A Millennium Aristocratic Family Starting from the Shang Dynasty

Chapter 549 Overt and covert fighting

The death of Prime Minister Chao Cuo was very sudden, and the entire court had no time to react. This was a critical period for the imperial court's reform and reform.

How can destiny be reversed so easily?

Chao Cuo's reform methods seemed to make Daqian full of vitality. It seemed that it had overcome the difficulties and began to rise again.

But in fact this is not the case. Apart from the final enfeoffment and development of the nobility, the rest of this reform basically focuses on rectifying the administration of officials and combating corruption.

The system of pioneering nobles has not yet been perfected. Although it temporarily solves the problem of large numbers of people and small land, it will also cause the pioneering nobles to have a large tail.

Originally, Chao Cuo was planning to wait for these pioneering nobles to become stronger before continuing to push forward the reform, but now there is no chance.

In just two years, the two main figures who presided over the promotion of the reform passed away, which also greatly damaged the strength of the reform and innovation faction in the court. Although Wang Cheng also supported the reform, without Chao Cuo's cooperation, the difficulty of the reform would be increased several times. .

Chao Cuo's funeral was held grandly. After Chao Cuo left, there was no other reformist with such ability in the Daqian court.

There may be a few ministers with good abilities, but they are only "official ministers" and "capable ministers". They do not have the courage to face death and dare to be the first in the world.

After all, there are only two endings for those who reform, one is to succeed and escape unscathed, the other is to fail and be ruined, and of course the other is to commit suicide after succeeding.

It's just that since the founding of the Wang family, no emperor has done this. The moral bottom line of the royal family is unexpectedly high. They have never done anything like killing a donkey and hiding a bird.

Reform and innovation almost always involve making enemies of the nobles, noble families, and powerful people in the world, and not everyone is willing to do it.

Wang Cheng promoted several officials and began to replace previous officials. Without Chao Cuo's help in promoting the reform, Wang Cheng began to shoulder the burden of the reform and personally presided over the advancement of the reform.

Wang Cheng once again strengthened the rights of the embroidery envoys, and at the same time increased the number of embroidery envoys to monitor the world more closely. In addition, he increased the number of patrol censors, hoping to rely on more stringent scrutiny to Implement reforms.

Because there is no suitable candidate for prime minister, Wang Cheng is also worried that after appointing a new prime minister, he will not be willing to fully implement the reform, which will make it more troublesome.

The prime minister is the highest-ranking official in Daqian, and half of the government's decrees need to be handled by the prime minister.

Therefore, once the prime minister does not support the reform, the hardships Wang Cheng faces will increase exponentially. Until he can find a like-minded and talented person, the position of prime minister will be temporarily vacant.

But without the Prime Minister to help handle things, the situation Wang Cheng needs to face will become very difficult.

Fortunately, there were internal ministers and deputy ministers. With their help, Wang Cheng began to handle government affairs smoothly and implement reforms.

In the Daqian court, after seeing the death of the late emperor and the prime minister in just two years, the nobles and powerful people in the country were still looking forward to it, thinking that the reform could be stopped.

Unexpectedly, the royal family was so determined to reform.

Of course, the determination of the royal family is very high, because the royal family knows very well that if the Daqian collapses, the Wang family will be the first to be unlucky, just like the collapse of the Yin and Shang Dynasties.

After Chao Cuo passed away, Daqian's power structure needed to be adjusted. Coerced by countless situations, he needed to stabilize the court and clarify the context. Wang Cheng's talents were also not outstanding, but with the help of many talents in the royal family, he quickly regained control of the court. Next, Wang Cheng began to adjust the reform and continued to implement the reform. Only when he actually started to implement the reform did Wang Cheng understand how difficult it was.

Many times, there are inscriptions stipulating it above, but the people at the grassroots level don’t know it yet. The imperial court asked local officials to publicize the new decree. The local officials copied the imperial decree and then sent people to read it out.

Some people deliberately wrote the decrees in a flourishing and colorful way, but left out the key things in one stroke. The people heard that it was raining and foggy, and they were confused.

Not only the common people, but also the officials themselves cannot understand this kind of government order. How can we implement the New Deal in this way?

Because there was no Prime Minister Zuo, most of the memorials in the court had to be approved by him personally. In addition, with the various documents and annotations left by Chao Cuo, Wang Cheng had to burn the midnight oil every day to fight even with the help of everyone in the royal family.

Since he succeeded to the throne, Wang Cheng has had a sense of urgency. He is not too young anymore, and he does not want to leave the reform to his children to implement.

Therefore, Wang Cheng would deal with government affairs until late at night every day, and during the day, ministers from various courts would still need to discuss government affairs.

Originally, Wang Cheng felt that time was tight, but the memorials sent by the officials below were filled with flowers, thousands of words, or praise for the emperor, Daqian, or other things, but there were only a few sentences that were really useful. .

Wang Cheng would read patiently at first, but after a while, he found that he had wasted a lot of time on these memorials.

Therefore, Wang Cheng issued an edict that all memorials should be concise and clear, and it was forbidden to repeat nonsense, and it was forbidden to use flowery, large and empty articles. If you make a mistake, you will be directly ordered to reprimand and correct it.

In addition, restrictions were imposed on the paper used by imperial officials to write memorials. The paper used by imperial officials to write memorials was all high-quality paper, and each sword sold for one imperial silver coin.

Thousands of officials across the country use memorials, and the amount of paper needed in a year is a huge amount. Coupled with various official documents, the court uses a lot of paper. A large part of this was wasted. Wang Cheng ordered that the number of official documents written by officials every year should be set according to their levels.

After exceeding the set amount, the paper needs to be purchased by itself.

After Wang Cheng's strict orders, this trend was stopped. From then on, official documents and memorials from court officials were required to be concise and clear.

Wang Cheng handled the government affairs and was guided by Chao Cuo for a period of time. He knew very well what tricks those people were playing. These people deliberately let Wang Cheng handle so many memorials. If they couldn't hold on anymore, they would naturally appoint the prime minister.

What's more, if they get tired of dealing with government affairs and slack off in government affairs, it would be more to their liking if they leave these things to the prime minister.

Through this behavior, the official group was able to usurp the rights belonging to the emperor.

On the other hand, if the emperor issued an edict asking officials to write memorials simply and clearly, they would go to the other extreme and write extremely concisely, with almost every sentence having to be considered repeatedly. This is another kind of "doubling" by officials.

Deliberately double the execution of your orders. In real history, Zhu Hongwu encountered this situation.

(End of this chapter)