Chapter 12 Chapter Eleven: The Three Great Cases of Hongguang

Just when Shi Kefa was busy on the front line for the Northern Expedition, in the court hall, the "eunuch party" headed by Comrade Ruan Dacheng and the "remnant forces" of the leaderless Donglin Fushe two parties were also fighting "invincibly". . It is said that Ruan Dacheng has been quite complacent since he used the "smooth case" as a weapon to make the Donglin Fushe and the two parties "no longer powerful".However, people's desires are endless. Comrade Ruan Dacheng felt like a thorn in his back when he remembered that he was still carrying the black burden of "reversing the case".

If you want to completely turn around politically, you have to let the "reverse case" be washed from black to white.After much thought, Comrade Ruan Dacheng believed that the best way was to re-list the "Three Dynasties Essential Code", which was destroyed by Emperor Chongzhen's edict. "Three Dynasties Essential Code" is the anti-Donglin Party white paper composed of years of painstaking efforts by Wei Zhongxian as the chief designer, Gu Bingqian as the editor-in-chief, and Feng Quan as editors.Although the book is written in the official language, it uses a large number of novel techniques such as line drawing and fiction, and carries out vivid and artistic processing of the Stiles attack case, Hongwan case, and Yigong case, making the plot more confusing and turbulent. ups and downs.The book was released to the public after being approved by Emperor Tianqi, and became an important cultural weapon for the Eunuch Party to attack the Donglin Party.It allows readers who read this book to understand how "dirty and dark" the Donglin Party did, and how "fair and just" the Eunuch Party did.

Comrade Ruan Dayue just wanted to use this "weapon of mass destruction" to prove the innocence of the eunuch party, and of course he also proved his innocence. It is not too difficult to realize his "little wish", as long as Emperor Hongguang approves it.And it seems that it is not too difficult to get Hongguang Emperor to approve and approve, as long as the anger in this "dumb man" is aroused. Because in the three major cases, the main creative material of "Three Dynasties", a large number of political reputations of Emperor Hongguang's grandmother, Concubine Zheng Guifei, were involved. It can be proved that "His Majesty's grandma" was an innocent victim in those struggles back then. She was not only politically innocent, but also ideologically pure.

He also continued to give full play to his talent in acting, and tirelessly enlightened and guided this "stupid man": "Of course the country's great enmity must be avenged, but the hatred of grandparents should also be avenged!" But it is a pity that in front of Emperor Hongguang, who was "severely slow in mental response", his efforts only had the effect of "half the result with twice the effort".Emperor Hongguang only agreed with the Ministry of Rites to visit the "Three Dynasties Essentials" scattered among the people, and put them in the National Archives-Historical Museum as historical materials for preservation, and did not mention the republication.However, in order to comfort Comrade Ruan Dacheng's efforts, Emperor Hongguang issued an edict to rehabilitate Huo Weihua and others who were "politically persecuted" for participating in the compilation of this book. A memorial service will be held for the dead to commemorate, and those who are alive can come out and "do it for free." Officer", stop here.

From this incident, Comrade Ruan Dacheng saw that the Donglin Party still had vitality in the government and politics, and it was still deceptive in the eyes of Emperor Hongguang.This further strengthened his sense of crisis. But it doesn't matter, Comrade Ruan Dacheng, who adheres to the principle of "doing everything well and doing everything well", immediately found a new opportunity to "leverage strength to fight strength". This opportunity is the first of the three major cases of the Hongguang Dynasty—the Demon Monk’s Great Compassion Case, which occurred in December 1644.

One day in this month, a monk came to Nanjing, the capital of the world. He neither burned incense and worshiped Buddha, nor visited temples to visit friends. Zhan Luan became a monk, and now he is looking for Emperor Hongguang to find relatives. Emperor Hongguang, who learned of this matter, dealt with it as follows: evade himself, and transfer it to the relevant administrative department for trial and identification. After sorting out the transcripts of the trial, the "dehydration" draft is as follows: The monk first called himself Chongzhen, and then called himself King Qi, King Wu, and King Ding. .After repeated trials, it was found that the monk's real name was Dabei, and he was a monk in Suzhou. Seeing the chaos in the world, he made a criminal attempt to pretend to be a prince and deceive him.

Seeing that it was an ordinary criminal case, Emperor Hongguang ordered that he should be convicted and punished according to the "Law of Ming Dynasty". However, Comrade Ruan Dacheng, who is extremely clever, found the confession of "Lu Wang is wise, he should be the lord of the world" in Dabei's incoherent statements. The trick - to induce a confession. Under his earnest guidance, Monk Dabei's "confession ability" has been further improved, and the number of people involved in the case has expanded from Dabei to 143, including Shi Kefa, Gao Hongtu, Qian Qianyi, Jiang Riguang and other senior officials and the society. Celebrities are "famous on the case".

At the same time, in order to make the effect of exposing "criminals" more visual and popular, Comrade Ruan Dacheng launched his second popular book, "The Record of Locusts" (the first is "Hundred Officials"), based on the people involved in the case. "Picture"), Locust refers to Donglin Party, and Lime refers to Fushe.The book lists the "big figures" of the two parties who endanger the country as "Eighteen Arhats, Fifty-three Talented Boys, and Seventy-two Sages and Bodhisattvas". Later, the old boy, whose creative enthusiasm was out of control, made persistent efforts and released his third popular book in a short period of time - "Gnat Records". One hundred and sixty-five heavenly kings, five hundred should be true."More than a thousand people were implicated in an attempt to wipe out all those who were involved in Donglin Fushe.

His approach aroused disgust among some "savvy people" in the eunuch party, who once advised him: "Now the world is in chaos. If you mess around like this and take revenge blindly, in the end, I don't know whether it is cheaper to clear the captives or to break into the thieves?" However, the spiritual world of Comrade Ruan Dacheng has entered a state of "madness and confusion". The "tragic experiences" of being suppressed by the Donglin Party and being expelled from the rehabilitated society in the past clearly reappeared in his mind.So, he replied without hesitation: "I am almost sixty years old, and my days are numbered. I just want to devote this limited life to infinite revenge activities, and make those who have hurt me tremble." Go! I don't care if it's the result of clearing captives or burglars, I only want the pleasure in the process of attacking!"

Just when this old boy's plot was about to succeed, a person stretched out his thin but strong arms to block his fat body that "swirled forward". This person is the actual head of the Nanming government - Ma Shiying. "Brother Ruan, let's stop here. Do you really want to turn our court into a cemetery where thousands of mountains and birds are gone, and thousands of people are gone?" The "hysterical" Ruan Dacheng was finally calmed down by the basin of cold water that Comrade Ma was pouring over his head, and he stopped his further steps of "breaking the law and committing crimes".

Three days later, Monk Dabei was beheaded in the downtown area for the "crime of evil words", and the case finally ended as a criminal case. However, "the tree wants to be quiet but the wind doesn't stop", can the battle provoked by Ruan Dacheng really stop here? Of course not, because the two parties of Donglin Fushe are not a group of "lambs to be slaughtered". Compared with the Ma Ruan Group, which is "calling the wind and calling for the rain" in the court, the Donglin Fushe and the two parties outside the court seem to be a "disadvantaged group", but the actual situation is not always the case. These two parties have two major advantages that the Ma Ruan Group cannot match.One is the large number of people. From the north and south of the river to the coast of the East China Sea, wherever there are feudal scholars and bureaucrats, there are their "good comrades" everywhere.Although they are fighting independently and lack a unified leadership, thousands of ants can eat an elephant if they act, let alone that small Ma Ruan Group. The second is to control the orientation of public opinion.The two parties not only have a large number of people, but most of them are "social elites" who claim to represent the "direction of development and progress" of Ming Dynasty. Therefore, they have extremely high prestige among the people and have a strong ability to guide public opinion where to go .And public opinion is a "social biochemical weapon with the effect of mass destruction"! Now, people from both parties who have been repeatedly persecuted and severely suppressed by Ruan Dacheng are taking active actions to defend their rights to survival and development, and must not allow the tragedy of the Tianqi Dynasty to happen again. Just at this time, two major cases occurred in the Hongguang Dynasty one after another, which made people from both parties discover a good way to "treat others in the same way". These two major cases, one is the "fake prince case" and the other is the "fake daughter-in-law case". The parties involved in the case cannot do without Emperor Hongguang. Let's talk about the "fake prince case" first. The time when this case happened: the end of December 1644. The facts of the case are as follows: When Mu Hu, the servant of Gao Mengji, the Shaoqing of Honglu Temple, was fleeing from Beijing to Nanjing, he met a young man on the road, and the two walked together.While sleeping at night, Mu Hu discovered a big secret of this young man, that the underwear he was wearing was actually embroidered with dragon patterns. There are only two possibilities for a person who dares to wear underwear embroidered with dragon patterns and is insane, either he is tired of living and wants to kill himself, or he is the emperor or the prince.Surprised, Mu Hu hurriedly asked the boy's identity, and the boy didn't hide anything, and told him directly - I am the prince. Mu Hu, who felt that life had suddenly "won the lottery", has been carefully serving the "Prince" His Royal Highness all the way since then, and hastily handed over this "rare item" to his master - Gao Mengji after returning to Nanjing. As a government official, it was difficult for Mr. Gao to distinguish the authenticity from the false. However, in order to be on the safe side, he first asked his family to take the "prince" out of Nanjing, a place of right and wrong, and go to Suzhou and Hangzhou for "tourism", so as to give himself some time to spend. Time to think and respond. But this "Prince" is not willing to bow his head under the eaves.During the journey, he swaggered through the market and openly made an "image advertisement" for himself. Now Master Gao was dumbfounded. In order to shirk his responsibility, he immediately gave a secret performance to Emperor Hongguang and reported the situation of the "Prince". As Emperor Hongguang who inherited the great rule with his pro-vassal, the people he fears most now are the three sons of Chongzhen who are more qualified to succeed him than himself.Regardless of which of the three nephews appeared suddenly, legally speaking, he had to pack up and leave immediately. So as early as July this year, he issued an edict to the world, announcing that these three nephews of his had "martyred for the country" and gave them posthumous titles respectively. But what he was afraid of came to nothing. Gao Mengji's sudden report made him dumbfounded and at a loss for a while. After all, after being emperor for more than half a year, Emperor Hongguang, who still had some administrative ability, gradually calmed down. He first sent his internal officials to hold imperial letters to summon the "Prince" to Beijing. After the prince came to Beijing on the first day of March, 1645, Emperor Hongguang asked Jin Yiwei Feng Kezong to "receive" him. He held a meeting of ministers the next day, and said at the meeting: "Now there is a child from the north who claims to be the prince established by the first emperor. Please help me identify it. If it is really the prince, this is also a great thing. I have no son, so I can raise this child as my own, to comfort the spirit of the late emperor, and to appease the earnest wishes of the people!" His speech was concise and touching, reasonable and restrained, which made him stand on the moral and legal grounds On the highest point, it won unanimous praise from the participating ministers. Subsequently, the "screening team" composed of relevant people such as Hou, Bo, Jiuqing, Hanlin, Ke, and Dao began to work. Among the members of the "screening team", the most authoritative person was Wang Duo, a university scholar. He had been the prince's "tutor" in the East Palace for three years, so he should be quite familiar with the prince. The screening conclusion of "Teacher Wang" came out quickly - this prince is a typical "fake version of the prince". Later, two other "tutors" of the prince, Liu Zhengzong and Li Jinglian, and the "classmate of the prince" Qiu Zhizhong (an eunuch who was once a tutor for Dong Guan) also came to the same conclusion. This conclusion dropped a stone in Emperor Hongguang's heart, and under his instructions, the case entered the next round of legal procedures - using the "trial team" to replace "Zhen Biju" to find out the true identity of the "false prince". Under the strong attack of comrades in the "trial team", this "false prince" finally confessed: I am Wang Zhiming, the grandnephew of Prince Consort Wang Bing, a native of Gaoyang, who embarked on the criminal path of fraud because of his greed for wealth. Just when this case was already heated up, another big case of Hong Guangchao - "Fake Daughter-in-law Case" also entered the public's field of vision. This case occurred in January 1645, one month later than the previous two cases. One day this month, a middle-aged woman surnamed Tong from Henan came to see Yue Qijie, the governor of Henan in the Southern Ming Dynasty. She claimed to be the daughter-in-law of King Dechang (that is, the earliest title of Emperor Hongguang). Please help the governor, so that you can "find your husband and reunite", and explain some other details.This convinced the well-informed governor of Yue, so he sent someone to escort the "emperor's daughter-in-law" to Beijing while playing the report. It was also on the first day of March in 1645 that the "child daughter-in-law" came to the capital swaggeringly, but instead of being welcomed into the palace to "reunite" with Emperor Hongguang, she was sent directly to the highest-level prison—the Imperial Prison, and He was interrogated severely by Jin Weiyi. The "child daughter-in-law" was treated like this because the other party involved in this case, Emperor Hongguang, did not recognize the identity of this "door-to-door daughter-in-law" at all, accusing her of being an adulterer and impersonating her. After being tortured and interrogated, the confession of this "fake daughter-in-law" was: "The civilian girl is 36 years old, surnamed Tong, entered the palace at the age of 17, and was canonized by Cao Neijian. At the same time, the Huang family of the East Palace and the Li family of the West Palace were also sealed , Mrs. Li gave birth to a son, Brother Yu, whose whereabouts were unknown due to the war. I gave birth to a son, Brother Jin, who now lives in Ningjiazhuang. The child's arm is marked by the tooth marks I bit off..." Emperor Hongguang, who received this confession, was so angry that he splashed ink and wrote vigorously on the spot, pointing out its absurdity, and defending himself outside the court: One is that my wife died early and has been sealed, and a "child daughter-in-law" appeared out of nowhere; The second is that I was only a county king in the past, according to the "Law of the Ming Dynasty", how did the county king come to the East and West Palaces; The third is that the canonization of the county princess must be carried out by officials from the Ministry of Rites sent by the imperial court, so why come Cao Neijian to canonize it; The fourth is that I have never had a son, so why come Jingeyuge. The analysis of the holy criticism of "defense" made the ministers look at Emperor Hongguang's talent with admiration again. His Majesty's anger aroused the uneasiness of the officials who escorted the "fake daughter-in-law" to Beijing. In order to assist the emperor in combating criminals, they went to the Weibo to provide circumstantial evidence. On the way to Beijing, the woman behaved frivolously and did not have the demeanor of a "princess". If the officials did not supply enough, she would throw off the table and yell at her; waived"…… All right!Now both the "fake prince case" and the "fake daughter-in-law case" can be classified, but they are just two criminal fraud cases of a particularly bad nature! Wait a minute, the party constitutions of the two parties of Donglin Fushe are "the sound of the wind and rain, the sound of reading, and the care of family affairs, state affairs, and world affairs." How can we let go of such important national affairs. Instead of letting it go, intelligent people in both parties have also discovered the huge "political value" contained in it. It is best to use this case to remove the general backer of the Ma Ruan Group--Emperor Hongguang, so as to wipe out this small group. Into the "garbage dump" of history. Due to the large number of people in the two parties, they fought against each other, so when they used the two cases to attack Emperor Hongguang, they formed the "moral faction" and "legal faction". The "morality faction" is mainly lower-level party members. Because of their low level and low vision, they added fuel to the two cases to prove that Emperor Hongguang forgot not only the kindness of the former emperor, but also the love between husband and wife. He is a typical contemporary "Chen Shimei". The intention is to discredit Emperor Hongguang and express the resentment in his heart. The "legal faction" is mainly middle- and upper-level party members. Because of their high level, they also have high vision.They used Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi, etc. as the pushers of the two parties, and wrote books to directly deny the identity of Hongguang Emperor from the law. Some of the "Legal School" advertised like this: "Tong Daughter-in-law" is real, but Emperor Hongguang dare not admit it, why?Because he is a fake, a "little gangster" pulled from the street by Ma Shiying in order to achieve his personal goal of "holding the emperor and making the princes".Not only the existing Hongguang is fake, but also the aunt he brought in later—the Empress Dowager Zou, is also fake. Some of the "Legal School" advertised that the prince from the north was real, but Emperor Hongguang didn't want to admit it.It is because once he admits it, he should give up his seat to the prince and lose the legal basis for his legal title of emperor. Whether His Majesty's "daughter-in-law" is true or not is his "personal secret", and ordinary people can ignore it.But the authenticity of the "Prince" is related to the foundation of the country and cannot be left alone.Out of nostalgia for the glorious image of the "martyr Chongzhen", out of hatred of the Maruan Group for selling officials and nobles, and out of disgust for Emperor Hongguang's misconduct, everyone's subjective consciousness is more willing to believe that the prince is real, and public opinion unanimously demands the government to clarify In fact, it is really like the world. This kind of public opinion was also transmitted to the military camp, and it was so infected that Emperor Hongguang's "benevolent" in the past-Jingnan Hou Huang Degong actually believed it.He said to Hongguang Shangshu: "The prince may not be a fake. Your Majesty, you must treat it with caution. During the trial of this case, the prince must not be punished, lest the judges make an unjust verdict in order to obey His Majesty's wishes!" The sentence of Shangshu pierced Emperor Hongguang's heart, making it difficult for him to distinguish.I can only tell my subordinates to keep this "prince" under strict supervision, not to punish him, let alone kill him, and let time slowly prove his "innocence". But he was not so polite to the "fake daughter-in-law" who gave him infinite embarrassment.Let Jin Yiwei beat her until she is bloody and insane, and throw her into hell to starve to death! However, the struggle is inertial.People from the two parties, who have enjoyed the thrill of the public opinion struggle, are even more "victorious" and set off waves of "trust storms" against the Hongguang government.This storm did not stop until the fall of the Hongguang Dynasty, and finally it was considered "rest with the country". In the three major cases of Hongguang, Comrade Ruan Dacheng took the lead in lifting the stone, and while throwing it at the two parties of Donglin Fushe, he also threw himself at the same time. Comrades from the two parties raised the stone to fight back, and while smashing at the Ma Ruan Group, they in turn smashed the entire Hongguang Dynasty.Naturally, he also ruined his position! "It's spring again, peach blossoms and apricot blossoms are all over the sky."But can the gloomy Hongguang court start a new journey in this spring full of life?