In the Ming Dynasty, there were more terrifying organizations than the East and West Factories and the Jinyi Guards? This is really lonely.
"Factory Guard"
As we all know, the Ming Emperor set up a number of secret service agencies in order to supervise hundreds of officials.
Unlike the functions of the imperial masters, these institutions often acted in secret, specializing in picketing and collecting evidence of the mistakes and incriminating crimes of civil and military officials, especially those that were unfavorable to the state, such as conspiracy and rebellion.
At first, the emperor only set up the Jinyi Guard, which was established in the eighteenth year of Hongwu, but later after Zhu Di ascended the throne, he was afraid that the hundred officials would oppose him, so he specially set up the East Factory, which was jointly called "Factory Guard" with the Jinyi Guard.
You don't have to say that the strengthened secret service system is really powerful, helping Zhu Di solve a lot of troubles. Coupled with the fact that Zhu Di was an authoritative and capable emperor, the factory guards could indeed consolidate imperial power in his hands.
But the emperor in the back could not do it.
During the Chenghua years, the emperor felt that he could not play the East Factory, so he simply created another West Factory, but its power exceeded that of the East Factory.
This is interesting, the purpose of the establishment of the factory guard is to supervise hundreds of officials, but the more complicated the emperors play, the leaders of the three secret service agencies are also secretly competing, and even in order to ask for credit, they are often tortured, resulting in many unjust, false and wrong cases.
This is not to mention, even more will deliberately frame Zhongliang, casually plant a crime and hand it over to the emperor.
The factory guards are directly ruled by the emperor, and it can be said that the emperor has absolute trust in them. But after a long time, the emperors also discovered that they were fighting each other and wronging good people.
No, during the Zhengde period, the emperor authorized the grand eunuch Liu Jin to establish a larger and more powerful "insider factory".
As the name suggests, "insider" is an agency that does things internally, supervising three other secret service agencies in addition to its subjects.
That is to say, the emergence of the insider factory has broken the previous situation of three divisions of the world.
It is reasonable to say that this is a good thing, at least it can restrain the factory guards from coming as before, so why is this institution rarely heard of in history? Why are they called "terrorist organizations" by civilian and military officials and ordinary people?
According to historical records, from the establishment to the abolition of the inner factory, a total of 5 years before and after, but in these 5 years, they did all the bad things, and their cruel acts were even worse than those of the East and West Factories.
Why? This is mainly because of its leader, Liu Jin.
Insider factory
Although Liu Jin was a red man around the Zhengde Emperor, he had not been able to completely control the Dongxi Factory, because the cabinet at that time had great power, and the Dongxi Factory and the Jinyi Wei seemed to be close to the Cabinet.
In this way, not only could he not grasp the power of life and death, but his own life was also in the hands of others. Liu Jin is an ambitious person, and in many competitions with the East-West Factory, the two sides have almost become sworn enemies.
In desperation, Liu Jin could only coax Zhengde and expose the old bottom of many things factory, such as wronging good people to fight for merit.
When the emperor heard that this was still possible, he agreed to Liu Jin's request and established a more powerful insider factory.
In fact, Zhengde also knew that the cabinet at that time had great power, otherwise he would not have hidden in the leopard room and established his own "small cabinet".
However, Liu Jin was a villain, and with the support of the emperor and the blessing of the power in his hands, he would be lawless in doing things.
To say that the previous things factory was still sneaky, but Liu Jin was fierce and fierce, and he could blatantly install charges at will, not only civil and military officials, but also many people in the east and west factories and Jinyi guards were framed.
Tired of evil deeds
According to the "History of Ming", when the inner factory was established, it ostensibly advocated mitigating punishment, but in fact, as long as the convicted person, regardless of the size of the crime, was sentenced to 200 rods, and then permanently killed, he was not allowed to leave.
Even if the permanent edge is also calculated, it is also specially customized about 150 pounds of shackles, and the prisoner drags the injured body, carrying such a weight of the shackles, and will be tortured to death in a few days.
Judging from the list of criminals in the "History of Ming", there are dozens of officials with more than five pins, including many sages such as Shi Zhong, Gongbu Lang Zhang Wei, and so on.
This is only the number of people above five pins, and it is not known how many people have been framed below.
Of course, in addition to the civil and military officials, the East and West Factories were also suppressed and bullied by him.
According to the records of the Ming Shi And Criminal Law Chronicle III, a supervisor of the East Factory was tortured to death after being "washed and punished" because of insulting Liu Jin.
The so-called washing, is to use an iron brush to pull on the prisoner's body, the kind of skin open flesh scene do not have to think about.
In addition to "washing", there are many creepy-sounding punishments, such as "sucking intestines", "peeling grass" and so on.
How many people can survive such torture?
Because of this, not to mention that officials must kneel first when they see them, that is, the other three institutions in the factory guard will also take a detour when they see them, for fear of causing any trouble.
However, Liu Jin's various bad deeds, the Zhengde Emperor did not completely ignore the question, when the cabinet power issue was almost handled, Zhengde and the backhand killed him. As for the insider factory, it was also dissolved in an instant, and even the west factory was dissolved.
Therefore, the world only knows that Liu Jin has done many evils, but they do not know that this is the result of Zhengde's killing.
In the end, the insult was borne by Liu Jin, and the Zhengde Emperor sat on the fisherman, so it is no wonder that the world has a positive and negative argument against the Zhengde Emperor.
Reference: History of the Ming Dynasty