What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Accompanying the king is like accompanying the tiger road, which has long become a consensus in the feudal era. Countless capable people "become emperors and defeat emperors." Even Liu Bowen, a humeral heavy minister of the Ming Dynasty and praised by Zhu Yuanzhang as "my son's room", did not end his life in the end.
And there are still people who are well versed in the mind of the emperor, living a life of trembling and trembling, like walking on thin ice, even if one day the dragon is displeased, he will be killed by the emperor. And some people can successfully avoid danger and achieve a perfect ending. Zhu Sheng is such a person.
First, tired of the chaos at the end of the Yuan Dynasty
Anhui at the end of the Yuan Dynasty was undoubtedly a place where dragons and crouching tigers were hidden. Zhu Yuanzhang, Xu Da, etc. need not say much. In the cultural world, Zhu Sheng is undoubtedly also a representative. In the third year of Emperor Yuanchengzong's reign (1299), Zhu Sheng was born into a poor peasant family in Huixi Village, Xiuning County, Anhui Province. However, his family was very supportive of Zhu Sheng's education. Tongli's township gongjinshi Chen Que was Zhu Sheng's enlightenment teacher. And because Zhu Sheng is talented and intelligent, he has the personality to break the casserole and ask the end, so the masters also like this young man.
In the fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1344), Zhu Sheng, who had returned from studying in other places, began to give lectures at the Ziyang Ancestral Hall in Xiuning County. In the same year, he also passed the jinshi examination. However, Zhu Sheng did not enter the career path, but continued to run a school in his hometown. In the eighth year of Zhizheng (1348), he was appointed by the Yuan court as a professor of Confucianism (or "Xuezheng") on the Road of Chizhou, and it was only two years before he took office.
When he first arrived at Chizhou Road, Zhu Sheng was faced with the dilemma of "learning from the field to be rich in other places" under the serious corruption of officials, and "the disciples only had one meal a day, there was no way to raise them, and the teachers and students disintegrated" the dilemma of almost extinction in name only. So Zhu Sheng, who had studied for decades and had been a master for several years, launched a drastic reform of the education of Chizhou Road as soon as he arrived, and "taught in the morning and showed the law by example."
Through Zhu Sheng's three years of efforts, the educational achievements of Chizhou Road are very remarkable: "Scholars from the north and south of the jiangnan are gathered.". But unfortunately, when Zhu Sheng's term of office expired, Yuan Dynasty society was in turmoil of peasant uprisings, and even Zhu Sheng's hometown was affected. Therefore, Zhu Sheng had to move to avoid chaos and go to Shimen in Shexian County to write books behind closed doors, occasionally or give lectures. However, this closed door waited until Zhu Yuanzhang's personal visit.
2. The strange strategist who helped Daming to establish
In the autumn of the seventeenth year of the Yuan Dynasty (1357), Zhu Yuanzhang's soldiers came to Huizhou. At this time, Deng Yu, a member of Zhu Yuanzhang's generals, as a Huizhou native, shouldered the heavy responsibility of introducing local talents to Zhu Yuanzhang. Therefore, under the circumstance that Deng Yu repeatedly emphasized that Zhu Sheng was a rare sage, Zhu Yuanzhang personally went to Zhu Sheng's home to talk with Zhu Sheng secretly and invited him to jinling with him.
In the 24th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1364), Zhu Yuanzhang was proclaimed the King of Wu, and Zhu Sheng was appointed as a Hanlin attendant and a Zhongshun doctor. It was also in this year that Zhu Sheng began to be ordered to edit the history of the country. In the first year of Hongwu (1368), Zhu Sheng was promoted to a Hanlin scholar, confirming Zhu Yuanzhang's identity as a member of the "think tank".
Counting Zhu Sheng's deeds after he defected to Zhu Yuanzhang, we have to admit that although he is not as famous as Liu Bowen, his importance is not bad at all. Zhu Yuanzhang was able to take Xin'an almost bloodlessly, relying on Zhu Sheng's strategy. Zhu Yuanzhang was able to kill Ji several times, and according to his own words, it was all because Zhu Sheng deduced the celestial phenomenon for him in advance. Break through the predicament at the mouth of the river, raise enough grain for the decisive battle at Poyang Lake, "appease the false Han Lishu, capture Zhang Thief, take the Central Plains"... Almost every strategy given by Zhu Sheng has worked.
In addition, Zhu Sheng also played an important role in the construction of the ceremonial system in the early Ming Dynasty. In February of the first year of Hongwu (1368), Zhu Sheng was ordered to formulate the ceremony to be enjoyed at the temple. In March, he and Zhu Confucian revised the Female Commandment. In December, Zhu Sheng again asked for a suicide note. In March of the second year of Hongwu (1369), Zhu Yuanzhang asked Zhu Sheng to determine the period of fasting and write the "Fasting Text". Many of Zhu Yuanzhang's books of rewarding meritorious heroes are also from Zhu Sheng's hand... It can be said that Zhu Yuanzhang is consistent in words and deeds to express his affirmation of Zhu Sheng's "unparalleled strategy of the national dynasty and the first in the Hanlin article".
Third, the good ruler who retreats from the rapids
From Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Sheng received an evaluation that Liu Bowen had never received. And in the eighteenth year of Zhengzheng (1358), Zhu Yuanzhang personally wrote a four-character famous building for Zhu Sheng, "Plum Blossom First Moon". In the twenty-fourth year of Zhengzheng (1364), Zhu Sheng was "specially exempted from hajj". In the Edict of Zhu Sheng, Zhu Yuanzhang even referred to Zhu Sheng as "Your Excellency the Patriarch" (because the two had the same surname, Zhu Sheng was twenty-nine years older than Zhu Yuanzhang)... It can be said that none of Daming's founding ministers received higher courtesy than Zhu Sheng. Liu Bowen is difficult to match.
However, in March of the second year of Hongwu (1369), that is, after completing the work related to fasting, Zhu Sheng took the initiative to request retirement. At this time, he was over seventy years old, so Zhu Yuanzhang not only readily agreed, but also wanted to give Zhu Sheng the title. However, Zhu Sheng, on the grounds that his son Zhu Tong was "more loyal than a prince and insufficient in the wisdom of self-preservation", not only declined the title, but also in turn asked Zhu Yuanzhang to leave him a full corpse after his death.
In the second year of Hongwu (1369), this was before Zhu Yuanzhang rewarded Li Shanchang, Liu Bowen and other founding heroes. However, Zhu Sheng had already begun to request the death of a corpse at this time, which showed his understanding of Zhu Yuanzhang and his sensitivity to the political situation. Zhu Tong later hanged himself for being involved in the Blue Jade case, but Zhu Sheng lived in seclusion with his wife in Beilonggang Town, Jiangsu Province, after retirement, and spent the last part of his life peacefully. Compared with Liu Bowen's illness in the cold and fear, Zhu Sheng's old age can be described as a good ending for the founding heroes of the Ming Dynasty.
A person's fate actually embodies the wind and rain of the times.