The literary giants of the late Ming Dynasty began by copying books

Chapter 44 Donglin Famous Person
In Wuxi County, Nanzhili Province, there is a forest outside the east gate of the county. The towering ancient trees cover an academy built by the Song Dynasty.

Gu Xiancheng was directing his servants to clean the courtyard.

This academy was recently chosen by him as a place for discussing government affairs with scholars and officials, but it was a bit too dilapidated. Gu Xiancheng planned to get a sum of money to repair it.

He was a Jinshi in the eighth year of Wanli, and served successively as a doctor in the examination department, a foreign doctor in the examination company, and a doctor in the literary selection department.

Emperor Wanli stayed in the palace all day long, which gave the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty a great opportunity to fight. The best way to fight in the officialdom was naturally to form parties, so starting from Wanli's stay at home, the signs of party strife in the late Ming Dynasty began to brew.

The emperor, who was supposed to compromise the party struggles all over the world, did not work. The civil servants took matters into their own hands and gradually played by their own rules.

There are two main battlefields for the entire Wanli party struggle. One is to quarrel over major issues, such as the fight for the country's foundation, taxation, and later the four major cases in the late Ming Dynasty. Every time there is a major event, various civil servants rush to express their opinions. , forming factions and using issues to attack other parties.

The second item is the Beijing Inspection held every six years. The Beijing Inspection is equivalent to the cadre assessment. During the process, all officials below the fifth rank in the country must go through the Ministry of Personnel.

Before Wanli, the Jingcha could still go through the motions, but during the Wanli period, party strife intensified. Civil officials found that the Jingcha was the best way they could kill the enemy without the emperor, so they quickly removed the Jingcha from the rank of official to protect the enemy. It turned into gouging each other's eyes.

Although the Jingchao only targeted officials below the fifth rank, which civil servant did not come from the fifth rank or below?
By this time, the rules of the game in the officialdom have become whichever faction can control the main positions of the bureaucracy and related departments before the arrival of the six-year Beijing inspection, and can remove people from other factions one by one during the assessment. Through this channel, parties are rising rapidly.

Now let’s take a look at the officials Gu Xiancheng held before he resigned: none of the official positions in the Examination Department, the Examination Company Yuanwailang, and the Literary Selection Department were higher than the fifth rank, but they were all in the Beijing inspection system.

Gu Xiancheng was placed in such a position, and the personnel power he had mastered in the past few years had already allowed him to cultivate a network in the court.

How powerful is his power?

Four years ago, Gu Xiancheng was the head of the Ministry of Personnel. Sun Long, the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel, was dismissed. Wang Xijue, the chief minister of the cabinet, recommended his crony Luo Wanhua to take over. Gu Xiancheng opposed Wang Xijue and recommended Chen Younian, the censor of the right capital.

Gu Xiancheng was promoted to the sixth rank, and Wang Xijue was the first assistant, but in the end, Chen Younian was given the title of Minister of the Ministry of Personnel.

However, in the same year, the chief minister Wang Xijue resigned, and Wanli asked the court officials to nominate a new chief minister. Chen Younian, the minister of official affairs, also obeyed Gu Xiancheng's words and recommended Wang Jiaping together with Gu Xiancheng.

Who is Wang Jiaping?

Seven years after Zhang Juzheng's death, Wang Jiaping became the elder of the pavilion, and Wanli began to live at home. Luo Yuren, the judge of Dali Temple, wrote the "Four Advices on Drinking, Sex and Wealth", urging Wanli to drink less, stay at home and play with the ladies every day, and come out. Work.Emperor Wanli was so angry that he thought he was just a truant student.

Wanli angrily went to Wang Jiaping to complain that Luo Yuren was too rude and wanted to ask for approval, but Wang Jiaping, the pavilion boss, directly said: Luo Yuren was right, and the emperor must listen.

Wanli was about to die of anger. Later, Wang Jiaping returned to the throne and Shangshu persuaded the emperor to come out and work.

Later, during the struggle for the kingdom, Wang Jiaping became the chief minister, which made Wanli even more popular.

At that time, Shangshu, the head of the Ministry of Rites, asked Wanli to quickly send his eldest son out of the cabinet to study. Wanli was furious and issued an order to demote Shangshu's officials. However, Wang Jiaping directly used the power of cabinet ministers to "return" the imperial edict and refused to issue it.

Wanli's eyes were on fire when he saw Wang Jiaping, and he finally got this guy off his seat. Gu Xiancheng actually suggested that Wang Jiaping sit on him again, so Wanli finally couldn't bear it anymore and sent Gu Xiancheng home.

Gu Xiancheng didn't care about this at all. Although he was only a sixth-grade person, Gu Xiancheng's influence on the court did not diminish at all after he left office.

Gu Xiancheng has thoroughly played through the party struggles in the Ming Dynasty. In the past few years, he has returned to his hometown, roamed in the forest, and satirized the government with a group of scholars. Gradually, he gathered a political group, and his influence on the court was even higher than when he was an official. . …

After cleaning the porch under a shabby plaque that read "Donglin Academy", Gu Xiancheng was asking his servants to make tea when he heard someone knocking on the broken door of the academy.

Gu Xiancheng raised his head and said, "Come in."

The broken door was opened by a servant, and a boy walked into the yard outside. After saluting, he said to Gu Xiancheng:

"I am the book boy of the Qian family. My master asked me to bring a good book to my husband from Fujian and told him to read it."

Taking the bundle from the bookboy's hand and opening it, Gu Xiancheng took one look at the quality of the books and smiled: "Where did you get the mosaic?"

Qian Benben was a Jinshi in the 11th year of Wanli. He was demoted from his post to the people due to the impeachment of Zhang Juzheng decades ago. Since then, he has been giving lectures in Wuxi. This Donglin Academy was originally his territory.

Qian Yiyi recently went to Fujian for a visit and has not returned, so today only Gu Xiancheng is giving the lecture in Donglin.

In recent years, the printing industry in South Zhili and Zhejiang has developed rapidly. The quality of the books produced is very good. There are many readers in Jiangnan, and the types of new books are also richer.

For Jiangnan literati, the Jianyang blockbuster has become somewhat disdainful.

However, Qian Yiben was a Fujian Taoist censor before he was demoted from his post to the people. He had many friends in Fujian, and people often sent him some newly published engravings in Jianyang.

Gu Xiancheng also knew that he would not send it to him to show off unless it was extremely good.

Let the book boy go down and Gu Xiancheng opened the history of Portugal and read it.

After reading a few pages, Gu Xiancheng was gradually surprised. He was in Nanzhili, which was an important Catholic town in the Ming Dynasty at that time. Missionaries often came and went. As a celebrity, Gu Xiancheng often dealt with people from overseas. For overseas people, The situation is somewhat understood, but at this time, no one in the Ming Dynasty could explain the affairs of European countries so clearly. Politics extracted useful comments from the history of European countries.

Where did Wang Jianyang come from?His ability in making history and his sophisticated comments can definitely reach the top level among scholars at this time.

There are even many wonderful words in his book, which may seem unbelievable at first glance, but if you think about it carefully, it turns out to be exactly the truth.

Gu Xiancheng couldn't sit still after reading the history of Portugal's prosperity. With his keen political vision, he could already predict that this book would definitely play a great role in politics.The wonderful stories recorded in the book made him tired, so he never got up from his seat. At night, he held his rice bowl and read while eating. It took him an afternoon and a whole night to finally complete Portugal. I have read the first half of the history of the country.

Gu Xian grew up and breathed a sigh of relief. He felt that this book was extremely wonderful, and the content contained in the book had great room for maneuver in politics. He thought that if this book spread, it would definitely play a role in the party struggle. .

Gu Xiancheng put down the book and had time to open the letter written by Qian Yiben. He had long been curious about who the author of this book, Wang Jianyang, was. However, because the story in the book was so attractive, he couldn't read it in one sitting. I don’t have time to read Qian Yiben’s introduction.

Later, he found out from Qian's surname that Wang Wenlong turned out to be a returnee from overseas, and he was arrested by Gao Yin for writing novels just after returning to China. Gu Xiancheng felt dumbfounded.

He thought for a while, called his servants to lay out paper and grind ink for him, and then began to write a letter to Qian Yiben:
"Although the writing is vulgar at this time, the reasoning is sophisticated. The rise and fall of a country is summarized, which is what people in the Ming Dynasty use. It is the principle that stones from other mountains can attack jade. Brother, I should ask Wang Jianyang if he can be made. , or it can be promoted..."

(End of this chapter)