Those Things in the Ming Dynasty Part 1 The Great Emperor Hongwu _ Chapter 18 Sweep away all corrupt people!
Among all the evil deeds, Zhu Yuanzhang hated corruption the most, which is understandable. Whenever he thought of the disaster relief food that should have been distributed to his parents but was embezzled by officials, causing his parents to starve to death, he couldn't help but grit his teeth.
These people should all be killed!
He wanted to create a truly pure dynasty, a dynasty where all officials were honest and the people lived and worked in peace and contentment. So he made every effort to realize this dream.
But dreams may not become reality.
In the second year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang once said such touching words to his ministers: "In the past, when I was a common man, I saw corrupt officials who did not pay any attention to the suffering of the people, and I hated them in my heart. From now on, I will legislate to strictly prohibit them.
If there are corrupt officials who dare to harm the people, we will never forgive them!"
Zhu Yuanzhang kept his word. He promulgated the most stringent anti-corruption law in history: Anyone who embezzles more than sixty taels of silver will be killed immediately!
Even at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China, sixty taels of silver was not a large amount. This order showed Zhu Yuanzhang's determination to eliminate corruption.
In order to increase the intensity of deterrence, Zhu Yuanzhang also set up an appalling policy.
Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, the political systems and institutional settings have been different, but the layout of the county government is similar. There are gates, stone walls, drum towers, and two gates. However, in the Ming Dynasty, there were many structures between the gate and the second gate.
A land shrine has been set up. Do not visit this earth shrine at night, it is really scary.
What is the purpose of this earth temple? Don't be surprised, this place is used for skinning, and what is skinned is human skin.
After Zhu Yuanzhang ordered an official to be executed for corruption, he would peel off the corrupt official's skin and stuff straw inside the skin to make a scarecrow and hang it next to the public seat for everyone to see. This scarecrow is not used to scare birds, but to scare birds.
Used to deter corrupt officials.
The first person to enjoy this high-level treatment was Zhu Yuanzhang's old subordinate Zhu Liangzu. This Zhu Liangzu was a famous founding general who had made great achievements. He was named Yongjiahou (Marquis) and guarded Guangzhou. He was in a high and powerful position. But this person
He has a fatal flaw, arrogance.
At that time, the magistrate of Panyu County (now Panyu District, Guangzhou) was called Dao Tong. He was a very honest official. Due to his strict enforcement of the law, he had conflicts with the local tyrants and evil gentry. These local tyrants suffered a loss and had nothing to do with Dao Tong, so they wooed him.
Zhu Liangzu hoped that he would stand up for him. The simple-minded Zhu Liangzu accepted the benefits and actually agreed.
Since then, Zhu Liangzu had many conflicts with Daotong, interfered with Daotong's normal law enforcement, and even sent underworld gangs to secretly set up an ambush and beat up Daotong. However, Daotong did not give in and fought unremittingly with Zhu Liangzu.
The conflict between the two sides escalated step by step, and finally reached its climax. Daotong captured the bully Luo brothers, and Zhu Liangzu dared to use troops to surround the county government and forcibly snatched the prisoners out. He also reported to the emperor and impeached Daotong on a lot of charges.
Daotong finally couldn't bear it anymore and sent a memorial to the emperor to explain the situation, but he forgot that Zhu Liangzu had an advantage that he did not have - fast horses.
The horse that Daotong sent to deliver the memorial was a horse from the inn, but Zhu Liangzu used a military horse. Zhu Liangzu also expected that Daotong would complain, so he sent someone to pick the best horse, rushed to the capital quickly, and complained fiercely.
Dao Tong complained. Zhu Yuanzhang was a hot-headed person. As soon as he saw Zhu Liangzu's complaint letter, he immediately sent people to kill Dao Tong.
Shortly after Zhu Yuanzhang issued the order, Daotong's memorial arrived. Zhu Yuanzhang discovered the problem as soon as he compared it, and quickly sent people to chase him. However, it was too late, and Zhu Liangzu killed Daotong.
Daotong was an honest official and his family had no money. What he was most worried about before his death was that his mother would have no one to support him, so he entrusted his friends to support his mother and then died calmly.
When he was killed, countless people came to see him off.
Justice is in people's hearts.
Zhu Liangzu was very proud that he had finally defeated Dao Tong, and he and those local tyrants and bullies could rest easy.
Having said that, Zhu Liangzu was still a little uneasy. He had fought with Zhu Yuanzhang and knew very well that this person would either do nothing or do nothing. However, Daotong was just a small county magistrate, but he was the founding general of the country and had the imperial title.
Marquis, I think Zhu Yuanzhang would not attack him for a sesame official.
Zhu Liangzu's estimate seemed to be correct. After a while, Zhu Yuanzhang never reacted, and he finally felt at ease.
It is precisely for this reason that Zhu Liangzu was so surprised when officials from Dali Temple came to arrest him with Zhu Yuanzhang's handwriting. Although he had soldiers, he was not insane enough to dare to confront Zhu Yuanzhang. He acted very honestly.
He handed over his military power and went to the capital with the officials of Dali Temple to plead guilty.
However, the officials of Dali Temple were not in a hurry to start the journey, but asked him: "Where is your son Zhu Xian?"
Zhu Liangzu was shocked now, he understood the meaning of this sentence.
Because Zhu Yuanzhang's philosophy of life is precisely: either don't do it, or do it at all.
Along the way, Zhu Liangzu still had illusions. He thought that his hard work was a great achievement and he only killed a county magistrate. Zhu Yuanzhang would only punish him at most and would not kill him.
But there is always a gap between reality and imagination.
On the third day of September in the thirteenth year of Hongwu, Zhu Liangzu and his eldest son Zhu Xian were escorted in front of Zhu Yuanzhang. Zhu Yuanzhang did not talk nonsense to him, gave full play to his own spirit, and whipped Zhu Liangzu when he came up. When the guards saw that the emperor personally went into battle, they
The morale was greatly boosted, and after getting Zhu Yuanzhang's tacit approval, they all started to take action. Zhu Liangzu and his son Zhu Xian were whipped to death in this way.
The word "whipped to death" is really frightening to read carefully.
After killing Zhu Liangzu and Zhu Xian, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered all the bullies involved in the matter to be killed. He thought of Zhu Liangzu's meritorious service and left his whole body, but others were not so lucky. The skins of Zhu Xian and others were all
It was peeled off and hung in a busy city for everyone to see, as a warning for future generations.
Zhu Yuanzhang's handling of this matter frightened many officials. Zhu Liangzu also inadvertently set a record: he was the first minister to be beaten to death by the court.
But he was not the last one. After that, the unique Ming Dynasty phenomenon of beating ministers to death in court continued. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, many outspoken ministers were killed by this extreme punishment.
Since then, Zhu Yuanzhang's attitude towards corrupt officials has become more and more severe. He created a policy that feudal rulers could not even think of in the past, which stipulated that as long as ordinary people discovered corrupt officials, they could be tied up and sent to Beijing to be punished.
, and all checkpoints on the road must be allowed to pass. If anyone dares to block it, not only will he be executed, but the nine ethnic groups will also be implicated! This is unique in the history of Chinese legal system.
However, this policy was not very practical, and there were not many implementers in the Ming Dynasty.
Compared with this kind of mass reporting and exposure, Zhu Yuanzhang's main source of clues to combat corruption was his eyes and ears, which are the inspectors we introduced above. These people are located all over the country. Once they find that officials are corrupt and bend the law, they can report it.
Zhu Yuanzhang also showed a life-threatening spirit. Even if it was already midnight when the information was sent to the capital, he would get up immediately to deal with it.
There are even corrupt officials who have just received red envelopes today, and disciplinary inspection officials will come to see them the next day and arrest them for questioning. The efficiency is not bad.
Zhu Yuanzhang used so many methods and fully cooperated with him. Corruption should be eliminated, but the situation was far from as simple as he imagined.
Zhu Yuanzhang enacted the law, which stipulated that the punishments at that time were limited to five types: flogging, rod, imprisonment, exile, and death. It is easy to understand these five punishments literally. Objectively speaking, these punishments were not heavy in feudal society. This is also
An improvement made by Zhu Yuanzhang considering that the punishments of the previous dynasty were too severe.
But Zhu Yuanzhang was not a man who played by the rules. When dealing with corrupt officials and ministers who opposed him, he definitely did not use these tactics.
Among the punishments he carried out, the most famous one was Ling Chi, who tied people to pillars and cut them slowly with a knife. If the executioner was skilled, the victim would suffer. It is said that the highest record was more than 3,000 cuts.
The knife has cut all the flesh and the person is still alive.
In addition, there are also so-called intestine removal (as the name suggests), scrubbing (pouring boiling water on the person and then brushing it with an iron brush), weighing (hanging the person up with an iron hook to dry), castration, digging out the knees, etc.
However, in the face of these formidable art of death, the officials were still "corrupt", just like a group of death squads, walking in groups to Zhu Yuanzhang's torture device.
Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, corruption has continued, and Zhu Yuanzhang was determined to kill everyone. According to statistics, tens of thousands of officials were killed for corruption and bribery. By the 19th year of Hongwu (1386), officials from prefectures to counties in 13 provinces across the country
Very few of them were able to serve their full term, and most of them were killed. Being an official at that time was not necessarily a good thing. Being able to live peacefully until retirement was already very good, and you could be completely proud of it.
Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't understand why these people, who read poetry and books and took the so-called "hearing the Tao in the morning and dying in the evening" as their life creed, became "accepted in the morning and corrupt in the evening" after becoming officials.
He couldn't figure it out even if he thought about it, but he knew how to deal with these people, kill them!
However, after killing one group, another group came. Zhu Yuanzhang became anxious, so he issued a more severe decree: "I wanted to kill corrupt officials, but I didn't expect that after killing them in the morning, you would do it again in the evening. Then don't blame me. From now on,
There is no need to limit the number of those who take bribes to sixty taels and kill them all!"
But even this did not stop the number of officials. On the contrary, there were fewer and fewer officials, so a funny record appeared in the historical materials at that time: that year, there were 364 officials assigned to the same wholesale list, all of whom were Jinshi supervisors.
A year later, six people were killed.
It seems that this number is not many, but don't worry, there are still 358 people who are serving death sentences and exiles.
You see, not a single one of these more than 300 people has been missed. Let’s talk about this crime of death, but the crime of exile.
What does it mean to be punished with the death penalty and served with nothing but a crime? This is a strange scene in the Ming Dynasty. Many criminals went to court and only found out that the officials were also wearing shackles when they went to the yamen, exactly like themselves, and there were people watching behind them. Except for their clothes,
In official uniform, he looked like a prisoner.
This situation occurred because too many officials were killed and there was no one to work. Although Zhu Yuanzhang was hard-working, he could not replace all the officials. So he created such a system of doing things with death penalty and innocent life. The specific operation method
Yes, official guilty
After being sentenced to death, he was first pulled down and slapped with dozens of boards. Just as the official was applying medicine to the wound, and it was estimated that his life was in danger, a man suddenly came from the prison, and pulled the punished official out regardless of his life or death, and stuffed him into a carriage.
Go up and send them to various yamen to handle official business.
Want to die? I've given you an advantage, but the work isn't done yet!
As a result, the official who was sentenced to death sentenced the prisoner kneeling below to death, and then went to Zhu Yuanzhang to receive his death.
Now that the work is done, it's up to you to kill or cut him up.
Kill those who deserve to be killed, and those who deserve to be imprisoned and exiled. Don't bother anymore.
Zhu Yuanzhang made great efforts to eliminate corruption, but the effect was not very good. This is worth analyzing. Generally speaking, during the founding period of the feudal dynasty, officials were relatively honest, but during the Hongwu period, such a large number of officials were killed for corruption.
, is very abnormal.
It should be said that there were problems in the formulation and implementation of some of Zhu Yuanzhang's policies. Although the main cause of official corruption was their own illegal behavior, the low treatment of officials and the too hasty approach of Zhu Yuanzhang in combating corruption were also one of the important reasons.
The two cases we are going to talk about below can illustrate some problems. These are known as the Kongyin case and the Guo Huan case among the four major Hongwu cases.