Wei Zhongxian, this person used to have a very fixed wind evaluation before the Republic of China--the curse of the country and the eunuch. And so far there is no authoritative official book, and historical sources will say that he is daming's good minister to save the country. However, with the rise of various platforms on the Internet, the public tends to be more entertaining, and Wei Zhongxian's reputation has suddenly and slowly improved. There is a blow that he is the first hero of daming in three hundred years, and if he is there, there is daming, and without him there is no daming. There is also a blow that he is the only one who can almost destroy Hou Jin. It is difficult for me to answer them all. Therefore, some historical materials have been sorted out. To facilitate everyone to see a comprehensive Wei Zhongxian more intuitively.
Wei Zhongxian's peak period can be described in a single sentence of Ming History: the internal and external power belongs to Zhongxian. From the cabinet, the six ministries to the four governors, the inspectors, the death party, the appointment and removal of official positions, and the killing and disposal are all up to him to decide. He could actually elevate the emperor, and was one of only two people in the Ming Dynasty who could elevate the emperor. This was also one of the reasons why Chongzhen would kill him, and the imperial power could not be bypassed.
I counted how Wei Zhongxian almost destroyed Hou Jin's record when he was in power. For your reference. In the first year of the Apocalypse, in the Battle of Liaoyang, the Jin army captured Shenyang and Liaoyang, and the Qi family army, which was once famous in the world, completely withered away and ceased to exist. In the same year, Su Chongming rebelled (along with the later An Bangyan and called the Suan Rebellion)
In the second year of the Apocalypse, the Ming army was defeated in the Battle of Quang Ninh, and the land of western Liaoning was returned to Houjin. At this time, Hou Jin had already controlled the entire Liaodong. The Ming army began to be compressed within Shanhaiguan, and the Xiangjiao uprising broke out.
In the third year of the apocalypse, Shui Xi tu rebelled with Zhi'an Bangyan. Due to the delay in military salaries by the imperial court, Funing and Hangzhou mutinied. This is also the most direct manifestation of the deterioration of the financial failure during the apocalypse.
In the fourth year of the Apocalypse, when the people rebelled, the Ming army defeated the Suan army in Puding, and after entering the Zhijin (the Suan Rebellion was completely quelled in the 10th year of Chongzhen), Jin attacked the zhenjiang city where Mao Wenlong lived, burning the island and accumulating. A year later, Jin attacked the Mongol Chahar department for aiding the Mongol Horqin, and signed a pact with Horqin, leaving no time to attack Daming. Therefore, this year there is no record of a major war between the Ming Army and Houjin, and at the end of the same year, the Netherlands officially occupied Taiwan
Five years after the apocalypse, Liuhe was defeated, and more than 60,000 Ming troops fled. Later Jin captured Lushun, Jinzhou. During this period, the Apocalypse was even more obsessed with carpenters who did not care about the country, and because of the completion of the Qingling Tomb, many of them were given to Wei Zhongxian.
In the sixth year of the Apocalypse, the four battalions of the Ming army were destroyed in the Battle of Juehua Island, and the Qing army successfully captured Juehua Island and captured Songshan.
In the seventh year of the Apocalypse, the Jin army attacked Jinzhou and Ningyuan, but although it failed, it destroyed the two cities of Linghe, Big and Small. The Chengcheng rebellion and the Shaanxi Wang Er Uprising also marked the official outbreak of the largest peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty and quickly spread to all parts of the north. In the end, the Shaanxi peasant army destroyed Daming seventeen years later.
Another is that many marketing numbers say that Wei Zhong had no asset records when he was raided, in this sense, Wei Zhongxian was clean and great, but according to the existing historical records, Chongzhen only removed him from his posts as the superintendent of ceremonies and the East Factory, and who sent Fengyang to guard the ancestral tombs. Just let him go to the tomb, rather than raid the family and exterminate the clan (Later Wei Zhongxian committed suicide himself) ming shi recorded: then placed Zhongxian in Fengyang, looking for life and arrest. Zhongxian traveled to Fucheng, smelled it, and died with Li Chaoqin. Therefore, it is normal that the amount of Wei Zhongxian's assets does not appear in the historical data.
It is not that Wei Zhongxian had nothing to do, when the two Zhejiang provinces were affected, Wei Zhongxian advocated that the franchisees who delivered goods for the royal family be exempted from the filial piety fee paid to the inner treasury. In addition, he has adopted a policy of suppression against all the criticisms, the nobles and rich merchants who despise him, and the heavy ones have the whole family being cursed, and the light ones have no family property. This may be a basis for many marketing trumpets on the Internet to help Daming suppress businessmen and increase the revenue of the national treasury. But this was only because these people looked down on Wei Zhongxian or despised Wei Zhongxian that they were retaliated against. Its starting point is not for the sake of the state. For those local squires who knelt and licked Wei Zhongxian, Wei Zhongxian was very generous and supportive. Especially for yourself and the Ke clan. His brother's grandson Wei Pengyi made An Pingbo, his nephew Wei Liangdong the Marquis of Dong'an, and Wei Liangqing the Prince of Taishi and the Duke of Ningguo. Wei Pengyi was a young master, and The Prince of Wei Liangdong was taibao. At that time, Wei Pengyi was five years old, and Wei Liangdong was still a baby in his swaddling. Can be ranked three less, official residence two products. This is the only example of this strange degree in all dynasties and dynasties. Those who attached themselves to Wei Zhongxian and were added to the rank were Cui Chengxiu, Tian Ji, Wu Chunfu, Li Fulong, and Ni Wenhuan, known as the "Five Tigers" Tian Ergeng, Xu Xianchun, Sun Yunhe, Yang Huan, and Cui Yingyuan, and the "Five Biaos" had ten dogs, ten children, forty grandchildren, and so on. There were actually 315 people attached to Wei Zhongxian in the court, which brought the Daming party struggle to its peak. Wei Liangqing even took the place of the emperor and held sacrifice ceremonies in the northern and southern suburbs to worship the ancestral temple. Such an act of transgression is comparable to rebellion.
When Wei Zhongxian was in charge of the imperial program, the people of Daming were not well fed, on the contrary, they were more in the water, and he restored the mining tax, which is not explained here, and everyone can consult the information by themselves. The measure of exploiting the people in the name of increasing the national treasury is easy to cause civil unrest, so the White Lotus Sect Uprising, the Wenxiang Sect Uprising, and the Wang Er Uprising during the Apocalypse Period are some of the larger-scale civil uprisings. I won't list the small-scale hundreds of people. From the reactions of these people, we can see how miserable the life of the Daming people was at that time. What is even more tragic for the people of Daming is that at this time, the castration party created a new strange atmosphere, that is, to establish a new word, and it is not as simple as building a bungalow in ordinary times. Historical records record: The cost of each temple is hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the number of people is tens of thousands, stripping the people's wealth, invading public funds, and cutting down trees. The construction of the ancestral hall of Kaifeng also destroyed more than 2,000 people's houses, and created the palace nine jacarandas, yi like the emperor. In the year of the 6th year of the Apocalypse alone, more than 70 new words were built, and the libraries of the prefectures and counties were empty. I can understand why the fiscal deficit was so big during the apocalypse. A more hilarious operation came, and the Apocalypse also gave one of the larger names yongen. The meaning is to let the people always have a grateful heart for Wei Zhongxian. I don't know if the hearts of the people at that time were greeting the fathers and mothers of those people. But this is also a source of creative material for some marketing trumpets to blindly make up the People of Daming who will always be grateful to Wei Zhongxian. But the marketing number will not feel that the people are oppressed because the emperor faints, but will feel that Wei Zhongxian and the castration party are bullying the people and helping Daming.
Wei Zhongxian and Ke's intervention in the inner palace was even more outrageous. Because the empress of the Apocalypse, Zhang Shi, had advised the Apocalypse to alienate the Ke clan and Wei Zhongxian, wei Zhongxian retaliated, rumoring that the Zhang clan was not the daughter of Zhang Guoji, the head of the state, but a thief, and wanted to use this as an excuse to curse the entire Zhang clan, but fortunately, at this time, the Apocalypse still had a conscience, and the whole Zhang clan escaped the disaster of extinction. After that, he did not dare to discuss Wei Zhongxian again. However, after becoming pregnant, she was poisoned by Wei Zhongxian's minions and miscarried, and Lian Mingguangzong chose zhao shi to be hated by the two and forced to die. Feng Guiren persuaded Emperor Xizong to resign and was given death. Wei Zhongxian's jealousy of the Diner Clan was the Apocalypse Concubine Zhang, and was mutilated and died of starvation as a pregnant woman. Because of the joint efforts of Keshi and Wei Zhongxian, the concubines of the Apocalypse were all in danger, which led to the fact that the two children of the Apocalypse had disappeared before they were born. Let the apocalypse be childless until death. This doesn't look like a loyal family subject, more like the Apocalypse is just a pawn for them to seek power, but because Wei Zhongxian is there, so that he can concentrate on fun, he has always felt that Wei Zhongxian is a loyal servant of Daming. Here is a misunderstanding, many people like to flatter, encourage the emperor to depose the state affairs, indulge themselves is the performance of loyalty, and ignore the rise and fall of the country and the survival of the people. This, in my opinion, is extremely outrageous. Throughout the ages, it is not necessarily mingjun who reuses civil officials, but none of the eunuchs who reuse eunuchs are mingjun. From qin's deer as horses, Han's party curse, Tang's ganlu temple change, and then to the Ming Dynasty's change of Tumu Fort and words everywhere. This without exception proves the harm of the eunuchs.
To refute the rumors a little more, the marketing number said that before Chongzhen died, he let people collect Wei Zhongxian's body, which has no historical basis, and Chongzhen's last words were: Seventeen years after the ascension of the pole, the interior fell three times, and the rebels went straight to the Beijing Division; although Chongzhen was a bandit who bowed to heaven, it was the mistake of all the ministers! Death, faceless ancestors in the underground. Therefore remove the crown from the crown, cover the face with hair, and let the thief divide; and do not hurt the people. Then he committed suicide. He desperately beheaded his own concubine, the princess, before he died. At this time, how could he think that it was Wei Zhongxian. Moreover, Wei Zhongxian had been dead for seventeen years. Yes, you read that right, it is not that Wei Zhongxian died as soon as Daming died, if you add Nanming, then Wei Zhongxian died more than forty years after Daming was completely finished, wei Zhongxian died seventeen years later, the peasant rebel army invaded Beijing and destroyed Daming. These rebel armies were initially the result of a popular uprising that occurred after Wei Zhongxian came to power during the Apocalypse period. It can be understood that Wei Zhongxian indirectly destroyed Daming.
Then debunked the rumor that Wei Zhongxian helped Daming increase taxes, which was the most rumored in the Ming Dynasty for more than two hundred years. Before Wei Zhongxian came to power, the imperial court could pay 3.47 million taels of silver to the border outside of Liaodong, and the salary given to Liaodong could reach 6.28 million taels of silver. After Wei Zhongxian came to power, in the five, six, and seven years of the Apocalypse, there were only about 2.98 million, 1.04 million, and 1.46 million, respectively. Where did it go? During Wei Zhongxian's reign, it can be clearly seen that the military salary is falling, of which liaodong alone owes 2.37 million taels in the seventh year of the apocalypse, but Daming has more than one liaodong, which shows that it is normal for daming to mutinous militia to emerge in an endless stream. Those soldiers really eat faith as food, and they go out on expeditions, their families are subsistence, their taxes have to continue, and the people are bitter. This also indirectly led to the Mutiny in chongzhen's early years. I don't know what the marketing number said about Wei Zhongxian's tax revenue in the two hundred years of The Ming Dynasty, what kind of treasury is full and so on. How did these bases come about? I have at least not found it in the existing historical data.
In the face of Daming's financial chaos and deficit, it is not that no one is trying to save it, Wang Yingjiao wrote "Jibu Songshu" Li Qiyuan's "Jibu Songshu" so far seems to be a good medicine to change Daming. However, the eunuch party controlled the government, and these people were eventually expelled from the imperial court. And the end of Daming is already unavoidable.
To sum up, many people like to brush comments that Wei Zhongxian is just a pawn of the emperor, so they can kill if they want, they are just tools for the emperor to seek power. But in fact, the Ming and Qing dynasties were the two most centralized dynasties in China. No emperor is non-existent and powerless. Eunuchs are the emperor's pawns, but the emperor is not a pawn of eunuchs, taking advantage of the emperor's trust, forming parties for personal gain, causing chaos in the dynasty, and amassing wealth and power. Wang Zhen, Liu Jin, and Wei Zhongxian are the three most typical representatives of Daming. And not only the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were the emperor's tool people, but also all the civil and military officials, Yan Song was deeply trusted by Jiajing, Jiajing did not like a word to be directly cool, and his son was even more different, so that he had no one to send him to the end. Yu Qiantang Shaobao, Bingbu Shangshu, was so famous that Emperor Yingzong beheaded him with a single word. The appointment of any official in the entire Ming Dynasty (except the Southern Ming Dynasty) and the dismissal of the first assistant were all based on the emperor's words. There was no official who could confront the imperial power. Therefore, those comments that the so-called reuse of Wei Zhongxian is because the emperor has no power, the emperor wants to be in power, he wants to manage the country, and so on, in fact, he does not understand the political ecology of the Ming Dynasty at all. Besides, Apocalypse didn't care much about the country at all, he preferred to be a carpenter, and the people were really less important than wood. The Qing Dynasty people even said that during his reign: the women's temple stole power, indiscriminately rewarded adulterous punishments, loyal and good misfortunes, billions of trillions of centrifuges, although they wanted not to die, how could they get it? "There are such kings. It can be seen how the life of the Daming people is in full swing. In addition, Wei Zhongxian suppressed and slaughtered the Donglin Party, the Chu Party, the Qi Party, and the Zhejiang Party only because these people opposed the eunuch dictatorship, and had nothing to do with whether the Apocalypse had power or not. If these people call him Daddy, he will be happy to take care of these people. Such as Wang Huazhen, Ruan Dacheng. It was precisely because Wei Zhongxian intensified Daming's party struggle that the castration party and other opponents of the castration party were impeached back and forth every day, and then Wei Zhongxian was imprisoned one by one. As a result, the court was smoky and miasma, and no one was thinking about state affairs. So there is that sentence: Ming died in the apocalypse, died in Wanli, and died in Jiajing" Chongzhen was only very unlucky to appear in an era that could not be saved, and finally became the king of the country.
In fact, the harm to Wei Zhongxian and the castration party was not only that they had purged a large number of Daming's civilian generals, but also that they had been committed to slaughtering and framing all the Ming generals and commanders who were opposed to the Manchu Qing. Until the Chongzhen period, he also worked hard to help the Manchus eliminate all the military generals who intended to resist the Manchus. What is even more fatal is to make Daming completely lose the hearts of the people. Never underestimate the influence of intellectuals on the country as a whole. Their strength alone may be too small, but when they are gathered together, they can change the day. Therefore, since Wei Zhongxian came to power, Daming's popular uprisings have become more and more numerous and more intense. Especially the Shaanxi peasant army that revolted during the apocalypse. Later, it became the main army that destroyed Daming. Therefore, Ming Shi's evaluation of the apocalypse: Billion trillion centrifugal, although the desire is not dead, how can it be obtained? A pair of monarchs who made Daming lose people's hearts instead became the greatest monarch of Daming for more than two hundred years under the blind compilation of marketing numbers. It's ridiculous.
In the two dynasties of the Heavenly Apocalypse and Chongzhen, disasters were also frequent, but this had nothing to do with Wei Zhongxian, so it was not listed one by one.
Let's take a look at historical common sense. Whether it is the Ming Dynasty or other dynasties, it does not mean that you can compile history books at will if you are a literati. Many people said that the Ming history written by the Donglin Party smeared Wei Zhongxiancai. But in fact, after the Qing Dynasty unified China, it established the Ming History Museum in 1645 and began to compile the History of Ming, and it was not officially written until the fourth year of Qianlong. At this time, Daming had been dead for more than a hundred years. I really don't think it was the Donglin Party who lived for hundreds of years to help the Qing Dynasty write history. After all, I believe that science does not believe in theology, and the records of Emperor Gao of the Qing Dynasty were compiled by people with orthodox yellow flags and blue flags. They didn't know Wei Zhongxian at all. Not to mention deliberately smearing Wei Zhongxian. Any opinion should be justified, not fabricated. This does not prove how different and correct those marketing numbers are, only that they are not of ordinary quality and like to reverse black and white. More importantly, with a straight book, the Book of Kings and Dynasties is the basic quality of historians of all generations, from the descendants of Yanhuang to the unification of China. There is the style of the Qin Emperor Han Wu Tang Zong Song Zu, but also has the regret of crossing the south with a crown and the northern expedition hopeless. We have pride and anger, pity and abomination, all kinds of dynastic deeds. Let us know very well how this nation has been passed on and developed. And these links between ancient and modern are the words of those historians, who use a few words and sentences to outline the rise and fall of dynasties. We read the history books at random, some of them have been compiling a book for more than ten years, some people have been condemned for truthful records, and there are also fathers and brothers who have died, and so on. We can't perceive the bloody wind in the history books. But for their beliefs we should give respect and understanding. And you can't trample on them and humiliate their personality because you haven't studied for a few years. Negate their efforts. Open your mouth to say that the history books cannot be believed, and the unfounded marketing number is true. Then all kinds of anti-intellectual comments to maliciously attack them, which will not make those historians unbearable, on the contrary, it will only expose their own knowledge and quality.
If you hold different objections, please cite historical materials, and don't always use those marketing numbers that have no provenance as the basis
Encourage the kings, resist the inventors of history, and insist on being the porter of history.
References: "History of the Ming and Qing Wars", "Records of Emperor Gao of the Qing Dynasty", "Records of Emperor Mingxi", "History of Ming", "Ming Tongjian", "Chongzhen Records"