Wei Zhongxian

Wèi Zhōngxián (( Chinese  魏忠賢 ) also Wei Chung-hsien ), actually Lǐ Jìnzhōng ( Chinese  李进忠 ) (* 1568 in Suning ; † October 19, 1627 in the Forbidden City in Beijing / possibly also in Anhui ), was a head eunuch from the time of the Ming dynasty in the 17th century.

Today he is one of the darkest characters in Chinese history, who also contributed to the worsening of the state crisis in the 17th century and the fall of the Ming dynasty.

biography

Admission to the court

Little is known about Li Jingzhong's youth except that he was born in 1568, was born in Suning and that he married a woman with the surname Fang. Because of his infamy in Chinese historiography, there are various versions of his early years. According to tradition, he was a do-it-all and gambler with the extraordinary gift of ingratiation. According to Ming Dynasty reports, when he lost more and more games and was unable to pay the debts, he was castrated for payment at the age of 21 because he was sure he would find a job in the imperial palace . He found this shortly afterwards at the court of Emperor Wanli . There he was favored by the eunuch Wang An in order to be favored by Wanli. Although Wei was illiterate , he was called to the office of rites with the help of Lady Ke , the wet nurse of the later Emperor Tianqi . When there was an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the Hereditary Prince Taichang in 1615 , led by the concubine Zheng and then in 1620 with the sudden death of this new Ming emperor, it was very strongly asserted that Wei had a hand in it. When Tianqi came to power in 1620, he was appointed head of the imperial tombs .

Exercise of power and consolidation in the empire

Tianqi was not suitable for the role of Heavenly Son from the beginning :
Obviously suffering from a learning disability , only interested in wood construction and cabinet making, Wei took advantage of the situation together with Lady Ke and practically took over power in China with her.

Wei also showed no interest in the broken position of the empire. Instead, he had Wang An murdered because he stood in his way, enriched himself with the dwindling state revenues and had temples built everywhere for his own glory and for the glory of his accomplices, the so-called temples of the living ( shengci ). The very first temple was built on the bank of the West Lake in Hangzhou in honor of the governor of Zhejiang , Pan Ruzhen . Fairytale sums were spent on all temples as a whole.

In order to strengthen his power, Wei increased the appointments of favorites and the number of fictitious officials, as a result of which corruption became more rampant. Tianqi was so grateful to Wei for allegedly assuming state duties that he even ordered the chief eunuch to be venerated in the same way as Confucius . It didn't bother him that he himself had to kneel down in front of the statue of Weis with the spring and autumn sacrifices and touch the ground three times with his forehead.

Wei also had all personal enemies executed, every member of the scholarly caste whom he could get hold of, as well as the rest of those who opposed him. The members of the Donglin Academy , whose authority had been able to assert themselves for a while in Wanli's time and who had also been in conflict with the eunuch cliques since 1615, were particularly affected . They came back to power at the beginning of Tianqi's term; but their influence was short-lived. Wei spun a network of complicity and soon afterwards controlled the entire administration of China with the help of his secret police . In 1621 there was an assassination attempt on Wei, carried out by Donglin member Liu Zongzhou , which failed, however. From 1625 onwards there was terrible repression against the members and sympathizers of the Donglin party, many of whom were incarcerated, tortured and murdered in prison. A list of the names of over 700 conspirators , senior and middle officials, was published and permitted general prosecution. The academies of this opposition were closed.

The censor Yang Lien also fell victim to this regime of terror:
after exposing himself several times in numerous disputes within the leading civil service and with the eunuchs, he even dared to accuse Wei in 1624 . Because of this boldness he was dismissed from office and executed in 1625 by order of Weis.

The Lady Ke secured her influence on the emperor and the affairs of state by removing all other ladies-in-waiting from the Tianqi harem , imprisoning them and finally starving them.

The fall of the chief eunuch and his end

When Tianqi died on September 30, 1627 at the age of only 21, he had left no heir to the throne. Thereupon, palace intrigues tried posthumously to impose an heir on him . Zhu Youjian , the younger brother of the emperor, emerged victorious and took the throne under the motto Chongzhen . Immediately after taking power, he ousted Wei Zhongxian and all of his followers, as well as Lady Ke. Apart from the year she died in 1627, nothing is known about Ke's fate. There are two common versions of Wei's death:
After Tianqi's death, he is said to have hanged himself on his own initiative in order to escape the revenge of his enemies. Other sources attribute that he pulled from Chongzhen accountable, relieved of all offices and suicide by hanging was forced.
But also a murder on imperial orders in Anhui cannot be ruled out. After his death, his body was eviscerated .

Effects

After the death of statesman Zhang Juzheng in 1582 , the corrupt eunuch cliques, disempowered and corrupted at the time of Longqing, regained political power, succeeding in making the state administrative apparatus submissive and using it for their own purposes.
Wei sensed his chance to pay his gambling debts by castration and also to come to great power. His lack of interest in the economic and political problems of China contributed to the fact that the financial problems of the Ming dynasty worsened, the situation of the people, which had already deteriorated by then, worsened, there were peasant uprisings everywhere and also that no military precautions were taken, in order to master the threat from the Manchurians under Nurhaci and later under his son Huang Taiji . When Weis died and Chonzheng came to power, China was bureaucratically, financially, militarily, politically and economically almost completely shattered, which ultimately led to the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644 .

swell

literature

• John W. Dardess: Blood and History in China. The Donglin Faction and Its Repression. 1620-1627. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu HI 2002, ISBN 0-8248-2516-0 .
• Herbert Franke , Rolf Wedding slip : The Chinese Empire (= Fischer World History . 19). 13th edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-60019-7 .
• Jacques Gernet : The Chinese World. The history of China from the beginning to the present time (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch. 1505). Translated from the French by Regine Kappeler. Checked and updated for the German edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-518-38005-2 .
• Gisela Gottschalk : China's great emperor. Their history - their culture - their achievements. The Chinese ruling dynasties in pictures, reports and documents. License issue. Pawlak, Herrsching 1985, ISBN 3-88199-229-4 .

Web links

• Top 10 eunuchs in ancient China (English)
• Article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (English)
• Biographical summary in "Cultural China" (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John W. Dardess: Blood and History in China. 2002, p. 35.
2. ↑ John W. Dardess: Blood and History in China. 2002, p. 36.

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Wei is the family name here, Zhongxian is the first name.