Facts have proven that Li Xi and Li Xiuming's judgments are basically accurate.
The great chaos caused by imperial physician Xin Zhongshu was planned by Queen Cheng Wen behind the scenes.
As the phoenix master of the mother ceremony world, Cheng Wen enjoys a lofty status. In the world, except for the emperor Li Bing, she has the most noble status.
However, noble status and political power cannot be completely equated.
According to the ancestral system of the Holy Tang Dynasty, the harem was not allowed to interfere in politics. This iron rule firmly blocks Cheng Wen's access to the court. Although before that, she had gained the favor and recognition of Li Bing by virtue of her beauty and thoughtfulness, and the Zhenguo Palace had become a representative of traditional noble forces. Many courtiers secretly attached themselves to the descendants and became Cheng Wen's party members. .
However, this speed is still too slow. In comparison, Princess Li Xi's people, the Shengtang military, and a large number of neutral officials still occupy the majority of the Shengtang court, especially many important powers and key positions that the queen cannot get involved in.
Cheng Wen originally thought that the affairs of the government should be handled step by step and steadily. It would be best if she could give birth to a son for Li Bing first and establish him as the crown prince. Then, depending on the son's wealth, she could calmly make arrangements and continue to cultivate the Cheng family brothers and officials. Compete with Li Jiangyao and others.
But the rapid changes in the world situation suddenly caught Cheng Wen off guard.
The first change, of course, is the counterinsurgency process.
The Zhenjiang Army defeated the rebel navy, then crossed the Yangtze River to conquer the south, and successively recaptured important towns such as Xuancheng, Jinling, and Danyang. Recently, the good news of Changzhou's victory came. The army was about to reach Hangzhou and completely eliminate the rebel Li Zhang.
Once Li Jiangyao is allowed to join forces in triumph, the political situation in the court will change dramatically. Not to mention that the entry of the Zhenjiang Clan into the court would threaten the development of the clan's power, but Cheng Wen would find it difficult to accept just letting Li Jiangyao return to the Ghost Desert of Western Xinjiang safely.
The second change came from Emperor Li Bing.
She finally came up with the plan to reward Jiuxi, originally hoping to directly anger her husband and make him ruthlessly attack his enemy Li Jiangyaotong. However, he did not expect that Li Bing was too weak and useless. He only deepened his fear of the commander-in-chief of the Zhenjiang Army, but had no intention of taking any further action.
Although Li Bing explained that the reason why he chose to remain silent was entirely out of consideration for the overall situation: first put down the rebellion in the south, reunify the Holy Tang Dynasty, and then slowly deal with Li Jiangyao's problem. However, Cheng Wen was very dissatisfied with this. She believed that Li Bing's indecisiveness would eventually harm him and bring her own misfortune as well.
The third change occurred in the harem.
Some time ago, Concubine Hui Murong Ling gave birth to another prince. Li Bing was very happy about this. He not only rewarded her heavily, but also gave the Murong family many honors. At the same time, Ma Yunfang, a concubine with a lively personality and proficiency in military affairs, was also deeply favored by the emperor. Some time ago, Li Bing stayed in Shangyang Palace every night, discussing frontline warfare and military management with Ma Yunfang. During these days, he heard that Concubine Ma Shu was also pregnant.
This situation made Cheng Wen feel anxious.
Throughout the ages, the inner court of the harem and the political situation of the outer dynasty have been inextricably linked. Relatives can rise in power by relying on the favor of their concubines. Similarly, concubines in the harem can rely on their family members to make great contributions to the country and win the favor of the monarch.
Ma Hongjie and Murong Xue's achievements in countering the rebellion far exceeded that of her brothers. In the long run, although her position may not be shaken, the choice of crown prince may undergo fundamental changes.
If the Ma family and the Murong family gain power, and the courtiers encourage the emperor to make Concubine Shu or Concubine Hui's son the crown prince, then the Cheng family will never be able to succeed.
In view of this, Queen Cheng Wen began to have twisted thoughts: What if her husband suddenly became seriously ill and was unable to manage the government normally.
If the emperor is unable to manage the affairs of state, or lacks physical strength and energy, as the empress, she has the opportunity to take care of him, make suggestions, and even write for her husband and approve memorials and official documents. Over time, a lot of power will naturally fall into her hands.
In this case, it will be much more convenient and easier whether it is to support and cultivate one's own power, or to interfere with and drag down the operations of Li Jiangyao, Murong Xuema, Hongjie and others.
So, how to make the emperor unable to get sick?
Although Li Bing's body is not strong, he is still young and cannot easily suffer from any serious illness. The only chance is to poison him.
And this poison must be measured carefully so as not to kill Li Bing. Otherwise, as soon as the emperor dies, the queen, who has not yet succeeded in her plan and has not given birth to a prince, will immediately become worthless in the eyes of the courtiers.
After careful consideration, Cheng Wen finally made up her mind to use the hapless old doctor Xin Zhongshu to bring down Li Bing by using drugs to counteract each other, and then secretly controlled the review of the memorial, in the name of the emperor, before Li Jiangyao and his class returned to the court. Develop your own power quickly.
Hence, the incident that shocked the government and the public a few days ago took place.
Up to now, Li Bing is bedridden and has yet to get better. Cheng Wen is accompanying him hypocritically, serving tea and medicine, and taking care of him in every possible way. In addition, she also issued an edict as a queen on the pretext that the emperor needed to recuperate, cutting off other people's opportunities to contact the emperor, and only allowing the royal family to visit occasionally, which was equivalent to semi-house arrest of Li Bing. He took the time to read the memorial to Li Bing beside his bed and asked him how to deal with it.
Li Bing was in poor health. He often felt unbearable pain in his abdomen and felt dizzy. He was unable to concentrate on handling government affairs. Except for things related to counterinsurgency on the front line, where he gritted his teeth and listened to the reports and made corresponding opinions, for other official matters, he just had a few cursory chats with Cheng Wen and let the other party follow his general wishes. Planned reply.
Therefore, Cheng Wen seized this rare opportunity and used Li Bing's name to secretly influence the political layout of the government.
The most important thing among them is the four memorials reviewed by Cheng Wen yesterday, which can be said to have directly affected the political situation of the Holy Tang Dynasty.
These four memorials come from the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Rites, the Ministry of Industry and Dali Temple respectively.
Dong Tianxing, the Secretary of the Ministry of War, requested the emperor's approval and urged the Ministry of Household Affairs to allocate 3 million yuan of military resources and salaries to the three regiments of Qinglong, Zhuque and Xuanwu for frontline operations. Li Bing responded that in view of the drought in the north at the beginning of the year, the harvests in various governments, and the construction of warships took up a lot of funds, he agreed to allocate two million guan first and make up the rest later.
Cheng Wen drafted the imperial edict in accordance with this idea, but at the same time added some other content in the reply: The Suzaku Army had suffered a disadvantage in previous operations due to the negligence of its commander Ma Hongjie, so Gong Chengze, the military affairs inspector of the Southern Expedition, was promoted to the Governor of the Governor's Mansion. , and also served as the deputy commander of the Suzaku Army, commanding the third and fourth flags of the army to cross the Yangtze River and march to the west to recover Bashu and other places.
Since ancient times, the Bashu region has been an extremely important strategic location with rich products, a large population, and dangerous mountains and rivers. Previously, the imperial court specifically chose Yizhou as its temporary capital to avoid Turkic invasion, which shows the importance of Bashu.
Cheng Wen brought private goods and asked Gong Chengze to lead the army to attack Bashu. Firstly, it divided Ma Hongjie's forces. Secondly, he could occupy the southwest and expand his camp's strength in terms of human and financial resources.
The memorial from the Ministry of Rites is about commending Li Jiangyao for the honor of Jiuxi. Under the operation of Cheng Dong and others, the Ministry of Rites once again went to the Ministry of Rites to advise the emperor to consider the public sentiment and public opinion and reward meritorious ministers with special honors. In this regard, Li Bing did not directly refuse, but excused that he should wait until the southern rebels were completely destroyed before he could reward him based on his merits.
Cheng Wen was unwilling to give in, and secretly added another article after Li Bing's opinion: Regarding the reward of Jiuxi, Li Jiangyao, the Central Governor and the commander of the Phoenix Army, was also asked to personally submit a memorial to express his attitude towards this reward.
To put it bluntly, just ask Li Jiangyao himself if he wants Jiuxi.
This is simply harboring evil intentions. Because no matter how Li Jiangyao replies, Cheng Wen's gang members can find faults and stir up trouble in front of the emperor.
The petition submitted by the Ministry of Industry is about the construction of water conservancy projects in northern states. This year's severe drought has caused huge losses to the people, and has also indirectly affected the court's tax revenue. The national treasury, which was already somewhat stretched, not only failed to collect enough money and food, but also had to spend money for disaster relief, which worried the Ministry of Revenue and the Taifu.
In view of this, the Ministry of Industry proposed to carry out large-scale water conservancy reconstruction, build dams in various parts of the north to store water, and dig diversion canal networks to improve the irrigation capacity of farmland to withstand droughts that may occur again next year.
This had nothing to do with counterinsurgency, so Li Bing didn't ask too much. He only asked Cheng Wen to write a simple reply and clearly forward it to the Ministry of Secretariat. He would consider the national strength and discuss the matter on his own.
However, Cheng Wen refused to let go of such a good opportunity. She did not follow Li Bing's wishes and forward them to the Shangshu Provincial Council. Instead, she wrote a bunch of specific instructions: asking the Ministry of Household Affairs to divert a large amount of money from military expenditures and allocate it to the Ministry of Works for the construction of water conservancy projects. In addition, Mrs. Cheng Dong's brother Su Chenfeng, the eldest son of the Earl of Yanping, was appointed as a member of the Ministry of Works, specifically responsible for this large-scale project involving 31 counties in six northern states.
Just like when Xie Guang pushed for the governance of Jinhe, in the blink of an eye, the power of the Hou clan has successfully controlled a large amount of civilians, funds and local resources, and can even directly affect the performance evaluation and promotion of state officials.
The last key memorial was that Dali Temple requested an investigation into the emperor's poisoning case. Although it was nominally the Minister of Dali Temple who came forward, in reality it was Beiya Nilinsi who was behind the scenes.
Cheng Wen was secretly happy: This can be said to be an extremely sharp sword that swept across the court and was invincible. All ministers who dared to oppose her would have to peel off a layer of their skin!
According to Cheng Wen's wishes, Ouyang Lin and Tian Mu were jointly responsible for a thorough investigation of the case. In order to prevent these two people from discovering that she was behind the plot to murder Li Bing, Cheng Wen used the emperor's name to specially set the direction of the investigation and pointed all the spearheads at the ministers in the hostile camp who had a long-standing friendship with Xin Zhongshu.
At the same time, she also hinted to the two of them: I would rather catch the mistake than let it go, and I would never tolerate it if I deal with it harshly.
The storm is about to come and the wind is filling the building. A political storm that is about to sweep the entire court is swirling and condensing over the imperial capital of the Holy Tang Dynasty.
