In ancient times, it was not as played in the film and television drama, "The whole world can not be the king's land, and the coast of the land can not be the king's subject", the affairs of the world are not decided by the emperor alone. Emperors, eunuchs, foreign relatives (harems), vassals, courtiers, clans, these are all forces, and it is these forces that make up an empire. Among them, eunuchs are the only ones who can be bound to the emperor as a force, because they do not have the ability to breed offspring.
This can be seen in the "Ming Dynasty 1566" Jiajing Emperor and the Si Li Supervisor are in cahoots, also because the Jiajing Emperor did not grow up in the imperial palace like a regular prince from the beginning of his reign, with his own foreign relatives or ministers, which is why at the beginning of his reign, he used great ceremonial events to support the ministers who promoted him to the throne. Including his practice of doing nothing and practicing xiuxian, I think it is also to show and publicize to everyone that although he is not an orthodox heir to the throne in the traditional sense, he is the kind of emperor heir who is similar to the emperor hand-picked by heaven, so the Jiajing Emperor often takes Emperor Wen of Han as a reference standard, because that person was also selected by the ministers to become emperor.
The means used by eunuchs to balance civilian officials were too powerful in the late Ming Dynasty, and the Wanli Emperor li crown prince could not make his own decisions. The most intolerable thing for the emperor was that the eunuchs did not collude with civil officials, for example, the emperor used eunuchs against the Donglin party, and the problem behind it was that the treasury was empty, the emperor wanted to collect taxes from the south, and the Donglin party represented the interests of the southern landlords and merchants.
Since the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the total number of eunuchs in the central court is definitely no less than that of the civil and military generals served in the central government, and it is to see whether there are more civilian military generals or eunuchs who are usurping the throne in the chaotic government. Eunuchs naturally depended on the imperial power, and the emperor was already comfortable to use, and because there were no descendants to pass on, even if the power was tilted to the government and the opposition, they would not directly want to change the dynasty, and on average they were more loyal to the society. Because the eunuch clique does not consider the aftermath, the decision-making characteristics of the group are indeed short-sighted and vicious, easy to be disdainful, and the living environment of the harem is only a gloomy imagination space; but in fact, the eunuch chaos itself is mainly the result of the failure of the civil and military officer selection system rather than the cause, so on this issue, when all the dynasties are not directly out of the eunuchs, the eunuchs' described evils should be regarded as the historian's throwing of the pot.
Imperial power needs a concrete way of expression, and when dealing with the people at the bottom, its manifestation is the bureaucratic clique. And if this object becomes the bureaucracy itself, then his form of representation is the eunuch. Eunuchs are a power structure deliberately set up by the strong emperor, the rights of eunuchs come from the emperor, dependent on the emperor, even if the emperor is a thug, once the emperor loses the eunuch group, it will be pitiful, the soldier who is bullied by the scholar will die and live, the historian is also the scholar class, naturally help the scholar to speak, and the eunuch group is the emperor's seal to restrain the scholar group.
The young emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty was able to win the championship when he grew up, and the foreign relatives of the great general were beaten down by the political legacy left by the old emperor to the eunuch group before his death, and the Han Xiandi lost the eunuch group, and there was no way to face the powerful subjects. Wei Zhongxian, the grand eunuch of the Ming Dynasty, was in the Apocalypse Dynasty, which scholar dared to sing the opposite tone? Then the apocalypse died, the emperor was changed, Wei Zhongxian collapsed in an instant, Chongzhen did not understand until he was played by the Donglin Party, Wei Zhongxian was the emperor's eagle dog, without him, the scholar could be unscrupulous.
In essence, the emperor and the civil and military officials are not really one, and many times they will stand on opposite sides in the distribution of benefits, and if you want to break the wrist with the bureaucracy, all you can show is: 1. clan relatives; 2. in-laws and foreign relatives; 3. eunuchs. In the historical experience of thousands of years, the first two are not well controlled, which will directly make them sit on the big threat to the imperial power itself, only the third party, even if it is bigger, it is difficult to threaten the imperial power itself, at most it is only a scourge to the people of the lower court, so how to choose is simply clear.