But this does not mean that all members of the Fan Party follow Fan Zhongyan's lead. It can only be said that they are good friends with Fan Zhongyan and have the ambition to reform all the shortcomings of the Song Dynasty in one fell swoop.
Therefore, to put it simply, the so-called Fan Party is actually a group of young middle-level officials in the court who are keen on reform.
In the middle and late period of Renzong's reign, they also became the backbone of the prime ministers of Renzong's dynasty.
After Fu Bi came in, he ignored Ouyang Xiu and instead bowed to Fan Zhongyan, who was sitting in the main seat, and said, "Duke Xiwen."
"Um."
Fan Zhongyan nodded and said, "Sit down."
Everyone sit down.
Ouyang Xiu was the first to speak again. "Duke Xiwen, we've won a great victory this time, and we've even taken control of the Censorate. Next, let's have the Censorate submit a petition to impeach Lü Yijian. Let's see if he backs down!"
"Well, Yan Guo is now in charge of the Censorate and is in charge of the censors. We can use him to attack the Prime Minister!"
Cai Xiang also said.
"Isn't that a bit too rash? The emperor only ordered Xiwen to purge some of the lower-level officials of the Lu Party. Lu Yijian and Song Shou's positions are as secure as Mount Tai. Obviously, the emperor doesn't want them to be dismissed."
Yu Jing hesitated and said, "If we insist on impeaching Lü Yijian, I'm afraid it will incur the emperor's wrath."
"What are you afraid of?"
Ouyang Xiu, always audacious, immediately declared, "It's because the emperor is so concerned about old ties that he's allowed Lü Yijian to tyrannize the government. He's already a powerful prime minister, while Li Si and Zhao Gao are only so powerful. If he can't be removed from office, the Song Dynasty will be in imminent danger!"
"Well, that makes sense. And everyone knows that Yan Guo and we are of the same blood. The emperor let Yan Guo take charge of the Censorate, most likely to use us to contain Lu Yijian, just because Lu Yijian is an old minister after all."
Yin Zhu also said: "Yan Guo, after a few days, you should immediately impeach Lu Yijian."
Everyone looked at Fu Bi. Now Fu Bi had grown into an important force in defeating the Lu Party.
Historically, the Fan-Lu factional struggle lasted for several months and ended with Fan Zhongyan, Yu Jing, Yin Zhu, Ouyang Xiu, Cai Xiang and others being banished from Bianliang, and Lu Yijian winning a great victory.
But now is completely different from history.
Because the Fan Party was not purged this time, the power of the middle and lower-level censors of the Lu Party suffered a devastating blow, and their voice in the court was greatly reduced.
The most important thing is that the Censorate in the Song Dynasty was very special. This institution was a public opinion agency responsible for collecting suggestions and comments in the court.
At that time, the imperial court had two official positions: censors and imperial censors, collectively known as the Taijian. The imperial censors were responsible for organizing various officials to collect public opinion; the censors discussed the successes and failures of government policies for the emperor's reference, and sometimes corrected the emperor's mistakes.
The Song Dynasty inherited the Tang system, but the censorship system in the Song and Tang dynasties was different. In the Tang Dynasty, censors were under the jurisdiction of the Menxia Province, which was under the responsibility of the prime minister. They were the prime minister's mouthpiece, so in the Tang Dynasty, censors became a force for the prime minister's power.
In the Song Dynasty, the court divided the censors into the Left and Right Censor-in-Chief, the Left and Right Censor-in-Chief, and the Left and Right Corrector, and established the Censorate. The censors were no longer under the management and recommendation of the prime minister, but were directly promoted by the emperor.
This resulted in the Censorate having great power, and it could discuss the appointment of officials and various political affairs of the court, put forward opinions, and correct shortcomings in the government.
The censors in the Censorate had the habit of speaking out everything they knew and saying anything that was not a crime, and they often disagreed with the prime minister. Since then, the Censorate became an important tool for the emperor to supervise court officials.
Now Fu Bi was transferred back to Bianliang and was in charge of the Censorate. Although combined with his position as the prosecutor of Kaifeng Prefecture, he was only a sixth-rank official, the censors had always been of low rank but great power, and they had the same considerable influence as the Ming Dynasty's Jieshizhong.
By transferring a general of the Fan Party to the important position of the Censorate, everyone speculated that the emperor was obviously intending to curb the power of the prime minister, so they decided to start an uprising immediately and use Fu Bi's power to attack Lu Yijian.
But after hearing what everyone said, Fu Bi did not respond immediately. Instead, he looked at Fan Zhongyan and said, "Mr. Fan, what do you think?"
Fan Zhongyan pondered for a moment and asked, "Yan Guo, what do you think?"
"I think the government's actions this time are very strange."
Fu Bi said, "Although it seems that many of Lü Yijian's former students and officials have been dismissed, they are all middle and lower-level officials, such as the Imperial Censor Han Du, the Censors Gao Ruone and Liu Jie, and have not damaged the foundation. Moreover, even among the officials dismissed, the replacements were not friendly with us except me. This does not seem like a sign that the government is planning to take action against Lü Yijian."
"It seems so."
Reminded by Fu Bi, Yu Jing frowned and said, "If the emperor really wanted to dismiss Lü Yijian, we could all join the Censorate and the Court of Remonstrators. Then we could attack him in unison. Even if Lü Yijian had a thick skin, he would have resigned himself. Why did Yan Guo come back?"
Fan Zhongyan chuckled and shook his head: "This is not surprising. The emperor has always been this wavering. If it weren't for..."
Ouyang Xiu wondered, "If not what?"
"nothing."
Fan Zhongyan waved his hand.
He knew very well that if it weren't for Zhao Jun, he would have been demoted to Raozhou.
That official has always been so indecisive.
Zhao Jun said that in history, the dispute between Fan and Lu lasted for several months, and the emperor could not make up his mind, but in the end Lu Yijian had a higher status in the emperor's heart, so Fan's party was banished from the capital.
Now that Zhao Jun has appeared, the emperor has realized how important he is, which means that Fan Zhongyan's status in the emperor's heart has been greatly improved.
Because of this, the government wanted to treat Fan Zhongyan equally. It did not dismiss Fan's party on a large scale, nor did it directly dismiss Lu Yijian. Instead, it only targeted the middle and lower-level grassroots of Lu's party, and brought Fu Bi back to appease Fan Zhongyan's emotions.
But the problem is that in Fan Zhongyan's mind, Lu Yijian is a powerful minister who is bringing disaster to the country and the people. The two sides have different interests and positions. How could Fan Zhongyan give up so easily?
So this fight has to continue.
Fu Bi said, "The government is wavering and clearly unwilling to remove Lu Yijian. Even if we submit a letter of impeachment, it may not be of any use."
Ouyang Xiu angrily said, "I just don't believe that Lü Yijian is so shameless that he has the nerve to stay in the position of Prime Minister despite being impeached all the time."
"Uncle Yong, don't be so impatient. You will suffer a great loss in the future if you keep this kind of temper."
Fan Zhongyan frowned and said, "If we force the emperor to make a decision now, we may not be able to get anything good out of it. We must make plans carefully before taking action."
"What's Xiwen's idea?"
Cai Xiang asked.
"You forgot."
Fan Zhongyan looked around and smiled slightly: "There is a master behind me!"
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