What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
When Emperor Myōjin ascended the throne at the beginning of the Wanli Calendar, he was a relatively diligent and good young emperor. Under the guidance of teacher Zhang Juzheng, he lectured, loved the sages, loved the people, and used sparingly. He loved to read, Zhang Juzheng believed that although the emperors of ancient times had divine talents, they still needed to strengthen their study, and the Ming Dynasty also had the tradition of opening a feast day for the emperor, and asked for a feast day for the Emperor, and he readily agreed. Every 369 days, Emperor Shenzong went to the court, and the rest of the time he set up a sutra feast in the Wenhua Hall to lecture and read, and there was a special lecturer to preach the history of the scriptures to the emperor, and only when he encountered a great cold and summer, he would quit the sutra feast, and the day of the shang dynasty would also be exempted from the lecture and reading. Zhang Juzheng believed that Taicang (the warehouse where the Ming Dynasty government stored silver money and materials) could not make ends meet, and asked Shenzong to live within his means and reduce unnecessary expenses, although Shenzong was reluctant, but most of them obeyed him, cutting or prohibiting some palace uses, clothing, and rewards. However, after Zhang Juzheng's death, after Emperor Shenzong grew older and began to grasp the imperial power, he became lazy and lazy, what were the manifestations of his slackness, and what was the reason for this?
The sluggishness of the Shenzong sect is mainly reflected in the following aspects: not pro-suburban temples, no imperial court lectures, no dynasty, no ministers, and no issuance of the song chapter.
Not pro suburban temple. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, attached great importance to the sacrifice activities, "Ming Taizu initially decided the world, he did not succeed, the first ceremony, the second round of music, the wide conscription of Confucianism, the division of Cao investigation." In the first year of Hongwu's reign, the Province of Hanlin and the Taichang Division were destined to be ceremonial. It is the reason for the history of the history, and it is decided that the suburban shrine will be entered", the sacrifice of the temple and the heaven and earth should have been held by the emperor himself, and the Divine Sect sent a minister to replace him with a physical condition. The history books record that in the nineteenth year (1591), "enjoying the Taimiao Temple, dispatching officials to travel, and thinking it was normal from the future", to forty-one years (1613), "more than twenty years without bowing to relatives", half of the reign of Emperor Shenzong, was to send officials to sacrifice on his behalf. Twenty-four years later (1596), empress dowager Rensheng died, and Emperor Shenzong also said that he was ill.
Don't talk about it. In the eighteenth year (1590), the japanese prayer was abolished, and since then there has been no prayer day. Not on the Dynasty. Beginning in the fourteenth year (1586), Emperor Shenzong repeatedly exempted himself from the early dynasty, perhaps for physical reasons, and he claimed that he was "temporarily dizzy, dark-eyed, and weak in his limbs, and he was temporarily exempted from preaching for several days, thinking that he would take medicine for rest and make it effective." But in recent days, even taking drugs, I am still weak and dizzy." By the forty-sixth year (1618), Emperor Shenzong "did not regard himself as a man for thirty years."
The recital remains in the middle. In the later period, the operation of the central power organ was already very difficult, and shoufu ye Xianggao sighed, "The sonata of the imperial front is like a mountain, the seal of the signature is as heavy as the sea", "There are even those who have never seen the body of the dynasty for eternity." For example, the cabinet ministers have been confined to the deserted temple for three years, the ministry and the secretary of state have been waiting in the suburbs for several months, and the buses have not been reported to the hills and mountains, and the number of officials who have no office is as high as one hundred and ten."
The neglect of the emperor directly affected the attitude of other forces in the ruling regime:
1. Dali Temple and other supervisory organs. The commentator of the Dali Temple, Yu Renzeng, pointed out that the reason for The Divine Sect's slackness in government was "wine", "color", "wealth", "qi", and "the subject knows His Majesty's disease, so the one who causes it has a reason." When a subject smells alcohol, he rots his intestines, his lust lusts his sex, his greed for money loses his will, and his anger grows." Alcohol. One day, at the instigation of the eunuch Sun Haike, Shenzong went out of the palace to drink, drank heavily, and after getting drunk, he even caused trouble and beat people. Eroticism. After the big marriage, Shenzong began to indulge in the harem, and in the tenth year of the Wanli Calendar (1582), he was given a nine-day funeral, and later the most favored Concubine Zheng guifei was also among them, once, Shenzong went to Empress Li's palace to ask for peace, and then he was fortunate to be in the palace of the Cining Palace, Wang Shi, who became pregnant and gave birth to the emperor's eldest son, Zhu Changluo. Not only were there concubines on the side, but more than ten small eunuchs were favored. avarice. The Divine Sect is essentially a man who is greedy for money. After Zhang Juzheng's death, someone accused him of corruption and bribery, saying that there was treasure hidden in Zhang's mansion, and Shenzong was very impressed with the rumored huge wealth, and raided Zhang Juzheng and several of his sons and brothers, and found a total of 10,000 taels of gold and more than 100,000 taels of silver. The extravagant life in the imperial palace cost a lot of silver, opened a lot of mines throughout the country, sent eunuchs to various places to serve as tax supervisors and mine supervisors, and looted the people's fat and people's ointment. Shangqi. Shenzong had a bad temper and was moody, and often beat and scolded the palace eunuchs for no reason, and some people were beaten to death under the staff. Some outspoken ministers were convicted of disobeying the will of the Divine Sect. We should abstain from sex, alcohol, wealth, and qi. After seeing Cone Yuren's performance, Shenzong was furious and did not admit his mistake and dismissed him. Then there is indeed illness, and alcoholism and lust make the health of the Shinjong a problem. In the fourteenth year of the Wanli Calendar (1586), the twenty-four-year-old Shenzong began to have symptoms of dizziness and weakness.
Second, the auxiliary force represented by Empress Li. When Emperor Shenzong was young, Empress Li, Feng Bao, and Zhang Juzheng all disciplined him very strictly. When Emperor Shenzong read the Analects on the feast, he pronounced "Seboruye" as "back", and when Zhang Juzheng heard it, he reprimanded him in a loud voice that it should be read as "Bo", and Shenzong felt very afraid. Before Emperor Shenzong got married, Empress Li moved to the Qianqing Palace to live with him, supervised his reading, and punished him for kneeling if he slackened off a little, and when he encountered the day of the Shang Dynasty, Empress Li told him to get up on the fifth day. Once Shenzong drank alcohol at a banquet and forced an internal servant to sing, the internal servant could not get away, Shenzong beat him with a sword, and when Empress Li knew, she asked Shenzong to kneel and count his faults. Feng Bao was a eunuch who was the eunuch of Bingbi, and when Shenzong was a child, he loved to play with the palace attendants, and every time Feng Bao came to his palace, he would always sit in danger and was very afraid of Feng Bao. The rebellious element in Shenzong's personality was also one of the reasons for his slackening. When he was young, with the discipline of Zhang Juzheng, Feng Bao, and Empress Li, Shenzong, who was already greedy, could barely make the appearance of being diligent and diligent, and when Zhang Juzheng died, Feng Bao was expelled, and Empress Li was old, Shenzong, who was in his prime, was free and could almost do whatever he wanted. Another point is that in the "dispute over the foundation of the country", Shenzong did not achieve the effect he expected, he disagreed with most of the ministers who supported the establishment of the emperor's eldest son as the crown prince, and a large number of recitals urged him to immediately appoint a prince, which made him very annoyed, he simply left it alone, did not go to the court and did not approve the recital, and put the important matter of establishing the prince on hold, as if he was gambling with the chancellor.
Shenzong's long-term neglect of the government had a very negative impact on the political rule of the Ming Dynasty. "When the Shen Sect is sluggish in political affairs, Cao is empty." The history books record that in the twenty-third year of the Wanli Calendar (1595), the official Shangshu Sun Buyang inspected the officials and believed that "there were many vacancies"; in the twenty-fourth year (1596), "there was one person in charge of the branch in the six branches, and five people were in charge"; "there was no one in the thirteen provinces who was the main seal"; in the thirty-seventh year (1602), "the governor of Jiliao was missing for two months, and the five inspectors of Yansui, Shaanxi, Henan, Zhejiang, and Fengyang were in short supply, and the number of officials in the two divisions of the world was not replenished"; in the thirty-seventh year (1609), "there was a shortage of many officials." "The officials and the rites have neither Shangshu nor waiters",
"The military department stops a shangshu, and the illness cannot be recovered, and the three ministries of households, criminals, and labor, as well as the officials of the metropolitan inspection court, are all noted in the words of people, and there are no officials in the government and Dali... In the forty-eighth year (1620), "when Emperor Shenzong died, there was only one cabinet minister, and there was no shortage of shangshu, and there was no shortage of three departments: officials, households, and soldiers, and the three departments of punishment, work, and etiquette were all signed by people." It can be seen from this that in the middle and late period of Shenzong's rule, from the central to the local, from high-level officials to low-level officials, there was a serious shortage of officials. The lack of officials and the lack of compensation was also a way for the Divine Sect to limit the power of the ministers, and even if the emperor did not go to the court for decades and did not approve the recital, the power must be tightly in his own hands.
When Emperor Shenzong first ascended the throne, he said, "If you use your sacrifice to seize, it is not up to the imperial court, how can the united general rule the world", when he was only a ten-year-old child, he already knew how to manipulate power. The chaos of the Ming dynasty's central power from top to bottom led to the defeat of the Ming army in foreign wars.
During this period, the frontiers of the Ming Dynasty were also often invaded, such as the Loukou on the southeast coast and the Jurchens in the northeast. Nurhaci, the leader of the Jurchen clan, unified the Jurchen tribes and established the Later Jin regime, which was a great threat to the Ming Dynasty. In the forty-seventh year of the Wanli Calendar (1619), the Ming army and the Later Jin fought a decisive battle at Salhu, the Ming army was defeated, and then lost Kaiyuan and Tieling one after another, and the northern gateway of the Ming Dynasty was in jeopardy. External threats and already began to endanger the existence of Ming rule.
Under the pressure of such internal and external troubles, the power of eunuchs continued to grow. In the forty-eighth year of the Wanli Calendar (1620), Shenzong, who had been ill for many years, died, and the heir to the throne was the crown prince Zhu Changluo, that is, Guangzong, who briefly served as emperor for more than a month, Zhu Changluo also died, and his eldest son Zhu Youxiao ascended the throne, that is, Emperor Xizong. Although the throne changed three times in the period from the death of Emperor Shenzong to the time of Emperor Xizong's ascension to the throne, including the Red Pill Case and the Palace Transfer Case, fortunately, there were also upright ministers such as Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou in the dynasty, and Emperor Xizong smoothly sat on the throne, and the political situation was still relatively stable. But the good times were short-lived, and the rise of Wei Zhongxian pushed the late Ming dynasty politics into the abyss of darkness.