China's ancient history is very wonderful, with dozens of dynastic changes, one monarch after another on the stage of history, no matter whether the ruling emperor is clear and intelligent or faint and incompetent, the imperial court will always appear some bribery and corruption, thus producing corrupt officials. There are also many emperors in history who hate corrupt officials very much, such as Zhu Yuanzhang of the Ming Dynasty, who devoted his life to eliminating corrupt officials inside and outside the imperial court, he implemented a series of policies to control corrupt officials, and even executed his son-in-law who was corrupt and bribed, but even under such regulations, the corrupt officials of the Ming Dynasty were still as crazy as weeds and difficult to remove.
According to a volume of the History of Ming, there were more than 100 traitors in the Ming Dynasty, and the existence of one of them was very abrupt. It is said that when the guards searched for property, why did this Yan Song, who was called a "traitorous courtier", have as much family property as the qing officials in the imperial court? Supposedly, traitors will have a lot of property, what is going on?
Yan Song was very intelligent since childhood, and under the strict education of his father, he won the first place in the township examination at the age of 19 and began his career as an official eunuch. Yan Song was an upright person and did not collude with the bribery of the officialdom, so until the age of 40, he was still only a small position of guozijian. However, when he was fifty years old, he suddenly understood the way of the officialdom, and in order to promote his official position, he began to seduce Xia Yan and get close to the Jiajing Emperor. The Jiajing Emperor indulged in "xiu xian" and took Taoism as his faith, and gave the agarwood leaf crown to the ministers, and Yan Song saw this situation, so he hung up what the emperor had given him and flattered him in front of the emperor, thus winning the emperor's favor.
Shoufu Xia Yan believed that the Jiajing Emperor ignored the government and indulged in absurd and superstitious things, which was really faint and incompetent, and expressed his dissatisfaction to the emperor several times, and for a long time, the Jiajing Emperor slowly had an opinion on Xia Yan. At this time, in order to curry favor with Emperor Jiajing, Yan Song proposed that Emperor Jiajing's biological father be named and included in the Taimiao Temple, at this time, Emperor Jiajing was very happy, believing that Yan Song was his rare confidant, Yan Song easily replaced Xia Yan's position and became the first assistant, at this time Yan Song had tasted the sweetness of power, and his desire could not be satisfied.
After Yan Song ascended to the position of first assistant, his ambitions began to slowly unfold, and in order to tilt his power in the imperial court, he designed to kill the ministers who hindered his power one by one, and even executed Xia Yan, who had the grace to promote him, and the minions of his power had extended throughout the imperial court. As he grew in grade, Yan Song thought he needed to arrange an eyeliner in the imperial court, so he left a position for his son Yan Shifan in the imperial court. Since then, father and son have bought and sold official positions in the imperial court, accepted bribes and money, and turned power to the opposition. The overly ostentatious father and son were eventually reported by the chancellor, and the Jiajing Emperor demoted Yan Song back to his hometown and confiscated all his property, and within a few years, Yan Song died of illness, and after his death, no one went to mourn, which was sad and lamentable.
According to historical records, Yan Song's family search for moral silver was not as much as that of the imperial court's important ministers, only tens of thousands of silver, and there were also folk rumors that Yan Song exchanged the money he had received from the bribe with calligraphy and paintings, which was similar to the biggest corrupt official in the Qing Dynasty.