For many people, history is boring, especially when facing positive history, but people show great interest in facing wild history.
Just like everyone didn't have much interest in the question of how Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, but hearing the gossip about who Qin Shi Huang's biological father really was, his eyes widened and he wanted to find out.
But Huang Renyu's book tells us that zhengshi can also arouse our interest like wild history.
Hello everyone, today I bring you the correct history written by Huang Renyu - "Fifteen Years of the Wanli Calendar".
This book was actually published very early, and in recent years, because Gao Yuliang often holds this book in the TV series "In the Name of the People", the book has once again ushered in a "turning red".
So, what kind of book is this that allows the TV series to choose it? Overall, this is a magical book.
As the author of this book, Huang Renyu adopted a lot of novel writing methods when writing this book, which allows everyone to read history without psychological burden.
Huang Renyu uses a lot of prose techniques, and his narrative and historical thinking have also broken many of the rules and regulations of historical narration in the past.
And before Huang Renyu, no one had ever been interested in the boring year of the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, but Huang Renyu had a special love for the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar.
In his view, the Ming Dynasty was gradually moving towards a state of collapse because of this bland year. Huang Renyu himself commented on the book and said:
"Although this is the story of a year, in fact, I want to talk about the general record of China's failure."
Huang Renyu used the ming dynasty group portrait to describe the story of what happened in the fifteen years of wanli, and the first person he wanted to tell was the emperor of that period, the Wanli Emperor.
When the Wanli Emperor ascended the throne, he was still a child under ten years old. After the death of the Longqing Emperor, the throne passed to Wanli, but the first assistant during the reign of the Longqing Emperor did not retire.
And this first assistant was named Gao Gong, who thought that he was a heavy minister of the previous emperor and did not take Wanli in his eyes.
Wanli sent someone to ask Gao Gong's opinion, and he would brazenly say to the messenger:
"You claim to have done the Holy Will, and I say that it is the words of a child under the age of 10. Can you convince me that he can really manage the world's affairs? ”
In Gao Gong's eyes, the Son of Heaven is nothing more than a child, and the Empress Dowager is nothing more than a woman and a Taoist family, and this kind of arrogance is absolutely incompatible with the status of a human subject.
Fortunately, heaven blessed, and the loyal minister Zhang Juzheng, so that Gao Gong did not do long in this position, and returned to his hometown to retire.
As a result, Zhang Juzheng naturally took over the position of the high arch and became the first assistant. The empress dowager was very satisfied with Zhang Juzheng and made him the teacher of the Wanli Emperor.
The Wanli Emperor's childhood was raised under the tutelage of Zhang Juzheng and his mother, both of whom were strict with him.
As long as Wanli did not follow the teaching of "respecting the Heavenly Dao and imitating the ancestors", the empress dowager would punish him for kneeling for four or five hours.
And Zhang Juzheng even questioned Wanli in a stern voice when he couldn't recite his question, so that the Wanli Emperor could not tolerate himself in an instant.
But under this strict education, Wanli has made great progress in learning.
Wan Li has great respect for Zhang Ju, and even has a sense of dependence on Zhang Juzheng. The young Wanli could not manage a great dynasty at all, and the existence of Zhang Juzheng also made the Ming Dynasty in Wanli's youth bright.
Wanli could not do without Zhang Juzheng, so he would let Zhang Juzheng stay by his side and reduce the guilt to those who opposed Zhang Juzheng. Even at the expense of violating traditional morality, Zhang Juzheng was left by his side.
In the autumn of 1577, Zhang Juzheng's father died in his hometown, and it is reasonable to say that Zhang Ju was going to resign from his official position and go home to mourn for three years.
Although Wanli is already fifteen years old, the major events of the state and the education of the imperial family still need the indispensable assistance of Yuanfu.
Moreover, in the past, officials who could not leave their posts because of their important status were not without precedent for those who were instructed by the emperor to "seize affection" and not let officials keep filial piety.
So the emperor consulted with his mother and decided to follow this precedent to comfort Mr. Zhang. Zhang Juzheng refused several times, but he could not resist the heart of Emperor Chicheng and stayed.
But in 1584, after Zhang Juzheng's sudden death, Wanli's attitude toward Zhang Juzheng changed by one hundred and eighty degrees.
Not only did he raid Zhang Juzheng's home, but he also sent Zhang Juzheng's descendants to the frontier, all because the Wanli Emperor found that Zhang Juzheng was not at all as good as he imagined.
After Zhang Juzheng's death, the imperial court set off a "storm against Zhang Juzheng", and almost half of the civil officials wrote zhang Juzheng's corruption evidence.
The Wanli Emperor did not look at it, and was shocked to see that Zhang Ju was living in such a luxurious place behind his back, so he ordered the raid on his home.
But the Wanli Emperor still attached great importance to feelings, and did not force Zhang Juzheng's family to a dead end.
However, at this time, the civil officials began to be unhappy, and vigorously told Zhang Juzheng's incriminating evidence in front of the emperor, and finally the emperor had to do the thing to the extreme.
It was also at this time that the Wanli Emperor suddenly discovered that even if he was the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, he could not act according to his own ideas.
Zhang Juzheng's death not only did not give him more opportunities to show his ambitions, but was more and more restricted by civilian officials. Even in his private life, these civil servants wanted to govern.
The Wanli Emperor knew in his heart that what these civil officials represented was a heavy moral concept for thousands of years.
This kind of morality is the foundation of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, and unless he wants to be the king of the fallen country, he must obediently be led by the nose.
But he was not willing to give in after all, and he would silently make his own resistance. He liked Shufei, so he wanted to make Shufei's son Zhu Changxun the crown prince.
However, the civil officials disagreed, and they began to collectively write letters criticizing Shufei's son Zhu Changxun. After several battles, the Wanli Emperor was finally tired. He didn't want to fight with these civil servants anymore.
Therefore, from the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, the subject-controlled emperor rebelled against these civil officials with silence and began a strike that lasted for 32 years, and the qi and blood of the Ming Dynasty also became weak from this time.
The emperor was gone, the courtiers began to be overwhelmed, who could reconcile between them?
Huang Renyu then said the second person, this person is Zhang Juzheng's successor, named Shen Shixing.
Shin Shi Hang is a peacemaker. His value was to regulate the relationship between the courtiers and the emperor, and how could Shen Shixing inherit the position of shoufu after Zhang Juzheng's death?
All this stems from the fact that Shen Shixing was a person who was extremely morally attached. The Ming Dynasty originally promoted the "moral concept", and the existence of Shen Shixing was just the right existence.
However, during Shen Shixing's reign, he was too "treating others with forgiveness", and although he was able to use his balancing skills to properly contribute to the contradiction between the civil official clique and the emperor, he was somewhat powerless to govern the entire Ming Dynasty.
Although Zhang Juzheng was not a moral model, he could make the Ming Dynasty prosperous.
However, Shen Shixing is not too bad in general, although he is a peacemaker, he can achieve the top level of the muddy thing.
Moreover, it can be said that without Shen Shixing's peace and mud, the Ming Dynasty may have collapsed when Wanli became emperor.
Because of Shen Shixing's peace and mud, there was a decade of peace on the northern border, so that the enemy Mongols became Daming's business partners, and the common people also gained benefits.
Therefore, Shen Shixing is not exactly a bad official. Looking at it another way, Shen Shixing should be said to be a traditional good official, who has both the ability to manage and has no moral transgressions.
But precisely because Shin Shixing paid too much attention to moral standards, he did not end up in the position of first assistant in the cabinet, but at the age of 57, he was forced to write a letter saying that he wanted to resign and return to his hometown.
Then didn't the Ming Dynasty cabinet have a better first assistant? Yes, that is, what we called Zhang Juzheng earlier. Huang Renyu started from here to talk about the third person, Zhang Juzheng.
Seriously speaking, the Ming Dynasty did not have Zhang Juzheng, which is a major loss for the Ming Dynasty. Huang Renyu did not tell the credit of Zhang Juzheng here, but about the Zhengde Emperor.
In fact, like the Wanli Emperor, the Zhengde Emperor saw through the mechanism of the Ming Dynasty and knew that his behavior had been restricted by the civilian officials, so the Zhengde Emperor began a life of fighting wits and courage with the civilian officials.
The civil officials wanted the Zhengde Emperor to stay in the palace and play the folds, but the Zhengde Emperor was not, and he wanted to run to Mongolia to fight. He also built a leopard house of his own in Mongolia.
Unfortunately, the emperor was unable to defeat the "civil officials" after all, and died at a very young age. But what does the zhengde emperor's affair have to do with Zhang Juzheng?
In fact, Huang Renyu wants to tell us through the situation of the Zhengde Emperor that without Zhang Juzheng in the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court will be as chaotic as during the Zhengde Emperor's time.
What kind of person is Zhang Juzheng, who can make Huang Renyu say that "there is no Zhang Juzheng in the world"? This brings us to the political achievements of Zhang Ju during his reign.
Everyone should have read "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty", it doesn't matter if you haven't read it, this book's evaluation of Zhang Juzheng is actually very accurate
"Zhang Juzheng this person, said that he is an honest person, that is to see the ghost, honest people can not sit in his position, said that he is a good person, not very reliable, after all, he did a lot of things that good people can not do, to be exact, he is a fierce man." ”
But where is Zhang Juzhengmeng? This also starts from Wanli's grandfather Jiajing, maybe the emperors of the Ming Dynasty love to slack off work,
When Jiajing was emperor, Jiajing also gave up his hands and did not care about political affairs because he was too tired, so the officials who wanted to seize the management power in that period seemed to have infighting like squeezing their heads.
First Yan Song Yan Shifan killed Xia Yan, and then Xu Jie killed Yan Shifan, but it didn't take long for the high arch to be pushed to Xu Jie, but this power eventually came to Zhang Juzheng, who was watching silently in this,
Not because these people in front of them were not fierce enough, but because Zhang Ju was the most yin person.
After Zhang Juzheng ascended to the throne, he met the emperor who was extremely young at that time, and his greatest achievement was that at this time, he did not overthrow the Ming Dynasty surnamed Zhu, but launched a reform.
And because of this reform, the trend of the Ming Dynasty began to rise. Unfortunately, the Ming Dynasty was unable to have another "Zhang Juzheng".
When Zhang Ju was there, the Wanli Emperor did not have to face the bureaucratic clique, Zhang Juzheng was gone, and the Wanli Emperor could only face the bureaucratic clique alone.
However, the Wanli Emperor himself could not fight them, so he began a 32-year-long sabotage strike.
Shen Shixing was still able to support this imperial court when he was there, but after Shen Shixing stopped doing it, Daming's national strength also began to decline.
However, Wanli also has his own unspeakable bitterness, the Wanli Emperor is not a person who is incapable of governing the country, after all, he grew up under the guidance of Zhang Juzheng.
Moreover, he also had political achievements, such as his resolute strength to send troops in the face of internal rebellion and foreign invasion, which allowed him to capture three places in one fell swoop.
It is another pity that the ming dynasty's civilian bureaucracy locked up the ambitions of the Wanli Emperor. Otherwise, the Ming Dynasty may not have begun to decline from the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar.
The end of the Ming Dynasty court was already ruined, so was there anyone who could be used in the local officialdom? Yes, Huang Renyu here talked about the fourth person, named Hai Rui.
Huang Renyu gave him the rating of "eccentric". Why weird? Because Hai Rui is a superb person. It is reasonable to say that the corruption during the Ming Dynasty can be described as very serious.
However, Hai Rui is an extremely honest and honest person, and he can be regarded as a moral model representative in ancient society.
However, there are too few people like Hai Rui, so he can't save the country.
As mentioned earlier, the Ming Dynasty was a country that paid attention to morality, so Hai Rui has been promoted all the way since he became an official. But what?
Hai Rui, this person, is too old-fashioned, his own morality is even if he wants everyone to accompany him to morality. When he was a county magistrate, he confronted his superiors.
When he was promoted to the capital, he confronted the emperor and scolded him. He warned Jiajing: "Jiajing Jiajing, the family is clean", which can make Jiajing not lightly angry.
Fortunately, Xu Jie liked Hai Rui and saved Hai Rui's head, but after Xu Jie stepped down, Hai Rui actually took revenge, believing that Xu Jie's son was not clean and unclean, and sent both of his sons to the frontier, feeling with a righteous face that his approach was correct.
Hai Rui's approach was actually correct, but in the corrupt Ming Dynasty, his approach became wrong.
Before long, Harry's official position was gone, and in his last years, he was doing an idle job that did not have to do anything. When Huang Renyu commented on Hai Rui, he sighed:
"Although the Ming Dynasty regarded moral ethics as more important than anything else, moral ethics is moral ethics, and there must be another magic way to do things."
Although Hai Rui was a person with a very strong spirit of the rule of law, he was ultimately not accepted in this era of the Ming Dynasty. In the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar, Hai Rui died.
A man with the most moral spirit left, a clean and good official who thought about the people left, and since then, Daming has never seen anyone like Hai Rui.
After talking about the emperor, the cabinet, and the magistrate, Huang Renyu began to talk about the fifth person, the military attaché Qi Jiguang.
For his evaluation, Huang Renyu used "loneliness" to describe him. Qi Jiguang is indeed lonely, because he was born in a Ming Dynasty that "emphasizes literature and light weapons".
Qi Jiguang was actually a military attaché who knew how to strategize, but the Ming Dynasty did not need such a military officer, they only wanted a military attaché who could win the battle.
People who have studied history should know Qi Jiguang as a person, because when the high school history books talk about the Ming Dynasty, "Qi Jiguang Resists the Wu" is the key knowledge for students to learn.
But what we don't know is the process of Qi Jiguang's resistance. In fact, it should be very cool to fight with Qi Jiguang, because Qi Jiguang's talent is slightly higher, and for the enemy, Qi Jiguang's goal is only one: total annihilation.
As long as there were enemies on the Japanese islands who came to invade, they were annihilated by the Qi family army led by Qi Jiguang, without exception. It was precisely because of Qi Jiguang's attitude that Wokou no longer invaded China.
Speaking of why Qi Jiguang can be reused, it is still necessary to thank the civilian officials Tan Lun and Zhang Juzheng for their support.
In addition, Qi Jiguang can bravely kill the enemy in his favorite position for a long time, and because Qi Jiguang is very aware of current affairs,
He was not as incorruptible as Harry, he would be corrupt, but the money he embezzled was not used on himself, but on the leaders of the military department.
Perhaps, Qi Jiguang is not the most perfect person, but in order to realize the ideal of maintaining the safety of the people, he is still the hero in people's hearts.
However, such a hero, after zhang Juzheng's death, was unfairly treated by the imperial court, and finally died desolately in the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar.
Huang Renyu said in his final comment:
Qi Jiguang's misfortune was that the whole set of measures he had introduced in a town had in fact upset the balance that the civilian clique was trying to maintain. That being the case, he has to pay the price. ”
Now it seems that we can only sigh that the hero has become a victim of political struggle and eventually died alone in the disease.
When I finish reading "Fifteen Years of Wanli", I always want to do a hypothetical question.
If the Wanli Emperor had not slackened his government, would the Ming Dynasty have lived longer?
If the Ming Dynasty could still have someone like Zhang Juzheng, would the Ming Dynasty go further?
If the civil officials of the Ming Dynasty did not exclude the honest and honest official Hai Rui,
If the Ming Dynasty could equalize the power between the "civil and military officials", would the Ming Dynasty not be overthrown by Nurhaci and Emperor Taiji?
if.....
However, history does not have the assumption that the decline of these heroes since the fifteenth year of the Wanli Calendar has already shown that the prosperous world of the Ming Dynasty is gradually failing.....