Feng Bao, the chief eunuch of the Bureau of Ceremony and the governor of the East Factory, has been in a very bad mood these past few days. He feels that everything has gone towards the worst direction.
First, Gao Gong personally left the court in the name of the chief minister and said that the Chief of Ceremonies, as the center of the inner court, had unshirkable responsibility for the emperor's collapse. He not only failed to take good care of the emperor's dragon body beforehand, but also failed to take care of him afterwards.
Make timely responses.
Generally speaking, according to the habits of civil servants, after such a big hat is put on, a storm of blows will follow, usually with the purpose of suppressing the prestige of the Supervisor of Ceremonies and reducing the power of the Supervisor of Ceremonies.
But this time, the situation was a little different. After Gao Gong scolded the Supervisor of Ceremonies from top to bottom, he did not propose to reduce the power. Instead, he believed that this was due to the lack of manpower and scattered energy of the Supervisor of Ceremonies.
, it is recommended that the emperor expand the scale of the eunuchs who are the eunuchs, eunuchs, and eunuchs, and split the responsibilities of the various eunuchs in the eunuchs as much as possible.
The most typical one is that the chief eunuch Bingbi has too many concurrent responsibilities and is too heavy. The chief eunuch Bingbi not only has to participate in the approval of the ceremonial eunuch, but also takes charge of the East Factory. He even takes charge of the twelve eunuchs in the inner court.
He is also in charge of the Royal Horse Supervisor - this is currently the last method used by the inner court to monitor the Beijing camp, and his status is not unimportant.
Why is it emphasized that this is the last resort for the inner court to monitor the Beijing camp? Because the Ming Dynasty’s Beijing camp system has been constantly changing.
Of course, in the early years, it goes without saying that the noble military ministers 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 noble military ministers.
Some time after the Civil War, as the power of the nobles and nobles was greatly reduced, civilian officials began to infiltrate the Beijing camp and establish the Twelve Regiment Camps, replacing the declining three major battalions and becoming the main force of the Beijing camp. At this time, the civil servant group represented by Yu Qian controlled the major forces.
Part of the real power of the Beijing camp.
Later, when Yu Qian was killed, the imperial camp became the inner court's final say. Especially in the Xianzong Dynasty, the imperial horse eunuchs and admirals supervised the twelve regiment camps, which was very powerful.
Later, Emperor Wuzong and Zhengde, although he was also a patron of eunuchs, because he was good at military affairs, he even sent elites from nine sides to the capital and established them as the "Four Outer Families", so he actually became the emperor's personal control.
Beijing camp, but this system was troublesome, so that period was relatively chaotic. The Beijing camp orders were sent out in many places, and there were a lot of nonsense and messy things.
Emperor Shizong Jiajing was quite concerned about the Beijing camp and always wanted to find a long-term mechanism, but could not continue to implement it. In the sixth year of Jiajing, the Ming court began to set up civil servants to oversee the military affairs of the Beijing camp. At that time, after the recommendation of the court officials, Li Chengxun was
He was appointed as the Minister of the Ministry of War and the Censor of Zuodu of the Metropolitan Procuratorate. He was appointed Prince Shaobao to supervise the military affairs of the regiment and camp, and became the first civilian official responsible for supervising the Beijing camp. However, it soon stopped and the previous practice of part-time civilian officials was resumed.
In the 20th year of Jiajing, Liu Tianhe also served as the admiral of the military affairs of the regiment and camp, and was responsible for the military affairs of the Beijing camp. However, it was less than a year, and the admiral of the military affairs of the regiment and camp became a part-time job of the Ministry of War again.
In the middle and late period of Jiajing, the civil service group also tried to strengthen the cooperation between civil and military officials to increase the combat capabilities of the Beijing camp - this was not easy, and there was a reason. The reason was that the Gengxu Revolution occurred in the 29th year of Jiajing, and the Anda army besieged the capital.
, the Beijing soldiers were cowardly and did not dare to fight, and they were defeated when encountering the enemy, which fully exposed the corruption of the Beijing soldiers.
Therefore, under the advice of Yan Song, the chief minister at the time, Wang Bangrui, the Minister of Civil Affairs, and others, the Ming court abolished the regiment camp and the east and west official hall systems, and restored the three-camp system. All the guards in Beijing were all subordinated to the three camps.
In the management of Jingying, the practice of eunuchs serving as admirals and supervising gunners was also stopped, and a Rong government agency was established. The chief of the Rong government was called the Governor of Jingying Rongzheng, who was served by a military attache and was given the seal of defense. The deputy position was called Zan.
Those who manage military affairs (later renamed as co-managers of military affairs) are elected by officials from the Ministry of War or the Supervisory Directorate, and are not given the seal of defense.
After Emperor Longqing came to the throne, the civilian control of the capital camp shifted from centralized to decentralized. In the fourth year of Longqing, scholar Zhao Zhenji wrote a memorial in which he spoke out about the harm caused by military officials monopolizing power. After discussion by the Ministry of War, the post of governor-general of military affairs was eliminated, and the three major
Each battalion has a chief military officer and a deputy general. Each of the three chief soldiers is given the seal of customs defense and is still selected by the military attache. The post of assistant military affairs officer is replaced by three civilian officials selected from the Ministry of War and the Supervisory Yuan, who are still called admirals.
But in this way, it is equivalent to the Ming Dynasty going to the other extreme to prevent the disadvantages of centralization of power in the Beijing camp. There is a situation where six admirals share the management of the military affairs of the Beijing camp. The powers and responsibilities are too dispersed, and mutual lack of control has become a prominent issue in the management of the Beijing camp.
dilemma.
"After setting up six admirals, each has his own opinion and will not make a decision for ten months or more when encountering problems."
Of course this didn't work, so Zhao Zhenji took office together, and Gao Gong immediately abolished this self-constrained system, and restored the governor and one person to assist in military affairs.
Different from the Sejong period, the governor-general and the assistant minister of Rongzheng each gave the seal of defense. In the original history, from then on, the Rong government system only changed slightly, but overall it was basically followed until the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
Looking back in this way, it is very clear: the power of the Beijing camp was once entirely controlled by the inner court, but now, the inner court has been squeezed out of the core power of the Beijing camp by the civil servant group and the military ministers and nobles. Even the eunuchs in charge of the imperial horse eunuch
, in fact, they are just in name in the Beijing camp, acting as supervisors of the army, and no longer enjoy real power such as command and deployment.
It is precisely because the position of eunuch, chief eunuch of the royal horse supervisor, although the power has been greatly reduced, still has great significance, so the chief ceremonial supervisor has always been in charge of both writing and writing.
However, Gao Gong is now taking action against Chief Bingbi for holding too many concurrent positions.
Gao Gong's suggestion is that the first task of chief Bingbi should be to participate in the approval of the red, and should not be in charge of other affairs too much. His current concurrent duties, such as the East Factory and the Royal Horse Supervisor, would be best to give up altogether. If
The emperor was worried that too many divisions would affect the authority of Chief Bingbi in the inner court, so at least one item should be separated and handed over to other eunuchs Bingbi.
This suggestion is actually the core of Gao Gong's essay. Other statements include, "In the past, there were only three or four Bingbi, and each person had to take charge of three to four important institutions of the inner court, so Bingbi should be added.
"It's enough to be in charge of two organizations at the same time," etc. In fact, this was done to prevent "cutting off Feng Bao" from appearing too abrupt.
Feng Bao was very dissatisfied with this, that's for sure, but his dissatisfaction was useless. He was a "direct party" in this matter. No matter how thick-skinned he was, he couldn't jump out and say, "We men are not tired, we can do it."
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Feng Bao had no choice but to go to Zhang Juzheng overnight again for advice to see if Mr. Zhang had any solution.
On the way to Zhang University's residence, Feng Bao felt furious at times and frightened at other times.
Needless to say, being cruel, being forced into this situation, not to mention someone like Feng Bao who looks kind-hearted, but actually looks down upon someone like a hawk, would make even the Clay Buddha angry.
He was frightened and really panicked. Gao Gong's method this time seemed sharp, but it was very measured. It was not at all like his style of doing other things: he didn't directly ask to reduce the power of the entire Supervisor of Ceremonies.
——In other words, he did not touch the power of the inner court as a whole. He only divided this power from three or four people to five or six people.
Even though they are both decentralized, the difference is huge.
The former method directly reduced the power of the Supervisor of Ceremonies. Since the Supervisor of Ceremonies was actually one of the emperor's hands, reducing the power of the Supervisor of Ceremonies was equivalent to reducing the power of the emperor. Even though Gao Gong's trust in Gao Gong is simply indescribable today, Gao Gong's trust is still indescribable.
If Gong does this, even if the emperor finally agrees, he will definitely be somewhat dissatisfied.
But the latter is not the case. The Chief Eunuch originally had a lot of power, and the big eunuchs in it might each have three points. But after Gao Gong's round of cuts, the big eunuchs were stripped of their power, and each of them might only have three powers.
There are only two points of power left, but the Secretary of Ceremonies still controls ten points of power, and it has not been reduced at all.
As a result, the eunuchs might be dissatisfied, but the emperor didn't care - anyway, the power at his hands was not reduced at all.
Feng Bao panicked here, which meant that the emperor himself was almost unlikely to be disgusted with this suggestion. Considering the emperor's performance that day, he seemed to be afraid that Gao Gong would continue to ask why he fainted, so there was a high probability that this time it would be
You will go along with the flow, agree with Gao Gong's suggestion, and pass the responsibility for your fainting to the Director of Ceremonies - it's because you didn't take good care of him, Mr. Gao has a sharp eye!
At this moment, Feng Bao felt that only Zhang Juzheng might be able to save himself.