Rebirth of Zhu Di's son

Chapter 313 Splitting South Zhili

The next day.

early morning.

On Fengtian Temple.

After Zhu Gaoxu ascended the throne, he accepted the worship of all ministers.

After the ceremony, the ministers of civil and military affairs stood in order in their classes.

Zhu Gaoxu cast his gaze on Prince Zhu Zhanyu, who was on the left side of the throne, and said in a deep voice: "Declaration."

"My son has orders."

Zhu Zhanyu first turned around and saluted Zhu Gaoxu, then turned around and walked in front of Lord Dan, standing firmly facing the ministers.

At the same time, two young eunuchs in charge of the ceremonial supervisor bowed, appeared from the corner door on the left and the right, and walked to Zhu Zhanyu's side.

The eunuch on the left humbly handed an imperial edict to Zhu Zhanyu.

Zhu Zhanyu slowly unfolded the imperial edict and read loudly: "The emperor is destined to be carried by heaven, and the system says: The Minister of the Ministry of War, Qi Tai, will be appointed as the governor of Guizhou. Nine days later, he will leave for the post and order Chen Qia, the left minister of the Ministry of War, to act as the minister of the Ministry of War. I hereby express my gratitude. "

Qi Tai, the Minister of the Ministry of War, and Chen Qia, the left minister of the Ministry of War, walked out of the class, bowed and saluted: "I, Qi Tai (Chen Qia), obey the order and thank my emperor for his grace!"

Minister Jian Yi and other ministers who participated in the selection of governors of the six provinces were secretly surprised when they heard this.

They did not expect that Zhu Gaoxu would transfer the dignified Minister of War to serve as governor of a province.

It can be seen that Qitai will definitely make big moves after he takes office in Guizhou.

Without waiting for the officials to discuss the matter, Zhu Zhanyu saw Qi Tai and Chen Qia receive the order and then returned to the class. Then he rolled up the imperial edict in his hand and gave it back to the eunuch on the left. Then he turned sideways and picked up the second one presented by the eunuch on the right. Taoist edict.

Under the attention of the ministers, Zhu Zhanyu once again unfolded the imperial edict and said loudly: "The emperor is destined to carry the emperor, and the edict says: Zhejiang Province will be changed to Jiangdong Province, and the original jurisdiction will remain unchanged; Huguang will be divided into Hunan with Dongting Lake as the boundary. , Hubei provinces; split the southern Zhili into Huaixi and Huaidong provinces."

"Huaixi Province has jurisdiction over seven prefectures, including Fengyang Prefecture, Luzhou Prefecture, Anqing Prefecture, Chizhou Prefecture, Ningguo Prefecture, Huizhou Prefecture, and Taiping Prefecture. Huaidong Province has jurisdiction over Yingtian Prefecture, Huai'an Prefecture, Suzhou Prefecture, and Yangzhou Prefecture. , Changzhou Prefecture, Songjiang Prefecture, Zhenjiang Prefecture and other eight prefectures. Xuzhou, the original Southern Zhili Prefecture, was placed under Huaidong, and Chuzhou, Hezhou, and Guangzhou were placed under Huaixi. I admire this."

After Zhu Zhanyu read out the second imperial edict, he thought that the ministers would salute and accept the edict. However, some of the ministers in the palace couldn't help but started making noise in a low voice.

"It's just a matter of splitting up Huguang. As for the splitting up of Nanzhili, we, as His Majesty's advisors, had no prior knowledge of such a big matter."

This seems to be Jie Jin's voice.

"Nanjing still has three ministries of rites, punishment, and work. If Nanzhili is demolished, how will the original officials be resettled?"

This seems to be Huang Huai's voice.

"This is a serious matter. We can't demolish it in Southern Zhili just because we want it!"

This was probably Zeng Qi's voice.

"..."

Zhu Gaoxu listened to the subtle noise among the ministers, glanced slightly sideways, and winked at Kang Ping, who was standing beside him.

Kang Ping instantly understood what Zhu Gaoxu meant, and immediately walked down the steps, shook the fly whisk in his hand hard, and shouted loudly at the ministers in the hall: "How can we tolerate noise in Fengtian Hall? Still not quiet!?"

The next moment, the noisy sounds suddenly disappeared.

"The ministers obey the order."

Jian Yi, the Minister of Personnel, Yu Yanzhao, the Minister of Rites, Xia Yuanji, the Minister of Hubu, and other six ministers, as well as all the military officials, all bowed and saluted.

When other civil servants saw that the senior officials of the six ministries had already obeyed the decree, and knew that the overall situation of splitting the Southern Zhili was decided, and that as the emperor, Zhu Gaoxu had no chance of taking back his word, so they all accepted the decree.

Whether it was in the original history or after the history was changed, in short, during the Hongwu and Yongle years, the military ministers of the Ming Dynasty could not discuss the government affairs or interfere in political affairs unless they had the permission of the emperor.

Likewise, civil servants cannot interfere in the military affairs.

In other words, as long as the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty issued a decree, the military attachés of the Ming Dynasty could only choose to follow the decree. Otherwise, they would be resisting the decree, disobeying the order, and having evil intentions!
Therefore, even if some military attachés did not understand why Zhu Gaoxu did what he did, they still chose to obey the order like Jian Yi, Yu Yanzhao and other six ministers.

During the Hongwu period, the local provincial administrative divisions of the Ming Dynasty included, in addition to Zhili, twelve provinces including Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Sichuan.When Zhu Di abdicated, the Ming Dynasty had six more provincial-level administrative divisions than during the Hongwu period, namely Beiting, Anxi, Puchang, Liaodong, Guizhou, and Jiaozhi.

Zhu Gaoxu changed Zhejiang into Jiangdong, split Huguang into Hunan and Hubei, and split up Southern Zhili into Huaixi and Huaidong. This was to adapt to the development of the times, not to be innovative.

In the 13th year of Yongle, Zhu Di officially moved the capital to Beijing, changed the capital to Nanjing, and Zhili was renamed Southern Zhili.

At the same time, in order to appease the people of Nanjing and reduce the pressure of moving the capital, Zhu Di specially retained the three departments of Rites, Punishment, and Work among the six departments, but added the word "Nanjing" to them.

The Nanjing Ministry of Rites was theoretically responsible for the tribute matters of the southern overseas vassals, but Zhu Di had long since deprived him of this authority and granted it to the Capital Ministry of Rites.

Therefore, it was eventually reduced to a yamen responsible for the full-time worship of Zhu Yuanzhang's Xiaoling Mausoleum every year, without much authority at all.

In principle, the Nanjing Ministry of Punishment is responsible for the criminal names of various bureaus, princes, and imperial guards in the southern Zhili region.

However, after Zhu Di moved the capital, most of the princes and princes in Nanjing moved to Beijing one after another. If the left-behind departments and other departments violated the laws of the Ming Dynasty, the Nanjing Criminal Department did not have the final right of adjudication and had to be escorted to Beijing.

It can be said that the Nanjing Criminal Department is only a formal criminal yamen with limited powers.

As for the Nanjing Ministry of Industry, in addition to being responsible for the maintenance of Nanjing City, Nanjing imperial mausoleums and palaces, and construction in various parts of South Zhili, it also oversees the largest Longjiang shipyard in the country. It is the most profitable among the three ministries of Rites, Punishment, and Work in Nanjing. yamen.

However, in fact, under Zhu Gaoxu's "micro-management", many officials of the Nanjing Ministry of Industry were mostly part-time personnel dispatched from the Beijing Ministry of Industry.

Before the middle period of Yongle, the tax revenue of Southern Zhili alone accounted for one-third of the country's total, and the number of people who passed the imperial examination accounted for more than one-third of the country's total.

With the development of the economy, if a separatist force emerges in southern Zhili in later generations, then this separatist force can use its unique advantages to resist the imperial court with a corner of its territory, causing great damage to the Ming Dynasty.

It was precisely with this in mind that Zhu Di had long wanted to give Southern Zhili a share. The reason why he left this matter to Zhu Gaoxu was because he wanted to give this credit to Zhu Gaoxu.

Historically, after Zhu Di moved the capital, he also left the three ministries of rites, punishment, and work in Nanjing, adding the word "Nanjing" to them.

However, after Zhu Gaochi, Emperor Renzong of the Ming Dynasty, came to the throne, he ordered that the word "Nanjing" be removed, and the three departments of officials, households, and soldiers be added to Nanjing to restore the six-department system.

In the sixth year of Zhengtong, Beijing was reestablished as the capital, and the word "Nanjing" was added in front of each of the six departments of Nanjing, thus becoming a custom.

After history was changed and Zhu Gaoxu became the emperor, he would naturally not follow the old path in history and create a Nanjing Sixth Division.

He wanted to take advantage of the weak power of Nanjing's Rites, Punishment and Work Ministries to split Nanzhili into two provinces, which would create many more official positions.

Such good deeds will naturally be supported by most people.

This is also the reason why Zhu Gaoxu did not discuss with the cabinet ministers, but only raised the issue a few times with the six ministries and nine ministers before he issued the imperial edict arbitrarily and directly.

Of course, there must be some disadvantages in doing this, but in terms of time efficiency, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

Veteran ministers like Qi Tai, Jian Yi, and Xia Yuanji could certainly see that it was extremely unreasonable to split up the Southern Zhili according to Zhu Gaoxu's imperial edict.

However, they also understand that if it is too reasonable, it will increase the risk of separatism in the two provinces split from Southern Zhili.

Zhu Gaoxu did this on purpose by splitting up Southern Zhili.

The principle of defining provinces in the former Yuan Dynasty changed from the previous generation's practice of focusing on mountains, rivers and shapes, and clearly focused on the interlacing of teeth.

The purpose of this is to fundamentally eliminate the natural geographical risks, regional economic benefits, and the hearts of the people on which the province relies for self-respect.

It can be said that this provincial principle was a turning point in the history of local administrative divisions in ancient China.

Zhu Zhanyu saw that the ministers had regained their initial calm, so he took the last imperial decree of the day from the eunuch on his left, slowly unfolded it, and then read aloud:

"The Emperor, who has been entrusted by heaven, said: In order to consolidate the border defense and protect the territory and the people, nine governor's offices are now established to control the troops and horses of the provincial guards in the world."

"The first is the Governor's Mansion of Zhili, which controls the health posts in Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Zhili, and Liaodong. The second is the Governor's Mansion of Shaanxi and Puchang, which controls the security posts in Shaanxi and Puchang. The third is the Governor's Mansion of Bei'an, which controls Beiting, Anxi Internal Guard Station."

"The fourth is the Duochuan Governor's Mansion, which controls the guard posts in Duogan and Sichuan. The fifth is the Yunnan-Guizhou Governor's Mansion, which controls the health posts in Yunnan and Guizhou. The sixth is the Huguang Governor's Mansion, which controls the health posts in Hunan and Hubei."

"The seventh day is called the Governor's Office of Liangguang and Guangxi, which controls the military posts in Guangxi and Guangdong. The eighth is called the Governor's Office of Liangjiang and controls the military posts in Jiangxi, Jiangdong, and Fujian. The ninth is called the Governor's Palace of Lianghuai and controls the military posts in Huaixi and Huaidong."

(End of this chapter)