In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang died, and Zhu Yunwen succeeded to the throne as Emperor Jianwen. At the suggestion of Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng, Zhu Yunwen decided to immediately start cutting the feudal domain, and in the name of defending the border, he transferred the elite guards of Zhu Di, the king of Yan, who was stationed in Beiping, out of the border outside the fortress. This kicked off the prelude to the Battle of Jingjing.
The Battle of Jingyan took four years, and Zhu Di, a small vassal king, although he had military power in his hands, how could he compare with the Ming court, which had a perfect system? Is Zhu Di's ultimate success inevitable or accidental?
To understand this issue, we need to have a clear understanding of the dynamics of the situation between the two sides during the four years of the Battle of Jingjing.
1. The name of "Jingnan" was approved by Taizu.
During the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, in order to stabilize the Ming Dynasty, all his sons were named vassal kings, and in the early days of the Ming Dynasty, each vassal king also had military command in addition to food and ten thousand stones. According to the regulations, the feudal king could set up a prince to guard the commander within the palace, and the number of guards ranged from 3,000 to 1Ranging from 90,000, the nine Sai kings (Liao, Ning, Yan, Gu, Dai, Jin, Qin, Qing, and Su) were additionally responsible for defending against the invasion of the Mongol nobles, so they had much more guards than ordinary princes.
At that time, Zhu Di, the king of Yan, had 100,000 troops, and went out many times to fight against the remnants of Mengyuan, so he was very valued by Zhu Yuanzhang, and Zhu Yuanzhang also ordered him to "control the soldiers and horses along the border", and his status can be said to be the highest among the vassal kings.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was alive, in order to prevent the powerful ministers in the court from usurping power, he stipulated that the vassal king had the right to ask for traitorous ministers and Qing monarchs. "Emperor Ming Zuxun" records: There are no ministers in the court, and there are treacherous people inside, and they will raise troops to punish them, and they will clear the side of the monarch.
Later, Zhu Di used this as a reason, under the slogan of "Qing Jun's side, Yasukuni is difficult", and identified Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng as traitors who needed to send troops to punish them.
Two: Cut the five kings first and intensify the contradictions.
After Zhu Yunwen ascended the throne, Zhu Di relied on his identity as an imperial uncle, and his attitude towards Zhu Yunwen was not respectful.
Zhu Yunwen accepted Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng's suggestion and was determined to cut the domain. Qi Tai believes that the strongest Yan King should be cut down first, but Huang Zicheng thinks that Yan Wang has merit in fighting the border, and if he is suppressed without any reason, I am afraid that it will cause a huge **, in order to cut the feudal domain more smoothly, he should start with the feudal king who made a mistake, and finally Zhu Yunwen decided to adopt Huang Zicheng's suggestion.
In July of the 31st year of Hongwu, Zhu Youjiao, the second son of King Zhou, accused his father (Zhu Hu) of rebellion, and Emperor Jianwen sent Li Jinglong, the Duke of Cao, to escort the whole family of King Zhou back to Nanjing and demote them to concubines. In the following year, the imperial court successively demoted the three kings of Qi, Hunan and Dai to concubines for various reasons.
In less than a year, the imperial court successively disposed of five vassal kings, which completely intensified the contradictions between the feudal kings and the imperial court, and Zhu Di, the strongest Yan king, naturally became the head of the feudal kingdoms and began to compete with the imperial court.
Three: At the beginning of the Jingjing, it was unstoppable.
In July of the first year of Jianwen (1399), Zhu Di raised troops to "Yasukuni Disaster".
Zhang Yu and Xie Gui got Zhu Yunwen's secret edict, and on the fourth day of July of that year, they led troops to surround the Yan Wangfu, and the Yan King pretended to bind all the officials and subordinates, and invited the two to enter the palace to check, and after the two entered the mansion, they were captured and executed by Zhu Di's dead soldiers. On the same day, Zhu Di arranged for Zhang Yu and others to capture the Nine Gates of Beiping and control the entire Beiping City.
The sixth day of the seventh month. Tongzhou took the initiative to attach; On the eighth day of the first month, Jizhou was conquered, and then Zunhua and Miyun were attached; On the 11th, the Juyong Pass was broken; On the 16th, he broke through Huailai and captured Song Zhong; On the 18th, Yongping Mansion was attached. In just one month, Zhu Di swept away the imperial forces around Beiping, and the Yan army also expanded to tens of thousands.
In August, the imperial court was worried that the King of Liao and the King of Ning would assist Zhu Di, so they ordered them to enter Beijing, and the King of Liao should return to Beijing, but the King of Ning did not obey, and the acting king was ready to raise troops to echo Zhu Di, but was controlled by Chen Zhen and finally did not act.
In July of the first year of Jianwen, the news of Zhu Di's rebellion was transmitted back to Nanjing City, Zhu Yunwen sacrificed to the Taimiao, cut the Zhu Di clan's subordinate status, abolished the people, and set up the Pingyan Bu Political Division in Zhending, and enabled the Changxing Marquis Geng Bingwen as the general, led the army of 130,000 to the north, divided into multiple roads and marched into Yan.
What Zhu Yunwen didn't expect was that in less than a month, Geng Bingwen's team was defeated, and in the end he could only lead the remnants of the army to defend Zhending. Subsequently, Zhu Yunwen appointed Li Jinglong as a general to replace Geng Bingwen to fight against the Yan army. In September, Li Jinglong went to Dezhou, Shandong, collected Geng Bingwen's scattered generals, mobilized troops and horses from all walks of life, and finally led 500,000 soldiers and horses into the river to station.
Knowing that Li Jinglong was coming with an army of 500,000, Zhu Di sent someone to investigate Li Jinglong's deployment in the army, and then said with a smile that there were five defeats in the art of war, and Li Jinglong committed all of them. In order to lure Li Jinglong to lead his troops deeper, Zhu Di decided to leave Zhu Gaochi and Yao Guangxiao and others in Beiping to garrison, and he led a large army to rescue Yongping.
Li Jinglong really hit the plan, coupled with his great joy, improper command and many mistakes, and finally failed to capture Beiping. After Zhu Di rescued Yongping, he went to Daning, and successfully collected all the troops of Daning, and also took Zhu Quan, the king of Ning, and his wife and children to Beiping.
Four: The Battle of Dongchang, Jingnan turned around.
At the beginning of the Battle of Jingyan, Zhu Di's Yan army was invincible, and the imperial court was almost powerless, and the turning point was probably the battle of Dongchang that broke out in October of the first year of Jianwen, and the first victory of the southern army (the army of the imperial court) began.
In October of the first year of Jianwen, the southern army continued to move north, and this time the defender of the southern army was replaced by Sheng Yong, who was a well-known tough guy. After Zhu Di learned the news, he ordered an expedition to Liaodong, and after capturing Cangzhou, he went to Dezhou, Shandong, Zhu Di wanted to recruit Sheng Yong, but did not get a response, and then Zhu Di sent cavalry to the Daimyo and burned the grain ships of the southern army. Seeing this, Sheng Yong could only lead his troops south to Dongchang, and he decided to fight to the death with the Yan army in Dongchang.
On December 25, the Yan army reached Dongchang. The Yan army has always led Zhu Di to lead the troops to charge, and this time is no exception, and Sheng Yong has long been prepared, he deliberately opened the formation to lure Zhu Di deeper, Zhu Di really rushed in, and then the southern army surrounded Zhu Di, and Zhu Di could only fight to the death. Seeing that the situation was not good, Zhang Yu and Zhu Neng led troops to rescue them in two ways, and finally Zhu Neng rescued Zhu Di, while Zhang Yu on the other side did not know it, was besieged by the southern army, and finally died. The next day, the Yan army was defeated again and could only return north.
In fact, in the Battle of Dongchang, Zhu Di fell into danger many times, and the chance of survival was very small, but Zhu Yunwen always emphasized that "I should not have the name of killing my uncle", which led to the fact that when facing Zhu Di, his subordinates did not dare to be ruthless, could not kill him, and did not dare to hurt him ruthlessly, and it was almost impossible to capture him alive. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Di often breaks at the end of the team with one person and one horse. Emperor Jianwen was too merciful, which was the main reason for his failure.
The Battle of Dongchang was the first victory of the Southern Army, which also gave Zhu Yunwen a lot of confidence, and also made him firm in his idea of capturing Zhu Di alive. Since the Battle of Dongchang, many other wars broke out between Yan and Nan, but they were all the same, the southern army had Sheng Yong and Tie Xuan in charge, and Zhu Di also suffered a lot, but because of Zhu Yunwen's will, the southern army could not take advantage of Zhu Di at all.
Fifth, the "Jingnan" was successful, and the country changed hands.
On June 13 of the fourth year of Jianwen, the Yan army arrived in Jinling, and Zhu Xi and Li Jinglong, who were guarding the Jinchuan Gate, saw Zhu Di's team and immediately opened the city gate to surrender, which is known as the Jinchuan Gate Change.
Zhu Di's army invaded Jinling, and since then, the country has changed hands.
After King Yan entered the palace, he saw thick black smoke rising from the palace walls, and Zhu Yunwen was gone. Later, the entourage carried out a charred corpse from the burned palace, Zhu Di cried bitterly, and then announced that Zhu Yunwen had died. In June of the fourth year of Jianwen, Zhu Di ascended the throne, and in November, he named the princess Xu as the queen, and then changed the name of the first year of Jianwen to the fourth year of Hongwu from 32 to 35, and the following year was changed to the first year of Yongle.
At this point, the four-year stalemate of the Battle of Jingjing has finally come to an end.
In the Battle of Jingjing, was Zhu Di's victory inevitable or accidental? In the author's opinion, inevitable events.
The ancients admonished: Compassion does not lead soldiers, benevolence does not engage in politics. Just eight words, but it contains countless truths. Zhu Yunwen was merciful, when Zhu Di summoned the army to "appease", it was doomed that between their uncle and nephew, it must be a battle of life and death, but Zhu Yunwen always felt that he could have a more peaceful solution. If Zhu Yunwen had ordered at the beginning to take Zhu Di's first reward, the farce of Dongchang War I would probably have ended, and the people would have suffered less from the war for three years. He didn't want to let himself be charged with killing his uncle, but he didn't think that Zhu Di might never have thought about the family relationship between them.
In the face of absolute power, family affection is insignificant.