In Chinese history, the Ming Dynasty was the last unified feudal dynasty established by the Han Chinese. The Ming Dynasty lasted for 276 years, and the first emperor was Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born in the grassroots. Perhaps accustomed to the corruption of the feudal government, Zhu Yuanzhang abhorred corruption after he ascended the throne and ordered a strict rectification of the official atmosphere.
Under zhu Yuanzhang's vigorous behavior, the early Ming Dynasty was politically clear and the country was peaceful. In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the national strength turned from prosperity to decline; in the late Ming Dynasty, natural disasters and man-made disasters and foreign enemies invaded, causing the Ming Dynasty's national strength to decline day by day until it perished.
In the most glorious years of the Ming Dynasty, some mysterious and powerful underground organizations were powerful weapons for the emperor to maintain the central group. These mysterious underground organizations resemble the secret service agencies of the revolutionary years.
The four major secret service agencies of the Ming Dynasty that became famous in later generations were the East Factory, the West Factory, the Inner Factory and the Jinyi Guard. These four-legged secret service agencies are responsible for the supervision of the whole country, and they are responsible for cleaning up the actions of corrupt or rebellious criminals as soon as they are discovered. So which of these four institutions is more powerful?
Jinyi Wei
The original intention of the establishment of the Jinyiwei was for military construction. In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the establishment of Jinyiwei was relatively simple, and the smallest units were "Wei" and "Suo". With the gradual development of national construction, Zhu Yuanzhang further improved the structure of the Janissaries. He set up twelve guards, and the Jinyi guards were the most important of the twelve guards.
The work responsibilities of the Jinyi Guard are mainly divided into two parts, one part is to follow the emperor around, responsible for managing the work of the imperial guards and the exhibition ceremonial guard, and the other part becomes the emperor's eye, responsible for the arrest and inspection work.
At the beginning of the Jinyiwei system, the emperor's main purpose was to let them manage the honor guards, but later in the execution of the Jinyiwei, there was a situation of indiscriminate killing of heroes. After much deliberation, the Emperor gradually transformed the functions of the Jinyi Guard into the Emperor's personal policeman.
Jinyiwei has a clear internal division of labor and performs its own duties. Among them, the Nanbei Zhenfu Division was the main institution responsible for criminal cases in the imperial court. The Beizhen Fusi was responsible for assisting in the investigation of the cases approved by the Emperor and had the right to interrogate, arrest and execute criminals on his own. Beizhen Fusi also has its own prison, which is quite feared in the DPRK.
Jinyiwei has strict requirements for recruiting talents and allows for hereditary inheritance. By flipping through historical materials and watching film and television works, it is not difficult to find that many Jinyi guards are hereditary, and they even have grandparents for generations to serve as Jinyi guards and serve the royal family.
The Jinyiwei were directly under the administration of the emperor, so their status in the dynasty was very high. Coupled with the privileges granted to them by the emperor, the Jinyiwei once became an institution that held the power to kill and kill the subjects. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the actions of the Jinyi guards became more and more unscrupulous, they used their power for personal gain, and indiscriminately killed innocent heroes, which made the emperor and the group of subjects fall into an embarrassing situation of opposition.
East Factory and West Factory
In order to maintain his rule and prevent outsiders from taking advantage of it, Zhu Di specially designed a reconnaissance agency that lived in the imperial palace and was commanded by eunuchs and could be deployed at any time, the East Factory. It is called Dongchang mainly because this eunuch institution is located on the north side of Dong'an Gate.
In the beginning, the East Factory was only responsible for arrest and did not have the right to independently interrogate and detain prisoners. Later, it continued to develop into the late Ming Dynasty, and Dongchang also had its own prison. The scope of inspection of the East Factory is very extensive, from the group of ministers and major institutions, down to the ordinary people, we can see the inspection figure of the East Factory.
Compared with the Jinyiwei, the East Factory was established later, but it was easier to gain the emperor's trust because of its proximity to the center of power. Later, the East Factory and Jinyiwei even developed a superior-subordinate relationship, and the boss of the Jinyiwei still had to be polite and polite when he saw the leaders of the East Factory.
The West Factory is an inspection institution that has existed for a relatively short time, and during the existence of the West Factory, the people of the west factory complained and suffered troublingly. The West Factory was created to help the emperor gather information, but unfortunately, the leaders of the West Factory were corrupt and abused their power for personal gain, resulting in many innocent officials suffering from it.
Just five months after the establishment of the West Factory, the courtiers jointly wrote to remove Wang Zhi, the leader of the West Factory, from his position and applied for the abolition of the West Factory. Ming Xianzong looked at Wang Zhi's earth-shattering guilt and immediately ordered the cancellation of the West Factory. But not long after, the suspicious emperor resumed the West Factory under the persuasion of his traitors.
After the restoration of the West Factory, Wang Zhi became more unscrupulous, and the hundred officials of the group had words of suffering. Wang Zhi once reached the peak of his power through so-called big cases. Gradually, Wang Zhi was lost in the officialdom. His arrogance eventually led him and his West Factory to the silent hill of history.
Internal factories and three major secret agencies
The name of the inner factory is not large, and the power is no less than that of the East and West Factory. After Emperor Mingwuzong ascended the throne, the eunuch Liu Jin became a red man with great power. At that time, Liu Jin was in charge of the East-West Factory, but the struggle and power struggle between the East-West Factory made the two institutions always stand on opposite sides. To this end, Liu Jin secretly set up the inner factory as an institution, which was specifically responsible for observing the movements of the East and West Factory and Jinyiwei.
The Inner Factory was not an imperial institution, it was set up by Liu Jin and directly led. In the years when Liu Jin held great power, the development of the inner factory was also in the sky. It was not until later that Liu Jin's power fell away that the emperor abolished the inner factory.
After combing through the history of the Ming Dynasty, we can find that there were four major secret service agencies standing on all four legs. If we want to say which of these secret service agencies is more powerful, then we can only say that in different historical periods, the institutions that stand at the peak of power are different.
In the face of several major secret service agencies, different emperors have different choices. In order to consolidate their rule, they vainly want to monitor the whole country to maintain their rule.
The emperor's paranoia and the four-legged establishment of the secret service agency made the government organization of the Ming Dynasty increasingly chaotic. The mutual killing of the four major secret service agencies also made Zhongliang die and the traitor ascend to heaven. This deformed political situation eventually pushed the Ming Dynasty to its demise.
Many people say that the Ming Dynasty did not die because of the invasion of liukou, but because of the quarrel between factory guards.
brief summary:
In the more than two hundred years that the Ming Dynasty ruled the land of China, the four major secret agencies were despised by the world while being feared. They originally existed to maintain imperial power, but they were used as tools for personal gain by people with hearts, and eventually laid a "solid" foundation for the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
The hearts of the military and the people are not aligned, how Tarzan moved. The more political institutions are set up, the better, and the tighter the control of people's hearts, the better. Once the pattern of the emperor killing loyal subjects by mistake and believing in the treacherous and villainous people becomes the norm of rule, it is not far from the destruction of the dynasty and the destruction of the country.