The "I Ching" says: The terrain is kun, and the gentleman carries things with thick virtue. The gist of it is that a gentleman should increase his virtue and embrace all things. The Analects: Gentlemen, do something, do something, do something. The meaning here is that a gentleman should have his own principles for handling things, and he should have his own choices about what should be done and what should not be done. However, in the pre-Qin period, a gentleman generally meant losing the monarch. Indeed, as a monarch, you should be open and honest.
However, there are always some things, some people, some problems that cannot be solved with tolerance and forgiveness. Under such circumstances, cool officials, Jinyi guards, castration parties, and such officials who have been insulted in history have emerged. There was only one reason for their appearance: to do what would otherwise not be feasible on behalf of the Son of Heaven. However, with the development and passage of time, these subordinates, who were supposed to clear the obstacles for the Son of Heaven and consolidate the court, eventually became the scourge that disturbed the people's livelihood and harmed the courtiers.
Stills of Zhi Du
Cool official: Refers to an official who interrogates with cruel punishment. Ku officials first appeared to help Tianzi act, such as the Western Han Dynasty's ZhiDu, a famous Cool Official who used severe criminal law to suppress lawlessness and maintain social stability at that time in the early Western Han Dynasty. In the early days of the Western Han Dynasty, in order to stabilize the development of society and improve the economic strength of the Western Han Dynasty, the top level of the Western Han Dynasty took "rule by doing nothing" as the basic governance strategy of the Western Han Dynasty. However, it was precisely because of strategic connivance that the powerful forces in some localities swelled rapidly, and some even dared to openly argue with the Western Han Government.
Therefore, this Zhi Du put aside the limitations of the Western Han strategy, adopted the simple method of countering violence with violence, and openly hunted down those who took the lead in making trouble, and quickly curbed the arrogance of those who were powerful. And Zhi Du also became a famous cool official in the Western Han Dynasty because of his cruel means. However, the difference between other "cool officials" is that the purpose of this capital is only to consolidate the development of the Western Han Dynasty, and does not bring more personal purposes. However, the purpose of most cool officials in history to use cruel torture to extract confessions from prisoners is to fight against hostile forces and indiscriminately bite their opponents.
Lai Junchen stills
For example, Lai Junchen and Zhou Xing in the Wu Zetian period. At that time, Wu Zetian ascended the throne, and there were many people in the Tang Dynasty who opposed Wu Zetian's rule, and in order to force everyone to obey, Wu Zetian appointed these cool officials to supervise hundreds of officials, which produced many wrongful and unjust cases. That is to say, the initial purpose of the appearance of cool officials may be good, but later the nature has changed, and these cool officials have become the pawns of the emperor's evil deeds. In the dynasties where cool officials are dominant, the society is often darker and the dynasty is chaotic.
Zhou Xing stills
The same role as the cool officials is also the Ming Dynasty's Jinyi Guard. At that time, after Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, in order to collect intelligence and monitor hundreds of officials, he set up a special "Arch Guard Division", which was later changed to Jinyi Wei. Jinyiwei was directly responsible to the emperor and had enough power to arrest anyone suspected at will, even a relative of the emperor. The Ming Shi Criminal Law Chronicle records: "The two cases of Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu were 40,000 in a row. "There is no shortage of Jinyiwei's figure. It can be seen that with such a department that was above the laws of the imperial court at that time, there must be many shadows in the development of the imperial court.
Stills of The Golden Guard
The more influential than the Cool Officials and the Jinyi Guards belong to the "Castration Party Group". The "castration party" belonged to the emperor's domestic slaves, and their power was naturally greatly related to the connivance of the imperial family. For example, in the late Tang Dynasty, the "castration party" ran rampant, because the festival made the uprising make the imperial family a bird of fright, in order to better supervise the forces of all sides, eunuchs also began to have a place in the military field at that time. And one of the most famous eunuchs in history, Wei Zhongxian, became the "nine thousand years old" who only lived below "Long Live", exercising power instead of the emperor. The decline of the Ming Dynasty was also inextricably linked to the rise of eunuchs to power. It was precisely because of the darkness of the Ming Dynasty that the monarch gradually lost the hearts of the people.
Wei Zhongxian stills
These can be seen that the emergence of cool officials, castration parties, and Jinyi guards was originally for the centralized behavior of ancient emperors, that is to say, the appearance of these officials was the emperors at that time in order to better control the country and stabilize the development of society. However, is it okay to govern the country with cruel penalties or strict surveillance? Obviously not from the perspective of historical development, because only when these emperors really began to think from the perspective of the people and seek the welfare of the people, the people's lives would be stable, so that they could achieve real long-term peace and stability.
References: Book of Han, History of Tang, History of Ming and Criminal Law
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