The six-dimensional pictures of emperors of all dynasties were exposed, and the ancestors panicked

Chapter 655 Kangxi: Being a slave to anyone is not a

The period of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty
Liu Qi narrowed his eyes, crossed one arm across his chest, and stroked his thick beard with the other hand.

"Compared to previous emperors, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were truly at the peak of power..."

"The fact that he was able to launch the absurd act of building ancestral temples in various places shows how powerful Wei Zhongxian was."

"Given the Tang Dynasty precedent, it is hard to imagine that with such power he could collapse not only so quickly, but also so completely."

"They couldn't even plot any kind of resistance, and their lives were in danger immediately."

Little Liu Che tilted his head and picked his ears:
"No matter how powerful Wei Zhongxian was or how high his status was, he still couldn't resist the almost absolute imperial power at that time."

"It seems that he has replaced the emperor in terms of power, but all his power still comes from the emperor, so it can be taken back by the emperor overnight."

"I can only say that Zhu Yuanzhang really put a lot of effort into the inner palace."

"The Emperor of the Tang Dynasty was born at the wrong time."

……

[After the eunuch party was eliminated, the Donglin party naturally ushered in spring. Han Yu, a member of the Donglin party, once again became the chief minister of the cabinet. Other members of the Donglin party, Li Biao and Qian Longxi, entered the cabinet one after another. The Ming Dynasty once again ushered in the era of the Donglin cabinet. ]

[At the same time, there was a group of non-partisan people in the court, and these non-partisan people were labeled as eunuch party by the Donglin Party.]

[At this time, Emperor Chongzhen was full of confidence and wanted to do something big, but there was a problem that could not be ignored, that is, the court was empty. ]

[Not only that, from the central government to the local governments, and even in the military, the elites of the Wanli and Tianqi dynasties all disappeared during this period of time.]

[Most of the high-ranking officials who appeared during the Chongzhen reign were unfamiliar names, and we don’t even know where they suddenly appeared from.]

[This is because after the political purges during the reigns of Tianqi and Chongzhen, a group of experienced officials who were good at government affairs were dismissed.]

[In March of the second year of Chongzhen (1629), Chongzhen asked Han Yu's cabinet to start drawing up a list of eunuchs. Han Yu made several lists but none of them satisfied the emperor. Chongzhen obviously wanted to expand this political purge.]

[The final list is as high as more than 300 people. ]

[It was called "rebellion case" in history, and the crimes were divided into seven levels. Those who were identified as party members who attached themselves to Wei Zhongxian were all expelled from the court.]

……

{The chief rebel and the six accomplices were sentenced to death.}
{He who made friends with nineteen of his close servants was sentenced to death.}
{Those who make friends with the second-rate eleven attendants will be exiled.}
{35 rebels were convicted and sent into exile.}
{Fifteen flatterers and supporters of the army were exiled.}
{One hundred and twenty-nine people who made friends with the Shiyouci and others were stripped of their official titles and became commoners.}
{He made friends with 44 people including Shi Jian and retired.}
{In addition, more than 50 relatives of Wei Zhongxian and Keshi and eunuchs were punished.}
{Among these more than 300 people, from the chief minister of the cabinet to the ministers of the ministries and agencies, the censors of various provinces, the officials of various departments, and the officials of various provinces, prefectures, counties, including the commanders of the borders such as the governor of Ji and Liao, Yan Mingtai, and Wang Zhichen. All were purged.}
{Not only did the Ming Dynasty lose a large number of mature bureaucratic elites, but it also caused disunity among the officials, making those in the court uneasy and those in the opposition hostile to each other.}
{To be honest, the factional struggles during the Chongzhen reign were not as sharp as those during the Wanli and Tianqi reigns, but this kind of slow internal friction often takes more energy.}
{Relievingly expanding the scope of attack...it must be the offspring of the Zhu family!}
{The extreme character actually reflects the immaturity of the emperor himself. This character defect of the old Zhu emperors has always affected the smooth operation of the empire.}
……

Datang.

Li Shimin looked at the sky and shook his head.

"It's so hard to save her... It's so hard to save her."

Seeing him rising from a tall building, seeing his building collapsed.

"In history, there were emperors who had a high sense of inferiority towards the nobles."

"There were emperors who had to flee and travel, without enough food or water."

"There were also emperors who were held hostage by force and used as puppets in order to control the emperor and the other vassal states."

"There were also emperors who, under the idea of ​​ruling the country together with scholars, were forced by scholar-chancellors to risk their lives on the front lines."

"The emperors of the Ming Dynasty were never subject to these restrictions. Even if the eunuchs or the prime ministers had great power, they were still people who depended on the emperor to exercise the imperial power. They could not exceed the imperial power, let alone challenge the imperial power."

"But from a longer-term historical perspective, such a Ming dynasty could not have been sustained."

Li Chengqian recalled the past emperors of the previous dynasty.

In the end, he had no choice but to admit what his father said.

There is only one truth.

Since the emperor has such absolute power, how can we ensure that he will use his absolute power in the right and good direction?

What kind of personality, spirit, and ability are needed to make good use of absolute power?

Absolutely means that the emperor can never be wrong, and no one can point out the emperor's mistakes and stop him from trusting Wei Zhongxian or defeating Wei Zhongxian.

Therefore, absolute imperial power cannot be gradually corrected and adjusted through trial and error.

Absolute power must rely on the person who exercises it being wise enough to know what decisions he is making and what consequences they will produce.

However, such power was grafted onto an extremely rigid system like that of the Ming Dynasty.

The system gave the emperor absolute power, but what kind of person he was depended entirely on chance.

Among the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, was there anyone who was basically able and willing to exercise absolute power?

Li Chengqian sighed like a little adult.

“Reject suggestions from others and cannot tolerate criticism.”

"These two characteristics really permeate the entire Ming Dynasty's rule."

……

Qing Dynasty, Kangxi Period
Kangxi smoothed his sleeves and said indifferently:

"Baocheng, do you know what my greatest achievement is?"

Yinreng smiled and said:
"It should be the young man who ascends the throne and overthrows Oboi."

Kangxi shook his head, pointed at him with his finger and said with a smile: "You are wrong."

"My greatest achievement."

"It is to transform the literati and poets who originally only identified with and strongly identified with the political structure of the Ming Dynasty into accepting and serving the new regime. Serve the Qing Dynasty!"

Kangxi looked up at the sky.

"The Ming emperor was able to have absolute power because the court officials had been thoroughly brainwashed through education, examinations and administrative procedures."

"This must also be the dynasty in which the bureaucracy was most thoroughly brainwashed."

"Compared with the court officials and literati of previous dynasties, the officials of this dynasty had no self-identity. They only recognized the emperor and this dynasty."

"Their loyalty to the emperor was more deeply rooted than any previous dynasty."

"The attitude of high loyalty to the emperor was formally established during the Ming Dynasty."

Kangxi thought of the Southern Ming Dynasty and sneered:
"At the end of the Ming Dynasty, it could not defend itself against bandits at home, nor against the Qing Dynasty from abroad. It was destroyed more than once, first by bandits and then by the Qing army."

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"However, this dynasty, which was full of problems and had no conditions to sustain itself, still dragged on and ended up with an interminable finale of the Southern Ming Dynasty."

"Do you think the Zhu emperor treats the literati ministers well?"

Yinreng thought about the Ming emperor's attitude towards officials and shook his head:

"We regard them as enemies."

Kangxi nodded and said:
"right."

"This dynasty cannot end because the ministers only catch one person who is qualified to be emperor."

"He could not accept or even imagine a day when there was no member of the royal family surnamed Zhu as emperor."

Kangxi straightened his body and said slowly:

"The Confucian officials of the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties... were very particular."

"They stressed that ministers must have integrity and backbone. In fact, there are many examples of ministers in various dynasties who collectively had integrity and were not servile."

"But these do not include Ming Dynasty!"

"If that's the case, how can this cognition not be transferred to the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty?"

"They have been tamed and only need an emperor. Those who have been tamed will certainly obey the emperor and be obedient slaves in front of the emperor."

Kangxi stood up and walked to the center of the hall.

Looking at the sky, he said in a dark voice:

"They are all slaves anyway."

"Anyway, I just need a master."

"Then what difference does it make who is the master?"

……

[After Chongzhen ascended the throne, he dismissed the eunuch party cabinet, so it was urgent to form a new cabinet team. ]

[Emperor Chongzhen may have wanted to be an independent emperor who was not dominated by party struggles, but he was inevitably involved in the party struggles among court officials.]

[He ordered the Ministry of Personnel to recommend cabinet ministers. Under the operation of Qian Qianyi, the Minister of Rites and a member of the Donglin Party, the list of candidates recommended this time was all members of the Donglin Party.]

【However, the non-partisan Minister of Rites Wen Tiren and Vice Minister of Rites Zhou Yanru were not selected. 】

[This is not a normal phenomenon, because several vice ministers of the Ministry of Rites were selected, but Wen Tiren, the Minister of Rites, and Zhou Yanru, the Vice Minister of Rites, were not selected.]

【It was only at this time that Emperor Chongzhen began to have a preliminary understanding of why Emperor Tianqi had to crack down on the Donglin Party so severely.】

[Because this party is different from other parties, it is too selfish and too partisan.]

【Zhou Yanru and Wen Tiren thought this was a good opportunity to strike at the Donglin Party. Zhou Yanru spread the fact that Qian Qianyi manipulated the party. Wen Tiren even wrote a memorial "Directly Dispatching the Greatest Traitor" to expose the bribe Qian Qianqiu, a student, received from Qian Qianyi when he was the chief examiner in Zhejiang in the second year of Tianqi.】

【The court was caught up in a dispute between Wen and Qian. 】

[The outcome of this Wen-Qian confrontation was already decided before it even began, because the focus of Emperor Chongzhen had already shifted.]

[The final result of this struggle was that Qian Qianyi was dismissed from his post and sent back to his hometown to be investigated, and the other officials involved in the case, Zhang Yunru, Fang Kezhuang, Qu Shisi, and Liang Zifan, were demoted one by one.]

[Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru both entered the cabinet with the title of Minister of Rites and Grand Secretary of Dongge, and the two celebrated. ]

[The Chongzhen Dynasty still could not escape the fate of factional strife. ]

【Just when the Ming Dynasty court was caught up in meaningless internal friction. 】

[October of the second year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty and the third year of Tiancong in the Later Jin Dynasty (1629).]

[The second emperor of the Later Jin Dynasty, Huang Taiji, led an army of 70,000 across Xifengkou and marched towards Zunhua.]

[On November 17, Huang Taiji's army arrived at the horse ranch on the outskirts of Beijing.]

[The capital is in danger.]

(End of this chapter)