Hello everyone, I am a historian. Ming Chengzu Zhu Di seized the throne through JingNan, and he definitely had to wash himself white, in order to prove the legitimacy of his throne, he made a lot of efforts.
First of all, we must make a brief introduction to Zhu Di's family background. Zhu Di was the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, and he could not have taken his turn in the imperial throne. However, due to the early death of crown prince Zhu Biaoying, Zhu Yuanzhang passed the throne to his young grandson Zhu Yunjiao, who was the later Jianwen Emperor. Zhu Di saw that a hairy boy had become an emperor, he was his uncle, and he had made great achievements in battle, and had always guarded the border for the empire, so it was very likely that he would be hit by Zhu Yunjiao. The more he thought about it, the more unfair he felt, so he prepared to raise an army to make a big gamble, a big gamble to become a king and lose Kou, and after a period of preparation, he launched the Battle of Jingnan.
Because Zhu Di was the best general of that era, the soldiers under him also fought for a long time and had strong combat effectiveness. He had the right strategy and tactics, and he also bought the people around the emperor. After several years of bloody struggle, Zhu Di finally ascended to the throne as he wished. After that, Zhu Di began his own whitewashing journey.
First of all, Zhu Di pays attention to the shaping of the legitimacy of his identity. He said "Empress Dowager Yuangao's concubine also". The High Queen is the Horse Queen. Empress Ma was Zhu Yuanzhang's wife, and if Zhu Di was Empress Ma's son, then Zhu Di was a concubine.
In this way, his identity is incomparable to Zhu Yuanzhang's other sons. But the reality was that Empress Ma had never had children in her lifetime, and Zhu Di's birth mother was a concubine of low status. And if Zhu Di is a concubine, according to the principle of standing up for a long time, Zhu Di will definitely become a prince, where is there anything wrong with Zhu Biao! From this point of view, the label of this concubine is just Zhu Di putting gold on his face.
Second, Zhu Di focused on rewriting history. Zhu Di rebuilt the Taizu Shilu, first asking Xie Jin to re-repair it, but after reading it, he was still not satisfied, so he let Yao Guangxiao re-repair it again. Yao Guangxiao was the black-bellied monk, Zhu Di's number one military master. In the reconstructed Records of Taizu, Zhu Di added a lot of praise to himself, repeatedly showing the old emperor Zhu Yuanzhang's appreciation for himself, but only under the pressure of the ministers, he did not make himself crown prince. The Taizu Shilu was repaired three times in total, and the history is called the Three Revision Records. From this point of view, there is not much left of the reference significance of Taizu Shilu.
Third, Zhu Di also paid attention to reform. Zhu Di overthrew many of the measures taken by Zhu Yunjiao. Instead of his own policy, he also adopted a series of policies of the Zhu Yuanzhang era, you can question me, you can not question my father Zhu Yuanzhang. And Zhu Di also reactivated the East Factory and the Jinyi Guard, and these eagle dogs closely monitored the people of the world. The people of the world dared to be angry and did not dare to speak, although they did not say it, but they all knew that Zhu Di's throne was not legitimate.
Zhu Di also knew that he and the throne had not been obtained legally, and he had been worried and secretly searched for the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen. He sent Hu Hao (ying) to search on land, and Zheng He to search by sea.
"The emperor has gone to bed, smelled the rain, and hurriedly summoned in. Knowing that what he had heard was right, he missed the four drums, and before he arrived, it was rumored that Emperor Jianwen had gone to the sea, and the emperor sent his internal minister Zheng He to the Western Ocean for several generations, and it was a doubtful release."
From this sentence to the beginning of the doubt, and they talked for so long, we can see that Zhu Di finally found the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, dead or alive, and could not pose a threat to him, and his hanging heart could finally be let go.
I have to say that Zhu Di is an emperor with achievements. He created the Yongle Dynasty, sent Zheng He to the West, and showed other countries the strong national strength of the Ming Dynasty, and all the countries came to the Dynasty. He invaded Mongolia in the north and won many victories, which greatly solved the border problems of the Ming Dynasty.
But Zhu Di is also a problem emperor, he has a cruel personality, good at disguise and acting. Be cruel to the enemy and do whatever it takes. He planted a lot of time bombs for the Ming Dynasty. First, the cabinet was reactivated here, and later their power grew larger and larger, almost equivalent to that of the prime minister, and the power was tilted to the opposition. Secondly, he used Dongchang and Jinyiwei as secret service agencies, and later the Ming Dynasty repeatedly appeared as great eunuchs, such as Wang Zhen, Liu Jin, and Wei Zhongxian's generation, which brought calamity to the country and the people. Finally, I think that the genes of his branch are not good, and the emperors after the Ming Dynasty are either faint and confused, or stubborn in nature, or addicted to cultivating immortals for decades and not going to the dynasty, or not loving the country and the mountains and loving carpentry. But history is history after all, and we can only judge and not change.
Yongle is gone, and there is no more Yongle in the world.