The Forbidden City was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. After the Battle of Jingnan, Jianwen's former vassals did not support him, and in order to keep the throne, he brutally killed Qi Tai, Huang Zicheng, Tie Xuan, and Fang Xiaoru. The Yongle Emperor felt that the readers in the south were at odds with him, which made him nostalgic for beiping, the fief he had been given as the king of Yan. When he was 21 years old, he was crowned the King of Yan, came to Beiping, and stayed in Beiping for a total of 15 years until he ascended the throne, and Beiping was his land of Longxing.
According to the History of Ming, the Yongle Emperor killed so many people that he often had nightmares at night. In the third year of Yongle, a Zuo Yudu Yushi named Jingqing rushed to the Yongle Emperor in the early dynasty with a sharp blade and took advantage of the fact that no one was paying attention. The Yongle Emperor was saved by the guards, and Jing Qing was beheaded and paraded in public. The Yongle Emperor felt unable to understand the hatred, and ordered his skin to be taken off and hung on the city gate. Coincidentally, a few days later, when Yongle passed through this city gate by public opinion, the dried human skin suddenly fell and landed in front of the Yongle Emperor. The Yongle Emperor knew that Nanjing could not stay any longer and would return to Beiping as soon as possible.
In order to prepare for the return to Beiping, the Yongle Emperor ordered that Beiping be renamed Beijing Shuntianfu, which had the same status as the Ying Tianfu of the Jingshi, and was called "Xingzai" and "Accompanying Capital". Subsequently, he ordered Daoyan to set up the Governor's Office, the Xingbu and the GuoziJian in Beijing.
Daoyan, commonly known as Yao Guangxiao, was a strategist of the Yongle Emperor. According to the "History of Ming", Yao Guangxiao took refuge in Buddhism in his early years, and the Dharma number Daoyan. After the death of Empress Ma, the empress dowager of the Hongwu Emperor, many monks were invited to give her a degree. At the end of the matter, Zhu Yuanzhang left these monks behind and assigned them to the princes to be their teachers. The Daoyan monk was assigned to Zhu Di, the King of Yan. The two became good friends at first sight.
When Emperor Jianwen was cutting the domain, DaoYan once advised Zhu Di to pretend to be crazy first, and in the summer wrapped in a quilt and roasted. This trick was really smart, and Emperor Jianwen really relaxed his vigilance against the King of Yan. Subsequently, Dao Yan secretly trained troops in the Yan King's Mansion to build weapons. Because he was afraid of leaking the wind, he dug deep and wide tunnels in the Yan King's Mansion, and raised many chickens, ducks, geese and other poultry in the yard, so that the chirping of poultry covered up the noise of military training. When the Yan King raised his army, a gust of wind blew down the tiles of the eaves. Others thought it was ominous, and King Yan was discouraged. Dao Yan said, "This is an auspicious omen." Flying dragons in the sky, from wind and rain. Tile fall, will be easy to yellow also. In one word, the Yan King said that he was a hundred times more confident.
At first, King Yan's army was not smooth, and almost all of it was destroyed. It was Dao Yan who sacrificed a strange plot and suggested that the King of Yan directly pound the Dragon Court, and it was successful.
Moving the capital to Beiping, the original palace is obviously no longer applicable. The place where Zhu Di, the King of Yan, lived in Beiping was Longfu Palace, part of the Yuan Forbidden City, near present-day Zhongnanhai. The layout of the Yuan Forbidden City is three-legged, including Ouchi, Longfu Palace, and Xingsheng Palace. After the general Xu Da attacked the Yuan capital, he demolished most of it and moved the city wall south. In order to prevent the remnants of the Mongol Yuan from rebelling, Xu Da moved most of the people in the city to Henan.
The Yongle Emperor wanted to move the capital to Beijing, and the construction of a royal palace became an urgent problem. In the fourth year of Yongle, that is, in 1406, the Yongle Emperor issued an edict to build the Forbidden City in Beijing.