The Ming Dynasty is a very special existence in Chinese history, in the order of dynasties, he was sandwiched between the two minority regimes of the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and at the beginning of the founding of the country, the Mongolian iron cavalry that had swept across the Eurasian continent could not find the north, quite a beautiful scenery;At the end of the dynasty, the Jurchens, who only had a population of a few hundred thousand, took away the country, which was quite a nest.
There were a total of sixteen emperors in the Ming Dynasty, each with its own characteristics, but one thing was the same, that is, one word - horizontal. Before the Ming Dynasty, the Han regime mostly adopted a policy of harmony with the surrounding ethnic minorities, for example, Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty once married Wang Zhaojun to Huhan Evil Shan Yu, and Tang Taizong married Princess Wencheng to a cadre named Songtsen. When the Song Dynasty was not in harmony, he changed to pay tribute, first to the Liao State, and then to the Jin State, and even the remote and small country of Xixia had to pay tribute, which really lost the face of the Han people. It's different in the Ming Dynasty, one doesn't get along with relatives and the other doesn't pay tribute, as long as you dare to come and flirt, the big-eared thunder will immediately flash over, which is called life and death and don't accept it. In the more than 200 years of history of the Ming Dynasty, it fought with Mongolia for a long time, and also conquered Burma, beat Annam (now Vietnam), fought the Japanese on the southeast coast, and assisted Korea to beat little Japan all over the ground.
In addition to "horizontal", most of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty were unreliable, pinching the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang and the deceased monarch Zhu Youzhen, there are still four reliable ones left, and the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunwen I want to talk about today is one of them.
Zhu Yunwen was born in the tenth year of Hongwu (1377), when Zhu Yuanzhang had pacified most of China, and Zhu Yunwen was fortunate not to have to experience the life of exile during the war years. He grew up in the palace and received formal Confucian education from an early age, learning from contemporary Confucians such as Fang Xiaoru and Huang Zicheng, and was nurtured into an authentic literati. To say that the literati are praising him, from another perspective, it is appropriate to say that he is a nerd.
According to the normal handover of the feudal dynasty, Zhu Yunwen could not be the emperor, and he was able to ascend the throne thanks to his grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang's paranoia about the primogeniture inheritance system. Zhu Yuanzhang had a total of 26 sons, of which Queen Ma gave birth to five sons and two daughters for him (not necessarily credible, but Zhu Biao was undoubtedly born to Queen Ma). Zhu Biao is the eldest son, who is deeply loved by Zhu Yuanzhang, and was canonized as the crown prince in the first year of Hongwu. Zhu Biao is generous by nature, and has advised Taizu several times to stop killing heroes, Zhu Yuanzhang repaired him with a thorn stick in anger, and since then his health has been poor, Hongwu twenty-five years, Zhu Biao died of illness at the age of 38. According to common sense, the crown prince is dead, and he should choose another capable son to be the prince, but Zhu Yuanzhang hesitated again and again, and decided to choose a grandson from the son of the crown prince to inherit the throne in the future.
Zhu Biao has five sons, and the eldest son Zhu Xiongying hung up 10 years ago, so the second son Zhu Yunwen became the eldest grandson of the emperor. Zhu Yuanzhang believed that the emperor's eldest grandson, Zhu Yunwen, was "benevolent and filial piety", and five months after Zhu Biao's death, he was officially canonized as the emperor's grandson and became the legitimate heir to the throne.
Before Zhu Yunwen, there were four precedents in Chinese history for passing the throne to his grandson, namely: Xiao Zhen, Emperor Wu of Qi in the Southern Dynasty, passed the throne to his grandson Xiao Zhaoye;Liaodaozong Yelu Hongji passed the throne to his grandson Yelu Yanxi;Jin Shizong passed on the throne to his grandson Wanyan Jing;Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan dynasty, passed on the throne to his grandson Timur. Of these four cases, only Timur was passable, and the remaining three cases caused domestic turmoil, which can be said to be very unsuccessful. So, is it right for Zhu Yuanzhang to pass the throne to his grandson?
In the thirty-first year of Hongwu (1398), Zhu Yuanzhang died of illness and was succeeded by Zhu Yunwen, the emperor's grandson, at the age of 21. The following year, the name of the year was changed to the first year of Jianwen. After Zhu Yunwen sat on the throne, the first assassination problem he faced was "cutting the domain".
In order to defend the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang formulated a strategy of dividing the Zhu clan into four towns, and successively sealed 25 people (24 sons and one grandson) as the vassal kings in the third year, eleventh year, and twenty-fourth year of Hongwu, and divided the towns all over the country. Zhu Yuanzhang was smart and wise, and he could be said to have exhausted all the organs for the longevity of the Ming Dynasty, but in the end, he repeated the mistakes of Sima's family. Sima Yan, the martial emperor of the Western Jin Dynasty, learned the lesson of Cao Wei's suppression of the clan, and after the founding of the country, he sealed the kings of the Sima clan, which soon led to the rebellion of the eight kings, which exhausted the national strength in the Western Jin Dynasty and only existed for 60 years. The consequence of Zhu Yuanzhang's erroneous move was that the vassal king could not lose his own weight and threaten the security of his successor's ruling position at any time.
Although Zhu Yunwen has read too many sage books and is a bit of a nerd, his brain has not yet entered the water, and he knows that these uncles of his have heavy troops in their hands, and sooner or later they will threaten his emperor's throne. After ascending the throne, he relied on Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng and others, and immediately put the reduction of the feudal domain into practical action.
Cutting down the feudal domain has been a top priority in all dynasties, and if you don't do it well, there will be a big mess. At this time, the ministers trusted by Emperor Jianwen lacked strategic vision, and on the question of whether it was easy first and then difficult or difficult and then easy, they actually made a stupid trick that could not be more rancid: first pick up the soft pestle and pinch it. As a result, Zhu Lu, the king of Zhou, Zhu Bai, the king of Xiang, Zhu Yu, the king of Qi, Zhu Gui, and Zhu Yang, the king of Min, were abolished successively. Maybe Emperor Jianwen thought that this move was to knock the mountain and shock the tiger, but the actual effect was to startle the snake. At this time, Zhu Di, the strongest Yanwang is a fool, and he can see what the eldest nephew wants to do, so he simply doesn't do it, he can't pull down the gourd and spill the oil, but he is a hammer. In July of the first year of Jianwen (1399), Zhu Di, the king of Yan, rebelled in the name of "Qing Jun's side", thus starting a four-year war between uncle and nephew, known as the "Battle of Jingyan" in history.
As soon as the two sides went to war, the sequelae of Zhu Yuanzhang's killing of the founding heroes were revealed, Zhu Yunwen took the country as the backing, the logistics were substantial, and the army was not less than one million, but he could not find a general who could fight. Li Jinglong, who was temporarily appointed, could only talk on paper, and he could only play the role of the captain of the transportation brigade when he went into battle to face the enemy, and the 500,000-strong army was completely wiped out, leaving him alone as the commander of the bare pole and fled back to Nanjing.
On the other hand, Zhu Di was a general taught by Lan Yu and Feng with his hands, and when he was a vassal king, he underwent a baptism of war, and beat the Northern Yuan army so that he couldn't find the east and west, and only knew to flee to the north. At the beginning of the "Jing Disaster", Zhu Di pretended to be crazy and stupid to capture and kill Zhang Yu and Xie Gui, the Beiping Supervisory Army, and obtained the actual command of the Beiping Army. After that, Zhu Quan, the king of Ning, borrowed the most capable light cavalry on the earth at that time-Duoyan Sanwei, first defeated Lian Bingwen, and then defeated Li Jinglong, so as to attack Nanjing with all his might.
Blocking Zhu Di's footsteps was Tie Xuan, a civil official who was the political history of Shandong at the time. When Li Jinglong spread the girl and fled for his life, Tie Xuan went against the trend and gathered the remnants of the army to stick to Jinan. Zhu Di had no way to do anything about the small Jinan, and he couldn't capture it for several months, so he wanted to cut off the supply line of Jinan, and was besieged for a long time, and was raided by Sheng Yong, who was stationed in Texas with each other's horns, and the Yan army was defeated.
Zhu Di stopped outside Jinan for three months, his ambition was frustrated, and just when he wanted to put down the butcher's knife, a person stood up, this person was Yao Guangxiao, who was called the "black-clothed prime minister" by later generations. Yao Guangxiao was originally a monk, his Dharma name was Daoyan, he didn't love money and didn't lust, and his biggest hobby in his life was only one thing - rebellion. It was at his instigation that King Yan pulled the flag and raised his troops, and now Zhu Di is in trouble in Shandong, Yao Guangxiao is unhurried and says eleven to King Yan.
One word: "Don't go down to the city, drive the Beijing division, the Beijing division is weak, and it is bound to move." (Later generations also said that Yao Guangxiao said to Zhu Di "If Qingshan doesn't come to me, I'll bypass Qingshan", I think this language is very awkward, I checked it, and I couldn't find exact evidence, and the right was doubtful.) ）
Zhu Di was woken up by Yao Guangxiao's words, gave up Jinan, and went south through Xuzhou all the way to the city of Nanjing. At the critical moment, Li Jinglong struck again, secretly opened the Jinchuan Gate, and welcomed King Yan into Nanjing City. Later generations said that Li Jinglong may be an undercover agent sent by King Yan to Emperor Jianwen, but there is no conclusive evidence for this, but Li Jinglong is a often defeated general, and it is an indisputable fact that he has helped Emperor Jianwen several times. Li Jinglong's father Li Wenzhong is Zhu Yuanzhang's nephew and Zhu Di's cousin, according to this generation, Zhu Yunwen and Li Jinglong are also cousins, anyway, they are not outsiders, who is not a pit.
Zhu Di led his troops into the city of Nanjing, and won a military victory, and the "Battle of Jingyan" was a success. However, how to deal with his nephew Zhu Yunwen has become a problem. He waged a war under the banner of "Qing Jun's side", and if he rashly broke into the palace at this time and captured Zhu Yunwen alive, then Emperor Jianwen would become a hot potato, and he would not stay or stay if he was killed. Therefore, as soon as Zhu Di entered the city and saw the palace on fire, he ordered to surround it on all sides and not to burn the fire. Now there are two results in front of us: one is that Zhu Yunwen was captured alive, which will be very troublesome, and he has to let his nephew take the initiative to abdicate and ascend to the emperor's throne again;The second is that Zhu Yunwen committed suicide, which is the most ideal, and he can successfully ascend the throne and take over the Ming Dynasty. In fact, after the fire in the palace was extinguished, Zhu Di waited for the third result: his nephew Zhu Yunwen disappeared.
Regarding the ending of Zhu Yunwen, there are different opinions, and there is no consensus, and it has become the first mystery case in the history of the Ming Dynasty. There are two main theories: one is that after the city of Nanjing was broken, there was no monitoring in that year, let alone DNA comparison, it can only be guessed;The second is that after the fire in the palace, Zhu Yunwen disguised himself as a monk and escaped from the secret passage, Gu Yingtai said in "The End of the Ming History Chronicle" that he had a nose and eyes, which was like a real thing. After Zhu Di ascended the throne, he heard a lot of rumors, and he was also suspicious of his nephew's escape. Hu Dan received the secret decree and has been searching for 16 years, and even when his mother died, he did not ask for leave to "worry about Ding". In the twenty-first year of Yongle (1423), Hu Dan hurried back to Beijing, and it happened that Zhu Di's northern expedition garrison was in Xuanfu (now Zhangjiakou City), Hu Dan chased all the way to Xuanfu, and called the emperor up in the middle of the night, and the two kept talking about the fourth watch. From this series of abnormal actions, Hu Dan must have found the exact news of Emperor Jianwen, but after many years, Zhu Yunwen had no idea of regaining the throne, so Hu Dan conveyed his thoughts to his uncle. After that, Zhu Di fell to the ground with a stone in his heart, and no longer asked about the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen.
Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yuanwen reigned for a total of four years, (1399-1402), during these four years, in addition to fighting with his fourth uncle, Emperor Jianwen set out to reform and changed some of the malpractices of Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, known as the "Jianwen New Deal" in history. His main achievements are:
1. Improving the political status of civil officials and changing the six Shangshu from the second grade to the first grade, changing the situation of emphasizing military force and ignoring literature. At the same time, the imperial examination was held in a big way, and a number of outstanding talents were selected for the country.
2. Lenient sentences and prison sentences. The "Da Ming Law" was changed, which changed the situation of excessive punishment and extrajudicial punishment during the Taizu period. At the same time, the unjust imprisonment was redressed, so that some unjust, false and wrongly decided cases during the Hongwu period could be rehabilitated.
3. Reducing taxes. Zhu Yuanzhang hated the gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang for clinging to Zhang Shicheng back then, so he increased taxes as punishment. Zhu Yuanwen abolished customization and reduced the burden on farmers in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. In response to the encroachment of monasteries on people's land, he ordered that each monk should not occupy more than 5 acres of land, which not only allowed the peasants to increase their land, but also guaranteed the state's tax revenue.
If Zhu Yunwen did not make a big mistake on the issue of cutting the feudal domain, then he would probably become a good emperor in Chinese history. However, history cannot assume that no matter what, the era that belongs to Zhu Yunwen is like a meteor, fleeting, leaving only a sigh for future generations.
On June 17, 1402, Zhu Di ascended the throne in Nanjing, and the era name was Yongle. Since then, the Ming Dynasty has opened a new prosperous era.
If you like it, please like and follow, the next episode will tell about Zhu Di, the emperor of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty.