In Chinese history, eunuchs have always been regarded as the eagle dogs of the emperor, they usually take care of the emperor's diet and living, and when the emperor needs it, he will become the representative of the emperor's will in the court and even the people, in order to maintain the power of the emperor and compete with various forces, the most prominent of which is the Ming Dynasty.
Since the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, the taizu emperor Zhu Yuanzhang repeated the history of the Xiao Wall in order to prevent Han and Tang foreign relatives and eunuchs from interfering in the government. It was specifically stipulated that the harem and eunuchs were not allowed to interfere in politics. Ordered the casting of iron plates, standing in the palace gate, the letter "internal ministers shall not interfere in political affairs, offenders beheaded", there are nearly three hundred years, almost no harem interference in politics. But the eunuch's seizure of power did not go as he wished, but intensified, and why was this? In ancient times, I will tell you about the reasons for this phenomenon and the deeper struggle between imperial power and monarchy.
Abolish the prime minister, and the imperial power is supreme
Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was a great hero, who re-established the Han family world after the Yuan Dynasty destroyed the Han legal system and expelled the Mengyuan from the han family's homeland. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, a series of laws and norms were formulated to consolidate the stability of the country. Even in order to consolidate the imperial power and weaken the power of xiang, he did not hesitate to use the Hu Weiyong case to unceremoniously eliminate the product of maintaining the balance between the monarch and the subject for thousands of years, and issued the "Abolition of the Minister, the Doctor, and the Strike of the Zhongshu Edict", abolishing the Minister, abolishing the Zhongshu Province, and all six Shangshu were under the direct leadership of the emperor, and since then the emperor has been both the head of state and the head of the administration.
Since then, the major policies of the country have been based on the emperor alone, and the civilian and military generals are all executors. However, this phenomenon began to change again after Zhu Di launched the Battle of Jingnan to seize the rule of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang would never have imagined that Zhu Di, the King of Yan, would launch the Battle of Jingnan shortly after his death and seize the throne. And Zhu Di, who seized the throne, also had to consider a problem at this time, and rebellion was a high-risk behavior. In the course of his rebellion, there were only a few civilian and military generals who really turned to him. So who can he use when he takes the Ming Dynasty? Foreign relatives? It is unrealistic, after all, these people are still outsiders. The courtiers and military generals were not necessarily reliable, so in the process of his southern expedition to Jing, the eunuchs who always accompanied him around undoubtedly became Zhu Di's best choice, so eunuchs such as Zheng He, Hou Xian, Yi Zhiha, and Ruan An appeared one after another, becoming Zhu Di's right and left arm in governing the country.
A cabinet was established, and the power of the phase rose again
But after all, the governance of the country can not rely on eunuchs alone, Zhu Di obviously does not have the good energy of his father Zhu Yuanzhang to face the huge amount of music every day, so he established a "cabinet".
The Cabinet was actually the Emperor's secretarial team, which was mainly held by cabinet scholars. At the beginning of the establishment, the main work was to carry out the preliminary processing of the chapter on behalf of the emperor, and attach suggestions in the form of a note for the emperor's reference in decision-making, a process known as "voting". If these documents are to be published, they must be "approved" by the emperor, that is, the emperor copies the opinions of the cabinet before they have real administrative effect.
Looking at it this way, we will find out. This cabinet is actually another form of beggar system. However, the original government affairs of the prime minister were changed to a group of people with Hanlin bachelors as cabinet scholars to assist the emperor in the management of state affairs.
Checks and balances on power, honor and nobility, and use eunuchs
So would Zhu Di allow Zhu Yuanzhang's banned chancellor to appear again to constrain his rule? Obviously, he was well versed in the art of trade-offs, and he would not rely solely on the xun and noble classes to balance the power of the civil servants, so after he transferred the center of Ming rule from Nanjing to Beijing, he made large-scale adjustments to the eunuch institutions, and magnified the power of the twenty-four yamen established by Zhu Yuanzhang.
At the beginning of its establishment, the Twenty-Four Gates were not a eunuch system, and its eunuchs in charge did not necessarily adopt eunuchs, it was simply a management body that served the royal family and its family, but after Zhu Di ascended the throne, most of them sent eunuchs to manage. Therefore, the people gradually called eunuchs eunuchs, which is also the true origin of the term eunuch.
So how is the power of the twenty-four gates magnified? ——Establish the East Factory.
It was precisely because of the improper position that in order to enable the eunuchs to have the strength to oppose the civilian bureaucracy and the xungui class, Zhu Di established the notorious secret service agency of the East Factory, whose power was still above the Jinyi Wei established by Zhu Yuanzhang, and was mainly responsible for investigating and spying and monitoring society. The department that directly manages this secret service is the chief of the twenty-four yamen, and it is the chief administrative department of the inner court, which is not only in charge of court affairs, but also the eunuchs who are in charge of approving red and passing on the edicts, so that the power of the monarchy has been infinitely enhanced. The xiang power represented by the civil servants was firmly suppressed by the imperial power.
After the change of civil engineering, the power of the phase expanded, and the suppression of eunuch power was enhanced
However, after Zhu Di's death, this situation of strong kings and weak subjects soon ushered in changes - the change of Tumu Fort.
Before the change of Tumu Fort, due to the unlimited amplification of the monarchy's power and the emperor's excessive dependence on eunuchs, Wang Zhen, the eunuch who was in charge of the Imperial Household during the Ming Yingzong period, arbitrarily interfered in the government affairs, and eventually caused the disaster of Tumu Fort, which buried the Ming Dynasty noble class and a large number of military forces in northern Xinjiang in vain.
After the change of Tumu Fort, because most of the noble class was destroyed, the eunuch clique became the culprit of the change of Tumu Fort. The political status of the civilian-official clique in the Ming Dynasty rose sharply, and the Ming Dynasty began to move from a political pattern of emphasizing both culture and military to emphasizing literature over military force.
After the restoration of Emperor Ming Yingzong, in order to curb the power of the civilian official clique, he began to reuse eunuchs to suppress the civilian clique, which was the beginning of the new imperial power and power struggle of the Ming Dynasty.
After that, during the reign of Emperor Akihito, the power of the cabinet began to expand, and the head of the cabinet was able to draw up edicts, and its power was equivalent to that of the chancellor, and in order to maintain imperial power and exercise effective supervision over the civil servants, Emperor Myeongxianzong established the West Factory in addition to the original East Factory and the JinyiWei Foundation. Together with the East Factory and Jinyi Guard, it is called the Factory Guard. Because the main duty of the West Factory was to investigate the words and deeds of the people's ministers, and had the power to investigate, arrest and interrogate, it was greatly resisted by the Wenchen clique. It was abolished twice, and finally completely abolished during the ming dynasty after Liu Jin was attacked by Wen Chen.
Zhang Juzheng reformed, and The Xiangquan family had a grand short performance
After the Wanli Emperor succeeded to the throne, Zhang Juzheng, as the teacher of the Wanli Emperor and also the first assistant to the cabinet, in order to reverse the ming Dynasty's difficult financial and corrupt bureaucracy, after obtaining the support of the eunuch Feng Bao, began to implement a whip law and an examination method, known in history as Zhang Juzheng reform.
Through these two decrees, the revenue of the Ming Dynasty increased rapidly, and the rule of officials was greatly improved. At the same time, the use of excellent generals such as Qi Jiguang and Yu Daxun will finally solve the problem of the Wokou that has been plaguing the Ming Dynasty's maritime frontier, and the Ming Dynasty once had a recovery situation, known as Wanli Zhongxing.
This period was undoubtedly the era when imperial power had the least influence, and the Xiangquan represented by Zhang Juzheng controlled the political direction of the entire Ming Dynasty. Most of the eunuchs represented by Feng Bao were attached to Zhang Juzheng and assisted him in carrying out political reforms, and Zhang Juzheng's power was so great that it almost completely overshadowed the imperial power.
However, Zhang Juzheng's reform also laid a very deep hidden danger, because these two decrees were more harmful to the interests of the civilian class, after all, a whip law forced a large number of meritorious civilians to pay taxes for their hidden land property, and also lost the opportunity to continue to eat empty wages because of the examination law.
Therefore, after Zhang Juzheng's death, the Wenchen group attacked Zhang Juzheng's reforms and portrayed Zhang Juzheng as an unforgivable courtier. It is also fashionable to make excessive remarks, arbitrarily using the dispute over the foundation of the country to arbitrarily accuse the palace of prohibition. This also made Wanli no longer trust the cabinet and not go to the court for decades. Eunuchs became the main tool for wrestling between Wanli and the courtiers, and the struggle between imperial power and power once again entered a balanced stage.
Wei Zhongxian monopolized power and suppressed the power in the hands of Wen Chen
This balance was broken by Wei Zhongxian during the Ming Dynasty, and because Emperor Xizong greatly favored Wei Zhongxian and was only concerned with Mu Zuo's affairs and had no interest in the government, the government was controlled by Wei Zhongxian.
In order to oppose Wei Zhongxian, the Wenchen clique began to use the original good reputation of the Donglin Party to launch a party struggle. As long as they confronted the Donglin Party, they were portrayed by Shilin as chaotic politicians. This caused chaos in the government, and Wei Zhongxian, who was supported by Emperor Xizong, dismissed and removed all the so-called Qingliu Donglin party members above the court who opposed his rule, and the dissidents in the court, for one thing, gained sole control of the court.
Chongzhen ascended the throne, first suppressed and then raised, maintaining balance, but it was difficult to return
After the death of Emperor Mingxi, Zhu You, the Prince of Xin, who had been supported by the Donglin party, ascended the throne as the Chongzhen Emperor. The Donglin party member Jiaxing Gongsheng Qian Jiazheng took the opportunity to impeach Wei Zhongxian for ten major crimes, after which Wei Zhongxian was sent to Fengyang and committed suicide on the way.
After that, the Donglin Party members made a complete comeback, plotting revenge day and night, and secretly forming parties for personal gain, excluding non-Donglin officials. Chongzhen was educated from an early age that the eunuch party dictatorship was the right to be eradicated, and it was the chaotic subjects who should be eradicated, but he never thought about the imperial power represented behind the castration party. Therefore, after assisting Donglin in the early stage to eliminate Wei Zhongxian, Chongzhen still saw endless party strife, which caused a change in his mentality, and he also began to dislike these courtiers who formed parties for personal gain, and began to reuse eunuchs again, hoping to restore the balance of forces in the government.
However, at this time, the political situation of the Ming Dynasty had collapsed, and even if the Chongzhen Emperor was diligent in his administration, even using eunuchs to assist in handling local affairs, it was too late. After the failure of Zhang Juzheng's reform, the civil service class was reckoned, and the party struggle between Wei Zhongxian and the Donglin party members had already completely hollowed out the foundation of the Ming Dynasty.
The bureaucratic class has long since become a vested group of interests, constantly encroaching on the interests of the state, constantly attacking for the interests of the court, and being corrupt at the local level. The state finances are in difficulty, and there is no money, no food, and no one. However, Chongzhen had the name of an emperor, but did not have the reality of an emperor to solve this series of problems, and finally helplessly brought the Ming Dynasty with nearly three hundred years of national zuo to a tragic end.
epilogue
It is worth mentioning that even if the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty gained high power in the court, there was no case of harming the emperor, which has to be said that the Ming Dynasty's management of eunuchs and the education of loyalty to the king were still quite good.
Finally, we can see that the history of the Ming Dynasty in the past three hundred years can almost be seen as a history of the struggle between imperial power and xiang power, and the emperor and the civilian subjects have constantly tug-of-war with the civilian subjects for the real ruling power of the country, looking for a balance, from the initial Zhu Yuanzhang's strong imperial power to Zhang Juzheng's real power, which truly reflects the transformation of this struggle. The role of eunuchs in this process is the most important part of this, and the change in the power of eunuchs has witnessed the change in strength between imperial power and power.
Because of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Dynasty was influenced by strong imperial power in the early days of the founding of the country, and the country's politics were clear and the military was strong. However, in the ming dynasty of Zhu Di, subject to the gap in the strength of the emperor himself, he began to seek the assistance of the wenchen, and in order to avoid the promotion of the power represented by the wenchen to affect the imperial power, and at the same time, the noble class and the eunuch forces were taken together to assist the imperial power, which was originally from the perspective of power balance, which was not too much of a problem.
However, after the change of Tumu Fort, the collective fall of Xun Gui caused the Wenchen family to dominate, which in turn formed a political pattern of the Ming Dynasty that emphasized literature over military force, and the state's control over the localities was in problems, and the finances were increasingly embarrassing. In order to resist Xiang quan, generations of Ming emperors began to increase the power of eunuchs to suppress the courtiers, but they did not expect that when they arrived at the Chongzhen Emperor, they were played off by Chongzhen, and the eunuch forces that maintained the imperial power were uprooted, and by the time he reacted, it was too late.
It can be seen from this that the Ming Dynasty used eunuchs to balance the power represented by the civil servants, which was no problem at the beginning of the design, but unfortunately, the various forces that were later balanced by each other played the drawbacks of party struggle to the fullest, and eventually buried the Ming Dynasty in vain, so the balance is very important, but the key to checks and balances is the need to establish a good supervision system, but as the peak of the feudal period, the Ming Dynasty lacked such an effective supervision system, and finally embarked on the road of no return.
bibliography:
History of the Ming Dynasty
Ming Shilu
The End of the Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty
The Complete History of China