What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Historians have never had a clear answer to Emperor Jianwen's life and death, because his whereabouts are unknown after the Jingnan Rebellion. "Ming Shi Gong Min Emperor Benji": "The fire in the palace is up, and the emperor does not know the end." Gu Yingtai said in his "Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty" that Emperor Jianwen disguised himself as a monk and escaped from the secret passage of the Nanjing Imperial Palace. "History of Ming": "Before arriving, it was rumored that Jianwen had gone to the sea, and the emperor dispatched his internal minister Zheng He to float to the sea for several generations to go to the Western Ocean, and it was a doubt that it was first released." As a result, the mystery of the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen became a historical suspense case.
Did Emperor Jianwen set himself on fire or die? This is not only a problem that we care about, but also a problem in the heart of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di.
The army of Zhu Di, the king of Yan, attacked the capital, but did not find the emperor, at this time the palace was on fire, and zhu Di, the king of Yan, sent people to find the emperor's body, insisted that the eunuchs in the palace identify it as the emperor's, and buried it with tianzi.
The matter of the court fire can be basically determined, the great probability is that Emperor Jianwen himself did it, of course, Zhu Di can't say so, the pot that forced the emperor to die is too big to be carried, Zhu Di said in the edict to the king of Korea after he ascended the throne: "Unscheduled Jianwen was coerced by the power traitor, and the palace burned itself." "This means: I was going to help the emperor get rid of the traitors, but the emperor was coerced and coerced by the traitors, and was forced to burn down the palace himself."
Zhu Di's words even made him feel weak, although on the surface he must say that Zhu Yunjiao was dead, but judging from his performance afterwards, it may be that he did not find Zhu Yunjiao's body, and he has always had great doubts.
It is rumored that Emperor Jianwen was in exile overseas, and Zheng He went to the West to find him.
The whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen are different from the so-called "filial piety under the marriage of Dolgun" in the Qing Dynasty, which basically belongs to the misrepresentation of wild history, and the credibility is basically zero.
So where did Emperor Jianwen go? So far, there are several statements:
First, Emperor Jianwen was indeed burned to death, and the reason why the body could not be found was because they were all burned to ashes.
The second is that Zhu Di killed Emperor Jianwen, and then deliberately leaked some flaws, making everyone think that he had escaped, and there was one less crime of killing the king.
Third, Emperor Jianwen did not die, and the most widely spread was that he became a monk.
However, the people have been sympathetic to Jianwen, and the social corruption and darkness of the late Ming Dynasty, many people have borrowed the jianwen emperor's death to express dissatisfaction with reality, the Cambridge History of the Ming Dynasty of China said: "The legendary story of the Jianwen Emperor reflects people's sympathy for the Jianwen Emperor and the ideals he believed in."