In the long course of history, there is a seriously underestimated uprising, and it is the Fangla Uprising.
Unlike the small scale of a few thousand people in Liangshan, the Fangla uprising reached hundreds of thousands, vowing to work together to drive out the foreign tribes and restore Han orthodoxy.
However, what was the purpose of the Fangla uprising? What impact did this vigorous uprising have on the dynasty at that time?
The social elite of the Song Dynasty had realized the importance of timely communication of information within the administrative system.
In August of the sixth year of Yuanyou, Wang Yansuo, a member of the Privy Council, replied to Emperor Zhezong's question of "what is the first way to govern the road", and said: "In the world's love and traffic without the trouble of obscurity, then the road will be governed by itself." The feelings between the top and bottom are so common that they are used by those who hold them. The heart of the benevolent cannot bear to bully its king, and the lower cannot bear to bully its people. Therefore, the king has the will to push it to the bottom, and the people have the suffering to reach the top. Don't take one's own heart as one's own. Those who are not benevolent are not, those who sit back and watch are suffering and do not tell the above, the king has the heart to benefit all things, and does not extend it to the bottom, although the master wants to become a ruler, he cannot get it. ”
And, "Although the law is strict, although the discipline is in place, if there is no affection in the middle, it will also benefit God." Therefore, at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Song Dynasty paid special attention to the accurate and timely grasp of information from the lower levels.
After hundreds of years of development, the bureaucratic system of the Song Dynasty was already quite developed. In addition, the founding monarch learned the lessons of the previous dynasties, and in order to prevent the "obscuration" of information, the Song Dynasty established a very complete supervision system and a relatively complete system to ensure the smooth flow of information.
In political life, the more common way of information transmission is the ministers' performances, which are one of the important channels for the imperial court to grasp information.
Professor Deng Xiaonan pointed out: "It includes not only the direct meeting of the emperor or the performance to the political hall in the court, but also the internal and external affairs through the Yintai Division or the Yamen to submit the chapter and the book. ”
The information it reflects is diverse and comprehensive, diverse in form and up-to-date. This ensured that information could be transmitted quickly and accurately to the Imperial Palace, and similar to the system of edicts and blunt speeches.
There is also a first-class assessment of the locality, including the Taiwan admonition, the local performance report, the verification of the grinding and checking system at all levels of the departments and ministries, and the special envoy to visit the systemThere are two forms of expression, top-down and bottom-up, and except for the special envoy to carry out the inspection, the rest are more conventional methods of investigation.
Of course, another factor that we cannot ignore within the bureaucracy is the layered network of relations formed by bureaucrats with personal interests, which is an invisible system of power, which has horizontal and vertical connections, and the internal structure of this system is complex and delicate.
But it often delivers information faster and more accurately than official channelsBecause only personal interests need to be taken into account when dealing with problems here, each bureaucrat always tries to gather the maximum amount of information in order to maximize his own interests, analyze it comprehensively, and act quickly. Therefore, in this system, the transmission of information is the most timely.
At the same time, because this system is inextricably linked with the explicit bureaucratic system, the information transmission within the system can to some extent drive the information transmission of the bureaucratic system.
The society of the Song Dynasty, especially at the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, was faced with a series of social and management crises, and in the face of these crises, the normalized model was obviously difficult to cope with a series of changes in society, and in the face of the crisis, it was bound to adopt some special coping mechanisms. The Fangla uprising is one of the more typical of these many crises.
The Song Dynasty had been in turmoil since the middle of the period, with foreign invasions and peasant uprisings in various places. During the reign of Huizong of the Song Dynasty, traitorous ministers were in power, and the "Huashi Gang" arose in the south, causing the people to live in poverty.
Against this background, Fang La launched an uprising in Qingxi County in October of the second year of Xuanhe. The uprising spread throughout many prefectures and counties in Zhejiang, including Wuzhou, Quzhou and many other prefectures and counties, and spread to the borders of Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi and other places, leaving Jiangsu and Zhejiang in an extremely chaotic state.
The Song court gradually lost control here, so he sent Tong Guan and others to lead elite soldiers to suppress it. The rebel army was eventually suppressed in April of the third year of Xuanhe due to outnumbering and some strategic mistakes.
In the process of suppressing the Fangla uprising, the Song court adopted a series of conventional and unconventional measures to deal with the great crisis caused by the Fangla uprising, and the discussion and study of these measures can greatly expand and deepen our understanding of the internal information transmission of the Song bureaucracy.
According to historical records, at the beginning of the Fangla uprising, the local ** was not unaware. The uprising was soon discovered by Li Zhengfang and reported to **. Fang La immediately "killed the square".
Although this time Li Zheng's denunciation did not have a corresponding effect because of the later behavior of "Wang Huangfang's extravagance and peace", we can see from here that in the bureaucratic system of the Song Dynasty, the low-level landlord bureaucracy was also organized.
And this is exactly what has been overlooked in the eyes of everyone before. Li Zheng began in the Qin State during the Warring States Period, as the chief of a residential area, and in the later rule, there was an administrative unit under the county, and the governor of Li was Li Zheng.
After the establishment of the Northern Song Dynasty, he sent the landlords of the countryside to be the head of the household, the head of the household and the elderly. "Jingxi transshipment envoy Cheng can ask the state households to be the ninth class, according to the nationality, the fourth equal weight of light and heavy service, the remaining fifth class is exempted, and then there are rich and poor, at any time to rise. Zhaojia ruling. In the fifth year of Chunhua, the counties were ordered to take the first-class household as the lizheng and the second-class household as the head of the household, and not to impersonate themselves for service."
And, "the service is from the people, and the states and counties have constants." Because of the system of the previous generation, the Song Dynasty used the official property of the former government to supervise the taxation of the Lizheng, the head of the household, and the village scrivener".
In the records of historical records, the Li Zheng was mainly used to supervise taxes and oppress the peasants. However, under the ancient bureaucratic system, all officials, including those who were petty officials, automatically exercised the power of supervision for their own promotion, and began to transmit information from the bottom to the top at the lowest level.
Moreover, the peasant uprising endangered their interests first and foremost, and they were very eager to get help from above to suppress the peasant uprising, so the information they had was often the most authentic and timely.
The middle and lower class officials, such as the state and county magistrates, belonged to another class in essence than those minor officials, and those who were still the landlord class were essentially the landlord class.
And they are already part of the ancient bureaucracy, so they will see the crisis in the region from a completely different perspective. The crisis in the region is also closely related to their interests, because it is one of the important criteria for their assessment.
In the fourth year of Yuan You, he followed the "Four Virtues" and slightly changed the content of the three articles of Xining, called the "Three Most", which was used as the assessment standard for governors at the state and county levels, as follows: to be virtuous, prudent, fair, and diligent for the four virtues. There is no injustice in prison lawsuits, no disturbance in urging the department, no loss of taxes, coherence in publicity, neat case books, and equal servants; Agricultural mulberry reclamation, no open land, water conservancy construction, and the people rely on it to persuade the most; Eliminate traitors and thieves, get a safe place, give relief to the poor, and do not move, although there is a displacement, it can induce a return to work as the most supporting.
Here we see that the most important requirements of the assessment standards for their grassroots officials are: first, the development of production; Second, maintain stability. And the content of maintaining stability is much higher than that of developing production.
Therefore, those grassroots officials are very concerned about the safety of their own territory, and even if they are not safe, they have to take the risk of not reporting it. Similarly, in the beginning of the Fangla uprising, unlike Li Zheng's performance, in "at the beginning, in the rebellion of La, Wang Huangfang was extravagant and peaceful, and there were bad rumors that there were foreign criminals, and he was scolded for the punishment of Zhang Yuan and not Zhang Huang, and the thieves could not be controlled". The local magistrate chose to keep things down.
The local middle and low-level bureaucrats have made a game of their choices, and if their superiors know about the situation, then they will not even be able to keep their official positions, and if their official positions are gone, they will have nothing left, and concealing and not reporting them may save their official positionsAnd the probability of Fang La's uprising reaching the imperial court is very low, and the middle and low-level ** finally chose to intercept the information, which is the result of a rational game, which is reasonable.
However, it was unfortunate for Wang Huangfang that this uprising became the largest peasant uprising in the Northern Song Dynasty, causing "great anger". But the rational game he made was the right one.
In the face of the crisis, the reaction of the top brass within the bureaucracy, when the Fangla uprising became more and more noisy, the Song court had to start taking urgent measures.
At this time, the Fangla Uprising had become the focus of attention of the Song court, and at this time, various formal and informal information channels in Zhejiang were called, and the latest news of the Fangla Uprising was also sent to Tokyo as soon as possible.
When Fang La's troops reached Hangzhou, the Song Dynasty quickly took measures.
Faced with the chaos in the southeast, Huizong took the last resort and gave Tong Guan the greatest power. At this time, **'s complete and absolute grasp of the southeast information is not important, it bets all its bets on Tong Guan, as long as Tong Guan can bring Fang La to peace, it will be regarded as a victory for the Song court.
We can see that in the face of a crisis, the Song Dynasty will take some unconventional measures to deal with the crisis. At this time, the focus of information transmission is no longer the political center of the north, but the Tong Guan of the south, which greatly saves time, reduces costs, and improves the probability of successfully surviving the crisis, which is also the best choice of Song Huizong after the game.
This choice turned out to be the right one.
As we mentioned earlier, there is a very large network of relationships beyond the bureaucratic system at the ancient level.
The connection speed between any two points of this network is very fast, and because of this, various informal channels also played a key role after the Fangla uprising in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. This type of information is usually transmitted through letters.
In addition to such unofficial channels, the auxiliary role of private information transfer in facilitating the transfer of information within the bureaucratic system between regions is also very important.
We see that although limited by various factors, the communication of information with the people is often limited, but for the ancient emperor, the people's ** is also crucial to his rule.
Therefore, they will also visit the people's ** trends in a timely manner. In addition, in the private sector, information carriers composed of various businessmen and displaced people can also promote the rapid transmission of information. Therefore, through the non-governmental this is a very large aspect, the transmission of internal information will also be greatly improved.
We see some distortions in the face of crisis patterns in some of the inherent patterns of messaging.
Because in times of crisis, each interest group will play according to the amount of information it has, and finally make the most beneficial choice for itself, so there is also the fact that the local government truthfully reflects the situation to the superiors, while the middle and low levels conceal it and do not report it, which also explains the emergency measures taken by the supreme ruler as a last resort.
We have seen that in times of crisis, some information will be more deliberately withheld, and the mode of information transmission will also change dramatically, and it is necessary to immediately change the way of thinking and take some unconventional measures to deal with the crisis.
On the way home is the New Year