(Chen Wen)
Chen Wen was a very smart young man.
This can be seen from his good results in the first place in the township examination.
China's imperial examination system can be traced back to the Sui Dynasty.
Before the Sui Dynasty, there was a general situation in the feudal dynasty that "the family was poor and there were no high-ranking officials", and in the selection and appointment of officials, one was directly held by the sons of the clan, and the other was personally selected by the emperor or the senior members of various ministries, and the means were really limited.
Comrade Yang Guang, the Emperor of the Sui Dynasty, officially represented the birth of the imperial examination system, and the selection of officials changed from the original relationship through the back door to relying on taking the examination to assess whether they were qualified for positions in the imperial court.
After being replaced by the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty improved it on the basis of the Sui Emperor, and by the Song and Yuan dynasties, the imperial examination system had become very mature, and the Song Dynasty had directly established a three-level examination system of state examination, provincial examination and temple examination.
After the founding of the country by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu Emperor of this dynasty carried out a drastic reform of the imperial examination, changing the prefecture to a township and a province to a meeting, and the palace examination was not much modified, which was the most critical link in the imperial examination system, and the candidates from all over the world were selected layer by layer, and finally on the main hall of the Imperial Palace of the Beijing Division, the emperor himself personally assessed.
Comrade Chen Wen not only ranked first in the township examination, but also performed very well in the temple examination.
The final score of the Ming Dynasty Examination was divided into three grades, one and three, which were the existence of the candidates' secondary school hegemony, and the second and third grades were several, and there was no specific number.
The second and third divisions are not too much attention because they are scumbag runners, and the focus of a imperial examination is entirely on the top three people.
And Chen Wen was one of the top three in the scientific expedition that year.
(Imperial Examination)
In the first year of orthodoxy, in 1435 AD, Comrade Chen Wen was admitted to the second rank of the third class, and was officially awarded the position of Hanlin editor by the imperial court.
Relying on the good results of the second place in the country, Chen Wen finally entered the career path.
This is also a problem that test takers often face.
Ten years of cold window no one asked, in one fell swoop into the Hanlin.
The Hanlin Academy, equivalent to the alternative unit of Daming government officials.
Those who were admitted as a result of scientific examinations, if they were not particularly favored by the emperor and directly assigned to their posts, or if there was no suitable position for the time being, they would first enter the Hanlin Academy and temporarily be idle.
It is said to be idle, but there is also work to be done.
Compiling the biographies of the previous emperors and editing the history books of the dynasties and dynasties, anyway, from morning to night, are all the business of cultural people.
For these Hanlin personnel who have not been appointed to real power, this is undoubtedly a very sad thing.
They spent half a lifetime or even almost a lifetime studying, in order to be able to obtain meritorious names and serve the country, and no matter how bad it was, they had to do a job as an official, not to continue studying in the Hanlin Academy.
But this is true, because the Ming Dynasty has never lacked talents.
No matter how outstanding talents are, once they enter the political stage of Daming, they will feel that they are incomparably small, like a drop in the ocean.
Chen Wen, who had just entered the career, also faced such an encounter, as soon as he entered Hanlin, he was immediately hidden by the snow.
Promotion and fortune? Splendid future?
Excuse me, just wait.
None of them work, you are a leader, what is there to worry about?
This waited until the second year of Jingtai, 1451 AD.
Although this year was an unremarkable year in Chinese history, the period before this year was a turbulent period in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
(Zhuqi Town)
Two years ago, Emperor Yingzong of Daming, Zhu Qizhen, with a 200,000-strong army, was full of confidence, but he was beaten by the Wala cavalry at Tumu Fort (Huailai, Hebei), and the army was more than half dead and wounded, and even the emperor himself was captured.
A year ago, the Wallachians attacked the Beijing Division, and the Ming Army's army Shangshu Yu Qianli turned the tide, and forced the Wallachians to retreat with 20,000 and defended the city of Beijing.
Seeing that there was nothing cheap to take advantage of, the People of Valar had no choice but to give up and let Zhu Qizhen go back.
The emperor released it, but a new situation emerged.
It turned out that when Emperor Yingzong was captured, Daming had already established a new monarch (that is, Emperor Yingzong's younger brother, Emperor Jingtai Zhu Qiyu), and he had made a trip to the north of the desert, and the Forbidden City had already changed hands.
Zhu Qizhen, who had lost power, was placed under house arrest by his younger brother Zhu Qiyu in the Forbidden City Of The Southern Palace, and the era belonging to the Jingtai Emperor began.
That is, in the same year, Chen Wen, who had been dormant in the Hanlin Academy for several years, finally got a position that was very important to him--the right envoy of Yunnan.
After all, this official position is not big, after all, it is an official from other provinces, and it is not as important as the authority in the hands of the Beijing official.
However, it cannot be considered too small to say that it is small, and the envoy in charge of the administration and taxation of a province is a very important official position in Yunnan.
At that time, the situation was that in the area of Guizhou Province, there were often disturbances in the local area, which led to continuous local wars, and Yunnan, as the rear base of the Guizhou battlefield, undertook the important task of transporting military supplies.
The so-called "soldiers and horses have not moved, grain and grass have gone first," and if the problem of grain and grass is not solved on the issue of military operations, this battle will be equivalent to losing half of the battle.
According to the law of daming, when grain was transported in wartime, when the people in the rear came out, they formed a team and escorted the grain and grass to the front line.
But the strange thing is that the local people in Yunnan do not have a single person who transports grain.
(Grain transportation)
This was not because the people were working against the imperial court, but because it was autumn when the peasants were busy, and the imperial court wanted grain, and the peasants had to hurry to the ground to harvest and raise grain and grass.
While collecting grain and transporting grain, the peasant friends will not be separated, and can only do the same.
However, the war ahead was really tight, and if we waited for the people to finish their agricultural work and then transported grain, I am afraid that the soldiers would have starved to death long ago.
After Chen Wen arrived in office, how did he solve this very difficult situation?
Actually very good to solve.
It is not false that the Daming Law stipulates that grain and grass should be transported by the people, but the people do not only refer to the peasants, and the merchants and friends are also the people of Daming.
The peasants want to cultivate the land and harvest, but the merchants are mostly idle.
Therefore, Chen Wen ordered that local merchants in Yunnan be recruited to form a transport team and immediately open up Guizhou to support the front line.
Of course, after all, transporting grain is physical work, one is hard, the other is to delay time, there is no free lunch in the world, and Daming does not have a job in vain.
The merchants were shrewd, and the imperial court requisitioned them, of course, to pay them.
Who will pay the reward?
Of course, the Beijing master will not give money, and the state capitals in Yunnan will certainly not pay, because this is your own idea of Chen Wen, and you are responsible for all the budgets.
Therefore, Chen Wen found a peasant friend again, saying that you have no time to transport grain, I found someone to transport it for you, but looking for someone is not in vain, salary and remuneration, do you also have to pay it?
The local peasant friends were very reasonable and paid money to Chen Wen.
At this point, a grain transportation crisis was perfectly solved by Comrade Chen Wen.
After that, he developed the economy in Yunnan, adjusted the people's livelihood, encouraged agriculture and industry and commerce, and achieved remarkable political achievements and was widely acclaimed, and under the leadership of Chen Wen, the province of Yunnan at that time was described in four big characters:
Politics and people.
Fast forward to the first year of Tianshun, 1457 AD.
(Zhu Qiyu)
In this year, Emperor Yingzong Zhu Qizhen, who had been imprisoned for eight years, took advantage of Emperor Jingtai's serious illness and inability to personally manage political affairs, launched a mutiny, successfully restored the throne, and regained the throne.
Zhu Qizhen was an emperor who had suffered a great crime.
He was taken by the Walas and taken prisoner in the bitter cold of the wind and sand outside the country.
He was also imprisoned by his half-brother in the most remote corners of the Forbidden City, a prisoner of politics.
And now, he has finally tasted the changes in the world and is once again in the world.
The emperor was open for the second time, of course, to reorganize his own personnel team.
As a result, Chen Wen, who was well known in the mouths of the people, was transferred back to the Beijing Division.
Returning to the Beijing Division, Chen Wen couldn't help but let out a relentless sigh of the years.
The Ming Dynasty has changed, and those who stood above the court have fallen one after another, Sanyang, Yu Qian, Xu Youzhen, Cao Jixiang, Shi Heng... They have all disappeared into the long river of history, which is exactly:
There are talented people in the jiangshan generation, each leading the way for hundreds of years.
At that time, in the Ming Dynasty, the first assistant of the cabinet was a man named Li Xian.
(Li Xian)
Compared with the first assistants in the history of the Ming Dynasty who were extremely deep in the city government and extremely good at power and scheming, Li Xian was a very pure person.
He was humble and good at selecting talents, and thought that Chen Wen was very capable and a cattle man, so he recommended him to enter the cabinet to do things.
In the seventh year of Tianshun, in 1463, Chen Wen was promoted to the position of Right Attendant of the Rebbe, and at the same time entered the cabinet to serve.
It is reasonable to say that Li Xian has the grace of recommendation for Chen Wen.
The cabinet is not something that anyone can come to if they want to, and although Chen Wen has outstanding political achievements, if there is no recommendation from Li Xian, if he wants to come in by himself, I am afraid that he will almost be interested.
But the strange thing is that Chen Wen's front foot just entered the cabinet, and the back foot fell out with Li Xian. He said to everyone that he had come to this day by relying on his true talents and practical learning, not on the relationship between Li Xian and Li Xian. Moreover, chen Wen repeatedly opposed Li Xian on the issue of discussing state affairs and handling government affairs.
Li Xian said one, he said two, Li Xian went east, he went west, Li Xian ate apples, he ate pears.
Anyway, Chen Wen and Li Xian were on the bar.
This continued until the eighth year of Tianshun, in 1464 AD.
In this year, Zhu Qizhen, who had been up and down all his life, fell seriously ill and reached the point where he was about to die.
The emperor wanted Bin tian, and the officials in the imperial court were all pregnant with ghosts, all secretly thinking about what to do next.
The eunuch Wang Lun took the lead, and he found a cabinet minister named Qian Pu in the cabinet, and the two conspired to discuss, planning to expel Li Xian after the emperor's death and install Qian Pu as the head of the new cabinet.
(Qian Pu)
For most of the courtiers and officials who plotted against him, Li Xian's presence was very dangerous.
This old and serious first assistant was fair and strict, and he was very strict with the gang and the law and discipline, and under the constraints of Li Xian, it was difficult for them to engage in some small actions of corruption and bribery.
Therefore, taking advantage of the death of the emperor and the beginning of the new emperor, the official field of Daming must be reshuffled.
The two of them discussed it, thinking it was seamless, but they didn't expect the conversation to be learned by Chen Wen by chance.
It is reasonable to say that Chen Wen and Li Xian are very contradictory in the cabinet, and there is no room for fire and water, and at present, they calculate Li Xian, which is beneficial to Chen Wen and harmless.
Isn't it a pleasure to die that a dead Daoist friend does not die a poor Dao?
But our Comrade Chen Wen did not play his cards according to common sense, and turned his head and told Li Xian the whole thing.
It is really difficult for us to understand Chen Wen's operations, since he has a disagreement with Li Xianduo in political views and regards him as an enemy, why did he choose to help Li Xian when he saw that he was in trouble?
History doesn't tell us the answer.
But the human temperament, seeing the subtle, we can easily get the answer.
Because Chen Wen is not a person who has abolished public affairs for personal gain.
Private affairs are private affairs, and public affairs are public affairs.
Even though Chen Wen and Li Xian were full of contradictions in political opinions, and he longed for Li Xian to step down as soon as possible, he still could not sit idly by in the face of the traitors' desire to calculate his colleagues.
Yes, Chen Wen is a man on the edge of a cliff who can save his enemies.
Li Xian was reminded by Chen Wen, so he prepared in advance, and after Emperor Xianzong Ascended the throne, he preemptively kicked Wang Lun and Qian Pu out of the game.
(Zhu Jianshen)
The two conspirators were demoted and left Beijing and retired.
I have read many modern and contemporary historical materials, and I have found that in the mouths of the vast majority of historical researchers, Chen Wen was a courtier with very bad conduct, suppressing his colleagues, stubborn in his opinions, blind to retribution and fond of gaining power, so that everyone in the government and the public hated and became infamous.
This is the view of many mainstream historians, but the author here holds a diametrically explicit opinion.
After the Chenghua Emperor Zhu Jianshen ascended the throne, Chen Wen served as a rebbe Shangshu, strictly observed etiquette, strictly abided by the rules, and after Li Xian's death, he took over as the first assistant of the cabinet, and although his political achievements were unremarkable, he did two things of great significance to the Ming Dynasty.
The first, the compilation of the Records of Emperor Yingzong, left a valuable historical wealth for later generations of Ming historians.
In the second case, he brought up a eunuch.
The eunuch's name was Wynn.
in Wynne
At that time, the little eunuch Huai'en first appeared on the stage of history, which was not at all eye-catching, but in the future, he would become a famous eunuch in later generations, shining in the annals of history.
How can such a person be a traitor, a courtier?
In the fourth year of Chenghua, in 1468 AD, Chen Wen died of illness at the age of sixty-four.
A generation of shoufu has completed his controversial life, and the future of Daming is about to usher in a period of magnificent years.