After killing Hu Weiyong, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor, made an extremely bold and influential decision for future generations to abolish the system of beggars that had existed for more than a thousand years. At this point, China's more than a thousand years of prime minister system ended, and all power went to the emperor. How did Zhu Yuanzhang abolish the beggar system step by step? What were the results of Zhu Yuanzhang's abolition of the beggar system?
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, all walks of life were in ruins, but the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu did not seem to focus mainly on work, but on another thing - party struggle. The party struggle in the early years of Hongwu was mainly a struggle between two factions, one of which was the Huaixi Party led by Li Shanchang and the other was the Zhejiang Eastern Party led by Liu Ji.
In the long-term mutual confrontation and struggle, Liu Ji, the leader of the Zhejiang Eastern Clique, gradually lost the trust of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, and in order to get rid of Liu Ji, Zhu Yuanzhang appointed another person, this person was Hu Weiyong. Zhu Yuanzhang first removed Liu Ji from his post, and then secretly instructed Hu Weiyong, who was already at odds with Liu Ji, to do something and send Liu Ji back to the west. Liu Ji died, and Li Shanchang had the intention of retiring, so the loudest speaker above the court naturally became the new minister Hu Weiyong.
Just when Hu Weiyong was complacent and thought that he could get to this position today because of his strong strength, he did not realize an important problem, that is, the reason why he was able to defeat Liu Ji was entirely due to the support of Zhu Yuanzhang. People have self-knowledge, and Hu Weiyong, who has lost self-knowledge, began to slowly become a beam-jumping clown.
In Hu Weiyong's view, he was already able to cover the sky with one hand above the court, and as long as he could continue to work hard to develop his own forces, even if he wanted to replace Zhu Yuanzhang, it would not be difficult. But it turned out that he was wrong, completely and utterly wrong. After Liu Ji's death, the gradually inflated Hu Weiyong began to embezzle and accept bribes, exclude other parties, and even attempt to challenge the imperial power, and many matters were decided without being reported.
However, when Hu Weiyong was doing these things, Zhu Yuanzhang obviously saw it in his eyes, but he held great tolerance for what Hu Weiyong had done, not to mention severe punishment, and did not even mention a word, as if he was afraid that hu Weiyong would become afraid of his head and tail after he said it. Zhu Yuanzhang's behavior did seem a little difficult to understand at the time, but from the perspective of future generations, there are still traces to follow.
After Zhu Yuanzhang handled the Hu Weiyong case, the first thing he did was to abolish the beggar system. However, as we all know, the system of beggars has been handed down from ancient times for thousands of years, and zhu Yuanzhang alone wants to overthrow this whole system, and its difficulty is conceivable, so at this time, Zhu Yuanzhang took a fancy to Hu Weiyong.
He needs a person, a person who is not very smart, so this person can't be Li Shanchang or Liu Ji, he needs this person to sit in the position of the prime minister and do something stupid, so that he can tell the world how stupid and ridiculous the system of people and people is. In Zhu Yuanzhang's mind, this most ideal candidate is Hu Weiyong. At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang was waiting for only an opportunity.
Finally, the opportunity came. In October of the twelfth year of Hongwu, the Vassal State of the Ming Dynasty, the State of Champa, came to pay tribute, but it was not until the envoys of the State of Champa arrived in the capital that Zhu Yuanzhang did not know that there was such a thing, and Hu Weiyong, who was in charge of foreign affairs, had not reported it before that, which was undoubtedly a major dereliction of duty.
What happened after that fully showed that Zhu Yuanzhang had been planning for a long time, and as soon as the East Window Incident occurred, Zhu Yuanzhang arrested a large number of officials related to this matter with lightning speed, and obtained human testimony from these officials - Tu Jie. Tu Jie was Hu Weiyong's nemesis, so he must have known a lot about Hu Weiyong, and in order to save his own life, Tu Jie decisively betrayed Hu Weiyong and gave Zhu Yuanzhang a reason to get rid of Hu Weiyong.
After this, the story is very simple, Zhu Yuanzhang adopted the policy of preferring to kill by mistake, killing Hu Weiyong and then killing a batch of officials, and the total number of people killed in a few years exceeded 30,000, which is really a river of blood. It is worth mentioning that a month after Hu Weiyong's death, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the abolition of the beggar system, and at that time, it was good that the military officials of the imperial court could save their lives, and naturally no one dared to disagree.
Finally, Zhu Yuanzhang got the chance to abolish the chancellor and put all the power into his hands, which greatly satisfied his desire for power. But the history of the Ming Dynasty for more than two hundred years has finally proved that this decision may be the most wrong decision Zhu Yuanzhang made in his life.
After the abolition of the chancellor, no one could bring help to Zhu Yuanzhang in his post, and later commentators also gave an extremely accurate evaluation of this move, and the power was concentrated in the monarchy. Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang was an extremely powerful man with an extremely strong desire for power, and he severely punished anyone who dared to touch his power.
Zhu Yuanzhang made this move, and no one came to oppose him. At the same time, an extremely serious problem in front of Zhu Yuanzhang: There are so many cases submitted in various places, who should handle it, even if you Zhu Yuanzhang handles it alone, don't you want to rest? In the eyes of others, Zhu Yuanzhang would soon restore the beggar system. But they didn't see this scene until the Qing soldiers entered the customs.
There are two reasons: 1. Zhu Yuanzhang himself really does not want to rest to deal with the case, he must look at all things, without his decision, no one is allowed to make a decision; 2. Zhu Yuanzhang also established an ancestral precept: If anyone in the future wants to restore the chancellor, the minister will be directly executed, and the emperor can be deposed directly.
It is these few articles that also reflect that Zhu Yuanzhang is always thinking about his descendants, and he does not want the imperial power to be divided by the ministers. But there are some things that people often can't imagine, and Zhu Yuanzhang ignores one important thing, and the name of such a thing is called history. History is not something that you can change as an emperor says, history is constructed by thousands of people, which also led to the emergence of the same institution in the Ming Dynasty that was enough to restrain the imperial power- the cabinet.
The cabinet was originally proposed by Zhu Di, and it was also ridiculed that it was Zhu Yuanzhang who set the rules, and as a result, there was an institution with similar powers to that of the chancellor here, mainly because not every emperor had an extremely good working attitude like Zhu Yuanzhang.
And Zhu Di did not initially want these people to take charge of the power, from the position he arranged, it is clear at a glance: all of them are small officials of four or five pins, and the people who hold that position are not the Shangshu of the six departments, that is to say, everything is still decided by the emperor, and you only have a certain degree of censorship power in the small matters reported by some local officials.
Another reason is that during the Yongle years, Zhu Di often personally went out to lead troops to fight, and someone had to take care of the major affairs in the DPRK and China, so the cabinet was born. Even Zhu Di would not have thought that the future power of the cabinet could be higher than that of the chancellor, which was a scene that Zhu Di and Zhu Yuanzhang did not want to see, sorry, it was Zhu Di's son who destroyed this scene - Zhu Gaozi. The system of sons changing to fathers seemed to have become a tradition in the early Ming Dynasty.
The reasons for Zhu Gaozi's reform are not many and many are two: 1. He is a disabled person, and it is not particularly convenient for him to handle the affairs of the government, so he added an official to everyone in the cabinet, and the specific purpose is not clear, anyway, the addition of officials is more powerful than the six Shangshu, and the management of the six departments is not the same as the prime minister.
2. Zhu Gaoxu's position as prince was not easy to come by, the prince dispute seems to have been in every dynasty, and Zhu Gaozi's prince was sealed quite early, the key is that his father lived too long, which made his brother Zhu Gaoxu look red, constantly threatening and suppressing. I won't go into detail here.
In this way, after four emperors, the cabinet system began to take shape, which also laid a great foundation for the later cabinet first assistant dispute. Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to achieve the concentration of imperial power by abolishing the beggar system, but history made a joke with him, and the later cabinet power was no less than that of the chancellor, and the head of the cabinet could even directly constrain every action of the emperor.
From the Sanyang Cabinet, to the later Li Dongyang, Yang Tinghe, Yang Yiqing, Yan Song, Xu Jie, Gao Gong, and Zhang Juzheng all grabbed the emperor in the palm of his hand to play, Zhu Yuanzhang's decision-making produced a scene he did not want to see the most, the imperial power was unprecedentedly constrained, and the major affairs of the government seemed to be decided by one person, which was also like a revenge against Zhu Yuanzhang.
If you do not respect the rules and play the game, then I will punish your descendants, punish your descendants whose power is constrained. Many people say that the cabinet is a manifestation of the excessive concentration of imperial power, but I personally believe that this is precisely the product of the excessive concentration of imperial power, and the producer of this product is called the rule of history, and no one is the one who breaks this rule.