(Portrait of Zhu Qizhen)
Although the protagonist of this article is Zhu Qizhen, I am not going to come up and introduce this emperor to you, the first thing I want to mention is a person named Wang Zhen.
To be precise, it was a eunuch named Wang Zhen.
Wang Zhen, a native of Wei County, Hebei Province, is said to have been a free-spirited reader when he was young, and he also took several imperial examinations.
In the Ming Dynasty's imperial examination examination "Eight Shares", the content of the Four Books and Five Classics was specially examined, and because Comrade Wang Zhen had a lively and free personality, he always wrote content other than "Eight Shares" in each examination, which led to his several scientific examinations and failure to mix with even a person.
Wang Zhen, who has repeatedly failed to make the list, feels that his future is bleak, and he wants to stand out in the imperial examination, become a jinshi, and then break into the official field of Daming, and it is no play to find an official and a half-job, but the so-called all roads lead to Rome, and Wang Zhen quickly found the second way out in his life, that is:
Be a eunuch.
The history books only record that one night in the last year of Yongle, Wang Zhen raised his knife and castrated himself, and after the castration, he went to the Forbidden City the next day to register as a eunuch.
You may think that this is quite humiliating, or quite despise Wang Zhen's behavior of not being able to join the eunuch ranks, but I think that Wang Zhen can be called a cruel person, a person who has the courage to click his lower body, and must be a person with unswerving faith.
The front foot stepped into the Forbidden City, and the back foot King Zhen head was bigger.
He thought that he had entered the palace as a eunuch, and it would not be long before he could be promoted and raised, become a general manager, become a CEO, marry a little palace girl, and embark on the peak of his life, but he found that things were not as simple as he thought.
There were about 10,000 resident eunuchs in the Forbidden City, and there were only a few of them, and it was even more difficult to climb up than the Himalayas.
Therefore, he waited silently in the Forbidden City for a while, waiting until Chengzu Zhu Di and Renzong Zhu Gaozi had all died and Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji ascended the throne, and only then did he wait for an opportunity.
(Ming Xuanzong, Zhu Zhanji)
The so-called "belly has poetry and books to be self-explanatory", although Wang Zhen became a eunuch, after all, he read books when he was young, standing among a group of eunuchs, always having so much temperament than others, his mind is smart, and his brain is fast, so he quickly got the love of Xuanzong.
Emperor Xuanzong believed that Wang Zhen was well-read and reasonable, and it was a pity to do rough work in the eunuch pile, so he arranged the first job in his life: Donggong Julang.
The East Palace is the prince's palace, and the bureau lang is the subordinate who serves the prince.
Don't look at it as a job to serve the prince, but the official position is not small, and there are five positive products.
And the prince who Wang Zhen served is the protagonist of our story today, Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen.
When Zhu Qizhen first met Wang Zhen, he felt that the eunuch in front of him was very interesting, completely different from the eunuchs he had seen before.
This eunuch could recite poems, tell stories, astronomy and geography of Kyushu, customs and customs of the four directions, understand everything, know everything, and know everything, which made the young Zhu Qizhen have a huge liking for Wang Zhen.
Compared with those who would only bow their knees in front of them, the Wang Zhen in front of them was simply a beautiful landscape for Zhu Qizhen.
Of course, Wang Zhen also seized this opportunity, although the Zhu Qizhen in front of him is now just a child who sleeps and wets the bed, but if there is no accident, he will be the new emperor of the Ming Dynasty in the future, and he will coax him well, and he is still worried about not being promoted to an official and getting rich in the future?
It was also during this time that Zhu Qizhen and Wang Zhen established a very close relationship, that is, Wang Zhen became the best partner of Zhu Qizhen in his childhood.
Zhu Qizhen knew him, trusted him, liked him, and respected him.
In the tenth year of Xuande, a generation of heroic lords, Emperor Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji, suddenly fell ill and died of ineffective rescue, and in the same year, Zhu Qizhen changed his yuan orthodoxy and ascended the throne.
Zhu Qizhen, who became emperor, did not grasp the sovereignty at the first time, because he was nine years old, and in the eyes of the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu was just a small fart child who still wore open crotch pants, so the power of the imperial government was in the hands of Zhu Qizhen's grandmother, the empress dowager Zhang Shi.
Although the little emperor could not personally govern, some basic personnel transfers could still be decided by himself, so he quickly arranged his most trusted Wang Zhen to become a eunuch of The Ceremonial Supervisor Bingbi.
The eunuch departments of the Ming Dynasty had a total of twelve supervisors, four divisions, and eight bureaus, totaling twenty-four departments. The Shang Food Supervisor, who is responsible for cooking, the Bell and Drum Division, which is responsible for playing more, and the Huan Clothing Bureau, which is responsible for washing clothes, and other departments.
Among these twenty-four departments, the best welfare treatment and the greatest power are Wang Zhen's celebrant.
(Wang Gi-gi image)
And the eunuch bingbi of the celebrant is equivalent to the shoulder handle of the celebrant.
The reason why the Celebrant of Ceremonies is so powerful is because the Bingbi eunuch has a very bullish ability: to criticize the red.
We know that the political system of the Ming Dynasty is called the "vote drafting system", which means that when the minister looks for the emperor to do things, he needs to write the content on a piece of paper and send it to the emperor's desk, and the process of the emperor taking a Zhu pen to write down his opinions on the paper is called approval red.
Daming has a vast territory, thousands of acres of fertile land, thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, large and small, and there are 20,000 officials with heads and brains, most of these people are looking for the emperor for a little thing, the emperor is not Iron Man, the folds are piled up into mountains, but if you are busy, you have to find someone to help, and the eunuch bingbi, the superintendent of ceremonies, has become a person who helps the emperor.
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, some powerful eunuchs, such as Liu Jin and Wei Zhongxian, all did the work of eunuchs, which was basically equivalent to the second emperor, and it can no longer be said that he shared the work for the emperor, but "approved the red" for the emperor himself, and directly did the emperor's work.
Of course, Wang Zhen could not mix that part, because since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, there had never been a eunuch who could be in power, and he had no way to learn from his predecessors, he could only explore on his own.
But what Wang Zhen did not expect was that his dream of becoming a great eunuch who wanted to be a powerful minister and a public did not seem to be so difficult to realize.
Because Wang Zhen was still very young, the forces that could restrain him in the court had begun to age and go downhill.
Time is the biggest weapon in the world, and Wang Zhen has time and these people who restrict themselves to slowly survive.
Time flew by, day and night flew by, and empress dowager Zhang Shi, who had always made Wang Zhen jealous, finally received a bento, and finally no one could restrain herself above the court.
Wang Zhen soon became a powerful eunuch.
The process was simple and easy, because Zhu Qizhen had grown up, but he still trusted Wang Zhen very much.
This trust is based on childhood memories and is deeply planted in the bones of Zhu Qizhen.
Zhu Qizhen, the emperor, is very strange, he does not smoke, the second does not drink, the third is not a bad woman, the fourth is not indiscriminate killing, on the contrary, he is a very well-behaved person, abide by the code of conduct of the emperor, and honestly clock in and out of work every day.
That is to say, although the emperor entrusted all the power of the state to Wang Zhen and had nothing to do with himself, he did not allow himself to degenerate or contract any bad habits.
His only shortcoming was that he listened too much to Wang Zhen's words.
For Zhu Qizhen, his father and mother, Wang Zhen is the closest, the heavens and the earth are big, and Wang Zhen is the biggest.
Therefore, when Wang Zhen instigated the emperor to personally march and expedition to Wallache, Zhu Qizhen agreed without saying a word.
The idea of the imperial conquest was proposed by Wang Zhenxian, but in fact it did not have much to do with Wang Zhen.
As a young emperor, Zhu Qizhen was very eager to establish his military feats in the north like his father Xuanzong and his grandfather Chengzu, first, to serve the public, second, to pass it out to be more pleasant, and third, to leave his name in history.
This is a good idea, and it has not been without examples before.
The Northern Song Dynasty Zhenzong emperor personally marched, the Song and Liao sides boycotted, signed the alliance of The Yuanyuan, and he was not stronger than Song Zhenzong, he ten Zhao Kuangyin? When the army came out, it would press the Wallachians to the ground and pound them, and it would not be a matter of minutes to sign a treaty?
When the ministers learned of the emperor's idea, they objected.
The court was agitated, and the ministers blew their beards and narrowed their eyes, righteously rebuking the emperor for not being able to do such a ridiculous thing.
Because the imperial conquest is very risky, the Wala people are just rioting on the border, and it is not enough for the military department to directly send troops to clean them up?
The emperor himself went to the battlefield and won the national celebration, so what if he lost the battle, was captured by the enemy, or died directly on the battlefield?
The ministers spat on the court, and Zhu Qizhen was very frightened.
Because the empress dowager Zhang Shi and his father Emperor Xuanzong had told him that he should respect his courtiers and listen to their opinions in everything, now the ministers were angry because they wanted to go out to fight, and the young Zhu Qizhen also retreated a little.
But Wang Zhen's words made the little emperor Mao Sai open, and Wang Zhen told Zhu Qizhen, what to be afraid of, you are the ruler of the Ming Empire, and the ministers at the bottom look quite imposing, but in fact they are all working for you.
A few words woke up Zhu Qizhen.
Yes, I am the emperor, the world is our old Zhu family, I can do whatever I want, I still use others to point fingers at me?
I want to go out and fight, and Lao Tzu, the Heavenly King, can't stop me!
(The Change of the Civil Fort)
Later things everyone knows, Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen took his most trusted eunuch Wang Zhen, as well as 200,000 troops, the vast and mighty to pull out the front line, originally planned to find the Wala people to brush experience, did not expect to just walk to the Tumu Fort (Zhangjiakou, Hebei), was raided by the cavalry of the Wala people, 200,000 troops died, wounded, fled, basically even if it was cold.
At this point, Wang Zhen was of course to blame, he was killed by an angry general, but it was useless to kill him, because the general trend had gone, the Ming army lost the initiative in the frontal battlefield, the army scattered, and even the emperor Zhu Qizhen himself was captured by the Wallachians.
Of course, the matter is far from over at this point, but this article is almost over.
Tianzi was captured, the Capital Division was shaken, the Army of Vala drove straight in, the King of Qi, Zhu Qiyu, was in danger, succeeded to the emperor, the soldier Shangshu Yu fought in the city of Beijing in blood, and Zhu Qizhen returned to the Forbidden City...
These are all afterwords.
In this article, we will only talk about Zhu QiZhen.
Of course, there is nothing to talk about.
Those historians talked a lot of rhetoric and all kinds of analytical behavior to Zhu Qizhen, in my opinion, very ridiculous.
Theoretical analysis applies to adults, but not to children.
Zhu Qizhen didn't understand what it meant to be emperor, and he didn't know what he was doing.
Because in essence, he is just a child who does not grow up, and the thoughts and actions of a child have no logic to speak of.
The reason why he didn't have the opportunity to grow up was actually not entirely to blame Wang Zhen.
Because the role played by Wang Zhen is really just a childhood playmate of Zhu Qizhen, every child is entitled to have a playmate.
What really keeps the little emperor from growing up is layer after layer of dynastic politics.
(Forbidden City)
The empress dowager, the cabinet, the ministers, they were too enthusiastic to shield the emperor from the wind and rain, and did everything that should have been done by the emperor.
A group of people who hoped day and night that the Ming Dynasty could become stronger and bigger were the culprits who caused the Ming Dynasty to suffer heavy losses.
They did not give Zhu Qizhen the opportunity to learn, nor did they give him a platform to grow.
It was Zhu Qizhen himself who turned himself into the so-called "Daming God of War".
Yes, it's that simple, simple, and ironic.