Chapter 29 Chapter 28 Ling Emperor Liu Hong

In the first month of the first year of Jianning (168 A.D.), 12-year-old Liu Hong was welcomed into the Luoyang Palace and proclaimed himself emperor the next day. He became the eleventh emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Lingdi.Emperor Ling is the son of Liu Chang, Marquis of Jieduting, great-great-grandson of Emperor Zhang, and mother Dong. Since Emperor Hanhe, the power of the Eastern Han Empire has been held in the hands of relatives and eunuchs in turn, and the majestic emperor is just a puppet.In the later period of Emperor Huan's dynasty, the eunuch group dominated the government and became arrogant.Emperor Ling came to the world, and Dou Wu, the father of Empress Dou of Emperor Huan, was appointed as a general to assist the government because of his contribution to welcome Li.Chen Fan was jealous of eunuchs who exercised power, and was approved by General Dou. He introduced like-minded Yin Xun as the minister, Liu Yu as the servant, Feng Shu as the captain of the Tunqi school, and appointed the imprisoned "party members" Li Ying and Du Secret etc.For a while, the literati cheered happily.

The group of scholar-bureaucrats began to attack, and first took some eunuchs with lesser positions but notorious crimes, and punished Guan Ba, Su Kang and others.Then, Dou Wu reported to the Queen Mother and asked Cao Jie and other eunuchs to be punished.Empress Dowager Dou hesitated, and the matter dragged on.In August, Dou Wu arrested the eunuch Zheng Sa and tortured him.Cao Jie and others were implicated in Zheng Sa's confession.Dou Wu decided to take this opportunity to eradicate eunuchs.He ordered someone to write a memorial and send it to the Queen Mother.When Cao Jie heard that Dou Wu was going to kill them, he ran into Emperor Ling's bedroom in a hurry and said, "There is a lot of noise outside. Something has happened. Please come out of the front hall of Yudeyang, Your Majesty." Hug back and leave the bedroom.Cao Jie ordered the gates of the palace to be closed, and the seals and talismans used for sending orders were confiscated; all the officials of the Shangshutai were called, with knives on their necks, and forced to draft edicts; the eunuch Wang Fu was sent to rescue Zheng Sa with an imperial edict; Xi.After Zheng Sa came out, he immediately took people to arrest Dou Wu.Dou Wu ran into the barracks and sent an order: "The eunuch has rebelled, and he who tries his best to kill the enemy will be rewarded!" Thousands of people were assembled and the eunuch who arrested him was killed.When Wang Fu and others heard that Dou Wu had resisted arrest and escaped, they assembled more than 1,000 imperial guards and went out to the south gate of the imperial city.

As a result, Dou Wu saw that the general situation was over, so he fled on his horse, and Wang Fu urged his troops to pursue him.Dou Wu was desperate and committed suicide.When Wang Fu sent troops to attack Dou Wu, Chen Fan got the news of the incident and led more than 80 people into the Chengming Gate of the palace, just in time to run into Wang Fu.Wang Fu ordered Chen Fan to be arrested, captured and killed.The eunuchs won a big victory. In the second year of Jianning (169 A.D.), the eunuch Hou Lan ordered his minions to falsely accuse Zhang Jian, a native of Shanyang, of rebellion. Cao Jie took the opportunity to arrest "party members", and Li Ying, Du Mi and other hundreds of scholars died in prison. Three years later, Empress Dowager Dou died, and someone wrote anti-eunuch slogans on the Zhuque Que in Luoyang. The eunuchs once again searched for "party members" and arrested more than a thousand people.Four years later, the eunuch group issued another order: all "partisan" disciples, old officials, fathers, sons, brothers, and relatives within the fifth service should be exempted from official imprisonment.This is the second "party ban" after the first "party ban" in the ninth year of Yanxi Emperor Huan (AD 166).

The young Lingdi was a little at a loss about the struggle between the scholar-bureaucrat group and the eunuch's centralization of power.The eunuch Cao Jie and others accused the "party members" of plotting misconduct, and the emperor read the memorial, but he didn't know what "misconduct" was.Later, when he was a little older, he knew that the power of the empire was controlled by the eunuchs around him, and he was just a puppet, but he was calm about this.He often said to people: "Zhang Changshi is my father, Zhao Changshi is my mother." Zhang Chang's waiter, eunuch Zhang Rangye, Zhao Chang's waiter, eunuch Zhao Zhongye.The eunuch became the emperor's father and mother!He was not interested in power, and willingly handed it over to the eunuch.

No one would have thought that what this absurd emperor likes is to buy farms and houses.Liu Hong was originally a marquis with a poor family background.After being welcomed as the emperor, the world is rich, people, wealth, and things are all his.But he felt that he should buy some land and houses like he did when he was Jiedu Tinghou.So, he took the money he had collected back to his hometown in Hejian to buy a farm and house, and began to look at it.Some leftovers were stored in the eunuchs' homes, and the family kept tens of millions.An eunuch named Lu Qiang felt that it was inappropriate for a majestic emperor to buy farmland and houses, so he went to the Shu and advised him: "Everything in the world belongs to your majesty, and your majesty is supreme. It is not suitable to buy private land or private houses." Emperor Ling saw After reading Lu Qiang's memorial, he threw it aside, ignored it, and remained the same.

In addition to buying fields and houses, Emperor Ling also thought of a way to play: he drove four white donkeys, and drove around the imperial garden with his own bridle.The dignitaries followed suit, and for a time the donkey was so popular that its value skyrocketed, and the price of the donkey was equal to the price of a horse; A shop where palace ladies sell goods and steal and fight each other.He himself took off his dragon robe, put on the clothes of a merchant, and had fun in the market place. When the treasury was exhausted, Emperor Ling hung out the public price for selling the officials in the West Garden: 20 million Wen for 2,000 stone officials; 4 million Wen for 400 stone officials.The county magistrate and the county magistrate negotiated the price face to face.There are good and bad shortages, and there are high and low prices.If you go to a rich place, pay in cash; in a poor place, negotiate a good price first, and pay double when you arrive.This is public.There are also "black market" transactions: Sangong, 10 million yuan; Qing, 5 million yuan.Except for the seat of the emperor, which is not for sale, other official positions can be bought with money.There was a man named Cui Lie, a well-known scholar in Jizhou, who was an official to Jiuqing. He paid 5 million yuan through Lingdi's mother Fu and bought a Situ.On the day when he was awarded Situ, all officials gathered together.Emperor Ling turned his head and whispered to one of his favorite ministers: "This official has sold out. He should have asked for 10 million!"

The eunuchs exercised power and indulgence, the Lingdi was licentious and immoral, and the bureaucratic landlords were greedy and extravagant, which intensified the already sharp class contradictions and triggered a vigorous peasant uprising, which occurred in the first year of Zhongping (184 AD). The Yellow Turban Rebellion led by Zhang Jiao. The country was unstable, and Emperor Ling couldn't care less about running donkeys and playing dogs, so he hurriedly held an imperial meeting to study countermeasures.Most civil servants and generals advocated annihilation by force, but Lu Qiang, who had advised Emperor Ling not to engage in private property, suggested releasing the "partisans" to win over people's hearts.Emperor Ling adopted this suggestion.Another doctor, Zhang Jun, advocated killing the eunuchs to thank the world, so that the chaos can be calmed without fighting.After hearing this, Emperor Ling reprimanded: "This is really a madman!" Although the emperor, who depended on eunuchs as his parents, was indignant at the affair of some eunuchs with Zhang Jiao, he believed that there were still good people among the eunuchs. .As a result, the loyal Zhang Jun was killed by the eunuch on an unwarranted charge.

So Emperor Ling appointed He Jin, the queen's half-brother, as the general, to lead the army to garrison the eight fortresses around Luoyang, to defend the capital; he appointed Huangfu Song and Zhu You as left and right generals, leading the main force of the imperial army Suppress the Yellow Turban Army in Yingchuan, which is the greatest threat to Luoyang; send North Zhonglang General Lu Zhi to lead the army to suppress the Yellow Turban Army in Jizhou.After several battles, the Yellow Turban Army in Yingchuan and Nanyang lost successively, and Zhang Jiao died of illness. Hearing that the "Yellow Turban Bandit" was exterminated, Emperor Ling was very excited and changed the name to "Zhongping".While rewarding the soldiers, he took bloody revenge on the uprising masses. Thousands of civilians were killed in each county.

In the sixth year of Zhongping (189 A.D.), the 34-year-old Lingdi ended his short and absurd life. After his death, he was buried in the Huangling area in the northwest of Luoyang, named "Wenling".