Chapter 953 Woman
God will guide everything.
The night was as blue as water, and the moonlight was bright. Wu Zhao looked outside the palace, and the words Luo Junwei had said to her emerged in her mind. She was a person who had some faith in what she did, and she firmly believed that she had a mission.
In today's world, Wu Zhao believes that she is about to become invincible. She has reached the point where the two saints are in power. From a personal point of view, there is nothing else to pursue. At this time, all she wants to accomplish is the lofty mission and fulfill the will of King Su. Many, many years ago, she already knew from the mouth of the national teacher Luo Su that King Su had a will.
The court's solution to the unrest in Qi was sharp and swift, and it did not cause any turmoil. Only Tubo fought with the Tang Dynasty as usual, while the King of Yan Li Ke on the grassland did not make any unnecessary moves, which made people feel at ease. The Western Regions continued to interact with the Tang Dynasty as before.
The next target of the Tang Dynasty court is Tubo. Once the problem of the surrounding vassal states is solved, it will take action against the last great power on the snowy plateau.
The Luo family sent out invitations to people all over the world. Such a large scale of publicity was rarely seen and attracted many people's attention. No one knew what the Luo family was trying to do.
Many people asked each other for the news, thinking that they would get nothing, but they didn't expect that the Luo family had no intention of hiding it at all, and directly spread the news that Luo Junwei was going to inherit the position of head of the family.
This instantly caused a huge uproar and caught many people off guard. They did not expect that the Luo family would take such a move and even invite people from all over the world to witness it.
What no one expected was that after this incident spread, the imperial court issued an edict to reward Luo Junwei.
When Luo Junwei started his career, he was the Minister of Rites. Later, he was promoted to the third rank of the Secretariat, becoming the third rank. Then he was transferred to the Minister of Personnel, still the third rank of the Secretariat, becoming the Prime Minister of the Heavenly Official. His power was enormous, and he ranked third among the prime ministers in the Council of State.
This brings us to the reform of the prime minister system by the couple Li Zhi and Wu Zhao. In fact, the prime minister system has been constantly reformed throughout the dynasties.
By the time of Li Zhi, the Tang Dynasty's system of multiple prime ministers had come to an end, and even the titles of Shangshu and Zuo Pushe were gradually rarely awarded, especially after Zhangsun Wuji and others were exiled, because it was very unbalanced.
The heads of the three ministries, Zhongshu Ling and Menxia Shizhong, were both third rank, while Shangshu Ling was second rank, Shangshu Pushe was junior second rank, and the six ministers of the six ministries were all third rank. It is obvious that Zhongshu Ling and Menxia Shizhong had low status, but in fact, Zhongshu Ling and Menxia Shizhong were responsible for drafting imperial edicts and reviewing and rejecting them respectively. These were the departments with more power, and both departments were within the imperial palace.
At first, the power of the prime minister was gradually transferred to the Secretariat, and now the power of the Secretariat is gradually moving to the Secretariat and the Ministry of Personnel, so the prime minister is called "Tong Zhongshu Menxia Sanpin". Later, Wu Zetian and Li Zhi created a secondary prime minister called "Tong Zhongshu Menxia Pingzhangshi" in order to quickly promote middle-level officials and break the monopoly of the prime minister by the high-ranking families. He is called a secondary prime minister because this position is usually awarded to a fourth-rank official.
Although they are both prime ministers, the status of a prime minister of the fourth rank and a prime minister of the third rank, or a prime minister with the title of the third duke, is of course very different, and their say in the government hall is also very different.
Luo Junwei was a third-rank prime minister. In the imperial edict, Luo Junwei was given the title of second-rank civil official. This was not a big deal. What really attracted people's attention was that he was conferred the title of Duke of Jincheng County.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were precedents for women serving as officials. The founding princess Pingyang Zhao was a high-ranking official and the Minister of the Central Secretariat, which could serve as a role model for Luo Junwei. Luo Junwei's aunt, Luo Xuanjing, was also a woman who served as an official. Therefore, there was no objection to Luo Junwei serving as an official at the beginning.
People are like this. They are always worried the first time, feeling like they have ruined something. But once it happens once, they let it go. There is not much difference between once and countless times. As the saying goes, all things are difficult at the beginning.
But there had never been a case of conferring a title. Princess Pingyang Zhao was directly conferred the title of a princess of the first rank because she was Li Yuan's daughter. Later, she was given the title of Princess Zhenguo. After Li Yuan's death, she became the eldest princess because she was Li Shimin's sister.
Because of Luo Xuanjing's merits, she was first named Lady of Wu and later Lady of Chu. This was a title for women of noble birth. There were quite a few such titles. For example, Wu Zhao's sister was Lady of Korea.
Neither Li Xiuning nor Luo Xuanjing escaped the level of women's titles. The most obvious point was that the titles of princess and lady could not be passed down.
In history, only the title of Marquis of Anyang was passed down, but she had long been forgotten. For hundreds of years, there has been no second example. Now, the Tang Dynasty is going to bring up this matter again. The title of Duke of County is not considered too high in the Tang Dynasty when such honors were rather indiscriminately conferred, but it represents a way of thinking.
That is, women can also obtain titles, and it is a title that can be inherited. Once women can be granted titles, the changes that will be brought about will be extremely huge, and will even affect the changes in the entire Tang Dynasty law.
The history of mankind is the process of liberating more productive forces step by step. Although Rockefeller could not see so deeply, he could still feel in so many years of practice that letting people move voluntarily is still the general trend, and a more equitable society is the real future.
More than a thousand years ago, only a few people held power in the world, and most people were slaves. But now, slaves only exist among the powerful families, and most people have become free people. The law is also gradually covering more people, and this is a process that is difficult to reverse.
It is impossible to go back to that era now. The changes in the economic foundation have brought about changes that have given farmers the ability to overturn everything.
In this situation, as women make up half of the population, even if they cannot play the same role as men now, leaving loopholes and loosening restrictions rather than suppressing them should be the direction the world should move in the future.
At least from the Luo family's own perspective, restraining women will have very bad consequences for the Luo family. In the Luo family, talents will appear randomly among men and women, but even if a woman has higher talent, she cannot become an official to gain more benefits and future for the family.
A woman like Anyang Hou Luocai has to rely on Han Xin to obtain the title, and it is difficult for the title to be passed down within the Luo family. This is extremely detrimental to the interests of the Luo family and is even unfriendly to the future of the family.
A woman ruling the world, for the Luo family, does not only mean a female supreme authority, it also means that the women of the Luo family can finally enter the officialdom through formal channels on a large scale, and it may even become a rule from now on, thus freeing the Luo family from the shackles that have been weighing on them for a thousand years!
No matter what happens in the future, this is definitely an advancement of civilization and a great advancement for the Luo family. Some things, as long as they have a start, and if the start is good, there will be something to talk about in the future.
The imperial edict issued from the palace allowed everyone to see the will of Empress Wu Zhao. There had also been rumors about the past between the Empress and Prime Minister Luo Junwei over the years. Because there was nothing worth covering up, the court did not stop it, so everyone knew that the Empress was standing behind Luo Junwei.
In the present day when the empress is in power, as Wu Zetian's absolute confidant, Luo Junwei speaks very firmly in the Council of State. Even the First Prime Minister, the Minister of the Secretariat, who presides over the meetings, sometimes cannot win over her.
As the news spread more and more, everyone knew that this matter was true. Some people began to congratulate Luo Junwei and congratulated her on becoming the first female head of the Luo family. Luo Junwei also said generously: "Thank you very much. The family will send out invitations in a few days. I hope you can witness it then."
After seeing Luo Junwei acknowledge it directly and knowing that it was not fake news, more people came to congratulate her. Even in the government hall, there were people congratulating her, some with an attitude of currying favor.
The reason for this is that the prime minister of the Tang Dynasty has a strong sense of crisis, which is very different from the previous prime ministers. The prime ministers of the Tang Dynasty, starting from Emperor Taizong Li Shimin, have actually been unstable.
On the surface, Fang Xuanling, Wei Zheng, Luo Xuanchen, Zhangsun Wuji and others have always been in the cabinet and served as prime ministers, but in fact this is not the case. Luo Xuanchen was dismissed from his post twice, and Fang Xuanling was dismissed from his post three times.
Although many people know that these two people will be reinstated soon after being dismissed from their posts, it is still a deterrent, not to mention that more people may find it difficult to be reinstated once they are dismissed from their posts.
The biggest change in the thinking of the prime ministers of the Tang Dynasty compared with the previous dynasties was that they did not serve for long.
The system of groups of prime ministers was originally designed to separate power and balance checks and balances, so that the prime minister will not be allowed to serve as prime minister for a long time. As the emperor's ruling ideas change, the prime minister group must also change. For example, if the emperor wants to expand the territory, then those who are conservative and oppose this in the prime minister team must step down. If the emperor wants to stabilize people's livelihood, then those who are more radical and tend to compete for foreign interests must step down.
"There are many people who can serve as your prime minister. Choose the best one and make him your prime minister."
This is the Tang Dynasty’s philosophy of employing prime ministers. The group prime minister system lowers the requirements for the prime minister’s personal ability and emphasizes collective wisdom. Therefore, the emperor believes that there are many people who can serve as prime minister, and he can just select the useful ones from them.
In this situation, making the emperor, now the Empress Wu Zetian, think that he is useful is the only choice to ensure the position of prime minister. In the Tang Dynasty, the position of prime minister is absolutely the best of the best, far surpassing all other positions. Other third-rank officials, whether they are military generals or civil officials, or the grand commander-in-chief and grand protector-general above the third rank, are far inferior to the prime minister.
For the wealthy families in the Tang Dynasty, even the title of Duke was far less honorable than that of Prime Minister. This trend actually started in the late Han Dynasty, with the Yuan family's three dukes in four generations being the beginning. For the aristocratic families in the Tang Dynasty, the number of prime ministers in the family could, to a certain extent, reflect the family's prominence and nobility.
After the prime ministers exchanged greetings with Luo Junwei, they each sat in their seats, waiting for the Queen Mother and the Emperor. Most of the meetings in the Council of State were organized by the current chief prime minister, the Minister of the Central Secretariat, but some meetings were presided over by the Emperor himself. Generally speaking, such occasions were used to discuss important matters and for the prime ministers to report their work to the Emperor.
After Wu Zhao and Li Zhi entered the Council of State, they greeted each other and then the prime ministers in the Council of State began to report on the progress of the affairs they were in charge of. Among them, Luo Junwei reported a lot. She was the Minister of Personnel, known as the Heavenly Official.
Even the prime ministers did not expect that Luo Junwei had done so much. Not only did she summarize the last two imperial selections, she also focused on the academies in various places and the academic officials sent by the Ministry of Personnel.
This was originally the responsibility of the Ministry of Rites, but when Luo Junwei was transferred to the position of Minister of Personnel, he took over the Ministry of Personnel. The new Minister of Rites reported the matter to the emperor, but it was suppressed by Wu Zetian. The Minister of Rites was not promoted to the third rank of Zhongshu Menxia, did not enter the Council of State, and was not the prime minister. He could only swallow this loss in frustration.
Of course, there were reasons why Wu Zhao and Luo Junwei did this. Even before she had such great power as she does now, she had already attached great importance to the imperial examination system. She had a very deep understanding of the imperial examination system. In this regard, Li Zhi was not as good as Wu Zhao. Wu Zhao had always been thinking of various ways to extend the imperial examination system towards greater universality and to exert greater power for the country.
Under such circumstances, she certainly could not let the imperial examination fall into the hands of the Ministry of Rites. It must be in the hands of the Ministry of Personnel, and with the Ministry of Personnel's power to select officials, she should adjust the current Tang Dynasty's official appointment system that prioritizes the aristocracy. Although the feudal system will inevitably lead to the revival of aristocratic power and the priest class, as a true monarch, she must still try her best to put the situation in the world on the right track, do as much as she can, and start adjustments at the root. It is always better than sighing helplessly when things are too serious to be reversed.
Listening to Luo Junwei's well-organized report, Wu Zhao and Li Zhi nodded frequently. After Luo Junwei stopped, Wu Zhao smiled and asked, "My dear, do you have anything else to say?"
Luo Junwei pondered for a moment, "Your Majesty, I have something to say about the implementation of the imperial examination system. In the time of the previous emperor, the imperial examination system was changed from being recommended by high-level officials with only a few vacancies to being open to anyone, and the number of vacancies was greatly increased. As a result, there have been so many scholars in recent years that it is necessary to set up education offices in each state and county.
Some time ago in the Jiangnan region, a woman wanted to sign up for an exam, but ultimately failed. Because there had never been such a precedent before, after the incident was reported to me, I was quite skeptical.
I would like to ask whether this woman can take the exam, and whether the "anyone" mentioned by the late emperor includes women, and how should I explain it. "
This question!
All the prime ministers in the Council of State immediately sat up straight. Luo Junwei's question was not an ordinary one. At this moment, it didn't matter whether this woman really existed or whether Luo Junwei had created the incident on her own initiative.
it.
It has been placed before the Emperor and the Empress!
(End of this chapter)
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