As mentioned earlier, in 1052 AD, Di Qing was once again promoted by the Northern Song Emperor Song Renzong for quelling the NongZhigao rebellion, and was promoted from deputy envoy to privy councillor, which was the first time in the history of the Song Dynasty that a military general held this position, and this position had always been held by a civilian official, because the mainstream policy of the Song Dynasty to select talents was to "emphasize literature over force". Why? First, Zhao Kuangyin, the founder of the Song Dynasty, became emperor after launching the Chen Qiao Mutiny because he held military power; the second Song Dynasty was preceded by the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms at the end of the Tang Dynasty, and it was because of the great split era of the division of the feudal towns formed by supporting the army to stand on their own, so after Zhao Kuangyin became emperor, in order to avoid the recurrence of this phenomenon of military generals chaos, he set the basic national policy of "ruling the country by civilians", so the upper echelons of the Bureaucracy of the Song Dynasty were basically all civilian officials.
Therefore, when Song Renzong proposed to promote Di Qing to the position of Privy Counsellor in the court, there was a wave of opposition in the court, but Song Renzong still insisted on his own ideas, and in the name of "violating the ancestral precepts", a paper edict sealed Di Qing as a privy councillor. What is the position of Privy Counsellor? The Privy Counsellor was still the supreme ruler of the Northern Song Military Clique, the supreme commander who controlled the world's soldiers and horses, equivalent to the Prime Minister, similar to the current Chairman of the Central Military Commission. This is equivalent to slapping a big ear scraper on the civilian official clique, and an illiterate person actually relies on military merit to sit on an equal footing with them, which touches their reverse scales and becomes a thorn in the eye of the civilian clique. How could they give up? As a result, the high-knowledge elements of the civilian-official clique began to appear on the scene, and all kinds of fancy attacks and slanders continued to throw at Di Qing.
One day, the capital sent a lot of water, the water is very fierce, Di Qing's family was washed away by the flood, temporarily can not live, Di Qing thought for a moment, the Xiangguo Temple in the capital has more empty houses, enough for a family to temporarily borrow, did not think much, with the family moved. The public opinion in the official group has begun to fry the pan, and the literati, who are full of poetry and books, are all people with strange brains. Some people say: Di Qing did not have good intentions, and went to Xiangguo Temple to worship the Buddha every day and ask the Buddha to bless him to become an emperor; some people said: Di Qing has great ambitions and lives in the Buddha's main hall in order to let more ordinary people worship him, in order to win people's hearts and minds, and to try to rebel. After hearing these rumors, Di Qing was frightened and took his family to quickly pack up his bags and go home.
At this time, Di Qing seemed to have a word engraved on his body, "wrong", what he did was wrong, what he did not do, that was also wrong. Eggs pick bones, see stitches and needles, people are also very good at it, anyway, they are "grinding their mouths". In other words, Di Qing raised a dog, this dog is very naughty and playful, accidentally fell himself, did not fall in other places to fall to the head, the head was smashed swollen two large bags, as if two horns, this time people began to burst the sky again. Di Qing's dog began to grow horns, which was the rhythm of turning into a "dragon"!
Once, Di Qing burned paper in the ancestral hall at home to worship his ancestors, at that time the paper money, paper clothes, etc. burned a little too much, the fire was relatively large, the people next door saw it, thought it was on fire, they reported it to the officials, the government sent soldiers to take a look, it turned out to be just a false alarm. However, as soon as this matter was processed by the literati and doctors, it became that the Di Qing family suddenly filled the sky with red light and did not disperse for a long time, which was an image of changing the heavens!
Although the previous ones were all small materials, they did not affect the fundamental trust of Emperor Song Renzong in Di Qing, but they could not withstand the more and more they spread, the more widely spread, after all, "people are fearful of words". In 1056, Di Qing had been in the position of Privy Counsellor for nearly four years, and for more than three years Di Qing had been strictly disciplined and lenient with generals in the army, and the soldiers loved him very much; in the court, Di Qing was a low-level man and did things in a down-to-earth manner, but a group of literati did not recognize him. Therefore, even if he has a lot of military merit and seems to be in a high position of authority, Di Qing has also clamped his tail and acted cautiously over the years. And the long-term gossip made Di Qing almost out of breath, and he could still insist because he still firmly believed that he didn't care about his origins, and the emperor Song Renzong, who promoted him all the way, reused him, and trusted him, was not affected by the rumors, which was Di Qing's last straw.
In June 1056, there was a sudden flood in the capital, Di Qing was the commander-in-chief of the capital to fight floods and provide disaster relief, one day when he commanded the soldiers on the spot, he was wearing a pale yellow trench coat, which happened to be seen by Ouyang Xiu, who was also at the scene, and Ouyang Xiu immediately wrote to Song Renzong: The reason for sending a big water is because he violated the ancestral precepts, reused military generals, and punished by heaven, if Di Qing's privy councillor was spared, the punishment of heaven could be lifted, so he asked that Di Qing be released. Ouyang Xiu was the third time to impeach Di Qing, and although Song Renzong was shaken after hearing this, after all, Song Renzong was also a Ming Emperor in history, not a faint and incompetent person, and moreover, Di Qing's position as a Privy Councillor was raised by him in spite of the opposition of the court.
Therefore, Song Renzong summoned the prime minister Wen Yanbo again, the first big man of the civil official clique at that time, from a noble family, and the emperor trusted him very much, and Song Renzong said to him: "Di Qing has made such great achievements for our country, why do the people in the court have to exclude him?" Wen Yanbo had a very high opinion of himself, and he was also ruthless in speaking in front of the emperor, and Wen Yanbo replied: Song Taizu is also a meritorious warrior of Northern Zhou, because he has military power in his hands, so he launched the Chen Qiao Mutiny, and the yellow robe was added to become the emperor!" The big guy was the big guy, and the words made the emperor dumbfounded, and there was no way, so Song Renzong had to order di Qing to be relieved of his position as privy councillor, and openly promoted Tongping Zhangshi to the prefect of Chen Prefecture.
Di Qing stayed in the position of Privy Counsellor for 4 years, and finally he was given a high-level black by those literati doctors who the ground. In fact, Di Qing himself couldn't understand what he had done wrong? Why did these civilian officials keep targeting him? Therefore, before going to ChenZhou, Di Qian ran to Wen Yanbo's mansion and asked him: Why is the imperial court so unfair to me? Wen Yanbo said coldly: "Nothing, it's just that the imperial court doesn't trust you anymore." Di Qing listened to the back like dead ash. Di Qing, who has not read any books, actually does not understand the checks and balances of power behind politics. He did not know until his death that in fact, he was not wrong, as a military general, he had meritorious service in defending the frontier, he had meritorious service in suppressing the rebellion, and his achievements were fought with his life; as a superior, he was not greedy for merit, and he would push him to his subordinates if he had military merit, he was lenient to soldiers, and soldiers loved him; he did not climb to power and nobility, some people said that he was a descendant of Di Renjie, and he did not dare to climb high; he was not proud of his merits, and in front of those civilian officials, he had always been careful and cautious in his tail. But in the end, they still suspected that he had two hearts. He did not understand that from ancient times to the present, the literati and black-armed people have always been the most reprehensible people: they are proud of their merits, they are self-respecting in support of soldiers, and they have the same heart.
After Ming Sheng secretly degraded Di Qing, after arriving in ChenZhou, Song Renzong listened to Wen Yanbo's advice, and would send emissaries to visit Di Qing every once in a while, every time he heard that the emissary was coming to Chen Prefecture, Di Qing was frightened all day, at this time Di Qing had already been gossiped, hurt and exhausted, fear and worry, making Di Qing's health deteriorate, and he died of depression in the second year of Chen Prefecture (1057 AD), and died at the age of 49.
Southern Song Dynasty Yue Fei, Northern Song Dynasty Di Qing, posterity often compared Di Qing with Yue Fei, but I think That Yue Fei is much luckier than Di Qing, because Qin Juniper's badness is well known, the structure of Yue Fei is also a clear gun, Yue Fei's sacrifice is also a kind of self-fulfillment, so it has achieved the admiration of future generations; and Di Qing's tragedy is because of the mistakes of the times, his opposite, standing on the side of the literati and the good man Emperor Song Renzong, who is praised by later generations, these people's exclusion of Di Qing is not so clear as black and white. So Di Qing was blackened for a while, because some acting novels or film and television dramas were blackened in these works in order to shape the characters and create the plot.
If Di Qing had not died at the age of 49, would the Northern Song Dynasty have survived for a longer period of time?