Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 736: Imperial Power Does Not Exceed the Provinces

[When it comes to managing the Yellow River, Tuotuo, the prime minister who studied Han classics, did not clearly understand the differences between the Yuan Dynasty and the Han, Tang and Song Dynasties.

We have said repeatedly before that because of the Li Jin Law, the central power of the Yuan Dynasty was divided very much. If the previous dynasties were "imperial power does not go down to the countryside", then the Yuan Dynasty was "imperial power does not go down to the provinces."

For example, when Bayan was in control of the government, a minor official named Fan Fan Mengduan under the Henan Province made big news.

The common problem of ancient scholars is that their ambitions are as high as the sky and their lives are as fragile as paper. Fan Mengduan is no exception. Although he is only a minor official, he always lamented that his talent was not appreciated. Later, he got drunk and wrote a poem on the Henan Provincial TV Station:

The hand that slays dragons and cuts off dragons in the sleeve has buried Qingfeng for twenty years.

This matter would definitely be investigated thoroughly in any normal dynasty. If it were the more stringent Qing Dynasty, it would probably be directly pushed out and chopped off. But in the Yuan Dynasty, nothing happened, and no one cared about the people coming in and out of the provincial government.

Perhaps it was because of this that Fan Mengduan saw the administrative loopholes in the Yuan Dynasty. Later, he found a few people to work together. Five of them directly disguised themselves as imperial envoys and went to the provincial government to falsely convey the imperial edict, and they actually succeeded.

In the name of imperial envoys, five people summoned the Pingzhang, Prime Minister, General Manager, Wanhu and others of Henan Province into a small room in the government office one by one. After announcing a crime at random, they did not give these central officials any chance to argue, and simply smashed their heads with iron hammers. In this simple way, they wiped out all the high-ranking officials of Henan Province.

After the mission was accomplished, the person in the gang who pretended to be the imperial envoy announced the appointment of Fan Mengduan as the "Henan Marshal". Then this minor official really began to control all matters in Henan.

By closing the land routes and waterways and isolating Henan Province from the outside world, Henan Province was easily taken over by these people. Fan Mengduan even had enough time to return home in glory and kill all his former enemies, Shangguan.

Fan Mengduan, who was living a very happy life, got drunk again. Coincidentally, his subordinates wanted to take this opportunity to ask Fan Mengduan to introduce them to the imperial envoy so that they could get an official position. However, the drunk Fan Mengduan didn't hold back and said directly, "Who is the imperial envoy? I am the imperial envoy."

There is no need to say much about the consequences after the truth was revealed, but the example of Fan Mengduan is enough to show that the Yuan Dynasty's rule not only failed to reach the grassroots level, but also had poor control over the middle level.

In this situation, Tuotuo still thought that he could summon hundreds of thousands of civilians to control the river without causing chaos. This was really wishful thinking. After all, there were many "rebels" among the civilians he summoned.

The most famous among them was Han Shantong, a professional rebel who practiced all three religions.

In April 1351, Emperor Shun of Yuan Dynasty approved Tuotuo's river control plan and recruited civilian laborers from routes including Bianliang and Daming, and garrison troops from Luzhou and other places, totaling people to officially start the project.

Construction started in April, dredging was completed in July, water was released into the old course in August, boats were allowed to pass in September and blocking work began, and the embankment was completed in November after the wood and earth works. The plan of "dredging and blocking at the same time, dredging first and then blocking" proposed by the river management expert Jia Lu was perfectly implemented. The whole project took 190 days, and the Yellow River management planned by Tuotuo ended successfully.

However, just one month after the project began, Han Shantong dug out the stone man he had buried not long ago.

This stone statue with the inscription "Don't say the stone statue has only one eye, once this thing is revealed, the whole world will rebel" also completely opened the prelude to the peasant uprising war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty. 】

Liu Bei sighed in the Xuchang government office:
"The Mongols did not know the will of the people, no wonder they perished suddenly."

It was just a normal sigh, but Cao Cao always felt it was a bit irritating to hear Liu Bei talk about the people's will, so he simply responded:
"What is the will of the people? Isn't it that the Great Chu will raise Chen Sheng as its king?"

"More than a thousand years have passed, and the things we do are still the same as divination by ghosts. There is nothing new."

This made Liu Bei shake his head and smile:
"The will of ghosts is the will of people, and the will of people is the will of the people. They are used by ghosts and gathered by the people. The will of the people is the will of ghosts. What is the difference?"

Cao Cao frowned, and just as he was about to organize his words to refute Liu Bei's words, he was interrupted mercilessly by Zhang Fei:
"Since the Prime Minister is familiar with the Records of the Grand Historian, I think he must have memorized what Chen Sheng said when he started the rebellion?"

Chen Sheng probably said a lot of things when he started the rebellion, but Sima Qian's Family History only recorded one sentence: Are kings, princes, generals, and ministers of different races?

In the past, Cao Cao would have just laughed at this. But now, seeing Liu Bei's serious expression and the light curtain calling the turmoil at the end of the Yuan Dynasty a peasant uprising, all of these seemed to be the best footnotes to Chen Sheng's roar four hundred years ago.

So Cao Cao finally fell silent.

Unlike the sharp conflict of opinions here, Kong Ming felt a little regretful after writing down the key points:
"If Zichu were here and saw this strategy of exchanging banknotes, he might gain something."

Pang Tong suddenly became energetic:
"Kong Ming doesn't understand?"

"It's not that I don't understand, but sometimes human power is limited."

Kong Ming then looked at the words he had written down again and began to carefully annotate his thoughts below:
"But the more I think about paper money, the more I feel that the theory of economic currency in later generations is so extensive."

"Currency standard, margin, banknote exchange policy, dual lines of main currency and subsidiary currency, etc. Each word is enough to make people think for a long time, and my understanding is only one or two ten thousandths of it."

Pang Tong also fell silent: Next time I will never believe Kong Ming's sigh again. It is obvious that he despises me for not understanding currency.

However, he was still somewhat unwilling, so he asked:

"Then we will pacify the four borders. Does Kong Ming have any plans for the paper currency?"

In response, Kong Ming shook his head again:

"Although we have entered Xuchang, the world has been in turmoil for more than 30 years, and the people's livelihood is so poor,"

"When I was in Chengdu, Zichu and I had already discussed this. In today's world, mining and minting are enough to restore the country's economy. Although paper money is of great use, at present, Chengdu's rare goods are the basis, and the amount of paper money is enough. It would be inappropriate to have more."

Seeing Kong Ming's expression that said "you should understand this", Pang Tong didn't want to talk anymore.

……

Seeing the young man talking about Tuotuo, Zhu Yuanzhang's face also showed some sighs:
"The Hu people have occupied the orthodox Chinese system for more than a hundred years, and have thrown away social norms and turned their hats and shoes upside down. They have brought the northern barbarians to rule China, and everyone in and outside the country has submitted to them. Is this human power?"

"Tuotuo used the Confucianism and laws of the Han Dynasty to try to prolong his fate, but the last ruler was so licentious that the people were trapped in greed and cruelty. Heaven really disliked him. How could the laws of the Han Dynasty be effective for those who were ignorant of education?"

Zhu Biao had some impression that most of his father's current flowery words were mentioned in the manifesto to the people in the north on the eve of the founding of the Ming Dynasty.

But it was still early at that time, and my father was more concerned with declaring to the people of Hebei that the Ming Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty were irreconcilable, and telling the people of the north that the time had come to restore China.

Now that later generations have praised Tuotuo's achievements in controlling the Yellow River, the Ming Dynasty has been founded for more than ten years, and it is obvious that his father's mentality has changed.

"Dad, do you think that Tuotuo has been entrusted to the wrong person?"

Zhu Yuanzhang rolled his eyes at his son and said slowly:
"We lament that the internal fighting between the Hu Yuan Dynasty was a good thing, which saved many casualties among the people."

(End of this chapter)