When Zhu Lunkui said at the court meeting that he was going to appoint Qi Biaojia as the governor of Jiangnan, Ma Shiying was shocked. He knew too well what the emperor was doing this, it was nothing more than sending a henchman to the front line to contain Ma Cheng.

The governor of the Ming Dynasty first appeared in the Yongle period, which can be regarded as Zhu Di's invention and creation. Actually, the governor at that time and the governor after him were not the same thing.

After Zhu Yuanzhang occupied the whole country, he abolished the Zhongshu Province of the Ming Dynasty and set up a political envoy in the local area, and the highest governor was the political envoy, in charge of the affairs of the whole province, and his status was equivalent to that of our provincial governor today.

Originally, it was normal for the political envoy to be in charge, but Zhu Yuanzhang had a hobby of decentralization, and he was never at ease about handing over all the power of a province to one person, so he also set up two other departments to be in charge of justice and the military. These two departments are respectively the Department of Procuratorial Envoys and the Department of Command Envoys, and the highest officials are the Inspectors and Commanders.

Lao Zhu did such a move, nothing more than to facilitate the control of provincial affairs and prevent the local government from sitting big, and his intention was not bad, but the subsequent development of events was beyond his expectations, because his move was in line with a Chinese saying: three monks have no water to drink.

Although the functions and powers of these three governors are not the same, and the political envoys are in charge of civil affairs and finance, the judicial affairs are in charge of the procuratorial envoys, and they are all in charge of the military, but they all work in the provincial capitals, and they do not look up and look down, and the relationship is not good, and it is also very troublesome. In case there is a natural disaster such as a flood or drought, if there is no unified deployment, it is very troublesome, especially at that time, there are often mass activities such as peasant uprisings, there is no commander-in-chief to take charge of things, maybe when the peasant army enters the official office, these three adults are still arguing about who is the boss.

In order to deal with the problem of these three monks, the central government came up with a solution, that is, the central government sent someone to manage the affairs of the whole province, and this person who was similar to the central commissioner was called the governor. It should be noted that the central government does not send people down to be governors at random, and in Chinese officialdom, where seniority is very serious, those who can be sent down to take charge of affairs are not idle people, and generally speaking, these governors are all squires (deputy ministerial level) of various ministries.

Contrary to what many people think, in the Yongle period, there was actually no official name of the governor in the sequence of central officials, and the so-called governor was just a temporary official position. Therefore, the original intention of the central authorities is to send someone down to take charge of affairs, and when the matter is done, you will come back and continue to work at the level of your deputy minister.

However, the heavens do not follow people's wishes, and when the central officials go down to the localities, it is easy to do small things, and if they encounter such major events as ethnic disputes and peasant rebellions, they will not be able to come back in a year and a half. If you want to encounter this kind of thing, the governor can be troublesome, running from east to west, busy for more than half a year, solving the problem here and there, every New Year's holiday, migrant workers can go home for the New Year, and some anxious governors can not return home for several years.

Originally, it was just a temporary errand, but it often never returned, and the governor also had wives and children, and there were also husband and wife who were separated, and the children were enrolled in school, and it was really hard for these adults to hang outside for a long time. The central government is also in trouble, often because it has just come on tour and has reported where something happened, and the local government cannot deal with it, so it needs to be dispatched again, and the cycle repeats itself, which also affects the deployment of personnel from the central government. Thus, in the later historical development, the governor gradually changed from a temporary commissioner to a permanent commissioner

The staff is still a person from the central government, but the specific office is in the place, and there is no need to run several times a year.

Since we talk about governors, we have to talk about the two official positions related to them, governors and governors. Although the governor is a high-ranking official, he is not the largest local official, in fact, there are two levels of officials who are greater than the governor, and these two levels of officials can really be called pivotal figures.

After the Ming Dynasty government determined the governor system, a new problem arose, because the peasant rebels at that time often changed their locations, that is, the so-called shooting to change places, which was also a kind of guerrilla warfare.

For example, the governor of Zhejiang ran after the rebel army with his soldiers, and he was about to catch up, but these people ran to Fujian, and the governor of Zhejiang was not familiar with the terrain, and it was not convenient to run into other people's territory, so he would ask the governor of Fujian or the commander of the envoy to cooperate. If the relationship is not good, it will be troublesome, and people can raise their eyes: "Who are you, your surname?" Why should I be at your command? ”

In order to deal with this situation, the central government had to send higher-level officials (usually at the ministerial level) to the localities to handle affairs and take charge of the governors. These people are the so-called governors. The Governor General is generally in charge of two provinces or one large province (e.g., the Governor of Sichuan is only in charge of Sichuan) and may issue orders to the Governor.

In the late Ming Dynasty, after fierce people such as Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong came out, the guerrillas became regular troops, and the pomp was quite large, with hundreds of thousands of people under their hands, and they did not put your little governor and governor in their eyes at all.

Under these circumstances, the largest magistrate in China's history appeared, and the exhausted Ming government finally had to create a new official named Governor. This official was in charge of the governor, and he was in charge of wherever the peasant army made trouble, and of course, the highest-ranking magistrate was generally concurrently held by the highest civil official of the central government.

The most powerful supervisor in the Ming Dynasty was Lu Xiangsheng, the superintendent appointed by Chongzhen in the sixth year, and his position was the military affairs of the prime minister of seven provinces, including Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Huguang, and half of China was under his management.

However, in this time and space, there is a big man who is much more powerful than Lu Xiangsheng and Hong Chengchou, that is, our protagonist, Ma Cheng in the nine provinces of Zhili, Liangguang, Fujian and Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, and Yunnan and Guizhou, basically except for Sichuan, which is in a mess, the entire south of the Yangtze River is under the management of Ma Cheng.

However, Lu Xiangsheng, Hong Chengchou, and Yang He all have the official titles of university scholars, while Ma Cheng does not have the title of civil official at all, and in the eyes of the Manchu Dynasty scholars, his name as a supervisor is still a little worse than Lu Xiangsheng and others.

Qi Biaojia was the governor of Jiangnan in the early Hongguang period, but was impeached and lost by Zhang Sunzhen in the later period, and this governor was served by Ma Shiying's brother-in-law Yang Wencong, but Yang Wencong's literary level is enough, but the war is not as high as his painting level. After Duoduo led the Manchu army across the Yangtze River, Yang Wencong led tens of thousands of troops to defeat in successive battles, losing Zhenjiang, an important town on the south bank of the Yangtze River, so that Duoduo easily gained a foothold on the south bank of the Yangtze River.

Yang Wencong fled

After returning to Nanjing, according to the rules and regulations of the imperial court, he should be held responsible, but at that time, the attention of the imperial court was to fight against the Qing army, coupled with Ma Shiying's mediation, Yang Wencong did not have any responsibility at all, but turned into one of the small nine Qings, Shang Baosi Zhengqing, responsible for managing the cabinet of documents.

Although Ma Cheng can also be in charge of administration, Ma Cheng leads the troops to fight, so he naturally can't focus on local administration, so Ma Shiying has long planned to send a henchman to serve as the governor of Jiangnan, so that his son has no worries. Now hearing that the emperor was going to send Qi Biaojia of the Donglin Party, Ma Shiying naturally refused to give in, and immediately signaled his henchmen to start attacking Qi Biaojia.

Ma Shiying's henchmen don't look at the war, but they are all experts in fighting in the nest, and their means of pouring dung are second only to those Donglin Party who claim to be upright gentlemen. As soon as Ma Shiying's order was issued, his royal thug Zhang Sunzhen immediately stood up to impeach Qi Biaojia.

Zhang Sunzhen is not a connoisseur who eats this job, and he lists ten things that must not be done on the spot, from Qi Biaojia's character to character, Qi Biaojia is useless.

Although Zhang Sunzhen is powerful, don't forget that the Donglin Party is not bad, and Zhang Jinyan, the Yuanma Temple Qing who was soon reactivated, stood up for Qi Biaojia and spoke up, completely ignoring that he was just a horse breeder.

The Ma Party and the Donglin Party were fighting vigorously here, but Ruan Dacheng led a group of genuine eunuchs to watch the excitement on the side. After a long time, Ruan Dacheng stood up and began to speak for the Donglin Party, this change can make Ruan Dacheng's ironcore, Yang Weiyuan, the secretary of the Ministry of Industry, very puzzled. It stands to reason that Ruan Dacheng and the Donglin Party are in the same boat, and it would be good not to go up and kick them at this time, how can they still say good things for them?

However, Ruan Dacheng is the leader of the eunuch party, and his subordinates naturally have to obey when the boss speaks. In history, Yang Weiyuan, who committed suicide with his whole family in Nanjing, didn't care about Ma Cheng's grace to save the whole family at this time, and stood up to attack Ma Cheng.

Now that things have come to this point, two of the three elders of the court and the central government support Qi Biaojia, Qian Qianyi felt that the time was almost up, and stood up and said: "Your Majesty, since your colleagues have objections, let's push it!" ”

Tingtui is a democratic system of officialdom in the Ming Dynasty, that is, voting, and when major political matters cannot be decided, this way of voting is often used to solve them. However, there are restrictions on the level of officials who can vote, and only officials above the fourth rank in Beijing have the right to vote.

Ma Shiying saw that the matter was about to happen, and quickly stood up against it. Ma Shiying's henchmen occupy half of the high-level, and half of the big Jiuqing and Xiao Jiuqing are Ma Shiying's henchmen, so Ma Shiying is not afraid of any force in the court, even the alliance between Ruan Dacheng and Qian Qianyi is only on a par with Ma Shiying.

However, Tingtui is different, Ma Shiying's time in charge of Nanjing is too short, and many of those middle-level officials of the fourth grade are not Ma Shiying's party. And the Donglin Party has been operating in Nanzhili for hundreds of years, and most of these middle-level officials of the four grades are sympathetic to the Donglin Party, so Tingtui must be unfavorable to Ma Shiying.

However, at this time, Zhu Lunkui's purpose was to enable Qi Biaojia to pull Ma Cheng's hind legs, so naturally Ma Shiying could not be allowed to do his bidding, so Zhu Lunkui quickly ordered to push the officials above the fourth grade in Beijing.

Three days later, the results came out, and as Qian Qianyi expected, Qi Biaojia's appointment was approved, and Zhu Lunkui soon issued a holy decree appointing Qi Biaojia as the secretary of the military department and the governor of Jiangnan.