As the saying goes: "Ten years of trees, a hundred years of tree people." "The Importance that the Chinese nation has attached to education since ancient times is extremely commendable, and even the poorest families will strive to send their children to private schools to read a few books, not to mention the education of the first family royal family." An ordinary man who does not receive a good education may become a hooligan who will cause harm to his family and the circle around him; if an emperor does not receive a good education, he may cause harm to the whole country and the nation. And the person who did not correctly educate and guide the emperor was the head of the disaster to the country and the people.
Ming Yingzong's "enlightenment teacher" Wang Zhen is such a person. At first, he was a low-ranking talent, still of some level, with wives and children, and had also worked as a school official in the county. Maybe he felt that he would never get out of his head when he did this, or maybe it was because he had committed a crime and wanted to be sheltered, in short, after many years of doing the first show, Wang Zhen signed up for the palace and became a eunuch.
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the measures to prevent eunuchs from interfering in politics were still extremely severe, and if eunuchs deviated slightly, they were immediately punished with capital punishment. But by the time of Emperor Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji, this policy was slightly relaxed. Wang Zhen was relatively old and educated, so he was sent to the Eastern Palace to serve the prince and conduct some enlightenment education for the prince.
After the death of Emperor Xuanzong of Ming, the crown prince succeeded to the throne, which was Zhu Qizhen of Emperor Mingying. Zhu Qizhen was only nine years old when he ascended the throne, and the state affairs were mainly carried out by his grandmother, Empress Dowager Zhang, and the cabinet of the "Three Yangs" of the Four Dynasties. Despite this, Wang Zhen, as Zhu Qizhen's enlightened teacher, gradually gained power: through the emperor, he gained the power of the eunuchs (eunuch institutions cultivated by the emperor to balance the civil bureaucracy). Sitting in this position, Wang Zhen revealed his cunning face: he advised the emperor to use severe punishment for his subordinates to eliminate corrupt elements in the ranks of officials, and then the officials were dealt with in an endless stream, and if they wanted to see the light of day, they could only ask Lord Wang for help, and Wang Zhen gradually formed his henchmen in this way.
When Empress Dowager Zhang reigned, she was the supreme leader of the country, and she was very wise and discerning, and Wang Zhen did not dare to blatantly overstep her power. After the death of the old empress, Sanyang and others gradually bid farewell to the political stage because of their age, and the new ministers in the cabinet were still young, and no one could restrain Wang Zhen anymore, and he finally became the de facto supreme head of the empire.
Wang Zhen had the audacity to build a mansion near the imperial city, and to the minister who dared to mention his faults, he actually let his lackeys brutally dismember him in prison and die. If the officials had the slightest disrespect for Wang Zhen, Wang Zhen could find a reason to pit them and almost die. When some officials saw Wang Zhen kneeling, Wang Zhen demoted him to the border pass to drink the cold wind. Even if Wang Zhen was anonymously denounced, Wang Zhen could find out who had written it, and without trial, he was directly in the downtown area, and no one dared to say a word!
There is no ambiguity about lower-level officials and no ambiguity about senior officials. Whether it was the duke or the horse master, he could only kneel and speak in front of Wang Zhen. Bingbu Shangshu Kuang and the others just said a word, and Wang Zhen asked them to kneel in the grass. At this time, almost no one in the imperial court could beat Wang Zhen, and if he did not bend his knees to Wang Zhen, Wang Zhen would break his leg and force him to kneel!
What about the Emperor? The young Zhu Qizhen was almost completely blinded by his teacher Wang, and even Wang Zhen's name was not directly called, but only called him Mr. Wang. With such an obedient student as the emperor, Wang Zhen was of course even more unscrupulous and unscrupulous.
It's just that Wang Zhen bullied his own people and bullied himself, and he was overwhelmed by bullying outsiders. The Mongols had always received rewards by paying tribute to horses, and Wang Zhen cut the rewards by more than half because he did not give enough benefits. Since being beaten back to the steppe by Zhu Yuanzhang, the Mongol cavalry had been holding back to counterattack the Central Plains, and Wang Zhen's move finally gave the Mongols an excuse. Soon after, the Mongols invaded the south en masse.
The Ming government was very defensive in the north, and the Mongols could not bargain for anything. However, Wang Zhen, who was obsessed with acquiring the martial arts of Wenzhi, instigated his students to march in person, and led almost all the main officials of the imperial court at that time, as well as all the elite troops of the Ming Dynasty around Beijing.
Wang Zhen, who did not understand military affairs, did not consider the issues of logistics, equipment, and battle plans at all, and hurriedly led his men and horses out on the expedition. As soon as its main force encountered the Mongols, it was defeated, and had no choice but to return to the dynasty. In the process of retreating, Wang Zhen wanted to go around and ask the emperor to return to his hometown to see, which delayed the best time to retreat. In the end, hundreds of thousands of horses and horses were besieged in Tumu Fort, and eventually the entire army was destroyed, only a very small number escaped, the emperor himself was captured, and Wang Zhen was killed in the rebel army.
The civil change brought extremely serious consequences to the Ming Dynasty and even the entire Han nation: first, hundreds of thousands of main forces and all the upper elites died in a war, the Ming government lost the most important development capital, and it was unable to deal with the Mongols, and the gap between these talents took many years to fill; secondly, because the emperor was trapped in the enemy camp, this brought great trouble to the country's foreign and national defense strategy; third, the country's finances were also plunged into a quagmire due to this war. In order to make up for the losses of the war and the cost of redeeming the emperor, the country's economy could not develop for a long time; finally, due to the deterrent power of the Mongols, the gradual rise of the voice of "returning to the capital Nanjing" gradually disappeared, and the entire strategic core of the country was pressed on the north, which made China, which was inclined to commercialization in both the direction of economic development and policy formulation, unswervingly return to the old road of agricultural statehood, and the southern part of the armed forces had to strengthen the closed national policy in order to prevent chaos. In the north, the tune of the Heavenly Son's Gate has been sung for hundreds of years, and in the end, only the king died and died, which also dragged down the dynasty.
Although Wang Zhen died in Tumu Fort, his legacy also dragged down the country. Previously, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty did not dare to interfere in politics, but after he began, the Ming Dynasty gradually formed the tradition of eunuchs interfering in politics, and from this point alone, it brought endless disasters to the political development of later generations. Even in the near future, Wang Zhen's death does not mean the collapse of his interest group, and the first thing the civilian official clique does before it unanimously goes to the outside world is to completely sweep away the remnants of the Wang Zhen clique. Among them, the eunuch Cao Jixiang, who was not purged by civilian officials, single-handedly launched a change to seize the door more than ten years later, and unjustly killed the national hero Yu Qian. This series of farces is all because of Wang Zhen!
National hero Yu Qian
But this is still not Wang Zhen's fault alone, Wang Zhen's calamity to the country and the people lies in his abuse of power and his position. And it is the person who needs to be responsible for the whole incident by helping this xiucai who can't even pass the examination to the side of the dragon rider. Whether it is Zhu Zhanji, zhu Qizhen, or even Yu Qian, who is just and righteous, should think under the spring, their too much connivance with this strange thing is the driving force behind the real destruction of the country and the family.