If you are an official of the Ming Dynasty, there is such a person you definitely do not want to meet, because once you see it, you may not be far from death.
Figure | The Jinyi guard in the movie "Embroidered Spring Knife"
This kind of person who made the Daming officials feel frightened was the Jinyi guard wearing a flying fish suit and an embroidered spring knife around his waist.
Many officials even had a physiological reaction as soon as they saw Jinyiwei's flying fish suit and embroidered spring knife, and their bodies were numb and sweaty. The "History of Ming" also says: "Ti rode out in all directions, and the sea was uneasy." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" how was jinyiwei created >? Why is the Jinyi Wei so frightening? </h1>
In our impression, the Ming Dynasty's Jinyi guards did bad things for the emperor, they were always haunted, and they often treated the officials who were taken away by them in cruel ways.
In short, whenever a Jinyi guard appears, it is often followed by conspiracies, whistleblowers, and killings.
In fact, at the beginning of the establishment of the JinyiWei, it did not do the work that everyone remembered as licking the blood of the knife edge. Initially, it was just Zhu Yuanzhang's honor guard + security team.
We all know that Zhu Yuanzhang was born into a grassy and reckless background like Liu Bang. At the beginning of his business, the people who followed him to fight the world were his brothers. But when he successfully became emperor and established the Ming Dynasty, his brother became a courtier. As a monarch, Zhu Yuanzhang had to be separated from them.
Figure | Zhu Yuanzhang, who had been a monk in his early years
However, for this point, some people can see clearly, and some people still get along with Lao Zhu in the way they got along in the entrepreneurial period, and they don't regard themselves as outsiders at all.
This made Old Zhu feel very upset.
You know, zhu Yuanzhang's "entrepreneurship" process in the first half of his life was quite thrilling, which can be described as several life and death, step by step. At that time, every time he made a decision, he had to think carefully, and if he was not careful, he would lose his life.
Therefore, these experiences made Zhu Yuanzhang's desire to control power particularly strong, and only by holding all the power in his hands as much as possible would he have a sense of security.
Not only that, Zhu Yuanzhang's entrepreneurial experience has also shaped him into a particularly suspicious person, always uneasy about the people around him, and suspecting that others have deceived him.
People who have been leaders should be able to appreciate that the position of the first leader is very strange, and after sitting on the position for a long time, it is difficult to obtain the real information (the information seen and obtained are selectively let you see according to your preferences).
Therefore, the position of the first leader will unconsciously isolate people, "Which people are sincere to me and which people are false to me?" What are true and what are false? In the end, which people are out of public conscience, and which people are fake public welfare? "The more you care about the truth, the more you doubt the people under you, the more you doubt the people under them, the more you worry about losing power, and finally people are turned into monsters dominated by the fear of losing power." 」
That's right, Zhu Yuanzhang became this monster.
How to emphasize the relationship between the dignity and inferiority of the monarch and the subordinate with those entrepreneurial partners in a subtle way, and how to maximize the control of power, has become Zhu Yuanzhang's most concerned issue.
In order to solve the problem of the relationship between the monarch and the subordinate, Zhu Yuanzhang established the Arch Guard Division.
The main function of the Arch Guard Department is to arrange ceremonial guards, that is, to be responsible for various matters related to large-scale national activities, such as hanging flags, placing ceremonial utensils during sacrifices, and reminding the emperor and hundreds of officials what dresses to wear and what etiquette to use. Zhu Yuanzhang wanted to use the rites to emphasize the order of the dignity and inferiority of the monarchs and subjects by reconstructing the ancient rites.
Later, in order to monitor the words and deeds of hundreds of officials, Zhu Yuanzhang merged the Gongwei Division and the Yiluan Division, which was responsible for security functions, and established a private secret service agency, which is the origin of the famous "Jinyi Wei".
Jinyiwei was independent of the bureaucracy and was directly subordinate to the emperor himself. However, its initial functions were limited to display honor guards and security work.
Until the big case that shocked the government and the opposition occurred- the Hu Weiyong case.
"Hu Weiyong case", friends familiar with the history of Ming should know: In 1380 AD, Zhu Yuanzhang killed the nine clans of Hu Weiyong, the prime minister, for the crime of "conspiracy", and at the same time killed several people such as Chen Ning, Zhongcheng Tujie, and other people. In 1390, Zhu Yuanzhang also promulgated the "Record of Manifesting traitors to the Party", and executed the founding heroes of the Country, such as Li Shanchang, the Duke of Korea, Lu Zhongheng, the Marquis of Liehou, and the descendants of the late Duke Gu Shi of Tengguo, for colluding with Hu Weiyong for the crime of misdeeds. Later, he used Hu Weiyong to kill more than 30,000 people, known as "Hu Prison" in history.
Figure | Hu Weiyong film and television image
Hu Weiyong was the prime minister of the Ming Dynasty at that time, and it should be known that during the Tang and Song dynasties, xiangquan could influence imperial power to a certain extent. The ancient system of phase power was actually a kind of supervision and check on imperial power, and it was actually the result of the compromise of imperial power with the military families and door valve nobles behind the scholar class.
By the Time of Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming Dynasty, there was no longer a door valve aristocracy in China, so the strongest support behind Hu Weiyong's power was actually those founding heroes.
Hu Weiyong had served in the Taichang Temple in his early years, and the responsibility of this department of the Taichang Temple was to "control the matter of sacrificial ceremonial music", that is to say, in the matter of Lao Zhu establishing the order of respect and inferiority of the monarch through the ritual music system in that year, Hu Weiyonggong also gave his own strength. Therefore, he should not be unaware that Lao Zhu was a person who was particularly concerned about his authority.
However, power can cause one to lose oneself. As Hu Weiyong's officials became bigger and bigger, he became less cautious.
As we all know, the chapters of each department are to be processed by the minister and then selected and presented to the emperor. This Hu Weiyong actually used his power to withhold the unfavorable music for himself or his henchmen and not show it to Lao Zhu.
What was even more excessive was that he dared to make his own decisions on many major matters of life and death and robbery, and did not report them to Zhu Yuanzhang. Old Zhu put up with Hu Weiyong again and again, and finally couldn't bear it anymore, so he took care of Hu Weiyong.
Zhu Yuanzhang made a "Hu Weiyong case" and implicated so many people, but it was not as simple as eliminating the proud founding heroes. Through the Hu Weiyong case, in addition to cracking down on the founding heroes group, Zhu Yuanzhang also did an important thing: taking the opportunity to adjust the state power structure.
How did Zhu Yuanzhang adjust the state power organs?
First of all, the system of prime ministers was abolished, and the prime minister was gone, and the six shangshu reported directly to the emperor and were responsible to the monarch. The civil government of the Confucian scholars no longer had the power to balance with the imperial power.
Then, it was the creation of the Imperial Prison, allowing the Ming Emperor to blatantly interfere in judicial affairs, and the specific executor was Jinyiwei.
It should be known that during the Ming Dynasty, all cases had to go through the "Three Laws Division", that is, the Punishment Department, the Metropolitan Inspection Yuan, and the Dali Temple. For large cases, these three institutions should cooperate with each other (the three divisions will try the case), the Criminal Investigation Department will be responsible for trial, the Metropolitan Procuratorate will be responsible for correcting, and the Dali Temple will be responsible for rejecting it, so that the occurrence of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases can be avoided as much as possible.
However, from the "Hu Weiyong case", Emperor Daming could skip the Three Laws Division through the Zhao Prison, arrest people through the Jinyi Guard, and then personally handle some cases.
With the prison, the power of the Jinyi guards can become greater. Because they had the support of the emperor, the Three Laws Division had no right to inquire, so when they tried officials, it was called a fierce. All prisoners caught by jinyiwei may skip the normal judicial procedures and directly throw themselves into the prison for torture and interrogation to extract confessions.
There is an alias called "Heavenly Prison". "Heavenly prison" not only means that this is a prison that only the upper class is qualified to enter, but also means that as long as you enter, you will ascend to heaven, and it is difficult to get out alive.
It is precisely for this reason that when the Hundred Officials of the Ming Dynasty mention the Jinyi Guards, they will think of the Zhao Prison, and they are all talking about the tiger color change.
Later Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, because the throne was not justified, so he was even more obsessed with the secret service agency than Zhu Yuanzhang.
Zhu Di's character was completely inherited from his father Zhu Yuanzhang, suspicious and cruel. He likes to intimidate his subjects by bloody massacres and creating an atmosphere of terror. After he ascended the throne, he not only did not abolish the secret service, but also continued to strengthen it.
In Zhu Yuanzhang's time, the Jinyi wei was only an institution outside the imperial palace, and Zhu Di felt that it was not used well enough, so he chose the eunuchs around him and set up a new secret service agency, "East Factory".
Figure | East Factory eunuch film and television image
Later, by the time of Emperor Ming Xianzong, the "West Factory" was established (the West Factory was only a temporary institution that existed for a short time in the history of the Ming Dynasty). The East Factory, the West Factory and the Jinyi Guard, collectively known as the "Factory Guard", constituted the Ming Dynasty's secret service agency system.
The bureaucratic system of the Ming Dynasty was actually very mature, and the supervision of civil and military officials depended on the bureaucracy itself, and there was no need to get a secret service agency. The secret service organs of the Ming Dynasty were actually a plug-in set up by the emperor for himself in the system of checks and balances between himself and the bureaucracy, and it was a tool for the emperor to destroy the bureaucratic system in order to satisfy his own selfish desires. Later, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty took power because they had mastered the si li supervisor, and the secret service organs such as the East Factory became the weapons for eunuchs to control the government and persecute hundreds of officials, making the official field chaotic. The eunuch dictatorship was also a major factor in the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" >Why did the Qing Dynasty not set up such a secret service agency as Jinyiwei? </h1>
In 1644, after the Manchu Qing entered the customs, most of the ming system was inherited. However, the Jinyi Wei only appeared briefly for more than a year in the early days of Shunzhi, and never appeared again after it was abolished.
Emperors all have an urgent need to know the truth, why would the Qing Emperor abandon the Jinyi Wei?
Because the rulers of the Qing Dynasty learned the historical lessons of the Ming emperors, they knew well how harmful secret agencies such as Jinyiwei and Dongchang would cause to the government.
What harm would a secret service agency such as Jinyiwei cause to the imperial court?
First of all, it takes money to raise a guard, and it takes a lot of money.
Secondly, Jinyiwei helped the emperor to do a lot of open and dark work, which not only had great power, but also caused corruption.
Finally, jinyiwei, an institution independent of the bureaucracy, has unsupervised power, is easy to self-devour, and if it is not careful, it will set itself on fire and hurt the safety of the rulers themselves. At the beginning, Zhu Di established the East Factory to balance Jinyiwei because of the incident in which Ji Gang tried to "plot a great rebellion" under the command of Jinyiwei.
Therefore, the Qing Dynasty not only did not set up Jinyi guards, but also severely attacked eunuchs, abolished the celebrant of ceremonies, tried its best to degrade the status of eunuchs, and cut off the possibility of eunuchs harming the government.
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the world was undecided, and it was not yet an ironclad piece. Externally, there are three Great Han clan kings entrenched in the south, and they may rebel at any time. Internally, there are also founding ministers who have formed parties for personal gain and plotted against each other.
In addition, what worries the Manchu Rulers even more is that the remnants of the former dynasty and the remnants of the people are surging in the dark tide, and there are many anti-Qing organizations.
Without the Han Chinese, satisfaction could not govern the great China at all, so in order to avoid intensifying the problem of ethnic contradictions, the Manchu Rulers even had to think carefully about the appointment of officials.
If a secret service organization such as Jinyiwei is openly set up, doesn't it show that there is no trust in the Han people? In this way, it is inevitable that the nerves of the Han officials who are already dissatisfied will be stimulated, and the ethnic contradictions between the Manchu and Han will be further intensified.
Therefore, the reason why the Qing Dynasty would abandon the establishment of such a secret service agency as the JinyiWei was also a decision they had to make after weighing it several times, and it did not mean that they wanted to show their sincere hearts to their courtiers.
As we said earlier, as the emperor of the country, it is difficult for him to get real information from his courtiers. The more the emperor did not get the truth, the more he feared losing power, so no ruler would give up intelligence gathering. The Qing emperor did not openly set up secret service agencies, but behind the scenes, he used some means - first of all, political spies.
The political secret agent system of the Qing Dynasty began to emerge from the Kangxi period.
At the beginning of the Shunzhi Pass, the Manchu Qing government banned associations in order to prevent Han literati from gathering crowds to incite emotions, but in fact it could not be strictly enforced. In the Jiangnan region, far from the center of Manchu power, there have always been some secret anti-Qing societies with religious gimmicks, and they have been repeatedly forbidden, and even riots have often occurred.
After Kangxi came to power, he analyzed that behind the repeated prohibitions on the problems in Jiangnan, it actually reflected that the ethnic contradictions between the Manchu and Han dynasties were still very acute, and the Han officials and gentry in Jiangnan still had the possibility of opposing the Qing.
Therefore, in order to supervise the Han officials in the south and maintain control over the south, the Kangxi Emperor began to set up political spies after the end of the last southern tour in 1707.
Who were the people who worked as political spies for Kangxi in Jiangnan?
Through the establishment of the Ming Dynasty JinyiWei and the East Factory, we can know that the ancient emperors would develop a set of third-party forces outside the bureaucracy to become their own people in order to not be constrained by the bureaucratic system for imperial power. But the question is where to find people who are absolutely loyal to the imperial power?
At the beginning, Zhu Di was precisely because he was not confident about Jinyiwei that he established the East Factory.
In the face of interests, there is no absolute loyalty. Unless they can find people who are completely dependent on the emperor for their status and leave the emperor, they are nothing. Is there such a person?
There are really two kinds of people: one is a eunuch, and the other is a foreign relative.
However, these two kinds of people can not be used, ah, the two Han Dynasty dynasty government was ho ho ho how miserable these two kinds of people, dare to use them?
Who did the Qing emperor look for as his own political agent?
In fact, the Qing Dynasty also had a special group - wrapping clothes.
Wrapping, called Wrapping Aha in Manchu, is the meaning of house slave. In the society of the Jurchens, it is mainly the nobles who own the coat, and the coat lives with the master, who assigns labor tasks to him, and the output of labor belongs to the master.
The main source of the wrapping is actually the population that the Jurchens plundered from other ethnic groups, mainly Han and Korean.
The political spies initially set up by the Kangxi Emperor were actually wrapped in clothes from the Shangsan Banner, and they mainly reported to Kangxi the daily movements and evaluations of the feudal officials.
For example, Cao Xueqin's grandfather Cao Yin is the kangxi family's coat. Cao Yin's mother was still Kangxi's wet nurse, so he studied with Jun since childhood, which brought his relationship with Kangxi closer and closer, and finally he was favored.
In the Kangxi Dynasty, political spies were still just a prototype, and more terrible things were still to come. Because, the Yongzheng Emperor invented a more perverted "secret folding system".
Before the Yongzheng Dynasty, officials gave the emperor "song chapter", most of which were open to officials. Because there is a cabinet, the sonata must first be submitted to the cabinet minister, and then the cabinet minister will play it to the emperor, so what is written in the sonata is known to the cabinet.
We all know that the Yongzheng Emperor was a famous workaholic in history, and his desire to grasp the real information was definitely stronger than Zhu Yuanzhang. Therefore, the Yongzheng Emperor must have known that if the true thoughts of many people below were unfavorable to the cabinet ministers, they would certainly not dare to write them on the recital. Therefore, in addition to continuing to use the public sonata, Yongzheng also extensively used the secret "sonata".
We have seen the film and television dramas, which is actually a unique thing of the Qing Dynasty, it is a private document exchanged between officials and the emperor, and the content of the document is not public.
As soon as the system of folding appeared, it meant that the Qing Dynasty opened a set of secret politics, which made the Manchu Dynasty wenwu everyone endanger themselves, but it was very conducive to the emperor's control of the subjects.
By folding, the emperor could easily verify the authenticity of the information. Because he could ask different ministers about the same thing, such as the disaster situation in various places, the price of food, the behavior of certain officials. The minister who was questioned did not know what the others had told the emperor in the recital, so no one dared to lie, so that the emperor took the group of ministers firmly in his own hands.
Before Yongzheng, not everyone could hand over the chapter upwards, and it was not enough to be of sufficient grade. However, during the Yongzheng period, even local middle-level officials could give the emperor a fold, which meant that all the officials at the middle level and above in the country accepted the direct leadership of the emperor.
In the Ming Dynasty, for the emperor to issue an order, it had to be drafted by the cabinet, that is, it had to be consulted by the cabinet first, and the process was open, and the cabinet passed before it was implemented. After the emperor's order was issued, it was also handed over to the six ministries to be conveyed one level at a time, and the process was also open.
The Manchu Emperor used the folding system to directly write his own instructions and orders on the fold and send them back to the officials, but the process was completely secret, except for the emperor and the executive official, even the middle department was unaware.
Compared with the Ming emperors, the Manchu Qing emperors did not need to raise any secret service agencies such as Jinyi Wei and Dongchang, because they relied on the folding system to turn the ministers of the whole country into spies who provided intelligence.
In other words, starting with Yongzheng, the emperors of the Qing Dynasty practiced "secret politics." What the emperor wanted to do, what information he got, could be completely secretive and unknown to anyone. Such a system, you say it is perverted no?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="27" > conclusion</h1>
Whether it is the Jinyi Wei established by the Ming Dynasty or the secret politics of the Qing Dynasty, it is essentially the product of the expansion of the emperor in order to satisfy his personal desire for power and to keep the imperial power from the control of the civil bureaucracy.
Before the Ming Dynasty, from the Han and Tang Dynasties to the Two Song Dynasties, it was the civilian officials who ruled the world together with the emperor. Although this stage is also an absolute monarchy, it is only an enlightened despotism, and the imperial power is subject to the constraints of the bureaucracy, and the emperor cannot do whatever he wants.
However, the ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system, which was a major event in China's political history. Scholars can rule the world with the monarch, and the system relies on power. However, the Ming Dynasty began to have no prime minister, and the six Shangshu reported directly to the emperor and were responsible to the monarch. From then on, the civil government of the Confucian scholars and masters no longer had the right to balance with the imperial power.
From the Ming Dynasty onwards, the emperor disrespected intellectuals and even regarded the readers as slaves and domestic animals. The emperor was slightly dissatisfied, so he peeled off the pants of his subordinates in public and beat them to the ground, and many people were killed on the spot.
Wait a minute, didn't the Ming Dynasty still have a cabinet?
Yes, it is precisely because of the cabinet that the emperor of the Ming Dynasty cannot do whatever he wants. Because the following chapters, the emperor's orders, have to go through the cabinet, and what the emperor wants to do is equivalent to being open, so the emperor also has to bear the pressure of official public opinion. If the emperor violated Confucian ethics, he would be subject to overwhelming condemnation by hundreds of officials and the threat of collective resignation, so the Ming emperor still had a bad time.
However, china's history developed to the Qing Dynasty, because of the adoption of a secret political system, there was no "public opinion supervision", so it was difficult for the imperial power to be constrained by the civil bureaucracy and became an absolute monarchical system.
In the Manchu Government, whether it was the Southern Study Or the Military Aircraft Department, all ministers had to be absolutely subordinate to the emperor. What the emperor said was what he wanted, and no one dared to go against the emperor's will.
The Group of Chinese Literati doctors, who should be most highly conscious, suddenly lost their voices collectively. Of course, it is not that they cannot speak, but that they have become afraid to speak under the absolute absolute monarchical system, have become slaves, and have taken the initiative to turn themselves into mutes.
As for the emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the courtiers and courtiers around him disappeared, leaving only some traitors and slaves who only promised to promise. They spent all day in the great dream of the Spring and Autumn of the Heavenly Kingdom, until one day, they woke up to the sound of the Cannons of the British...
END
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