He hated that the court was full of mediocre ministers, and no one dared to take responsibility for the court, and when he thought of this, he was furious, smashed the teacup in his hand, and angrily scolded a sentence: 'All the courtiers have misunderstood me, everyone should be damned!' ’
This is the performance of the last Chongzhen Emperor when the Ming Dynasty was about to face the disaster of the nest, and from this period of history, we can see that the imperial court politics at the end of the Ming Dynasty has reached an incomparably dark level, and some of it is derived from the party struggle at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
Why did the Ming Dynasty fall? The reason for this is that the Ming Dynasty no longer has any advantages in the advantages of time, place, and people, and at that time, the Ming Dynasty was plagued by natural disasters, with flames and smoke, strong external enemies, and internal disputes among the courtiers.
Although Chongzhen had a strong ambition to turn the tide, the heavens did not give a good opportunity, and the Ming Dynasty was already a thin and thin western mountain, unable to return to heaven.
If we want to explore at a deeper level, the demise of the Ming Dynasty and the party struggle at the end of the Ming Dynasty are inextricably linked! When it comes to party strife, the Donglin Party naturally cannot escape its blame.
The Ming Dynasty's love of mouth cannons is extremely rare in the history of the feudal dynasty for more than 2,000 years, and perhaps only the Song Dynasty can compete with it, and the Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor opened a hanging record for more than 20 years, mainly to avoid the Manchu Dynasty's literary sword, and this situation reached its peak after wanli.
Since Zhang Juzheng was liquidated by emperor Mingshenzong, the power of the Ming cabinet had fallen to the bottom, so that the cabinet chief assistant who later took office was no longer able to dictate and control the government.
The eunuch party and the Donglin party took advantage of the situation to enter the stage of history, and the two fought to the death, and the Qichu, Zhejiang, Xuankun, and Xuankun parties also fought against the Donglin party, prompting the late Ming court to be extremely inefficient, and there were many good remedies to save the Ming Dynasty, and because the courtiers could not reach a consensus, they were finally shelved and aborted.
For example, during the Chongzhen period, when the entire Ming Dynasty was already facing very serious pressure from internal and external troubles, and urgently needed the imperial court to make a decisive decision, Yang Sichang proposed that the imperial court should negotiate peace with the Manchu Qing, and under the condition of stabilizing the Jurchen Iron Horse, create an opportunity to suppress the internal peasant revolt, and then Xu Mou went north to conquer the Manchu Qing, but this proposal was strongly opposed by Huang Daozhou and other old ministers of the Donglin Party, and the entire court engaged in a verbal battle, causing the Chongzhen Emperor to no longer dare to put forward the idea of peace with the Manchu Qing.
Who is right and who is wrong with Yang Sichang and Zodiac Zhou?
I'm afraid that no one can say clearly, they are all for the sake of Daming's country and social considerations, they all have their own reasons, and the suggestions they put forward can also be justified, and they are not wrong, and they are all wrong.
The mistake was that the mutual competition between the two forces made it impossible for the imperial court to make any major policies that were conducive to changing the current situation in time, so that Daming missed the opportunity to save himself again and again, and the decadence was irreparable, and eventually led the Ming Dynasty to the abyss.
It can be seen from this that after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the Donglin Party naturally also has certain responsibilities, but it is a bit unreasonable to talk about the main responsibility for the demise of the Ming Dynasty on the Donglin Party, and at the same time, the Donglin Party is labeled as "empty talk about misleading the country", which is a kind of misunderstanding of its orientation, in feudal society, in addition to the emperor, "do what you want" is indeed a luxury.
To put it this way, Donglin Party members did play a certain positive role in the late Ming Dynasty, but in fact, within the Donglin Party, courtiers loyal to the Ming Dynasty and civilian officials with real talent and practical learning abounded.
Unfortunately, they were born in the already decaying society of the late Ming Dynasty, and the emperor's slackness in government made the power of the entire imperial court in a vacuum, and the various parties in order to compete for control of the imperial court arose a bloody storm of partisan disputes.
◎ The origin of the Donglin Party
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a nursery rhyme that sang:
"The dispute at the end of the Ming Dynasty began at the portal and the party, the party began in the Donglin Party, and the Donglin Party began in Gu Xiancheng."
Gu Xiancheng was Xie Yuan of the high school during the Ming Wanli period, and later served in the bureaucracy, with this errand, Gu Xiancheng accumulated a large number of contacts throughout the upper echelons of the Ming court, which also laid the foundation for him to later form the Donglin Party.
After Zhang Juzheng's death, the power of the Ming Cabinet began to suffer a great degree of weakening, so the ministries began to engage in an unprecedented power struggle with the Cabinet, especially Gu Xiancheng's bureaucracy and the Cabinet struggle more acutely.
At that time, Gu Xiancheng's official position was not high, but the energy was very large, and he was actually able to influence his superiors, trim the wings of the cabinet, and even appoint his own superiors, even without paying attention to the emperor.
After the resignation of the first assistant of the cabinet, Wang Xijue, the Wanli Emperor ordered the officials to select one of several highly respected old ministers to succeed him to the position of first assistant, but the candidate selected by Gu Xiancheng not only did not conform to Wanli's wishes, but made Wanli very disgusted, and eventually the Wanli Emperor demoted him to a commoner on the charge of Gu Xiancheng's disrespect for resisting the will.
Returning to his hometown, Gu Xiancheng was enthusiastic and decided to use his extensive network advantages to do a great job, established a Donglin Academy in the name of lecturing, and began to make friends and carry out a wide range of activities.
Since the establishment of Donglin Academy, it is not a formal place of teaching, but a club of opposition people with obvious political intentions, due to the increasing number of members joining, the momentum is huge, Donglin bachelors began to hold a group, and slowly formed a party, called Donglin Party, Gu Xiancheng is their first boss.
The Donglin Party not only has fruitful academic achievements, but also has distinct political views, the Donglin Party respects Confucianism, its members all regard themselves as gentlemen, advocates the elimination of the ills of the imperial court, and puts forward some suggestions that are beneficial to the people, thus receiving extensive support from the people at the bottom, and the social influence of the Donglin Party is also increasing.
However, power has its advantages and disadvantages, and since ancient times, the term "the party is the same as the other" has been circulating! The rise of the Donglin Party's power inevitably touched the interests of other non-Donglin party figures or officials, and many non-Donglin party members who served as officials in the imperial court also formed their own teams.
With high-ranking officials as the leader and the region as the name, for a time the entire Ming Court social parties were lined up, and many parties such as Xuanzhe, Chuqikun, and so on appeared.
After Emperor Mingxi succeeded to the throne, the Donglin Party took a turn for the worse because of its merits in supporting the Emperor of the Apocalypse, and the then cabinet chief assistant Liu Yijing, the official Shangshu Zhao Nanxing, the Bingbu Shangshu Xiong Tingbi, and the Rebbe Shangshu Sun Shenxing were all members of the Donglin Party or supporters of the Donglin Party.
We can see that at that time, the Donglin Party had already controlled the power of the imperial court and had become the mainstream party in the entire Ming Dynasty society, and if they could put into practice the political theories they had put forward at this time, they would certainly be able to take the Ming Dynasty in a better direction.
However, before the Donglin party showed its magic, a force that was equal to the Donglin party was forming, and everyone should be familiar with the name, that is, the famous castration party at the end of the Ming Dynasty, especially the power of the nine-thousand-year-old Wei Zhongxian was even more monstrous.
Emperor Mingxizong was a famous carpenter emperor of the Ming Dynasty and was not very interested in so-called politics, and Wei Zhongxian was able to rise as the closest templeman to the emperor.
In order to counter the Donglin Party forces that were standing in the imperial court, Wei Zhongxian began to exclude dissidents and open up wide doors, and those other parties that had previously fought with the Donglin Party and were inferior began to form and attach themselves to Wei Zhongxian's eunuch clique, and Wei Zhongxian began to spread a complete network of secret agents in the imperial court to deal specifically with the Donglin Party.
How arrogant was Wei Zhongxian at this time? At the same time, Wei Zhongxian also ordered the construction of ancestral shrines throughout the country, so that the whole people only knew that there was Wei Zhongxian and did not know that there was an emperor, and the act of castrating the party was naturally hated by the upright Donglin party people.
For example, Yang Lian once bluntly told Wei Zhongxian's twenty-four counts, and the heart of the naked son to serve the country was not only not appreciated by the emperor but was degraded because of this, and other Donglin Party members did not deter, but continued to face the difficulties and criticize Wei Zhongxian.
However, as a result, the entire Donglin Party was also subjected to all-out retaliation from the eunuch party represented by Wei Zhongxian.
Wei Zhongxian first took advantage of the Xiong Tingbi incident to frame Yang Lian, Zhou Shunchang, Miao Changqi, and others for embezzlement and perverting the law, and wantonly captured the Donglin Party members, and a large number of Donglin Party members were unjustly killed in prison, and later Wei Zhongxian hunted down and killed the famous Seven Gentlemen of Donglin, and the number of Donglin Party members who were convicted was innumerable.
After some purge of the eunuch party, the Donglin Party, which once controlled the imperial court, was exterminated by the eunuch party after only four years, and soon lost its dominant position in the imperial court, and the governing strategy proposed by the Donglin Party before was also a death for the government.
After the Chongzhen Emperor succeeded to the throne, he suppressed and liquidated the eunuch clique led by Wei Zhongxian, and also took justice for the Donglin Party, which returned to the Ming court for a certain period of time, but later because of the Yuan Chonghuan Incident, the Donglin Party was once again suppressed and forced to withdraw from the cabinet.
Therefore, the prejudice of the Ming Dynasty dying in the Donglin Party is extremely unfair to the Donglin Party, but it is more reasonable to say that the castration party hastened the demise of the Ming Dynasty, although there are also some indiscriminate generations in the Donglin Party, but most of the Donglin Party members have a heart to serve the country with a pure son, and they want to use their own faith to correct the imperial court and use their own actions to save the Ming Dynasty under the world.
How nai lao tian did not give them a chance at all, first by other parties, then by the castration of the party fatal blows, to the Chongzhen years, but also because of the Chongzhen Emperor's distrust or other coincidences, so that the Donglin Party has always been unable to exert its residual heat.
The fault of the Donglin Party was that during the reign of Emperor Mingxi, he had four years to show his ambitions and come up with a set of effective governance plans, but they also missed the opportunity to exclude dissidents, watching Wei Zhongxian sit on the throne without any defense, and when they really realized the seriousness of the problem, it was too late.
However, in the big picture, this is also the limitation of feudal society, even if the power of the Donglin Party is greater, it is not as big as the emperor, the emperor has the power to kill and seize power, he wants to trust or want to use whom, not the group of ministers can interfere with just a few words, Ming Shenzong and Xizong favor eunuchs, use eunuchs to seize power, suppress the civil and military ministers who follow the law, even if the group of ministers have a strategy for governing the country and a passion for serving the country, but there is no room for implementation, this is the sadness of the Donglin Party, and it is also the sadness of the whole Daming.
History is often fair, although the evaluation of the Donglin Party in the history books is not high, but fairness is in the hearts of the people, although the Donglin Party itself has certain limitations and is not perfect, but the Donglin people have also become a symbol of patriotic intellectuals.
Until now, Donglin Academy is still a place of admiration and remembrance for some patriotic intellectuals, and the spirit of Donglin scholars who are honest and honest in performing official duties and serving the country and the people is still worthy of our admiration and study.
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