Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 409 Viewing Flowers in the Mist (Part [-])
Feng Bao, the chief eunuch of Bingbi and the admiral of the East Factory, has been in a very bad mood for the past few days. He feels that everything is heading towards the worst direction.

First, Gao Gong came down to the court in the name of the first assistant to speak out, saying that the supervisor of rites, as the center of the inner court, had an unshirkable responsibility for the emperor's fainting. Make a timely response.

Generally, according to the habits of civil servants, after such a big hat is put on, there are basically stormy blows that follow, and the purpose is usually to suppress the prestige of the supervisor of ceremonies and reduce the power of the supervisor of ceremonies.

But this time, things are a little different.After Gao Gong scolded the Supervisor of Rituals from top to bottom, he did not propose to cut power. Instead, he believed that this was due to the lack of manpower and the distraction of the Supervisor of Rituals, and suggested that the emperor expand the number of Supervisors of Rituals. The scale of the pen eunuchs, and the division of the functions and powers of the chief eunuchs of the rites and ceremonies as much as possible.

The most typical one is that the chief eunuch who holds the pen holds too many hands and is too heavy.The Chief Bingbi Eunuch not only has to participate in the approval of the Supervisor of Ceremonies, but also takes charge of the East Factory, and even among the twelve eunuchs of the inner court, he also takes charge of the Imperial Horse Supervisor—this is the last one in the inner court to monitor the Beijing camp. The means, the status is not unimportant.

Why do you specifically emphasize that this is the last resort for the inner court to monitor the Beijing camp, because the Ming's Beijing camp system has been constantly changing.

In the early years, of course, it goes without saying that the military officials Xungui were in charge of the Beijing camp alone, and the three major battalions of the Beijing Army were all in the hands of a group of Xungui military officials.

For a period of time after the civil engineering change, due to the great reduction of honorable power, civil servants began to infiltrate the Beijing camp, and established the Twelve Regiment Battalion, replacing the three declining battalions as the main force of the Beijing camp. At this time, the civil official group represented by Yu Qian controlled the large Part of the real power in Beijing.

Later, Yu Qian was murdered, and the Beijing camp became the inner court's final say, especially in the Xianzong Dynasty, the imperial horse supervisor and eunuch admiral supervised the [-]th regiment battalion, which was majestic.

In the future, Emperor Wuzong Zhengde, although he was also a master of eunuchs who favored and trusted eunuchs, because he was good at military affairs, he even recruited elites from the nine sides to Beijing and established them as the "Four Foreign Families", so he actually became the emperor himself. Beijing camp, but this system is troublesome, so it was chaotic during that period, the Beijing camp issued many orders, and there were so many bullshit things in a mess.

Sejong Jiajing is still more concerned about the Beijing camp, and has always wanted to find a long-term mechanism, but he couldn't push it forward.In the sixth year of Jiajing, the Ming court began to set up civil servants to supervise the military affairs of the Beijing camp.At that time, after the meeting of the court officials, Li Chengxun was appointed Minister of the Ministry of War and Zuodu Censor of the Metropolitan Procuratorate, and he was added to the Prince Shaobao Admiral to supervise the military affairs of the Regiment, becoming the first civil official in charge of the Admiralty of the Beijing Camp.But it stopped soon, and the previous practice of part-time civil servants was still resumed.

In the 20th year of Jiajing, Liu Tianhe also served as Minister of the Ministry of War to supervise the military affairs of the regiment battalion, specializing in the military affairs of the Beijing camp.

In the middle and late period of Jiajing, the civil official group also tried to strengthen the cooperation between civil and military officials to increase the combat capability of the Beijing camp-this was not easy, and there was a reason for it.The reason is that the Gengxu Incident occurred in the 29th year of Jiajing. The Alda army besieged the capital. The capital soldiers were cowardly and did not dare to fight.

Therefore, at the suggestion of Yan Song, the chief assistant at that time, and Wang Bangrui, the servant of the Ministry of official affairs, the Ming court abolished the regiment battalion and the east and west officials, and restored the three battalion system. All the guards in Beijing were divided into three battalions.

In terms of the management of the Beijing camp, the practice of eunuchs serving as admirals and supervisors was also stopped, and Rong government agencies were set up.The chief of the Rong government is called the governor-general of Jingying Rongzheng, who is held by a military attache and given the seal of Guanfang.The deputy title is Zanli Military Affairs (later renamed as Assistant Rongzheng), which is selected by the Ministry of War or the Superintendent of Supervisors, and is not given the seal of Guanfang.

After Emperor Longqing ascended the throne, the civil officials' control over the Beijing camp changed from centralized to decentralized.In the fourth year of Longqing, Zhao Zhenji, a scholar of the University, made a memorandum, saying that it would be harmful for Rongzheng officials to monopolize power.According to the agreement of the Ministry of War, the post of governor-general was abolished, and each of the three major battalions had a commander-in-chief and a lieutenant general.The seals of the three generals were each given to Guanfang, which was still selected by the military officer.The position of assistant manager of military administration was replaced by three civilian officials selected from the Ministry of War and the Supervisory Yuan, and they were still called admirals.

But in this way, it is equivalent to the fact that the Ming court went to the other extreme in order to prevent the centralization of power in the Beijing camp. There was a situation where six admirals were in charge of the military administration of the Beijing camp. dilemma.

"Since the establishment of six admirals, each has his own opinion, and he will not make a decision for ten months."

Of course this is not possible, so Zhao Zhenji became an official, and Gao Gong immediately abolished this self-binding system, and still restored a governor and an assistant minister.

The difference from Sejong's period is that the governor and assistant minister Rongzheng each gave the seal of Guanfang.In the original history, since then, the Rong government system has only been slightly changed, but it has been basically followed until the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Looking back, it is very clear: the power of the Beijing camp was once entirely in the inner court, but now, the inner court has been squeezed out of the core power of the Beijing camp by the civil servants and military officials, even the eunuch , In fact, it is only a name in the Beijing camp, just as a supervising army, and no longer enjoys real powers such as command and transfer.

It is precisely because the position of Yumajian in charge of the eunuch, although its power has been greatly reduced, still has considerable significance, so the chief supervisor of ceremonies has always been in charge of both the pen and the hand.

However, Gao Gong is now targeting Chief Bingbi with "too many palms".

Gao Gong's suggestion is that the chief task of Bingbi should be to participate in the redemption, and should not be in charge of other affairs too much. It is best to give up the current concurrently in charge of Rudong Factory and Ruma Supervisor. The emperor is worried that too many splits will affect the authority of the chief Bingbi in the inner court, so at least one item should be split up and handed over to other Bingbi eunuchs.

This suggestion is actually the core of Gao Gong's prose. Other sayings, such as "In the past, there were only three or four Bingbis, and each person had to manage three to four important institutions in the inner court. Therefore, Bingbis should be added. In the future, every It is enough to be in charge of two institutions at the same time”, in fact, it is all done in order not to make “cutting Feng Bao” too abrupt.

Feng Bao was very dissatisfied with this, that’s for sure, but it’s useless for him to be dissatisfied, he is the “direct party” to this matter, no matter how thick-skinned he is, he can’t jump out and say, “We men are not tired, men can do it.” .

There was no other way, so Feng Bao had no choice but to go to Zhang Juzheng again overnight for advice, to see if Mr. Zhang had any solution.

On the way to Zhang Dashi's mansion, Feng Bao felt ruthless for a while, and frightened for a while.

Needless to say, being ruthless, being forced to this point, not to mention Feng Bao's seemingly kind face, in fact, even a mud bodhisattva would be angry if an eagle sees a wolf and cares about others.

Fear is really a little panic. Gao Gong's method this time seems to be sharp, but he is very measured. It is not at all like his style of doing other things: he didn't directly ask to cut the power of the entire supervisor. ——In other words, he did not move the power of the inner court as a whole, he just distributed this power from three or four people to five or six people.

Don't look at the same decentralization, the difference is huge.

The former one directly cuts the power of the Supervisor of Rites. Since the Supervisor of Rituals is actually the emperor's hand, cutting the power of the Supervisor of Rituals is equivalent to cutting the power of the emperor. If Gong did this, even if the emperor finally agreed, he would still feel some dissatisfaction in his heart.

But the latter is not the case. The chief eunuchs are originally very powerful, and the eunuchs in it may each hold three points, but after Gao Gong's round of cuts, the eunuchs have been cut off, and each may only have three points. There are two powers left, but the Supervisor of Ceremonies as a whole still holds ten powers, and it has not been cut at all.

In this way, the eunuchs may be dissatisfied, but the emperor doesn't care - anyway, his power at hand has not been cut at all.

Feng Bao panicked here, which means that the emperor himself is almost unlikely to be disgusted with this suggestion. Given the emperor's performance that day, he seemed to be afraid that Gao Gong would continue to ask him why he passed out. Will push the boat along the way, agree with Gao Gong's suggestion, and blame the responsibility for his fainting to the supervisor of ceremonies-it's because you didn't take good care of it, Mr. Gao has sharp eyesight!

At this moment, Feng Bao felt that only Zhang Juzheng might be able to redeem himself.

(End of this chapter)