Chapter 52 Gentleman
Liu Jin offended the general because he wanted the border soldiers to have enough to eat.
Like Wei Zhongxian later, most of the father-in-laws came from poor backgrounds - if they were not really desperate, in the general environment of "three ways of being unfilial, and having no offspring is the worst", who would have the heart to give their children or themselves a one-size-fits-all treatment? Therefore, many eunuchs often relied on their status as slaves of the emperor to have trouble with civil servants, but they were often very sympathetic to the poor people at the bottom.
Because they were originally from Sri Lanka and knew the hardships of the people.
The same is true for Liu Jin.
Eunuch Liu, whose real surname is Tan, is from Shaanxi. When he was six years old, he was adopted by his father-in-law named Liu Shun. After being stabbed, he adopted the surname Liu and became a glorious little father-in-law.
After Liu Jin took charge of the Supervisor of Ceremonies, he found that the civil and military officials in the border newspapers were asking the court for food and pay all day long. He felt a little incredible: Are the soldiers guarding the border starving? How can this work! But... Grandpa Taizu has clearly planned military camps, and they are producing something! Why are you still starving and asking the court for food? So I went to check.
To be honest, after reading history until this point, no matter how much the civil servants confuse right and wrong, they can't avoid the fact: If Liu Jin really wanted to be corrupt, he could just encourage Wuzong to approve it. Wu Zong is famous for his love for the military, and there is no reason why he should not be allowed to do so. Who wouldn't want to be "filial" to the silver grain that Eunuch Liu asked for for you? Even if you don't want to, those who supervise the army are all the young father-in-laws sent by Liu Jin from the palace. Who dares to show less care for Boss Liu?
Liu Jin went to investigate, not for himself, but for Wu Zong, for the imperial court, and for the hungry frontier troops!
Then, the civil servants calmly made a stumbling block and severely deceived him.
The money and grain had to come from the Ministry of Household Affairs, so Liu Jin went to Gu Zuo, the Minister of Household Affairs, to ask what had been done in the past and whether it had always been like this.
Gu Zuo replied: "There was no such case in Tianshun before."
This answer is so wicked!
A clever lie is not a lie that is made up of nothing, but a lie that tells you part of the truth and then leads you in the wrong direction, trapping you without any discussion. Yes, this is only the next best thing - the best thing is to repeat it a thousand times.
This is the case with Gu Zuo. He only said half a sentence: It was true that it didn’t exist before Tianshun, but it started to exist during the Chenghua period!
To put it in a more straightforward way: the fields in the military camp have been occupied by the general families for decades!
Do you single-handedly want the military chiefs, big and small, to vomit out all the property that your family has eaten for generations?
hehe.
Eunuch Liu was an impatient and stubborn man, how could he tell that Gu Zuoyun had dug such a big hole for himself so easily! At this time, Eunuch Liu was completely ignorant of the fact that the military camps allocated to the generals had already become the private property of military leaders for decades!
So Eunuch Liu followed the route preset by the minister and headed straight for the bottomless pit. He rejected the border army's request for food and wages on the spot, and replied: No payment for expenses is allowed! Don’t you have your own farmland production? Why do you still want to ask the court for more reimbursement? This will not be the case next time.
Then, in the next side report that followed, a more serious problem appeared: the frontier troops were starving to death, their morale was unstable, and something might change, please ask the court to allocate money and food as soon as possible! As for the reason why the border troops did not have enough to eat, everyone attributed it to the fact that the imperial court did not provide enough food, and they themselves had not mentioned a word about the fact that they had already divided the military settlements privately.
Eunuch Liu was even more surprised: You all have production and no disasters, why do you still need money and food? Moreover, the border troops are about to starve to death?
Someone needs to be sent to investigate.
After some investigation, Eunuch Liu understood: It turned out that all the farmland had been embezzled by the generals!
Gu Zuo did not tell Eunuch Liu directly, but guided him to find out on his own. In this way, all the things that offended the generals were done by Eunuch Liu himself! Gu Shangshu himself gained a reputation as a good person who said "I tried my best".
In his usual drastic and resolute style, Eunuch Liu sent a large number of troops to various places to measure the acres of land and thoroughly investigate the encroachment of military villages.
If you and I were the generals, would we hate, hate, or resent this Eunuch Liu who wanted to take away most of the family property?
Finally, the big pit of measuring the farmland smashed the powerful Eunuch Liu to pieces!
Eunuch Liu's death and reputation are actually inevitable - because: he is a good person!
There is only one person to whom he is devoted wholeheartedly: Emperor Wuzong Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty - the child he raised since childhood and the only god on the altar in his heart. For the sake of morality, and for the sake of the people of the Ming Dynasty represented by morality, he offended everyone.
Therefore, he must die.
And he died terribly.
For more than two hundred years of the Ming Dynasty, except for the period of two ruthless men, Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, who were extremely powerful, the court always revolved around the game of monarchy and central power. In other words, the civil servant group was always competing with the emperor for the management of the empire. This issue remained entangled until the complete fall of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system and concentrated all power on himself, no problem. Because he is cruel! Anyone who refuses to accept will be beheaded. Even if you really accept it, as long as Zhu Chongba thinks that you may be dissatisfied, he will be killed! However, this is not the case for his descendants. Without the prime minister, the buffer barrier between the emperor and the civil service group was lost. Before the Ming Dynasty, the emperor could influence the civil service group through his control of the prime minister. Without this barrier, he could only stand on the front desk and fight shirtless. There was a cabinet in the Ming Dynasty, and the chief minister sometimes did have functions similar to those of the prime minister. However, the most crucial difference is that whether it is the chief minister or the second minister, the cabinet itself is not an independent identity like the prime minister; Representative of the civil service group!
Unless he is completely destroyed like Jiajing and Wanli, otherwise, in the process of fighting the entire bureaucracy with one person's power, the emperor will of course need to find helpers, and the only helpers that can be chosen under this structure can only be eunuchs, that is, Group of eunuchs.
The civil service group was also well aware of this, so on the one hand, they tried their best to recruit and collude with the eunuchs who served as internal agents. On the other hand, they were also looking for every opportunity to eliminate the potential helpers of the great emperor. When Zhengde just inherited the throne, the civil servant group bullied the children for being ignorant (Zhengde was sixteen years old) and showed their knives to the eight eunuchs closest to him.
When Zhengde got married that year, he asked the Ministry of Household Affairs for 400,000 taels of silver, and the Ministry of Household Affairs paid 300,000 taels. As for matters such as purchasing dragon and phoenix robes, the civil service group directly rejected Zhengde's request for 12,000 salt sales licenses.
In the past, it was a common practice to use salt in weaving. The Ministry of Household Affairs distributes salt, and the eunuch responsible for purchasing it sells it to merchants, and the silver earned is used to pay for weaving costs. However, the distribution of salt will inevitably affect the interests of the civil servant group: the total number is so much, if I give it to you, what should I sell? The salt industry is a monopoly - you know, as long as it is a monopoly, there must be power behind it! The profit delivery chain during this period can be figured out with your toes.
The civil service group was prepared to take this opportunity to give the little emperor a show of strength. Therefore, on the grounds of possible entrainment, only half was distributed, and the other half was paid in discounted silver (official price, you know).
How could Zhengde, a junior high school student, understand these twists and turns? He went to the cabinet to reason with him: "The emperors of the previous dynasties have done this all the time. Why is it suddenly no longer possible for me? If you say there may be entrapment, then strengthen supervision and investigate! If you find any illegal reasons, you should be killed. If you need to arrest, you can arrest them. You can't just deny it all because there may be a problem, right? According to this logic, if you have a penis, you may be raped. Is it okay to just cut it off and permanently eliminate it? I will come to you personally to intercede. Teachers (several people) The main officials have been serving as emperor's tutors since Zhengde was still the prince, and they still have to watch the little emperor read after going to court every day), they have to give him some face, right?"
No!
Great Emperor, let us tell you, eunuchs are the worst in the world. You should be close to gentlemen, well, that’s us; Yuan Xiaoren, yes, those dead eunuchs. Everything is ruined by them!
Zhengde was a little confused: "Gentlemen, what you said is not quite right, is it? How can the internal supervisor be responsible for the affairs of the whole world? Aren't you the ones who manage the country? For example, among ten officials, there may be three or four who are good, and the bad ones are often Sixty-seven out of ten. Didn’t the gentlemen explain this to me yesterday?”
I go! We are talking about this to tell you that except for us who are good people, the others are bad people and we cannot listen to them. Use your hands to eliminate dissidents! Bad, careless! This little brat is hard to fool!
Give me something hard!
The three ministers appointed by Emperor Xiaozong, Gu Ming, together with the six ministries and nine ministers, with the support of the eunuch Wang Yue, jointly wrote a letter: Please punish the "Eight Tigers" - the emperor was good, but he was led bad by the eight bastard eunuchs. Yes, these people must be killed! Otherwise, we will quit and resign!
No matter how the official history is written or what is written, my personal feeling after reading the history is: What a bastard!
A young man who has just inherited the throne, you are going to kill the eight closest people around him in one go. The crime is either to accompany the emperor to play Cuju, or to send hawks and birds to the emperor, or to instigate the emperor to behave badly... Otherwise, you will all be thrown away!
What is the real intention?
Tightly control the little emperor!
Such a person is labeled as a gentleman!
Zhengde cried.
Really cried - the little emperor was frightened.
He went to the ministers again to plead: "It's not their fault that they play with me. Can I send them far away to Nanjing? I will listen to you from now on. Go to court on time, study hard, quit playing games and never play games again." Alright, okay?"
no!
Must be killed! Without such a bloody lesson, how can I control you firmly in the future!
The "Eight Tigers" are eight senior eunuchs including Liu Jin, Ma Yongcheng, Gu Dayong, and Zhang Yong (remember him).
These eight people were always kept in the dark and had no idea that the disaster was coming. They didn't get the news until the last moment. Most of the people were frightened and went to find the little emperor together all night, kneeling and crying and begging for mercy.
Liu Jin was not busy crying. He thought about it carefully and found the crux of the problem. So he said a few words to Zhengde: "Wang Yue is the eunuch who oversees rituals and supervises the East Factory. The most important responsibility of the East Factory is to supervise the outer court for the emperor, and everything should be reported directly to the emperor. A supervisory agency, on the contrary, has nothing to do with the emperor. The supervisors are colluding with each other. This matter is very serious! Donating dogs, horses and eagles is a small matter, and it is not just a few of us who give them, but others also give them. There is a deeper meaning in making such a fuss: they are threatening you like this, but they are actually fighting for power. ! Moreover, there are already people from the outer court serving as internal correspondents!”
The little emperor understood.
Wang Yue is dismissed!
Liu Jin is the Superintendent of Ceremonies and Admiral of the East Factory!
If you threaten me with resignation, get out immediately!
Send someone to the household department to check the accounts. Aren’t you saying that I don’t have money to pay for my wedding? A gentleman should correct himself first. Aren't you all gentlemen?
This investigation is incredible: there are fake silver ingots in the library!
However, both Zhengde and Liu Jin are considered kind people: Han Wen, the Minister of Household Affairs, was ordered to retire (retire), and other people and things were not further investigated, and they stopped there. In fact, if you are still young and honest, if you take this opportunity to deal with those sanctimonious civil servants, the Ming Dynasty may be a different scene... Not only may history be rewritten, but Wu Zong himself may not die so early and unclearly. Not white.
The civil servants who were filled with righteous indignation and asked for help were dumbfounded. In the blink of an eye, they all showed their magical powers to intercede with Eunuch Liu who just wanted to kill him.
A small episode.
The person who drafted the memorial to punish the Eight Tigers was named Li Mengyang. His official position was Yuanwailang of the Ministry of Household Affairs. The article was written with sonorous force and righteousness. After the Ministry of Finance discovered the counterfeit money, he was arrested and imprisoned. His agent brought out a piece of paper with four words: "Duishan save me." "Dui Shan" is Kang Hai's nickname, and Kang Hai is a great talent Liu Jin has always wanted to make friends with.
When Liu Jin heard about Kang Hai's visit, he hurriedly went out to greet him. He actually responded to the idiom: greet each other with his shoes on backwards - Eunuch Liu really hurriedly put on his shoes backwards!
Then, as expected, Li Mengyang was released from prison.
Then, when Liu Jin fell, Kang Hai was labeled as a "eunuch" for the rest of his life.
"Gentleman" Li Mengyang now has great power. Of course he knew in his heart that Kang Hai was accused of being an eunuch because he had sought out Liu Jin and sought out Liu Jin to save himself. Then, a gentleman is a gentleman. To this, Mr. Li pretended not to see it and said nothing.
hehe.
Let me ask, compared with these gentlemen, can Eunuch Liu really be called a bad guy?
From then on, Liu Jin began his fortune.
After becoming successful, Eunuch Liu soon attracted the hatred of everyone.
Well, he has been fixing the civil service group since he became rich, so the civil servants hate him.
His one-size-fits-all approach did affect some people. However, what cannot be ignored is that he saved more people. However, as for the common people, it is an old tradition to hate whomever the imperial court orders, so it is no wonder. So the people hated him.
He measured military camps, which led to his eventual death. It is normal for the generals to hate him. We’ll talk about this in the next chapter.
He actually didn't spare "his own people" - he didn't show favoritism or bend the law when he dealt with his father-in-law. Therefore, the father-in-law hated him even more.
Ma Yongcheng, who was also one of the "Eight Tigers", once accepted a favor and wanted to promote a guy to "Hundred Households". This military position is nominally the sixth rank, but because it is a military position, the Ming Dynasty used civility to control military affairs, so it was devalued to a very high level, probably to the level of company platoon leader. Zhengde had already approved such a trivial matter, but when Eunuch Liu found out about it, he just canceled it.
Another "Eight Tigers" comrade, Gu Dayong, colluded with the Linqing garrison eunuch and wanted to open a royal village to make some money. Liu Jin thought this was competing with the people for profit, so he arrested the garrison eunuch and messed up the matter.
There was another eunuch named Wang Xiu who gave the little emperor Zhengde an idea: Didn't the Ministry of Household Affairs keep complaining about not being able to collect taxes? Let's find a few people to be "urban management" to cover the taxes, go to the people to collect money and food, and return the income to the palace. After hearing the news, Eunuch Liu ran to question Zhengde without saying a word: "How can there be any reason for the emperor to ask people to pay money and food?" Then, he put wooden shackles on the households of the "internally appointed urban management" and threw them in front of the Meridian Gate, where they stood alive. .
After looking at the bits and pieces of Snow and Mud Hongzhao in these historical materials, can we still say that Eunuch Liu was a heinous bad guy?
