Chapter 9 call eunuchs parents

On the first day of the first month of the first year of Jianning (168), under the grand welcoming ceremony of all the officials, a luxurious green-covered cart drove a 12-year-old child slowly into the palace.The child's name is Liu Hong. He is the son of Liu Chang, Marquis of Jieduting, and the great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty. He is about to become the eleventh emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty. This is Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty. Speaking of it, it was an accidental luck that Emperor Han Ling was able to ascend the throne of emperor.Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty who had just died had no sons.His Empress Dou and her father, Dou Wu, decided to choose an heir from the royal family.They fell in love with Liu Hong, because Liu Hong's great-grandfather was Liu Kai, King of Hejian, his father, Liu Chang, Marquis of Jieduting, and Emperor Huan Liu Zhi were cousins, and Liu Hong was the nephew of Emperor Huan.But these relatives are not the most important thing. The important thing is that Liu Hong was young, only 12 years old at the time.

It turned out that from the beginning of Emperor Zhang of the Han Dynasty, the rule of the Eastern Han Dynasty had the phenomenon of alternating powers between foreign relatives and eunuchs.The dictatorship of foreign relatives was already very common in the Western Han Dynasty. In the end, the foreign relative Wang Mang replaced the Western Han Dynasty and established a new dynasty.Therefore, in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the emperors were very afraid of their relatives taking power. However, all the emperors in the Eastern Han Dynasty from Zhangdi Emperor were young and unable to govern, so they could only rely on the empress dowager to rule. People, thus bringing the dictatorship of foreign relatives.But the emperor will always grow up. Hanling Emperor Liu Hong was unwilling to keep the power in the hands of his relatives, but the monopoly of relatives made most of the court ministers support them. The emperor could only rely on the eunuchs around him to cut off relatives, and the result was relatives Downfall, eunuchs rule.When the next emperor ascends the throne, the cycle repeats itself.Whether they are foreign relatives or eunuchs, they do not select officials according to the normal way of the government. Once they are in power, they often form cliques for personal gain and extort money.So the Eastern Han Dynasty went to perish in such a vicious circle.For foreign relatives, only when the emperor was very young when he ascended the throne can the title of the queen mother be justified, and they can get the chance to monopolize power. However, the emperors of the Eastern Han Dynasty often died early and had no heirs, so they were willing to choose the heir to the throne. Small children for easy control. The 12-year-old Liu Hong was pushed to the throne under such circumstances.

Although Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty ascended the throne, the teenage children did not understand anything, so naturally the Empress Dowager Dou had to rule.Empress Dowager Dou's father, Dou Wu, was granted the title of Marquis of Wenxi; her son, Dou Ji, was named Marquis of Weiyang, and was appointed as a servant; Waiter, in charge of Habayashi Zuoqi.Dou's family has power inside and outside the court and is very dignified.A new cycle begins again. However, the situation changed slightly at this time.Foreign relatives and eunuchs successively monopolized power and controlled the government. Those officials in the court who were selected according to due procedures such as "inspection and examination" were naturally very dissatisfied.In addition, the Eastern Han Dynasty attached great importance to Confucianism education, and the scale of Taixue in Luoyang, the capital, continued to expand, and the number of students reached as many as 30,000.These people gather in the capital, intervene in public opinion, and have considerable power to influence politics. They unite with the upright scholar-bureaucrats in the court, and use "Qing Yi" as a weapon, and have become another political force independent of relatives and eunuchs. .Their resistance to foreign relatives and eunuchs won the support of the general public, so that the emperor sometimes had to submit.During the time of Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty, he had to pardon the officials who were punished for offending the eunuchs because of the petition of the imperial students.But how could the eunuchs give up on this, and accused them of forming a party to slander the court and confuse customs.So Emperor Huan of the Han Dynasty ordered the arrest of "party members", and made a list to announce to the world that all "party members" will be imprisoned for life, and they are not allowed to be officials and travel.This incident is known as "the disaster of the party".It's just that although the imperial court declared these people as sinners, they still had high prestige among the people. Even the high-ranking officials in the imperial court had many sympathies for them. Empress Dowager Dou's father, Dou Wu, was one of them.

Although Dou Wu is also a relative, he has a good relationship with these Qingliu literati. He once asked for pardon for the "party members" after the disaster of the party.Now that Emperor Ling ascended the throne and Empress Dowager Dou came to court, and the power of the court was already in his hands, he summoned those imprisoned celebrities to serve as officials, and joined forces with Chen Fan, a minister who had always opposed eunuchs, to plan to kill eunuchs. .At this time, the great eunuch Cao Jie was granted the title of Marquis of Chang'an, and was temporarily suppressed. However, through Lingdi's wet nurse and the maids around the Queen Mother, he showed courtesy to Queen Mother Dou and gained the trust of Queen Mother Dou.As a result, Empress Dowager Dou was always hesitant about the conspiracy of Dou Wu and Chen Fan, and she went back and forth.In the end, this incident was learned by the eunuch, which triggered a major incident.

On the seventh day of September in the first year of Jianning (168), the eunuchs launched a palace coup. They first held Emperor Hanling and Queen Mother Dou hostage in their hands, seized the jade seal, and sent people to arrest Dou Wu and others.Later, it was announced that Dou Wu and Chen Fan had conspired against each other, and they were killed. Those Qingliu literati who were promoted by them were naturally all dismissed, and the power of the court was once again in the hands of eunuchs. Emperor Han Ling just became emperor when he encountered such a coup.He is only a child in his teens, and he comes from a foreign domain, and has never lived in the palace. How can he understand what the struggle between the scholar-officials and the eunuchs is all about.Even when the eunuch Cao Jie and others accused the "party members" of plotting misconduct, the little emperor didn't know what "misconduct" meant.But when he saw the heads of people falling to the ground, he also felt quite scared, and from then on he was willing to hand over the power to the eunuchs.The ten eunuchs around him, including Zhang Rang and Zhao Zhong, all served as Zhongchangshi and were named Liehou, known as "Ten Changshi".These eunuchs were originally servants by the emperor's side. Seeing that the emperor was young, they were willing to find all kinds of new ways to play for him, so that he could have fun, ignore state affairs, and exercise power for himself.Seeing these eunuchs being so caring, Emperor Ling of Han favored them even more. Once he even said: "Zhang Changshi is my father, and Zhao Changshi is my mother."

The eunuchs became the emperor's "parents" and held great power ever since. Their fathers, brothers, children, in-laws and guests spread all over the world, domineering, greedy and indulgent, plundering property and harming the people.Even the mansions they built imitate the appearance of palaces.They were afraid that Emperor Ling would see him on the stage, so they lied to him and said: "The emperor should not climb high. If the emperor ascends, the people will be scattered." The eunuchs have even fooled the emperor, and they are even more unwilling to let go of their former enemies, Qingliu scholar-bureaucrats.In the second year of Jianning (169), the eunuch Hou Lan ordered people to falsely accuse Zhang Jian, the governor of the eastern part of Shanyang County, of forming a party and endangering the country.As a result, another large prison was set up, and hundreds of people died in the prison. This was the second disaster of the party's imprisonment.After these two times of tossing, the political power of integrity in the ruling and opposition parties has been tossed.In the fourth year of Xiping (175), Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty issued an order: "Eunuchs can act as orders." This means that eunuchs who are in prison can legally and directly participate in the government management agencies composed of scholar-bureaucrats. among.Prior to this, eunuchs could only indirectly control the imperial government by influencing the emperor.In this way, the eunuchs lost the power to check and balance, and became more unscrupulous since then. The reign of Emperor Ling became the darkest period in the history of the Eastern Han Dynasty.