readx; Two days later, the imperial court received Li Dingguo's flying pigeon message. In addition to informing Chengdu of the great victory, the pen fun and pavilion www.biquge.info also told the story of Zhu Zhishu, the king of Shu, coercing Qin Liangyu with grain, with the intention of forcing Ma Qianxue.

When it comes to the King of Shu, of course, the cabinet does not dare to be self-contained, and hurriedly sends it to Zhu Youzhen for inspection. Zhu Youzhen was furious when he saw it, and immediately issued an edict: "Zhu Zhishu, as a vassal king, is blindly arrogant and extravagant, not only does he not help the officials and soldiers to defend the city, but he uses food to blackmail the loyal marquis, and he does this shameless thing, which is really hateful!" Immediately cut off the king, wear brocade clothes and guard locks and take them into Beijing to strictly review and approve Chen, admire this! ”

As soon as the decree came out, the whole dynasty shook. There were many vassal kings in the Ming Dynasty, especially the twenty-four "one-word kings" divided by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang were the most prominent, and this Shu king was one of them. For more than 200 years, there have been occasional vassal kings who have won the title for crimes, but without exception they are all because of "misdeeds". And for ordinary small mistakes, the emperor will turn a blind eye, and at most he will issue a decree to reprimand. Therefore, no one dared to provoke the feudal king in the fiefdom, and the local officials had to try their best to get along.

And although Zhu Zhishu's behavior this time was a little dirty, in all fairness, it seems that the palace does not have the obligation to lend food to the officials and soldiers. As for the fact that he fell in love with Qin Liangyu's daughter, although he used some dirty means, after all, Qin Liangyu agreed, and it was a bit reluctant to say "Qiangna". Therefore, although the officials expected that the emperor would be angry about this matter, no one expected that Zhu Youzhen would directly cut Zhu Zhishu's prince.

However, after all, this matter belongs to the family affairs of the royal family, and there is little room for the ministers to intervene. Only the cabinet auxiliary ministers and the Ministry of Rites Shangshu came to play on the sect, since Zhu Zhishu's prince was removed, according to the ancestral system, his son-in-law should be appointed as the king of Shu, and the other concubines should be the king of the county.

However, Zhu Youzhen said that Zhu Zhishu's crime must be escorted to Beijing and convicted after the trial. Before being convicted, it is not appropriate to set up another king of Shu.

It makes sense for the ministers to think about it, maybe the emperor still has the idea of opening up to Zhu Zhishu, this time the title is to give all the vassal kings a dismount, maybe after the trial, he can continue to be the king of Shu. This is called breaking bones and connecting tendons, who makes the family all descendants of Emperor Taizu?

Only Zhu Youzhen himself knows that he will never let Zhu Zhishu be the king of Shu again. Not only Zhu Zhishu can't do it, but his son doesn't want to do it, Zhu Youzhen wants to take this opportunity to abolish the Shu king's family first, and then attack other vassal kings. To put it bluntly, he is going to cut the domain!

Because Zhu Youzhen knew very well that the vassal system of the Ming Dynasty had become a heavy burden on the country.

The vassal system of the Ming Dynasty can be described as ingenious, called "dividing the feudal without tin soil, the lords without the people, and eating Lu without governing things". Although the vassal king was nominally a feudal state, he did not have any real power, and only enjoyed the money provided by the imperial court, and he did not have to do anything and was not allowed to do anything.

Zhu Yuanzhang's original intention in designing this system was to allow the vassal kings to enjoy glory and wealth for generations, and to prevent them from using their noble position to seize power and even threaten the emperor. The vassal kings had no power or soldiers in their hands, so naturally there would be no fratricidal killings like the "Rebellion of the Seven Kings" in the Han Dynasty and the "Rebellion of the Eight Kings" in the Jin Dynasty.

But Zhu Yuanzhang ignored an obvious problem, that is, the number of vassal kings would gradually increase with the reproduction of the clan. He had dozens of sons, and he was crowned dozens of vassal kings; And every emperor will also make his son a vassal king, and the prince is hereditary, which inevitably snowballs bigger and bigger.

In order to solve this problem, the title system of the Ming Dynasty also stipulates that only the concubine can inherit the title, and the concubine must be demoted to a knighthood. For the clan, there are eight ranks: prince, county king, Zhenguo general, auxiliary general, Fengguo general, Zhenguo lieutenant, auxiliary lieutenant, and Fengguo lieutenant. For example, the concubine of a prince should be named the king of the county, and the concubine of the prince of the county should be named the general of the town, and so on. When he reached the lowest-level Fengguo lieutenant, he was not divided into concubines, and all of them were hereditary Fengguo lieutenants. For princes and county kings, in addition to sons, daughters can also be crowned princesses and county lords.

Of course, there is a difference between these eight-level titles. For example, the highest prince has an annual salary of 50,000 stones, 25,000 yuan, 40 brocades, 300 silk, 100 yarn and Luo, 500 silk, 1,000 winter and summer cloth, 2,000 taels of cotton, 200 salt, 1,000 catties of flowers, and 600 horses of horse fodder. Other titles are decreasing gradually. But if it is a prince who is particularly loved by the emperor, just like the apocalypse did to Zhu Youzhen back then, he can also eat the two princes or even the third prince Lu.

Facts have proved that this system does not solve the problem of clan reproduction at all, but only makes the problem worse. Nowadays, there are more than 80 large and small vassal kings in various places, hundreds of county kings, thousands of Zhenguo generals, and the following auxiliary generals and Fengguo generals are increasing geometrically, and there are hundreds of thousands of clan leaders. Every year, just paying the clan is already an astronomical amount, and it has become an extremely heavy burden on the imperial court's finances. If there is no reform, even if there is no Houjin invasion and thieves, the Ming Dynasty itself will go bankrupt.

Therefore, Zhu Youzhen has long thought about cutting the feudal domain by hand. But this cutting is also an extremely sensitive topic, even a taboo. It was precisely because Emperor Jianwen was determined to cut the feudal domain that Zhu Di's "Jing Difficulty" was introduced, so the emperors of all dynasties did not dare to touch this hot potato.

Now Zhu Youzhen is also facing this problem. The vassal king nominally had no power, but after all, he had lived in the feudal kingdom for more than 200 years and was inextricably linked with local powers. Especially in the economy, it occupies a considerable part of the resources of the location. If he rashly starts to cut the feudal domain, it will naturally provoke a strong backlash from the local forces led by the feudal king, which can be said to affect the whole body, and if it is not good, it will also attract the unanimous opposition of all the clan members, then his legitimacy as an emperor will be in question.

So Zhu Youzhen is waiting for an opportunity. He didn't intend to cut the feudal domain in a big way, but he could find out if the feudal kings had violated the law and forbidden things. If there is, then he can hold on to it and cut off the prince. And the case of Zhu Zhishu, the king of Shu, gave him such an opportunity.

Under Zhu Youzhen's strict order, Yan Zhengang, the envoy of Jinyi Weibei Town, personally rushed to Chengdu to arrest Zhu Zhishu. Before leaving, Zhu Youzhen specially confessed: not only must Zhu Zhishu be arrested, but more importantly, the entire Shu Palace's Mansion must be sealed, and members of the palace are strictly prohibited from entering and leaving; If the palace still prohibits the use of eunuchs, the eunuchs must be dismissed immediately; Seize all the properties of the Shu King's Mansion in Sichuan.

"In addition, don't be idle in other places." Zhu Youzhen frowned and said coldly, "As long as there is a clan that violates the law, first investigate secretly, and report to me when it is almost found." Eat and drink for nothing and do bad things, I will never raise such a group of moths! ”