Jingnan Strategy

Chapter 575 Yongle No Regrets
"Cough cough..."

In mid-November, as the weather grew colder, Zhu Gaoxu finally announced the withdrawal of his troops.

Except for the two thousand cavalry and infantry stationed in Yangyi City, the rest of the troops withdrew to Yili.

It is not known whether it was because it was too cold, or because they had achieved their goal and became weak due to slacking off, but both Zhu Di and his son Zhu Gaoxu caught a cold on their way back.

In the carriage, Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Di sat face to face, each holding a book in their hands.

The difference is that Zhu Gaoxu was writing with a book in his hand, while Zhu Di was reading a book that Zhu Gaoxu wrote for his children and grandchildren.

Zhu Gaoxu wrote five books, two of which had been completed. The one Zhu Di was holding was one of them, and Zhu Gaoxu was writing the third one.

These books have no names, but their contents are very rich.

From technology to ideology, thought waves, and then to several extensions of the world pattern...

It's obviously just a book, but it seems to be describing what will happen hundreds of years in the future.

Although he was ill, Zhu Di was still engrossed in watching.

The same thing went for Zhu Gaoxu. He was clearly sick, but he was still coughing while writing.

For a sentence in the book, he would need to think for an hour or even a quarter of an hour before he would start writing. He was very cautious.

Outside the carriage, a long team was moving eastward along the Tianshan Mountains. If you opened the window and looked at the Tianshan Mountains, the scenery was shocking.

Although it has not snowed yet at the foot of the mountain, the top of the Tianshan Mountains is already covered with white snow.

Zhu Gaoxu would look out the window from time to time, and then turn back to write from time to time.

Zhu Di immersed himself in the book, feeling the "future" he could see.

Except for talking during meals, the father and son spent the rest of the time immersed in their own world.

They arrived at Suiye City, formerly Tokmok.

They have not changed much because there is no railway connection, and materials from the mainland and the Northeast cannot be transported here. Naturally, it is impossible to transport a steady supply of steel, cement and other construction materials here to make the fastest changes here.

However, although they did not immediately change the local environment, as more and more Han people arrived, the local environment would eventually improve.

Without staying too long, they left behind three thousand soldiers and continued to advance towards Hezhong City.

On the ninth day of the twelfth lunar month, the team crossed Hezhong City and did not head towards the Ili River Valley, but headed towards Yinshan City in the north.

On the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month, they arrived at the Yinshan City (Haili) and saw the Yibohai (Lake Balkhash).

As the two had not recovered from the cold, they did not get out of the carriage but just sat in it and admired the magnificent Yi Bo Sea through the glass.

"This is ours..."

Zhu Gaoxu looked at Yi Bohai and couldn't help but say this.

Zhu Di just thought it was an exclamation, but only Zhu Gaoxu himself knew how rare this sentence was.

Sailimu Lake, Balkhash Lake, Yiksai Lake...

Of these three lakes, only one was left for later generations, but now I have taken them all back.

"Cough cough..."

He coughed a few times, and then gave the order: "The wind is too strong by the lake, let's continue walking and go to Yinshan City to rest."

"Yes." Hu Ji nodded in the carriage, then carefully opened the window and told the general leading the troops the news.

Zhu Neng was left in the Ili River Valley. Zhu Gaoxu appointed him as the General of Anxi, rewarded him with three mines, and ordered him to control three military governors in the Western Regions. He was allowed to leave in the spring.

Chen Mao was promoted to the commander-in-chief of Anxi and was given the title of Marquis of Ningyang.

Zhu Yong was appointed as the commander-in-chief of Beiting and was awarded a copper mountain.

Mao Zhong was granted the title of Fuqiang Bo and appointed as the commander of Hezhong.

In addition, many soldiers and generals who had made contributions were promoted, including many people Zhu Gaoxu was familiar with.

Sun Tong, Yang Hong, Liu Yu, Shi Heng and other four people were famous generals during the Zhengtong period who were familiar to him. Although Yang Hong's actions in Tumu Fort were worthy of criticism, Zhu Gaoxu did not treat him harshly and gave them due rewards.

In order to train them, Zhu Gaoxu also placed them in Beiting and Hezhong, two places where wars were prone to break out.

With this group of people around, and with myself taking charge of the general direction, there should be no problem in selecting generals for the Western Region.

As the battle line moved forward, Zhu Gaoxu transferred three guards from Gansu to Hezhong to guard the border, and transferred one guard each from Mobei, Shanxi and Peking to Beiting to guard the border.

In addition, three new guards are needed to garrison Anxi.

The three Dusi together have a total of more than 5400 people in the Nine Guards.

It may not seem like much, but this is already the maximum number of troops that the Ming Dynasty can currently maintain in the Western Regions.

This is because the train goes directly to Xizhou, otherwise it would be difficult to carry even 30,000 people.

While I was thinking, the carriage arrived at Yinshan City.

This city standing in the eastern part of Yi Bohai has a circumference of only six miles and a height of no more than twenty feet. It is made of rammed earth and has a population of more than ten thousand people, and there are more than twenty thousand nomadic herdsmen around it.

Yinshan City still retains the style and architecture left over from the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, all of which will be demolished and rebuilt in the future.

But for now, until the railway is built, we can only let them grow wildly.

"Your Majesty, the Ministry of Revenue has sent an urgent memorial."

After getting off the carriage, Zhu Gaoxu had just entered the former Governor's Mansion of Haijiaoli when he received an urgent memorial sent by Liu Mian.

He walked and looked around. Fortunately, this so-called Governor's Mansion was not big. After a while, he walked into a room with a fireplace.

Zhu Gaoxu sat in the main seat, and Zhu Di sat beside him, still holding the book written by Zhu Gaoxu and reading it.

Zhu Gaoxu frowned and opened the memorial from the Ministry of Revenue. The content inside was almost the same as Zhu Gaoxu expected, but because of this, his brows furrowed even deeper.

"what happened?"

Zhu Di noticed Zhu Gaoxu's attitude, and Zhu Gaoxu sighed, closed his memorial and said:
"People's lives have improved, but they are no longer willing to struggle."

"After more than three months of trying to persuade the people to migrate, the court was able to persuade only over 3,000 households, or less than 20,000 people. Moreover, many people on the way could not return, so in the end, only less than 1,700 people were sent to Xizhou."

"At this rate, it will probably take a hundred years to completely control the Western Region..."

Zhu Gaoxu didn't have a hundred years to wait, and Zhu Di knew that, so he closed the book and asked, "What do you want to do?"

Facing Zhu Di's question, Zhu Gaoxu did not hesitate for a moment and spoke directly:

"Jiangxi suffered from the Yangtze River flood this year, and people in several counties need to be relocated."

"In that case, let's move the people of these counties to the Western Regions."

"How many counties?" Zhu Di frowned slightly. Zhu Gaoxu nodded and said, "Three counties, about 200,000 people."

"In addition, this year, grain in the two capitals, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan and other places has suddenly increased, and there may be drought next year."

"If a drought really occurs, all the people affected will be relocated to the Western Regions."

Zhu Gaoxu remembered that a large-scale drought broke out during the Xuande period, but he was not sure which year it was.

Just according to the time, it is almost the eighth year of Xuande.

This year is almost over, so drought will break out either next year or the year after, so it is good to prepare early.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the people from these places can be relocated to the Western Regions to settle down.

Thinking of this, Zhu Gaoxu asked Hu Ji to prepare a red pen and quickly wrote his reply.

"Cough cough..."

At this time, Zhu Di coughed a few times. Seeing this, Zhu Gaoxu said to Hu Ji: "Send the imperial physician Wang Wanzhe to take his pulse."

"Yes!" Hu Ji bowed, took the memorial and left.

Soon, Wang Wanzhe came to take the pulse of Zhu Gaoxu and Zhu Di.

"Your Majesty's evil spirits have been dispelled a lot, but the evil spirits of the retired emperor..."

Wang Wanzhe hesitated for a moment, but Zhu Di said, "Don't be so secretive. At my age, is there anything I can't handle?"

Zhu Di still looked very energetic, but Wang Wanzhe said to Zhu Gaoxu: "Your Majesty, it would be better for the army to rest here for two months."

"Okay!" Zhu Gaoxu agreed without hesitation after hearing this.

After he agreed, Wang Wanzhe continued to say to Zhu Di: "Your Majesty, things are not that bad. As long as we avoid the cold winter, it will be fine."

"Okay." Zhu Di nodded and then fell silent.

"You go down first." Zhu Gaoxu motioned Wang Wanzhe to go down, and then smiled and said to Zhu Di: "Did father find any ideas from reading these days?"

He tried to chat with Zhu Di to ease the atmosphere, but Zhu Di sighed and said, "Your book is so comprehensive, what else can I think of it?"

Zhu Di held the book with a somewhat cloudy look in his eyes.

"I think the two points you mentioned are very important. The first is the distribution issue, and the second is to be vigilant against the problem of bureaucratic factions."

Since Zhu Gaoxu wrote with a similar chronology as the main body and the rest as branches, one book basically represents the progress of the Ming Dynasty in the next fifty years, so it is not that fast to read.

Zhu Di spent more than a month reading and only just finished the first book. He has just started reading the second book.

The first book begins in the 1432th year of Hongxi, which, if calculated according to the Western calendar, would be 1482, and ends in .

During these fifty years, the North must first transform from an agricultural focus to a balanced balance between industry and agriculture through industrial investment.

By 1482, the population of the Ming Dynasty had to reach million, fiscal revenue had to reach million guan, and the amount of cultivated land must not be less than billion mu.

If the Qinling Mountains and the Huai River are used as the north-south dividing line, the fiscal contribution of the north needs to account for about 40% of the total fiscal revenue, and agricultural output needs to account for 35% of output.

Due to the excessive concentration of population, Jiangnan will be the first place to see contradictions such as rich and poor and class in about 50 years. This is a contradiction that the emperor in power at the time can experiment with and solve, because there are still a lot of resources in the vast land of Ming Dynasty to alleviate this contradiction.

As long as the distribution issue is resolved, the conflicts in Jiangnan will no longer be conflicts.

The reason why the experiment of resolving contradictions in Jiangnan was to test public opinion and see what the people in Jiangnan thought. In the late Ming Dynasty, due to the over-concentration of population in Jiangnan and the excessive exploitation of slaves by landlords, slave rebellion broke out.

It was against this background that so many thinkers emerged in the late Ming Dynasty, and even ideas such as equalizing the world, opposing autocracy, and criticizing the monarchy emerged.

As the population continues to grow, this process will accelerate and will most likely occur within fifty years.

For this reason, Zhu Gaoxu suggested that the emperor at the time should look at what the people thought and decide how to guide the people and public opinion based on what the people thought.

Simply suppressing public opinion is not a good thing. What Daming Newspaper should do is not to suppress public opinion and deny people space to speak, but to guide people's public opinion. This is a very important experiment and experience.

Of course, Zhu Gaoxu himself didn't know whether this could be implemented.

There was nothing to copy in the Ming Dynasty today. Both Eastern and Western ideologies and thoughts had problems. The only thing that could provide Zhu Gaoxu with ideas was the ideological wave of the late Ming Dynasty.

As for the ideological waves in the late Qing Dynasty, they did not mean much to Zhu Gaoxu.

After all, the late Qing Dynasty was a gathering of all kinds of shortcomings. Whether from the perspective of nationality or class, there was no possibility that the Qing Dynasty could survive.

In comparison, the Ming Dynasty at least had no ethnic issues, only pure class issues.

Because of this, it is more difficult to overthrow the Han imperial system.

If the distribution of wealth in Jiangnan could continue fifty years later, the Ming Dynasty could continue to develop by this means.

The reason why equal distribution of wealth is so powerful is that the distribution of wealth is important.

Once the distribution of wealth becomes unbalanced, or even to the point where it far exceeds the proportion of capitalism, then no matter what ideology it is, it will collapse.

This is why the more Zhu Gaoxu confiscated property, the richer the people of the Ming Dynasty became. The important thing lies in "distribution".

One reason for the collapse of the late Ming Dynasty was the corruption and degeneration of the entire administrative system. This issue involved many problems, and even Zhu Gaoxu himself could not explain it clearly at that time.

Anyone can make mistakes, and any group can make mistakes too.

It’s not scary to make mistakes, once you correct them you will get back on track.

The scary thing is that when an individual or a group makes a mistake, there is no one and no way to correct it.

When mistakes cannot be corrected, one will just keep running down the wrong path until one runs into a cliff.

This is something that Zhu Gaoxu could not change. Even though he wrote these books to awaken future rulers, things would still happen.

When a privileged group and a bureaucratic group emerged in the Ming Dynasty, it meant that they controlled the key departments of the Ming Dynasty.

They will gain huge political and economic benefits for themselves, and officials and ordinary people outside these groups have no rights.

When faced with officials and people who are independent of the group, they will not only not listen to their opinions, but will even attack and persecute them after they put forward their opinions.

These two points are the two questions raised by Zhu Gaoxu.

Zhu Di stared at Zhu Gaoxu and slowly said, "What you said makes sense. From your grandfather to now, officials have been forming cliques and groups, but they still exist and are even quite serious."

"You are in control of the world today, but are there any cases of groups like those in your book persecuting and persecuting others, or abusing their power for personal gain?"

"Yes." Zhu Gaoxu nodded and looked at Hu Ji: "Hu Ji, do you think there is any?"

"Your Majesty, I..." Hu Ji hesitated for a moment, not knowing what to say.

Before he could open his mouth to ask the question, Zhu Gaoxu sighed:
"You know more about this kind of thing than I do, but you always report good news but not bad news, and this is also the behavior we need to be wary of."

"Officials have privileges, political needs, personal connections, and a competitive mentality... These can easily lead to corruption and rigidity in the administration of officials. These are what we need to be careful of."

“If officials only represent the interests of one class and not the interests of the general public, then the court will be in danger.”

"When officials become powerful and earn more money, they distance themselves from the people... In the end, they live in an environment created by the group and naturally ignore the real environment."

"Last year, many officials said that now that we have railways, there is no need to build official roads."

"They say that because they now travel long distances by train instead of horse-drawn carriages, so they think it is unnecessary to continue building the official road."

"But the reality is that the official road was not built for them, but for the people."

"Each station costs ten cents, which is too expensive for ordinary people to afford. They can only take the horse-drawn or donkey-drawn carts on the official roads, but our officials just can't see this."

"They just waved their hands and stopped repairing the official road. Will the people then have to climb mountains and wade through rivers, or walk along cliffs?"

"There are also many cases in the Ministry of Justice that were unfair. I asked them to reexamine the cases, but the results were very rigid. They didn't consider the truth and only wanted to close the cases quickly."

"If they continue like this, sooner or later they will be separated from the larger environment in which the people live and enter their own smaller environment."

“When the time comes, they will feel that their environment is like this, and the environment for the people should also be like this.”

"That's what they think, but in fact they can see the people's environment if they open the car window, but they don't look."

"They covered their eyes and ears, and only knew how to use the gavel in their hands to knock and bang. What they did was not in line with what the overall environment should do."

"It has been like this throughout the dynasties. Once you lose the support of the people, the country will perish..."

"The problem is not the lack of wealth but the inequality of wealth. The purpose of secondary distribution is to keep the overall gap between the rich and the poor at a certain level."

"What we need to do now is not to continuously increase the wages and salaries of a few people, but to gradually narrow the gap in personal incomes across the country and prevent a small number of people from abusing their power to enjoy any privileges."

"Whenever a privileged class appears in the officialdom for a long time, the country is not far from destruction. This is what we need to be vigilant about."

Zhu Gaoxu did not finish his words because he knew very well that their Zhu family was a long-standing privileged class.

If left unchecked, it will become a threat to the Ming Dynasty in the future.

He also wanted to intervene, but now was not the best time. When the best time came, he didn't know whether the emperor in power at that time would be determined to solve these problems.

Zhu Di also understood what Zhu Gaoxu said. The family empire is bound to perish eventually. Although Zhu Di did not believe it, if he followed Zhu Gaoxu's thinking, the outcome could only be this.

Thinking of this, he seemed to age a little: "By the time you and I have been dead for who knows how many years, there is no point in caring about these things."

"In my life, I have made big mistakes and also accomplished great things. Even if my descendants in the future do not want to be ashamed of me, they should not dig up my grave and pull me out of it, haha..."

Zhu Di was able to laugh, and not only that, he stood up and patted Zhu Gaoxu on the shoulder: "It's getting late, have a good rest."

As soon as he finished speaking, he walked out.

His figure was taller than usual, and he walked with the might of a tiger.

Watching him leave, Zhu Gaoxu calmed down and realized that Zhu Di did not take his books with him.

"I'll take the book to the emperor." Hu Ji reached out to take it, but Zhu Gaoxu shook his head and said, "No need."

Hu Ji was stunned for a moment, his eyes seemed to be asking questions, while Zhu Gaoxu looked outside the door. Even though there was nothing outside the door, he was still fascinated.

"It doesn't matter to him whether he reads the book or not."

"If he wants to see it, he'll let you get it himself."

After he finished speaking, Zhu Gaoxu also stood up and walked out.

Light snow began to fall from the sky. Zhu Gaoxu reached out and caught a few snowflakes, which melted in his hands.

These snows will melt in the next summer, nourishing the northwestern land, keeping it green, and finally flowing into the Yi Bo Sea.

By this time next year, they will turn into snowflakes again and nourish the earth again.

The snowflakes are also like wealth. Every winter, it is like a big case.

The confiscated wealth will be distributed to benefit the people, but will eventually go through various things and finally flow into the hands of that one in ten thousand people.

Big cases cannot be sustained, but they must be sustained. At least when class contradictions are serious, a bloody storm can nourish a piece of land, even for a moment...

But the emperor was only an emperor after all, not the real "Son of Heaven", and he could not be consistent and do things over and over again.

Emperors will always change, and not everyone can be like Zhu Gaoxu, who does not care about his reputation and casually initiates major cases.

"Your Majesty, please put on some more clothes."

Hu Ji followed and draped the fox fur coat on Zhu Gaoxu's shoulders. Zhu Gaoxu withdrew his hand, feeling the wetness in his palm and the warmth on his shoulder. He looked at Hu Ji.

"Your father and you have served me for forty years. If you don't tell me the truth, who will tell me the truth?"

"If you can't even tell me the truth, how can the people under you dare to tell you the truth?"

"There are some things you should think about carefully..."

Zhu Gaoxu turned and left, but Hu Ji looked at his back for a long time and refused to leave.

Soon, his shoulders felt warmer.

He turned around and saw an official from the Western Factory who was about the same age as him.

"Commander, be careful not to catch a cold..."

Seeing this, Hu Ji thought of his previous actions and couldn't help but ask this person: "Yuan Bin, are you telling me the truth?"

"What does the commander mean by this?"

Yuan Bin was stunned for a moment, and Hu Ji sighed when he heard it: "Nothing, I just thought of something."

"Do you think there are factional disputes within the West Factory?"

Hu Ji looked into the distance, not knowing what he was thinking.

"Of course there is." Yuan Bin said without hesitation:
"As long as there are people, this kind of thing is inevitable. I can only rely on the commander to remain neutral."

Yuan Bin's honest behavior made Hu Ji look sideways. He looked at Yuan Bin with complicated eyes, and finally said:

"Liu Mian said a few days ago that he would retire in a few years. He didn't have many candidates for the Imperial Guard, so he asked me to recommend someone."

"After this matter is over and you return to the capital, you will serve in the Imperial Guards. In a few years, you will take over his position. Remember to be kind to me and His Majesty... Forget it."

Hu Ji didn't finish his words. He shook his head and walked out of the Governor's Mansion. Although Yuan Bin was confused, he still bowed to his back to show his gratitude.

As he watched, Hu Ji's back gradually disappeared in the wind and snow...

(End of this chapter)