It is October of the fifth year of Zhengde, and the little prince, King Anhua and others have been escorted to Beijing one after another.

The Ming Dynasty court held a grand ceremony to offer prisoners.

But Zhu Houzhao did this not to show it to foreign enemies, but to those court officials in the court who were unwilling to recognize His Majesty the Emperor's glorious achievements.

The civil officials who were deeply influenced by Confucian Neo-Confucianism and were kind to the outside and cruel to the inside had to grit their teeth and admit Zhu Houzhao's martial arts.

Zhu Houzhao also asked each of them to write a congratulatory statement to praise the destruction of the little prince and the recovery of Hetao, especially the officials of the Hanlin Academy's history review. Zhu Houzhao asked them to spend a lot of space to record the matter.

Most civil officials can only grit their teeth and write many stingy words of praise for their own official positions.

Of course, some civil officials do not like Zhu Houzhao's appearance of being very fond of merit, so they used this to persuade Zhu Houzhao. Zhu Houzhao was not polite, and demoted all of these officials to the Hetao area on the grounds that they did not know the severity of the little prince's crimes against the military and civilians in the border town.

Anyway, the Hetao area now needs a large number of officials to manage it because it has just been recovered.

Zhu Houzhao also took this opportunity to exil all these civil officials who still abide by the Confucian Neo-Confucianism's governing philosophy to try to restrain themselves to Hetao.

For civil servants, this is even more uncomfortable than killing them.

After all, everyone knows that the outer border is a bitter and cold place. Even if Hetao is known as the "Jiangnan on the Frontier", since the Ming Dynasty lost the invasion and destruction of the Tatars in the Hetao, Hetao is now a barren land. Exile to these places is equivalent to freezing or dying of illness.

"Let me go to Dongsheng to be the magistrate! It's better to kill me!"

Liu Meng, who was demoted to the magistrate of Dongsheng for misrepresenting the military newspaper, now had this idea.

As a high-ranking official who has become a governor, he can't stand to bow to his former boss with a low rank, and secondly, he can't stand to be a short magistrate without people or land outside the desolate frontier.

Therefore, Liu Meng did not go to the Ministry of Personnel to receive the imperial edict, and directly took the opportunity to go home.

This is usually the case for civil officials in the Ming Dynasty. They were dissatisfied with the appointment of the court or were dissatisfied with the government and left without caring about the rules of the court at all.

This is related to the pride of literati and also to the court's always preferential treatment of literati.

But from the laws of this era, edicts are the emperor's will. If the emperor appoints you to be an official, you will not accept the order.

Therefore, Liu Meng's behavior has constituted a crime in this era.

Of course, Liu Meng also knew that he was resisting the order, and other civil officials also knew that, but these civil officials were not afraid of death. In their consciousness, it is not embarrassing to resist the order and being killed without obeying the order, and it can even be regarded as loyalty and unyielding.

After all, many such literati in history are unwilling to be recruited by the monarch and disobey or even killed, which have been circulated as a good story.

"Either you can just dismiss your official position, or even remove it from common people, or even kill it, but you must not insult your official position, and let it become a county magistrate outside the border and manage a group of barbarians!"

Liu Meng shouted to the officials of the Ministry of Personnel in this way at this time. He felt that he was very tough and strong, and was very proud of it.

Of course, he himself knew that if he was dismissed from his post or demoted directly to a commoner, the money he earned from his decades of official career would be enough to be a rich gentry or a rich man, and he could take this opportunity to cultivate family children and make profits for the children of his family's backward children;

If you are killed, you can leave a reputation for being upright and unyielding in history books, and you can also make your family respected in the scholars.

If you go to the county magistrate outside the Frontier, you will not be promoted to a high-ranking official soon if you do well. If you do poorly, you will even be demoted and punished. You will also have to worry that you may die of illness and freeze to death. Even if you can make some money, you will not be able to live a good life. Even if you die in the line of duty, you will easily be forgotten by history books.

Zhu Houzhao also knew the thoughts of Liu Meng and other civil officials. After learning that Liu Meng was unwilling to take office, he issued an order directly: "I don't obey the order! I should be executed. I have also made one or two actions that benefit people's livelihood. I was sentenced to 60 years in prison, deprived of the rights of the people stipulated in the constitutional outline, and sent to Yulin to mine. If I die, my sons and nephews will be ordered to repay their crimes!"

After the outline of the Imperial Constitution was finalized in a debate that almost a year later, its content was very different in many aspects. The first difference was that he was still protecting the imperial power, and the other difference was that he still had the content of impunity and punishment.

Therefore, when Zhu Houzhao decided to impose Liu Meng on his 60th anniversary in Yulin, he said that if Liu Meng died, his sons and nephews would continue to dig it until 60th anniversary.

After returning to his hometown, Liu Meng did not take the responsibility of resisting the order and not taking office outside the Great Wall. Refusing to be an official was nothing for civil officials. He also took a concubine directly. He was over fifty years old and had just married a seventeen-year-old girl into the family. When he was excited to be a groom again, the soldiers of the Shandong Censor came to the door and read out the order issued by the cabinet.

After hearing this, Liu Meng was shocked: "What! I have to mine for 60 years! Your Majesty, Your Majesty might as well kill me directly!"

"take away!"

The officers and soldiers of the Shandong Censorate did not dare to neglect, because once the court knew that Liu Meng, a criminal, was not detained to Yulin City for service within the specified time, the officials of the Shandong Censorate would be severely punished. Therefore, Liu Meng, who had just become a groom and had not had time to enter the bridal chamber, was pulled away.

Liu Meng's mining career after being taken to Yulin City was naturally very miserable. If he had chosen to be a county magistrate outside the West, although he would bow to his former subordinates, he was at least an official. But now he could only do mining work every day like those criminal Mongolians, and would be beaten by supervisors.

Less than three days after serving, Liu Meng could not stand the feeling of being driven to work like a beast, so he knelt in front of the county government office of Zhang Cong, the magistrate of Yulin, and asked for a visit: "My county master! I would like to ask you to help me give you a memorial to Your Majesty, and I would say that the guilty minister is aware of the crime! The guilty minister should not resist the order and do not obey the rules! The guilty minister is willing to go to Dongsheng to be the magistrate! Woo woo! Or let the guilty minister teach people to read like other Confucian scholars!"

Zhang Cong is very busy now, so he naturally has no time to take care of an ordinary prisoner serving his sentence.

Liu Meng is no longer the mighty official in the past. He just knelt down and cried in the county yard, but he was dragged out by the yamen runners.

At the same time, the supervisor who found that he had not yet served appeared at this time, and directly whipped him: "Bastard! Who told you to come to the county government to go back to work! Who do you think you are! Only the people of Daming who can come to the county government to seek justice have this right. You are not a people of Daming now, you are a criminal of serving! Go back to work!"

The whip made Liu Meng cry and call her parents, but she couldn't resist it, so she could only return to the mining area obediently to continue working.

The newly recovered areas of the Ming Dynasty were short of labor, so many criminals are now exiled to Yulin City to rely on these criminals to complete mineral development, official road construction and land reclamation.

Therefore, civil servants who were unwilling to go to work outside the Great Wall, basically all sent to mining outside the Great Wall on the grounds of resisting the orders, until they were exhausted and thrown into the wilderness. Even if they were released for a short sentence, they were basically bloodless and numb as if they were walking zombies.

Some civil officials who were arranged to take office outside the Great Wall and took office obediently. When they saw these civil officials who were unwilling to take office and were sent to mining outside the Great Wall, they were a little lucky that they had followed the imperial court's will to become officials. Otherwise, let alone the officials could not be considered as officials, they were afraid that even the people would not be considered as the people.

Of course, some civil officials also complained about this after they learned of the tragic situation of being sent to the frontier to mine, so they submitted memorials to advise the court, believing that the court should treat the literati and officials well and not punish the officials as a reason.

Zhu Houzhao naturally did not admit that the punishment was not as good as a doctor. He refuted the fallacies of these civil servants in his memorials on the grounds that the imperial constitutional outline did not stipulate that the punishment was not as good as a doctor, and said that the punishment of these civil servants was followed by the constitutional outline, and was punished because of their guilt, and it was not for the crime to be punished without reason.

Those civil officials who wanted to advise Zhu Houzhao not to be very fond of merit did not dare to advise Zhu Houzhao, after all, they were afraid of being sent to the frontier to mine.

actually.

The civil servants now find that they can't seem to be able to persuade Zhu Houzhao not to be very happy with merits, so that the empire can continue to follow the Confucian Neo-Confucian governance model that is kind to the outside and strict at home.

Because, with the emergence of the Imperial Ming Pao and the deliberate promotion of the Second Secretariat after Zhu Houzhao's instructions, the people of the imperial people already knew about this when civil servants were unwilling to publicize the Ming Dynasty's achievements in destroying the little prince.

Over the years, the Huangming Pao has let the people of the Ming Empire know who the little prince was, how he invaded the Ming people, and what sins he committed;

Even the people in the Second Secret Office specially asked the people who had been bullied by the Tartars to come to the capital and other important towns to have cries.

Therefore, the people of the Ming Dynasty were not unfamiliar with the sins of the little prince.

Therefore, when the people were very excited when they heard that His Majesty the Emperor of Ming Dynasty sent a cavalry to defeat the little prince and captured the little prince alive, they all became very excited. For the first time, they had some favors for the court and the official army that had only bullied them in the past. They knew that the court not only knew how to collect taxes but also protected them and eliminated evil people for them.

"The people can be used to it, but they cannot be known. How can the life and death of the people who rise up and fight against the people and the country of the Ming Dynasty be raised? Because the little prince killed the people who fight against the people and conquered them. If they lose, it will damage the country's wealth and people's strength. If they fail, it will damage the country's wealth and people's strength! How can he fight against the people and fight against the people? He only thinks that the Ming Dynasty is a good thing, but he doesn't know that victory is the same as defeat! Even worse, if the grassland tribes revenge, so that the military affairs continue, it will only harm the people even more deeply!"

At this time, civil servant He Jingming could not bear the people's political discussions brought about by the emergence of Huang Ming Pao, because he found that this would only lead to all civil servants losing the advantage of controlling public opinion through speech, and even make them like civil servants supervised by the people;

Even because Huang Ming Pao made some shameless things about the literati and officials to the people, the people fully knew that many so-called sages were just hypocrites and no longer had a sense of respect and fear of scholars.

Therefore, the civil servant He Jingming directly submitted a memorial to request an edict, hoping that the court could stop the Imperial Palace, and even prohibit the public from publishing newspapers, and also demanded that the people be prohibited from discussing politics. It is actually a destructive act of corruption, and the people should take farming and weaving as their jobs, and abide by their duties. Discussing politics is the responsibility of scholars and officials.

Zhu Houzhao naturally did not follow He Jingming's request to stop the Huangming Pao. He even asked the cabinet to encourage private newspapers and asked schools and teahouses around the world to write a couplet, namely, "The sound of wind and rain sounds and readings are heard, and family affairs and state affairs are concerned about everything in the world."
Chapter completed!