Zhu Di was zhu yuanzhang's fourth son, the most hated uncle of the Jianwen emperor Zhu Yunjiao, and Zhu Yuanzhang made him the king of Yan three years after he ascended the throne. In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang originally meant to let these clan kings hold a certain amount of power, so as to defend the imperial family, lest this military general rebel, and that military general make trouble and threaten Daming Jiangshan.
In 1402, Zhu Di attacked Ying Tianfu, Zhu Yunjiao disappeared, and Zhu Di became emperor. Naturally, Zhu Di would not let the king of the domain be pleased, and he ostensibly restored the old titles of the princes of Zhou, Qi, Dai, and Min, but in fact, when the throne was stable, he immediately drove King Gu to Changsha, King Ning rushed to Nanchang, and The King of Liao and the King of Qi also had weakened guards.
In short, Zhu Di was an emperor who knew how to "get rid of the old and welcome the new", and his means were much more clever than his nephew Zhu Yunjiao. Among Zhu Di's series of "welcome" measures, many of them can help him monitor his subjects and understand the secrets of privacy, such as his father Zhu Yuanzhang's abolition of the Jinyi Guard during his reign, Zhu Di set it up again, and for example, Zhu Di broke his father's ban that "eunuchs are not allowed to interfere in politics".
Zhu Di was not a fool, he had read the history books and knew about the eunuch rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, was he doing this to gamble with his father? Of course not, this has to start from Zhu Yuanzhang, when Zhu Yuanzhang from a person with no culture, constantly learning and progressing to become the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, what he was most worried about was that the Ming Dynasty collapsed as quickly as the Qin Dynasty and the Western Jin Dynasty, so he moved a bunch of history books and constantly learned lessons.
After reading the history of the former dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang deeply felt that the problem of eunuchs was a big problem. Although these people are inseparable from these people in the palace, because these people are too close to the emperor, the danger coefficient is very high: "I see the history of the book, the last days of the Han and Tang Dynasties were all eunuchs defeated, can not be saved, but not to regret it!" ”
That is to say, Zhu Yuanzhang believed that eunuchs had the ability to overthrow the world, so he stipulated: eunuchs and foreign ministers were not allowed to have the title of civil and military, they were not allowed to read, read, and engage in culture, and they were not allowed to have more than four official ranks. The "History of Ming" records that Zhu Yuanzhang also made an iron plate to hang in the palace for this matter: "Internal ministers are not allowed to interfere in political affairs. "Zhu Yuanzhang did not allow the eunuchs of all major departments to intervene in any official documents.
It turned out that Zhu Yuanzhang was very prescient, and in Zhu Di's "Battle of Jing", many eunuchs helped him pass on the news and made great contributions, such as Dog'er, Li Xing, Zheng He, and Ma Jing, who were rewarded by the Yongle Emperor afterwards.
Zhu Di's heavy use of eunuchs was not because he had not heard of the curse of eunuchs, but when he ascended the throne, the people and the imperial court were a little bit about his practice of killing his nephews by force and seizing the throne, this throne he sat unsteadily, and he felt that it was not easy to use the Jinyi guards outside the palace. In the eighteenth year of Yongle (1420), Zhu Di set up the "East Investigation Factory", which on the one hand monitored the temple and rivers and lakes, and on the other hand, also restrained the Jinyi guards.
The head of the East Factory was Zhu Di's favored eunuch. As a result, the history of the Ming Dynasty's "eunuchs interfering in politics" began, Zhu Di not only let the power of the East Factory override the Jinyiwei, but also set up the "Inner Book Hall" to teach the eunuchs to read and read, the eunuchs' cultural level was high, and the ability to do things also went up, and the history books recorded that the Ming Dynasty had 4 major eunuchs:
Wang Zhen during the reign of Emperor Mingyingzong, Wang Zhi under Emperor Mingxianzong, Liu Jin under Emperor Wuzong of Ming, and Wei Zhongxian under Emperor Mingxi.
Wang Zhi even established the West Factory, the forces crushed the East Factory and the Jinyi Guards to death, and even arrested the ministers to create prisons without playing the Ming Emperor, resulting in the rebellion of the eunuchs, the reason for the demise of the Ming Dynasty, the eunuchs and courtiers were opposed, and the contradictions stimulated by infighting were a major cause, and at that time, people "only knew that there were eunuchs, but did not know that there was a son of heaven", which was also a feature of the Ming Dynasty.