When it comes to Zhu Yuanzhang's rule, there is a term that cannot be avoided - brutality. The brutal way is to repeat major cases.
In the field of history, there has long been a saying of the "Hongwu Four Major Cases". The so-called four major cases, namely the empty seal case, Guo Heng case, Lanyu case, and Hu Weiyong case, behind the simple noun, are tens of millions of heads on the ground.
Among the four major cases, the "empty seal case" and the "Guo Heng case" are both corruption cases, the former aroused Zhu Yuanzhang's anger because of the use of blank documents stamped with official seals, and tens of thousands of people were involved in the case. The latter was imprisoned again because of Guo Heng, the head of the household department, and tens of thousands of officials were connected. The "Lanyu Case" and the "Hu Weiyong Case" are both cases of rebellion, and most of the people implicated are heroes who followed Zhu Yuanzhang to fight the world, and tens of thousands of people were slaughtered for more than ten years before and after. The piles and piles of cases are all bloody and bloody.
However, in terms of influence on future generations, no matter which one of the "four major cases" is, it is very limited. The two cases of "Hu Weiyong" and "Blue Jade" have been innumerable, Zhu Yuanzhang's original intention was to clear the obstacles for his descendants to "take over", who backfired, but caused the enthroned Emperor Jianwen to have no generals available, and he was defeated by Zhu Di in the "Battle of Jingyan". As for the purpose of the "Empty Seal Case" and the "Guo Heng Case", it was to rectify the rule of officials and eliminate corruption, but even at that time, in the face of the repeated killings of corrupt officials, Zhu Yuanzhang himself felt desperate and lamented that "the court kills and commits crimes". Later, the Ming Dynasty officials were corrupt and rampant, which may have been unthinkable for Zhu Yuanzhang during his lifetime.
However, there is such a case, in terms of the number and scale of the case, it cannot be compared with the "four major cases", but the impact of the case is far more far-reaching than the four major cases, not only in the Ming Dynasty, but even today. This is the "Nanbeibang Case" that occurred in the thirtieth year of Hongwu (1397 AD).
One
The Nanbeibang case, also known as Liu Sanwu's fraud case, is different from the controversy of the four major cases, which is "public and reasonable", and this case is an outright unjust case.
In February of the thirtieth year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1397 AD), the Ming Dynasty was shrouded in the bloody wind of the "Blue Jade Case", ushered in its triennial imperial examination. It is precisely because of its importance that in the selection of the examiner, Zhu Yuanzhang took great pains to determine the 78-year-old Hanlin bachelor Liu Sanwu as the main exam.
Liu Sanwu was a great Confucian at that time, this person was an old minister of the Yuan Dynasty, and at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he served as the director of Guangxi Tixue (equivalent to the director of the Department of Education), and after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, he made many achievements. He formulated the regulations of the imperial examination system in the Ming Dynasty, and he also wrote the preface to the criminal law "Da Xu" in the early Ming Dynasty, and he also edited the "Huanyu Tongzhi", which is an encyclopedia for Chinese people to understand the surrounding countries of China at that time. He and Wang Rui and Zhu Shan are known as the "three elders", and the "History of the Ming Dynasty" even says that he is "generous, without a city in his chest, and calls himself Tan Tan Weng", which can be described as a Shilin leader with good character and learning. Choosing him as the main examination is not only Zhu Yuanzhang's recognition of him, but also Zhu Yuanzhang's expectations for this imperial examination.
However, Liu Sanwu would not have thought that his fame and even his life would be buried because of this imperial examination, and everything stemmed from a "low-probability event" that no one had thought of.
In February of the thirtieth year of Hongwu, the examination began, after the assessment in January, 51 tributes were selected, and after the first palace examination in early March, Chen Andi was the champion, Yin Changlong was the leader, and Liu Que was the flower. However, only 6 days later, the door of the Ming Dynasty Ministry of Rites was almost smashed by the accusation, a large number of unsuccessful candidates ran to the Ming Dynasty Ministry of Rites to complain, on the streets of Nanjing, there were dozens of candidates along the road to shout grievances, and even stopped the official sedan chair to petition for complaints, in just a few days, the whole city of Nanjing was boiling, a hustle and bustle. "Fraud in the science field" has become a topic of conversation among the people of Nanjing.
The reason for shouting grievances is very simple and peculiar. The 51 tribute students who won the examination that year were all from the southern provinces, and there was not a single northerner. Therefore, all kinds of rumors are flying in the streets and alleys, some say that the examiner has collected money, some say that the examiner engages in "regional discrimination", all kinds of arguments have noses and eyes, so that the examiners are full of mouths and can't say clearly.
When the news came, the Ming Dynasty was shocked, and more than 10 people supervised the imperial history, asking Zhu Yuanzhang to investigate thoroughly, and Zhu Yuanzhang's attendant Zhang Xin and others also suspected that there were ghosts in the imperial examination. Zhu Yuanzhang himself was naturally angry, he was born in poverty, and what he hated most in his life was "corruption, corruption, and malpractice". Only a few days after the incident, on the 10th day of the first month of March, Zhu Yuanzhang officially issued an edict and set up a 12-member "investigation team", including Zhang Xin and others, who had suspected fraud in the imperial examination, Yan Shuzai and Dong Guan, who were known for their learning, and Zhou Heng, Huang Zhang, and others who were famous for their "loyalty, straightforwardness, and outspokenness." The selection of members can be said to be fair and just.
However, after several days of review, the investigation team made an investigation conclusion at the end of April of that year, which once again made Zhu Yuanzhang dumbfounded: Liu Sanwu and others were fair and impartial, judging by the level of candidates, and the 51 people admitted were all admitted on the basis of talent and learning, without any problems.
The conclusion has once again caused an uproar from all walks of life. Naturally, the northern students who failed to make the list did not do anything, and many officials of northern origin in the DPRK and China criticized one after another, demanding that competent officials be selected again, that the examination papers be re-examined, and that all officials involved in the case be strictly investigated. However, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was furious, made a more extreme decision.
In May of that year, Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly issued an edict, accusing Liu Sanwu, the chief examiner of this imperial examination, and Ji Shan, Bai Xin, the deputy chief examiner, of the three people as "Lanyu Yu Party", especially the old account that Liu Sanwu had written for Hu Weiyong more than 10 years ago, and identified Liu Sanwu as a "thief", as a result, all the officials involved in the case were severely punished, and Liu Sanwu was assigned to the northwest. Zhang Xin, who had questioned Liu Sanwu, was even more miserable, because he was accused of saying that he had been instructed by Liu Sanwu and ended up being executed by Ling Chi. The rest of the people were also sent into exile, and only Dai Yi and Yin Changlong were exempted. The reason why these two people were exempted was that after reviewing the examination papers, they made a list of northern scholars. In June, Zhu Yuanzhang personally reviewed the test papers and issued an even more jaw-dropping admission list: all of the 51 Zhongbang tributes were from the north, and none of them were from the south.
After this incident, the imperial examination system of the Ming Dynasty underwent a major change. Since then, the imperial examination admission of the Ming Dynasty is no longer a "unified national line", but is divided into a "north and south list", that is, students from the north and south are ranked according to their regions, and after admitting tribute students respectively, they will participate in the palace ceremony in a unified manner. This system has not only been used throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties since then, but also has the same meaning as the "zoning line" in today's college entrance examination.
Zhu Yuanzhang used the method of "balancing" to deal with the major imperial examination case that shook the Ming Dynasty, but the mystery behind the case is still worth studying.
Two
Delving into the case of the North and South Lists, the first mystery is: Why after two re-examinations, all the people on the list are still southerners, is it fraud or a "coincidence"?
To answer this question, we have to face a phenomenon - the southward shift of China's economic and cultural center.
This phenomenon began during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty and further expanded in the Southern Song Dynasty. After the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of northern cultural elites fled south, so that the southern culture began to develop by leaps and bounds. After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty abolished the imperial examination system for a time, and although the imperial examination was reopened in the later period, the proportion of Han Chinese admitted was extremely small, and the status of officials born in the imperial examination in the Yuan Dynasty government was also extremely low. The Central Plains north of the Yangtze River, after hundreds of years of foreign rule by the Jin Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, has long lagged far behind the south in terms of economy and culture. In the imperial examination of the Yuan Dynasty, most of the Han people who won the list were from Anhui and the Jiangnan region. In the era when Zhu Yuanzhang raised troops to level the world, the most famous figures in the Chinese cultural circle at that time were the "Four Talents of Eastern Zhejiang" from Zhejiang - Wu Zheng, Liu Ji, Zhang Yi, and Song Lian. Zhu Yuanzhang, who started his business in the early days, was able to rapidly expand his strength precisely because he attracted a large number of celebrities in the Jiangnan cultural circles. Zhu Yuanzhang's advisers Zhu Sheng, Li Shanchang and others are also talents from Anhui and Jiangnan.
Before the Ming Dynasty, the innate gap between the culture and education of the north and south of China was huge, and the education system and examination system implemented after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty did not bridge this gap, but on the contrary, continued to widen. Let's talk about the education system first, the education system of the Ming Dynasty was established as early as when Zhu Yuanzhang fought the world, and the government schools, state schools, and county schools in various places were first set up in Zhu Yuanzhang's early occupation areas, such as Anhui, Jiangsu, and Jiangnan regions, and the large-scale re-establishment of schools in the north and the popularization of education, mostly after Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition to the Yuan Dynasty in the first year of Hongwu (1368 AD), both in terms of teacher level and degree of development, compared with the south. Of course, the north is not without talents, and Shandong and Shanxi provinces have always been major education provinces. However, Zhu Yuanzhang practiced cultural autocracy, and in the early Ming Dynasty, the northern scholars mostly had a wait-and-see attitude towards the new regime. Zhu Yuanzhang's several literary prisons, most of the victims were northern literati, so many celebrities lived in seclusion in the mountains and forests and adopted a "non-cooperative" attitude towards the Ming Dynasty. In such a situation, it seems understandable that education in the north of the Ming Dynasty lagged far behind that of the south.
In the imperial examination of the Ming Dynasty, the "Bagu Wen" was used to select scholars, and this examination method itself provided an advantage for southern students. Today's people say that the eight strands of literature, most thought that it was the first of the Ming Dynasty, in fact, the eight strands of literature to take the scholar, began in the Northern Song Dynasty Wang Anshi changed the law, when Wang Anshi innovated the imperial examination system, proposed to "the study of the scriptures and righteousness" to take the scholar, but there is no special requirement for the style, this is the beginning of the eight strands of literature. With the passage of time, the requirements for Baguwen have become more and more refined, and its stylistic characteristics have become increasingly clear. The actual formulators of the imperial examination in the Ming Dynasty were Liu Ji and Song Lian in the "Four Sons of Eastern Zhejiang", and their examination specifications, examination scope, and examination requirements were more suitable for Jiangnan students. Every time a course is opened, students in the south are naturally "familiar with it".
In fact, since the first imperial examination of the Ming Dynasty in the third year of Hongwu, the results of southern candidates have always been higher than those of northern candidates. For example, in the three-year imperial examination in Hongwu, the number of admission places in the south was 350, and the number of students in the north was only 250. In the 6 court examinations of the Ming Dynasty before the "North and South List" case, all the champions were southerners. In terms of the proportion of admissions, there is also a trend of gradually increasing the number of students in the south and decreasing in the north. The general pattern of "the south is strong and the north is weak" has long been known to the Ming Dynasty.
However, why did such a low-probability incident occur in the 30th year of Hongwu, such a low-probability event as "all southerners"? And why did Zhu Yuanzhang, who had already "known it all by heart," react violently?
In fact, the imperial examination has never been just an examination issue, but also a political issue. The occurrence of the "low-probability incident" and Zhu Yuanzhang's fierce reaction are all related to a political event - the Lan Yu case.
The Lan Yu rebellion case that shook the Ming Dynasty lasted for several years, and the number of Zhulian reached 100,000, especially officials at all levels. Lan Yu guarded the north all the year round, and after the case broke out, most of the officials who were killed because of him were northerners, and there were many northern officials from the imperial examination. Under the bloody wind, many scholars even regarded being an official as a daunting way and avoided the imperial examination one after another. In fact, before this scientific examination, the Ming Dynasty Ministry of Rites had said: "Today's northern scholars, the number of candidates for the examination is also halved." ”
As a far-sighted politician, Zhu Yuanzhang naturally understands the way of "grace and power", and after a long period of purge, "might" has been given, and choosing the right opportunity to "show grace", alleviate the contradictions with the northern intellectuals, and stabilize the rule has become his inevitable choice, and the imperial examination is the best way. However, whether it was Liu Sanwu, who was the first to take the exam, or Zhang Xin, who once questioned Liu Sanwu and was later ordered to review the examination papers, they were all pure intellectuals who had no distractions, and insisted on learning from talent, the gap in the level of candidates from the north and the south, and the fairness of the two of them, caused such an unbelievable incident. After the uproar in the Manchu Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang naturally could not admit the fact that there was a gap between the level of candidates from the north and the south, which was tantamount to blaming the northern scholars, and the introduction of the north-south list became the best compromise.
In the "North and South List" incident, since the court was well aware of this phenomenon, it still caused an uproar, causing courtiers from all walks of life to discuss one after another, accusing each other in the case, adding fuel to the fire, and finally causing the unjust case of the examiners. In addition to the political goals mentioned above, there is also a long-standing problem: the "north-south contradiction" of China's imperial examination system.
Speaking of this contradiction, it can be traced back to the Song Dynasty. Chinese officialdom has always had the saying that "the south is the prime minister and the north general", but in the Song Dynasty, this was not the case at all. The imperial examination of the Northern Song Dynasty has always been "heavy on the north and light on the south", before the Northern Song Dynasty Zhenzong, all the prime ministers were northerners, and Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty, wrote in the prime minister's hall that "southerners are not allowed to sit in this hall". After the Song Dynasty, there were more and more candidates in the south, and the cultural celebrities of the Song Dynasty, such as the "Three Sus" and others, also came from the south. By the time of the Yuan Dynasty, although the imperial examination was resumed, the Semu and Mongols were given preferential treatment, the Han people were excluded, and most of the suppressed candidates were southerners.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, during Zhu Yuanzhang's 30-year reign, students in the south can be said to be proud and have an absolute advantage in all the imperial examinations. In addition to competing for a very small number of places in the imperial examination, students in the north can only enter through non-imperial examination methods such as supervision and recommendation, and they are also suppressed in the officialdom. The occurrence of the "North-South List" incident happened to give many northern officials the opportunity to "counterattack and count." In the whole incident, most of the imperial historians who impeached the examiners came from the north, and it was Yang Dao, a native of Henan, who accused Zhang Xin of colluding with Liu Sanwu for fraud. In such a situation, even Tan Qian, who later revised "The Legend of the Nation", also sighed: "The public discussion is raging, not for public anger, but for personal grievances." ”
Three
With the end of the "North and South List" confusion case in the 30th year of Hongwu, the examination system of the Ming Dynasty's "North and South Separate List" was also established, and in the following days, it was constantly revised, and by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, it finally became the division of "South List", "North List" and "Middle List" (Anhui and Southwest Provinces). The admission ratio is also fixed at 55% in the South List, 35% in the North List, and 10% in the Middle List. The Wanli period went further, adding "merchant status" to the imperial examination, and lifting all kinds of restrictions on the examination of merchant children during the Zhu Yuanzhang period. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, this sub-list system was also followed.
Objectively speaking, the Ming Dynasty's "sub-list" system did have many positive effects, such as popularizing cultural education (improving the learning enthusiasm of candidates in backward areas), balancing political relations, and even maintaining national unity (promoting the imperial examination system in ethnic minority areas) and so on. And the negative effects cannot be avoided, one of the important ones is to fuel the "hometown politics" of the Ming Dynasty officialdom.
Since the division of the "North and South List", the relationship between officials in the officialdom of the Ming Dynasty, in addition to the relationship between teachers and students (teachers and protégés), the relationship between fellow villagers has also become more and more intense. Even the formation of gangs among candidates on the same list has gradually become the norm. Qiu Xian, a minister in the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, once concluded: "Today, there are three ways for the party, one is on the same list, the second is the protégé of the master, and the third is the same year." On the contrary, the relationship between the "township party" overrides the relationship between teachers and students. From the end of the Wanli period to the beginning of the Apocalypse, the "party struggle" that was criticized by later generations was divided into "Qi Party", "Chu Party" and "Zhejiang Party" to attack each other, and the "separate list" system was indeed one of its hotbeds.
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