Since the Establishment of the Imperial Examination System in the Sui Dynasty for more than 1300 years, the Imperial Examination has been one of the main ways for the emperor to recruit talents, and the Door Yin Scholar is obviously not as fair as the Imperial Examination, and countless cold door students have pointed to this way to jump the dragon gate and enter the career path. Therefore, the emperors of successive dynasties have attached great importance to the "examination fraud" incident and strictly prevented fraud, including Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding father of the Ming Dynasty.
Zhu Yuanzhang had a hard time destroying the Yuan Dynasty, and then destroying other hostile forces, and painstakingly constructing the framework of the Ming Dynasty, he thought that it was time to let some emerging talents enter the imperial court. To this end, in the thirty years of Hongwu (1397), Zhu Yuanzhang thought for a long time, and finally decided to let the highly respected old Confucian Liu Sanwu serve as the chief examiner, this talent and scholarly character are outstanding, and the shilin is famous.
Liu Sanwu was very experienced in this kind of thing and presided over it in an orderly manner. After he and the deputy chief examiner Bai Xinyu were busy, the results of this year's examination and examination came out quickly, and the volume was sent to Zhu Yuanzhang in front of the imperial review, and Zhu Yuanzhang did not feel that there was a problem after reading it, so the golden list was announced in the spring: Chen Anyan, Yin Changlong, Liu Shichen, and 48 people in the same branch, a total of 51 people.
After the imperial list was posted, the onlookers quickly found that it was not right: the jinshi of this section were from uneven origins in the north and the south, the northern scholars were invariably named Luosun Mountain, and all the famous people on the list were from the south. Public opinion was in an uproar, and the more the noise became, the more fierce it became, and the northern people insisted that the chief examiner Liu Sanwu and others had received benefits and were deliberately selfish, so they went to the Ceremony Department to jointly play and asked Zhu Yuanzhang to thoroughly investigate the case.
Such a situation has never occurred in all the dynasties and dynasties, which caused a lot of turmoil at that time. The northern scholars quickly pulled out that the two examiners were both southerners, and the northern officials in the dprk began to question their impartiality. Zhu Yuanzhang received a report that he attached great importance to it, and immediately organized a group to re-examine the examination papers, with the top three and his own attendants reading Zhang Xin, and the attendants Dai Yi and others re-reading the examination papers of the fallen people.
The answer handed in by the results surprised Zhu Yuanzhang, except for Dai Yi and Yin Changlong, who increased the number of northern scholars who could be admitted, the remaining 10 people in the investigation organization did not increase, and according to the level of the examination papers, the results of the examination were consistent with the candidates' situation, and there was no fraud. As soon as the results of the review came out, the northern disciples made even more serious noise, and soon after, someone sued the reviewer Zhang Xin.
The complainant said that Zhang Xin had received a secret instruction from the two examiners and deliberately handed over the Northern Ugly Scroll to cover the eyes and ears of the Holy One. Some imperial historians in the DPRK also began to impeach Liu Sanwu and others for forming parties for personal gain. Things became more and more unmanageable, causing Zhu Yuanzhang to feel a terrible headache. Seeing that the crowd was surging and countless old cases were involved, Zhu Yuanzhang was furious, and after entering the summer, he suddenly issued an edict to severely punish the chief examiner, reviewer, and scholar involved in the case.
The cause was that someone had reported to Zhu Yuanzhang that Liu Sanwu was involved with Lan Yu and Hu Weiyong, and that Liu had "complained" about Hu Chengxiang 10 years earlier; so with a stroke of his imperial pen, Liu Sanwu, who was 85 years old, was sent to the border area and was extra enlightened; Zhuangyuan was lingchi, some of the review personnel were lingchi, and some of the scholars, including Tanhua, were exiled; except for Dai Yi and Yin Changlong, who revised the list, all the rest were severely punished.
After that, Zhu Yuanzhang personally presided over the summer re-examination, and the 61 scholars admitted were all northerners, and finally calmed down the storm. Later generations called the imperial list of this examination "North List" and the previous one "South List", and from then on the Ming Dynasty gradually established a system of dividing the north and the south to take the soldiers, and the Keju Zhi recorded: "In the first year of Hong Xi, Emperor Xuanzong took the throne. In July, I will definitely try the three volumes of south, north and middle. ”