Some time ago, I was fortunate enough to read "The Ming Dynasty under the Microscope" written by Mr. Ma Boyong. I feel that this historical and factual literary work is very vivid. The author has no intention of advertising, I am just expressing my own feelings.

1.

talks about an unjust, false and wrong case in the Ming Dynasty.

Some time ago, I was fortunate enough to read "The Ming Dynasty under the Microscope" written by Mr. Ma Boyong. I feel that this historical and factual literary work is very vivid. The author has no intention of advertising, I am just expressing my own feelings. The seventh volume of the

book records a story of "Four Wrongful Souls in the Orthodox Era" .

It is said that when the orthodox emperor of the Ming Dynasty Ming Yingzong was in power, there was a Jinyiwei Baihu named Yang An in the Gyeonggi area.

Jinyiwei What level of official is Baihu? In the Ming Dynasty, it was a sixth-grade official position, which is equivalent to the department and bureau level in modern times.

This is a very big official. If you are an official to this extent, the ancestral graves at home will not only be smoking, but will be burned to the ground.

Yang Baihu was lucky enough to marry a beautiful daughter-in-law named Gao. When a woman is beautiful, she naturally has more disputes.

Yang Baihu's boss fell in love with Gao's beauty and tried to take it for himself several times, but failed.

You think Yang An is a department-level official in the Ming Dynasty, and his boss is most likely a thousand-level Jinyiwei in the Ming Dynasty.

Yang An's boss couldn't succeed, so he hated Yang An and Gao, and thought about how to punish Yang An all day long.

As a result, Yang An died peacefully not long after.

Yang An's boss took this opportunity to retaliate against Gao, and filed a lawsuit with the Yamen on the grounds that he suspected his subordinate's "bizarre" death, saying that Gao was suspected of murdering her husband.

Mrs. Gao is already a bureau-level wife, so she must have enough motive to murder her husband.

The logical evidence provided by Yang An's boss was that Gao had an improper relationship with his son-in-law Qiu .

Moreover, they teamed up with the neighbor's old lady Hao to find the quack magician Shen Rong. They burned the talismans into ashes and mixed them with a recipe of decoction, and cursed Yang An to death. This scene of

is so similar to Pan Jinlian’s method!

Pan Jinlian and Wang Po's conspiracy to murder Wu Dalang are all capital crimes, not to mention that the person who died was a high-ranking official of the Ming Dynasty.

According to the "Laws of the Ming Dynasty", if what Yang An's boss said is true, Gao will definitely be executed by Ling Chi, and his son-in-law Qiu, his neighbor Hao, and the warlock Shen Rong will also not escape death.

The law at that time stipulated as follows for those who murdered their husbands:

A wife or concubine who murdered her husband would be sentenced to death, and if she committed adultery, she would be sentenced to Ling Chi, and the adulterer would also be executed.

Maybe it was because of his birth, Emperor Hongwu hated those men and women whose relationship was unclear.

At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Lao Zhu determined that "collaborating with adulterers to murder one's husband" was the most heinous crime among the people.

This Jinyiwei was really ruthless in his actions, leaving people to die without saying a word. It was equivalent to killing people and then crushing their bones and scattering their ashes.

2.

This case occurred in the Gyeonggi area, so naturally Sunchonbu was responsible for the investigation.

Just talking about the facts of the case is not a big deal. The relationship between husband and wife was not harmonious, and the wife took desperate measures to murder her husband. This kind of thing happened every day in the Ming Dynasty.

But the victim was a high-ranking person, and the plaintiff was at least a high-ranking person. Shuntian Prefecture did not dare to neglect, so they locked up Gao, Qiu, Hao and Shen Rong first.

At first, the four people refused to admit it and denied the matter in unison. There's no way to admit something that didn't happen in the first place.

However, Shuntian Mansion was afraid of Jin Yiwei's power, so it had to recognize Tang Qianhu's principles and let the four of them plead guilty.

It's too easy to get them to plead guilty. They were immediately subjected to severe torture, and the four of them were beaten to death, and their confessions were marked.

At this point, more than half of the case is basically settled. The rest is to send the file to the Ministry of Punishment for review. After the Ministry of Punishment passes it, it will be reviewed by Dali Temple , and then submitted to the orthodox emperor for ticking, and finally executed by Shuntian Prefecture.

According to the procedures, Yang An’s case will be initially tried by the Ministry of Criminal Justice. The Ministry of Punishment basically didn’t read it in detail. They just signed the annotation and sent the case to Dali Temple.

ended up getting stuck in Dali Temple.

Xue Xuan is in charge of Dali Temple.After Xue Xuan saw Yang An's file, she found that the evidence provided by Shuntian Mansion was not rigorous enough. The confessions of the four prisoners were inconsistent, and the confession of the main criminal Gao was full of loopholes.

Xue Xuan believed that the case needed to be re-investigated to improve the evidence, so he dismissed the case from the Ministry of Punishment and let the Ministry of Punishment take a closer look.

Here, it needs to be explained that Emperor Hongwu attached great importance to the investigation of the case. In order to prevent unjust, false and wrong cases, he deliberately increased the position and authority of Dali Temple. Dali Temple has the authority to reject retrial "for those whose love words are unclear or inconsistent".

After receiving the case file, the Ministry of Punishment found nothing wrong and signed again to agree to send it to Dali Temple.

After seeing it, Dali Temple directly dismissed the case from the Ministry of Punishment. The two sides went back and forth, forming a "tug of war."

The Metropolitan Procuratorate was very "angry" when seeing this scene. As a department that supervises the performance of its duties, the Metropolitan Procuratorate believes that the Criminal Department and Dali Temple deliberately "stuck" each other purely for the sake of vindictiveness.

As a result, the Metropolitan Procuratorate intervened in the matter to find out what happened.

After some investigation, the Metropolitan Procuratorate believed that the Ministry of Punishment had done the right thing and that Dali Temple was simply looking for trouble.

But Xue Xuan just didn't agree with the Metropolitan Procuratorate and disagreed with Yang An's case.

Censor Wang Wen was very angry and went to Dali Temple to argue with Xue Xuan many times, but Xue Xuan ignored him.

Wang Wen hinted to Xue Xuan that the plaintiff in the case was Jin Yiwei, and these people were not easy to deal with.

Xue Xuan remained indifferent. The case was about human life and he could not be careless. He insisted on refusing to sign and agree.

It seems that there is no way to mediate this matter. We can only report it to the emperor and ask the Holy Spirit to make a decision.

3.

The two sides argued before the orthodox emperor, and each spoke eloquently.

How can the emperor care about this matter? He is not professional himself.

But the emperor was smart. He appointed a censor named Pan Hong to re-investigate the case.

After some investigation, Pan Hong came to the conclusion:

The deceased Yang An suffered from diarrhea six months ago and has never been able to recover. His wife, Mrs. Gao, once entrusted her neighbor, Mrs. Hao, to help find Shen Rong, a warlock who could perform calculations and do calculations, to pray. However, half a year later, Yang An died of illness. The love murder described by Yang An's boss is even more nonsense.

Pan Hong reported the investigation to the orthodox emperor, and the emperor was very angry. A small case made it so complicated for you.

first signed the opinion of acquitting the four Gao family members, and then suspended the salaries of all those who investigated the case for three months. The only one who did not punish Jin Yiwei, including the false accuser Yang An, was his boss.

Shuntian Prefecture, Criminal Ministry, and Metropolitan Procuratorate were all punished.

First of all, the Ministry of Punishment is very aggrieved. The person responsible for the investigation is Shuntian Prefecture, and they should bear the responsibility.

The Metropolitan Procuratorate felt even more unjust. We didn’t understand the case handling process, we just supervised both parties, and ended up being involved.

The Ministry of Punishment and the Metropolitan Procuratorate were very unhappy. They thought Jin Yiwei should also be punished. After all, the cause of the matter was that Jin Yiwei's people falsely accused others. Without him, nothing would have happened later.

Jin Yiwei also got excited when he heard this. Those who did bad things were Jin Yiwei's people, not Jin Yiwei's organization. Furthermore, the case was tried by your Shuntian Prefecture and the Ministry of Punishment, so why should you punish us?

All forces came to find Ming Yingzong, which made the Emperor Yingzong very upset. After Emperor Yingzong became angry, he decided not to punish them and warned them to be more rigorous in doing things in the future.

4.

At this point, the truth has been revealed, and everyone should be happy.

There was one person who didn't think so. Commander Ma Shun of the Jinyiwei felt that he was very embarrassed.

He was reprimanded by the emperor for no reason, just because Xue Xuan was nosy, so he was extremely resentful of Xue Xuan.

But Ma Shun had nothing to do with Xue Xuan, so he had to take it out on the Jin Yiwei and asked someone to bring him in and give him a severe punishment.

This Jin Yiwei understands what kind of ruthless characters he is. As long as he admits that the accusation is a false accusation, his life will definitely be in danger.

Therefore, he insisted that Pan Hong favored Dali Temple and deliberately framed him. The command of

made Ma Shun feel that he could use Pan Hong to make a fuss. He wanted to accuse Pan Hong of favoring Dali Temple and use false evidence to deceive the emperor.

Unexpectedly, under Ma Shun's rhetoric, Emperor Yingzong really sent Pan Hongfa to Datong, Shanxi.

Later, Ma Shun re-arrested the four Gao family members. In Jinyiwei's prison, the execution service beat the four people again.

Ma Shun presented the new confession to Emperor Yingzong and impeached Dali Temple.

Unexpectedly, the impeachment was successful, and everyone in Dali Temple was imprisoned and imprisoned in the territory of the Metropolitan Procuratorate.

What's even more terrible is that the censor Wang Wen is in charge of the interrogation, so what else is there to interrogate? Thanks to Wang Wen's superb case handling ability, all Dali Temple officials "fell guilty".

Wang Wen’s survey results are so ridiculous that they even make people laugh out loud!

He said that the magician Shen Rong and the Dali Temple's Gu Weijing, Zhou Guan, and Zhang Tie were all from Suzhou , and they deceived the king purely for the purpose of protecting their fellow villagers.

Emperor Yingzong believed that this matter was so important that Jinyiwei must separate the personnel of Dali Temple for interrogation.

In the end, the Ministry of Punishment, with the cooperation of Jin Yiwei, made the following verdict:

Gao and Qiu were executed in Lingchi; Hao and Shen Rong were hanged.

went out for inspection and was no longer in the DPRK. The Prime Minister of Dali Temple who was not involved in the matter looked up to and was dismissed from his post and sent to Datong to find Pan Hong, the former censor.

Xue Xuan was directly sentenced to death, and all other Dali eunuchs were demoted to three levels.

Jin Yiwei and the Criminal Department acted like this, which directly angered other departments. They wrote letters one after another accusing Jin Yiwei and the Ministry of Punishment of being too unofficial.

Jin Yiwei was also afraid of public outrage, so he finally changed Xue Xuan's sentence to "cutting officials for the benefit of the people" and returning to his hometown to farm.

5.

Later, Xue Xuan was re-appointed, did a lot of things, and left a name in history.

He was punishing Wang Wen at that time. Because of the Tumu Fort Incident, he supported the Jingtai emperor. After Yingzong returned to China, Wang Wen and Yu Qian were executed for treason.

As for Ma Shun, the end of his life was that he was dragged to the Meridian Gate and beaten to death with sticks.

To be fair, neither Yu Qian nor Wang Wen conspired to rebel. When Yu Qian died, everyone in the world was indignant.

When Wang Wen died, history books recorded "Everyone knew that Wen's death was a false accusation. He was buried in plain sight, and the discussion of welcoming him and returning him to the throne was not satisfactory to public opinion, so he died unjustly and the people did not think about it.".

means that everyone in the world knows that Wang Wen was wronged, but they all applaud him.

Ming Yingzong’s imperial edict to get rid of Wang Wen was personally sent by Xue Xuan. I don’t know how Wang Wen felt at the time. This is the end of the

story. I don’t know how you feel.

As Mr. Ma Boyong said, many people are paying attention to Xue Xuan's awe-inspiring righteousness, angry at the Ming Dynasty's cowardly kings and sycophants, and Xue Xuan's wonderful struggle with them.

How many people have paid attention to the miserable experiences of Gao, Qiu, Hao and Shen Rong.

Xue Xuan is an upright and famous minister. He was convicted and imprisoned for upholding justice. Some people even rescued him, but what can everyone do except sympathize with the four people who died unjustly? When

was still alive, he was severely beaten twice. Unable to withstand the torture of the Ming Dynasty, he chose to sign "Pleas Guilty and Subdues the Law."

They are lucky to have met Xue Xuan, but the author has a question, how many upright officials like Xue Xuan could there be in the Ming Dynasty?

On the other hand, how many people like Jin Yiwei, Ma Shun, and Yushi Wang Wen are there who frame others, and how many civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty are there who care about matters that have nothing to do with them?

The author would like to know more about what the four innocent souls of said when they were tortured twice by the Ming Dynasty, what they thought in their hearts, and what kind of mood and expression they had when facing life and death.

Future generations will never know about all this, let alone understand it.

It seems that their existence is just to prove who was a loyal minister and who was a traitor in the Yingzong Dynasty. Their life and death are insignificant compared with the vast history.

Zhu Yuanzhang This eternal emperor who claims to speak for the poor, what do you think of Quanxia Youzhi?