The emperors of the previous dynasties have three thousand beautiful harems, why do they still need eunuchs to serve them? I am a good sir, welcome everyone to follow me, we discuss history together, think about history.
The origin of the eunuch
History of eunuchs
Pre-Qin: The Book of Poetry and the Book of Rites are all recorded in relevant records.
Qin and Han: The Qin Dynasty was under the jurisdiction of Shaofu, but the chaos of the eunuch Zhao Gao led to the fall of the Qin Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty used scribes to suppress eunuchs, but its power rose during the Eastern Han Dynasty.
Tang and Song Dynasties: After the Anshi Rebellion, the power of eunuchs grew, and even more so they were crowned kings and ranked as the third duke. Some even have high positions and can depose emperors.
Ming and Qing dynasties: The eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty reached unprecedented development, which also caused many disasters.
The term eunuch appeared after the Sui and Tang dynasties, but this system already appeared in the Qin and Han dynasties, and it can be said that the Qin and Han dynasties were a stage in the development and perfection of the system. Eunuchs, also known as eunuchs or eunuchs, are men who want to cut off male genital organs, but why do such people appear in the palace?
The imperial palace of ancient China has a vast area and very complex personnel relations, and the more heavy things in the palace are handed over to men, and some lighter tasks are handed over to women, but mixing men and women in the palace will inevitably cause problems. In order to avoid these problems, the emperor castrated the genitals of men by means of palace punishment, so that men, like palace women, lived in the palace for envoys.
Eunuchs participate in politics
Eunuchs serve the emperor's life, often accompany the emperor, are the most trusted people around the emperor, if you have a good relationship with the eunuchs around the emperor, won't you be able to achieve your goals? Therefore, various political forces used the eunuchs around the emperor to achieve their own political goals. Inevitably, eunuchs began to participate in politics, and even interfere in politics.
Not all emperors are good emperors who are conscientious and strive to govern, some emperors are greedy for pleasure, live rotten, short-sighted, and the eunuchs who serve next to them take the opportunity to flatter, throw themselves into their favor, and gain the emperor's trust and reuse through their rhetoric. With the emperors' emphasis on centralized power, in the face of different strengths of the government and the public, eunuchs, as people around them, can effectively contain all forces.
Therefore, eunuchs began to get involved in the country's military and political power, such as Wei Zhongxian, Li Lianying, and Zheng He who traveled to the West.
Eunuchs in film and television dramas
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Eunuchs during the Qing Dynasty
The emergence of eunuchs is the need for rulers to rule, the existence of eunuchs is actually a means for the emperor to strengthen centralized autocracy, used to weigh the power in the court and the public, due to the particularity of harem concubines, can not interfere in imperial politics like eunuchs, and even affect political stability, so the emergence of eunuchs is the trend of the times, their role determines their fate is to be related to the royal family.