In 1368, the Ming Dynasty was officially established in Nanjing, and in the same year, General Xu Da led the Northern Expedition army to the Tongzhou area of Hebei Province, which was not far from the old nest of the Yuan Dynasty, and it was only two days away at most!
As long as Xu Da led the army to pursue with victory, presumably the Yuan Shun Emperor Would only be able to capture it. However, Xu Da led the army to stay where it was, did nothing, and stayed like this for seven days, which was undoubtedly sending Emperor Yuan Shun to escape from the city in vain.
On July 28, Emperor Yuanshun finally opened the Jiande Gate and sneaked from Dadu to Shangdu. Soon after, Xu Da once again led his troops to attack Shangdu Kaiping, but the scene in Dadu continued to repeat itself, and he deliberately left a gap for Emperor Yuanshun to escape when he besieged emperor Yuanshun.
In this regard, Chang Yuchun, who often fought with him, saw the cattiness in it, and he was very upset and ran to ask Xu Da, accusing him of why he deliberately let emperor Yuan Shun go and lost an opportunity to capture the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty alive and make a great contribution.
In this regard, Xu Da explained: "After all, the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty is the leader of Yidi, if he is caught, how will the emperor deal with him?" Killing him, or giving him a piece of land to seal a king with no real power, these two are not perfect practices, so it is better to simply let it go! ”
For Xu Da's answer, Chang Yuchun was naturally dissatisfied, so after The Banshi returned to the dynasty, he directly impeached Xu Da to Zhu Yuanzhang, and as a result, Zhu Yuanzhang did not blame him, which meant that this matter was tacitly approved by Zhu Yuanzhang.
Is the logic of this just that it is difficult to handle it perfectly after catching Emperor Yuanshun, so it is directly released?
In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang was worried that if he directly executed Emperor Yuanshun, it would cause the Mongols to hate each other, according to past history, these ethnic minorities would give birth to a capable leader after every civil strife, so instead of this, it was better to directly release the weak Emperor Yuanshun and continue to lead them, which would be beneficial to the Ming Dynasty, after all, as the saying goes, stupid enemies are friends!
Moreover, if you choose to carry out a water-draining siege of the capital and Shangdu of the Yuan Dynasty, the Yuan Shun Emperor will naturally resist desperately, and then it will become a very costly offensive battle, so it is not worth it!
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang referred to Emperor Yuanshun as "knowing the Mandate of Heaven and retreating away", which was enough to see that he agreed with Xu Da's release of Emperor Yuanshun.