Zhu Yuanzhang was the founding emperor with the lowest starting point in history, he lived by herding cattle for the landlord's family in his childhood, after his parents died in the famine, he defected to the Huangjue Temple as a monk in charge of begging, and at the age of 25, he participated in the Red Turban Army Uprising led by Guo Zixing, and finally overthrew the Yuan Dynasty step by step, and established the Daming Jiangshan in 1368.
Zhu Yuanzhang is not only a legendary founding emperor, but even his mausoleum is one of the largest imperial tombs in China, and it is also the first of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Ming Xiaoling was built in the fourteenth year of Ming Hongwu (1381), when Empress Ma died in the fifteenth year of Hongwu (1382), and was buried in Xiaoling in September, there is a saying that the origin of the name "Xiaoling" is because of Empress Ma's nickname "Xiaoci".
In the thirty-first year of Hongwu (1398), The Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang collapsed and died, and the underground palace was opened to be buried with Empress Ma. Until the eleventh year of Yongle (1413), the "Monument of Divine Virtue of the Great Ming Tombs" was completed, and the entire tomb was completely completed.
As the mausoleum of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the richness of its burial goods can already be imagined. After all, the construction of the mausoleum alone involved 100,000 people, and the construction period reached 25 years before and after. It is said that "money can make ghosts grind", so why hasn't Xiaoling been stolen so far?
First of all, let's analyze the historical reasons, in the Ming Dynasty period, it is needless to say, throughout the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Tombs were the fundamental place of the Zhu family, and the three major festivals and five small sacrifices every year could not be less than once, and there were heavy troops stationed all year round that no one dared to come to rob the tomb.
In the Qing Dynasty, the rulers of the Qing Dynasty were Manchus, and in order to attract the vast number of Han people to strengthen their rule, they implemented a policy of protection for the Ming Tombs, and the first to bear the brunt of it was the Ming Tombs.
In the thirty-eighth year of The Kangxi Dynasty (1699), when Kangxi went down to Jiangnan, he also inscribed the four characters of "Zhilong Tang Song" in Xiaoling on the stele pavilion, which is enough to see the attitude of the Qing rulers to protect the Ming Tombs.
By the time of the Republic of China, the Ming Tombs were no longer just tombs, but cultural sites. On February 15, the first year of the Republic of China (1912), Sun Yat-sen and the provisional government officials of Nanjing paid tribute to the Ming Tomb and personally wrote the sacrifice text. Coupled with the fact that the Ming Tomb is relatively close to the city, even some warlords with ulterior motives do not dare to risk the wrath of the people to steal the Ming Tomb.
Of course, these are all big, political reasons, and the main reason is still in the Ming Tombs themselves.
In 1998, Nanjing organized an archaeological team to conduct an exploration of the Ming Tombs with modern technology. It was found that the Ming Xiao Mausoleum Passage was not located on the central axis, but a curved line on the west side, and it was precisely because of the twists and turns in the construction of the tomb road that the tomb robbers could not directly follow the tomb road into the burial chamber.
In addition, the construction of the Ming Xiaoling Underground Palace adopted the construction method of horizontal excavation of the mountain. Although this method is huge, it is very safe, and if there is no correct method, it is difficult to enter the burial chamber without modern technology.
After investigation, experts found that there was also a thick layer of pebbles under the sealed mound of the Ming Tombs, which means that if you want to enter the tomb directly from top to bottom, it is impossible, and the robbery cave will be submerged by the pebbles that gradually tilt down, not to mention that the tomb robbery cannot even escape the day. It is precisely because of this heavy organ that the Ming Tomb has been preserved intact to the present.