Chapter 2209: Renzong Chronicles 18: Three Years of Political Turmoil

There is no doubt that Wang Shilin's greed for power and refusal to retire was a very serious disruption and harm to the political ecology of the Great Han Empire, even though no statute or institutional regulation in the empire stipulated that the Director of State Affairs could serve only five years, with nobles and commoner officials rotating power in turn.

But that consensus between court and country, reached through decades of practice, through countless struggles, compromises, and exchanges, that unwritten rule established by convention among the core ruling elite — that could not be lightly broken.

Compared to the legal provisions written in the Criminal Code and the Collected Statutes, the destruction of such political unwritten rules had far more serious consequences. For the former was mainly used to restrain the ruled and the exploited classes, while those rules hidden beneath the surface were the true balance of all interests reached by the ruling class — the powerful and noble.

Once broken, what was shattered was not merely political principles, but also the hard-won balance of interests, and infringing upon the interests of others would inevitably arouse public wrath.

And for those ruling elites who lived off their privileges, conflicts of fundamental interest were far more likely to unite them in struggle than concerns about stable governance, the security of the state, or the welfare of the common people.

As for this situation, with Wang Shilin's cunning and foresight, he could hardly have failed to understand its difficulties and risks — only, the temptation of power, especially the temptation of executive authority, was not so easily resisted.

Among all the successive Directors of State Affairs in the empire, Wang Shilin was definitely one of the younger ones; even after serving a full five or six years, he would only be just past sixty, healthy in body and vigorous in spirit — how could he bear to retire just like that?

Even if outside the court there were still positions of regional governors, high ministers, and generals waiting for him, how could they compare with the power and prestige of the Chief Chancellor of the realm?

And the reason Wang Shilin was willing to take action for his desire for power and put it into practice largely stemmed from his own self-confidence. He believed that with twenty years of painstaking management, plus the added authority of the Director of State Affairs position, he already possessed sufficient prestige and strength to quell those dissenting voices.

He was confident that, relying on his familiarity with the court and his own political cunning and strategies, he could balance conflicting interests — and indeed, in the past, he had done quite well.

Even more important was the attitude of the Zhengtong Emperor. Liu Weizhen had not opposed Wang Shilin's pursuit, and had even stated that Chancellor Wang governed the state well, that His Majesty had no worries and owed it all to his merit — this was a powerful shot in the arm.

With these three factors as his foundation, from the twenty-first year of Zhengtong, Wang Shilin formally began his "re-election," which naturally provoked discontent among numerous powerful figures and officials both inside and outside the court, and resistance arose from this.

The confrontation with Bao Zheng was merely a warm-up, an opening act. After all, although Bao Zheng's attitude and words were fierce, he only addressed the matter at hand, only considered the basic overall situation, and all his actions remained within the constraints of court regulations — the impact, though significant, was limited in scope.

But after Bao Zheng, things were different. One Bao Zheng fell, but thousands upon thousands of Bao Zhengs stood up — of course, only on the matter of toppling Wang Shilin's monopoly on power.

Dukes and marquises, meritorious nobles, court ministers, and pure-stream scholars — all manner of figures, as if by common accord, launched attacks against Wang Shilin. And it was by no means limited to verbal condemnation; from politics to military affairs, from official administration to people's livelihoods, every political action of Wang Shilin's was studied under a magnifying glass, used to find flaws, loopholes, and even malpractices to attack.

This was only the basics. The partisans attached to Wang Shilin were even greater targets of scrutiny, and on their persons, the last thing lacking was problems.

Wang Shilin knew it would be troublesome, but he had not expected it to be this troublesome. When court nobles, central ministers, and pure-stream celebrities united together, the pressure they brought upon Wang Shilin was extremely immense.

He even at one point felt a sense of being besieged on all sides, ambushed from every direction. Under such circumstances, Wang Shilin naturally could not just sit there and take the beating — on the contrary, his counterattack was also fierce.

All crows under heaven are equally black — if you dare expose my shortcomings, I dare dig up your old secrets. Relying on the real power in his hands, the counterattacks from the "Chancellor's Faction" were clearly more incisive.

And this mutual mudslinging could obviously not help resolve the problem; on the contrary, it was intensifying the contradictions, and the final result was often mutual destruction. When the ruling elites fell into internal strife, the court's situation likewise became turbulent and unstable.

In the late Jianlong period, a large-scale political struggle had erupted in the court over the succession dispute. This time, compared to that year, there was no essential difference — it was still a game played within the ruling class over power and interests.

Only, last time, with Emperor Shizong suppressing it, no matter how chaotic the situation, there was a bottom line, and the negative impact could be controlled. But the current emperor was not Shizong, but Liu Weizhen.

While the Chancellor's Faction and the anti-Wang faction were locked in struggle, what was the Great Han Emperor doing? He was not purely watching the show either. Faced with the deluge of impeachment memorials piling up like a mountain, Liu Weizhen was both caught off guard and extremely furious.

He sternly reprimanded Wang Shilin, saying he could not unite his fellow ministers, causing resentment between superiors and subordinates. He did not let those nobles who repeatedly stirred up disputes off either, issuing several edicts urging them to be tolerant for the sake of the state.

Liu Weizhen's series of statements were not without effect, but they were merely skimming the surface of boiling water — they never touched the root of the problem. The Emperor's ambiguous attitude naturally gave Wang Shilin the opportunity to continue his monopoly on power.

Of course, with Liu Weizhen, Wang Shilin had expended considerable effort. Besides his consistently attentive service, it also related to a piece of advice Wang Shilin had offered: "The office of Director of State Affairs was conferred by Your Majesty. Now Your Majesty has no intention of replacing or removing me, yet the ministers urgently seek my dismissal — what is their intention? Today they can unite to attack me; if one day they join forces to pressure Your Majesty, how will Your Majesty deal with them?"

Wang Shilin's words naturally had the flavor of substituting concepts and deflecting contradictions, but they were highly effective with Liu Weizhen. This was not a confident emperor; accustomed to the peaceful days of a court filled with upright men, he was truly at a loss for how to handle the chaotic political situation and surging public opinion.

Thus, letting Wang Shilin shield him from the disturbances and storms from the outer court seemed to become a good choice, even though these disturbances originated from Wang Shilin himself. Of course, also influencing Liu Weizhen's attitude was the chief palace eunuch Cai Jue — at least when the powerful figures of the outer court were checking each other, those of them serving in the inner palace had a much more relaxed situation.

This factional struggle centered on the power of the chancellorship lasted a full three years. Due to Emperor Liu Weizhen's attitude, Wang Shilin always held the advantage. During this process, he made considerable compromises to seek cooperation, but what he did more of was using various means to suppress his political enemies.

Zeng Gongliang, Fu Bi, Zhao Shangfan (successor of Zhao Kuangzan), and other senior ministers were successively pushed out of the central government. Men like Ouyang Xiu were even exiled to the provinces. Although he did not think much of these pure-stream types, their prestige in scholarly circles was too high, and the pens in their hands were quite formidable.

Wang Shilin's performance in the later period of his administration fit the characteristics of a powerful chancellor, even a treacherous chancellor — the traditional archetype of the great villain. His political cunning was entirely spent on appeasing the emperor, suppressing political enemies, and consolidating his position. For his own selfish desires, he plunged the court into chaos, causing administrative disorder, restless scholar-officials, and bureaucratic inertia.

Although Emperor Liu Weizhen bore great responsibility for the turmoil at court, in the end, the one who delivered the final blow and drove Wang Shilin from power was Liu Weizhen himself. The Emperor's authority within the imperial system was far from worn away; it always existed — it only depended on whether the one sitting on the throne was willing to exercise it.

Wang Shilin had sat on the edge of a volcano for over three years, and from every direction, firmly suppressed the surging forces beneath his seat. However, in the long confrontation, he inevitably made missteps, even lapses of judgment.

And his greatest error lay in the fact that, over his long tenure in power, he gradually lost sight of where his power and position actually came from.

In the first month of the twenty-fourth year of Zhengtong (1065), in the biting cold of early spring, the 48-year-old Emperor Liu Weizhen, while favoring a palace maid, became so overly excited that he fainted. When the news spread, the court and the country were shaken, and undercurrents surged.