Chapter 148: Hitting Shi Fenglai

However, he waited and waited but there was no sign of the Jinyiwei, and even when he submitted his three letters of resignation, Chongzhen still refused to approve it.

Originally, when Chongzhen summoned him late at night, he thought his life would finally be judged, but...

The emperor actually gave him a seat?

Shi Fenglai waved his hands repeatedly and refused, saying, "I dare not sit down in front of the sage!"

Shi Fenglai, 65 years old, has a head of white hair and his wrinkled forehead is already oozing with sweat.

Seeing this, Chongzhen sighed slightly, walked out from behind the imperial desk with a memorial in his hand, and came in front of Shi Fenglai under his increasingly frightened gaze.

"Take a look. This is the memorial submitted by the censor Luo Yuanbin impeaching you." Chongzhen said as he handed the curse book in his hand to Shi Fenglai.

Shi Fenglai, who was originally quite nervous, couldn't help but sigh after hearing this, and thought to himself: What is coming has finally come.

He took the memorial with both hands, and his hands no longer trembled.

As expected, as Shi Fenglai had expected, the memorial was full of impeachment against him, and its general content was similar to the one in which Shanyin student Hu Huanyou impeached him.

It's nothing more than saying that he is just occupying his position but doing nothing and killing loyal and good people.

Since Chongzhen ascended the throne, the Donglin Party, which had been suppressed by Wei Zhongxian and almost disappeared, appeared from all directions like a ghost that had come back to life.

They did their utmost to attack anyone who was related to the eunuch party. It didn't matter whether that person was really a eunuch party member. In the eyes of these Donglin Party members, as long as one could hold an official position safely during Wei Zhongxian's reign, he must have gotten promoted and made a fortune by flattering the eunuch party.

Otherwise, how can we explain that we, the righteous Donglin Party members, have stepped down, while you, the incompetent people who have been sitting in office doing nothing, are able to rise step by step?

Putting aside the facts and talking only about stance, anyone who does not fight against the eunuch party is a member of the eunuch party.

As the chief minister of the cabinet, Shi Fenglai had read countless memorials of criticism like these, but there were relatively few that directly impeached the cabinet ministers.

Even so, Shi Fenglai had already prepared himself to exit the stage in disgrace, and had even begun to think about his afterlife.

Originally, Emperor Chongzhen did not show any intention of dealing with him, which made him feel extremely anxious. Now Emperor Chongzhen handed the impeachment memorial to him personally. Has the emperor made a decision?

Thinking of this, Shi Fenglai slowly knelt down, touched his head to the ground and said: "This old minister is guilty, please punish me, Your Majesty!"

Chongzhen was slightly stunned, then he suddenly realized.

He quickly reached out and helped Shi Fenglai up, and smiled at the other party's puzzled look: "Why do you say that, Yuan Fu? I never said that you are guilty!"

"This..." Shi Fenglai suddenly turned his head and looked at Chongzhen in confusion.

Chongzhen personally took out the impeachment memorial against him. Wasn't this a sign that he was voluntarily admitting his guilt and accepting the punishment?
Chongzhen raised his lips slightly, waved his hand to dismiss the people around him and said, "Prime Minister, please sit down first!"

As Chongzhen spoke, he patted Shi Fenglai on the shoulder.

Shi Fenglai didn't dare to sit down at first, but Chongzhen personally signaled him to sit down, so he had to sit down.

So he had to lean half of his buttocks against the stool and look up at Chongzhen, a very awkward posture.

Fortunately, Chongzhen did not let him feel uncomfortable for too long. He soon returned to the imperial desk and said sincerely: "Prime Minister, who do you think is more threatening to our Ming Dynasty, the bandits or the Jiannu?"

Shi Fenglai said without hesitation: "The Jian Nu are ambitious and powerful. They have 200,000 men to hold back hundreds of thousands of our elite troops from the nine borders. If we let them continue to develop, the consequences will be disastrous." Chongzhen nodded after hearing this. "So, Yuan Fu also thinks that the Jian Nu are the biggest threat to our Ming Dynasty?"

Shi Fenglai didn't understand why Chongzhen called him in late at night and suddenly talked to him about the Jian Nu and the bandits.

Although he was the prime minister, Shi Fenglai was not known for his "border talent" or "military knowledge".

However, even though he didn't understand, when Chongzhen asked the question, Shi Fenglai still expressed his opinion and nodded solemnly.

Although there had been occasional outbreaks of banditry across the country since the end of the Tianqi reign, the consensus among the government and the public was that the greatest threat to the Ming Dynasty was the Jiannu.

Small groups of bandits, numbering only a few thousand people at most, could often be wiped out by officers and soldiers. Therefore, no one in the court or the country thought that these bandits would be a serious threat to the Ming Dynasty.

Even though some people with lofty ideals, based on the laws of history, saw that these bandits would inevitably cause disaster, at this stage the buttons could not pose a more serious threat to the Ming Dynasty.

At least compared with the Jiannu, the combat effectiveness of the bandits is simply not worth mentioning.

However, Chongzhen seemed dissatisfied with Shi Fenglai's answer. Instead, he shook his head and said, "But I once met an expert who told me that the biggest threat to the Ming Dynasty was never foreign enemies, but bandits. He even predicted that the Ming Dynasty would be destroyed by bandits in the future!"

When Chongzhen said the words that the Ming Dynasty would perish, Shi Fenglai was so frightened that he fell to his knees from the stool with a thud, and said angrily: "What kind of evil person is this who is spreading lies to confuse the people? Your Majesty, please send the Jinyiwei to capture him and chop him into pieces immediately!"

However, Chongzhen did not show any anger on his face. Instead, he said calmly, "Whether it is just a lie or not, let's ignore it. But the expert said that the bandits will become a major threat to our Ming Dynasty. What he said makes a lot of sense."

Then, Chongzhen repeated Wang An's words about the bandits, especially the sentence "A single spark can start a prairie fire."

In fact, Shi Fenglai was not unaware of the threat posed by bandits. Just think about it, when Zhu Yuanzhang started the uprising, wasn't he also a bandit to the Yuan Dynasty at that time?

But what is the result?
The whole world belongs to Zhu!

However, the bandit theory was not mainstream among the government and the public.

If anyone stands up and advocates the threat of bandits, he will probably be laughed at by the world.

"A single spark can start a prairie fire..." Shi Fenglai stood there and murmured silently.

Chongzhen did not pause and continued, "At first I also found it incredible. How could a small bandit destroy our great Ming Dynasty?"

The people like Li Zicheng that Wang An mentioned were naturally indistinguishable from Shi Fenglai, so Chongzhen combined his own understanding and expressed his views on the harm of bandits.

In addition, Shi Fenglai himself was not completely ignorant of the situation, so he quickly accepted Chongzhen's point of view.

The two talked for a while, and Shi Dan finally understood that Chongzhen had no intention of settling accounts with him, at least not tonight.

So he sighed and said, "It's a pity that the country is in a difficult situation. It's hard to wipe out some small bandits this year..."

Chongzhen smiled slightly when he heard this and said, "In fact, that master did talk to me about how to wipe out the bandits..."

"In fact, just wiping out the bandits would only cause the fire on Lili Plain to flare up again!"

"So what Your Majesty means is..." Shi Fenglai said with a flash in his eyes.

(End of this chapter)