Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system and concentrated the administrative, economic, and military power of the state in the hands of the emperor alone, although it effectively prevented the ministers from holding more power than the emperor, but also greatly increased the workload of the emperor.

As a large country like China, which has a vast territory and a very different and ever-changing political situation in various localities, the major political affairs that we have to deal with every day are bound to be huge and complicated. Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, the founding emperors who were born in the army, are full of energy, and know that entrepreneurship is difficult, and they may be able to barely cope with it every day; But in later generations, those lotus flowers soaked in the deep palace and women's piles were neither capable of enthusiasm nor necessary sense of responsibility to analyze and review government affairs all day long.

Because the workload of government affairs is too huge, most of the emperors in the middle and late Ming Dynasty have a rebellious psychology of disgust with politics, and in order to escape government affairs, they actually stay in the deep palace for a long time and do not go to the court to work, and do not appear to see government officials.

This phenomenon is a bit similar to the "specialty training courses" in China's primary and secondary schools, which plundered children of their already pitiful free time to train piano, painting, and calligraphy, and the result was counterproductive, causing many children who originally had a certain talent in music and painting to have a headache when they saw the piano and drawing board in the future.

The emperor refused to go out to see government officials go to the court to work, and the Ming government's political system did not allow officials with extraordinary ability, sentiment and sense of responsibility to work for the emperor; The eunuchs who are closest to the emperor and pose the least threat to the throne will naturally handle state affairs on behalf of the emperor and dominate the government under the emperor's signboard.

In an era when the emperor was highly centralized and lazy emperors emerged, if the eunuchs did not interfere in politics, it would be a hell of a life.

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Although the emperor is high, but people are not gods, they have weaknesses and seven emotions and six desires, even if they are capable, there are times when they are in a bad mood, and in the face of unlimited centralized power that is difficult for a person's ability and morality, it is inevitable to make mistakes and make mistakes.

In order to cover up his mistakes and inability to do so, and to ensure the great image of the emperor as wise and martial, he naturally only allowed his subordinates to sing praises of virtue and good news but not bad news, and could not listen to any contrary advice that was beneficial to the family and country, especially those truths that were inconsistent with the emperor's great glory and good form.

In order to stifle the truth and contrary advice, Zhu Yuanzhang invented the short-lived "literary prison", beheading intellectuals with conscience and responsibility, and even exterminating the nine clans. The imperial examination also adopts the "eight-strand text". The main content of the "Eight Strands" is to praise the emperor for how great and upright; how subordinates maintain a high degree of alignment with superiors; How do officials "put the cart before the horse and do not understand the general situation", "shrewdness in small things, confusion in big things".

Zhu Yuanzhang's invention easily reminds us of "anti-rightism", "model play" and "standard answers" for the college entrance examination.

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The eight years of the dictatorship of the carpenter emperor Zhu Youxiao and the eunuch Wei Zhongxian pushed the Ming Empire to the edge of the cliff of the complete collapse of the social and moral bottom line.

The carpenter emperor died early because he forgot to sleep and forget to eat and focus on carpentry work, and his energy was exhausted, and Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen ascended the throne.

Zhu Youzhen inherited a crisis empire that was tossed by Zhu Youxiao and Wei Zhongxian, and the Ming Dynasty, which had been shamelessly hollowed out of its foundation, was about to fall and was in danger of overturning at any time.

Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youzhen was well aware of the deep crisis of the empire he took over, and he was very worried about the Ming Dynasty.

Unlike his lazy and incompetent predecessors who had been shrinking into the deep palace for many years, Zhu Youzhen had a strong sense of responsibility for the Ming Dynasty and was determined to turn the tide and save his empire.

As soon as Zhu Youzhen took office, he dismissed Wei Zhongxian, the eunuch of the ancestral hall who was in power all over the world, and was scared to death before he could investigate and deal with Wei's father-in-law, and the "ancestral hall" finally became a real "ancestral hall".

Next, Emperor Chongzhen began to look for a good way to pull out the chaos and return to the right to save the country and save the family.

The fundamental reason why the Ming Dynasty decayed to the point of Wei Zhongxian was caused by the set of "subordination from the top", "highly deformed centralization" and "public opinion environment of telling lies" founded by Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor.

By the time Zhu Youzhen took office, this all-round anti-intellectual, anti-civilization system had lost its last elastic adjustment function

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page), it is necessary to carry out drastic reform of the political system, and eradicate the political soil on which corruption and eunuchs interfere in politics from the system can inject new vitality into the empire surnamed Zhu, and turn the crisis into peace.

Emperor Chongzhen's efforts should be directed by the central government to decentralize local autonomy, and even if local government autonomy is not implemented, the tradition of self-government of the private elite should be restored and opened; The appointment and dismissal of officials implements a "two-way responsibility system", and although they are still appointed by their superiors, they must respect the will of the people, appropriately open up the rights of the people, and strengthen supervision over officials; drastically reduce official expenditures, reduce taxes and expenditures, recuperate and recuperate, and stimulate economic development; Intellectuals are allowed to talk freely about state affairs, exposing and supervising corrupt officials, and not convicting scholars for their speech......

But Emperor Chongzhen and the bullshit think tank around him, who inherited from the decaying previous dynasty and only knew how to pat on the back and look at their faces, did not think so.

The Chongzhen think tank believes that the fundamental system of the Ming Dynasty cannot be changed, and it is necessary to adhere to the set of Ming political system founded by Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang unwaveringly, and can only "revitalize the stock" on the basis of "the total amount remains unchanged"; And we can't "start anew" like the Shang Dynasty reform.

Chongzhen's think tank believes that the crackdown is necessary, but it must be carried out within the system, and must not allow the civil examiners, that is, only the supervision officials in the system, to fight corruption and corruption.

The problem is that in a last-day empire where there is no pure land in the officialdom, most of the supervision officials at all levels who are ordered to fight corruption have also degenerated into big corrupt officials. The purpose of their anti-corruption campaign is not to purify the officialdom, but to solicit bribes from problematic corrupt officials and get a piece of the pie from the corrupt officials who have been caught.

The anti-corruption in such a system has naturally become a farce of officials protecting each other and exchanging experiences and experiences, and the final result is that the more anti-corruption they have, the more corrupt they become.

The Chongzhen think tank was deeply impressed by the corrupt officials of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, and believed that in troubled times, it would be possible to effectively eliminate corruption by using heavy codes and killing corrupt officials.

The problem is that in a corrupt officialdom where there are no officials and no corruption, if only officials within the system are responsible for fighting corruption, who will be in charge of killing corrupt officials? The final result is naturally that the big corrupt officials will be tried and punished, and the corruption of 10 million taels will be convened, and the corruption of 1 million taels will be studied and punished.

In the end, the anti-corruption campaign evolved into a grand event to eliminate dissidents, persecution, and protect officials.

Most of the powerful ministers who died unjustly during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen were victims in the name of "corruption".

Facts have proved that Zhu Yuanzhang's anti-corruption and anti-corruption system can only make corruption to a higher level in the last days of the dynasty; Those who die in the name of "embezzlement" are either deputy scapegoats; Either it is an officialdom elite with a surviving conscience.

Under the restart of Zhu Yuanzhang's anti-corruption system, the Ming Dynasty moved towards a feast of no officials and no greed, and the sense of responsibility of the officials was gone, and they only focused on quick success and quick profit, and regarded the fate of the national dynasty like a mustard.

Before Li Zicheng's revolutionary army entered the capital, Emperor Chongzhen wept in the Jinluan Palace and asked the ministers of civil and military affairs under the stage to donate money to the army defending the city to pay the peasant army. When Li Zicheng's army came to the city, the Daming city defense troops, which had been accustomed to high salaries, had not been paid for five months due to the collapse of the country's finances, and suddenly mutinied, and the city of Beijing, which was made of steel, fell without a battle.

Li Zicheng's revolutionary army arrested the civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty who were crying poor on the Chongzhen Jinluan Palace, put them on the sticks, sat on the tiger chair, and soldered iron, and knocked out 70 million taels in one night!

Regaining the outdated system of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang not only made the ** more intense, but also greatly damaged the empire's economy.

The economic shape of the late Ming Dynasty is very different from that of the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang. When Zhu Yuanzhang was in power, China was a purely agrarian society, and land tax was the main fiscal revenue of the state. Industry and commerce began to flourish in the late Ming Dynasty, and industry and commerce were an important source of tax revenue for the state.

Zhu Yuanzhang's economic policy is based on the stifling of private industry and commerce, and re-following Zhu Yuanzhang's path to play "the country advancing and the people retreating" will inevitably lead to a major recession of the country's industry and commerce, and the country will lose a large source of tax revenue, which will be fatal to the dynasty with arduous stability maintenance projects. The capital's urban defense forces were accustomed to high salaries and salary increases during the period when the country was "not bad for money", and later due to economic decline

(This chapter is not finished, please turn the page) The tax refund is exhausted, there is no money to pay for a few months, and the troops who guide the zhì garrison turn their guns and defect to the enemy, which is the economic evil result of re-taking Zhu Yuanzhang's road.

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Emperor Chongzhen, who had a strong sense of responsibility for the Ming Dynasty, did not want to govern the country well, but his IQ and the think tank of the loser did not allow him to do that.

Although the emperor's highly deformed centralization of power was the main reason for the crisis in the late Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youzhen refused to delegate even the slightest bit of power, believing that power could only be relieved if it was in his own hands.

So the eunuchs interfered in politics again.

In the passive situation of financial constraints in the late Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youzhen performed "meal reduction" and "withdrawal of music" in the court on the one hand; On the one hand, it maintains a huge army of more than 100,000 eunuchs and more than 10,000 palace maids.

As a result, the expenditure of the three public ** increased unabated in the Chongzhen era.

The expenditure of supporting more than 100,000 eunuchs alone is enough to support millions of troops. If the number of eunuchs is drastically reduced to several hundred, why can't the Beijing city defense force pay their salaries for several months? Why did the barrel-like city of Beijing fall in an instant? Why would Emperor Chongzhen go to the coal mountain to hang himself after killing his own beloved daughter?

Because he was obsessed with the high concentration of power in his own hands, Emperor Chongzhen was highly vigilant against the government and the opposition who had extraordinary ability, responsibility, prestige, and won the hearts of the people, and cut the anti-gold hero Yuan Chonghuan with thousands of knives on the charge of "traitor and traitor", and personally demolished the Great Wall of Steel of the Ming Empire.

In fact, it no longer matters whether the "enemy collaborated" or not, and if a country is forced to "collaborate with the enemy" and a national hero like Yuan Chonghuan, who sacrificed his life to save the fate of the motherland in times of crisis, is forced to the step of "collaborating with the enemy and betraying the country," there must be something evil in this country that is unbearable for normal people.

Historical experience has proved that local autonomy not only does not shake the foundation of the dynasty's rule, but also serves as a solid force for the dynasty to stabilize in times of crisis.

The Taiping rebellion in the Manchu Qing Dynasty was far more organized, large-scale, and destructive than the Li Zicheng rebellion in the late Ming Dynasty. However, the Manchu Qing Dynasty was a society with a high degree of autonomy among the civil elites, and the centralization of power was far less than that of the Ming Dynasty. When the government army was defeated by the Taiping army, the civilian elite spontaneously organized local defense forces to protect their homes and land, and became the mainstay of the fight against the Taiping army. In the end, the Taiping army was defeated by the Hunan army and the Huai army, which were armed with civilian autonomy.

The autonomy of the Ming Dynasty's civil elite was far inferior to that of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and when Li Chuangliu attacked the city, plundered the land, burned, killed and looted, the people had no ability to organize effective resistance forces to defend themselves, and could only count on the corrupt army to come from the distant capital to quell the rebellion. Every movement of government troops had to pay a large amount of military salaries, and the Empire's treasury was quickly emptied. When the government forces are outnumbered, the rebels are like a prairie fire, and the flames are out of control. A plate of scattered and undefended people, or let the rogues loot and slash and kill; Or join the rogue ranks.

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In the later period of Chongzhen's reign, Zhu Youzhen almost offended the vast majority of the subjects of the Ming Empire, and became an unprecedented loner.

One is that the bureaucracy hates him! On the one hand, he insisted on the unwavering personnel system of officials that could only create corrupt officials; On the one hand, they ruthlessly killed corrupt officials. Officials cannot gain a foothold in officialdom without corruption; Corruption is easy to lead to death? What's going on?

The second is that the common people hate him! Guarding the people as thieves, officials at all levels knock on the bones and suck the marrow and exploit the grass people, bullying men and women, even underage girls, and it is a big strange thing not to hate him.

The third is that intellectuals hate him! Don't let them tell the truth, forbid any voice of conscience, and slander them as "traitors and traitors" at every turn? Do intellectuals still have reason to love him?

When the last moment came, Emperor Chongzhen went to the coal mountain alone and hanged himself?

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It's all caused by the old road of Zhu Yuanzhang, the emperor of the country!

It's all the blame of those think tanks in the system with filthy souls!

The tragedy of Emperor Chongzhen is as deep as the East China Sea!

(The above information comes from the Internet)

(End of chapter)