In recent years, we have been able to see a lot of articles on the "rehabilitation" of Wei Zhongxian, the "eunuch" during the Ming Dynasty's Apocalypse.
Reading between the lines of these articles, Wei Zhongxian's strategy of abolishing agricultural taxes and imposing additional mining and commercial taxes to fill the state treasury is endorsed, and his effective use of personnel and effective measures on the battlefield in eastern Liaodong is also fully affirmed. Of course, in addition to "approving" and "affirming" Wei Zhongxian, it is also indispensable to criticize the Donglin Party represented by Zhou Yanru, Qian Qianyi and others, believing that the Donglin Party was the "bane" of the final demise of the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, to sum up these views, the historical role of Wei Zhongxian in the late Ming Dynasty is "incomparably huge", so based on this, there is also the classic sentence "Zhongxian is immortal, and the Ming Dynasty is immortal".
on the Internet).
Is it really "the loyal and virtuous are immortal, and the Ming is immortal", or is there really a so-called "loyal and virtuous immortal, the Ming Dynasty is immortal" and official historical materials? The answer is necessarily no.
Putting aside the evaluation of Wei Zhongxian's merits and demerits, purely from the source, characters and historical background of this sentence, "Loyalty and virtuous immortality, Ming immortality" itself is a complete "pseudo-proposition" with distinctive characteristics of the historical era.
on the Internet).
The earliest source of the phrase "loyal and virtuous are immortal, and the Ming Dynasty is immortal" is in the "Yandu Diary" written by Feng Menglong, a ** family in the last years of the Ming Dynasty.
Its original text is:
"Reinstate the minister Cao Huachun, and secretly order the burial of Wei Zhongxian's remains. Turning the past into loyalty, the speech: If the loyal and virtuous are here, the current affairs will not come to this. Shang was sorry and sent an edict to collect and bury the remains of Zhongxian. Alack! This is a fallacy. ”In this passage, two historically controversial "public cases" are introduced.
First, Chongzhen ordered Wei Zhongxian to be buried to express his remorse for killing Wei Zhongxian at the beginning of his succession;
The second is the sentence "If the loyal and virtuous are there, the current affairs will not come to this", which is extended from the sentence "The loyal and virtuous will not die, and the Ming will not die".
on the Internet).
Let's first see if Chongzhen has buried Wei Zhongxian.
There is such a record of Wei Zhongxian's final ending in the History of the Ming Dynasty:
In November, he placed Zhongxian in Fengyang and sought his life. Zhongxian traveled to Fucheng, heard it, and hanged himself with Li Chaoqin. Zhao Bang's corpse, hanging between the river. ”It can be seen that after Wei Zhongxian hanged himself in Fucheng, Emperor Chongzhen did not let Wei Zhongxian go, not only re-imposing Ling Chi punishment, but also hanging his head on the city gate of Hejian Mansion as punishment. And these things all happened in the seventh year of the Apocalypse (1627), that is to say, the city of Beijing was broken, Chongzhen hanged himself, and the orthodox Ming Dynasty was destroyed, and it was a full seventeen years from here, and the bones of Wei Zhongxian at this time had long been gone, and the so-called "collection of remains" was nonsense.
on the Internet).
And from the personal grievances between Chongzhen and Wei Zhongxian, it is impossible to do something to "bury" them.
When Chongzhen ascended the throne, Wei Zhongxian created huge obstacles and obstacles for him, and he was even ready to find a woman to give birth and weave a lie that it was the "dragon seed" of the Emperor of the Apocalypse, so as to prevent Chongzhen from ascending the throne. After that, Chongzhen ascended to the throne with the support of Empress Zhang of the Emperor of the Apocalypse and Zhang Weixian, the British duke, but the palace was still full of Wei Zhongxian's ears and eyes, and the situation was still tense.
Judging from Chongzhen's liquidation process and punishment results for Wei Zhongxian and his henchmen, it also fully proves Chongzhen's deep hatred for Wei Zhongxian. Therefore, according to the character of Emperor Chongzhen, it is impossible to rehabilitate Wei Zhongxian and bury him.
on the Internet).
As for Cao Huachun's saying that "if the loyal and virtuous are there, current affairs will not come to this", it is even more impossible to appear in history.
First of all, it is possible for anyone to say good things for Wei Zhongxian, but Cao Huachun will not.
Cao Huachun in Yandu Diary is portrayed as Wei Zhongxian's confidant, but this is extremely inconsistent with historical facts. If Cao Huachun was really Wei Zhongxian's confidant, then he should have been eliminated long ago when he liquidated the eunuch party in the early years of the Chongzhen Dynasty, and there was no way to live until the end of the Chongzhen Dynasty. In fact, Cao Huachun is not only not Wei Zhongxian's henchman, but Wei Zhongxian's sworn enemy Wang An's henchman.
Wang An and Wei Zhongxian's grudge was at the time of the "Palace Removal Case", one of the "Three Major Cases of the Late Ming Dynasty". Emperor Zhu Changluo of Mingguangzong Taichang died only one month after ascending the throne, and at this time, Zhu Youxiao, the Emperor of the Apocalypse who should inherit the throne, was controlled by Li Xuanzhi, so Wang An took the initiative to unite with Yang Lian, Liu Yixiao and others of the Donglin Party to snatch the Emperor of the Apocalypse from Li Xuanshi's hands. During this period, Li Xuanzhi did not give up, she let her henchman eunuch Wei Zhongxian (then called Li Jinzhong) vow to recapture Zhu Youxiao, but Wei Zhongxian was severely stopped by Wang An, Yang Lian and others.
In this way, Li Xuanzhi wanted to hold the Emperor of the Apocalypse hostage to control the government and bankrupt the conspiracy, but Wei Zhongxian did not give up the struggle for power because of the loss of power of the "master". After that, he relied on his friendship with the Apocalypse Emperor's nurse Ke Shi, and gradually became trusted by the Apocalypse Emperor, and began to grasp power, and then also launched revenge actions against Wang An, Yang Lian and others. In the end, Wang An was tortured to death by Wei Zhongxian in an extremely tragic way.
on the Internet).
At the same time that Wang An was framed by Wei Zhongxian, Cao Huachun, who was Wang An's confidant, was also suppressed by Wei Zhongxian, and then expelled from Beijing and arranged to stay in Nanjing. Later, with the accession of Emperor Chongzhen, Cao Huachun reactivated Chongzhen, and his first task after taking office was to liquidate the eunuch group and organize the rehabilitation of Zhaoxue by Wei Zhongxian.
From this point of view, Cao Huachun is full of deep hatred for Wei Zhongxian, after all, Wei Zhongxian not only killed Wang An**, who had the grace of knowing him, but even he himself was implicated and punished, so it is absolutely impossible for Cao Huachun to say good things for Wei Zhongxian.
on the Internet).
Secondly, Cao Huachun was not in Beijing at all at this time, let alone by Emperor Chongzhen's side.
Regarding this point, it involves another public case during the Qingming Festival, that is, whether Cao Huachun opened the door to surrender to Li Zicheng.
Many literary and film and television works, especially some martial arts**, have put the "credit" of "opening the city to welcome thieves" on Cao Huachun's body. However, according to Cao Huachun's own words, he was "at home for six years", that is, since he returned to his hometown on leave in the twelfth year of Chongzhen (1639), he has never returned to the capital, so there is no way to become Li Zicheng's internal response.
on the Internet).
For this point, I still agree that Cao Huachun did not "open the city to welcome thieves".
First, when Yang Bo of Shuntianfu, Yang Shimao of Wanping and other ** Cao Huachun, the approval given by Emperor Shunzhi, who was in power at that time, was"Cao Huachun is unprovoked, his heart is clear, there is no need to dissect Chen, the ministry knows"., indicating that the credibility of this matter is low and not enough to be believed.
Second, in the early years of Kangxi, in the process of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang and auxiliary ministers such as Sony and Aobai abolishing the "Thirteen Officials of the Inner Court", Wu Liangfu was killed, but Cao Huachun was not moved, which also shows that Cao Huachun's case record is relatively clean and his popularity is relatively good, so he was not implicated.
Third, when the Qing Dynasty first entered the customs, because it had a special internal affairs office outside the customs to be responsible for acting court affairs, and there was no tradition of using eunuchs in the court, but a special "coat", if Cao Huachun had such a behavior of "opening the city to welcome thieves", it would inevitably be abandoned, rather than reused.
It can be seen that until Li Zicheng broke through Beijing, Cao Huachun was not in Beijing, how could he accompany Emperor Chongzhen, let alone collect the funeral for Wei Zhongxian, and then there would be no emotion from his sentence "If Zhongxian is here, current affairs will not come to this".
on the Internet).
So, since these things are not in line with historical facts, how did they appear in "Yandu Diary"?The answer is that Feng Menglong really doesn't know these things, and it can be said that he "made up".
Feng Menglong himself is a first-class family, including his masterpiece "Three Words", namely "Yu Shi Mingyan", "Warning World Words", and "Xing Shi Hengyan", which are only literary works that "originate from life but are higher than life", and are not a display of historical facts.
The Yandu Diary is even more so, Feng Menglong died in the third year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1646), and Beijing Chengpo and Chongzhen hanged themselves in 1644, and the "Yandu Diary" wrote about the relocation of the capital to Shunzhi, so the writing time of this book can only be between 1645 and 1646.
And Feng Menglong is a native of Suzhou, and at this time he has been in the Jiangnan area and has never been to Beijing, so he has no practical historical materials to provide reference for the things in Beijing and the palace, either "hearsay" or "made up by himself", which also makes Feng Menglong's "Jiashen Change" completely a kind of romance existence.
on the Internet).
To sum up, the so-called "if the loyal and virtuous are here, current affairs will not come to this" appears in the ** that has a strong apocryphal component, and at the same time it comes from the mouth of Cao Huachun, who is impossible and could not say such a sentence at that time. Therefore, "the loyal and virtuous are immortal, and the Ming is immortal" is a completely non-existent "false proposition" from the beginning.
on the Internet).
Some people may ask, obviously there is no conclusive historical data in his hands, and at the same time, there are no clear facts, why does Feng Menglong still describe it like this?There is only one answer, and that is to serve the political ruling needs of the Nanming Hongguang regime at that time.
In fact, not only "Yandu Diary", but also many literary works published during this period have obvious political orientations to rehabilitate Wei Zhongxian and overturn the case for the "eunuch party".
In this regard, the Hanlin Academy during the Chongzhen period reviewed and surrendered decisively after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Yang Shicong gave a very incisive explanation for this:
"And catering to the current situation is a boast. ”on the Internet).
The political struggle between the eunuch party and the Donglin party was an important melody of the party struggle in the court in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, especially in the Ming Dynasty Tianqi and Chongzhen dynasties, the struggle between the two parties has reached a situation of saber rattling and life and death. During the reign of Wei Zhongxian, the Donglin Party members were wantonly punished, including Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou, Wei Dazhong, Huang Zunsu and other upright and capable Donglin Party members, and there was a miasma of smoke in the court. After the fall of Wei Zhongxian, the Donglin Party regained control of the political situation, and then liquidated and retaliated against the eunuchs.
In such a cycle of partisan disputes in the court, there is no longer a distinction between right and wrong, and there is only the difference between parties and sides. As in "Yongzheng Dynasty", Yongzheng summarized:
"It is its party members, whether they are virtuous or not, they will shelter in every way; It's not **, no matter whether it's good or bad, it's going to attack in every way. Regard the prosperity and decline of the party as his life, and ignore the overall situation. ”It can be said that the party struggle exhausted the only remaining vitality within the Ming Dynasty, and also made the whole country go further and further on the road to destruction, and finally in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), the city of Beijing was broken by Li Zicheng, and the orthodox Ming Dynasty perished.
on the Internet).
However, before the establishment of the Nanming Hongguang regime, the struggle between the Donglin Party and the Eunuch Party had already been reopened.
According to the legal lineage, Zhu Yousong, the king of Xiaofu, is undoubtedly the most suitable heir. However, it was because he was the son of Zhu Changxun, the old Fu King who triggered the "national capital dispute" of the Wanli Dynasty sixty years ago, and then he was opposed by the Donglin Party led by Qian Qianyi. The reason is that in the "national capital dispute", the Donglin Party supported the later Mingguangzong Zhu Changluo, and strongly opposed the Wanli Emperor's canonization of Zhu Changxun as the crown prince, so at this time, the Donglin Party was afraid of retaliation against the past, and then worried about their own political future and political interests, so even in such a dangerous situation for the country, they still chose to oppose and resist Zhu Yousong.
However, the Donglin Party members are just a group of "theoreticians", to use a fashionable phrase nowadays, a group of "mouth cannons", who have no enthusiasm but do not put it into action. In the end, Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, contacted Huang Degong, Gao Jie, Liu Liangzuo, Liu Zeqing and others from the four towns of Jiangbei to go to Huai'an to welcome Zhu Yousong to Nanjing to ascend the throne.
on the Internet).
At the same time, in order to prove the legitimacy of the eunuch party's control of the government, Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng actively planned to rebuild the "Outline of the Three Dynasties".
The so-called "Three Dynasties Classics" was compiled by Gu Bingqian, Huang Liji, Feng Quan and others during Wei Zhongxian's dictatorship, and pointed the spearhead of the "Three Major Cases of the Late Ming Dynasty" at Zuo Guangdou, Yang Lian, Wei Dazhong, Huang Zunsu and other Donglin Party "bigwigs" at that time, and used this to frame and ** the Donglin Party people, and then control the government An important tool.
Therefore, Ma Shiying and others rebuilt the "Three Dynasties Canon", on the one hand, to continue to use it to fight the Donglin Party forces in the court, and on the other hand, it was to "beautify" Wei Zhongxian, "beautify" the eunuch party in power, and attribute the reason why the country is like this to the power party, so as to improve their own status.
on the Internet).
However, in order to achieve such a goal, it is not enough to rely on a "Three Dynasties Classics". When Wei Zhongxian was alive, the whole country was already scolding him again and again, not to mention the deep-rooted concept deposition of the Chongzhen Dynasty for more than ten years, Wei Zhongxian and his eunuchs were even more notorious and difficult to turn over.
Therefore, in view of this situation, under the vigorous propaganda of Ma Shiying and others, from the court to the people, a vigorous cultural movement was launched to "rehabilitate" Wei Zhongxian, constantly advocating Wei Zhongxian's merits, and re-enshrined Wei Zhongxian on the altar. And only when Wei Zhongxian's reputation is reversed, then the rule of the eunuch party in the Southern Ming Dynasty will be more convincing, and then it will not end up in a discredited situation.
on the Internet).
Feng Menglong's "Yandu Diary" appeared in this period, whether he was willing to cater to it for the sake of selling books for a living, or he was afraid of the majesty of the eunuch party and echoed it, it could not change the political attribute of "Yandu Diary" as a specific historical period with specific views and propositions, so it was even more impossible to use the content recorded in it about Wei Zhongxian as the basis for his "rehabilitation".
on the Internet).
Throughout Wei Zhongxian's life, whether he had any merits at that time, and how much merit he had, we will not comment here. However, from the perspective of his ruthlessness, cruelty, greed, and extravagance, as well as the huge disasters brought to many courtiers, concubines and thousands of people at that time, it is categorically impossible to "invite" Wei Zhongxian from the pillar of shame in history.
And the so-called Chongzhen Emperor felt remorse for killing Wei Zhongxian, and even buried Wei Zhongxian, which was just the wishful thinking of some literati and scholars, but the historical facts were not like this.
As for the sentence "the loyal and virtuous will not die, the Ming Dynasty will not die", since its "birth" and its compilation and publication, it has the distinctive characteristics of the historical era and a strong demand for political rule, and its essence is indeed just a thorough "false proposition".
on the Internet).