weaving

Chapter 1328 Chongzhen's Reverse Scale

The capital of the Ming Dynasty is also in the midst of an undercurrent...

On June 20th, Zhang Laohu, the adopted son of the Earl of Yongning, arrived at Yuanlongchang Horse and Carriage Station on the outskirts of Beijing. The censor Yu Dayou left the city before the city gates closed at night. After a secret discussion with Niu Sheng and Zhang Laohu, he went into the city early the next morning to arrange everything.

On the afternoon of the day when Yu Dayou entered the city, the censors submitted memorials impeaching the chief minister of the cabinet, Zhou Yanru, to the Ministry of Public Security. The contents of these memorials were very consistent, all attacking Zhou Yanru for "enjoying the fruits of his labor while negotiating with the slaves, and for having the mentality of a mean man who shares the credit for success and does not share the blame for failure, which is not what a chief minister of the cabinet should do"!

Just when the cabinet was still struggling over whether to send the memorial impeaching Zhou Yanru to the palace, a second batch of impeachment memorials came from the Ministry of Public Administration, and the content of this time was even more explosive...

Li Qing, the Left Censor-in-Chief of the Engineering Department, took the lead in impeaching the cabinet chief Zhou Yanru, saying that Zhou Yanru instructed and condoned his aide Dong Tingxian to engage in various misdeeds such as seeking power and accepting bribes. His words were so convincing and the evidence so detailed that people had to believe them.

Moreover, this time, in addition to being delivered to the cabinet, another copy of the impeachment was secretly delivered to the desk of Emperor Chongzhen, and it was delivered together with the previous copy of the impeachment that was kept in the cabinet!

At this moment, Emperor Chongzhen was also very conflicted...

Emperor Chongzhen was relatively satisfied with Zhou Yanru's overall performance during his second stint in the cabinet. Now that state affairs were in a difficult situation, he really needed a cabinet minister who could take charge of the central government. So although he secretly hated Zhou Yanru in his heart, he had no choice but to use him.

Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen chose to keep these two batches of memorials impeaching Zhou Yanru and not send them out!

Originally, people thought that the matter could be settled, but unexpectedly, the censor Yu Shangyou also submitted an impeachment the next day. He impeached Zhou Yanru for pretending to be an expert on military affairs, deceiving the emperor, and harming the country and the people.

In his impeachment, Yu Shangyou pointed out clearly that Zhou Yanru falsely claimed to know military affairs but actually did not, and he occupied the position of Prime Minister but did not know how to share the emperor's worries. His recommendation of Hou Xun to lead the army to suppress the bandits was actually a move that harmed the country. He first used the matter of negotiating the money to attack Chen Xinjia in order to eliminate dissidents, and then came forward to plead for Chen Xinjia in order to gain reputation.

After reading Yu Shangyou's impeachment, Emperor Chongzhen hated Zhou Yanru in his heart, but the overall situation of the court still needed someone to preside over it, so he still wanted to leave Zhou Yanru alone for the time being, and then slowly plan to replace him when he had time.

However, he kept all the more than ten impeachment memorials received in two consecutive days. In addition, Yu Shangyou, Lu Dachun and others instigated the court, and many people who had been suppressed by Zhou Yanru, as well as those upright people who truly cared about the world, also followed suit!

Suddenly, the criticisms against Zhou Yanru poured in like a flood...

The cabinet elders also had a fierce argument over the issue of taking sides. Some of them supported the impeachment of Zhou Yanru, while others opposed it on the grounds of maintaining overall stability.

On the surface, the Second Assistant Minister Chen Yan was on pins and needles. He had to persuade here and comfort there. He also often went to the public housing of the First Assistant Minister Zhou Yanru to have heart-to-heart talks with him and expressed his support for him.

On the surface, none of Chen Yan's students, former officials, or close friends participated in the overthrow of Zhou. However, everyone knew that once Prime Minister Zhou Yanru really lost power, the biggest beneficiary would definitely be his second-in-command Chen Yan.

Even the Prime Minister Zhou Yanru cursed Chen Yan behind his back as an "old fox"!

Zhou Yanru, the core protagonist, was really on pins and needles at the moment. Although he looked very stable and calm on the surface, his heart was already boiling with anger.

Wu Changshi, Langzhong of the Ministry of Personnel's Selection Department, was the top representative of Prime Minister Zhou Yanru in the court. Naturally, he would not ignore everything to overthrow Zhou, because overthrowing Zhou was actually equivalent to overthrowing him, Wu Changshi.

After all, "when the nest is overturned, no egg can be left unbroken"! Wu Changshi would arrange for someone to attack anyone who submitted a memorial to impeach Zhou Yanru, and he also spread the word that all those officials who impeached the Prime Minister were recorded by him one by one, and they would have no hope of promotion in the future.

Meanwhile, Zhou Yanru's trusted aide Dong Tingxian was also working furiously in secret...

As an aide who was deeply trusted by Zhou Yanru, Dong Tingxian not only gave Zhou Yanru advice and received visiting officials, but was also responsible for doing some shameful things for Zhou Yanru.

Now he traveled around the homes of high-ranking officials in the capital. For example, Zhou Jian, the brother-in-law of Emperor Chongzhen, the half-brother of the current Empress Zhou, and the eldest son of Jiading Earl Zhou Kui, was very good friends with Dong Tingxian and often passed on to him the news he had heard from Empress Zhou.

There was also the father of Emperor Chongzhen's favorite imperial concubine Tian Xiuying, the Left General Tian Hongyu, who was also very good friends with him. He often spoke well of Tian in front of the imperial concubine and also inquired about the news in the palace and reported it to her.

Of course, this kind of friendship was mostly based on the benefits of gold and silver. Zhou Yanru had the same surname as Jiading Earl Zhou Kui, so after his second return to Beijing, he regarded Zhou Kui as a member of the same clan. He often sent Dong Tingxian to gamble with Zhou Kui's son Zhou Jian, deliberately losing money to Zhou Jian to make friends with him, so as to take the opportunity to find out the news in the palace.

The same was basically true for the Left Commander-in-Chief Tian Hongyu. On one hand, he was after gold and silver treasures, and on the other hand, he was after connections with the powerful. Of course, as the chief minister of the cabinet, Zhou Yanru held power, which made people like Zhou Kui and Tian Hongyu very excited. Although relatives like them were rich, they had no real power, and by making friends with the chief minister of the cabinet, they would indirectly gain this power.

However, the sources of information that were very effective in the past seemed to have lost their effectiveness at this moment. Money was still collected, wine was still consumed, and licenses were still gambled, but no news from inside the palace was leaked.

It was just like the weather in Beijing, getting hotter and hotter, more and more stuffy, as if a storm was brewing...

Dong Tingxian was forced to use another layer of connections - but for some reason, the eunuchs who had originally flocked to him now avoided him as if he were the plague god and dared not approach him.

And when the time came to June 22, two more blockbuster bombs pushed the battle to overthrow the cabinet into a vigorous and vigorous road of no return, and finally became the last straw that broke the camel's back for the cabinet chief Zhou Yanru!

One of them was the impeachment memorial written by Hao Shangshu, a Censor of the Ministry of War, in which he exposed the fact that Wu Changshi, a Langzhong of the Ministry of Personnel's Selection Department, and others had usurped power, accepted bribes and engaged in private activities. He said that as Zhou Yanru's adopted son, he knew in advance all the cabinet's drafts and state secrets. He also said that Zhou Yanru was a sinner of the Ming Dynasty, and Wu Changshi and others were Zhou Yanru's sinners.

The second was the impeachment submitted by the censor Jiang Gongchen. While exposing Wu Changshi's numerous misdeeds, he also reported that Dong Tingxian, as Zhou Yanru's trusted aide, was in collusion with Wu Changshi and did everything he could.

At the same time, the censor Jiang Gongchen mentioned an extremely explosive thing - Wu Changshi and Dong Tingxian secretly made friends with the eunuchs Li Rui and Wang Yumin, in order to spy on the inner court secrets and report to the Prime Minister Zhou Yanru, so as to help him guess the emperor's mind and realize his ambition to win favor and power.

"Outside officials are in communication with the inside" - this behavior touched the reverse scale of Emperor Chongzhen!