(The Woman Who Told History – No. 1118)
Who have been rich in history? In 2001, the famous Wall Street Journal asia made a statistic on the richest people in human history in the past 1,000 years, in addition to the well-known Bill Gates and others, There are 6 special people in China on the list: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, He Sheng, Liu Jin, Wu Bingjian, and Song Ziwen.
The sources of wealth of these six rich people are quite interesting, for example, the first two are emperor-level figures, these two Yuan Dynasty emperors are different from the historical Han Dynasty emperors, because of national habits, they have almost spent their lives fighting and plundering, plundering their people, plundering wealth, and the wealth they plundered is in addition to being distributed to the warriors and heroes, the rest is appropriated for themselves, so the wealth is huge, it is staggering.
In addition to the emperor, the real business model to achieve huge wealth, only Wu Bingjian, his business is silk and porcelain, etc., foreign trade is very large, throughout the United Kingdom, the United States, in addition to fixed property such as enterprises, a lifetime of private silver dollars, it is about 26 million to 28 million silver dollars, amazing.
Among these six people, the most ill-fated of the people are He Yan and Liu Jin. These two people are famous in ancient history for their great greed, and among these two people, Liu Jin is the most - his family has 2.5 million gold and 50 million silver, ranking among the top 50 of the world's richest people, and finally was executed by Ling Chi.
Unlike He Yan, he was an official of the Qing Empire, who in addition to corruption, privately operated some business, although it was a plot by means of power, while Liu Jin was different, he was just a eunuch himself, and his huge wealth was basically all earned.
This young man from Xingping, Shaanxi, was adopted by the eunuch Liu Shun in the palace at the age of 6, changed his surname to Liu, and then entered the palace. Judging from this historical record, Liu Jin was probably an orphan. Liu Jin's founder was Emperor Wuzong of Ming. At that time, Emperor Mingwuzong's father, Emperor Xiaozong of Ming, was still reigning, and Liu Jin was arranged to work in the Prince's Mansion of the Eastern Palace, because he was well-behaved and clever, and won the trust of The Crown Prince Zhu Houzhao.
After Emperor Wuzong of Ming succeeded Zhu Houzhao to the throne, the official who gave Liu Jin the title was the head of the ZhongGu Division. The so-called Bell and Drum Division is actually equivalent to an institution dedicated to the entertainment and other activities of the Emperor's Palace, and the personnel and activities such as singing and dancing are organized and arranged by the Bell and Drum Division. The Ming Dynasty Shen Defu's "Wild Harvest Compilation Supplement, Liechao, Forbidden Acting" contains:
"All the dramas in the inner court belong to the Bell and Drum Division."
On the surface, this institution is not very conspicuous, in fact, this institution has more opportunities to approach the emperor, and its power is very large. We all know that there was an institution in the Qing Dynasty called the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which evolved from the Ming Bell and Drum Division.
To put it bluntly, most of emperor Ming Wuzong's activities other than government affairs had to be arranged by Liu Jin. It just so happened that when Emperor Mingwuzong succeeded to the throne, he was only 15 years old, and it was a young man who inevitably indulged in fun. Liu Jin was also extremely good at figuring out the intentions, and every day he changed his tricks to make fun things, songs and dances to make the emperor happy.
As a result, Emperor Mingwuzong had a lot of fun, and his trust in Liu Jin increased day by day, and his official status increased accordingly.
Of course, if you simply play, coax the emperor to be happy, and then get a high-ranking position yourself, it will be enough, and after Liu Jin's status was promoted, he began to use means to amass huge wealth and interfere in the government affairs.
Of course, when eunuchs amass wealth, they must use the guise of the emperor. Under the inducement of Liu Jin, Emperor Mingwuzong adopted one of Liu Jin's suggestions: more than 300 imperial palaces were set up on the outskirts of Gyeonggi, and in the name of the emperor, they amassed wealth. The huge amount of money he amassed and the degree of madness of his wealth caused panic and dissatisfaction among the courtiers, and liu jian and other ministers of the court and china advised the emperor one after another, but the final result was that the impeachment of the courtiers failed, and Liu Jin was not only not killed, but promoted to the chief of the ceremonial supervisor.
Since then, the imperial power has basically been controlled by Liu Jin, and the voices opposing him are almost never heard again in the imperial court.
Next, Liu Jin walked in three steps:
The first step is to organize special institutions to let them search around for fun to provide the emperor with fun, such as imitating the market in the palace to establish a market in which the emperor can experience life; but this is not exciting enough, and later simply imitate the Qinglou outside the palace in the palace, establish a brothel, dress up as a palace woman and concubine, dance, sing small songs, all kinds of music are imitated outside the palace, Ming Wuzong is happy, indulging in it;
The second step was to rely on the emperor's trust and laissez-faire, constantly crack down on dissidents, and make the power in his hands more stable, and even Liu Jian, the first assistant minister left by Emperor Xiaozong of Ming, was forced to resign and return to his hometown;
The third step is to have the trust of the emperor and eliminate dissidents, leaving us with a large amount of wealth. In order to accumulate wealth, Liu Jin did have a big move, and there were three core gold mining methods:
The first is a must-kill skill, a trick to get rich.
He suggested to the emperor that all the treasuries of the provinces should be transported to the Capital Division and stored in the imperial treasury, so that the treasury would be very rich. Ming Wuzong thought this suggestion was very good and accurately played. This can be described as the wealth of the whole empire, gathered in one place, and its vastness is self-evident. But it is precisely like this that Liu Jin took this opportunity to fill his own pockets and eat a meal. At the same time as the treasury is rich, his personal wealth can also be imagined.
The second type can be called a fixed income, which is known in history as "bye-bye ceremony".
That is to say, when officials from all over the world go to Beijing to report on their work, they must first meet Liu Jin, not see him, let alone how well they have achieved their work, and whether the hat can be saved is an unknown. Therefore, when officials from all over the world came to see Liu Jin, they could not take gifts with them by the way like relatives, but they had to pay heavy gifts, so as little as silver thousands of taels, as many as thousands of taels, or even ten thousand taels.
In this way, once or twice is OK, once it becomes the norm, some local officials have relatively tight incomes, and they can't come up with the "greeting ceremony" at all. He had to borrow a loan shark at the rich house of the Beijing Master as a way to meet Jin Xiaojing Liu Jin, and then slowly use various taxes to repay the loan after returning home. History is called "Beijing Loan".
There are many officials, and the cumulative amount of their visits and gifts is huge and amazing.
The third can be called official business, scattered income.
Such phenomena have appeared many times in the past dynasties, such as He yan once relied on the power in his hands to clearly mark the price of the official positions of the empire, but the law of he yan may even be imitating Liu Jin, but it can also be said that it is a certain necessity of the officialdom at some time in ancient times.
Although the official business was only Liu Jin's scattered income, the amount of gold and silver obtained from the sale of official positions was also very objective. For example, there is an inspector named Liu Yu, who wants to be promoted, so he takes the silver to Liu Jin to carry out activities, and the first shot is very generous, directly sending ten thousand gold. What a generous thing! Liu Jin is generally impressed by such patrons and pays special attention. After that, Liu Yu sent tens of thousands of taels of silver. Liu Jin used his power to promote Liu Yu to be a soldier Shangshu.
In addition, in order to further loot money, Liu Jin also specially arranged for his cronies to serve as officials in richer places to accumulate wealth for him.
Conclusion: Although Liu Jin controlled the imperial power and ran amok for a while, it did not last long. In 1510, Zhang Yong exposed Liu Jin to Emperor Wuzong of Ming, summarizing 17 felonies. During the reign of Emperor Wuzong of Ming, there were 8 eunuchs' cronies, known in history as the "Eight Tigers", each in charge of a stall. This Zhang Yong is one of the "Eight Tigers", and is the head of many institutions such as the Twelve Regiment Battalion, the General Divine Machine Battalion, the Imperial Supervisor, the Admiral Shang Shan, the Shang Yi, the Si Shi, and the Internal Officials and Supervisors, and can be said to be holding several positions.
Judging from the situation in Shi Zai, although Zhang Yong was a eunuch, his character was not bad, and everything had rules and bottom lines, so although he and Liu Jin were colleagues in the same camp at the beginning, as Liu Jin's misdeeds became more and more serious, the contradiction between Zhang Yong and Liu Jin became more and more serious - until Zhang Yong personally stated Liu Jin's crimes.
If it was another minister, Ming Wuzong would probably not believe it, but Zhang Yong was not an ordinary minister, and he was also a close confidant of Ming Wuzong. Therefore, in addition to being shocked, Emperor Mingwuzong interrogated Liu Jin, and the result was quite a few crimes. After that, Emperor Mingwuzong personally led a team to raid Liu Jin's house, and found a staggering amount of gold and silver in his mansion, and countless other property. Zhao Yi of the Qing Dynasty wrote a book called the Twenty-Two Historical Notes, which described the wealth data of Liu Jin when he was raided:
"Gold 2.5 million taels, silver 50 million taels, the rest of the treasures are fine and soft can not be counted."
Emperor Wuzong was very angry and ordered Liu Jin's property to be confiscated and immediately executed.
In this way, liu jin, the great eunuch who was full of evil, ended his life of misdeeds.
References: "Ming History Chronicle", "Ming History", etc.