Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was able to sweep away the crowd and overthrow the powerful Yuan Dynasty, and his super personal ability was certainly beyond doubt. However, Zhu Yuanzhang has a psychological characteristic that has been plagued by illness: the suspicion of foxes is particularly serious. He always held a basic attitude of distrust towards the civilian and military generals under his command, always believing that they harbored evil intentions and bad intentions. There are three things that can prove it.
First, after Zhu Yuanzhang founded the country, he wantonly slaughtered heroes, and the six dukes and twenty-eight marquises of the founding of the Ming Dynasty were almost slaughtered by him, and more than 30,000 people were killed by Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu alone for the "major crime of conspiracy to rebel". Second, Zhu Yuanzhang set up the notorious secret service agency Jinyiwei and adopted various means to spy on and monitor the world's subjects.
Third, for the first time, he began the bad tradition of reusing eunuchs. At the beginning of Zhu Yuanzhang's ascension to the throne, he still attached great importance to strictly restricting the power of suppressing eunuchs, and he once set up an iron plaque in the palace: "Internal ministers must not interfere in political affairs" and warned his children and grandchildren not to reuse eunuchs, so as not to cause "castration disasters.". However, due to his extreme distrust of the imperial Chinese military ministers, he eventually unconsciously violated his own rules and precepts and began to entrust some important errands to the eunuchs one after another, which became the origin of the Ming Emperor's reuse of eunuchs.
After Ming Chengzu Zhu Di ascended the throne, he inherited Zhu Yuanzhang's system, and the eunuch power rose rapidly in the Ming Dynasty. Zheng He became the first eunuch of the Ming Dynasty to perform major foreign affairs activities before coming to power, and he led an ocean-going fleet of ships to the West seven times, traveling thousands of miles and spreading power all over the world. Unfortunately, not every emperor has the knowledge and talent of Zhu Di.
Since then, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty have continued to reuse eunuchs, which eventually led to four extremely harsh "castrations" in history. Wang Jin, Liu Jin, Wang Zhi, and Wei Zhongxian, the four eunuchs, relying on the emperor's favor, were unable to act lawlessly, wantonly framed Zhongliang to exclude dissidents, and filled their own pockets in the midst of bending the law. The heavy blows inflicted on the Ming Dynasty by their four chaotic courtiers and thieves were no less than four large-scale transnational wars, which made the Ming Dynasty feel badly wounded and seriously injured. Therefore, there is a saying that the Ming Dynasty was destroyed at the hands of eunuchs, and there is still a certain reason.
At the time of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, there were ugly dramas in which a large number of civil and military officials surrendered to Li Zicheng and the Qing Dynasty. In order to preserve their fame and fortune and future, those dignitaries and dignitaries who usually rode high horses and flaunted their military might, had no shame and lost their dignity, and did not care at all about the ming Dynasty homeland where they grew up in Sri Lanka, and surrendered to the enemy country, which was chilling.
In contrast, the eunuchs, who were usually despised, performed much better than them, winning the praise of later generations. For example, in the early morning of March 19, 17th year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng's soldiers entered the capital. The civil and military officials around Chongzhen scattered and ran for the future, truly becoming a lonely person. The eunuch Wang Cheng'en , the superintendent of ceremonies , never abandoned Chongzhen' side. Chongzhen walked up to the Coal Mountain Shouhuang Pavilion step by step to commit suicide, and Wang Cheng'en also followed Chongzhen's self-suicide, and his loyal heart touched the ages.
As early as the twelfth year of Chongzhen, the eunuch Cao Huachun, the superintendent of ceremonies, had already returned to his hometown. After the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, Cao Huachun heard that Chongzhen's cemetery was very simple, and his heart was greatly unbearable, so in the first year of Shunzhi, he risked losing his head and wrote to Shunzhi to request proper construction of Chongzhen's mausoleum, and the Shunzhi Emperor was quite touched and agreed to his request, and Chongzhen's mausoleum was repaired to a certain extent.
During the reign of the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, there was a loyal eunuch Pang Tianshou who made great efforts to save the Ming Dynasty. The Yongli Emperor had no savings in exile all year round, and he could not even pay the salaries of the ten battalions of forbidden troops around him. Pang Tianshou did not hesitate to give generously, and gave all his savings to pay the forbidden army, so that the forbidden army could be maintained.
Pang Tianshou also took advantage of his close relationship with the Portuguese missionaries to run to Macau to negotiate with the Portuguese, and went to great lengths to prompt the Portuguese to send a 300-man musketeer army into the interior to cooperate with the Southern Ming Army against the Qing Dynasty. It can be seen from this that there is no absolute in the world, and although the advantages of the Ming Emperor's favor of eunuchs outweigh the disadvantages, objectively speaking, the performance of these eunuchs in critical moments is still commendable, but it is much more reliable than those who hold great power.
References: "History of the Ming Dynasty", "History of the Southern Ming Dynasty", "Record of the Fire"