Free Web NovelChapter 2141: Chapter 1557: The Place of Black River Water is Called Black River!
"Wu Xiong, tidy up your Grandpa Mafa’s bones! Build a grave for him, erect a monument... Forget it, just follow your tribe’s tradition, wrap him in animal skin, let me return him to the tree! ... Hmm, that Deputy Commander’s official uniform, keep it well, hand it to the Ancestor High Priest... What? You still want potatoes and salted fish? Ancestor High Priest, what do you think? ... Good! The Ancestor High Priest has already agreed, go ahead and do it! Remember to kowtow to your grandpa!"
The Sorrel Tree stood quietly. A hundred years of time engraved its rings, growing into the treetop. Different banners came and went, buried bodies turning into white bones. To it, all the rise and fall on this land seemed like passing clouds.
"Swish... Swish..."
Chief of Harman, Ali, carrying the bones, wrapped them with a rope, and once again stepped on the mottled tree bark, nimbly climbing up. Wudou Wen raised his head, looking at the tree trunk he could no longer climb, muttering to himself, not knowing what he was saying to his ancestors.
Aguda then took out a leather bag, carefully and meticulously storing the wrapped official uniform and two Copper Seals, tying them tightly with a short rope. He was always focused; though his origins from the Wild Man Jurchens honed his incredible bravery, it also limited his vision. But now, someone who could see through the fog was pointing out the direction for the tribe’s advancement, hence he would become the most proactive chieftain!
"Ali... Ali..."
Zuwaro squinted his eyes, watching Ali at the edge of the forest. He still had uncertainties about the state of the Empire described by the converted old chieftain, the new Priest of the Chief Divine. He hoped to use his own eyes to observe everything about the Southern Great Ming, but Ali, he still trusted.
Personal experiences and knowledge always serve as an invisible constraint. Zuwaro had never been to the Ming, so he was unaware of the value of the Shushu Jurchen chieftain and thought Ali’s narration of the Empire’s politics to be some kind of university-taught common knowledge. However, from their first meeting, Ali spoke of having connections with important figures in the Liaodong Military Town, something not any ordinary Jurchen chieftain could promise.
In the twentieth year of Hongwu (1387), Ming Taizu dispatched troops to the Northeast, forcing the surrender of Mongolian Grand Commandant Naha Chu, summoning the surrender of the Liaodong Jurchen Tribes. From then on, a large offspring of noble chiefs from the Jurchen Tribes joined the court of Yan King Zhu Di as eunuchs. This was the initial seed planted by the Sorrel Tree.
Then twelve years later, in the beginning of the Jingnan Campaign (1399), among the generals who followed Yan King southward, many were close eunuch followers of Mongolian and Jurchen origin, each unafraid of bow and arrow, exerting themselves to the utmost, even more loyal than most of the Han army! The reason for this is twofold: partly due to the king’s governance and charisma, and partly because these hundreds of foreign eunuchs, being Yan King’s close followers, had no option to change allegiance. They could only follow the Yan King in Jingnan to the death!
And when the Jingnan success was achieved and the Yan King became the Taizong, he richly rewarded these loyal followers and meritorious ministers. Throughout the Yongle Period, the highest-ranking eunuchs in charge of the twenty-four governmental departments, almost invariably came from the Jurchen, Mongolian, Western Tribes, Wusi Tibetan, and Korean regions, were foreign eunuchs who participated in the Jingnan Campaign from the Dragon.
The identity of these eunuchs was actually equivalent to the "senior civil servants" trusted by the Emperor of Ming, serving as the emperor’s extended eyes, ears, mouth, and hands, to implement the emperor’s will and operate the entire empire. And with these extensions of imperial power, the Emperor of Ming could easily balance and even suppress the civil official group and the military merit faction. Even circumventing the civil official system, the emperor could maintain the basic order of the empire and complete the most important tax collection!
These eunuchs around the emperor, especially those of foreign origin, could not annex land internally in the empire, nor establish familial legacies, their wealth dissipating upon death. Their loyalty to the emperor was incomparable with the noble families granted titles or ranks; their potential harm to the long-term continuation of the empire was far less than the "gentry with scholarly family heritage". They were the true foundation of imperial power! Without their political balance and participation, surrounded by the civil official group, no matter how lofty the status of the Emperor of Ming might be, no matter how many civil officials’ heads were chopped, what could be done was limited, even unable to collect taxes...
Among the various foreign eunuchs of Emperor Taizong, the most famous was naturally the Hui Race internal official, Eunuch Zheng He. Following the emperor’s order, he successfully opened the South Ocean and Western Ocean routes. And in Zheng He’s fleet, the Tibetan internal official, Ritual Supervision Eunuch Hou Xian, known for "Five Missions to the Extremities", made great contributions in recovering the Western Tibetan Tribes. Following that, the Korean Imperial Horse Supervisor Eunuch Hai Shou, made seven trips to Korea, investigating the allegiance of Korea, and confronting the Korean King and Two Classes. Later, there was the Jurchen internal official, during the Xuanzong period, Duzhi Supervisor Eunuch Yishiha, who initiated the establishment of the Nurgan Metropolitan Authority and conducted seven inspections of the lower Heilongjiang River, ultimately taking over as Liaodong Town Guard Eunuch.
This also reflects Emperor Taizong’s frontier governance strategy. He was accustomed to appointing correspondents familiar with the internal affairs of the ethnic groups to carry out inspection, appeasement, enfeoffment, subjugation, and acceptance of surrender among all frontier tribes. From Nurgan, Wusi Tibetan, An Nan to the South Ocean, the emperor’s frontier expansion aspirations were actually contrary to the governance philosophy of Rationalist governance, generally opposed by civil officials, and were implemented with great effort by the eunuchs. From the historical events that actually occurred, a Ming ruled by civil officials was always conservative and inward-looking, while a Ming ruled by eunuchs was expansive and outward-reaching. To achieve Ming’s foreign expansion, it was only possible...
