Chapter Forty-Three: A Young Sovereign, a Nation in Doubt—the Absence of Imperial Authority Under the Imperial System

Emperor Zhu Yijun participating in the monthly examination was also a form of the official evaluation system.

Even when piloted in the capital, Zhang Juzheng’s Law of Evaluation encountered several obstacles, facing widespread opposition from the courtiers who employed a myriad of dissenting tactics.

Looking back at historical trajectories, Zhang Juzheng’s reforms often fell short of complete success.

In summary, the approach was hesitant and timid. While wanting to reform, he also clung to the ancestral laws and sought to comply with Confucian ritual codes. Such conflicting desires caused the reforms to be enacted only in half-measures.

Was Zhang Juzheng incompetent? Not at all.

Gao Gong’s *Memorial on Five Matters* demanded that the young emperor not issue arbitrary inner endorsements on memorials, provoking the Empress Dowager to directly issue an imperial edict dismissing Gao Gong. From beginning to end, Zhang Juzheng’s reforms never received the wholehearted support of the imperial authority.

Empress Dowager Li acted on behalf of imperial authority, and Feng Bao protected imperial authority, yet they could not provide sufficient support for Zhang Juzheng’s reforms. Both Empress Dowager Li and Feng Bao harbored a lingering fear that another Gao Gong might emerge within the Ming Dynasty.

Within an institutional design founded upon autocracy, lacking the underpinning of imperial power, Zhang Juzheng’s reforms lacked righteousness and justification. In sheer helplessness, Zhang Juzheng once cried out: "I am not merely a chief counselor, but a regent in all but name."

With a young ruler and a suspicious nation, the core issue of an autocratic system was the absence of imperial authority.

"Next time, you can make the questions slightly harder." Zhu Yijun straightened his posture, folded his hands, and looked around at the court officials. The smile on his face transformed into a bright and cheerful grin as he said quite calmly, "Recently, while attending government affairs and reviewing memorials, I noticed that the officials harbor many doubts regarding Prime Minister Zhang's Law of Evaluation, repeatedly submitting memorials to debate its merits."

"The ease with which I took this exam falls far short of the exhausting paperwork handled by the chiefs of the Six Ministries. However, matters of inspection, supervision, and oversight are of paramount importance to the state."

"From now on, the lecturers of the Imperial Lectures need no longer send the test papers to the Prime Minister for review."

Zhu Yijun raised the standards for himself. Having the lecturers grade the papers and send them to Zhang Juzheng for re-examination was essentially a tacit consent that the emperor could cheat.

After all, Zhang Juzheng and Feng Bao had joined forces to send Gao Gong home into forced retirement. In the eyes of the courtiers, Zhang Juzheng and Feng Bao were birds of a feather; once Zhang Juzheng knew the test contents, Feng Bao would know, and thus the emperor would know them as well.

However, since this test evaluated rote memorization, exegesis, and brief summaries, even if the emperor knew in advance, he still had to write it down. To Wang Xijie, being able to memorize and write it out was already quite remarkable!

After all, the emperor was only ten years old.

The reason Zhu Yijun raised his own standards and broke this tacitly accepted rule of cheating was to use his imperial authority to endorse Zhang Juzheng’s Law of Evaluation.

Without Zhu Yijun’s backing, Zhang Juzheng could still push forward the Law of Evaluation, but with the endorsement of imperial power, Zhang Juzheng gained imperial sanction. The difference lay in whether the endeavor was conducted with upright dignity and proper justification.

"This minister expresses his gratitude for Your Majesty’s immense grace." Zhang Juzheng furrowed his brow, glanced at Feng Bao, and then thought of the two Empress Dowagers in the inner palace. This was not the first time the emperor had endorsed him; the first was when the emperor hoed the fields at Jingshan, and with a casual remark, the emperor managed to shield Ge Shouli; the second was when factional strife was halted, and the emperor spoke out again, silencing officials both inside and outside the court regarding factional cliques.

This was the third time. The implementation of the Law of Evaluation had faced fierce opposition from many court ministers, which Zhang Juzheng had forcefully suppressed through his own authority.

Now, the emperor had stepped forward once more to endorse him.

Zhang Juzheng truly had not expected that the young emperor would use his own academic examinations to endorse the Law of Evaluation. For a moment, Zhang Juzheng bowed deeply and expressed his thanks with utmost reverence.

With a young ruler and a nation beset by doubt, the most terrifying problem within the institutional framework of autocracy was the vacancy of imperial authority—a terror whose destructive impact on the Ming Dynasty was utterly fatal.

***

After Emperor Yingzong of Ming, Zhu Qizhen, ascended the throne at the age of nine, the nation fell into a state of a young ruler and a suspicious court. Empress Dowager Zhang and Empress Dowager Sun doted excessively on the child, and though later generations offered profuse praise for the regency of the Three Yangs—Yang Shiqi, Yang Rong, and Yang Pu—in Zhu Yijun’s own view, their regency inflicted tremendous damage on the governance of the Ming state. To Zhu Yijun, the Three Yangs fell far short of Zhang Juzheng.

In the ninth year of Xuande, the sixth maritime expedition to the Western Oceans was completely halted. The mighty fleets that once dominated the ocean slowly rotted away at their berths. Ming maritime sovereignty was like those large ships quietly moored at the docks—rotting, sinking into the riverbed, swept away by the currents, never to return.

In the first year of Zhengtong, the King of Annam received investiture from the Ming Emperor, making the Kingdom of Annam legally independent. Accompanying this investiture was the precipitous decline of Ming influence in Luchuan (Southeast Asia), which subsequently broke into rebellion. The protracted Three Expeditions to Luchuan exhausted the national strength of the Ming.

In the third year of Zhengtong, the Duke of Ying, Zhang Fu, a minister assisting the state, stopped attending court. Ming military nobility was thoroughly marginalized and phased out, raising the curtain on an era that promoted civil governance while suppressing military affairs, leaving the capital garrisons unprepared and weak.

In the ninth year of Zhengtong, Yang Shiqi retired, and Emperor Yingzong took personal control of the government. He left behind a decayed court where border troubles flared up like wolf-smoke in the southeast, southwest, and northwest, while Emperor Yingzong himself turned out to be a scoundrel who plumbed the lowest depths of an emperor's capability.

In the thirteenth year of Zhengtong, the rebellion led by Ye Zongliu and Deng Maoqi swept through Fujian, Huguang, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Jiangxi, with nearly a million peasants taking up arms.

In the fourteenth year of Zhengtong, the Tumu Crisis shook the heavens.

And now, in the first year of Wanli, Zhu Yijun was ten years old. Once again, there was a young ruler and a nation in doubt, with imperial authority vacant. Zhang Juzheng was governing the state. Yet, unlike the Three Yangs, Zhang Juzheng first pointed his guns at the civil officials—or rather, Zhang Juzheng aimed his weapons at this rotting world, determined to transform it.

As the Senior Grand Secretary of the Empire, did he not know how terrible the realm was? Did he not know the severity of the problems? He knew it clearly; he knew it all too well.

The pain of those who know deeply yet cannot alter circumstances is a sober agony—knowing full well that something cannot be done, yet stubbornly pressing forward.

With the bit of the Law of Evaluation slipped over the heads of all officials, Zhang Juzheng’s ultimate fate seemed already predestined.

Zhu Yijun held the utmost respect for Zhang Juzheng. Yu Qian had turned the tide and propped up a collapsing building, single-handedly repelling the Oirats and rebuilding the capital garrisons while Emperor Yingzong was held captive as a foreign student in Oirat territory.

What was Yu Qian’s eventual fate?

After Emperor Yingzong was restored to the throne, he executed Yu Qian under the trumped-up charge of "having the intent to do so," causing Yu Qian to seek glory only to meet with humiliation.

Zhang Juzheng was a scholar; he clearly understood what fate had befallen Yu Qian.

Zhang Juzheng could have chosen to act like the Three Yangs, colluding with the Jin faction, or even accepting Yang Bo’s conditions to unite the Chu and Jin factions, becoming a towering, immensely powerful grand secretary whose very presence made even the emperor wary. That would not have been impossible.

Zhang Juzheng did not do so. He wanted to accomplish things, to make the declining Ming Dynasty a better place.

When Zhu Yijun endorsed Zhang Juzheng, he was exercising imperial authority, serving as a political backer for Zhang Juzheng’s reforms to lighten the heavy burden on his shoulders.

Would Zhu Yijun allow a posthumous political purge against Zhang Juzheng—with the Law of Evaluation and the Single Whip Law being repealed, and even Zhang Juzheng’s son starved to death—to happen?

As long as Zhang Juzheng did not turn his "Zhang Faction" into a clan clique, Zhu Yijun would resolutely prevent such tragedies from occurring.

"Let us proceed with court discussions." Zhu Yijun produced the *Direct Explanations of the Four Books*, intending to continue as he usually did: reading and listening to state affairs on the raised terrace while the courtiers argued below him.

Habits could be formed through twenty-one days of repetition, and Zhu Yijun had already grown accustomed to this bizarre atmosphere. Bizarre though it was, at least under the condition of a young ruler and a suspicious nation, the Ming Dynasty could stumble haltingly forward.

***

"Your Majesty, today is the ninth-day rest period." Zhang Juzheng looked toward the courtiers and bowed to report.

There was no studying scheduled in Your Majesty’s itinerary for today, and the courtiers’ only task was to come and invigilate the examinations at the Wenhua Hall.

Since today was a rest day, once the examination concluded, Your Majesty could take a day off.

Previously, on days ending in three, six, and nine, the emperor was granted a day of rest, totaling nine days off per month. However, ever since the *New Memorial on Five Matters* was submitted, the young emperor had been required to attend court and listen to governance at Wenhua Hall every day. After consulting with Wang Xijie, Wang Xijujue, and others, Zhang Juzheng finally decided that a day of holiday should be granted following the monthly examinations.

Too much of a good thing could backfire. If the young emperor were cooped up until he snapped, what would happen if his old mischievous habits resurfaced?

A balance between work and rest was necessary.

Zhu Yijun was momentarily stunned before putting away the *Direct Explanations of the Four Books*. Empress Dowager Li had specifically mentioned this after the court officials submitted their memorial; Zhu Yijun had simply forgotten due to his busy schedule.

His daily life was exceedingly full: morning audience and lectures, afternoon martial arts practice and farming, dusk stamping documents, and night reading agricultural treatises, summarizing, and excerpting notes.

"Why don't we go take a look at my Baoqi Hall? I have been personally engaged in agriculture for over a month now, and with Qingming fast approaching, shall we all go take a look?" Zhu Yijun thought for a moment and asked. Since he had nothing pressing at hand, he might as well visit Baoqi Hall and let the court ministers witness what he had actually accomplished.

This would also spare the Minister of Rites Lu Shusheng and the censorial officials from endlessly harping on the matter every day, claiming that the emperor was neglecting his proper duties. In the eyes of Confucian scholars, the proper duty of a Ming emperor was to cultivate virtue—embodying benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, trustworthiness, gentleness, kindness, respectfulness, frugality, and humility.

However, the virtue expounded by Prime Minister Zhang was the principle of personally practicing and realizing truths, the principle of putting the Dao into action and gaining insight, a virtue where theory guided practice and practice complemented theory.

Zhu Yijun felt that the Prime Minister’s words were entirely correct.

Over the past half-month, the seeding process in Zhu Yijun’s glass-paneled heated greenhouse had been completed. In a few days, it would be Qingming, and once Qingming arrived, actual cultivation could begin.

During this period, this was what Zhu Yijun had been busiest with.

The Senior and Junior Grand Secretaries, the illustrious ministers of the Six Ministries, the Censorate, Duke Cheng of Zhiguo Zhu Hizhong, and others were all momentarily stunned. They had truly believed that the emperor’s personal engagement in agriculture was merely for show; they had never expected that they would actually be invited to tour Baoqi Hall.

Was this content suitable for court ministers to observe?

Ever since the assassination attempt on the king and carriage, the rumors leaking from the inner palace had been bizarre and eccentric, making it impossible to tell how much was true and how much was false. The ministers were not entirely clear about what the young emperor was doing now that he had left Wenhua Hall.

"Your ministers are willing to follow Your Majesty," Zhang Juzheng hastily bowed and said.

Zhu Yijun stood up and smiled, saying, "Let's go."

Leading the gathered courtiers, Zhu Yijun arrived at Baoqi Hall in Jingshan. Baoqi Hall was quite small; the former orchard had been transformed into fertile fields, covered with a layer of decomposed compost. The half-mu glass-paneled heated greenhouse was still burning with warmth, and young palace eunuchs were pulling back thick straw mats. Sunlight poured into the greenhouse, casting its glow over Zhu Yijun as well.

"This is my seedling nursery." Standing beneath the sunlight with his left hand cupping his sleeve and his right hand placed behind his back, Zhu Yijun raised his chin slightly, quite satisfied with his masterpiece.