Chapter 52: The Gentleman

Liu Jin offended the generals because he wanted the border soldiers to have enough to eat.

Like Wei Zhongxian later, the vast majority of fathers-in-law were born in poverty - if they were not really desperate, in the environment of "no filial piety has three, no queen is great" cognition, who would bear to give a baby or themselves a one-size-fits-all? Therefore, many eunuchs often rely on their status as slaves of the Son of Heaven to get along with civil officials, but they are often very sympathetic to the poor people at the bottom.

For they came from Si and knew the hardships of the people.

The same goes for Liu Jin.

Liu Gonggong's surname is Tan, a native of Shaanxi. When he was six years old, he was adopted by a father-in-law named Liu Shun, and he was stabbed, and he became a glorious little father-in-law from the surname Liu.

After Liu Jin took charge of the celebrant supervisor, he found that the civil and military officials in the border newspaper were looking for the imperial court to urge food and salary all day long, and felt a little incredible: The soldiers on the border were starving? How can this work? But...... Grandpa Tai has clearly drawn up the military tun, and there is a production! Why are you still hungry and asking the court to bring grain? So I went to look it up.

To tell the truth, reading history and reading this, no matter how much your civil and official group can twist the pen and reverse black and white, it will not be able to avoid a fact: if Liu Jin really wants to be greedy, just instigate Wuzong to approve it. Wu Zong is famous for his love of the military, there is no reason not to be allowed, Liu Gonggong helped you to come with the silver grain, who is not willing to "respect" some? Even if you don't want to, the people who supervise the army are all the little fathers-in-law sent by Liu Jin from the palace, who dares to miss the heart for Boss Liu?

Liu Jin went to investigate, not for himself, but for Wuzong, for the court, and for the border army who couldn't get enough to eat!

Then, he was quietly stumbled by the civil officials and was severely pitted.

The money and grain had to come out of the household department, so Liu Jin asked Gu Zuo, the secretary of the household department, what was he doing before, and whether it had always been like this.

Gu Zuo replied: "There was no such case in Tianshun before."

This answer is too immoral!

The next clever lie is not a false fabrication, but tells you part of the truth, and then leads you in the wrong direction, and you are killed without discussion. Yes, it's just the second best – the most brilliant is the one that repeats it a thousand times.

Gu Zuo is like this. He only said half a sentence: Tianshun really didn't have it before, but it started to exist in the Chenghua years!

To put it more bluntly: the fields of Juntun have been eaten away by the generals' families for decades!

With your own strength, you want the leaders of the big and small armies to spit out the land that their families have eaten in their stomachs for generations?

Hehe.

Father-in-law Liu is an acute son and rectum, where can he see that Gu Zuoyun dug such a big hole for himself lightly! At this time, Liu Gonggong was completely ignorant and ignorant of the fact that the military tuns allocated to the generals had already become the private property of military leaders of all sizes for decades!

So Gonggong Liu followed the route preset by Gu Shangshu and went straight to the bottomless pit. He vetoed the report of the border army on the spot to ask for food and salary, and replied: You are not allowed to report the account! Don't you have your own tuntian production, why do you still want to find the imperial court to repay more? The next is not an example.

Then, in the next side newspaper that followed, there was a more serious problem: the border army was going to starve to death, the army's morale was unstable, I was afraid that something would change, please ask the court to allocate money and food quickly! As for the reason why the border army couldn't eat enough, everyone attributed it to the fact that the imperial court did not give it, and they had already privately divided the military camp without mentioning it.

Gonggong Liu is even more strange: You all have production, and you have not suffered disasters, why do you still need money and food, and moreover, it has reached the point where the border army is dying of starvation?

Gotta send someone to investigate.

After some investigation, Gonggong Liu understood: it turned out that those tuntian fields were privately swallowed by the generals!

Gu Zuo didn't tell Gonggong Liu directly, but guided him to find out by himself. In this way, the things that offended the generals were all done by Gonggong Liu himself! Gu Shangshu himself has a reputation as a good person who "I did my best".

With his usual bold and resolute style, Liu Gonggong sent a large number of men and horses to various places to measure the acres of land and thoroughly investigate the situation of the occupation of the military camp.

In other words, you and I are a border general, do you hate, hate, or hate this father-in-law Liu who wants to take away most of the family property?

Finally, measuring the big pit of Tuntian, the father-in-law Liu, who had been in power for a while, was shattered!

Gonggong Liu's death is actually an inevitability - because: he is a good person!

There is only one object of his wholehearted loyalty: Emperor Zhengde of Ming Wuzong - not only the baby he brought up since childhood, but also the only god on the altar in his heart. For the sake of Zhengde, and for the sake of the people of the Daming Dynasty represented by Zhengde, he offended everyone.

So, he had to die.

And died very miserably.

For more than 200 years in the Ming Dynasty, except for Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, two ruthless periods that were incomparably strong, the imperial court has always revolved around the monarchy and the cardinal power. In other words, the civilian clique was always competing with the emperor for the right to administer the empire. This question was entangled until the complete fall of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the prime minister system and concentrated all his power on himself, no problem. Because he's ruthless! If you don't accept it, you will kill your head, even if you are really convinced, as long as Zhu Chongba thinks that you may not be convinced, you will also kill! However, this is not the case with the descendants of the children who come after them. Without the prime minister, there is no buffer barrier between the emperor and the civil official group - before the Ming Dynasty, the emperor could influence the civilian official group through the control of the prime minister, and without this barrier, he could only stand in the front and go into battle shirtless. The Ming Dynasty had a cabinet, and the first assistant scholars sometimes did have functions similar to those of the prime minister, but the most critical difference was: whether it was the first assistant or the second assistant, the cabinet itself was not an independent identity like the prime minister, and they themselves were representatives of the civil official group!

Unless it is completely rotten and lying flat like Jiajing and Wanli, otherwise, in the process of fighting the entire bureaucracy with the strength of one person, the emperor will of course have to find helpers, and the only helpers that can be selected under this structure can only be eunuchs, that is, eunuchs.

The civil official group is also well aware of this, so on the one hand, they do their best to win over and collude with the eunuchs who are close to them, and on the other hand, they are also looking for every opportunity to cut off potential helpers on the emperor's side. When Zhengde had just inherited the unification, the civil official clique bullied the children to be ignorant (Zhengde was sixteen years old) and showed knives to the eight eunuchs closest to him.

Zhengde got married that year, and asked for 400,000 taels of silver from the household department, and the household department paid 300,000 taels. As for the procurement of dragon and phoenix robes, the civil official group directly rejected Zhengde's request for 12,000 salt quotations (salt sales licenses).

In the past, it was common practice to use salt for weaving. The salt was distributed by the household department, and the eunuchs in charge of procurement sold it to the merchants, and the silver taels obtained were used to pay for the weaving. However, the distribution of salt will inevitably affect the interests of the civil and official groups: the total number is so much, if it is given to you, what will I sell? The salt industry is a monopoly - you know, as long as it is a monopoly, there must be a shadow of power behind it! During the benefit conveyor chain, you can figure it out with your toes.

The civil official group is ready to use this to give the little emperor a disadvantage. So, on the grounds that there may be entrainment, only half is distributed, and the other half is paid to the discounted silver (the official rate, you know).

How can Zhengde, a junior high school student, understand these twists and turns? I went to the cabinet to reason: "The emperors of the previous dynasties had such a precedent, why did they suddenly not work when they came to me?" You say that it may be entrained, then strengthen supervision to investigate! If you find something illegal, you should kill and arrest if you should be caught, and you can't deny it all because there may be problems, right? According to this logic, if you grow a dingding, you may be raped, and you will be able to get rid of the trouble directly with a knife? I personally intercede with you, teachers (several key officials have been serving as emperors since Zhengde was still the crown prince, and at this time, they still have to watch the little emperor read every day after the next court), you have to give some face, right? ”

Don't give!

The Great Emperor, we tell you, the eunuchs are the worst in this world, you should be a gentleman, well, it's us; Far villain, yes, it's the dead eunuchs. Everything is ruined by them!

Zhengde was a little confused: "The gentlemen are not quite right, right?" How can the internal supervisor be responsible for the affairs of the whole world? Aren't you the ones who run the country? For example, out of ten officials, there may be three or four good ones, and six or seven out of ten bad officials. Didn't the gentlemen tell me this truth yesterday? ”

I'll go! We are talking about this to tell you that except for us who are good people, everyone else is a bad person, and we can't listen to them, so I want to exclude dissidents by your hand! It's broken, careless! This little bunny is not easy to fool!

Give you a hard one!

The three ministers appointed by Emperor Xiaozong, together with the six departments and nine qing, jointly wrote a letter under the advice of the celebrant eunuch Wang Yue: Please punish the "Eight Tigers" - the emperor is good, they are all taken by the eight bastard eunuchs, and these people must be killed! Otherwise, we quit and resign!

No matter how the official history is written and what is written, reading the history here, my personal feeling is: what a bastard!

A young man who has just inherited the throne, you have to kill the eight closest people around him in one go, and the crime is either to accompany the emperor to bow, or to send eagle sparrows to the emperor, or to instigate the emperor to learn badly...... Otherwise, pick and choose collectively!

What is the real intention?

Firmly control the little emperor!

Such a person is advertised as a gentleman!

Zhengde cried.

Really cried - the little emperor was scared silly.

I pleaded with the ministers again: "It's not their fault that they play with me, can I send a few of them to Nanjing?" I'll listen to you in the future, go to court on time, study hard, quit the game and never play again, okay? ”

No way!

Must be killed! If you don't have such a bloody lesson, how can you be firmly controlled in the future!

The "Eight Tigers" are Liu Jin, Ma Yongcheng, Gu Dayong, Zhang Yong (remember him) and other eight senior old eunuchs.

These eight were always kept in the dark, and they didn't know that the catastrophe was coming, and they didn't get the news until the last moment. Most of the people were also stupid, and went to find the little emperor overnight, kneeling and crying for mercy.

Liu Jin was not busy crying, but pondered carefully and found the crux of the problem. So he said a few words to Zhengde: "Wang Yue is the eunuch of the ceremonial eunuch, and he is the governor of Dongchang. The main responsibility of the East Factory is to supervise the outer court for the Son of Heaven, and everything should be reported directly to the Son of Heaven. A supervisory body, on the contrary, colludes with the supervised, this matter is very serious! It is a trivial matter to sacrifice the dog horse eagle dog, and it is not only a few of us who have given it, but everyone else has given it. There is no deep meaning in making such a fuss: they are blackmailing you like this, in fact, they are fighting for power! Moreover, the outer court already has people in the inner court to do the internal response! ”

The little emperor understood.

Wang Yue is dismissed!

Liu Jin is in charge of the ceremonial supervisor and the commander of the East Factory!

Get out of the way if you want to resign, get out now!

Send someone to the household department to check the accounts. Didn't you say that I didn't have any money for my wedding and didn't give me salt? Righteous people should first be righteous themselves, aren't you all gentlemen!

This check is incredible: there are fake silver ingots in the library!

However, whether it is Zhengde or Liu Jin, they are all kind-hearted people: Hanwen, the head of the household, was ordered to Zhi Shi (retirement), and other people and things did not go further into it, so they stopped. In fact, if you take this opportunity to clean up those sanctimonious civil official groups, maybe the Ming Dynasty will be a different scene in the future...... Not only may history be rewritten, but Wu Zong himself may not die so early and so unclear.

Those indignant civilian-bureaucratic cliques who were "asking for their lives" were dumbfounded, and in the blink of an eye, they showed their magical relationships and interceded with Gonggong Liu, who was bent on killing him just now.

A small episode.

The person who drafted the Eight Tigers is called Li Mengyang, and his official position is a member of the household department, and the article is written sonorously and forcefully, righteously and strictly. After the household department found out the fake silver, he was arrested and imprisoned, and the trustee brought out a piece of paper with four words: "Save me from the mountain." "To the mountain" is Kang Hai's nickname, and Kang Hai is a great talent that Liu Jin has always wanted to befriend.

When Liu Jin heard that Kang Hai was visiting, he hurriedly went out to greet him, and really responded to an idiom: greet each other upside down - Liu Gonggong really hurriedly put his shoes on backwards!

Then, not surprisingly, Li Mengyang was released from prison.

Then, when Liu Jin fell, Kang Hai was labeled as a "eunuch" for a lifetime.

"Gentleman" Li Mengyang was already in power at this time. Of course, he knew in his heart that Kang Hai was accused of being a eunuch because he had looked for Liu Jin and Liu Jin to save himself, and then, a gentleman is a gentleman, and Li Junzi pretended not to see it and didn't say a word.

Hehe.

Let's ask, compared with these gentlemen, can Gonggong Liu really be called a bad person?

Since then, Liu Jin has started his career.

After his career, Gonggong Liu soon attracted everyone's hatred.

Well, he has been repairing the civilian clique since the beginning of his career, so the civilians hate him.

His one-size-fits-all approach has indeed affected some people. But, what cannot be selectively ignored is that he saved more people. However, the people, the court let whoever they hate hate, the old tradition, no wonder. Therefore the people hated him.

He measured the military tun, which led to the final death, and it was normal for the generals to hate him. We'll talk about this in the next chapter.

He didn't even let go of "his own people" - he didn't bend the law when he cleaned up his father-in-law. Therefore, the father-in-law hated him even more.

Ma Yongcheng, who is also the "Eight Tigers", once accepted favors and wanted to give a guy a promotion to "100 households". This military position is nominally the sixth grade, but because it is a military position, the Ming Dynasty is depreciated with civil and imperial martial arts, which is probably the level of the company platoon commander. For such a trivial matter, Zhengde had already approved it, but after Liu Gonggong knew about it, he simply invalidated it.

Another "Eight Tigers" fellow party, Gu Dayong, colluded with the eunuchs of Linqing Town to open a Huangzhuang to make some money, Liu Jin felt that this was a competition with the people, arrested the town guard eunuchs, and made things worse.

There is another eunuch named Wang Xiu, who gave an idea to the little emperor of Zhengde: Isn't the household department talking all day long about not being able to collect taxes, let's find a few people to be "city management", including taxes, and go to the people to collect money and grain, and the income will go to the inner house. When Gonggong Liu heard the news, he didn't say a word and ran to question Zhengde: "Is there a reason for the Son of Heaven to let people pay for money and food?" Then, put on the wooden shackles of those "Neiding Chengguan", threw them in front of the noon gate, and stood alive.

Looking at the fragments of slush and claws in these historical materials, can we still say that Gonggong Liu is a heinous bad person?