History Cold Knowledge 003【East Factory Ting cane】
The court staff, as the name suggests, is the punishment of the emperor for the official who violates the imperial power or has a negligent official in the court, with the purpose of physically torturing the minister against the order, thus playing a threatening role.
How did Zhou Yunyi, the Overseer of Qin Tian, who was originally the Emperor Gao Shan, suddenly become the object of the court staff?
To say that Zhou Yunyi, the Supervisor of Qin Tianjian in the play, was originally lucky and encountered such a good performance opportunity, that is, the Jiajing Emperor sent someone to find him and ask him to find out the example of no snow in the prosperous world for three generations, to prove that no snow this winter has nothing to do with personnel.
However, Zhou Yunyi's answer completely violated the majesty of the Son of Heaven. In fact, successive emperors have understood that the so-called celestial phenomena are fooling people, and at most they can analyze the law of whether it rains, but to criticize the government with a long drought is something that the emperors have not allowed.
However, Zhou Yunyi firmly bit the Jingshi for a long time because "the superior person has no virtue and causes heavenly anger".
As a result, Zhou Yunyi was ordered by the Jiajing Emperor to be twenty scepters, and the executioner was Feng Bao, the eunuch of Dongchang.
Why twenty? Not forty, or eighty?
Twenty strokes is a standard punishment, for example, in "Water Margin", whether Lin Chong or Wu Song are treated this way: standard, twenty scepters, and then it is a thousand miles of the army.
- It is equivalent to implying that you will hit twenty times, and it will definitely not kill you.
But in the hands of the eunuchs of the Eastern Factory of the Ming Dynasty, it is not necessarily oh:
Dead or not, it's up to you to perform.
The eunuch Feng Bao later arrived in the Wanli Dynasty, which was a well-known figure, and Zhang Juzheng had to pay tribute to three points. In the Jiajing Dynasty, he was basically a dead runner - but the TV series here played a vitriol, in fact, he represented the Jiajing Emperor, from his heart is also unwilling to kill him, plus this person's nature is not bad, so he guided Zhou Yunyi more than once:
"Tomorrow is the Chinese New Year's Eve, your family is waiting for you for the New Year, you can't change your story?"
Zhou Yunyi closed his eyes...
It can be said that the Ming Dynasty has never lacked officials who are not afraid of death. Jiajing is not the first time he has seen it——
For example, in the great ceremonial discussion incident when he first ascended the throne, how many officials did the good guys kill in one go?
However, everyone thinks that the court staff was invented during the Ming Dynasty, but in fact, there was a similar criminal law before the Ming Dynasty, but the Ming generation strengthened this method of corporal punishment to the extreme.
One theory is that it originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Another theory is the Yuan Dynasty:
I prefer the latter. Ming Chengyuan system.
The Yuan Dynasty was one of the few unified ethnic minority regimes in ancient China, and its ruling class was dominated by nomadic peoples such as the Mongols. The way the Mongols lived on horseback gave birth to their rugged personality, which made it more obviously different from the harmonious and implicit culture of the Central Plains.
They advocated force, and the princes and ministers of the dynasty were mostly samurai and generals who were only good at fighting, and their education level was generally not high. Before subverting the Song Dynasty, the punishment of its punishing officials was relatively cruel, as long as they committed mistakes, they were punished by military law, and they were all cruel and innocent scolding in front of everyone, and even killing people above the court was not excessive, without any regard for the face of the official, which was the prototype of the Punishment of the Ming Dynasty's court staff.
After Ming Taizu ascended the throne, although he made great efforts to restore the Han system, he deliberately retained many barbaric and cruel punishments of the Yuan Dynasty, and the court staff was one of the representatives.
The imperial staff was ordered by the emperor to be tortured, the eunuchs commanded the use of torture, and the Jinyi wei was responsible for enforcing a kind of punishment, and the place of execution of the punishment was mostly above the court.
At the beginning of Ming Taizu's reign, he wanted to show the imperial prestige and consolidate the imperial power with "heavy punishment", so he began to execute the punishment of the court staff above the imperial court.
Notable examples of being caneed include:
Zhu Yuanzhang's nephew Zhu Wenzheng(朱文正), the governor of Dadu, Xue Xiang (薛祥) of the Ministry of Works, Zhu Liang the Marquis of Yongjia (永嘉侯) zhu Liang's grandfather and son, and Ru Taisu (汝太素), the chief of the Ministry of Cao, and so on.
After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, after a long period of peace, the emperor began to indulge in amusement, cultivation and other side affairs, and gradually ignored the government, but his eunuchs were favored by the emperor and had great power, so they replaced the emperor's decision-making power over the implementation of the court staff. When the Celebrant supervises the execution of the scepter, if the person subject to enforcement pays bribes to the Scepter, the East Factory, the Jinyiwei and others, the force of execution will be reduced, but if the person who offends these institutions because of the incident, especially the Celebrant and the East Factory, the overseer will instruct the cane giver or the person who casts the staff himself will increase the intensity of the punishment, and the person subject to enforcement will most likely be killed on the court because of this.
The tactics of the anti-crime factory are even more insidious. After the establishment of the East Factory in the Yongle Dynasty, Jinyiwei colluded with the East Factory and secretly attached themselves to each other, and the West Factory and the Neihang Factory established since then were the same. The officials of the West Factory were all selected from the Jinyi Guards, so that the "Factory" and "Wei" were fused together. In order to jointly exclude the impeachment of the civilian bureaucracy and eliminate dissidents, a situation of "the factory intends to correct the call and execute it".
"Ming Shi And Criminal Law Chronicle III": "The criminal law has a self-evident and self-evident, and those who are not sincere about ancient systems, such as the court staff, the East and West Factory, the Jinyi Guard, and the Zhenfu Si Prison are already there." ”
Ming Zhu Guozhen's "Chung Tung Sketches and Ting Cane": "Before Chenghua, all the ting staff did not wear clothes, but used thick cotton bottom clothes, heavy felt, and humiliation, but they lay still for several months, and then they were healed." In the early years of Zhengde, he used things against Jin, evil courtiers, and began to dress, so there was a staff to die. ”
Qing Qian Qianyi's "Huguang Ti Punishment According to the Inspection Division's Affairs in Charge of the Public Conduct": "The subject thought that if he did not remove the staff of the official, the road of speech would not be opened in the end." ”
The most serious period of the Ming Dynasty court was the Period from Chenghua to Wanli, and the most appalling was the "Great Ceremony" incident in Jiajing's three years:
Because the Jiajing Emperor was the heir to the throne, according to the ancestral system of the Ming Dynasty, the Jiajing Emperor had to return his clan to the Zhengde Emperor, which made the Jiajing Emperor very uncomfortable.
After many fruitless discussions with the ministers, the Jiajing Emperor was furious to the extreme!
In the third year of Jiajing, two hundred and thirty people, led by Yang Tinghe's son Yang Shen, knelt in front of the palace gate en masse, crying loudly, trying to force the Jiajing Emperor to obey in this way, and the distraught Jiajing Emperor immediately ordered the Jinyi guards to implement the court staff on these ministers.
As a result, 16 ministers were killed by the staff and 130 ministers were exiled, which was the largest and most tragic number of people killed in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
The most famous of the exiled ministers was Yang Shen, one of the three talents of the Ming Dynasty, whose ancestral home was In ji'an, Jiangxi, stayed in Yunnan for the rest of his life and was never activated.
Over the years, he remembered that career in the court, so he wrote a more famous poem "Linjiang Immortal":
The water rolling in the east of the Yangtze River, the waves exhaust the heroes
Success or failure turn around empty...
Let's take a closer look, so what kind of criminal law is the "court staff"?
Venue: Outside the noon gate
Recipients: Ministers who have offended the Emperor
Executor: Eunuch or Jinyi Guard
The specific process: ordered by the emperor or eunuch, the celebrant of ceremonies issued a post and stamped a letter, the criminal department signed the approval of the matter, and the factory guard took the person and executed it.
Don't think it's just a simple spanking, it's all about rigorous training!
When training the staff, two straw men are tied first, one with bricks in it, one wrapped in paper, and both wrapped in clothes.
When hitting the brick straw man, others looked very light, and when they opened it, the bricks inside were broken.
When the straw man wrapped in paper was beaten, others looked at it very heavily, and when they opened it, the paper outside was not broken.
If you can meet both of the above conditions, then congratulations on your successful selection as a qualified staff holder!
What's even more interesting is that there are still "code words" in the process of executing the court staff!
If the toes of the inmate open to show the "outer eight characters", it means "beating with the heart", then the person receiving the rod is not in danger of life.
If the prison officer stands on tiptoe, it means "real fighting", which is the signal of the "death stick" mentioned in the "Ming Dynasty 1566", then the recipient of the staff will undoubtedly die.
Therefore, when the general ministers were sentenced to the "court staff", relatives and friends would bribe the prison officer with money before the implementation of the court staff in order to save his life, but if the emperor insisted on letting him die, then sending money would not help.
In addition, there is another way to test the level of an executioner - the time it takes for the injured to heal!
In general, it is best for a minister who has received a cane to recover within a month.
In the "Biography of the Ming Widow Jiang Gong", the scene when he was treated by the Staff Minister was recorded in detail:
"After receiving the staff, the breath of the Zhonghang has been extinguished, and qin Zhu, a person from the Zhongshu She, has taken the doctor to the doctor and thrown a spoonful of medicine, Nai su." The public opinion returned to the south, stripped away dozens of luans of rotten flesh, and the big one was full of palms, as deep as inches, and one limb was empty. ”
This means that the minister who received the rod was beaten to the skin and flesh, and by the time he went to the doctor, the beaten part had become rotten flesh, and he had to be cut off with a knife to survive, and when the doctor finished the operation, one thigh was almost empty!
This shows how much pain has been endured!
Amazingly, although the court staff was very painful, the Ming Dynasty scholars were not afraid at all, and some even took pride in "receiving the staff"! Just look at Zhou Yunyi.
Let's go back to the wonderful description in "Daming Dynasty 1566":
Feng Bao took a step back and stopped looking at him, and the two toes standing in the outer eight suddenly turned inward and stood into the inner eight characters: "Ting staff." ”
This is the signal of the Death Wand! The eyes of the four eunuchs touched, and then all four pairs of eyes were closed, and the four scepters took turns to slam into the kidney area of Zhou Yunyi's back waist.
There was no sound under each staff, and no blood oozed from the robe, all that was broken was internal organs, and blood immediately spurted out from between Zhou Yunyi's mouth and nose.
A generation of arrogant Zhou Yunyi can be described as a death: it represents a value orientation of the scholars and doctors at that time.
What's going on?
In fact, this is related to the psychology of the scholar and doctor to "win a good reputation". In the traditional concept of Confucianism, the ministers who dared to speak out were all loyal to the country, such as Wei Zheng in the Tang Dynasty, Ru Taisu in the Ming Dynasty, and so on, who left a good reputation.
This made many ministers envious, but the problem was that only a small number of people knew about the outspoken things, and even if they were scolded by the emperor, they were only wronged in vain, and what way could more people know?
The staff is the best choice!
As a result, many ministers were holding this kind of mentality of "selling fame and fishing for reputation", hoping that the emperor would sentence himself to a "punishment of the court staff" in anger, and he would be famous in the world!
Although it sounds a bit perverted, this is indeed the real idea of the scholar class of that era, and for them, it is more important to be able to leave a good reputation than to be alive.
In this regard, I am afraid that even our sage Mr. Wang Yangming was not exempt from vulgarity at the beginning.
However, the only thing that made them feel a little ashamed was that most of the executors of the staff were eunuchs:
It's not just about letting a eunuch spank his own ass, it's really uncomfortable!
Moreover, the eunuch clique of the Ming Dynasty has always been the antagonistic existence of the civilian official clique.
Why?
This brings us to Daming's unique factory guard system: Jinyi Guard + East Factory + West Factory.
(1) Jinyi Wei
In many major cases of the Ming Dynasty, there were Jinyiwei involved, such as the Hu Weiyong case and the Blue Jade case.
In the Case of Hu Weiyong alone, the history books record that the number of people who were condemned in this case alone exceeded 30,000. Therefore, in the Ariake Dynasty, the JinyiWei was definitely a frightening organization.
1. Official title.
The highest leader is the commander of the capital, and the person who holds this position is qualified as "a relative of the emperor and a relative of the state or a meritorious warrior of war", and only one person holds the rank of three pins. The adjutant has commanded two people from Tongzhi, from Sanpin; two people who command you and four pins; two people who are fu envoys in the south and north towns, and fourteen people from fourteen thousand households, all of whom are zheng wu pins.
The management positions under this are still deputy thousand households (from five products), hundred households (from six products), test hundred households (from six products), general banner (main seven products), small banner (from seven products) and so on. Ordinary non-commissioned officers are assigned to the ranks of powerful sergeant and lieutenant.
These middle and low positions, we are familiar with a lot through "Embroidery Spring Knife":
For example, the male No. 1 Shen Lian is just a general banner, and if the Jinyi Guard in the play rises to a thousand households, it will be a great joy.
2. Functions.
As a military institution of the emperor's bodyguards, the main functions of the Jinyi guards were to "directly drive the guards, patrol and arrest", and engage in reconnaissance, arrest, interrogation and other activities. He also participated in the work of collecting military information and plotting against enemy generals, such as collecting a large amount of Japanese military information in the Wanli Korean War. Its leader was called the Jinyi Wei Commander, and was generally a close military general of the emperor, who was directly responsible to the emperor. Anyone, including relatives of the Imperial State, may be arrested and interrogated in closed public.
Among the leaders of the Jinyi Guards, there are not many good endings, and in the Jiajing Dynasty, Lu Bing is the only three dukes and three orphans in the Ming Dynasty, and it is rare to live to a good end.
Lu Bing was very loyal to the Jiajing Emperor and twice desperately tried to save his life. Jiajing admired him very much and promoted him to the command of Jinyiwei. In order to expand the strength of Jinyiwei, Lu Bing had close relations with Xia Yan and Yan Song. Ming Shi said that Lu Bing's "power over the world", he successively destroyed Xia Yan, Qiu Luan and Li Bin, several important ministers under the Jiajing Emperor, it can be said that above the court, Lu Bing's heart was fierce, and he played the power plot to the fullest, and did not do less corrupt things.
However, when the Jiajing Emperor wanted to commit crimes and kill officials, Lu Bing did his best to protect some loyal and righteous people, and he did not deliberately harm others when the party struggle was raging and the court was in turmoil. No matter what posterity commented, saying that he was a remnant of the Strict Party or a chivalrous man, he could be called the first person in the history of the Jinyi Guard.
According to historical records, Lu Bing died suddenly in office at the age of fifty-one. Jiajing was very sad, wept at the portrait of Lu Bing, and personally wrote an edict praising his merits in serving the country, exposing the rebellion, dedicating himself to his duties, and writing the Qingzi, and posthumously awarding him the title of Loyal Uncle, "Wu Hui" (meaning "folding the imperial insult, shi qin selfless"). Sejong gave him sixteen altars, equivalent to the specifications of an imperial prince; he also gave him fifty stones of fasting grain and linen; and ordered the Ministry of Works to prepare coffins and build a tomb for him. In addition, Sejong asked the military department to appoint his son Lu Xuan as the commander of the Benwei and instructed Zhu Xixiao to take care of his family.
Even the arrogant and arrogant Yan Shifan had a very high evaluation of Lu Bing: he tasted the world's talents, but he and Lu Bing, Yang Bo were the third.
Lu Bing died at the end of the thirty-ninth year of Jiajing, at the end of December 1560, so he is not mentioned much in the "Daming Dynasty 1566".
However, this point in time is exactly the opening node of "Daming Dynasty 1566", and Jiajing's mood at that time can be imagined. Therefore, Zhou Yunyi is extremely unlucky.
Lu Bing
3. Slot point:
As early as the middle of the Ming Dynasty, Jinyiwei was a department with fairly good treatment in the Ming Bureaucracy, and at that time, many ministers who had a little bit of a way out of the dprk and the central Government "went through the back door" to install their children in the Jinyiwei to go to work. For example, Yan Song of the Jiajing Dynasty, several of his descendants were not yet minors, and they were already eating empty food in the Jinyi Guard.
People like this, who only have a name in the Jinyi Guard and enjoy the treatment but do nothing, are increasing by the end of the next year.
Some big men who hold the personnel arrangements of the Jinyi Guards, and even directly sell the officials and knights, even if they are rogues, as long as they pay the money, they can enter the establishment of the Jinyi Guards.
The last boss of Jinyiwei was luo Yangsheng, And when Li Zicheng first invaded the capital, he surrendered directly, so we can imagine that we don't want these 150,000 Jinyi guards to protect Chongzhen, and at that time, even the Jinyi guards who accompanied Chongzhen were probably not one.
That is to say, at the time of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, only a very small number of these 150,000 jinyi guards, only a very small number of loyal and righteous people, died in battle, or committed suicide and martyrdom, and the vast majority of them chose to flee for their lives or surrender.
Embroidered spring knife poster
(2) East Factory
1. Official title
The chief executive is the Chincha Palm Seal Eunuch, and the full title is: The Governor of Chincha, the Eunuch of the East Factory Official School, referred to as the Governor of the East Factory and the Governor of the East Factory, is honored as the "Factory Gong" or "Governor". At the time of its initial establishment, the eunuch who was in charge of the printing was concurrently served by the superintendent of ceremonies, but due to the complicated affairs, it was changed to the second and third among the eunuchs of the bingbi eunuch of the superintendent of ceremonies.
The subordinate officials of the East Factory are one member of each of the thousand households and one member of the hundred households, and the Jinyi Wei Thousand Households and the Hundred Households are appointed, called the Criminal Officer. Officers such as the subordinates (called the head of the class, the foreman, and the division, a total of more than forty people), the chief of the service (called the chief of service and the service of the fan), and other officers were allocated by the Jinyi guards.
Specifically responsible for the investigation work are the chief of the service and the service, the captain is equivalent to the squad leader, also called the "stall head", there are more than a hundred people, there are also twelve ugly elements, all wear pointed hats, white leather boots, brown clothes, tied small tassels. The commanders of each commanded several officers, also known as "fanzi" and "officer", and these people were also composed of elite elements selected from the Jinyi guards.
Embroidery spring knife two
Prison interrogation
The function of the East Factory is to "visit and plot against evil and evil, and to equalize power with Jinyi Wei". One person is in charge, and he entrusts the power to investigate and spy. At first, the East Factory was only responsible for the investigation and arrest of people, and did not have the right to interrogate the prisoners, and the suspects caught had to be handed over to the Jinyi Wei Beizhen Fusi for trial; but at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the East Factory also had its own prison.
Social surveillance
Dongchang monitored various political forces such as government officials, celebrities, and scholars, and had the right to report the results of the surveillance directly to the emperor. According to the information obtained from surveillance, for those political opponents with lower status, dongchang can directly arrest and interrogate them without judicial trial; for opponents who are senior government officials or have the status of royal nobility, Dongchang can also arrest and interrogate them with the authorization of the emperor.
The relationship between the East Factory and the Jinyi Guard was originally at the same level. Jinyiwei appeared first, and later the East Factory was easy to gain the emperor's trust because the eunuch factory owner had a close relationship with the emperor, so sometimes the Jinyiwei report needed to be conveyed through the East Factory. In the era when the eunuch power was tilted to the opposition, even the commander of the Jinyi Wei had to kneel when he saw the owner of the East Factory.
(3) West Factory
The West Factory is a temporary institution with no formal official position.
In order to strengthen the rule of secret agents, Emperor Mingxianzong added the West Factory in addition to the East Factory in the thirteenth year of Chenghua (1477), and together with the East Factory and the Jinyi Wei, he was called the Factory Guard, and the eunuch Wang Zhi was used as the governor, whose power exceeded that of the East Factory, and the scope of activities spread from the Beijing Division to all parts of the city. Later, due to opposition, it was forced to withdraw. Zhengde was briefly reinstated five years later and then revoked.
After Emperor Xianzong's grandson Emperor Wuzong succeeded to the throne, the grand eunuch Liu Jin came to power, and the eunuch power rose again, and in the first year of Zhengde (1506), the West Factory was reopened and led by the eunuch Gu Dayong.
The struggle for power between courtiers and eunuchs was also open and secret, and the contradictions within the ruling group became increasingly fierce. In order to maintain the supremacy of imperial power and the effective control of the eunuchs, the emperor began to adopt a new method of supervision and control, that is, to set up a secret service agency to secretly monitor the words and deeds of the courtiers through his confidant eunuchs, so the West Factory came into being.
The West Factory existed for a relatively short time and was added by Emperor Mingxianzong outside the East Factory in order to strengthen the rule of secret agents. At that time, the power was more than that of the East Factory. You can arrest the ministers at will, and you don't have to ask the emperor. So they intensified their efforts, causing panic within five months of its establishment, and finally the ministers jointly impeached the abolition of the institution.
The East Factory, the West Factory, and the Jinyi Guard have one thing in common, that is, surveillance, investigation, and suppression of the wrongdoing of officials.
However, specific to the "Ming Dynasty 1566", Zhou Yunyi did not commit a crime, and there was no illegal behavior in normal times, but his words angered Jiajing, and it was a bit wrong to put on this court staff:
Zhou Yunyi knew that he had been punished with twenty court staffs, according to the intensity of the punishment at that time, twenty court staffs were not enough to kill, but he did not expect that the Jiajing Emperor's determination to let him die was strong, so the twenty court staffs fell on his kidneys every time, and all the broken organs were internal organs, and there was no doubt that he would die.
Zhou Yunyi did not commit a crime, and his death was an inevitable result of his challenge to imperial power, but it also officially opened the prelude to the competition between the courtiers and the Jiajing Emperor.
Only as far as the Jiajing Emperor was concerned, Zhou Yunyi's death was not important, the key was who instructed him behind him, and since he didn't want to say it, he couldn't leave a curse.
The later Jiajing Emperor himself said:
"Zhou Yunyi was killed, and now that I think about it, I also have some regrets, and he has no selfish intentions, but his words have disturbed the government of the dynasty, and He also called him to beat him with twenty court staffs, but he didn't expect him..."
One sentence is also twenty court staffs, skimming his responsibilities completely, and then pretending to track down who is heavy, but also to send money to Zhou Yunyi's family, but also shows that Zhou Yunyi's death, death deserved, at least Zhou Yunyi's purpose is achieved.
So, who did Jiajing specifically send to be responsible for the aftermath of this matter?
Of course, it is the most bullish department of the Ming Dynasty, and it is also the leader of the East Factory and the JinyiWei -
Celebrant.
What kind of existence is the Celebrant? This we will break down in the next episode Ha.