Hussars
Abstract: The Jinyi guard of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's personal guard, held the power of life and death. However, the leader of the Jinyi guard, precisely because of his great power, will naturally be jealous of the emperor, and the leaders of the Jinyi guard in previous generations usually have no good end. Only Lu Bing, the most powerful Jinyiwei leader of the Ming Dynasty, could finally get a good death and save the entire family.
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The Jinyi guard of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's personal guard, held the power of life and death. However, the leader of the Jinyi guard, precisely because of his great power, will naturally be jealous of the emperor, and the leaders of the Jinyi guard in previous generations usually have no good end. Only Lu Bing, the most powerful Jinyiwei leader of the Ming Dynasty, could finally get a good death and save the entire family.
Lu Bing was indeed the leader who developed the Ming Dynasty Jinyi Wei to the peak, and the personnel changes between the officials and the military department needed his words to be implemented; the approval of the income and expenditure of the household department and the Ministry of Works needed him to speak before it could be approved, and the trial and ruling of the Punishment Department even more required him to speak and decide. In addition, half of the most important mouthpiece officials in the center of power above the court were his protégés! Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that Lu Bingquan has fallen into the world.
However, asking him why he got a good death is another topic, Lu Bing's death has not yet been determined by historians, there are four theories, two of which are related to drinking in Yang Bo's house, one is drinking at Yang Bo's house, and Yang Bo came up with some kind of incriminating evidence to coerce Lu Bing to drink poisoned wine to commit suicide. The second was to drink at Yang Bo's house and was killed by Yang Bo and Yan Shifan. Another is that he was scolded by Emperor Mingshizong and went home frightened to death. Of course, if these three are true, they cannot be regarded as a good ending. There is only the last theory, Lu Bing is drunk, he was choked to death by phlegm, this is barely a good ending, this good end is only a good death, not killed by someone, because in the general concept, this method of death is still a kind of horizontal death, absolutely not a good end.
As for his family, in fact, it has not been able to save, his son Lu Xuan and younger brother Lu Wei have been fined for confiscating family property, removed from official positions, and he himself was almost killed in a coffin. It was not until Zhang Juzheng was right that he was rehabilitated and pardoned his family. If I had to say that if my family saved my life, I would have nothing to say.
Ming Shizong is the only continuing king of the Ming Dynasty, Ming Shizong praised Lu Bing's "merit of opening the country", that is, there is the merit of opening the country, which can be regarded as the supreme praise for the warriors, in fact, Lu Bing certainly does not have this merit, ming Shizong's words are implied: the founding of the country from the dragon, the focus is not from the founding of the country but from the dragon. It is difficult to save the car, and the focus is on saving the car.
Lu Bing's father was also a confidant of Sejong's father, Zhu Youyi, the King of Xing. Lu Bing's mother was Sejong's wet nurse, Sejong's father died early, so he had to be a serious home in the royal palace at the age of twelve, and the most intimate thing around him was his wet nurse and Lu Bing, the milk brother who grew up together. After ascending to the emperor's throne, Lu Bing himself also competed for qi, wen and wu were both perfect, Wu was a 22-year-old wu jinshi, Wen was a Ming generation, a well-known calligrapher, a seal engraver, all of whom had works handed down, could write poetry and sing and was proficient in official documents, and was also very proficient in ancient mathematics. In the eighteenth year of Jiajing, Sejong was on a tour of the south, and when Wei Hui encountered a fire in the middle of the night, Lu Bingfen rushed into the fire scene regardless of kicking the door and snatched the emperor out!
Lu Bing's emotional intelligence is very high, he is high-profile, he is a low-key person, a jinyi guard leader, who can be praised by Shi Lin as a "corporal of LiXian" and regarded as his own person in the cultural and educational circles. For those who have no real threat to him, Lu Bing can really help him with his liver and guts, like Yu Dayu was trapped, he raised a thousand taels of gold, asked for his own family Yan Song and Yan Shifan's mansion, spent money and human affection to let The Yan father and son let Yu Dayi go, and afterwards personally came to the door to thank him, such a powerful person, actually knelt down and prostrated his head, and later when Yu Dayu went to yan mansion to thank him, Yan's father and son sighed and said: You should not thank us, you should thank Lu Bing!
Ming Shizong was a very tyrannical person, he had thousands of palace women in his harem, because of some trivial matters were punished, more than two hundred were killed, that is to say, to be a palace girl, the mortality rate was as high as 20 percent! Finally, it provoked the most bizarre "Nongyin Palace Change" in ancient Chinese history - the palace women conspired to kill the emperor! Of course, in the end, he failed to kill the emperor.
However, at that time, Lu Bing's work on the court staff, under the rule of Sejong, who was always prone to change his face and be angry, throughout his life, Lu Bing did not kill or maim a single person under the court staff, but only some well-nourished skin trauma. The comparison between the two shows Lu Bing's style of behavior.
But it is useless, politics does not look at private morality, only on the position. In Lu Bing's life, the civil officials have fallen over the cabinet head Xia Yan, the military generals have overthrown the great general Qiu Luan, and the inner court has overthrown Li Bin, the superintendent of ceremonies, how many enemies will be formed here? It can only be said that he is lucky, Ming Shizong has never forgotten this small friendship with him, he himself is more capable of being a person, good and bad did not mix to the family and died, better than the various powerful ministers in history, but the good end and the preservation of the family really can't be said.
In December of the thirty-ninth year of Ming Jiajing (1560), the Jingshi snowed heavily, and under the darkness, the Jiajing Emperor received a sad news: Taibao, Shaofu, Crown Prince Taifu, Zuo Dudu, and Lu Bing, the guard of the Palm Jinyi, were fifty-one years old at the time.
Upon learning of the death of this childhood friend who grew up with him and entered Beijing from Anlu together, Jiajing was very sad and wrote an edict in his own handwriting, praising him for "folding the imperial insult, being diligent and selfless", "Bing, from my victims, gongdang and Kaijing, etc." He posthumously awarded his loyal uncle and gave him the title of "Wu Hui", and yin's son Lu Xuan was the commander of jinyiwei.
Why did Lu Bing's official position before his death be prominent, but after his death, he mourned and honored, and returned to the Yin and his descendants' families? It starts with his background.
In September of the seventh year of Akihiro's reign (1494), Zhu You, the fourth son of Emperor Xianzong, turned eighteen years old and had reached the age of the domain. Therefore, Emperor Xiaozong chose an auspicious day and enfeoffed King Xing at Luzhou (present-day Zhongxiang, Hubei). He also selected the Sergeant Jinyi Guards of the Jing Division as the xingwang yi guard and accompanied him to Anlu. Among them, there was a Jinyi Wei General Banner named Lu Song, who was selected as the Xingwang Yiwei Commandery and came to Anlu together.
In September of the second year of Ming Zhengde (1507), The second son of King Xing, Zhu Houxi, was born in Anlu, and when choosing a nanny for this little prince, Fan Shi, the wife of Lu Song, was selected to take on the responsibility of raising Zhu Houxi. Therefore, the Relationship between the Lu Family and the Xingwang Mansion was closer.
In the fifth year of Ming Zhengde (1510), Fan's son Lu Bing was born, and because of this relationship between his parents, Lu Bing followed Fan in and out of the Xingwang Mansion when he was four or five years old. After being a little older, at the request of Lu Song and Fan, King Xing and Princess Jiang agreed to let Lu Bing accompany Zhu Houxi, the son of Xingshi, as a relative, to serve daily life.
As a child, Zhu Houxi was very fond of this milk brother who was three years younger than himself (Lu Bing's mother Fan Shi was Zhu Houxi's nanny and nursing mother), and he went in and out of the same ride, living and sleeping together, just like his brothers.
In June of the fourteenth year of Zhengde (1519), Zhu You, the King of Xing, died in Anlu. Zhu Houxi, who was thirteen years old at the time (in fact, he was not yet twelve years old), with the assistance of Princess Jiang of Xing and the subordinate officials of the palace, began to independently take charge of this great palace with mature wrists that did not fit his actual age.
The father and son of Lu Song and Lu Bing, after Zhu Houxi, the son of Xingshizi, became the actual master of the palace of An Lu, the status also increased rapidly, and his authority in the Palace of Xingwang continued to grow. The Lu father and son were extremely satisfied with their existing status and felt that the peak of their lives was nothing more than that.
An even bigger surprise was still to come - in March of the sixteenth year of Zhengde (1521), Emperor Zhengde of Mingwuzong, who had been hip-hoping and acting unruly all his life, died, he had no heirs, nor brothers, and emperor Daming was about to break up, under the presidency of the first assistant of the cabinet, Yang Tinghe, and the civil servants led by Yang Tinghe, on the basis of "brothers and brothers" and "LunXu Dangli", after the approval of Empress Xiaozong and Emperor Wuzong's biological mother Zhang Tai, the imperial court sent emissaries to welcome Emperor Xianzong's grandson Zhu Houxi, the son of Xingwang Shizi, who was the first of the Xingwang Of Zhonglun Order, to enter Beijing and inherit the unification! This was the later Ming Dynasty, the era name Jiajing.
Therefore, the Lu father and son followed the Xingwang Shizi, who won the jackpot, and trekked all the way to the Beijing Division. After Zhu Houxi became the new emperor of daming (the process was tortuous and thrilling, because it did not involve today's topic, so it will not be repeated), Lu Song was awarded the title of deputy qianhu of jinyi guards, from a relative of a local clan king to become the most powerful figure in the world under the ming dynasty, which was simply a step to ascend to heaven.
After that, Lu Song was gradually promoted to "the merit of the dragon", until he was the governor of the Later Military Governor's Mansion and assisted in the Jinyi Guards. Such an encounter was something he could not have imagined when he went to Anlu more than thirty years ago with King Huanxing from the Capital Division.
And Lu Bing, because of his unusual relationship with the Jiajing Emperor in his infancy, naturally rose in the water and naturally entered the Jinyi Wei, which was the emperor's most trusted, and continued his career as a close confidant of the Jiajing Emperor. At this time, Lu Bing, but only more than ten years old.
In the Jinyi Guard, the young Lu Bing, because of Jiajing's care, quickly integrated into it. At that time, the commander of the Jinyi guard made Wang Zuo pay special attention to him, personally teaching him specific duties such as case handling, interrogation, and correspondence with official documents, and instructing him: "You will definitely be in charge of the Jinyi guard in the future, and the duties of the guard must not be unfamiliar." Therefore, in the future, after Lu Bing took charge of the Jinyi Guard, he often missed this teacher and was really grateful to him.
In the eleventh year of Jiajing (1532), Lu Bing's examination was held in the Wuke Examination and became a martial artist. Jiajing took the opportunity to appoint him as a deputy qianhu of the Jinyi Guard, and began to consciously cultivate him as his right-hand man in consolidating his imperial power.
In the thirteenth year of Jiajing (1534), the Tatars entered the Kou border wall, and Lu Bing, as the deputy qianhu of the Jinyi guard, went to the border wall to supervise the battle and beheaded one person, and Ming Shizong received a report and praised his merits. Soon after, his father Lu Song died, and Lu Bing inherited his father's position, serving as the commander and acting commander of Jinyiwei, and took charge of the Fusi of Nanzhen, thus officially entering the top core of Jinyiwei.
In the eighteenth year of Jiajing (1539), the Jiajing Emperor returned to the old domain of Anlu for the first and only time after he ascended the throne to inspect the joint burial tombs of his father and mother. When passing through Weihui, the palace encountered a fire, and the group of courtiers who accompanied the carriage did not know where the emperor was in a hurry, only Lu Bing, because of his daily attendants, knew where the emperor was, so he braved the fire to open the gate of the palace where Jiajing was located, and personally fled with the Jiajing Emperor on his back. After this incident, the Jiajing Emperor trusted and favored Lu Bing more and more, relying on him as an absolute confidant.
After this incident, the relationship between Lu Bing and Jiajing rose from a small age to a life-and-death friendship, and they reached the point of intimacy. Jiajing granted Lu Bingjin the command of Tongzhi and actually took charge of the guard. Lu Bing was the only courtier who still had a "family affection and friendship" mentality and complete trust in Jiajing besides his parents, and even his empresses, concubines, and princes did not have this treatment.
In the twenty-fourth year of Jiajing (1545), in the leap month, Lu Bing was officially appointed as the commander of Jinyiwei. After he succeeded to the throne, Jinyiwei swept away the decline of the officials in the East Factory for a hundred years, rose strongly, and comprehensively overwhelmed the East Factory, which was something that the successive Jinyiwei commanders and envoys had not done.
| and in the face of the various edicts of the Jiajing Emperor, Lu Bing unreservedly implemented them, and was a loyal eagle dog of the imperial family, and Jiajing was very satisfied. At the same time, in addition to his duties, Lu Bing also colluded with Yan Song, speculated on drilling camps, and accepted bribes on a large scale, so he was given evidence of illegal acts by Shoufu Xia Yan and prepared to report to Jiajing.
If the Jiajing Emperor learned of Lu Bing's wrongdoing, it would not be enough to kill Lu Bing, but his subsequent political life would be over. Therefore, Lu Bing lowered his head and bowed to Xia Yan and begged to be spared. Xia Yan was momentarily soft-hearted, and let him go under Lu Bing's begging for forgiveness.
However, this incident gave Lu Bing a great shame and made him deeply hate. In the twenty-seventh year of Jiajing (1548), Lu Bing and Yan Song took advantage of the correspondence between Xia Yan and the governor of the three sides, Zeng Milling, to discuss the opportunity of recovering the military operation in Hetao, and falsely accused Jiajing of Xia Yan colluding with the border marshals in an attempt to rebel. Jiajing was furious and asked Lu Bing to preside over the interrogation, so Lu Bing took the opportunity to take revenge and framed Xia Yan, causing him to be imprisoned and finally beheaded and abandoned the city. This is the only first assistant who was publicly executed in the two-hundred-year history of the Relatively Stable Ming Dynasty in the turbulent period of the early Ming Dynasty and the late Ming Dynasty. Lu Bing played a very bad role in this.
Even when he was defending against the Tatar invasion of Kou, he secretly played tricks to gain Jiajing's favor, and the Marquis of Xianning Qiuluan was also hated by Lu Bing because he thought that he had shared the emperor's favor. In the thirty-first year of Jiajing (1552), at the same time that the Tatars entered Kouda, Lu Bing's people secretly spread rumors and induced Qiu Luan's subordinates to defect to tatars. Then he intercepted and captured them halfway, in order to avenge JiaJing's collusion with the Tatars.
Qiu Luan was seriously ill at this time, and died of anxiety after hearing the news. Jiajing ordered Lu Bing to be tried together with the Three Laws Division, and Lu Bing replied: "Qiu Luan's plot against the enemy is true, and the crime should be punished by the clan." So the Jiajing Emperor issued a decree that Qiu Luan open the coffin and kill the corpse, beheading and passing it to the nine towns of Bianguan. Qiu Luan's parents, wives, and sons were all beheaded; concubines, daughters, and grandsons were issued to the meritorious family as slaves, and the property was put into the state treasury and the family members were exiled. The grand general and marquis of tangtang offended Lu Bing, and finally ended up with a tragic end full of slashes.
However, Lu Bing, in addition to embezzling bribes, unauthorized power, and forming parties for personal gain, did some good things, and he did not spare Yang Jisheng for three more years for Yang Jisheng, who directly advised the Jiajing Emperor and led to the emperor's imprisonment and severe punishment. Shen Lian, another minister of direct advice and who had the experience of serving as a Jinyi guard, was also covered by Lu Bing, and only many times escaped from dangerous situations. Even if in the end the emperor must execute Shen Lian, Lu Bing, helplessly, carried out Jiajing's edict, but Shen Lian's family, wives and children, all lived peacefully under his protection and were not implicated. The later famous anti-Wu general Yu Dayu was also under the protection of Lu Bing, who was able to escape from being framed and attacked.
In particular, Zhu Zaiyuan, the yu king at that time (that is, the future Emperor of Longqing), because of Jiajing's deliberate estrangement and indifference, did not live a very good life, and was despised and harassed by Yan Song and his son Yan Shifan. It was lu bing who had a lot of persuasion for Yan Song and defended it in the middle, so that King Yu could get the treatment he deserved. This is also where Lu Bing's shrewdness lies, the art of unity and blowing, lu Bing's use is pure fire.
Even Yan Shifan, who has always looked at no one, once said: "There are talented people in the world, I, Lu Bing, and Yang Bo are just three people." This can also be seen that Lu Bing's fame and talent at that time were strong.
After standing at the peak of his position and power, in order to maintain the prosperity of his family, Lu Bing also married the minister of military affairs of the Chinese Dynasty, and his five daughters were married to zhu Xizhong's concubine, Yan Shifan's son, the son of the first assistant Xu Jie, the son of the official Shangshu Wu Peng, and the son of The Nanjing Libu Shangshu Sun Shengzhi, which can be described as relatives throughout the dynasty.
In the major affairs of the dynasty, Lu Bing relied on Jiajing's trust and collusion with Yan Song, so that the courtiers did not dare to compete with him. Regardless of the promotion of officials in various ministries, the settlement of the use of various projects, and the investigation and interrogation of major and important cases, they must be handled with his permission or examination. More than half of the Imperial Historians of the Metropolitan Inspection Bureau were his protégés, so Lu Bing's claim was "the power of the world, and the decision of life and death with one word" was said.
In the thirty-third year of Jiajing (1554), under the favor of Jiajing, Lu Bing was ordered to enter the Western Garden, where he and Yan Song, Zhu Xizhong, and others served Ming Shizong to cultivate and fight. The Jiajing Emperor gave him the Daoist title "Shouyi Jindan Dashi Immortal".
In the thirty-sixth year of Jiajing (1557), Lu Bing, who was the commander of the Jinyi Guard, was sentenced to be beheaded by Li Bin and others who had embezzled materials for the construction of the imperial tomb and created a private cemetery. At this time, the Jinyi Guard, because of Lu Bing's reasons, was already above the Inner Palace Ceremonial Supervisor and the East Factory. Any internal official who offended Lu Bing, he was all attacked, and even lost his life.
In August of the thirty-sixth year of Jiajing (1557), the Jiajing Emperor made Lu Bing the title of Taibao (太保) and a young fu (少傅). At this time, Lu Bing was already the Third Duke and Three Orphans (Taibao and Shaofu), the first person since the Ming Dynasty.
For the sake of profit, Lu Bing can do whatever it takes to attack political enemies, whether it is the first assistant or the great general, offend him, and eventually be framed to death, full of doors. On the other hand, in order to create a retreat, Lu Bing also protected loyal subjects and good generals, and folded his hands with the scholars. Therefore, his reputation is relatively positive, and he has not been faced and adulterated.
Overall, Lu Ping is a shrewd and selfish person who is good at navigating a complex political environment. He proceeds in his own interests, does not allow others to offend him, and at the same time helps without hesitation when others are harmless. If there is a choice, Lu Bing first wants to be a good person.
Most importantly, Lu Bing's life was guided by Jiajing's edicts, loyal and unbiased, and he was the emperor's loyal eagle dog and thug, handling countless major cases for Jiajing Emperor to safeguard imperial power and crack down on offending his courtiers. This is the reason why he is in a high position and holds great power, but he can end well.
He was three years younger than the Jiajing Emperor, but he died seven years earlier, and he was in the emperor's incomparable trust and powerful care all his life. More than thirty years of emperor eagle dog career, and finally died peacefully in office, which was Lu Bing's greatest luck.
In the thirty-ninth year of Jiajing (1560), on December 11, Lu Bing died. Almost seven years later, on December 14, 1567, the Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houxi died at the age of sixty-one.
After Lu Bing's death, under the care of Jiajing, his son Lu Xuan inherited his father's post and became the commander of Jinyiwei. After that, Lu Xuan also lived peacefully in the last years of the Jiajing Dynasty, without major setbacks. After the Jiajing Emperor, the big tree that protected the Lu family, fell, the Life of the Lu family began to be sad. In the view of the newly enthroned Longqing Emperor Zhu Zaiyuan, the Lu family's merits were already in the past, and there was no reason to continue to give preferential treatment. At the same time, Lu Bing and the old minister Xu Jie were relatives, and in the eyes of Gao Gong, the minister whom the Longqing Emperor relied on, it was even more the target of attacking the political enemy Xu Jie.
Therefore, under the purpose of implicating and framing Xu Jie, Gao Gong instructed Yan Guan to impeach Lu Bing's previous wrongdoing, with the intention of implicating Xu Jie. The Longqing Emperor listened to Gao Gong's advice, investigated Lu Bing's sins during his lifetime, dismissed him from all official positions, confiscated the family wealth, and stripped Lu Yi of the Jinyi Guards of the command of you and his uncle Lu Wei (Lu Bing's younger brother) tai chang Shaoqing official positions, demanding that they repay the huge amount of stolen money that Lu Bing had embezzled. Lu Xuan was imprisoned for this and was forced to sell his property to repay the stolen money, and the Lu family has since lost all their family wealth and become destitute.
In the third year of the Wanli Calendar (1575), the Longqing Emperor had been dead for many years, and Gao Gong had also fallen for a long time, and with the help of Xu Jie's disciple Zhang Juzheng, Lu Xuan wrote to Wanli and asked for the Lu family's exoneration. Zhang Juzheng and others further helped to intercede, telling the Wanli Emperor that Lu Bing's rescue was meritorious and that the family should not have fallen to this point. Moreover, the Great Ming Law stipulates that unless there is treason, rebellion, adultery, and other crimes, no family property will be confiscated. Moreover, the Lu family has already been raided, and then it will be pursued, and the two sins are not in accordance with the law.
After hearing this, the Wanli Emperor was very merciful, so he issued an edict to exonerate Lu Bing's former guilt, and Lu Xuan was also able to exonerate himself and return his family property. However, the rich past of the Lu family was already like a cloud of smoke in the eyes, and it was gone forever.
Looking at Lu Bing's life and the various stories behind him, it is inevitable that people will have a sinister feeling of the eunuch sea, and no matter which historical figure, it is not a simple black and white, it is a complex mixture. As the most powerful Jinyi wei leader of the Ming Dynasty and the most trusted courtier of the Jiajing Emperor, Lu Bing's life can be described as wonderful. Later generations can also learn a lot of life philosophies from it.
(The picture of this article is from the network)