As the last feudal dynasty ruled by han Chinese in history, the Ming Dynasty produced a total of 16 emperors with very different personalities. They come alive in the picture of history and leave a vivid mark. In addition to the ideal figures who are close to heroes like Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the People's Republic of China, and Zhu Di, who moved the capital to Beijing to create the Yongle prosperous era, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty shows us more interesting and diversified aspects.
For example, a generation of Ming jun who loves to play with clams, an emperor who has not been in the dynasty for decades, and Zhu Jianshen, a noble concubine who spoils her teenage years older. When it comes to the name Zhu Jianshen, I think many people are relatively unfamiliar, but when you hear the era name of "Chenghua", I think many people are familiar with it. In history, most of the evaluations of the Chenghua Emperor Zhu Jianshen said that he reused eunuchs, favored noble concubines, coveted pleasures, and fainted and incompetent. But for various reasons, he is definitely an emperor who has been discredited in history.
Born in a rich and noble imperial family, but his childhood was miserable
Speaking of Zhu Jianshen, we have to trace some things that happened before he inherited the throne. Many people should have some understanding of this through film and television dramas, and the "Biography of female doctor Mingfei" that was once a fire tells the story that happened before the Chenghua year, surrounding Zhu Qizhen, Zhu Qizhen, his father, and his uncle Zhu Qiyu.
In fact, the real Zhu Qizhen in history was an emperor who was faint and incompetent in his early years, and he favored the eunuch Wang Zhen, who was full of enthusiasm and ambition when he attacked on the Mongolian border.
However, he imagined everything too idealistically, delusionally imagining that he could create a thousand-year-old hegemony by fighting bravely on the battlefield to create a thousand autumn hegemony and realize his long-cherished wish to leave a name in history. However, the reality is very bone-chilling, although he did not suffer the abuse of the Mongols like Emperor Huizong of Song, but he also fell into a captive fate.
In fact, neither he nor the eunuchs he appointed had any combat experience in the battlefield, so it was inevitable that he would fail on the battlefield. This battle not only did not make Zhu Qizhen Qingshi famous, but on the contrary became a failure for him to smear the entire Ming Dynasty, which greatly reduced the comprehensive national strength of the Ming Dynasty. Fortunately, at this time, Zhu Qizhen's younger brother Zhu Qiyu stepped forward and appointed Yu Qian as a heavy minister, which turned the situation around.
However, the later Zhu Qiyu was proud of his merits, believing that his merits for the Ming Dynasty should have allowed him to go further and bear the actual power, so he took advantage of the fire and robbery and seized the door to claim the title of emperor. Not only that, he also deposed the original crown prince Zhu Jianshen and made his son the crown prince. And all this, the most unfortunate victim is of course Zhu Jianshen.
Although Zhu Jianshen was not killed by his uncle, his every move was under the strict supervision of his uncle, and if he was not careful, he would incur the disaster of killing himself, and it was precisely because he was in such an adversity that he honed his sense of distress and his fighting spirit.
On the other hand, Zhu Qiyu, under the pressure of public opinion in the imperial court, not only could not kill his nephew like Zhu Di, but also took the captured brother Zhu Qizhen back to the Ming Dynasty from the hands of the Mongol tribes and was enshrined as "Emperor Taishang." "But Zhu Qizhen has been secretly plotting a grand plan to seize power."
Finally, when Zhu Qiyu was critically ill, Zhu Qizhen took Jiangshan back from his brother's hands, and in history completely denied that his brother had usurped the throne and sought power, and also killed Yu Qian, who had made merit to Daming and left "no fear of shattering his bones and bones for future generations, and wants to leave his innocence in the world". He also re-established his son Zhu Mishen as the crown prince. After his death, Zhu Jianshen succeeded to the throne as Emperor Chenghua.
The main achievements of the Chenghua Emperor during his reign
The first thing Zhu Jianshen did after he ascended to the throne was to wash and rehabilitate Yu Qian, restore yu Qian's sons and a series of implicated people to their official positions, kill the eunuchs who were moths in the imperial court, and transform the leadership of the imperial court into a clear stream.
He then acknowledged his uncle Zhu Qiyu's merits to the Ming Dynasty in history, restored his title of Jingtai Emperor, built his mausoleum, and offered incense to him in the ancestral hall. This has to be admired and praised for his bosom, saying that he is a monarch who is generous and wise with virtue, and at the same time, he can make the two factions of his father and uncle during their reigns use for himself.
These two factions were Wang Zhi and Wang Yue. Speaking of Wang Zhi, everyone may think that he is a traitorous eunuch of the West Factory who came to power by relying on Wan Guifei, who was fierce and fierce, and who did a lot of immoral things. But in fact, just from the fact that he beat the Mongol leader so that the Mongol army collapsed, it is enough to show that his military merit as a eunuch was second only to Zheng He's military contribution to the West.
Then there is Wang Yue, who was appointed by Zhu Jianshen, who was the only civilian official who had made military contributions. He and Wang Zhi cooperated with each other, defeating the Mongols at the Battle of Red Salt Pond, the Battle of Black Rock Cliff, and the Great Victory of Yansui, so that the Tatars would not dare to graze on the Hetao Plain during the Chenghua years.
Although Zhu Jian was well aware of people's good deeds and sat on a large number of excellent people to fight for him, in fact, when he first succeeded to the throne, the Ming Dynasty was worried about internal and external troubles, and the situation he faced was also very grim.
Not to mention the blow to the comprehensive national strength of the Ming Dynasty caused by the defeat of his father during his reign and the bad impact of his uncle's coup d'état on the internal system of the Ming Dynasty, the most important thing is that the frequent occurrence of natural disasters has caused millions of displaced people, especially in Jingzhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Other places. Instead of suppressing it by force, he set up three places for relief, and in less than a decade the displaced people lived and worked in peace.
Zhu Jianshen carried out drastic reforms within the imperial court, properly resettled displaced people in the governance of the country, and solved internal worries. Then in the face of border intrusion, he adopted a series of thunderous measures to solve external problems. Among them, the most famous event in history is the "Chenghua Plough court".
Chenghua Ploughing made the Jurchens nearly extinct, so they were smeared by the Manchu Qing
This matter is related to the Jurchens, who have always been restless in history. During the reign of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, he quelled the rebellion of the Jurchen clan and established the unified jurisdiction of Jianzhou Wei. Later, in order to contain the Jurchens, the chiefs were divided and the rights were divided into three parts. Until Zhu Jianshen's father Zhu Qizhen was defeated and captured, the comprehensive national strength of the Ming Dynasty declined, and Jianzhou began to look at the tiger, taking advantage of the fire and robbery to unite without stopping the riots, and finally after the Ming Xianzong Zhu Jianshen took the throne, he could not stop launching a large-scale rebellion and plundering the people of the Ming Dynasty.
At this time, there was a polarization between the conservatives and the main war faction in the imperial court, and Emperor Mingxianzong Zhu Mishen imprisoned the conservatives who advocated reconciliation and ordered the Koreans to jointly send troops, which was enough to see that he was determined to advocate war and had a tough attitude. Knowing that the Jurchen barbarians had always been good at cavalry combat, Zhu Mishen, with his foresight, sent a group of well-trained elite cavalrymen to carry out a large-scale encirclement and suppression of the Jurchen clan in Jianzhou, killing hundreds of Jurchens in less than a month.
Zhu Mishen's order, "Destroy the nest, absolutely its kind" is evident in such a fierce fighting spirit and determination to fight. He avenged his father, and the shame of the snow brought the Jurchens to the brink of extinction.
Eventually, the leader of the Jurchen clan who launched the rebellion was beheaded, and another leader, Aisin Kyaw Luo Dong Shan, Nurhaci's biological father, escaped after being captured and was also killed. Therefore, under the iron hooves of the Ming Dynasty army, the Jurchens were like a piece of farmland, crushed by a water wheel, and plowed, so that they could not be completely unified for nearly a hundred years. Therefore, this battle that brought ruin to the Jurchen clan was called "Chenghua Ploughing Court" by later histories.
This battle is definitely a big deal in the eyes of the entire Ming Dynasty. And such a masterpiece is entirely from the hands of Zhu Jianshen, the final decision-maker of the Ming Dynasty in the Chenghua years. He was young and promising, and in one fell swoop, he defeated the Jurchen Clan, and in this regard, he was indeed even more ruthless than his Ming Chengzu Zhu Di.
His thunderous policy toward the Jurchens and his iron fist in combat have made the Jurchens feel frightened. And it is precisely because his blow to the Jurchen clan can be called a "war to destroy the ancestors", so that the Jurchen clan has been unable to fight back for more than a hundred years after that, so the life expectancy of the Ming Dynasty has continued for more than a hundred years.
But because of this, the Jurchens hated him deeply, so many years later, the history books written by the Qing Dynasty for the Ming Dynasty seized the pain points of Ming Xianzong's fainting in his later years, coveting pleasures, and favoring Wan Guifei to indulge her misdeeds, comparing him with Tang Xuanzong and smearing him as a monarch who achieved nothing.
epilogue
Historical records of the Chenghua year of the Ming Dynasty are mixed, and the evaluation of the Chenghua Emperor is also mixed. The Manchu Qing people smeared him for being incompetent and did not talk about martial virtues because of the disaster of extermination, and the history of the Ming Dynasty was because he reused Wang Zhi and was unwilling to recognize the contribution of eunuchs to the government, and he was credited with continuing his life for the Ming Dynasty.
Hundreds of years later, the evaluation of him by later generations was more comprehensive and objective, and in his early years he was a monarch who knew people well and was kind and generous, and he was an iron-blooded man who attacked the enemy's aggression externally. In his later years, although he favored Wan Guifei alone and coveted pleasures in his later years, he left his son Zhu Youfan with no internal and external troubles to succeed to the throne environment, laying a good foundation for "Hongzhi Zhongxing".
The picture comes from the network, if there is infringement, contact to delete!