Some people explain that Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang likes to kill people because he has a super desire for power; others say that he kills countless people because of his grassroots origin and extreme lack of confidence in himself. Admittedly, there are both reasons, but the main factor is that some of the officials who were killed really deserved to be killed.
Hu Weiyong formed a party for personal gain, and if he did not kill him, sooner or later it would become a major problem for the imperial court; Lan Yu was arrogant and arrogant, trying to override the imperial power, which was also something that Zhu Yuanzhang could not tolerate. However, the purging of Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu is a political issue, and whether they should be killed or not depends entirely on Zhu Yuanzhang's personal wishes.
Then officials who abuse their power for personal gain and are corrupt and corrupt are not wronged at all. Throughout the Hongwu period, countless officials were killed for greed, from six officials to founding heroes, as long as the embezzled silver exceeded sixty taels, all of them were executed without exception.
Zhu Yuanzhang was never soft on corrupt officials, and could even be described as cruel, because the two criminal laws he commonly used were "Ling Chi" and "peeling the skin and grass", and the specific execution process was known to many people, which was definitely a very frightening criminal law. Even so, however, officials were so obsessed with the matter of greed that they could not stop them.
During the Hongwu period, there were two of the six Shangshu who embezzled huge sums of money. One of them was Hubu Shangshu, this person was called Zhao Mian, Zhao Mian was a jinshi of Hongwu in the eighteenth year, and the second rank seventy-one, the results were not particularly outstanding. However, he was able to be promoted to Hubu Shangshu in just four years, in addition to his own ability, it was naturally indispensable to Zhu Yuanzhang's weight for him.
In the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu, Zhao Mian only served as a Hubu Shangshu for three years, but he was greedy for more than 100,000 taels of silver. After Zhu Yuanzhang learned about it, in addition to anger and heartache, the cadre he had pulled by his own hand actually made him feel cold and disappointed. Just when Zhu Yuanzhang sent someone to secretly investigate Zhao Mian, he actually found a particularly unexpected thing.
Portrait of a Ming Dynasty official
To a large extent, this incident eased his sense of anger towards Zhao Mian. Because of these more than 100,000 taels of silver, most of them were bribes that Zhao Mian's wife, Liu Shi, had privately accepted behind his back. In order to find out the truth of the matter, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to personally go to the Zhao Mansion and "visit" Zhao Mian's wife Liu Shi at night.
On this day, Zhu Yuanzhang deliberately sent someone to leave Zhao Mian in the household department to work overtime, and in the evening, he asked a Jinyi guard to dress up as a local official, and he himself dressed as an official's personal entourage, and the two came to the door of the Zhao mansion together. As Zhu Yuanzhang expected, at first Liu Shi refused to let them in on the grounds that it was late.
But when Liu Shi got a letter from Zhu Yuanzhang, he immediately invited them to the living room because she smelled gifts. Zhu Yuanzhang had already given the question to Jinyiwei in advance, and after some greetings, he entered the main topic. Hubu Shangshu has great power, mainly responsible for the household registration, land and taxation of the whole country, of course, the use and management of special funds are also under the control of the Household Department.
According to Zhu Yuanzhang's plan, Jin Yiwei hoped that Zhao Mian could open a back door on the issue of taxation and special funds. However, when they deliberately learned that Zhao Mian was not at home and were about to leave disappointedly, they did not expect that Liu Shi would be able to take out a big package, as long as they could come up with five thousand taels of silver, they would definitely be able to do it.
At this moment, Zhu Yuanzhang could figure out that Zhao Mian was not false, but his wife was more greedy, more hateful, and more deserving of killing than her husband! The reason why Zhao Mian's wife, Liu Shi, dared to accept bribes so boldly was because she was not an ordinary person, but the daughter of Liu Sanwu, the great Confucian of the early Ming Dynasty.
Liu Sanwu was a great Confucian in the early Ming Dynasty, who had published the Three Disciplines to Take the Scholar's Law and successively transferred to hanlin, and Zhu Yuanzhang often asked him for advice on strategies for governing the country and ensuring the security of the country and selecting the best and the most capable, and was highly respected by Zhu Yuanzhang. After Zhu Yuanzhang left the Zhao Mansion, he had been thinking about how to deal with Zhao Mian and his wife, and the death penalty was certainly inevitable, embezzling more than 100,000 taels of silver, enough for them to die many times.
Liu Sanwu
However, if it is not handled properly, it will definitely backfire, because Zhao Mian is Hubu Shangshu, and coupled with Liu Sanwu's relationship, it is really difficult to grasp. At this moment, Zhao Mian returned home, and Liu Shi was overjoyed to tell Zhao Mian what had just happened, and also took out the five thousand two silver tickets left by Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhao Mian was more sophisticated in the end, and he carefully inquired about the appearance, accent and characteristics of Liu's two men. Zhu Yuanzhang's appearance characteristics are very obvious, Liu Shi slightly described, Zhao Mian became suspicious, and then he sent his family to quietly climb the roof, and vaguely saw many figures circling around the Zhao Mansion.
Who would dare to stalk Shoshu's mansion except Kintobe Shoshu? Zhao Mian slumped down on the chair and said weakly, "It's over!" It's all over! Liu Shi was very puzzled and asked, "Lord, why are you like this?" What's finished? Zhao Mian's eyes were closed, and he sighed, "The person who just arrived at the palace is Zhu Yuanzhang, and he gave you five thousand taels of silver!" ”
As soon as Liu Shi heard this, his hands and feet were weak, and the silver ticket also fell to the ground, and then he cried loudly, because waiting for their end, there was only one way to die, nothing more than scraping or peeling. In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang did not move for a long time, in addition to not being able to grasp the measure, he also hoped that the couple could wake up and make a self-judgment, which was also considered to save some face for them.
Zhao Mian and his wife did not sleep all night, who wants to say that they are not afraid of death is absolutely a joke, the spirit of the two of them is close to collapse, but when they think of Zhu Yuanzhang's cruel methods, suicide has become the most luxurious thing. The couple hugged and cried, and then took the whole family and committed suicide the next morning.
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