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Since the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the queen has basically been selected by several senior and respected families of Yin, Ma, Dou, Liang and Deng in turn. However, with the collapse of the Dou family's relatives in the palace coup d'état in the first year of Jianning (168), the history of several major families monopolizing the selection of the queen came to an end.
Some women from humble backgrounds took the throne and played a remarkable role on the political stage in the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
1. Behind the election
In the fourth year of Jianning (171), the various procedures for electing the queen in the court were in full swing according to the system. Although all the procedures for electing a queen are still the same, the content of electing a queen is very different from the past.
After a series of procedures such as consulting the ministers, divination, and turtle yarrow, in July, Song Guiren was elected as the queen.
In the third year of Jianning (170 years), the women of the Song family elected the court, and soon became a nobleman, and in the fourth year of Jianning (171 years), they were established as queens. In the palace full of sinister and tumult, how can the Song family women rise to prominence in just two years?
Empress Song is a native of Fufeng Pingling, and although the family she was born in is far inferior to the Yin, Ma, Dou, Liang, and Deng clans that have important influence in the country, they are also quite famous in the northwest region. During the reign of Emperor Zhang, the two sisters of the Song family became the nobles of Emperor Zhang at the same time, and the Empress Song of Emperor Ling was their great-granddaughter.
During the Jianning period (168-171), the Song woman's rise to prominence should have an important relationship with her family background, which was neither particularly prominent nor so lowly.
Under the autocratic imperial power, the election of an empress was never a personal matter for the emperor. The emperor was required to make political marriages aimed at preserving and consolidating imperial power through post-election elections.
Within the supreme ruling group, the various forces involved in the struggle for power wanted to seek capital and security for the throne by getting involved in the election of the empress. The election of the Lingdi Dynasty was also influenced by various political factions without exception.
The bureaucracy headed by the Three Princes, as the political representatives of the interests of the scholars and clans whose power had swelled dramatically in the Eastern Han Dynasty, tried their best to preserve the inherent system and traditions on the post-election issue.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, for more than 100 years before Emperor Ling, the history of the Yin family, the Ma family, the Dou family, the Liang family, and the Deng family taking turns to send the queen began when Emperor Guangwu conquered the world.
Emperor Guangwu's two wives, the Guo clan in Hebei and the Yin clan in Nanyang, were two important military forces that he contacted in the form of marriage after he raised an army against Wang Mang. After Zhongxing, Emperor Guangwu successively married Deng Yu, Dou Rong, Ma Yuan, and Liang Tong of the "Ministers of Yuan Gong", and formed the backbone of the Eastern Han Dynasty ruling group with these "Yuan Gong clans".
These families of the founding heroes not only have the importance of being a hero, but also are the in-laws of the Eastern Han Dynasty royal family. Such a pattern contributed to the formation of the "post-election system" with the characteristics of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
2. The post-election system of the Eastern Han Dynasty
During the Western Han Dynasty, the emperor's "selection of Shang Jian" for the concubine was only based on color, and as a result, there were many palace jokes. After the establishment of the Eastern Han Dynasty, in order to eliminate the disadvantages of the Western Han Dynasty after the election, and in order to adapt to the reality of the "marriage of the imperial family" of the famous family, the "female system" of selecting concubines was gradually formed.
In August every year, the imperial court sent middle doctors, courtiers and ministers to inspect Luoyang and neighboring townships, and visited the "virgins of good families" according to certain standards.
The imperial court set the criteria for the selection of women:
One is over 13 years old and under 20 years old; the second is beautiful and long; the third is "in line with the law"; The fourth is to have both ability and political integrity, that is, "to seek Shuzhe" and "must be virtuous".
The so-called "good family" originally refers to a pure white family, and the famous family is only a part of the "good family", but the "good family" involved in the "women's system" is almost synonymous with the famous family.
The area around Luoyang is a gathering place for famous families, meritorious heroes, princes, and bureaucrats, and the "virgins of good families" can generally only be selected from these high-ranking families. Provisions such as "conforming to the law" and "having both ability and political integrity" even exclude the general "virgins from good families" from the "women-taking system".
"Fit in the phase" means that people's bones, shapes, and appearances should be in line with a certain bone law, that is, there is a "noble life", and the woman with the noble life is naturally not the daughter of the scholar family and the meritorious bureaucracy.
As for "having both ability and political integrity", because most of the heroes and nobles of the Eastern Han Dynasty attached importance to the cultivation of Confucian classics, their children began to receive Confucian education at a young age and had a high level of cultural accomplishment. Therefore, the standard of "having both ability and political integrity" basically guarantees the monopoly of the Shi family's status as a concubine.
Of course, there are also a few "virgins" of low-level wealthy families who meet the provisions of the "female adoption system" and are selected into the harem, but any concubine outside the Shi family has no possibility of getting involved in the queen's position.
Among the 11 empresses from Emperor Guangwu to Emperor Huan, there are 9 from the five prominent families of Yin, Ma, Dou, Liang, and Deng in the northwest and Nanyang, and only the Yan family of Emperor Shun is an exception, and she has no prominent background. And Yan was made the empress, completely out of the need for the autocratic power of the Empress Dowager Deng. Empress Dowager Deng did not want her power to be challenged by an empress with a prominent family background.
The "post-election system" of the Eastern Han Dynasty was a system that guaranteed the interests of the scholars and clans, and the bureaucracy headed by the three princes naturally adhered to the routine "post-election system."
3. Why Queen Song?
The problem is that during the period of Emperor Ling, the bureaucracy still had the ability to completely influence the selection of the empress. The two "party disasters" since Huan Ling have seriously weakened the power of the bureaucracy, and at the same time, the power of the eunuchs has gradually reached its peak, so the eunuch group has become a force that cannot be ignored in the election of the queen.
At the time of Huan and Ling, the united front formed by relatives and the bureaucracy brought an unprecedented threat to the eunuchs.
Although the eunuchs used a palace coup d'état to kill the Dou family's relatives and Chen Fan and other leaders of the scholar bureaucracy, the psychological pressure brought by the political enemies to the eunuchs did not disappear with the demise of the political enemies.
From time to time, they are vigilant against any threat or destabilizing factor. The eunuchs understood that as long as they got their hands on power, the contradictions between themselves and the bureaucracy could never be eliminated, and they would develop and intensify.
To deal with this force, which is in fundamental conflict with their own interests, the eunuchs feel that it is too difficult! Because the role of the bureaucrats cannot be replaced, and at the same time, Emperor Ling never wants the eunuchs to be too powerful in his heart, so in military affairs, Emperor Ling mainly relies on the bureaucrats.
In this way, the bureaucrats always rely on the power given to them by the system to fight desperately against the eunuchs.
The eunuchs who came from the Huan and Ling periods were more clearly aware that in the struggle against the bureaucracy, the forces of foreign relatives were a decisive force, and if there was another alliance between the bureaucracy and the forces of foreign relatives, the consequences would be unimaginable.
Therefore, the eunuchs not only hope that the power of their relatives will no longer compete with them, but also hope that it can be twisted into a rope with themselves.
Based on the above trade-offs, on the issue of post-election, the greatest wish of the eunuchs is to elect a queen from a humble background without any family background.
The election of such a queen has at least three meanings for the eunuchs:
First, such queens and queens will not have a natural rejection of the eunuchs;
second, the queen has no foundation and capital to compete with the eunuchs in the power field;
Third, at that time, if a person from a humble background wanted to ascend to the throne, he had to rely on the great help of the eunuchs.
In other words, as long as a person from a humble background becomes the queen, it also provides a reliable guarantee for the alliance of relatives and eunuchs. In the Lingdi Dynasty, although the power of the eunuchs had reached its peak, it was impossible for them to play a decisive role in the post-election issue.
Because they are still unable to break through the shackles of traditional forces on post-election issues; At the same time, on post-election issues, the three public ownership systems give them the right to make recommendations.
The birth of Empress Song has experienced an important link of consulting the ministers. The eunuchs, who have rich experience in political struggle, know that on post-election issues, they must not act in too haste or too much according to their own wishes, otherwise they will be self-defeating.
From the perspective of Emperor Ling himself, based on the consideration of consolidating and maintaining the imperial power, on the one hand, he definitely did not want to become relatives of the scholar family such as the Dou family and the Liang family who could pose a threat to the imperial power, and on the other hand, he hoped that the wife family would have a certain amount of power in order to use it as a factor to restrain other forces. Of course, as a candidate for the queen, the Spirit Emperor must be able to like it.
It is the role of the "joint force" of the above forces that pushed the Song woman to the position of queen.
Empress Song was not the most ideal candidate for each force, but she also met the requirements of each aspect to varying degrees.
Although Empress Song was not from a family of scholars with national influence, her family had a certain amount of influence after all, which met the needs of the bureaucracy to a certain extent; Although Empress Song is not an ordinary commoner girl, she has no foundation in the court and no power network to back, which is exactly what the eunuchs can accept to a certain extent; Empress Song's impeccable background and her own "Shuyuan Zhiyi" also met the needs of Emperor Ling to a certain extent.
From the eunuchs' point of view, Empress Song was far from their ideal candidate for queen, they accepted Empress Song out of necessity, which doomed the eunuchs to always find ways to make the queen's candidate more in line with their own needs.
It is precisely this point that determines the fragility and instability of the status of the empress of the Song family.
Later, through the directors of the eunuchs, the fate of Empress Song had some connection with the daughter of a commoner in Nanyang.
4. He entered the house
In August of the last year of Jianning (168-171), when the imperial court was "picking women", a young girl with outstanding appearance, slender figure and slim figure was elected to the harem of Emperor Ling.
With the arrival of this stunning beauty, the already unstable palace is about to set off even greater waves.
This beauty's surname is He, and she was born in a poor butcher in Nanyang. According to the "women's system" and the selection custom of Lehan, it is impossible for a butcher girl to be elected no matter what. However, Ho's daughter's family bribed the chief elector with money and goods, so that the woman was elected.
There is no direct material to show what role the eunuchs played in the He family's female "election court". However, in connection with the fact that the relationship between the He family and the eunuch after entering the palace is extraordinary, the entry of the He family's daughter into the court should be a crucial step in the game of chess for the eunuch to choose the queen.
At the same time, logically speaking, it would have been impossible to support the poor and lowly at that time without careful planning.
First of all, according to the convention, those who come from poor backgrounds are not even eligible to enter the court; Secondly, even if there are poor and lowly girls who are selected to enter the palace through bribery, in the harem with a group of concubines, who can guarantee that she will be attractive to the emperor. It should be said that the chief elector of the "Picking Women" back then adhered to the will of the eunuchs and found the He family according to their requirements. Otherwise, a butcher at that time might never have dreamed that he would be able to bribe his daughter to be selected for the palace.
Through the chief election officer carefully selected by the He daughter, really lived up to the expectations of the eunuchs, with her appearance and means, of course, the promotion of the eunuchs, and soon fascinated the Emperor Ling, and was extremely favored by the Emperor Ling.
The eunuchs who closely watched the changes in the status of the He family immediately seized the opportunity of the favor of the He family and accelerated the pace of deposing the queen left and right.
5. The scourge of witchcraft
After entering the palace, the intelligent Song gradually understood the horror of intrigue and the sinister nature of mutual conflict in the palace, so the joy of being the queen at the beginning was quickly replaced by a heaviness, and she has been maintaining the status of the queen like thin ice.
From the perspective of receiving people and things, the behavior of the Song family is impeccable, especially for those eunuchs, and the thoughtful Empress Song tries to gain their favor. After the misfortune of Empress Song, many eunuchs expressed deep sympathy for her, which can prove that she has put a lot of repair work into the eunuchs.
Despite this, the position of the empress is an important object of contention between different interest groups, so the personal qualities and deeds of the empress of Song cannot have a decisive impact on the ups and downs of her fate. Although her personal behavior can win the favor of a group of eunuchs, but her becoming the queen has a conflict with the fundamental interests of the eunuch group, which determines that no matter how Empress Song behaves, she will not escape her doom sooner or later.
In the first year of Guanghe (178), Emperor Ling received an extraordinary letter, and Cheng A, a doctor from Taizhong, wrote to denounce Empress Song, saying that she used "witchcraft" to curse the emperor.
The so-called "witch Gu" is a kind of witchcraft, which generally uses the way of burying puppets to tell the ghosts and gods their wishes, and pray that the ghosts and gods will bring disaster on the people hated by the supplicants. This kind of witchcraft was very popular at that time, from the people to the court, from the dignitaries to the harem concubines, when the resentment could not be vented normally, they all wanted to achieve their goals through this kind of witchcraft.
This false accusation was planned and issued behind the scenes by the eunuch Wang Fu and others. Suddenly receiving this news, Emperor Ling was in disbelief. But Wang Fu and others took advantage of their special status to prompt Emperor Ling to quickly take the false accusation as an unquestionable fact, and the Song Dynasty would inevitably face great disaster.
Why did the eunuchs throw out the false accusation that the Empress Song was put to death in the first year of Guanghe (178)?
On the occasion of Xiping (172-177) and Guanghe (178-184), Emperor Ling's favor for the He family had reached its peak.
The reason why the He family was extremely favored by Emperor Ling during this period, in addition to her appearance, means and the role of the eunuch, an extremely important reason was that in the fifth year of Xiping (176), the He family gave birth to the prince Zi Zhen.
It is an extremely common phenomenon for harem concubines in previous dynasties to be favored because of their children, but in the Xiping (172-177) and Guanghe (178-183) of the Lingdi Dynasty, "the mother is more precious than the son" has an extraordinary significance. I don't know what the reason is, before the prince was born, several of Emperor Ling's sons died.
In the era of the patriarchal system of "family world", the pain and heaviness brought to an emperor by "having no children and breaking off heirs" must have been huge. Just when Emperor Ling was worried and suffering for "no child", the prince was happy to come to the world.
The ecstatic Emperor Ling was afraid that his "dragon species" would suffer another accident, so in addition to being happy, he did not forget to take the best care measures that people thought were the best, that is, not to give him the title of "prince" for the time being, and to raise him in the house of the Taoist surnamed Shi, and called him "Shi Hou".
The rarity and preciousness of the prince that is beyond the ordinary prince is naturally reflected in his biological mother, and Emperor Ling's favor for Concubine He has increased sharply, and it has reached the point of no return. After giving birth to the prince, the He family was immediately promoted from an ordinary concubine to a nobleman.
What shows that Emperor Ling is extremely favored by Concubine He is that the He family, from the identity of a nobleman, can recklessly interfere in court politics. Of course, He Guiren's unscrupulous intervention in the government is inseparable from Emperor Ling's extreme favor on the one hand, and even more inseparable from the behind-the-scenes planning of the eunuchs on the other hand. Only in this way can the degree and speed of He Guiren's involvement in the government be so astonishing. In the fifth year of Xiping (176), the He family was named a nobleman because of the birth of a son, and in less than two years, her intervention in politics made the court into a miasma.
6, behind the deposed queen
In the first year of Guanghe (178), the intervention of the concubine in politics had aroused strong dissatisfaction among the courtiers, and they wrote to ask for vigilance against the trouble of the concubine's interference in politics.
During the period of Xiping (172-177) and Guanghe (178-183), various disasters and strange phenomena appeared frequently, and the courtiers took the opportunity to write to the Emperor Ling to repair the government to relieve the disaster. In July of the first year of Guanghe (178), Yang Ci, a doctor of Guanglu, was full of loyalty to the imperial court, and criticized Emperor Ling as a courtier and emperor, saying that he was favored by his cronies and insiders, resulting in a situation of "being a disciple of a concubine and a eunuch, tyrannizing the country, and deceiving the sun and the moon".
At the same time, Cai Yong, the speaker of the council, also pointed out in the book:
"Within the cardinal, above the table, there is only one who sees the progress of color, and the mausoleum exceeds the system, and changes the image by tricks."
In connection with major events such as "Concubine He gave birth to a prince" and "deposed the Empress of the Song Dynasty" in the palace before and after the courtiers wrote the book, the courtiers criticized the concubines who "invited favors with sex", and then "overstepped the system of mausoleum" and "interfered in court politics", which could only be He Guiren.
During the reigns of Xiping (172-177) and Guanghe (178-183), Emperor Ling's favor for He Guiren swelled sharply, making the eunuchs feel that the conditions were ripe to replace the Empress Song with He Guiren, so they began to look for and choose the opportunity to depose the empress.
In the first year of Guanghe (178), the wave of condemnation of the concubines for interfering in politics was menacing, which undoubtedly prompted the eunuchs to speed up the pace of deposing the empress.
From the wave of condemnation and opposition, the eunuchs felt a kind of crisis.
The difficulty and resistance of making a concubine from a poor background as a queen is already very great, because there is no precedent in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The opposition of the courtiers not only increased the resistance to making her the queen, but the most terrible thing was that if this kind of opposition and rejection was allowed to develop, it was entirely possible that their carefully planned "appointing Concubine He as the queen" would fall short.
Therefore, they strongly realized that the matter of deposing the queen could no longer wait.
So in October of the first year of Guanghe (178), the recital of falsely accusing the Empress Song of "cursing" was issued. At the same time, the favored concubines led by He Guiren also stepped up to slander the Empress Song beside Emperor Ling.
The eunuchs knew the Spirit Emperor too well, so the timing they chose to strike and exclude dissidents was always so accurate. Judging from the situation at that time, the matter of Queen Song's "curse" seemed so reasonable that Emperor Ling could not believe it; It can also deeply touch the Spirit Emperor's most sensitive nerves, and it can't help but make the Spirit Emperor angry.
During the eight years of the reign of Empress Song, since He entered the palace, Emperor Ling gradually alienated her consciously or unconsciously, especially when Xiping (172-177) and Guanghe (178-183), He's favor and Empress Song's unfortunate contrast are the most obvious.
As a result, the actual status of Empress Song and Concubine He changed dramatically, so much so that the courtiers were deeply indignant at He's "mausoleum overstepping the system". Being in the right position and not favored, can Queen Song not resent Emperor Ling for this?
What's more, Empress Song's own aunt, as the concubine of Bohai Wang Kui, was ruthlessly killed by Emperor Ling together with Emperor Ling in the first year of Xiping (172). Although Emperor Ling became increasingly alienated from his queen, he never imagined that the queen would curse herself with witchcraft for this, so the moment he first read the book of false accusations, Emperor Ling was dumbfounded.
Recalling all the information he got from his attendants and some concubines on weekdays, Emperor Ling felt that the queen's resentment was indeed "three feet frozen"!
If he was resentful just because he had fallen out of favor, Emperor Ling might be a little more considerate of the empress, but the empress would never tolerate it if she bred resentment for her dead aunt. On the issue of the "throne", Emperor Ling, who is extremely sensitive and fragile, has long been deeply rooted in his bone marrow and can never be resolved.
The queen dared to resent and "curse" Emperor Ling for Liu Kui and others, could Emperor Ling still have the slightest forgiveness for Empress Song?
Cheng A, a doctor in the middle school, falsely accused Empress Song of "cursing" Emperor Ling; Quan Eunuch Wang Fu and Concubine He and others made "notes" for Cheng A's false accusations, and they cooperated seamlessly, not only making Emperor Ling believe in the "curse", but also insisting on linking the so-called "curse" with "Liu Kui's rebellion".
As a result, the fire of Emperor Ling's resentment against Empress Song was also fanned by the raging. Enraged, Emperor Ling immediately ordered the deposition of Empress Song, the killing of his stepfather and his brothers, and the exile of Empress Song's other relatives. Soon, Empress Song, full of grievances and grievances, died in a violent room.
7, the establishment of Queen He
Although the eunuchs couldn't wait to direct the "post-abolition incident", for a while, they failed to put He Guiren on the throne of the queen as they wished. Less than two months after Empress Song was deposed, some courtiers wrote to cry out for her.
The courtiers avenged the Empress of the Song Dynasty, which undoubtedly became an obstacle to appointing He Gui as the queen. However, the eunuchs would have gone to great lengths to remove any obstacles set up by the courtiers, so the courtiers' obstacles did not have a decisive effect in the end. Two years later, in December of the third year of Guanghe (180), the butcher girl He finally ascended to the throne of empress.
After the "abolition of the queen" and the killing of the father and brother of the Song Emperor, Emperor Ling was not so at ease, and the resentment against the Song Empress and the ambivalence of unjustly killing innocents often plagued Emperor Ling.
On the one hand, Emperor Ling's heart was full of resentment towards King Bohai and Empress Song who threatened the throne, and it was a kind of resentment that was never diluted until death; On the other hand, in the depths of Emperor Ling's heart, the subconscious of the unjust murder of Liu Kui and the Empress Song was surging from time to time.
Soon after the death of Empress Song, Emperor Ling had the fear of Empress Song's "wandering soul". Later, I dreamed that Emperor Huan reprimanded him with a fierce voice:
"What is Queen Song's crime? Thou hast listened to the word of evil and hast put her to death; Bohai Wang Kui has changed his ways, why do you want to kill him? Now that both Song and Kui have personally complained to God, even God is furious, and you have committed an unpardonable sin! ”
The Spirit Emperor who woke up from the nightmare was already dripping with cold sweat.
The next day, Emperor Ling couldn't wait to ask Xu Yong, the left eunuch of Yulin, "What is the omen of this dream?" If it is a bad omen, can it be eliminated? ”
Xu Yongming took the opportunity to tell Emperor Ling a tendentious opinion in the court, Xu Yongming clearly told all the facts of Liu Kui and Empress Song's unjust death, and pointed out that "loss of sentence" and "unjust killing of innocents" would invite Emperor Heaven to condemn him, and at the same time pointed out to Emperor Ling the remedy to eliminate his mistakes, but Emperor Ling, who had been plagued by "unjust souls" and had a lot of fears, refused to appease Liu Kui and Empress Song's "unjust souls" until his death.
It can be seen from this that the "clan rebellion" incident conjured up by Emperor Ling himself through the director of the eunuch had a profound impact on Emperor Ling.
The eunuchs took advantage of Emperor Ling's extremely weak psychology on the issue of the throne, which led to Liu Kui's execution and the unjust death of Empress Song. To a certain extent, it is precisely this weakness that has created the great sorrow of the Spirit Emperor himself.
(End of text)
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