Smuggling Daming

Liu Jin, a native of Xingping, Shaanxi, the leader of the Eight Tigers, from the first year of Zhengde to the fifth year of Zhengde, he used the trust of Emperor Zhengde to manipulate the government. Dynasty, he was one of the most powerful eunuchs.

Whether it was at that time or in later generations, Liu Jin's reputation was not very good, and it could even be said to be very bad. The scholars at that time summed up two major crimes for him.

The first crime is that Liu Jin monopolizes power and rejects dissidents. The most obvious evidence is that as soon as he came to power, he immediately excluded Xie Qian, Liu Jian, and a large number of courtiers among the three virtuous ministers. A group of minions such as Jiao Fang and Liu Yu were won over for their own use, and they took over the power of the DPRK and China.

However, in Zhou Zhong's view, this accusation really wronged Liu Jin. After all, the emperor and the courtiers, Zhengde had just succeeded to the throne at that time, but veteran officials like Xie Qian and Liu Jian had always wanted to suppress the monarchy, and even still regarded Zhengde as a minor Children, you have to contradict from time to time.As a result, Zhengde had to rely on the eunuchs around him to seize power, so there was a confrontation between the eunuch party headed by Liu Jin and the ministers of the court, and finally ended with Liu Jin winning.

Liu Jin's second biggest crime was greed for money, which didn't wrong him at all. As eunuchs, he couldn't do things like men and women, so they had an unusual love for yellow and white things, which was even more prominent in Liu Jin.After he came to power, he tried his best to collect money for himself. Extorting bribes, accepting bribes, and embezzling are all common methods. Carry forward, such as He Yinqian.Such as greetings and so on.

And Liu Jin is different from ordinary corrupt officials, he is very courageous, because there is only one emperor above him, and this emperor is still a guy who likes to play around, and has never been too fond of meddling, which also gave him the opportunity to amass a lot of money.In addition, Liu Jin is very domineering. In his opinion, if he asks others for money, he is worthy of the other party, so others have to give it if they want.If you don't want to give it, you have to give it, otherwise you will offend him, and the consequences will naturally be very serious.

It is also this unique way of accumulating wealth that enabled Liu Jin to accumulate a huge amount of wealth in just a few years, in Zhou Zhong's later life.Wall Street, the world's financial center, once made an authoritative statistics, and the results listed Liu Jin as one of the 50 richest people in human history, which shows how amazing his wealth is.

However, although Liu Jin was greedy for money and extremely greedy for power, he was able to stand out among the eight tigers and control the government alone.Naturally, he is not an incompetent person, even while satisfying his pursuit of wealth.He began to have a higher pursuit in life, and this pursuit is to live forever.

After Liu Jin gained power, he did not do nothing. On the contrary, he made many changes to the political system and implemented some new laws in response to some disadvantages of Ming Dynasty at that time.That is the so-called "Liu Jin Reform".

There are many items about Liu Jin's reform, so there is no need to describe them one by one here.Among these reform items, some are indeed very targeted, and solved some problems in the Ming dynasty at that time. Of course, some reforms did not achieve the expected goals, and even some items were out of Liu Jin's selfishness and for his own interests. Therefore, the contents of Liu Jin's reform are both good and bad, and cannot be generalized.

However, among the items of these reforms, one of them finally killed Liu Jin, and this item was to organize the military settlements.The so-called military colony was a military system established by Zhu Yuanzhang at the beginning. To put it bluntly, it was to allow soldiers to farm their own land to support themselves, and to train soldiers during slack. These soldiers were called military households.

Originally, the military settlement system was good. Firstly, a large number of soldiers could be self-sufficient, and the food they produced could even support the national treasury. Second, since the soldiers had their own land, they would not be easily incited to rebel.Of course, the combat effectiveness of these military households is definitely not as good as that of the professional army, but they are still good as security forces.

However, with the development of the times, some of the systems established by Zhu Yuanzhang began to collapse, including the military settlement system. This was mainly because some high-level officials in the army began to embezzle the land of the military households, and as a result, the military households gradually lost their land. His own land eventually became the tenants of the officers, and his life was extremely miserable.

The collapse of the military settlement system made most of Ming's troops powerless. After all, those military households couldn't even eat enough to eat, let alone go to war.This situation is fine in other places, but in border areas such as Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia, it is undoubtedly fatal.So under such circumstances, Liu Jin proposed to reorganize the military settlements, re-measure the land and distribute it to military households, hoping to restore the military settlement system and achieve the purpose of improving the combat effectiveness of the army.

But Liu Jin only cared about his own greed for money, but he never thought that the military settlement had already become the private land of the upper and middle class of the army. Now that he wanted to measure and re-divide the land, he would undoubtedly cut the flesh from those officers.Therefore, as soon as the reform to reorganize the military settlements came out, it was immediately opposed by the military system, especially those generals who held real power reacted fiercely.

Under such circumstances, a person finally jumped out, this person is Anhua Wang Zhu Zhixiong, this person has always been ambitious, especially when he saw that Zhengde was not doing his job properly, and stayed in the leopard room all day to play and play, the power in the court unexpectedly Being controlled by the eunuch Liu Jin made him even more ambitious and ready to do something big.

At the beginning of April in the fifth year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty, the opportunity that Zhu Zhiyu had been waiting for finally came. Liu Jin's reorganization of the military camp caused dissatisfaction among most of the generals in the army, and the morale of the army was also very unstable.Taking advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Zhu Zhixiu persuaded Ningxia to command a group of generals including Shi Zhou Ang to kill the guarding eunuch Li Zeng, the commander-in-chief Jiang Han, and a group of civil and military officials in Ningxia at a banquet, officially rebelling. Moreover, in order to publicize the justice of his rebellion, Zhu Zhixiu published an article against Liu Jin, pushing all the faults on Liu Jin, and then raised troops with the slogan of punishing Liu Jin and eliminating harm for the people, hoping to win the hearts of the people all over the country. the response to.

But Zhu Zhixiu really overestimated his own influence. He thought that as long as he raised his arms and shouted, he would immediately get responses from all over the world. Some people sent his call to the imperial court, which shocked the government and the public for a while. Even Zhu Houzhao, who was playing in the leopard room, was alarmed. For the first time, he took the initiative to call several important ministers to discuss the matter.

In the Hall of Martial Heroes, the young Emperor Zhengde sat on the Dragon Throne frowning, showing a rare serious expression.In front of him, Liu Jin, Li Dongyang, Yang Tinghe and other important ministers were all listed.

"Your Majesty, the king of Anhua has evil intentions and rebelled at this time. The old slave thinks that he should immediately send troops to suppress it, as a warning to others!" Liu Jin, with gray hair and stooped waist, was standing in the hall, and he was making a righteous suggestion to Zhengde. Send troops to suppress King Anhua who rebelled.

Seeing Liu Jin being so active, Li Dongyang, Yang Tinghe and others next to him laughed inwardly. King Anhua's call for rebellion had already spread to the capital, and every sentence in the call-out was aimed at Liu Jin. No wonder he was so anxious.

"I agree with you. As a descendant of the royal family, King Anhua doesn't know how to educate the people. Instead, he instigates the military households in the frontier to rebel. It is a heinous crime. We must send troops to quell it as soon as possible!" Although Li Dongyang secretly laughed, but on such a major national event, he still had to cooperate with him. Liu Jin stood together. After all, King Anhua's rebellion was a heinous crime, so naturally he would send troops to suppress it.

Seeing that Li Dongyang supported him, Liu Jin couldn't help but nodded in satisfaction. Some time ago, a confidant of Jiao Fang, who was the chief assistant of the cabinet, had secretly pledged allegiance to him, and even told him some words that Jiao Fang secretly said to slander him. This made Liu Jin very angry. He wanted to punish Jiao Fang, but he didn't expect that the other party was also very cunning. When he saw the situation was not good, he immediately asked him to resign, and finally he approved it. Li Dongyang took over most of the affairs in the middle of the day, and he was very satisfied with the performance of the other party.

Sitting on the dragon chair, Emperor Zhengde saw that both Liu Jin and Li Dongyang agreed to send troops, so he lazily said: "What the two lovers said is true, but what I am worried about now is who should be sent to lead the troops to counter the rebellion , do you have any good candidates?"

Hearing Zhengde's question about the generals in charge of countering the rebellion, Liu Jin and the others showed somewhat distressed expressions.Speaking of which, apart from the heavy use of military generals for a period of time in the early days, Ming Dynasty once again brought culture and restraint to the extreme, and even many of the military commanders at the border were from civilian backgrounds. When the civil servants are a few levels lower, they will feel that they are a head shorter.

This is especially the case in the Zhengde Dynasty. The whole court has almost no generals who can take action. If you want to suppress the rebellion now, you must not only send someone who understands soldiers, but also this person must be trusted by the court. But looking at the entire court, Almost none meet this condition.

"Your Majesty, I have a recommendation from an old minister, and I hope your Majesty will approve it!" Li Dongyang suddenly stood up and said with a smile on his face, and there seemed to be some inexplicable meaning in his smile.

"Oh, who does Master Li want to recommend?" Zhengde asked happily when he finally saw someone speak.Li Dongyang, as the prince's Taibao, was in charge of teaching Zhengde to study, so Zhengde always regarded him as a master, which was one of the reasons why Liu Jin did not dare to deal with Li Dongyang without authorization.

"Your Majesty, the old minister recommended Yang Yiqing, the former chief of the three sides. He has been an official in the court for many years, and he was in charge of military affairs in Ningxia and Gansu. One soldier and one soldier, all it takes is for Yang Yiqing to arrive in Ningxia, and the rebels over there will definitely surrender without a fight!" Li Dongyang finally spoke out the candidate in his mind, but when he was saying these words, his eyes glanced inadvertently Liu Jin thought that perhaps the opportunity he had been waiting for for many years had finally come! (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to vote for recommendations and monthly tickets. Your support is my biggest motivation.)