Why was the eunuch of the Ming Dynasty so reused by the emperor? Even the more than two thousand years of Chinese feudal history,
, a learning institution specially set up for eunuchs, is a history of centralization in which imperial power is constantly weighted. With the continuous strengthening of imperial power, the drawbacks have become more obvious. Among them, the eunuchs in the Ming dynasty were the aberrations that bred from centralized power. The Eunuch's Rebellion almost traverses the history of the Ming Dynasty for more than 200 years, which is very rare in ancient China.
So, why did the emperors of the Ming Dynasty like to reuse eunuchs?
philosopher Hegel once said: "Existence is reasonable." The eunuch has existed in ancient times and can be traced back to the Shang and Zhou era. There are many female family members in the huge palace. In order to maintain the operation of the entire palace and ensure that there is no fornication in the palace, the ancient monarchs came up with a method to castrate the servants. In fact, since the emergence of the eunuch, he has always served as a servant to the nobles in the palace.
Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, absorbed the lessons of the Tang Dynasty's nectar changes, and once explicitly banned the reuse of eunuchs. It stands to reason that the eunuchs therefore do not have the ability to spread cholera in the court. However, Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born in a poor family since he was a child, had been a beggar before he smashed the country. The huge change in his identity from a beggar to a ninth-five-year-old man prompted him to desperately want to strengthen the imperial power.
Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister and killed the minister in order to strengthen the imperial power. These actions have brought him a heavy workload. After the abolition of the prime minister, the cabinet directly took orders from the emperor. Zhu Yuanzhang's daily government affairs are piled up. According to the literature, Zhu Yuanzhang handled more than 3,000 major events in a week. It can be described as a real waste of sleep and food, daily management. In this way, Zhu Yuanzhang is regarded as a model worker among the emperors of the past. But his descendants cannot guarantee to be as diligent and diligent as him. This also laid the bane for the eunuchs in power, and it was also one of the reasons why the eunuchs were reused by future emperors. After Zhu Yuanzhang's death, Emperor Jianwen Zhu Yunqi succeeded to the throne.
Like his grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Yunxuan had no special affection for the eunuch. The change of things appeared to his uncle Zhu Di. It didn't take long for Zhu Yunshou to become the emperor to find a way to cut it. Zhu Di took the opportunity to rebel, broke into the capital, abolished Emperor Jianwen and became emperor himself.
officials helped Zhu Di a lot when he rebelled. On the one hand, the eunuchs in the palace actively acted as spies and confided to Zhu Di. On the other hand, Zhu Di's eunuchs also followed him on the battlefield, born to death. So after Ming Chengzu Zhu Di became the emperor, the eunuch became a great hero. During Zhu Di's reign, the East Factory was set up under the power of the eunuch, who was responsible for monitoring the imperial court officials. At this point, the power of the eunuch slowly expanded.
Besides, as mentioned earlier. The Ming Dynasty abolished the prime minister, and the emperor was not as diligent as Zhu Yuanzhang in handling government affairs. Sometimes he only read a few memorials a day, and all the others were distributed to the eunuchs around him for review. In this way, the eunuchs interfere in internal affairs and can almost influence the life and death of ministers. This is the second reason why the emperor reused eunuchs.
The eunuch must be literate if he wants to review memorials. The eunuchs in ancient China were always illiterate. Until the Ming Dynasty broke this rule. The emperor also set up a special institution in the palace, which can be called the "school" of eunuchs, called "Neishutang". It stands to reason that popularizing education and reading more sages' books will definitely cultivate sentiment and improve character. But these eunuchs were originally illiterate servants with complicated backgrounds, and they belonged to the generation of the three eunuchs. Teach them to read and read, and they can compete with the ministers of civil and military affairs in the court, which further contributes to their political arrogance.
eunuchs continue to expand, interfering in government and military affairs, sending envoys and imprisoning. Among them, in the famous incident of "Zheng He's voyages to the West" in history, Zheng He was the eunuch with power in power. Ming Chengzu sent Zheng He to the Western Oceans, in addition to the obvious purpose of promoting our country's prestige and expanding the scope of the tributary trade, it is said that there was another purpose-to find the missing Emperor Jianwen. After Emperor Jianwen disappeared from the Battle of Jingnan, the fact that no one was alive or a corpse had always been a confidant of Zhu Di. As an eunuch, Zheng He was entrusted with two important tasks at the same time, which shows the importance of his position in the eyes of the emperor!
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the eunuch not only controlled the court, but also began to collude with the harem. Although the eunuchs who were highly used by the emperor were very prosperous for a while, their lives and deaths depended only on the emperor's thoughts. This is so similar to the concubine of the harem. The rise and fall of the concubine's glory and disgrace are all dependent on the emperor's favor. In addition, the eunuchs and concubines are also the closest people to the emperor, and they can all be called the emperor’s "pillow people" and can have a significant impact on the emperor’s daily decisions. The same fate makes the eunuch openHajime and the harem concubine collude with each other.
During the Xianzong period of the Ming Dynasty, the concubine Wan Gui was uniquely favored, and she colluded with the eunuch Wei Xing and Liang Fang. The three were not constrained, and they brought trouble to the palace together and almost wiped out the entire Ming court's treasury.
In conclusion, the reason why Ming emperors reused eunuchs was inseparable from the historical trend of ever-increasing centralization, and was closely related to the emperor's own circumstances under the specific historical conditions of the Ming Dynasty. The eunuch's power from the heyday of the Ming Dynasty to the later decline gradually. The rise and fall of eunuchs from generation to generation also witnessed the rise and fall of a dynasty.
Reference materials: "Ming History" and "General History of China"
