Before you feel sorry for those heroes who were killed by Zhu Yuanzhang, you must first know what the heroes meant at that time.
From the beginning of the Shang martingale transformation method, there was a thing, the military merit knight. We all know the titles, but the titles of the heroes who have left their names in history belong to the top, and there are a large number of relatively low titles under this. What do these titles mean? Land tenure. Before the emergence of Lumi, the most important title of military merit was directly linked to land possession.
After the Qin and Han Dynasties, after the founding of the country, a large number of titles were divided, but the only people who left their names were titles such as Gonghou Bo, so what about the middle and lower-ranking officers who went down, as well as those who survived the founding war, they had nothing? Of course not, they are also the beneficiaries of the redistribution of land, and according to the knighthood accumulated by military merit, they can get the corresponding fief.
Therefore, although it seems that the titles after the Han Dynasty seem to be useless, in fact, they have always been very useful, especially military merits, which have very practical benefits. Except for the Song Dynasty, which was a conscription system from the time of the founding of the country, other dynasties were all conscription systems when they founded the country, and the advantage they received after establishing the political power was to be able to participate in the distribution of land and become large and small landlords.
Even Jin adopted this method after occupying the Central Plains. Every Jurchen family that participated in the war could allocate a piece of land in the Central Plains and become a small landowner. What is the basis of domination? This is the basis of domination. They and the court are both prosperous and lose, and when the court is finished, they will lose everything.
Of course, the Qing Dynasty was an exception in this regard, the Qing Dynasty directly paid money, but did not give the Manchu and Mongolian Eight Banners stationed in the interior.
Generally speaking, after the beginning of each dynasty, a new order will be formed, and the basis of this order is that the military class directly becomes a large and small landlord. It takes several generations for the land to be re-concentrated. The further you go, the longer the process takes, and the faster and shorter the process goes. Big fish eat small fish, small fish eat shrimp, and ordinary farmers are at the bottom of the food chain.
This group can monopolize political power even politically. For example, after the founding of the Han Dynasty, the military merit group basically monopolized the high-level positions, the needle could not be inserted, the water could not be spilled, and even the emperor had no way. It was not until the jing emperor period that there were middle and high-ranking officials who were not from the military merit group, and it was not until the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty that this military merit group was completely suppressed by the imperial power.
After the founding of the Ming Dynasty, it also did this. The only people we can see now are the Six Kingdoms and the Marquis and the Earl, but this does not mean that there are no more, of course, there are still some. As long as they participated in the founding war, made military merits, and survived, they were paid accordingly, that is, land.
But the problem with the Ming Dynasty was that because the previous Yuan Dynasty's rule was too extensive and not refined, it lacked basic data in many aspects, such as the number of land and the number of people, and there were no more accurate figures. Therefore, when redistributed after the founding of the country, it was not very accurate, there were a lot of ambiguous areas, and after the military merit group returned to its hometown, it was natural that the landlords of all sizes were strong and powerful, and they could covet these lands.
This leads to two problems, because the land and population are inaccurate and will encroach on the country's tax base, but the rent they deserve will not be less than a penny, and the imperial court will be easily deceived. Downwards, if a peasant who had been displaced during the previous period of war returned to his homeland after the war, or settled in a new place and multiplied, the land he needed for survival could only be rented from these powerful landlords.
It is precisely because Zhu Yuanzhang was born at the bottom of society and became an emperor, so it is easier for him to understand that this kind of person who does not have much culture in himself will be the most unfriendly peasant at the bottom after suddenly becoming a landlord. Because for them, they will feel that Lao Tzu is the master of this country, you people are our crops, I just need to harvest, law and order are set for your crops, we do not need to obey at all.
Therefore, after the founding of the country for a period of time, any dynasty must clean up the military merit class, otherwise it will become a door valve family like the Wei and Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, the emperor has no way, and the people have no way to live. The Han Dynasty took more than fifty years to complete this process, and basically entered the second and third generations before starting to do it, while Zhu Yuanzhang began to do it twenty years later. This, in turn, shows that the threat of the military elite class to the imperial power and the threat to the entire social order was exposed faster than the Han Dynasty and must be solved.
In the history books of later generations, most of the records of these heroes are how heroic they fought in the early years and how well they performed at some important junctures, but in the records after the founding of the people's republic, they are relatively vague, at most, that is, the five words of "many illegal deeds", but behind these five words is the destruction of countless ordinary people's pastoral gardens, the separation of wives and children, the destruction of their families, and the crying of no way.
Therefore, on the one hand, we can see in the history books how Zhu Yuanzhang slaughtered heroes, and the Danshu iron coupon is of no use at all, but few people mention that Zhu Yuanzhang has always attached great importance to protecting the interests of ordinary people, and has repeatedly bypassed the bureaucratic system, directly issued big edicts, shouted to the people of the whole country, and encouraged the people to come to the imperial court to petition if they encountered any unfair things.
In this sense, to say that Zhu Yuanzhang slaughtered heroes is actually from another angle, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is Zhu Yuanzhang's second revolution. If he had not shown no mercy to the heroes, but had allowed the military meritorious class to develop and grow day by day at all levels, I am afraid that the Ming Dynasty would not have been able to mix for more than two hundred years, and it would have ended.