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Chapter 205 Too Dirty
History books say that Yingzong brought 50 troops to the expedition, but Hong Tao went through the files of the Secretary of Ceremony and the Royal Horse Supervisor and could not get enough of this number.The gap was huge, just one zero, and only 5 cavalry troops were found, plus more than 20 civilians.

Although it is a bit extravagant to supply 20 troops with 5 logistics personnel for an expedition, in ancient wars, especially during expeditions, there were indeed many more logistics personnel than regular soldiers. Four to one was very impressive, considering that the emperor was still there. Within, it would not be surprising if it doubled again.

In the end, how many of the 5 elites died? Hong Tao searched through the files but couldn't find an accurate number. Was it because he didn't have time to count or that the corpses were all taken away by the enemy?

It doesn't seem to be the case. There is a routine report from Juyong Prison that reflects the situation at that time.This prison gunman was among the first to arrive at Tumubao following the border troops guarding Juyong Pass. When cleaning the battlefield, he gathered a total of more than 9000 helmets and more than 6000 pieces of armor, all of the Ming army standard.

Listen, since the battlefield has been cleaned and carefully counted, how many people died must also be recorded.There can only be one explanation for why these files cannot be found in the Supervisor of Ceremonies files: they were manually cleared!

Doesn’t it mean that the Chief of Ceremonies only listens to the emperor? Who can order them except the emperor?Yes, under normal circumstances, the Chief Li Supervisor did only listen to the emperor, but the person overseeing the country at that time was Yingzong's half-brother, Zhu Qiyu.

Zhu Qizhen saw neither alive nor dead bodies, and most of the most die-hard cronies in the palace also accompanied the emperor on the expedition.Eunuchs are also human beings, and without the support of the emperor, they have to be soft. What's more, Zhu Qiyu already had an obvious tendency. When a group of ministers openly attacked the imperial guards in the court, Ma Shun, the commander of the imperial guards, turned a blind eye.

Hong Tao is not a conspiracy theorist, but he is not a fool who only believes in history books.He checked the official document archives of the Supervisor of Rites, the Hanlin Academy, the General Affairs Department, and the Six Ministries, and found several problems.

Yingzong Zhu Qizhen had been counting guard posts since the ninth year of Zhengtong. At that time, there were more than 60 soldiers on the list. However, after three years of counting, the Metropolitan Procuratorate sent people to count only more than 6 soldiers.There are all kinds of difficulties when you ask. According to the censors, it will take another seven or eight times to finish everything.

Isn’t it annoying that when an emperor wants to know how many soldiers he has, he has to wait more than 20 years before he can count them clearly?What’s even more annoying is yet to come. In the 11th year of Orthodoxy, Zhu Qizhen began to count the granaries in the capital. These granaries were not stored for the people, but for military rations.

As a result, as soon as the news was released, fires broke out one after another starting in Taicang, and the fires seemed to be contagious. They burned out the granaries near the capital and the border. They were also infected and caught fire one after another.

At this time, you don’t need to have much management experience or extraordinary IQ to get some clues. There is a TV series called "The Granary of the World" in later generations. The content talks about how officials in the Qing Dynasty were corrupt and secretly colluded to embezzle food.

When there is a war or famine, the emperor wants to use the grain in the warehouse. The result is that either the fire dragon burns the warehouse or the underworld soldiers borrow the grain. Anyway, no matter how it changes, there is only one central idea. There is no food if you want it, and there is no one who wants to know where the food has gone. !
At that time, Hong Tao lamented that after the hard work of the people, who had worked hard in the wind and rain, not much was left after peeling off the skin layer by layer.If the stolen value is used in the construction of the country, the people will recognize the hardship. After all, the country is strong, and if you can’t enjoy it yourself, you can still leave it to your children, which is not a loss.

But I am afraid that not even one-tenth of these values ​​are left, and the rest have been eaten up by meat bugs at all levels.The Qing Dynasty was really corrupt, and its demise was not unjust at all. It should have been destroyed long ago!

However, after arriving in the Ming Dynasty, I suddenly discovered that the officials of the Qing Dynasty were just students. The teachers who taught them how to be moths, how to poach corners, and gnaw their flesh and blood were dangling in front of their eyes all day long, giving them live lessons again and again, taking the trouble to teach them. I'm afraid I won't be able to understand or learn.Hong Tao's painstaking efforts to check these extremely sensitive archive records, apart from raising some doubts on the official historical data, does it have any other use?It can't be just for making excuses. There were no various groups or forums in the Ming Dynasty, so no one would challenge them if they wanted to.

In fact, doing these investigations has nothing to do with refuting historical data, and it is not to make a point, but to save lives.Speaking of which, I have to thank the late Chief of Ceremony Tian Yi. If it weren't for his few words of advice before his death, Hong Tao wouldn't have the time to look for clues in the mountains of files.

What did Tian Yi say?No one was present at the time, only Hong Tao knew about it, and he would never tell anyone else in his life. The content was too heartbreaking, disgusting, and cruel.It violated almost all human truth, goodness and beauty, and also trampled on the dignity of the royal family.

"If Long Live Master wants to become a powerful emperor like Taizu and Chengzu, I don't know what to do. But I know that if the emperor wants to live a long time, there are some things that must not be done, and some people must beware.

Diligence, traveling, checking accounts, and military training cannot be done. The harem, the empress dowager, the empress dowager, the concubine, the empress, and the concubines must always be on guard.It's not that the slaves are troublesome, but that the ceremonial supervisor has inherited the palms of the past dynasties, and it's gone now! "

These were the last words left by Tian Yi before he left. A wise man speaks well even when he is about to die. Hong Tao didn't quite understand some of the content at the time, but he kept it in mind and prepared to find the answer on his own.

As a result, the more I checked, the more I felt that what Tian Yi said was true. Not counting the two founding emperors Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, most of them died young or died suddenly from Renzong onwards, with the exception of three people, Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houcong and Wanli Emperor. Emperor Zhu Yijun and Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian.

The experiences of Zhu Houcong and Zhu Yijun were very similar. Both emperors were very energetic when they came to the throne, but then suddenly became decadent, ignored the government affairs, and played house in the harem.But Emperor Chongzhen was completely different. He worked hard and worked hard as soon as he came to power.

But when the state of the court during their term of office is taken into account, a pattern seems to emerge.During the periods of Zhu Houcong and Zhu Yijun, the civil service group was very powerful. However, during the period of Emperor Chongzhen, the civil service group had been wiped out by the eunuchs. Coupled with external pressure, it had no time to take care of itself.

Combining these circumstances with what Tian Yi said, it is not difficult to come up with a conjecture.The reason for the short lifespan of the Ming Dynasty emperors seems not entirely to be due to genetic problems, nor is it entirely due to normal death caused by alchemy, excessive dissoluteness, or disease. It is more like some kind of accident.

Looking back and counting the experiences of each emperor and the attitudes of all parties at that time, Tian Yi's warning seems to be somewhat reliable.Each of them tried to strengthen the imperial power or wrest power from the civil servant group, but they were not very successful in the end.

But there is a problem that cannot be ignored. The security measures of ancient emperors were very strict. No matter how powerful the civil servant group was, it was almost impossible to kill the emperor quietly in the palace.

(End of this chapter)