, the gentry, warlords and many other forces in the Central Plains shattered the Central Plains with the help of the semi-civilized foreign troops in the border areas. Li Zicheng and others made reform attempts and made the barbarian tribal leaders emperors.

This can be said to be a retrogression, but it also means that the traditional hereditary dynasty is coming to an end.

The system of the Qing Dynasty was indeed very perfect, and the average quality of the highest rulers of the Qing Dynasty was actually very high.But the more advanced and powerful this aspect is, the more it proves that this dynasty, and even the dynasty era of the entire Central Plains civilization, has faded away.

Therefore, the Qing Dynasty also showed a strange state of "reactionary" and "advanced" coexistence-it must maintain an efficient organization to suppress unprecedented fierce resistance.In this regard, what the Qing Dynasty did was even relatively successful.

However, this efficient ruling machine is also efficiently consuming the power of supporters from all walks of life, both at home and abroad.In the end, the Qing Dynasty made almost all possible attempts, but it still failed.At this time, the barbarian army, royalist gentry, and even "foreign loyal ministers" were completely powerless to stop the trend of history.

In this way, after the Qing Dynasty, there was no effective restoration. In fact, it is not difficult to explain: after the Song Dynasty, the monarchy and the corresponding gentry class began to decline; after the Ming Dynasty, it was on the verge of collapse.The Qing Dynasty was a long restoration process. After all the power was burned out, it was no longer possible to do it again.

(End of this chapter)