Chapter 601: The Secretariat Becomes the Directorate of Ceremonial?

In the Qianyuan Palace, Zhang Zhao for once did not go to Dafu or Gao E'niang, nor to any of his favored consorts, but instead came to the bedchamber of Empress Cao Yanxi.

In the past two months and more, Zhang Zhao had gained three more children. Cao Yanxi had at last given birth to another little prince, which counted as a double insurance, and from then on the gloom was gone, and she looked radiant.

At the same time, Cao Yanmian had also given birth to a baby boy as she had wished, and the Samanid Persian princess Safiya had added a little padded jacket for Zhang Zhao.

Cao Yanxi had not expected Zhang Zhao to come, and Zhang Zhao had not had anyone announce him. She was just about to send away the three wailing tender babies when Zhang Zhao stopped her.

Zhang Zhao, who had lately been busy dealing with all sorts of sudden situations, for once set everything aside and amused himself with the three little ones, and at night he properly comforted Empress Cao Yanxi.

This was genuine comfort. Cao Yanxi had just finished her month of confinement and was not yet suited for anything else.

Moreover, Zhang Zhao could feel that Cao Yanxi was under no small pressure. She had been doing her utmost to keep pace with Zhang Zhao and be a qualified empress.

The empress of this time could not be compared with those of later ages, especially those after the Northern Song.

For example, an empress of the Great Ming only had a little power after she was promoted to empress dowager and the prince was still young.

But at this time, the empress could be called a Sage. When the emperor went on campaign, the empress would directly preside over court and govern the home front. Even when the emperor was present, the empress could issue orders to ministers on her own, called edictal instructions.

In the time of Zhuangzong Li Cunxu, Empress Liu was overwhelmingly powerful, and for a time her edictal instructions worked better than Li Cunxu's imperial decrees.

Although no such situation would exist here with Zhang Zhao, Cao Yanxi's power was actually not small.

For example, when Zhang Zhao campaigned against the Southern Tang, all major state affairs were discussed by Zhang Xichong, Fan Zhi, and others, and then had to be reported to Empress Cao Yanxi for approval before they could be carried out.

At that time, Li Jing refused to yield, and Zhang Zhao prepared to summon another ten thousand troops to march south to Huainan. It was also Cao Yanxi who urged the ministers to complete it as quickly as possible.

But precisely because the empress's power was still quite great, Cao Yanxi's pressure was all the greater.

On one hand, she had to do her own duty properly; on the other, she had to guard against the further expansion of the Cao family's power. The requests for office from Cao family sons that she alone blocked numbered no fewer than fifty.

Her clansmen did not understand her. They felt that with the Cao family now so rich and honored, and with many court offices vacant, what harm would there be in granting them a few posts? They all complained that Cao Yanxi had turned her back on her own people.

And Cao Yanxi, knowing Zhang Zhao's character well, could only block these vexing matters herself and keep Zhang Zhao from being affected, which was also quite tiring.

As he watched Cao Yanxi sink into deep sleep with a beautiful smile on her face, Zhang Zhao found it somewhat hard to sleep. The New Year was approaching, and he still had three major matters ahead.

The first was to solve the problem of Liangzhou's hollowing out. In Han or Tang times, one could well have moved the empire's wealthy households to Liangzhou.

But he could not do that now, because nearly two hundred years of turmoil had passed, and although the intensity could not compare with the end of the Qin or the end of the Sui, it had been far too frequent, and the people's livelihood was in a wretched state.

Wealthy households among the common people did exist, but they were not so large that they needed to be moved in order to be controlled, and they were not the group Zhang Zhao wanted.

More importantly, strictly speaking, after Zhang Zhao entered the Central Plains, Liangzhou no longer belonged to the center of the empire. That was why Zhang Zhao had elevated Liangzhou to one of the Five Capitals, precisely to prevent its too-rapid decline.

And besides serving as the great passageway for communication between the Central Plains and Anxi, Liangzhou was also Zhang Zhao's core source of military strength and his great rear base for conquest to the west.

Therefore, in addition to being relatively prosperous, it also needed the character for "martial," and that character was precisely what moving wealthy households could not achieve.

Having ruled out this method, Zhang Zhao could only turn his gaze to the people of Guanzhong, who were closest to Hexi.

Because before this, when Zhang Zhao came out of Tong Pass, he had brought six thousand sworn followers from Guanzhong. Before the attack on the Southern Tang, he had summoned another four thousand, and at the same time, because of Meng Shu's attack, Cao Yuanzhong, after asking Zhang Zhao for instructions, had also summoned about five thousand men.

Most importantly, in Guanzhong, Zhang Zhao took Tang Taizong Li Shimin as his benchmark, and many people in Guanzhong truly believed that Zhang Zhao was the reincarnation of Emperor Taizong the Civil. This could be seen from the performance of the Guanzhong sworn followers on the battlefield.

Therefore, Zhang Zhao's best method at present was to settle a portion of the Guanzhong sworn followers in Liangzhou and divide Liangzhou's fertile land into three parts.

The largest portion would be granted to the Guanzhong sworn followers who had already followed him and their families. A smaller portion would be used to recruit some people of various peoples from the Qingtang Plateau and the high mountains.

For the last remaining small portion, Zhang Zhao planned to move about fifty thousand more people from Guanzhong to Hexi.

As Zhang Zhao's most important rear base, Hexi and Longyou should still maintain the great fubing system model of households holding four or five hundred mu of land, so that if the Central Plains had trouble, troops could be transferred into Guanzhong, and if Anxi had trouble, support could also be sent quickly.

As for Zhang Huaiqing, Zhang Zhao still planned to transfer him back to the eastern capital, Kaifeng Prefecture.

I, Sage Zhang, am actually not afraid of subordinates with strong desire for power, because here there are plenty of high offices and rich rewards with which to place people. What I fear is subordinates who have already lost all ambition.

Zhang Huaiqing was exactly like that. He had already lost all courage and determination to strive, and keeping him forcibly in the western capital, Chengtian Prefecture, was of no benefit.

It was just that letting Pei Yuan serve alone as Acting Governor of the Western Capital and concurrently Prefect of Chengtian Prefecture was still granting a bit too much power. Pei Yuan could still be trusted now, but what about in the future?

The second matter was Li Shengtian's coming from the west. According to the report of Cao Liulang, Cao Yanlu, Li Shengtian had set out as early as the seventh month. Apart from leaving Li Congde to oversee the state, he had brought Cao Yuanxin, Li Congyu, and others with him.

Zhang Zhao had not expected Li Shengtian to have such a deep fixation on making a trip to the Central Plains, and he also sensed that Li Shengtian even intended to reside permanently in the Central Plains.

But Anxi absolutely could not do without him right now. How to coax his uncle, the Son of Heaven, back to Khotan to serve a few more years as the ox and horse guarding the western gate — that was the question.

The last matter was a comprehensive adjustment of the political structure. What Zhang Zhao currently practiced was a hodgepodge of Great Tang and Five Dynasties institutions.

At the central level, it was a parallel structure of the three departments — the Department of State Affairs, the Secretariat, and the Chancellery — plus the Bureau of Military Affairs.

But after it had run for a while, Zhang Zhao discovered a great deal of overlapping and unclear authority, buck-passing, and wrangling.

Because in fact, the three-department system had already existed in name only after the mid-Tang.

Many of the powers of the Bureau of Military Affairs, as well as the court structures of the Later Liang and Later Tang, overlapped with the three-department system.

The biggest problem was that this system of offices designed to assist the emperor had, in its original design, imagined every emperor as being of the standard of Tang Taizong.

But in reality, from ancient times to the present, over all these years, how many emperors could be like Tang Taizong — diligent in governance, aware of the people's hardships, and open-minded in accepting remonstrance?

Especially the Chancellery, with that long string of duties: if an emperor were even slightly narrow-minded, it simply could not be carried out.

Therefore, after Tang Taizong, the duties of the three departments gradually began to be stripped away by the various commissionerships that needed to obey the emperor more directly.

At the same time, the three-department system would also, to a certain degree, lead to a high concentration of civil official power. A wise sovereign could still control it, but if one encountered a few rulers of lesser ability, they could only be led around in circles.

Zhang Zhao did not have Tang Taizong's self-confidence. Tang Taizong was very confident that he could train his successors into worthy rulers like himself, while Zhang Zhao estimated that among his own descendants, mediocre rulers would probably be the majority.

Of course, he also did not want to use the Tang dynasty's poison-raising style of heir cultivation, so the three-department system had to be changed according to the times.

Zhang Zhao's idea was to completely transform the Secretariat, the department with the closest relationship to the emperor, into the emperor's secretarial staff.

The post of Secretariat Director would be changed into a nominal office, used for posthumous conferral, and the title of Joint Manager of Affairs with the Secretariat-Chancellery would be restored as an additional title for the Chancellor.

The actual chief of the Secretariat would be the Secretariat Vice Director, in charge of presenting state affairs, proclaiming edicts, submitting ministers' memorials for the emperor's perusal, selecting them, distinguishing urgent from non-urgent, and presenting them separately to the emperor.

One Drafter of Edicts in the Secretariat would be established, serving as the emperor's most intimate attendant, accompanying him at all times, in charge of investiture documents, imperial decrees, edicts, rescripts, and letters patent.

Six Secretariat Drafters would be established, corresponding respectively to the six ministries of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works, and responsible for duties such as registers, drafting and reviewing edicts, and inspection. The other offices and bureaus for seals, document transmission, and memorial presentation would remain unchanged.

However, the Secretariat's original duties of correcting deficiencies in governance, improper appointments, and official lawbreaking — held by the Left and Right Cavalier Attendants-in-Ordinary, Left and Right Remonstrators, and Left and Right Rectifiers — would be merged into the Chancellery.

From then on, the Secretariat would no longer bear supervisory or remonstrative duties, and would become the emperor's exclusive brain trust and secretarial corps.

Zhang Zhao even planned, once the civil examinations were complete, to have Secretariat officials selected not through the ordinary examinations, but through special examinations opened by the emperor.

This actually had quite the flavor of the Ming dynasty's Directorate of Ceremonial. The general direction was about the same, only the specifics still differed somewhat.

And after accepting the offices of Left and Right Grand Master of Remonstrance, Remonstrator, and Rectifier yielded by the Secretariat, the Chancellery's powers of review and veto, oversight, and remonstrance will be strengthened.

At the same time, the concrete administrative system will largely move to the Department of State Affairs.

Zhang Zhao plans to make the Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs, with the additional title of Chief Minister, the head, and the Right Vice Director the deputy.

At the same time, certain Left Vice Ministers of the Six Ministries will be given the additional title of Participant in Determining Government Affairs, allowing them to participate in state affairs as if they were chancellors.

In this way, the central power structure of Zhang Zhou will become: the Emperor personally serving as Director of the Secretariat, with below him the Chancellor of the Chancellery, the Chief Minister and Left Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs, the Right Vice Director of the Department of State Affairs, and several Participants in Determining Government Affairs as the collective chancellors.

On the local level, the title of Circuit Grand Commissioner was actually established by Zhang Zhao to suppress the authority of the Military Governors; its full title was originally the Grand Military Commissioner.

And now it is no longer applicable at all — even the current prefecture and county system is no longer applicable.

But all of this, Zhang Zhao must wait until Feng Dao and Zhao Ying return before making arrangements.

(End of Chapter)

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