Chapter 126 An De relies on the sky to draw the sword
Gao pragmatically said, "Those who should be impeached should be impeached," which can be regarded as the final statement of today's Double Ninth Festival Conference. It represents not only him personally, but the battle declaration of the entire Gao Party and the entire pragmatic school group.
The first Wanli party struggle, launched with a high pragmatic will, broke out.
In his view, the core driving force of this party struggle is to ensure that the advantage of cabinet power is still maintained without the leader of the real school. And its more direct driving force is to ensure that Shen Shixing cannot be in the cabinet this time.
The second Xin School official was inserted into the middle.
Even if my uncle Ding You resigns, I will leave you Shen Rumo alone!
And Pan Sheng.
Regardless of whether you are greedy for profit or out of necessity, in short, you have changed your previous neutral position and clearly sided with the Heart School.
This is because you betrayed the past friendship first. In this case, don't blame me, Gao, for not talking about the past friendship.
If betrayal can be easily forgiven, then if there are so many people in our school, how can I "lead the team" if someone betrays me one day in the future?
Sometimes it may not be easy to kill chickens to scare monkeys, but the effect of killing monkeys to scare chickens is never too bad.
A pavilion elder is qualified to be this monkey.
Party fights, party fights, if there are parties, there will be fights! What's more, this is the party fight of the Ming Dynasty, not the kind of the Song Dynasty, which is not so gentle and elegant, abolishing the law but not abolishing people.
Party struggles in the future will always be life-and-death.
Gao Pragmatic is very clear that there have been varying degrees of party strife in all dynasties, but their impact has also been different. Although Confucius once said: "Gentlemen are in a group but not in a party, and villains are in a party without being in a group." But history told him that party strife is not the same.
This thing has never been the "patent" of villains. Gentlemen can also fight with each other, and they can even fight much more powerfully than villains.
Why does Gao Pragmatic think that the party struggle in the Ming Dynasty was different from that in the Song Dynasty? The characteristics of party struggle in the Song Dynasty can best be explained by the "Qingli New Deal" and "Wang Anshi's Reform".
In the third year of Qingli in the Northern Song Dynasty (1043), it had been nearly 90 years since the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty. At this time, the Northern Song Dynasty had already experienced several wars against the Liao and Xixia, and its national power was severely consumed. At the same time, there was also a rebellion among the hungry people in the country, which could be described as "internal and external troubles."
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At this time, the famous minister Fan Zhongyan submitted the "Ten Things to Answer the Imperial Edict" to the current emperor Song Renzong, proposing reform measures to address various shortcomings in the system at that time. Afterwards, Renzong issued a number of edicts based on this, and history
It is called the "Qingli New Deal".
Since the New Deal directly hit the vital points of many vested interests, the seeds of "party strife" were sown from the very beginning, which ultimately caused the Qingli New Deal to "come to an end without any problem."
In order to implement the New Deal, Song Renzong intended to promote Xia Song to serve as Privy Councilor (the highest military officer in the country). Originally, Xia Song did not have many opinions on the New Deal, but Wang Gongchen, Ouyang Xiu, Yu Jing and others who were also "reformers" expressed this opinion
He firmly opposed it, and in the end Xia Song failed to achieve his wish. At this point, Xia Song completely stood on the opposite side of the "reformists".
With the advancement of the New Deal, the contradiction between the reformists and the opposition gradually became public, and the struggle became increasingly fierce: first, Ouyang Xiu wrote a letter accusing the imperial censor Liang Jian of being "unqualified"; as a counterattack, he impeached the censor Liang Jian and the reformists
Two ministers who were closely related to leader Fan Zhongyan eventually made Fan Zhongyan and Wang Gongchen, the chief of Yushitai, resign from their official posts to show their support for their colleagues.
After that, the party struggle further "escalated": Xia Song, mentioned above, had someone tamper with letters and falsely claimed that the behavior of reformist officials was "the Yi and Huo incident." This "murderous and heart-breaking" move made Fan Zhongyan, a stalwart of the reformists,
He and Fu Bi were deeply frightened, and they immediately resigned from their posts in the DPRK and went out to patrol the DPRK.
Continuous party strife led to the end of the reform: only one year after the implementation of the New Deal (the fourth year of Qingli), Fan Zhongyan was dismissed from the post of political advisor (approximately equivalent to deputy prime minister), and Fu Bi also resigned from office on the same day.
He was reassigned as border envoy and stayed away from the court. Soon after, all the reform measures were abolished, and the "Qingli New Deal" came to an end.
Compared with the "Qingli New Deal", the "Wang Anshi Reform" is more representative.
This reform during the Xining reign of Emperor Shenzong of the Song Dynasty can be said to have vividly reflected the characteristics of "party struggle": almost all officials in the court chose to "take sides", and because Shenzong supported the new law, the "reform faction" occupied the top spot from the beginning.
With the advancement of the new law, the voices of the opposition "are getting louder and louder": Yushi Zhongcheng, Lu Jiaoshangshu, impeached Wang Anshi, but Shenzong refused to reply, and the former asked himself to leave the court; Fan Chunren, the imperial remonstrance court, Shangshu attacked Wang Anshi for the chaos caused by the reform.
, Shenzong did not comment, and Fan Chunren also resolutely resigned; Fu Bi, an important veteran and minister, resigned as prime minister because of illness; Sima Guang submitted a letter to no avail, and took the initiative to ask to go to Luoyang to compile "Zi Zhi Tong Jian"; Su Shi and Su Che wrote letters stating the disadvantages of the reform, and the result was that
Su Che was demoted to Henan, and Su Shi asked himself to leave Beijing to serve as the general magistrate of Hangzhou...
It can be said that all the officials of the opposition left the central government without exception. However, in the thirty years of Hedong and thirty years of Hexi, the final result was still the failure of the reform and the conservatives once again took power (omitted a bit, I don’t want to write too much about the Song Dynasty)
history).
But the most critical thing is that these seemingly fierce battles basically did not result in the death of anyone, or in other words, there were no personal attacks or even physical destruction outside of politics itself.
Compared with the Ming Dynasty, the party struggles in the Song Dynasty were really restrained.
So what was the style of party struggle in the Ming Dynasty?
Some people talk about the late Wanli period when describing the party struggle in the Dynasty. In fact, that is a misunderstanding. In fact, signs of "party struggle" had already appeared as early as the period of Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang.
At that time, most of the people who followed Zhu Yuanzhang to conquer the world were Huaixi people, and Zhu Yuanzhang himself was also a Huai people. Therefore, after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, most of these people were granted public titles and held high positions.
The core figure at that time was South Korean Gong Li Shanchang, who headed the Huai people bureaucracy group in the DPRK.
Due to his dual status as a hero and a fellow countryman of the emperor, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Li Shanchang was appointed Prime Minister Zuo, ranking first in the court. After him, his countryman Hu Weiyong succeeded him as prime minister.
During their more than ten years in power, due to the exclusion of the Huai people group, it was difficult for non-Huai people officials to gain a foothold in the court. For example, Liu Bowen, a close advisor to Zhu Yuanzhang, was a native of eastern Zhejiang, so he joined the government on his own.
Afterwards, he was severely suppressed.
Liu Bowen's talents and achievements were obviously not bad among the heroes, but because Huai officials obstructed him, when the meritorious officials were awarded, he was only named Chengyi Bo, while Li Shanchang, who was born in Huai, was named Han Gong.
Due to Li Shanchang's instigation, the clever Liu Bowen retired and returned home in just four years of Hongwu, and has stayed away from officialdom since then. But this is not the end: when Zhu Yuanzhang consulted Liu Bowen about the candidate for prime minister, the latter did not speak well of Li Shanchang, so Li Shanchang
He kept his grudge in his heart, and later dismissed Liu's salary for some reason.
After a series of blows, Liu Bowen soon fell ill from worry and anger. At this time, Hu Weiyong of the Huairen Group took the opportunity to send a doctor to treat him, but something strange happened: Liu Bowen died a month later.
It can be seen that even if they stay away from politics, the Huai people bureaucrats still refuse to let go of their enemies. Liu Bowen is only one of their opponents, far from all. In fact, the Huai people group at that time almost suppressed the whole country with the force of one faction——
Otherwise, do you think that Zhu Yuanzhang really had a seizure and actually killed the heroes like that?
He found that the Huairen Group was already too powerful. He could have suppressed it when he was alive. However, the prince died young and it was completely uncertain whether the grandson had such prestige and ability. So Zhu Yuanzhang came into being.
The hero of the great killing.
By the Jia, Long, and Wan dynasties in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, "party strife" with more clearly defined factions officially appeared.
First, during the Jiajing period, there was a battle between the "Strict Party" headed by Yan Song, the chief minister of the cabinet, and the "Qingliu" represented by cabinet members Xu Jie, Gao Gong, etc. - note that the word "Qingliu" at this time does not have a derogatory connotation.
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At that time, Yan Song formed a party for personal gain and engaged in massive corruption. "Qingliu" officials used this opportunity to continuously attack the "Yan Party." And Yan Song was not idle either. He used his power to murder Xia Yan, the leader of "Qingliu" and others, on false charges. But in the 20th century when Yan Song took power
In the remaining years, "Qingliu" never stopped attacking him: Shen Lian, Yang Jisheng and others successively went to court to impeach Yan Song, but they failed to succeed and were framed and killed by Yan Song.
The events after Yan Song's defeat have already been discussed a lot in this book, so I won't go into details here. I will briefly talk about the original history of the party struggle in the late Ming Dynasty.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the "party struggle" reached its peak. First, on the issue of Wanli's crown prince, the Zhejiang Party officials who were born in Zhejiang basically chose to obey Wanli's idea (mainly because they were in power), while the famous Donglin Party officials
Shangshu strongly opposed it. In response, other parties attacked the Donglin Party.
As a result, officials from various factions have been fighting over the issue of selecting the crown prince for more than 20 years.
By the time of the Apocalypse, the "Party Struggle" had evolved into a dispute between the "Inner Dynasty" and the "Outer Dynasty". Because the eunuch Wei Zhongxian was the eunuch of the Bureau of Ceremony, he was able to participate in secrets and supervise the Dongchang. He could fabricate crimes at will and control officials.
He had the power of life and death, so a group quickly formed around him, which the Donglin Party members called the "Eunuch Party".
Because Wei Zhongxian gained the trust of Tianqi, he had great power inside and outside the court and could do whatever he wanted. There was an endless stream of followers who followed him, and they were even called "Nine Thousand Years Old".
Seeing that the "Eunuch Party" was monopolizing power and corrupting the imperial court (in the view of the Donglin Party), the Donglin Party began to violently attack Wei's party: Yang Lian, deputy censor of Zuodu, wrote a letter to impeach Wei Zhongxian on twenty-four major charges, and was falsely accused and imprisoned.
, and later died in prison after being tortured; other Donglin Party members such as Zuo Guangdou and Wei Dazhong were also imprisoned and tortured to death for opposing the Wei family's dictatorship.
At this point, the power of the "Donglin Party" was greatly frustrated, and the "eunuch Party" spread all over the court. It was not until the Chongzhen period that the "Sage King" used the "decapitation tactic" to eliminate it. By the way, the Holy King also eliminated himself.
Looking at the party struggles in the Song and Ming dynasties, most of the party struggles in the former were purely political disputes, such as between the reformers and the conservatives, and the results of the struggle only ended with the removal of the prime minister and removal from office (away from the central government).
The latter are mostly divided into factions based on the place of origin of officials, and fellow villagers cling to each other, suppressing and ostracizing those who are not from the faction. Later, it develops into "fighting for the sake of fighting", and everything must be criticized and fought.
The results were tragic: many of the losers were sentenced to death and died.
Gao Pragmatic once thought about what is the reason for these two different situations?
He felt that perhaps the foundations of the two dynasties were different.
The Song Dynasty can be called the happiest dynasty for intellectuals in Chinese history. Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin once swore an oath "not to kill scholar-bureaucrats and those who wrote letters" and engraved it on a monument. Therefore, the Song Dynasty was extremely tolerant of intellectuals (scholar-bureaucrats), as long as they were not
If the crime is so heinous that it arouses public outrage throughout the country, then no punishment will be imposed.
Even if they fight with the monarch, their lives are often not in danger. At most, they can just go to other places and stay away from the government. This is most typical of the situations of Fan Zhongyan and Wang Anshi.
The Ming Dynasty was different. Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, was born in a poor family and had personal experience with the corruption of officialdom. After the founding of the country, he used severe punishments and laws to rectify the officialdom. The requirements for officials were extremely strict, and the slightest act of corruption would be punished with death.
But on the issue of how to treat ministers, he and his son Zhu Di set a very bad example for future generations: when Zhu Yuanzhang handled the case of two heroes, Hu Weiyong and Lan Yu, only the officials who were implicated were killed.
Reaching more than 40,000 people;
Zhu Di did not hesitate to give in. In the case of Fang Xiaoru, he even carried out the feat of "killing ten tribes". Even Fang Xiaoru's disciples and friends were not spared. Because of Fang Xiaoru alone, more than 800 people were killed before and after.
Therefore, party struggles in the Ming Dynasty almost always ended with personal destruction, and losers often could not even save their lives.
If this is just the "ancestral" inertia formed by the actions of the founding emperor, then there are also actual social roots.
The key point of this social origin lies in the development of the Yangtze River Basin.
During the Northern Song Dynasty, the development in the south of the Yangtze River had reached a large scale, and the economy and cultural level were relatively high. However, the Yellow River Basin did not decline, and because the capital of the country was in Kaifeng, the development of the entire north and south was relatively balanced.
This can be seen from the birthplaces of famous officials in the Northern Song Dynasty: Fan Zhongyan was from Suzhou, Wang Anshi was from Linchuan, Jiangxi, Kou Zhun was from Weinan, Shaanxi, and Han Qi was from Anyang, Henan.
But by the Ming Dynasty, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had been developed to a very mature level, and the economic and cultural levels surpassed those of the north. In addition, Nanjing was the capital at the founding of the People's Republic of China, so its status as a political and cultural center has never declined.
Since then, it has led to a result that most of the "gold list winners" came from this area, so that the emperor had to change the national first list of the imperial examination and divide it into northern and southern lists, etc., in order to maintain balance as much as possible.
But even so, the effect was not particularly good, at least it should not have achieved the results that the emperors wanted. Therefore, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, the most influential "Donglin Party", "Zhejiang Party", "Kunming Party", etc. were even more influential.
One exception is concentrated in the Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou areas.
This makes it easier for them to recognize each other in terms of cultural concepts, and then unite the party and advance and retreat together.
If Gao Pragmatic had not appeared, Gao Gong's "Gao Party" would have been nothing more than a flash in the pan, relying entirely on Gao Gong alone. As soon as Gao Gong himself fell, Gao Party would simply disappear.
Similarly, if Gao Pragmatism had not helped Gao Gong integrate the Gao Party, Zhang Siwei's Jin Party would not have been controllable by himself alone - in addition to the Zhang family in Puzhou, the Wang family, Ma family, etc. were all members of the Jin Party.
Dude, it turns out that they are not inferior to the Zhang family.
It was only because Gao Pragmatic "connected" Zhang Siwei and Gao Gong that Zhang Siwei could, in turn, use Gao Dang's power to establish his absolute advantage in the Jin Party and thus form the sole authority.
Some scattered Jin parties were also integrated.
The combination of the two parties basically formed the basic foundation of the Practical School, and standing opposite it is today's Xinxue School. (In fact, due to its highly pragmatic management, it is almost difficult for the Zhejiang Party to emerge, at least as hard as it is.
The Zhejiang Party appeared like that in history.)
Now, with the death of Gao Gong, Guo Pu becoming official, Zhang Siwei and Ding You, the Xin School finally found an opportunity from more than ten years of forbearance. With the support of some maritime merchants, they began to make plans to "recover the lost territory".
’s first trial.
It stretched out its first paw.
Xu Guo did not see this, or even if he saw it, he hesitated because he was not worthy of his name as the leader of the party.
In this way, Gao Pragmatic, the man behind the scenes who actually built up the political resources of three generations of chief ministers and the former Xiao Ge elder, finally stepped forward.
After the Double Ninth Festival, Gao Pragmatic stood on the White Jade Tower and suddenly read out a sentence that he had read by heart.
"An De relied on the sky to draw his sword and cut you into three pieces."
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PS: I’ve thought about the title of the next chapter, and it’s called “Cut You into Three Pieces”!