Orthodox fourteenth year, 1449 A.D.
Outside the gate, the vast desert is extremely windy, sand and bitter cold land.
Outside a very dilapidated yurt, a young man dressed in a bearded suit with unkempt hair had been kneeling on the ground for a long time.
He was wearing a nomadic dress, but his face was vaguely recognizable, and he was a native of the Central Plains.
He knelt motionless, holding a bronze dagger in both hands.
The desert was extremely windy and sandy, and a gust of wind blew and landed on the blade of the dagger, and there was a faint "buzzing" sound.
The north wind swept the white grass and folded, and the snow flew in August.
The vast snow is quietly coming.
In the wind and snow, the young man turned his wrist inward and whispered to himself
Since ancient times, the emperor was defeated and died, it is a common thing, I am so confused, and I have been living secretly for so long, so that the country is ridiculed, it is really a great shame, today I am isolated here, and I am worthy of the ancestors of the Ming Dynasty.
With that, the young man was about to stab his lower abdomen with a dagger in hand, but a distant cry interrupted his movements.
In the distance, there were several ** dressed in the Ming Dynasty, pacing and hurrying over, while shouting loudly:
The Emperor! The Emperor! We're going back to Beijing! I'm back in Beijing!
The young man turned his head to see that the sky and the earth were white and snowy, vast and miserable.
Inscription. 
Portrait of Zhu Zhanji of Ming Xuanzong).
In the tenth year of Xuande, in 1435 AD, Zhu Zhanji, a generation of British lord Ming Xuanzong, completed his life journey and left at the age of thirty-eight.
The emperor ascended the throne at the age of twenty-eight and died at the age of thirty-eight, and his reign was not long or short, a full ten years.
Before Zhu Zhanji became the emperor, he once ridiculed himself, if the sky is false for me to be the king for ten years, I will work hard to make the country prosperous, so that future generations will know that Renxuan and the two generations will be prosperous in the Ming Dynasty.
As a result, Zhu Zhanji became a prophecy, and God was impartial, and he gave him exactly ten years.
Ten years have created the "rule of Renxuan" in the Ming Dynasty, and the next ten years will be handed over to Zhu Zhanji's son, the little emperor Zhu Qizhen.
When Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen ascended the throne, he was only eight years old.
In the "Confession Law", "Ying" represents the wisdom and martial arts, wisdom and wisdom, and is the emperor's nickname, which is often given to those emperors who excelled at a young age and had a great deed.
But Zhu Qizhen's "Ying" seems to be used to satirize him.
In the fourteenth year of orthodoxy, that is, in 1449 AD, the young emperor personally led an army of 200,000 to fight against Warat, but he was defeated at Tumubao (Huailai, Hebei), and not only was the whole army destroyed, but the emperor himself was captured by the Warats.
Warat, that is, the branch after the Northern Yuan Dynasty.
This elite Mongolian army has great ambitions, and has always had the desire to restore the prosperity of the Yuan Empire.
And the young Zhu Qizhen, who is not very old and ambitious, also has the ideal of wanting to establish military achievements in the north.
His grandfather and father are all generals on the battlefield, why don't you want to drink outside the horse pass and seal the wolf Juxu?
The young Zhu Qizhen regarded himself as Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Five Expeditions to Mobei, but at this time, the Wara Taishi was not the Mahamu who was chased and beaten by Zhu Di back then.
Also first portraits).
Rationalism, underestimation, arrogance, and naivety, Zhu Qizhen's defeat is, from a certain point of view, inevitable.
But the strange thing is that although Zhu Qizhen was a prisoner of the Warat people, he was in the enemy camp, and his welfare was surprisingly good.
As a prisoner, Zhu Qizhen had his own single room, the room was clean and chic, three meals a day were sufficient, and the Mongolian soldiers who were in charge of guarding him also respected him very much.
The soldiers respected Zhu Qizhen very much, and the senior leaders of Warat, such as Boyan Timur and others, even became Zhu Qizhen's friends in the end.
This emperor, who is almost useless in the orthodox historiographical point of view, has become a hostile camp, but has become a mixed bag.
And the reason for all this is none other than Zhu Qizhen's character - he is a very gentle person.
On the body of this emperor, there is no majestic demeanor, no domineering posture, and no commanding behavior.
Zhu Qizhen is a very equal person, and in his heart, there has never been a boundary between respect and inferiority.
At that time, Zhu Qizhen, the eunuch who held the power in the court, regarded him as his best friend, but now in the desert, the emperor regards this group of Mongolians as his friends.
But as an emperor, his mission is naturally different from others.
He thought about stealing his life, and he lived in this desert, and he also thought about killing himself and giving an explanation to the Ming court.
But in the end, he returned to the Forbidden City.
Going round and round, everything is back to square one.
Returning to the Forbidden City is really a matter of people.
Portrait of Zhu Qiyu of the Ming Dynasty).
His younger brother, Zhu Qiyu, became the new emperor, and he became a nondescript emperor.
Not only that, Zhu Qiyu also locked himself up - the suspicious new emperor locked Zhu Qizhen in the most remote South Palace in the Forbidden City, and sent people to strictly guard him, not allowing him to go out for a single step.
This emperor, who was once a prisoner of war, became a prisoner of politics again in an instant.
In the small Nangong, Zhu Qizhen stayed for seven years.
In the eyes of others, this seems to be a painful memory, but for Zhu Qizhen himself, the past seven years have not been bad.
Yes, Zhu Qizhen once again exerted his personality charm, that is, no matter who he gets along with, he can turn the other party into his friend.
The palace maids and eunuchs who are responsible for guarding themselves are very polite to themselves, and some ** people in the court have old feelings for themselves and have been trying to find ways to rescue themselves.
In the end, with the efforts of Xu Youzhen, the Marquis of Wuqing, and the eunuch Cao Jixiang, they opened the door of the South Palace in the middle of a quiet night and re-established Zhu Qizhen as the emperor.
Zhu Qizhen was restored.
After countless bloody storms and power struggles, this high-spirited young man is no longer young, and he finally lives a relatively peaceful life.
In contrast, Zhu Qizhen's life experience is really much richer than that of his grandfather Zhu Gaochi and father Zhu Zhanji.
The Ming Dynasty under the rule of the two emperors Renxuan was a Ming Dynasty with smooth weather and a rich country and a strong people, so this history is not interesting in nature.
Portrait of Akihito Sect Zhu Gaochi).
If history is not interesting, then the people's small life can be interesting.
Unfortunately, when history came into the hands of Zhu Qizhen, it began to become magnificent and wonderful.
He was once a heroic emperor of the empire, leading the six divisions to the expedition, wanting to establish a great cause.
He had fallen into the hands of the Warats, lost everything he had, and fell into the long river of history.
He was even defeated in the political struggle and fell victim to politics.
He also turned his hands into clouds and turned his hands into rain, subverting his doomed ending.
From the young son of heaven, to the prisoner of war, to the political prisoner, and then to the emperor, the process is really amazing.
Since ancient times, emperors have been captured, and the fate has basically been very miserable.
Portrait of Zhao Ji of Song Huizong).
Recently, the second emperor of Qinhui was captured by the Jin Dynasty, suffered humiliation, and died in a foreign land.
Far away, Emperor Sima Chi of Jin Huai was captured alive by the Han and Zhao regimes, and he liked to mention a glass of poisonous wine.
But Zhu Qizhen has become an exception.
In the enemy camp, he not only gained the respect of the enemy, but also allowed the soldiers to spare his life.
During his house arrest career in Nangong, Zhu Qizhen made a lot of confidants and friends who were willing to work for him.
Zhu Qizhen has no great talent, he can't engage in any conspiracy, and he doesn't have the strength to engage in coercion and temptation, and the emperor's life depends on the four words of personality charm.
Not humble or arrogant, not discouraged, although always in danger, but still self-esteem and self-love, demeanor is still the same.
But when the author says this, he is not speaking for Zhu Qizhen, or to "whitewash" him.
In fact, the life of the emperor, although legendary, was not glorious.
Wang Zhen image).
He favored the traitorous villain Wang Zhen, which led to the fiasco of the Ming army in the Tumubao Incident, which greatly dealt a blow to the Ming Dynasty's national defense force.
After he returned to the throne, he unjustly killed a generation of famous ministers, the national hero Yu Qian Yu Shaobao.
Mingyue, a writer of Ming history, once said:
Zhu Qizhen is not a good emperor, but he is a good person.
But in the author's opinion, Zhu Qizhen is not only not a good emperor, but also not a good person.
The emperor's deposition of the funeral system that had existed in Chinese history for thousands of years before his death was indeed a bright spot for him, but it did not cover up his previous mistakes.
On the cruel battlefield, there are mountains of white bones, how many lives have been lost because of Zhu Qizhen?
How many lives is that? Behind these lives, how many families have lost their husbands and sons?
Therefore, the author prefers to think that Zhu Qizhen is not a good person, but he is indeed more like a "person".
After many years of exile and the days under the fence, the emperor understood the difficulties of the weak and the hardships at the bottom.
If the success of the emperor is still withered, how many people will be buried with the emperor?
In the last years of the emperor, he chose to depose the funeral system by violating the ancestral system to atone for the wrongs he had committed.
In fact, the author once tried to forgive Zhu Qizhen, to understand Zhu Qizhen, and even to interpret him as a master who has done a lot of bad things and wrong things, but is quite good in the later period of his reign.
But Yu Qian's death has become the author's eternal pain in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
Portrait of Yu Qian).
It's not that I can't forgive Zhu Qizhen, I'm just too distressed by Yu Qian.
The sword light of the battlefield, the wind and sand of the desert, and the battle of the court, consumed the energy of Emperor Yingzong Zhu Qizhen's life, when the emperor drove the guest, there were still hundreds of officials crying, and the people mourned, but the Yu Qian Yu Shaobao, who died under the city of Beijing defended by his own hands, in the first year of Tianshun in the distant future, in 1457 AD, how fierce was his ambition?
This Ming Dynasty was once the emperor's Ming Dynasty.
This Ming Dynasty was also the Ming Dynasty of the courtiers.
But in fact, the Ming Dynasty does not belong to anyone, because the country is the master, the people are the guests, the emperor and the general, the talented and the beautiful, will eventually be annihilated into powder, but, only the heroic soul is eternal.