JinyiWei and the East Factory and the West Factory, collectively known as the Factory Guards, were the secret service organs of the Ming Dynasty that carried out the "Zhao Prison" (collectively referred to as the investigation and handling of various cases under the emperor's orders) outside the three judicial departments of the Punishment Department, the Inspectorate, and the Dali Temple. Because factory guards can arbitrarily arrest and torture confessions without abiding by the laws of Daming, both officials and ordinary people in the Ming Dynasty were very afraid of being targeted by factory guards and becoming their guests.
Zhu Yuanzhang established the Jinyi Guard
Jinyi Wei was originally a personal military bodyguard of the Ming Emperor, originally called Yiluansi, but it was an institution that took charge of the ceremonial guard for the emperor. In the fifteenth year of Hongwu (1382), Zhu Yuanzhang changed it to "Jinyi Wei Pro-Army Command envoy division", with one command envoy, all of which included 1,500 generals, lux soldiers, lieutenants, and soldiers.
The wei subordinate institutions of Jinyiwei are the Southern and Northern Town Fusi. The Nanzhen Fusi was mainly in charge of the punishment involved in the Weizhong and the management of military craftsmen, while the Beizhen Fusi was specifically in charge of the "Zhao Prison" work arranged by the emperor.
Because the Zhenfu Division interrogated prisoners, tortured them to extract confessions, and illegally abused them, the people's resentment boiled over. In order to appease the people's anger, Zhu Yuanzhang once ordered the burning of Weizhong's special torture devices in the twentieth year of Hongwu (1387), and sent all prisoners in prison to the Punishment Department for trial, and issued an edict stating that in the future, internal and external prisons would be handed over to the three divisions for trial, so as to reduce unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang was always very suspicious of his courtiers, and although the Jinyiwei temporarily lost the power to interrogate prisoners, the duty of spying on intelligence still existed, and Zhu Yuanzhang was full of Jinyiwei spies he arranged inside and outside the imperial court to serve as a tool for intelligence gathering.
Zhu Di established the East Factory
In the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), After the Battle of Jingnan, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di moved the Ming Dynasty's capital division to Beijing, and immediately set up the East Factory north of Dong'anmen, using it to spy on the behavior of his subjects to "conspire against evil words and commit great treachery". Because Zhu Di was not in the right position, he was worried that the ministers in the court had reservations about him, and he could not fully trust the Jinyi guards left by Zhu Yuanzhang, so Zhu Di specially appointed his most trusted eunuch to become the viceroy of Dongchang, thus breaking Zhu Yuanzhang's principle of prohibiting eunuchs from interfering in politics, and eunuchs began to supervise Dongchang, which also became the tradition of Dongchang, a Ming dynasty secret service agency.
After the establishment of the East Factory, eunuchs had the power to arrest and torture subjects at will. In order to balance the power of the East Factory and the Jinyi Guards, Zhu Di ordered the subordinate personnel of the East Factory to be transferred, and at the same time gave the eunuchs who were the governor of the East Factory the power to monitor the Jinyi Guards, so that the factory guards depended on each other and supervised each other, and did not dare to have any behavior that violated Zhu Di, becoming the most important tool for him to implement the rule of secret agents.
Emperor Mingxianzong established the West Factory
In the year of Chenghua, Emperor Xianzong, in order to strengthen the rule of secret agents, set up the West Factory in addition to jinyiwei and the east factory, and made the eunuch Wang Zhi the viceroy. Wang Zhi adopted Wei Ying of JinyiWei as his confidant, expanded the number of personnel in the West Factory to twice as many as the East Factory, and the scope of influence spread to most of China, causing panic in the hearts of the people, and finally Xianzong and Chenghua were forced to close the West Factory in the eighteenth year (1482).
However, during the Zhengde period, the West Factory was reopened due to Liu Jin's monopoly. However, at this time, because the viceroy of the East Factory was Qiu Ju and the Admiral of the West Factory was Gu Dayong, although the two were the same as Liu Jin's family, they had always been at odds, so the contradictions between the East and West Factories intensified during this period, and Liu Jin had to set up a "Neihang Factory" directly commanded by Liu Jin on top of the East and West Factories to directly supervise the East and West Factories.
epilogue
The Ariake generation, the Jinyiwei and the Dongxi Second Factory, are all equal in administrative subordination, they are all secret service agencies directly under the emperor, and their main job and task is to inquire about all the valuable information inside and outside the court for the emperor. Their relationship has both intersection and oversight. No one listened to anyone, and if there was, they all listened to the emperor.
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