Before Huang Renyu, the author of "Fifteen Years of Wanli", almost no one was interested in the boring year of Wanli 15, but Huang Renyu had a fondness for it. Some views believe that the time point of China's feudal society from prosperity to decline lies in the "Anshi Chaos", and Huang Renyu believes that the Ming Dynasty gradually collapsed because of this bland year. The author himself commented on the book, saying that although this uses the ming dynasty character group portrait to describe the story of the 15th year of the Wanli calendar, in fact, he wants to tell the general record of China's failure.
The first person mentioned in the book is the emperor of that period, the Wanli Emperor Ming Shenzong Zhu Yijun. When the Wanli Emperor Chong Ling ascended the throne, Zhang Juzheng, known as the "Backbone of Daming", succeeded Gao Gong and became the first assistant to the cabinet. The empress dowager was very satisfied with Zhang Juzheng and made him the teacher of the Wanli Emperor. Emperor Wanli's childhood was raised under the tutelage of Zhang Juzheng and his mother, and both of them were strict with him, but Wanli made great progress in learning under this strict education, and also laid the root of turmoil.
Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun in imperial costume
The Wanli Emperor had great respect for Zhang Ju, and as a young man, he could not manage a great dynasty at all, and zhang Juzheng's existence filled the gap in the management of the country. Therefore, the emperor would let Zhang Juzheng sit steadily in the position of the first assistant for staying by his side and giving the blame to those who opposed Zhang Juzheng, even at the expense of violating traditional morality. After Zhang Juzheng died of illness and illness when he was worried and needed to return to his hometown to fulfill his filial piety and leave Beijing, a group of civilian officials who opposed Zhang Juzheng oppressed the emperor and inflicted a heavy hand on Zhang Juzheng's family, who was greedy for property. The Wanli Emperor suddenly discovered that even if he were the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he would not be able to act according to his own ideas. Zhang Juzheng's death not only did not give him more opportunities to display his ambitions, but was more and more restricted by civilian officials, and even his private life, these civilian officials wanted to govern. The Wanli Emperor understood in his heart that these civil officials represented a heavy moral concept for thousands of years, and this moral concept was the foundation of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and under the issue of establishing the crown prince, under several battles, the Wanli Emperor was finally tired, and he did not want to fight with these civilian officials anymore. So from the 15th year of the Wanli Calendar, the subject emperor rebelled against these civil officials with silence and began a 32-year strike, and the Qi and blood of the Ming Dynasty began to become weak from this time.
The first assistant of the cabinet is Zhang Juzheng
Zhang Juzheng, seriously speaking, if the Ming Dynasty did not have Zhang Juzheng, it would be a major loss for the Ming Dynasty. Although Zhang Juzheng was not a moral model, he could make the Ming Dynasty prosperous. After Zhang Juzheng ascended to the throne, he met the emperor who was extremely young at that time, and his greatest achievement was that he did not overthrow the Ming Dynasty surnamed Zhu at this time, but launched a reform, and because of this reform, the direction of the Ming Dynasty began to rise, but unfortunately the Ming Dynasty could not appear another Zhang Juzheng. When Zhang Ju was there, the Wanli Emperor did not have to face the bureaucratic clique, Zhang Juzheng was gone, and the Wanli Emperor could only face the bureaucratic clique alone. However, the Wanli Emperor himself could not fight them, so he began a 32-year-long sabotage strike.
The Wanli Emperor is not a person who is incapable of governing the country, after all, he grew up under the guidance of Zhang Juzheng, and he also has political achievements, and it is a pity that those civilian official groups of the Ming Dynasty locked the ambitions of the Wanli Emperor, otherwise the Ming Dynasty may not have begun to decline from the 15th year of wanli. The emperor was gone, and Zhang Juzheng's successor was named Shen Shixing. Shen Shixing was a peacemaker who regulated the relationship between the courtiers and the emperor, and how could Shen Shixing inherit the position of first assistant after Zhang Juzheng's death? All this still stems from Shen Shixing, a person who attaches great importance to morality. The Ming Dynasty originally promoted morality, and the existence of Shen Shixing was just the right existence, and although Shen Shixing was able to use his own balancing skills to properly handle the contradictions between the civilian official clique and the emperor, he was somewhat powerless to govern the entire Ming Dynasty. Shen Shixing is not too bad on the whole, and it can be said that without Shen Shixing, the Ming Dynasty may have collapsed during the time of the Wanli Emperor. Shen Shixing made the northern border have 10 years of peace, made the enemy Mongols become Daming's business partners, and let the common people also gain benefits, so Shen Shixing is not exactly a bad official. Looking at it another way, Shen Shixing should be said to be a traditional good official. There are both management ability and no moral faults, but it is precisely because Shin Shixing pays too much attention to moral standards that he did not end up in the position of first assistant in the cabinet, but at the age of 57, he wrote a letter saying that he would resign and return to his hometown.
Harry like
The end of the Ming Dynasty court was already ruined, so was there any available people in the local official field? Yes. Huang Renyu here talks about the fourth person, named Hai Rui, calling him strange. However, Hai Rui's extreme incorruptibility and extreme sincerity can almost be regarded as a representative of the moral model in ancient society, but there are too few people like Hai Rui, And Hai Rui is too old-fashioned, and even if he is moral, he still wants everyone to accompany him to morality. He said, Jiajing Jiajing, the family is clean. Many of Hai Rui's actions were actually correct, but in the corrupt Ming Dynasty, his approach became wrong. It didn't take long for Hai Rui's official position to be lost.
After talking about the local officials of the emperor's cabinet, Huang Renyu began to talk about the fifth person, Qi Jiguang. Qi Jiguang was actually a military attaché who knew how to strategize, but the Ming Dynasty did not need such a military officer, they only wanted a military attaché who could completely annihilate the Wokou and win the battle. Perhaps Qi Jiguang is not the most perfect person, but in order to realize the ideal of maintaining the safety of the people, he is still the hero in people's hearts, but he is such a hero. After Zhang Juzheng's death, he was unfairly treated by the imperial court, and finally died in the 15th year of the Wanli Calendar. In his final comments, Huang Renyu said that Qi Jiguang's misfortune was because he had broken the balance that the civilian-official clique was trying to maintain. The hero fell prey to political struggles and eventually died alone in his illness.
Taihe Hall
After reading "15 Years of Wanli", people always want to do a hypothetical problem. If the Wanli Emperor had not slackened his government, could the Ming Dynasty have lived longer? If the Ming Dynasty could still have someone like Zhang Juzheng, would the Ming Dynasty go further? If the Civil Officials of the Ming Dynasty did not exclude the honest and honest official Hai Rui, and if the Ming Dynasty could balance the power between the civil and military officials, would the Ming Dynasty not die of internal and external difficulties? If history is not, since the 15th year of the Wanli Calendar, the decline of these heroes has already shown that the prosperity of the Ming Dynasty has ceased to exist.
The Wanli Emperor and his ministers fought for their own selfish desires, regardless of the rise and fall of the country. In the end, the Ming Dynasty was destroyed. Judging from the entire history of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the system of prime ministers and accelerated the confrontation between the bureaucracy and the imperial power. In the end, the Chongzhen Emperor did not have a trustworthy person. Zhu Yuanzhang hoped that his descendants would continue to be the same, and in the end it could only be a dream. Perhaps the author wants to tell us a fact through the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar: the author believes that China has been in decline since the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, the literati have become more and more pedantic, and the harm caused by feudal rule to the people has gradually deepened. Perhaps the fifteenth year of the Wanli calendar is not really a turning point, but the author dares to freeze this moment and combine the history of the East and the West, which is really appreciated.