Hai Rui's congratulatory note happened on the day when Emperor Jiajing moved to Wanshou Palace. Due to the serious lack of congratulatory notes from all the officials, Emperor Jiajing was angered.

In order to force hundreds of officials to express their congratulations, Emperor Jiajing issued another edict. He was very skillful in using the blame-shifting technique and successfully diverted the contradiction. At the same time, King Yu ran to visit the officials, who were moved by emotion and rationality. In the end, everyone shed tears of "regret" and unanimously stated that they must express their congratulations.

At the same time, Hai Rui, who has returned from the disaster relief front, is also gathering strength and intends to challenge the root cause of the Ming Dynasty...

So, why did Hai Rui choose this time to remonstrate? What about words?

1.

Hai Rui, who came back from the frontline to provide disaster relief, fell ill. After waking up, he analyzed the real root cause of the Ming Dynasty to Li Shizhen:

"Shi Guo For the sake of the family, one person governs everything, takes away everything, treats all officials as useless, and ignores the people of the world. This is the root of the disease!"

So how to explain this sentence?

Let’s look at Hai Rui’s understanding. He proposed that the Xia and Shang dynasties were a world where there were only kings and no people. As a result, the people lived in extreme poverty. They rebelled against each other and the two dynasties eventually perished.

When it came to Mencius, he put forward a theory:

"The people are the most important, the country is the second most important, and the king is the least."

The Qin Dynasty did not respect Confucius and Mencius died in the third generation (this includes Qin III, Ziying, who reigned for more than forty days). In the Han Dynasty, during the reign of Emperor Wen of Han Dynasty, he implemented the rule of monarchs and ministers, and the result was a peaceful and prosperous era, which was the rule of Wen and Jing.

No matter how the dynasties change in the future, as long as the monarchs and ministers govern independently and put people first, the world will be peaceful. On the contrary, the world will be in chaos, especially Emperor Gao, Taizu of the Ming Dynasty:

"Strictly implement A king rules alone, sets up a cabinet, treats them as servants, sets up hundreds of officials, treats them as enemies and bandits, fights when he wants, kills when he wants, empowers eunuchs, and governs the world with domestic slaves..."

More importantly, at the feet of the emperor, a group of people died of extreme cold during the New Year. The officials repeatedly emphasized not to let the emperor know, so as not to spoil the emperor's joy of moving. Therefore, Hai Rui wanted to use one person's power to evacuate Emperor Jiajing and get to the root of the disease.

2.

Let’s look at the whole thing. Why did Hai Rui not go to bed in the morning or at night, but chose this time to go to bed?

In fact, the civil servants in the past dynasties were lax and remonstrated. It was by no means a temporary headache. They planned in advance, seized the opportunity, and hit the target with one hit. Here are a few examples:

"Zou Ji satirizes the King of Qi and accepts advice" records that Zou Ji wanted to compare his beauty with Duke Xu in the north of the city, so he asked his wife, concubines, and guests, and they all said that he was beautiful. But after he really compared with Xu Gong in the north of the city, he found that that was not the case. So he ran to remonstrate with the King of Qi, saying that the King of Qi's harem, ministers, and people from all directions had deceived the King of Qi, so the King of Qi issued an order: "Anyone who can attack others in front of the officials and the people will be punished." Those who write remonstrances to the poor will receive middle rewards; those who can slander the court and hear the ears of the few will receive lower rewards."

As a result, Qi State became stronger, and in fact, remonstrances were given. This thing exists, but it is not necessarily the reason. The greater possibility is that Zou Ji had wanted to remonstrate for a long time, but he just thought about it for a long time and came up with this one trick.

Dongfang Shuo during the Western Han Dynasty also gave advice to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, but it was not accepted at first. He finally enlarged his move and chose the moment of death, and finally the Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty accepted it, and at the same time left such a famous saying :

"When a bird is about to die, its song is mournful; when a man is about to die, his words are also kind."

Including Wei Zheng, the first person to give advice in history, the reason why he can There are certain historical reasons for the repeated suggestions and acceptance. After all, Emperor Taizong Li Shimin of the Tang Dynasty wanted to establish the image of a wise king. Having such a former prince's subordinate working for him would provide some comfort.

Although Tang Taizong said that he had lost a mirror after Wei Zheng's death, he was actually secretly happy, otherwise, Wei Zheng's tombstone would not have been knocked down later.

3.

It’s not that Hai Rui didn’t want to remonstrate, but he never found the right time. In other words, he didn’t directly catch Emperor Jiajing.

As we mentioned in the previous issue, Emperor Jiajing was a good scapegoat. No matter what he said or did, especially the written edicts and imperial edicts, they were all watertight. Without extremely keen insight, he would not have been able to discover the root cause of the Ming Dynasty's illness.

When civil servants give advice, most of the consequences are not good. On the one hand, it depends on whether the king is wise and wise. On the other hand, you must also weigh your own weight and find the right time to have a glimmer of hope of success. Otherwise, Hai Rui would not have dismissed his wife and mother, bought a coffin, and treated death as if it were home.

What is the cause of this incident?

Emperor Jiajing didn't have much time left. He wanted to move into the Longevity Palace as soon as possible, but the treasury was running out of money and the finances were low. In this case, he hinted to the cabinet to find ways to raise money for himself.

In addition to various ministries squeezing out some silver, Zhao Zhenji made a surprising move. First, he saved money for disaster relief in Shandong, and asked the provinces in the south of the Yangtze River to assist in disaster relief. The second step is to delay the salary payment of the officials in Beijing so that everyone can serve the master.

The ideal is full, but the reality is very skinny:

As a head of the household department, Hai Rui has experienced it skillfully. First, he received a salary during the New Year, and other household departments The official hid far away, but he went to send it and was almost beaten. Furthermore, the Daxing County under the emperor's feet was full of disaster victims, yet it was Hai Rui who accepted such an errand to complete a task that was simply impossible.

However, after experiencing starvation and death everywhere in Daxing County and hundreds of officials wailing in front of Xiyuan, Hai Rui did not directly remonstrate. Instead, he chose the opportunity to explode when all the officials were appeased, the people were being relieved, and all the officials were congratulating themselves. This fake congratulatory form "Public Security Notice" was the last one and was presented to Emperor Jiajing at the last hour.

However, the timing is just right!

4.

What Hai Rui did was that he successfully tied everyone to his chariot:

First of all, Hai Rui himself Generally speaking, the main reason for his remonstration was that he had witnessed the tragic situation of the victims and the desolation of the salary arrears. The reason why this happened was because the money that was supposed to be used to provide relief to the victims and the money that was supposed to be used for salary payments was used to build a palace for Emperor Jiajing. Therefore, the root cause is directly at Emperor Jiajing.

Secondly, the reason why Emperor Jiajing gave Hai Rui this opportunity was because he misappropriated silver, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the officials in the capital. In order to shock everyone and demonstrate the power of God, he forced the ministers to congratulate him, which led to giving Hai Rui a chance at the last moment. The root cause still lies with Emperor Jiajing.

Once again, Hai Rui took advantage of Emperor Jiajing's suspicion and played a trick on Chen Cang, forcing a wedge between Emperor Jiajing and Huang Jin. Zhao Zhenji was forced to stand up and speak for Hai Rui. Behind Zhao Zhenji was Xu Jie, and behind Xu Jie was King Yu. This leads to the fact that no matter how this matter is handled, no one can escape even if the bones and tendons are broken.

Finally, there are hundreds of officials. Not only did they not receive their salary, but they also received a beating. They talked about giving a congratulatory form, but who was actually willing in their heart? To say how much they like Hai Rui, that's not true, but in the overall environment, if they don't fight for some power for themselves, the future will be even more difficult. Therefore, although they did not like Hai Rui, they had to protect him in this matter, otherwise the starting point and rationality of all these actions would completely collapse.

Including Li Shizhen, who encouraged Hai Rui to become a monk, it was also because he had admonished Emperor Jiajing to stop practicing Taoism. The root of all this was Emperor Jiajing.

In other words, everyone actually agrees that the current problems in the court are because of Emperor Jiajing, but they dare not speak out because of the imperial power. Therefore, when a fool pops up at this time, they must try their best to protect it. If they protect it, their status will rise in the future, and they will at least have a certain say. If he couldn't save it, it would still be Hai Rui who died, and it had nothing to do with him. In short, there was no harm at all.

As for Emperor Jiajing, no matter how strong he was, he mainly relied on his deterrence and the balance of relationships between several factions. But if all the officials turned to Hai Rui's side, he would be helpless.

So, don’t think that Hai Rui is a fool with low emotional intelligence. In fact, he is not only smart, but also has a very high IQ!

This is also the reason why he was able to survive in the end!