One day in May of the eleventh year of Chenghua (1475), Emperor Xianzong asked Zhang Min to comb his hair; emperor Xianzong, who was already twenty-nine years old at the time, had not been able to give birth to a prince for many years, and was afraid that he would be in danger of having an heir, and saw that he had a lot of white hair in the mirror when combing his hair, so he was sad and sighed long and short: "Old to the point of death, still childless!" Zhang Min, who was combing the emperor's hair, saw the emperor feeling sad, thought of the children in The Anle Hall, and under the excitement of his heart, resolutely decided to keep the secret and entrust it for six years.
Therefore, Zhang Min suddenly knelt down to Xianzong, prostrated his head in tears, and said, "Your Majesty already has a son!" After suddenly hearing this, Xianzong was stunned and asked Zhang Min to play it in detail. Zhang Min recalled the old events of that year, starting from the palace maid Ji Shi in the library cabinet, and told Xian Zong all about Ji's conception, Wan Guifei's persecution, Anle Tang's secret birth of children, and the baby being hidden and raised by everyone!
After listening to zhang Min's "earth-shattering news", Xianzong was shocked and surprised in his heart, but also overjoyed, and he did not expect that he actually had a son alive. Therefore, Xianzong's head was also not combed, and he immediately asked Zhang Min to lead the way to the Anle Hall in Sinai to meet his son, who had never met before.
The news that the emperor was coming to Anle Hall soon reached Ji's ears, so Ji put on his son's clothes and said to him with tears in his smile: "There will be many people coming later, and the man with the yellow clothes and beard is your father, and you have to follow him." Then he reluctantly took the small hand of his son, who was not very sensible, and said bitterly: "Son go, son go, I can't live anymore." ”
When Xianzong rushed to the Anle Hall, he saw Ji Shi outside the gate and the child he was holding in his hand. Looking at the pale face caused by not daring to go out and not being able to bask in much sun, and at the same time malnourished because of the hardships of eating and living, the weak little man, at the suggestion of his mother, dragging his long tire hair and wearing a hundred family clothes made of patchwork and sewing, stumbling over to himself, even if you are the emperor of the great tomorrow and the emperor who holds the authority of the world, Xianzong cannot suppress the excitement in his heart, the mood of sorrow and joy, leaned over and picked up the child, put it on his knees to carefully examine, and then tearfully said: "Like me, like me, It's my son! Seeing this scene, the palace maids and others also felt tears.
Later, Emperor Xianzong personally took the third son of the emperor back to the palace, who had only been able to make his identity public six years after his birth, and announced this great news to the assistant ministers of the cabinet and the ministers of the imperial court, and named the third son Zhu Youfan. The Ji clan, who had made great contributions to the imperial family, moved to live in the Yongshou Palace, and after that, Emperor Xianzong summoned her several times.
On the other hand, Wan Guifei, who learned that she had been hidden for six years, was furious and angry after Ji Shi and the third son of the Emperor entered the palace, and entangled with Xianzong and cried endlessly, and said hatefully, "It is the little people who deceive me!" Although Emperor Xianzong still greatly loved Wan Guifei, after all, he had a son, and there were successors to Daming, and the two things were still clearly distinguished, so although the entanglement of Wan Guifei was helpless, he did not fulfill Wan Guifei's wish like deposing Empress Wu, and only went with her to make trouble, at most he was relieved.
In June of that year after the third son of the emperor openly entered the palace, Ji Shi died in Yongshou Palace, the cause of death is unknown, and it is rumored that he was a poisoner under Wan Guifei. Zhang Min, the doorman who risked his life to reveal the secret of the crown prince to Emperor Xianzong, after learning of Ji's death, feared that Wan Guifei would take revenge for himself, so he took the initiative to swallow gold and commit suicide to resolve the feud in the palace and protect the young third son of the emperor from being implicated.
In November of the eleventh year of Chenghua (1475), Emperor Xianzong issued an edict and edict to the world, officially appointing the emperor's third son, Zhu Youfan, as crown prince.
Why do the rumors about the birth of Emperor Xianzong's third son have these two very different results, and even now, most of the folk chronicles, literary notes, literary works, and even official revision history books use the second situation, that is, "Wan Guifei persecuted Ji's mother and son, the emperor's third son concealed his identity for six years, the door supervisor risked death to play the truth of Ming Xianzong, Xianzong recognized his son, Ji was assassinated, and Zhang Min swallowed gold" This series of processes is "zhengshi", and ignoring so much of the true evidence in the "Ming Shilu", the proof is not the same thing at all? Taken together, there are several reasons————
First of all, the first thing that began to accuse Wan Guifei and was detrimental to her reputation came precisely from the Ming Shilu that Ming Dynasty itself cultivated. In the twenty-third year of Chenghua (1487), Emperor Xianzong died and the crown prince ascended the throne, that is, Emperor Xiaozong of Ming.
The Records of the Ming Dynasty are all Records of the Later Dynasty, that is, after Emperor Si ascended the throne, he gave his father emperor who died to repair his personal words and deeds (that is, the records); but after Emperor Xiaozong was born, he was deliberately concealed by Emperor Xianzong and raised outside the palace, and he was not able to disclose his identity for six years, and his birth mother Ji Shi was even more snubbed, equivalent to being abandoned by his father; so Emperor Xiaozong still had some resentment towards his father Xianzong in his heart.
After the death of Emperor Xianzong, Emperor Xiaozong gave his father a record of repairs, confined to the Confucian monarch's father-son etiquette, it is not good to directly count the father's not, only to take the opportunity of revising the records of the Constitution Sect to scold the imperial concubine Wanshi, who has been favored by his father for a lifetime, one is to report to his mother, and the other is to complain about his father Xianzong.
However, even if the "Records of Emperor Xianzong" first made accusations against The Noble Concubine of the Emperor, they were all crimes such as "exclusive favor", "poor and extremely arrogant", "fathers and brothers and nephews all entered with shade", "spoiled and blessed eunuchs to harm the good", although these things should have been done by the Wan clan, and they were not framed, but in the final analysis, they were not a matter of principle. There were many favored concubines in the Ming Dynasty, like Wan Guifei, who had a domineering personality, pampered and arrogant, far from saying that Xianzong's own birth mother, Empress Zhou, was such a person.
In addition, the matter of the door supervisor Zhang Min assisting Ji in hiding the baby and assisting in raising her is also recorded in the "History of Ming", but according to the records in the "History of Ming and The Biography of the Later Concubines", after the birth of the third son of the emperor in the sixth year of Chenghua (1470), Wan Guifei asked Zhang Min to go to Anle Hall to drown the baby, and Zhang Min was shocked and said: "The emperor does not have a son, how can he kill the prince!" So he risked his life to hide the third son of the emperor in a hidden place, and also sent rice noodles, honey and other things to the Ji clan to feed the prince.
This touching event was also made up by later generations - in real history, when Zhu Youji was born in the sixth year of Chenghua (1470), Emperor Xianzong's second son Zhu Youji was still alive and well, and was made crown prince in November of this year (even if he died in the first month of the second year, it also showed that at least in the sixth year of Chenghua, Emperor Xianzong still had a son alive); such an obvious thing, as a palace eunuch, how could Zhang Min, as a eunuch in the palace, not know and say such nonsense as "the emperor has no sons"? It can be seen that these are all the people who wrote the history books in later generations, according to their own speculations, took it for granted, and in this way, the name of "wicked man" was placed on the head of Wan Guifei (although Wan Guifei was not a virtuous person. ）
Therefore, although the Princess Wan Huangfei had indeed been, and indeed arrogant and arrogant by virtue of Emperor Xianzong's favor, there were many illegal things, but at least, in the Ming Dynasty Records, she had not yet been defined as a jealous and arbitrary person who plotted to kill the emperor's heir.
Until more than two hundred years later, the Ming Dynasty had collapsed and the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains. After that, the Qing Dynasty began to revise history books for the Ming Dynasty, that is, the History of Ming (later dynasties revised history to the previous dynasties, which was the tradition of Chinese dynasties). In the eighteenth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1679), the erudite Hongru Kejinshi, the review of the Hanlin Academy, and the revision of the National History Museum, Mao Qiling, were ordered to participate in the revision of the History of Ming.
Mao Qiling had previously written a biographical history of the "Records of the History of Tongshi of the Victorious Dynasty" in the form of private notes, including the record of the special favor of the Ten Thousand Emperors and noble concubines during the Chenghua years, and the mother and son of Emperor Xiaozong in their infancy. However, when Mao Qiling wrote the "Testament", he added to Wan Guifei the two crimes of "The Imperial Concubine is jealous, and all the concubines of the Imperial Court are fortunate to have a body, and they will force them to drink medicine and cause countless injuries and falls", "The collapse of Empress Xiaomu, the real Emperor Guifei Yin", and even Emperor Xiaozong was also placed on the tragic experience of "being born for several years, having no hair at the top, or being in the medicine house of the Imperial Concubine Filial Piety Mu".
And when he was ordered to revise the "History of Ming", when it came to the biographies of Xianzong, Xiaozong, Wanhuang Guifei, Empress Xiaomuji, and others, Mao Qiling copied all the contents of his previous "Records of the History of Tongshi of The Victorious Dynasty", whether true or false, so that after the "History of Ming" was officially written (the "History of Ming" was compiled for more than a hundred years, and finally completed during the Qianlong period and published in print), this period of history became what we called "Wan Guifei's persecution of Ji's mother and son, and Ji's assassination".
The two charges on which the Ten Thousand Emperors and Noble Concubines were inexplicably placed, as well as the fact that Emperor Xiaozong "had no hair on the top of his head due to medicine" when he was a child, were not recorded at all in the previous "Ming Shilu". It can be seen that this is all mao Qiling himself privately added to the wild history he wrote, and took the opportunity of writing the "History of Ming" to write it into the orthodox history book, which is completely "imaginary and speculative". But even so, he was not the first to prey on the reputation of Wan Guifei, and someone had written about it before him.
In the middle of the Wanli (1573-1620), Yu Shenxing, who had served as the Rebbe Shangshu, was at home (Dong'a, Shandong), because he had participated in the compilation of the Records of Muzong when he was a Shujishi of the Hanlin Yuan, and then promoted to the Rebbe Shangshu, he was able to consult a large number of palace historical materials and canonical records, and later, when Yu Shenxing returned to his hometown, according to his own historical data and eunuch experience, after aside, he finally wrote a large number of private notes, especially the "Gushan Pen Crane" recorded in the most detail It traces the events of the pre-Wanli Dynasty, court figures, and financial gifts and ceremonies to a precise and detailed level.
It is also in "Gu shan Pen Crane" that Yu Shenxing described in detail during the reign of Emperor Xianzong about the special favor of The Emperor's noble concubines, the fate of Empress Ji and Emperor Xiaozong's mother and son, and took the lead in installing the two things of "good jealousy, forcing the palace people to drink medicine and causing injuries" and "conspiring to poison and kill Empress Ji". However, he also knew that he might not be authentic in writing this, and in order to eliminate the negative impact of his "slander and slander" of the Ten Thousand Emperors and Noble Concubines, Yu Shenxing added a sentence at the end of the ten thousand emperors and concubines- "This is the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar (1584), and an old lieutenant (that is, a eunuch) is yu Daoyan." That is to say, this matter was told to me by an old eunuch on the side of the road in the twelfth year of the Wanli Calendar, and it was not that I scribbled and did not do my business.
Even though Yu Shenxing was later reactivated and returned to The Beijing Division as a prince shaobao and a scholar of Dongge University, after entering the cabinet as an assistant minister, some people still opposed his imprecise behavior of writing articles in private on the basis of "hearsay". Shen Defu, a late Wanli juror and a supervisor of the State Zi, who was slightly later than Yu Shenxing, felt that it was ridiculous after reading the record of the feud between the concubines of the Emperor And the mother and son of Emperor Xiaozong in Yu Shenxing's "Gushan Pen Crane", and it was even more ridiculous to add to Yu Shenxing's last sentence.
Therefore, Shen Defu unceremoniously ridiculed Shen Xing in his book "Wan Li Ye Zhi Zhi": "Yu Wending Gong (Yu Shen Xing's title Wen Ding) claimed to be an old middle official in the early years of this year; don't you know that such eunuch temples are accustomed to passing on officials and slandering them, even more than Qi Dongyan! Whenever the son hears this generation talk about the story of the chaojia, it is the most ridiculous thing to say that there is no truth in ten. ”
Shen Defu's attitude toward this matter was: Why is it that you are an old man or a cabinet scholar or a court official, how can such a serious and secret old matter in the palace be told to you by an old eunuch on the side of the road? Eunuchs talk I have not heard, nine times out of ten are false words, big words, you can also believe, the truth is too ridiculous (the story of the tanuki cat for the prince, also learned from you).
However, Shen Defu did not believe it, which did not mean that others did not believe, and at that time, during the reign of Emperor Shenzong, the imperial court was in a state of unrest for the sake of "the affairs of the country", and the emperor and his courtiers quarreled almost every day because of the matter of establishing the prince. Zheng Guifei, the mother of Zhu Changxun, the third son of Emperor Shenzong, was a person, and her temper style was nine like her predecessors, the Ten Thousand Emperors, and Yu Shenxing was also a rebbe Shangshu, a cabinet scholar, and a top member of the civil servants. Therefore, the courtiers didn't care whether what Elder Yu Ge wrote was true or not, anyway, by cursing the head of the Emperor's noble concubines, they pointed out that Sang scolded Huai and gave Shenzong and Zheng Guifei a good eyedrop, which is not what we as courtiers like to hear!
Therefore, the old events of the Ten Thousand Emperors and Noble Concubines recorded in the "Gushan Pen Crane" were gradually spread from the Wanli Years under the tacit acquiescence of the courtiers, and the Ten Thousand Emperor Noble Concubines, who were originally just some pampered, arbitrary, and domineering, under the ulterior motives and impetus of the literati in later generations, became the scourge of "controlling the harem, killing the imperial heirs, and intending to murder the prince", and the evil villains (in fact, this all refers to Sang Guihuai, against Zheng Guifei, the Ten Thousand Emperors Noble Concubines are firmly lying on the ground).
And Yu Shenxing's "old eunuch secretly told him" such nonsensical reasons, which were selectively ignored by everyone, really naturally true, fake that is also true. Later, when Mao Qiling wrote the "Records of the History of The Victorious Dynasty Tong", he inherited all this paragraph and wrote it into the book.
After the fall of the Ming Dynasty, when Mao Qiling participated in the compilation of the "History of Ming" as a revision of the National History Museum, he magnificently wrote his own private wild history into the national history, which gave rise to such a dramatic "historical material" that we now know as "Wan Guifei persecuted Ji's mother and son, and Xianzong and Xiaozong's father and son were recognized in six years".
For the above widely known history and the real historical facts behind it, I have to say that in today's world, Yu Shenxing and Mao Qiling are like carp crossing the river, while Shen Defu is too few and too few.