Spoiler History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

Chapter 780 From Iron Certificate to Iron Ranking
There is no room for regret for what has been done.

However, thinking about the red-lettered iron certificate carefully kept in the mansion, Li Shanchang was not too panicked.

But adhering to the principle of caution, he still secretly made up his mind:
Forget about Lan Yu, he will never wear blue clothes again!
But apart from this, Li Shanchang was also very clear about his current advantage - His Majesty was right in front of him.

So when Xu Da and Li Wenzhong were still thinking, Li Shanchang had already taken the initiative to stand up:

"Your Majesty has eliminated the barbarians and rectified the law and discipline, and has shed tears to remove those who have forgotten their roots. You should be a model of a wise ruler. These criticisms are definitely slanders by Hu Qing to tarnish our Ming Dynasty. Your Majesty should not worry about them."

Li Shanchang said this sincerely. As a person who was praised by Zhu Yuanzhang as "my Xiao He", he could also sense the effectiveness of this light curtain.

To put it bluntly, as long as it is used properly, the evaluation of "the greatest emperor in the ages" by later generations may be true.

If this is really possible, Li Shanchang's reputation in later generations will surely rise, which is hard to imagine.

Zhu Yuanzhang came back to his senses after hearing these words. He did not comment on them, but just shook his head and said:
"It's too early to say this now. We'll have to wait and see how future generations will judge us."

He was not worried about the case of the empty seal, but when the prime minister was dismissed on the pretext of the Hu Weiyong case, he went to the Taimiao to explain himself, so he was quite curious about how future generations would evaluate him.

[As mentioned before, any problem must be analyzed in light of the times, and one cannot use the sword of one's own dynasty to execute officials of the previous dynasty.

If we only look at the Qing Dynasty's evaluation of the early Ming Dynasty, we can easily get the impression that Zhu Yuanzhang was a mean and ungrateful person who regarded his meritorious officials as enemies and thorns and wanted to eliminate them to relieve his suffering.

This is also the reason why the evaluation of Qing Dynasty historian Zhao Yi was too one-sided. In fact, it is easy to imagine that if Zhu Yuanzhang was really mean and ungrateful, he would never have been able to stand out in the competition among heroes at the end of the Yuan Dynasty.

In fact, at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang's treatment of meritorious officials could be described as generous. Although the iron certificate of immunity from death is often talked about as a joke by us now, it was definitely the highest honor at that time.

Judging from the information handed down, Zhu Yuanzhang was very serious when issuing the iron certificate of immunity from death. Everything from its shape to its function, to the family rules, and the scope of the immunity from death, were carefully designed.

Those who hold the iron certificate are not subject to the king's law, and the criminals are not allowed to enter their homes. They are given titles during their lifetime and inherit titles after their death. This clearly tells you that you can be a relative of the emperor, which is the highest honor and privilege that the emperor can bestow.

Apart from the greatest privilege of being exempt from death, these founding heroes normally enjoy various other privileges.

For example, there are various economic gifts that can be corroborated by various materials: in the third year of Hongwu, meritorious officials were granted estates and fields, some of which were as large as 100 hectares; in the fourth year, Tang He was granted 10,000 acres of land, and the founding meritorious officials were ordered to share 658 hectares of land in Linhao Mountain; in the seventh year, meritorious officials were granted an additional 1,000 shi of public land as part of their food salary, etc.

In addition, from ceremonial households to a large number of slaves, adopted sons, followers, and slave armies, almost everything is available.

In politics, in addition to holding high positions and noble titles, the nobles can also hold power and control the military. It can be said that they are truly the highest-ranking officials in the country.

In addition, Zhu Yuanzhang also actively promoted marriages between the royal family and the children of nobles. For example, he took Guo Ying's sister and Hu Mei's eldest daughter as concubines, and ordered the princes to marry the daughters of nobles such as Chang Yuchun, Xu Da, and Feng Sheng. In addition, the sons of nobles such as Li Shanchang, Fu Youde, and Zhang Long married princesses, and so on.

From the above, it is not difficult to see that Zhu Yuanzhang actually hoped to form a solid alliance of interests with the founding nobles, and to exchange the nobles' wholehearted support for the royal family with generous political and economic privileges and the promise of eternal wealth, so as to consolidate the imperial power and Zhu Yuanzhang's ultimate goal of "family rule". However, whether it was the powerful people of the Han Dynasty, the aristocratic families of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the feudal lords of the Tang Dynasty, the landlords of the Song Dynasty, or the nobles of the Yuan Dynasty, each of them showed that human desires are endless, and each dynasty has its own blood-sucking worms.

Before the Ming Dynasty could even wait for the princes to make any move, the nobles had already successfully touched Zhu Yuanzhang's bottom line in less than two years.

After all, the iron certificate of immunity from death clearly states that it will not protect people from treason, but all other death sentences can be exempted once.

As for the common punishments other than the severe ones, it is clearly stated that "the officials shall not impose additional punishment". In short, no matter how many times a person has committed crimes such as bullying, seizing land, robbing women, riding horses and injuring people, they can be written off with the iron certificate.

The result was that "military officials became arrogant due to their achievements and offended more and more people."

So just two years later, Zhu Yuanzhang had to quickly patch the iron certificate and issued an iron list with nine laws and regulations engraved on it to restrain meritorious officials and nobles.

But even the iron list has a greater deterrent effect than its actual effect, and is more like a Ming Dynasty form of "three cups of wine as punishment."

The Iron List stipulated that nobles who abused their power to bully others, plundered property, or trusted their followers would be sentenced to death. However, the first and second offenses only needed to be recorded in the iron certificate. Only the third offense could be exchanged for a "real" death penalty. However, even this real death penalty, which was hard to come by, could be waived with an iron certificate.

To sum up, Zhu Yuanzhang treated the founding heroes very generously. If Zhu Yuanzhang was really a brave man and liked to kill people, there would be no need for him to play the game of three death sentences in exchange for one. There might even be no such thing as an iron certificate.

On the contrary to this conclusion, the Hu-Lan case was precisely because Zhu Yuanzhang's repeated leniency and preferential treatment of the founding nobles aroused their fearlessness, which ultimately led to their actions running counter to Zhu Yuanzhang's expectations, and eventually the two sides turned against each other and fought each other. 】

In the Guangzheng Hall, even Zhao Pu couldn't help but feel excited when he heard about the benefits of the iron certificate.

However, Zhao Kuangyin was more direct. He turned his head and looked at Qian Chu seriously and said:
"The Song Dynasty has no precedent for iron certificates, and the iron certificates of the Tang Dynasty are not the iron certificates of the Ming Dynasty. They cannot be used in this way."

There was no need for the official to emphasize this, Qian Chu quickly assured:
"I will never think of this! The Qian family's iron certificate was obtained by our ancestors through their merits, and it is used as a memorial for future generations. If it is used to punish the crimes of unworthy descendants, wouldn't it be a pity? How can these descendants face the Qian family's ancestors?"

This was a reasonable statement, and Zhao Kuangyin nodded slightly. Then he shook his head, thinking that Emperor Hongwu was acting too roughly:
"Tolerance breeds arrogance, while leniency breeds disloyalty. Even those who hold the highest position in the government will seek advancement. Isn't this just sowing the seeds of disaster?"

These words actually caused silence in the hall, because it was difficult for the ministers to judge for a moment whether the emperor was talking about Master Kong Jiong or himself?

But Zhao Kuangyin didn't think too much about it, he just said with a little regret:

"The Cao Youwen I saw earlier is a descendant of Guohua, and he also needs to work hard to advance."

"The Ming Dynasty had Han, Tang and Song dynasties to learn from, so why did Emperor Hongwu take such an unusual action?"

(End of this chapter)