Why in ancient times, they were all given death by the emperor, and they not only did not resist but also knelt down to thank the Lord for his grace?
Death system is an ancient Chinese monarchical society, a unique means of punishment for ministers or concubines who have done wrong things, the more common means of giving death are to give poison wine, give swords, give white aya, etc., the earliest system of giving death can be traced back to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, throughout ancient China until the end of the late Qing Dynasty.
However, successive emperors have not included the death system in the official criminal law of the country, and there is no corresponding crime and scope of application for death, whether it is a major crime of rebellion or dereliction of duty, so in a sense, it is more accurate to say that death is not so much a special punishment as a lynching for the emperor.
The ancient system of death was for the emperor to maintain his supreme power,
Execute ministers at will
A means by which it maintained the rule of the monarch to a certain extent, embodying the privileges of the ancient hierarchy.
In ancient times, the people who could be "given death" by the emperor were certainly not ordinary people, and the ordinary people could not enjoy the treatment of "giving death", so the ministers who could be "given death" by the emperor were either ministers who had made great merits for the country so that the emperor could not directly order punishment, or people who had a particularly important relationship with the emperor himself, such as important immediate relatives or close ministers, etc. The more famous is the Qing Dynasty period of Nian Tangyao, the relationship with the Yongzheng Emperor in the early years is not ordinary iron, In the end, he posed a great threat to Yongzheng's imperial power and was executed, Yongzheng remembered that Nian Tangyao was outstanding in merit, and if he tortured him, he would probably cause dissatisfaction among the people of the world, and he would inevitably bear the notoriety of being cruel and killing heroes, so he "specially enlightened" gave him to commit suicide in prison.
Why did he have to kowtow to Xie En when he was given death by the emperor? First of all, if the emperor wants to execute a person, there are too many ways, if this minister has a high status status, the emperor is not good to deal with it directly, first of all, the emperor will create public opinion to count the crimes and then directly send people to arrest and raid, not only the officials themselves, many immediate relatives will be implicated, confiscate property and cut off all the meritorious titles, not to mention, and even small lives may be difficult to protect, if the identity is not particularly prominent, the emperor can send people to kill them covertly.
And the ancient death penalty has the meaning of showing the public, during the Qing Dynasty, the minister of the imperial family, Su Shun, was escorted in a prison cart before his death to parade the public, along the way was thrown garbage, insulted and entertained, to the execution site was broken legs and cut his tongue, before the beheading lost half a life, after the decapitation according to the rules to lift the head to show the public, as the Xianfeng Emperor's former favorite, Su Shun before his death can be said to be no decent, compared to the two iron hat kings who were also executed, Zaiyuan and Duanhua were given to die in the house to end themselves, Not only did it retain decency, but at least a whole corpse was left, so compared to other means, "giving death" is actually a preferential treatment in the method of death.
In addition, if Xie En also pointed at the emperor's nose and scolded, angering the emperor would have only killed you, and the result was to kill your whole family or curse your nine tribes, such as Fang Xiaoru of the Ming Dynasty could not have died, but he worked against Zhu Di, resulting in the final involvement of his own people, so in general, those ministers who were given to die in order to protect their families, even if they were unwilling to die, but under the concept of "the emperor wants the emperor to die", even if he scolded the emperor in his heart for ten thousand sentences, he would often honestly accept xie.
Even if the minister who was given death by the emperor did not want to die, but it was still impossible to resist and escape, just as the so-called universal world could not be the royal land, even if he escaped and could escape to where, there were only two situations in which the person who committed suicide by the emperor was given, one was in the location of the person concerned, and the other was already in the prison, but no matter where it was, it was absolutely controlled, even if it was resisted and run, the emperor could also issue a reward for the arrest of the sea, even if you ran to the end of the world, you could be arrested, Then the method of death that you face at that time may not be as simple as giving death.
In ancient times, many punishments paid attention to the system of sitting together, letting the minister commit suicide is already a relatively light punishment, once the person concerned runs away, then his family will be imprisoned for sitting continuously, and the light will be charged with the army and the weight will be put on the ground, so many ministers will generally not escape in order not to harm their families and for the dignity of death.
However, there are also people in history who have escaped death, during the Tang Dynasty, there was a man named Jia Daochong, when he was given poisoned wine by the emperor to commit suicide, his son Jia Zhizhi was willing to die for his father, so he pleaded with the eunuch to let his father worship the four gods before he died, taking advantage of the gap between Jia Daochong's worship of the gods to grab the poisonous wine and drink it all, but Jia Daochong was also fateful and did not die after drinking, Tang Dynasty Emperor was greatly moved after hearing it, so he withdrew the will to give death and changed it to father and son exile together, Jia Daochong thus escaped a disaster. This is also the only person recorded in history who escaped the death of the emperor.