Among the many emperors in ancient and modern times, Zhu Yuanzhang was an outlier. He came from a poor peasant family and was born in a low thatched hut in The village of Guzhuang in Zhongli Taiping Township, Haozhou (present-day Fengyang, Anhui). Because he ranked eighth among the family brothers, it was called "heavy eight", and Zhu Heavy Eight was born in this way. At this time, he was so small, like a grass on the ground, one more than him was not much, one less him was not a lot, no one would have thought that in the future he would become the son of heaven of the Ming Empire and be admired by all the people.
As the saying goes, "the children of the poor are in charge of the family early", Zhu Zhongba's youth time is basically spent in the days of cattle herding. Although he did not eat very well on weekdays, he did not delay the growth of Zhu Zhongba into a burly figure when he was young, but his appearance was ugly, his head was long, his chin was wide, and he grew into a donkey face. In the time of cattle herding, Zhu Zhongba relied on his strong body, like a child king in the village, he liked to play the game of "being an emperor", every time at this time, Zhu Zhongba sat high on the mound, let the children at his feet sit in a row, and shouted in unison. If anyone shouted not seriously, it would be miserable, and Zhu Zhongba zhun would punch and kick him until he shouted seriously.
Folk portrait of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang
If the days were too peaceful, Zhu Zhongba would probably end his life slowly in cattle herding and playing, and honestly become a poor person under the rule of the Great Yuan Empire. However, fate did not want him to be so ordinary, and with the outbreak of the peasant uprising at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Zhongba's fate was deeply changed.
One of the major reasons for the outbreak of the great peasant revolt at the end of the Yuan Dynasty was the continuous natural disasters. The Huai River, famous for its floods, has brought heavy suffering to both sides of the strait for thousands of years. However, in the third year of Zhizheng (1343) and the fourth year of Zhizheng, what occurred on both sides of the Huai River was not a flood, but a drought. Drought has reduced food production, no doubt exacerbating the already poor families. People are digging up wild vegetables everywhere to fill their hunger, but wild vegetables are in two bowls of thin porridge, and there is nothing left in a bubble of urine. Even more frightening is the plague that comes with drought. Already extremely weak bodies suffer from the plague, people often have high fevers, vomit up and down, and then death. What started out as a village was a dozen deaths, and soon it grew to the point where every household died and every day, and if people didn't flee, a village would soon die. By the time Zhu Wusi's family realized it, it was too late, and a large number of people had died in less than half a month: only Zhong Liu and Zhong Eight were left, as well as the eldest sister-in-law and her children.
The eldest sister-in-law fled the wilderness with the remaining children, and now, the sixth and eighth heavy can only flee separately like their fathers and ancestors in the past. Before leaving, the brothers begged the landlord Liu De to bury his relatives, who knew that Liu De did not have a trace of pity and did not bury them, or Liu De's brother Liu Jizu kindly gave a piece of land the size of a palm, which buried his relatives. Faced with the destruction of the family and the separation of relatives, the brothers were relatively speechless and had to cry with their headaches. After burying his relatives, Zhu Zhongba was introduced to the Huangjue Temple as a child. However, there was not much food in the temple, and after entering the temple for fifty days, the temple master sealed the granary to dismiss the monks, and Zhongba had to leave his hometown to travel to Huaixi Yingzhou for the monks of Youfang.
Portrait of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor depicted in the main history
The transition from a lowly poor peasant to a noble son of heaven is not a simple change of identity. The family changes and traveling experiences of the youth enriched Zhu Yuanzhang's inner world. If Zhu Yuanzhang is an unpolished piece of jade in the wilderness, then several coincidences add up to make this uncarved piece of jade into a beautiful jade. The social unrest at the end of the Yuan Dynasty shook Zhu Yuanzhang's jade out, and his three-year wandering career enabled this piece of jade to be carefully carved. This honest peasant's child was baptized in many difficulties and dangers, and the subsequent years of war made him finally a beautiful piece of jade.
For Zhu Yuanzhang, the completion of this gorgeous turn from a poor peasant to a heavenly son is itself an almost impossible small probability event. It was under a variety of coincidences that this commoner Tianzi was created. In history, there is no one like Zhu Yuanzhang who has a clear love and hatred for peasants and landlords. This is determined by his own origins. He always maintained the peasant heart, peasant style, peasant style, whether his identity is a commoner or a son of heaven, Zhu Yuanzhang has been implementing this life creed from beginning to end.
In his later years, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ancestor of the Ming Dynasty
He was by no means silent, spending all his time in the Ming Empire, and hardly had a day off from his ascension to the throne until his death. Both his living utensils and his diet were the most frugal of any emperor in the past, eating only vegetables for breakfast every day. What is even more rare is that he applied this peasant ideology to the specific reality of his ruling the country, and Zhu Yuanzhang spent his whole life chasing the great peasant ideal of "equalizing the rich and the poor." This is reflected in all aspects of his rule, the demise of the dynasty has always been nothing more than the fall of the emperor's power, the dynasty was easily overthrown by the powerful ministers, foreign relatives, eunuchs, or the land annexation was serious, resulting in a large gap between the rich and the poor, so that the officials forced the people to rebel.
In view of the first aspect, Zhu Yuanzhang carried out a drastic reform of the central bureaucracy at that time: abolishing the chancellor and returning the power to the six ministries; abolishing the metropolitan governor, setting up the governor's office of the five armed forces, and systematically making the various departments contain each other, and no one could pose a threat to the imperial power.
Compared to the first, the second is particularly tricky. How to curb land annexation has been involved in many dynasties but has not played much role. Zhu Yuanzhang was different, the peasants were outstanding, and he dared to challenge all the old order. For the sake of the fundamental interests of the Empire and his peasant heart, he must severely crack down on the landlord class and the bureaucratic class. Based on this line of thinking, Zhu Yuanzhang launched the most brutal campaign in human history to punish corrupt officials, shooting and killing officials who embezzled more than sixty taels of silver, and also used cruel criminal law to deal with corrupt officials, using torture such as "peeling the skin and picking grass", picking tendons, cutting off fingers, cutting off hands, and cutting knees. He loved the people, worked state affairs, developed production, and the problem of eating and dressing for the people at the bottom was effectively solved.
Zhu Yuanzhang's dislike of the landlord class is based on two factors, first of all, he is the son of a poor peasant himself, and he has been under the oppression of the landlord for a long time, and it is estimated that he will never forget the humiliation of his relatives who died and begged Liu De to give him a burial place and was expelled from his home by Liu De. Secondly, as the son of heaven of the Ming Empire, he realized that the landlord class was vicious, and they would blindly annex land, making the rich families too powerful in the local area, which was not conducive to his rule, so he hated the landlord class extremely much.
In the thirty-one years of his career as emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang did not forget the hardships of his early years for a moment, and never hid his origins. In the edict, he repeatedly said that he was a farmer: "A farmer who knows the hardships of harvesting."