How did liu jin, a powerful eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, fall to power? Why did Emperor Mingwuzong kill Liu Jin?
In this article, I will talk to you about this topic.
The reason for Liu Jin's murder was that it was because he was corrupt, framed Zhongliang, and caused chaos in the government, and finally even his own eunuchs could not see it, so he and the chancellor jointly reported it, forcing Emperor Mingwuzong to raid his home.
As a result, in the process of raiding the house, the officials also found two daggers in the fans that Liu Jin often used, because there had already been officials who reported Liu Jin's intention to rebel to Emperor Mingwuzong, and Emperor Mingwuzong originally did not believe it, but after he saw these two daggers, he finally believed that Liu Jin intended to murder himself, so he ordered Liu Jinling to be executed.
In this sense, Liu Jin's murder was entirely self-inflicted, and in short, the evil eunuch who brought calamity to the country and the people was jointly beaten by the righteous men. But in fact, the reason why Liu Jin was actually killed, in a sense, is somewhat similar to Zhang Juzheng's ending, because the reform offended the vested interests, and thus met with their joint counterattack.
However, everyone is familiar with Zhang Juzheng's reform, but Liu Jin's reform, I am afraid that many people have not heard of it. Of course, many people do not believe that an evil eunuch can reform. After all, in most people's minds, Liu Jin is a great eunuch who does nothing wrong.
But in fact, this is just a typical political smear. In fact, if Zhang Juzheng had not been rehabilitated later, his reputation in the history books would probably not have been better than That of Liu Jin!
At that time, after Emperor Mingwuzong came to power, the finances of the Ming Empire had already begun to have a crisis, and Mingwuzong hoped to alleviate this crisis through reforms. So, how to reform? Emperor Mingwuzong turned his gaze to Juntun (军屯). The reason why we wanted to choose Juntun was that we should start with the policies formulated by Zhu Yuanzhang.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, zhu Yuanzhang, in order to avoid increasing the burden on the people, was specially reclaimed by the state to cultivate 0.89 billion mu of arable land, which was specially used to ensure the expenditure of the army, and this income was not used in the national tax system, but directly used in the military system.
In other words, the army expenditure during Zhu Yuanzhang's period was not levied from the heads of the common people, but 89 million mu of arable land to support. To put it more in layman's terms, this 0.89 billion mu of arable land means 1 million soldiers, and each soldier can get 89 mu of land.
That is to say, as long as a person is a soldier, the government will give him 89 acres of arable land, and at the same time, it will also exempt the soldier's family from all servitude. In this context, the government is equivalent to using 89 acres of arable land for a stable military service.
That is to say, if a family wants to receive the government's 89 acres of arable land, and the whole family is exempt from military service, then the family must provide the government with a soldier and be responsible for all the expenses of the soldier.
In this context, the cost of the army of the Ming Empire is equivalent to being paid by the soldiers themselves, and there is no need for the state to take money, and it is precisely because of this that Zhu Yuanzhang dares to proudly declare:
"Raising millions of soldiers does not consume a grain of rice from the country."
But with the passage of time, especially the long period of peace, the 0.89 billion mu of military assets began to be lost on a large scale.
Because, in the Taiping era, the army was a number, and no one would check it carefully. As a result, many people began to fight the idea of this military tun. For example, generals would embezzle land by hanging empty quotas, and soldiers would spend money to find some old, weak, sick and disabled to risk the territory.
Over time, this huge military asset gradually became the private field of generals, or local officials, squires, and even some related soldiers.
After Emperor Mingwuzong succeeded to the throne, he began to discover this problem, so on the one hand, he personally went to the front line to fight, and even made himself a great general, in order to find out the actual situation of the army. On the other hand, he began to reuse eunuchs, and with Liu Jin as the leader, he carried out reforms and re-measured the assets of Juntun.
Although Liu Jin's reforms were a good thing for the country and the people, the problem was that for officials and generals, especially the profit-making military clique, it was a naked deprivation of their vested interests. Against this background, the military department and border generals wrote to the emperor one after another, saying that Liu Jin had abused his power and openly demanded bribes from the border generals by measuring land, and thus excluded dissidents.
Of course, whether this statement is true or false, it is actually difficult to distinguish clearly. Because although Liu Jin is not a good person, the problem is that those proud generals are probably not good things. In other words, Liu Jin would naturally be suspected of favoritism and fraud, but to say that he was completely by nature was obviously also taking politics as a fairy tale, so Ming Wuzong did not bother to pay attention to it.
Later, with the deepening of Liu Jin's reform, more and more interest groups were touched, especially the interests of the military group, which were seriously damaged, so they directly instigated King Anhua to launch a rebellion.
Although the rebellion was put down by Emperor Mingwuzong, Emperor Mingwuzong also understood that if it continued in this way, the military group would most likely lose control of the collective. Because, the commander-in-chief Yang Yiqing and the overseer Zhang Yong, who led the suppression of the rebellion, also wrote to Emperor Wuzong at this time, demanding that Liu Jin be punished.
In this context, if Emperor Mingwu were to insist on reforming again, the situation would likely spiral out of control. So he had to throw Liu Jin out, in short, everything was Liu Jin's fault, I was blinded by him, and in the end Liu Jin was executed by Ling Chi, and Liu Jin's changes were naturally all abolished.
Later, no one in the Ming Dynasty dared to reform the military clique, even if it was as strong as Zhang Juzheng, it only dared to attack the landlord and gentry class.