In 1644, the city of Beijing was attacked by the army led by Li Zicheng, the king of chuang, and the then Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youguan fled to Coal Mountain with the eunuch Wang Cheng'en, and Zhu Youjian felt that he had no face to see his ancestors, so he covered his face with hair and hanged himself.
When he was dying, the eunuch did not forget to sigh: If the loyal sage is still there, why did the matter come to this point! Prior to this, Zhu Youjian's brother Emperor Zhu Youxiao also said when he gave way to him: Zhongxian is loyal to people and can be used.
When it comes to Wei Zhongxian, he is the representative of a "traitorous minister" who is hated to the point of itching his teeth, but at this time he is praised for being able to save Daming's reputation for ruining the situation, but why is it? Is it true that the image of the "traitor" that people have long identified as a "traitor" is false?
In fact, the so-called "traitorous courtiers" refer to those courtiers who are disloyal to the king and rely on the art of selling power to eventually mislead the country. If Zhu Youxiao was counted as a "loyal subject" during his reign, Wei Zhongxian could be said to have borne the brunt of it. Although he "flaunted power and persecuted Zhongliang", the national treasury at that time was surprisingly abundant, and the place was quite stable, and even the Manchu Qing regime in the northeast did not take advantage of it at all.
Under such circumstances, how did Wei Zhongxian, the person, become the representative of the word "traitor"?
Then we have to mention the opposite of Wei Zhongxian, a bureaucratic class political group represented by "Jiangnan Shi dafu", which is simply the "Donglin Party". In other words, Wei Zhongxian at that time, like the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, offended the gentry who had the "right to disseminate public opinion" and "dance and ink".
After Zhu Youjian succeeded to the throne, he purged the "castration party clique" headed by Wei Zhongxian with lightning speed. From this, it can be imagined that the "Donglin Party members" who were already in opposition to Wei Zhongxian would inevitably retaliate in various ways!
So, as a eunuch, how did you do it to influence the outcome of the Ming Dynasty?
Dating back to the Ming Dynasty's Wanli years, the Wanli Emperor "fought" with the cabinet for more than ten years because of the "prince's affairs", and in the future, he simply ignored the government for 30 years, at this point, the Ming Dynasty began to gradually enter a chaotic stage. But thinking about it, after all, Daming Jiangshan was still the old Zhu family, and he couldn't just destroy it in his own hands, but he didn't want to compromise with the minister. At this opportunity, the eunuchs gradually acted as intermediaries and began to wield power.
But who would have thought that the further back they went, the greater the power in the hands of the eunuchs, so that the officials who were originally officials in the court were some excluded or liquidated. Coupled with Wei Zhongxian's great washing, the remaining ministers up and down the government and the public were basically his "followers". You can imagine how degenerate his character has degenerated.
Faced with such a miasma of black smoke, the young and vigorous Chongzhen Emperor was determined to clean up this group of "castrated parties" that disrupted the program of the dynasty! Therefore, after he declared his ascension to the throne, in order to revitalize the Ming Dynasty, the first thing he ordered was to begin liquidating the "castration clique". After that, the "Donglin Party" once again controlled the Ming court.
Imagine that the Chongzhen Emperor, who had no political experience, liquidated the old and treacherous eunuchs, no doubt cutting off his right arm, and creating favorable conditions for the "Donglin Party" to oppose himself. In fact, before Zhu Youxiao succeeded to the throne, the eunuchs and the Donglin Party members were in contention, and the Emperor of the Apocalypse, Zhu Youxiao, could sit behind and reap the benefits of the fishermen. And now that the Donglin Party, which resembles a human spirit, has no opponents, it is undoubtedly smooth sailing and smooth all the way.
So what method did Wei Zhongxian use to suppress the Donglin Party? The answer is absolute obedience, not to reason with you at all, and if you don't listen to what you say, then die. It is precisely because of this situation that the country's governing policy and financial policy have begun to undergo fundamental changes. The most obvious thing is the abolition of taxes such as commercial taxes and mining taxes, which are the most important financial revenues of the imperial court, and then the vast number of poor people are the victims of the trend
So why is this, is the Chongzhen Emperor really stupid to that point? In fact, this is not the case, because most of the Donglin Party members in the court are representatives of the Jiangnan family, and the abolition of the commercial tax can bring broad benefits to them and the families they represent. But the truth is that the Chongzhen Emperor was clearly fooled by these high-ranking intellectuals.
If Old Wei was still there, how could these people who could only move their mouths dare to be so arrogant? After all, he did not have a so-called family class, only a heart that swore allegiance to the Emperor Daming. The truth of the cold lips and cold teeth is well known, how could the experienced Wei Zhongxian not understand. As long as the Ming Dynasty is still there, I Wei Lao'er will have the power under one person and above ten thousand people.
Nowadays, Wei Zhongxian has been executed, no one has earned money for the emperor, and the imperial power has been almost empty, and the situation was once extremely embarrassing. The imperial treasury was empty, so he ordered the organization to be streamlined and the number of personnel to be reduced, so that Li Zicheng, who had lost his job, had the reason for exposing the uprising; the army was short of food and wages, and the army could not resist the Eight Banner Army outside Guanwai and the peasant rebel army inside.
Later, Li Zicheng, the king of the Chuang Dynasty, proposed that the imperial court pay millions of taels of silver to withdraw its troops from the truce, which should have been a good thing, but the government and the public were extremely distressed, and the reason was that they could not come up with this money. Who knew that after Beijing was captured, Li Zicheng's silver stolen amounted to tens of millions of taels!
Think about it again, if Old Wei were alive, would he be able to have such an embarrassment? Directly a fundraising order, who dares not follow, that is death! Unfortunately, Wei Zhongxian, who was able to charge for Zhu Youjian, was already facing the loess with his back to the sky, and the Donglin Party members, who used to be full of "loyalty and patriotism", turned around and became the submissives of Li Zicheng and the Manchu Qing regime after he hanged himself, and continued to be prominent officials.
After all, it is not a single disaster, because his own enthusiasm, without thinking about the overall situation, finally ruined his dynasty. In such a historical background, how should loyalty and adultery be judged?