In 1644, China was in turmoil, and behind the frequent regime changes was the fall of the Ming Dynasty. The root of all this can be traced back to the self-hanging of Emperor Zhu Youzhen at the end of the Ming Dynasty.
In this year, Li Zicheng, the leader of the peasant rebel army, captured the capital, and Zhu Youzhen chose to commit suicide in despair at the age of 34. However, during his lifetime, the Ming Dynasty was already suffering from internal and external troubles, so he did not have time to build a mausoleum.
But after his death, he was still buried in the Ming Ming Tombs of the Ming Dynasty, which was named the Ming Si Mausoleum. So, who buried him here, and who named his mausoleum?
Li Zicheng deeply respected Zhu Youzhen's sacrificial spirit, so he personally buried Zhu Youzhen's body. At that time, the Ming Dynasty was already on the verge of collapse, and the Ming Dynasty finances could not build a mausoleum for Zhu Youzhen's elder brother Zhu Youxiao, so the construction of the mausoleum could only be completed at half the cost.
Zhu Youzhen asked the princes and ministers for help, and finally relied on their donations to complete the construction of Zhu Youxiao's Deling. Soon after, the Ming Dynasty fell into internal and external troubles, and fought a two-front war against the Manchu regime established by the peasant rebels Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, and the Jurchens, and the financial situation has been stretched, so Zhu Youzhen did not have the time, opportunity and funds to build a mausoleum for himself.
On March 17, 1644, Li Zicheng's rebel army besieged the capital, and the next morning, they launched a general attack, and the Ming army was routed and the capital fell. In the early morning of that day, Zhu Youzhen summoned his ministers to the court, but no one was able to reach the Forbidden City.
At this point, he knew that the tide was over, and he began to despair. He entrusted the crown prince Zhu Cixiong to Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chunguo, and entrusted his third son Zhu Cijiong and fourth son Zhu Cijiong to his father-in-law, Jiading Bo Zhou Kui.
After settling down his three sons, Zhu Youzhen let them hang themselves in order to protect his wife Empress Zhou and his sister-in-law Empress Yi'an Zhang from humiliation. After their deaths, Zhu Youzhen personally ** 15-year-old Princess Changping and 6-year-old Princess Zhaoren, and finally Princess Zhaoren was killed, although Princess Changping broke an arm, but fortunately survived.
Zhu Youzhen planned to break through again, but his henchman eunuch Wang Chengen could only reluctantly gather more than a dozen eunuchs from Dongchang to escort him to break through. However, three breakthroughs were unsuccessful, and Zhu Youzhen had no choice but to return to the Forbidden City.
In the early morning of March 19, Zhu Youzhen once again summoned hundreds of civil and military officials to the court, but no one was present. Zhu Youzhen was completely desperate, he and Wang Chengen and a few little eunuchs came to Jingshan in the back garden, where he took one last look at the Forbidden City, and then said in despair: "The ministers are mistaken, the king is dead, and the world in the two hundred and seventy-seventh years of the Ming Dynasty, once it is abandoned, it will be mistaken by the traitors, so that it is so." ”
He dismissed these little eunuchs and, with the help of Wang Chengen, hanged himself from a tree in Jingshan. Before he died, he wrote an edict, which read: "Since I ascended the throne for seventeen years, although my behavior is not respectful enough, which has caused **, it is all the ministers who have mistakenly caused the traitors to approach the Jingshi.
When I died, I would take off my crown and cover my face with my hair when I saw my ancestors in the ground. Let the thieves divide my body, but don't hurt a single one of the people. ”
Zhu Youzhen and his personal guard Wang Chengen were like father and son, and after Zhu Youzhen hanged himself, Wang Chengen followed. Li Zicheng invaded the Forbidden City, thinking that Zhu Youzhen had fled, so he ordered a reward to find it.
In the end, the bodies of Zhu Youzhen and Wang Chengen were found on Jingshan, and Li Zicheng deeply felt Zhu Youzhen's loyalty and courage, so he decided to bury him with the gift of the Son of Heaven. Although Zhu Youzhen did not build a mausoleum before his death, he had already chosen Changrui Mountain, an auspicious place for ten thousand years, as his resting place, but it could not be realized due to the emptiness of the treasury.
Now with Li Zicheng's reasonable arrangement, Zhu Youzhen can finally rest in peace in the place he chose.
Li Zicheng's admiration for Zhu Youzhen was overflowing, and he wanted to bury the former Ming emperor according to the rites of the Son of Heaven, but this required a huge expense, and his financial situation was not rich at the time.
In order to realize this wish, Li Zicheng handed over this task to the ** surrendered by the former Ming. After taking over the task, these ** found that there were not enough funds to complete the construction of the mausoleum.
After some deliberation, they decided to bury Zhu Youzhen in the tomb of Tian Guifei. Tian Guifei was Zhu Youzhen's favorite concubine before her death, she had died two years before the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and Zhu Youzhen hoped that after his death, she could accompany him to sleep underground.
When the tomb of Tian Guifei was first built, the progress of the project was slow due to a shortage of funds. Now, they decided to bury Zhu Youzhen in Tian Guifei's tomb, because Tian Guifei's tomb site was chosen by Zhu Youzhen before his death, and he liked Tian Guifei very much.
In this way, they can save a lot of money and at the same time satisfy Li Zicheng's wishes. The core idea of the new copywriting is still that Li Zicheng wants to bury Zhu Youzhen according to the rites of the Son of Heaven, but due to financial constraints, he handed over this task to the ** surrendered by the former Ming.
When these ** faced the problem of lack of funds, they decided to bury Zhu Youzhen in the tomb of Tian Guifei, which could not only satisfy Li Zicheng's wishes, but also save a lot of money.
Although the location of Tian Guifei's tomb had been determined, Li Zicheng was reluctant to bear the huge amount of money needed to buy the coffin and hold the funeral. For this reason, the former Ming surrender ** had to publicly post in the capital, ask the people for help, and call on everyone to donate money to hold a funeral for Zhu Youzhen and his wife.
The people in the capital were moved by the words in Zhu Youzhen's edict, "Let the thief ** destroy the corpse, don't hurt the people", and donated one after another. In the end, 233 taels of silver were raised, a good coffin was bought for Zhu Youzhen and Queen Zhou, and a thin coffin was prepared for Wang Chengen.
Although the scale of the funeral was extremely small, only 233 taels of silver was spent, at least it provided a burial place for Zhu Youzhen.
Shunzhi admired Zhu Youzhen's spirit of suicide and martyrdom, so he built an imperial mausoleum for him and named it Siling. Li Zicheng was defeated by Wu Sangui and the Qing army in a stone battle outside Shanhaiguan, and he was forced to abandon and flee after only 42 days of occupation of the capital.
This led the Qing regent Dolgon to lead the Shunzhi Emperor to move the capital from Shenyang to the capital, beginning the process of unification of the Qing Dynasty. In order to buy people's hearts, after the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Dolgon announced the protection of the Ming Dynasty imperial tomb and rebuilt the imperial tomb for Zhu You.
However, Dolgon only verbally announced that the progress of building the imperial tomb for Zhu You was very slow. Cao Huachun, a eunuch of the former Ming Dynasty, couldn't stand it anymore, and wrote many times to request that the construction of the emperor's mausoleum be implemented as soon as possible.
This caused the Ministry of Households, which was responsible for allocating funds and the Ministry of Works, which carried out the construction, to start budgeting for the project, and the results showed that it would cost a lot of money to build a new mausoleum for Zhu Youzhen. At that time, the Qing Dynasty was unifying China, and the cost of all aspects was very large, and Dolgon did not agree to build a mausoleum for Zhu You's overhaul.
The household department and the Ministry of Industry of the Qing Dynasty saw that Dolgon disagreed, but they knew that Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum had to be built, so they suggested that Dolgon carry out a small-scale expansion on the basis of the tomb of Tian Guifei to make it have the specifications of the imperial mausoleum, which could save a lot of money.
Although the Qing treasury was not abundant, Dolgon was still unwilling to fully afford the construction of Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum. He suggested that the household department take out half of the treasury and give the remaining half to the surrender of the former Ming as a task.
As a result, Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum was completed through fundraising and appropriations from the Qing Dynasty. Among them, Wu Sangui donated the most, 5,000 taels**, to reshape his image.
Although Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum was completed in imperial specifications, due to limited funds, it was more shabby compared to other imperial tombs of the Ming Dynasty. After Dolgon's death, Shunzhi was able to govern in person, and was impressed by Zhu Youzhen's spirit of self-hanging.
In order to buy people's hearts, in the sixteenth year of Shunzhi (1659), he ordered to renovate Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum, and personally wrote sacrifices and inscriptions for it, naming the mausoleum Siling.
Emperor Shunzhi admired Zhu Youzhen's spirit of self-hanging, and for the purpose of admiring him and buying people's hearts, he personally led the Qing Dynasty's civil and military officials to cry and sacrifice, and repaired and renovated his mausoleum, naming it Ming Si Mausoleum.
However, Zhu Youzhen's mausoleum suffered damage after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, first the ground buildings were destroyed by the war during the warlord melee, and then during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, it was stolen and destroyed by bandits and the army, and it was unrecognizable during the ** period.
Zhu Youzhen's heroic soul was respected by two important figures: Li Zicheng was in charge of his burial, and Emperor Shunzhi was in charge of the expansion and renovation and named Siling. It was his spirit of self-hanging, martyrdom that moved them.
However, even this heroic martyr did not escape the fate of the stolen tomb, and his tomb was ruthlessly excavated. It's a pity.