Later generations often lament that the last years of the Ming Dynasty were unlucky, and natural disasters and wars occurred frequently, which directly accelerated the fall of the Ming Dynasty, which made people sigh. In fact, the fall of the Ming Dynasty, in the final analysis, was mainly caused by the emperor's laziness, the eunuchs' power, and the continuous party struggle.
This kind of struggle for power directly triggered the button of corruption, which made the social contradictions at that time unprecedentedly acute, and also led to the occurrence of many unjust, false and wrongful cases, such as the famous "Lotus Unjust Case" recorded in the "History of the Ming Dynasty" occurred in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. This unjust case directly reflected the officialdom of the late Ming Dynasty and had a huge impact on the judiciary at that time.
But what exactly caused this unjust case?
1. How was "Lotus Flower" unjustly killed?
In the sixth year of Longqing, there was a Jinyi guard commander named Zhou Shichen, whose ancestors were originally related to the royal family, but in his generation, due to the cancellation of the system of knighthood by relatives by Ming Shizong, the Zhou family quickly fell when he arrived.
Jin Yiwei's income is limited, and he can only barely survive, in addition to his wife, there are only two servants in the family, a man and a woman, the male is called Wang Kui, and the female is called Lotus. After the death of his wife, he lived with the maid Lotus because he had no money to continue the strings.
Late one night, Zhou Shichen was just about to go to bed with lotus flowers, when he heard someone climb over the wall to come in, so he immediately went out with a waist knife to fight with the thieves. During this period, the lotus was so frightened that she hid behind the screen and never dared to come out.
It wasn't until she heard that there was no movement outside that she quietly came out to investigate, only to find that Zhou Shichen was dead, and in horror, she picked up the scattered silver taels on the ground and went to the housekeeper Wang Kui to discuss.
At that time, when Emperor Longqing died, the whole city was under martial law, and the chief Zhang Guowei was ordered to inspect the market, and Zhou Shichen's home was also within the scope of his inspection. This incident alarmed Zhang Guowei, so he took his men and horses to Zhou's house to arrest the thieves.
After arriving at Zhou's house, the thief was gone, but at that time, a neighbor named Lu Jin ran to Zhou's house to ask for a meat account, and when he heard the movement of officers and soldiers outside, he was frightened and got under the bed. After Zhang Guowei came to Zhou's house, he only saw Lotus, Wang Kui and Lu Jin, because he didn't catch the thief, he was worried about being held accountable, so he wronged Lotus and Lu Jin for adultery, and cooperated with Wang Kui to kill the master.
During the trial of the case, because the judicial department had not found evidence of adultery and murder of the owner as evidenced by Zhang Guowei, Pan Zhiyin of the Criminal Department believed that there were grievances in the case, so he dragged on and refused to close the case. However, his boss Weng Dali firmly believed that Lotus was an adulterous murderer, so he appointed Wang Sanxi and Xu Yizhong to participate in the trial.
Under his urging, the three of them could only hastily close the case and sentenced Hehua, Wang Kui, and Lu Jinling to death.
Two years later, two blind girls suddenly came to report that the real culprit of the lotus case was their owner named Zhu Guochen. It turned out that Zhu Guochen often beat and tortured these two people, once drunk and then beat the two of them, and afterwards showed off that he had killed the emperor's relatives, these two people could not bear the torture, so they ran to the government to denounce him.
With the arrest of Zhu Guochen and others, the grievances of the lotus case completely surfaced, and for a time the city was full of storms, and the case even reached the inner court, and the then cabinet minister Zhang Juzheng gave the original version of the matter to the Wanli Emperor, and wrote a letter demanding that the officials involved in the case be severely punished.
In order to appease the anger of the people, the emperor ordered the three Lang Zhong to be demoted and transferred, and also dismissed the retired Weng Dali as an official and abolished him as a commoner. And the culprit Zhang Guowei was tough in the background, and in the end he was only sentenced to confiscate the army. At this point, the lotus case was completely closed.
2. Understand how the trial system was set up at the end of the Ming Dynasty through the "Lotus Unjust Case".
The first is the acceptance of the case. In the Ming Dynasty, the local administrative setup was very complex, and it was roughly divided into a three-level system of provinces, capitals and counties. Under normal circumstances, the Lotus case should be tried by the officials of the government and county yamen at the first time, but since the case occurred in the capital, there are certain particularities in handling it.
Because it is at the foot of the Son of Heaven, there are also institutions such as the Five Cities Terracotta Division and the Jinyi Guard under the management of the Inspectorate who are responsible for local security and case handling.
Since the first agency to arrive at the scene of the crime at that time was officials from the Five Cities Terracotta Division, it was not inappropriate for them to take over the case.
The second is the review process of the case. Strictly speaking, there were three levels of review procedures in the Ming Dynasty, namely the Criminal Department, Dali Temple, and the Metropolitan Procuratorate.
The Criminal Department was the central presiding organ of the Ming Dynasty, mainly reviewing cases in the Jingshi area and serious cases with local prison sentences and above. Generally, criminal cases must be transferred to the Criminal Department for sentencing after the first instance, and normally the direct sentencing of the Criminal Department is also in line with the process, and only for major or difficult cases, Dali Temple and the Inspectorate will be involved.
Dali Temple is the Ming Dynasty's prudent punishment organ, "in charge of the trial of the decree of rehabilitation", generally not in charge of the trial, mainly responsible for the review and rehabilitation of cases in Beijing and the provinces. The Metropolitan Procuratorate is "the professional discipline of the hundred divisions, the identification of wrongs, the supervision of all provinces, the eyes and ears of the Son of Heaven", mainly responsible for supervising the trial of the criminal department and the review of the Dali Temple.
In the Ming Dynasty, major and difficult death penalty cases needed to be resolved through court trials, that is, they were first tried by the "three legal divisions", and then the emperor decided how to decide. However, due to the fact that "there are people who do not know the precedents and arbitrarily quote them or stick to the whole precedent to add circumstances to prison" and there are many vacancies in the judicial department in the late Ming Dynasty, the case review is not in place, so that "the introduction is not appropriate, and many people die unjustly".
When Pan Zhiyin, an official of the Criminal Department, questioned the case, according to the normal trial procedures, it should continue to be handed over to Dali Temple for review, but this link was skipped and directly sentenced to death by Lotus and others, which caused the occurrence of unjust cases.
Finally, there is the enforcement of judgments. The final verdict of the Lotus case was to put Lotus and the other three people to death, Ling Chi is a very ancient torture in the history of the mainland, and it has two main functions, one is a punishment and the other is a demonstration role.
Ling Chi will be divided into levels according to the number of knives, the most serious is Ling Chi more than 3,000 knives, making people bleed but unable to die quickly, for prisoners, in addition to physical pain, there is also psychological torture, it will punish the prisoner to the greatest extent.
Moreover, the places chosen by Ling Chi are generally in crowded places like Caishikou, which have no dignity at all for the tortured, and are also a threat and deterrent to the prisoners.
3. What kind of social environment does the "Lotus Unjust Case" reflect in the late Ming Dynasty?
First, social unrest. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor abandoned the government and the officials were wise and wise, which led to the relaxation of the country's governance, the ruins of the law, and the people's misery. The social crisis has led to an increase in the number of poor people, and the resulting increase in thieves and criminal gangs.
Due to the rampant number of thieves, but the ability of officials to solve cases has not been improved, the blind pursuit of case closure rate has directly led to these criminal gangs becoming more blatant. Just like Zhu Guochen, the culprit in the lotus case, he has been doing this kind of murderous and overselling business all year round but has not been discovered, and even takes pride in it and shows it off, which further highlights the incompetence of officials.
This is a vicious circle, the incompetence of officials leads to rampant thieves, and the thieves aggravate the turmoil of social security, so that the law is more stringent, and under the strict law, it is easy to misjudge and kill, thus making social contradictions more intense, leading to turmoil in the court and instability in the people's mind.
Second, the state system has been abolished. During the Wanli period, when Zhang Juzheng was in charge of the cabinet, the Ming Dynasty system was still relatively strict, and there was a brief period of Zhongxing. After Zhang Juzheng, the emperor basically rarely managed the government, and the power began to be held by eunuchs and the cabinet in turn, so that the party competition was fierce, and most of the people in the court were people who stood in line for power, even if there were clear people, they did not dare to come out rashly.
After the state's confidential government affairs were reported, no one dealt with them in a timely manner, and there were vacancies in the imperial court and the yamen, and no one placed them, and many departments were useless, and even if officials were arranged, they were either incompetent or unworthy party fighters.
At the time of the Lotus case, because the new monarch was on the throne, as the saying goes, "the new official takes office with three fires", at least the case could be concluded in a timely manner, but because there were still vacancies in important positions, it was still impossible to avoid the occurrence of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.
Third, officials are overjoyed. At the time of the Lotus case, it was a national funeral, and Zhang Guowei, as an official patrolling public security, did not pay attention to the bad impact caused by the murder, but only paid attention to the punishment he might receive. In order to keep his position, the hasty Lahehua and others were convicted and regarded human life as a mustard, which was quite bad, and completely forgot what his duty as an inspector was.
Another example is Weng Dali, who served as a magistrate in many places before he took up the post of squire of the Criminal Department, and his reputation has been tepid. In this case, in order to show his excellent case-handling ability to the new emperor, he ignored the incompleteness of the evidence chain, ignored the doubts of his subordinates, and used his power to suppress people and decide the case strongly, which directly led to the tragedy.
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there were many such unjust, false and wrongful cases, many of which were caused by officials' eagerness for quick success.
summary
As the saying goes, "in his position, seek his position", as an official, in an important position, you should always remember your own responsibilities and seek benefits for the people, rather than seeking a high position for yourself.
In particular, officials in the judicial department, who are responsible for the life and death of the people, should always regulate their words and deeds, pay strict attention to every detail of the case, and know that their every judgment directly determines the direction of the case.
As far as the ruler is concerned, the will of the people is always the center of centralized power, and in order to grasp the will of the people, it is not enough to use strict legal constraints, but also to "think about what the people think" and "think about what the people think", so as to make the rule more long-lasting.
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2. "The Robbery Case in the Late Ming Dynasty and the Judicial Trial of the Prefecture-level Magistrates: Taking the Mengshui Zhai Cuncalf as the Object"
3. Research on the Survival Status of Zhishi Civil Officials in the Middle and Late Ming Dynasty