Chapter 168

"@Emperor Chengzu Wen, you brat, where the hell have you died off to!"

"Did you strip the princes of their fiefs again after usurping the throne?"

"@Emperor Sizong Lie, you brat, why keep talking about that nonsense regarding the elite troops of the Nine Frontiers? Didn't we seal thirteen Frontier Princes? Where are the troops of the Four Garrisons?"

"@Emperor Chengzu Wen, stop pretending to be dead, damn it! Where are you?!"

Inside the chat group.

Silence reigned.

Zhu Di, still stranded in the Zhengtong era, sat with a deathly pale face in Zhu Qizhen's central military tent.

Zhu Qizhen looked at Zhu Di and whispered a reminder.

"Great-Grandfather, Great-Grandfather is calling you!"

Zhu Di glared fiercely at Zhu Qizhen.

"I'm not blind! I saw it!"

"Then why didn't you answer Great-Grandfather?"

"Nonsense, I... where did you brat get all this nonsense?!"

Zhu Qizhen looked at Zhu Di and couldn't help but grin wickedly.

"Oh, I get it. Great-Grandfather did something wrong and got caught by Great-Grandfather, didn't he!"

Emperor Yingzong Rui:

"Great-Grand..."

Before Zhu Qizhen could finish sending the message.

Zhu Di immediately yanked Zhu Qizhen out of the central military tent.

"You brat, you dare to tattle on your ancestor?"

"Try acting up again, will you?!"

Looking at the half-sent message from Zhu Qizhen in the chat group.

Zhu Yuanzhang immediately understood.

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"@Emperor Chengzu Wen, stop pretending to be dead. Do you think I won't come find you right now?!"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"Ah, Father, I just had something come up, and this brat Qizhen was being a bit disobedient again."

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"I'm just asking you, did you damn well strip the princes of their fiefs too?!"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"Ah... well, that can't really be called stripping the fiefs. Father, since I became Emperor, how could I bear to let my younger brothers continue eating sand on the frontier..."

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"Then did you clean up the grasslands? Is the Great Ming free from border troubles now?"

"Putting other things aside, @Emperor Sizong Lie, I'll just ask you: who was the Regional Commander of Great Ming during your reign?"

In the later Great Ming, the stipends for the imperial clan were burdensome.

But Zhu Yuanzhang had clearly considered this point.

For instance, Prince Ning Zhu Quan, although a Prince of the Blood, received only five hundred shi of stipend annually while guarding Liaodong, just like the Prince of Dai, the Prince of Su, the Prince of Liao, and the Prince of Qing.

The treatment of a Second Rank, Junior Grade official!

Where was this lost portion made up?

Reclaiming wasteland!

Thus, the so-called Great Ming Regional Military Commissioner of the early Ming period was actually a colony developed by Zhu Quan during his tenure guarding Liaodong.

Moreover, relying on the black soil of Liaodong, Zhu Quan expanded northward on a massive scale, establishing over ninety cities large and small, covering three thousand li of land, with eighty thousand armored troops and six thousand war chariots!

All on an annual stipend of merely five hundred shi.

The Ning Mansion became the wealthiest princely fief at the beginning of the Jianwen era!

This is also the fundamental reason why Zhu Quan, who was more than ten years younger than Zhu Di, could stand on equal footing with Zhu Di during the Jianwen reign!

After a long silence.

Zhu Youjian finally sent a message timidly.

Emperor Sizong Lie:

"Great-Grandfather, what Great Ming Regional Military Commissioner...?"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"Father, don't ask. I abolished the Great Ming Regional Military Commissioner in the first year of Yongle."

Seeing this, Zhu Yuanzhang's blood pressure immediately skyrocketed.

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"Are you sick?!"

"You've already ascended the throne; why the hell did you abolish the Great Ming Regional Military Commissioner?"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"Father, don't be angry. At that time, I simply didn't have enough men on hand. The three guards of Duo Yan under Old Seventeen were quite handy for me, so I directly converted them into the Three Thousand Camp of the Three Great Camps. Later, I led them out to kill enemies and captured tens of thousands of Tatars!"

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"Spit! Over three thousand li of land, more than ninety cities, and you damn well just threw them away like that?!"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"No, not all of it was discarded; half was allocated to the Liaodong Regional Military Commissioner..."

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"What about the other half?"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"The other half was yielded to the Tatars, but I didn't yield it for free, Father."

Emperor Taizu Gao:

"What else did you do?"

Emperor Chengzu Wen:

"I played one group against another, stirring them up to fight! The Jurchens and the Northern Yuan alike—just look at that Yexian of yours; he was the result of what I did back then..."

Zhu Di, realizing the situation was turning sour, instinctively shut his mouth.

The methods for handling the various grassland tribes appear frequently in web novels of later generations.

In fact, during the Ming Dynasty, all of them were implemented as national policy for a time.

It is still the same saying.

The ancients simply died young; they were not stupid.

Yexian of the Oirat and Nurhaci, who ultimately buried the Great Ming, were both results of this Balance tactics.

If it is said that Li Chengliang raised a tiger to his own harm, did he have such boldness to disregard the Embroidered Uniform Guard, the Eastern Depot, the Six Censorates, and the Censorate, raising them so brazenly?

The key is that despite raising them this way, no one impeached Li Chengliang before Sarhu!

No one impeached him, and after Sarhu, Li Chengliang still did not face reckoning.

Clearly, Li Chengliang acted this way with the Ministry of War's permission.

Before Nurhaci rose, the Ming supported Nikan Wailan; after Nurhaci rose, they supported Buyanggu.

Who was Nikan Wailan? When he first met Li Chengliang, he knelt and prostrated himself, directly addressing him as "Grandfather."

But after Nikan Wailan helped Li Chengliang resolve Wang Gao, was he not immediately beheaded by the newly supported Nurhaci?

If one looks further back, the Jurchen tribal leaders supported by the Great Ming can be traced from the Tianqi era all the way to the Xuande era.

And the script was exactly the same.

Naturally intelligent, loved reading, proficient in Jurchen and Chinese languages, loyal to the Great Ming as an ally, rewarded with titles for merit, then beheaded and displayed before being rewarded again.

But if it went too far, it went too far; at least on the tactical level, it cannot be said to be wrong.

This Balance tactics might gain small advantages and save a lot of money for a time.

And history has proven countless times.

The final result of Balance tactics is inevitably a backlash.

Even in later generations, the White Eagle across the ocean, in order to deal with the Polar Bear to the north, still played Balance tactics; the Polar Bear might fall, but the result was equally significant.