What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Zhu Yuanzhang was poor when he was young and used to herd cattle for landlords. In 1344 (the fourth year of the Yuan dynasty), he entered the Huangjue Temple, and at the age of 25, he joined the Red Turban Army led by Guo Zixing against the Yuan Dynasty, and in 1356 (to the sixteenth year of the Zheng Dynasty), he was enshrined by his subordinates as the Duke of Wu. In the same year, Jiqing Road was captured and changed to Ying Tianfu. In 1368 (to the twenty-eighth year of Zheng), after Zhu Yuanzhang broke through various peasant rebel armies, he was proclaimed emperor at Yingtianfu, with the name of Daming and the era name of Hongwu. Later, it ended the Rule of the Mongol Yuan in the Central Plains, pacified Sichuan, Guangxi, Gansu, Yunnan and other places, and finally unified China.
Where the Ming Dynasty was founded, where to build the capital Zhu Yuanzhang took a lot of brains.
Although he had already claimed the title of emperor in Nanjing (Ying Tianfu), Zhu Yuanzhang was not very fond of building a capital in Nanjing. He believes that since ancient times, the great dynasties have all built their capitals in the north, the south is after all in a remote corner, not very suitable for ruling the world, and the six dynasties that have set the capital nanjing are almost all born during the Wei and Jin dynasties, and the state is relatively short, 60 years is the longest, even if it is a divided regime.
In April of the first year of Hongwu (1368), Zhu Yuanzhang personally led a large army north to inspect Bieliang (汴梁, in present-day Kaifeng, Henan Province), thinking about the old days of the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty. After the inspection, the road was changed to Kaifeng Province, and the capital was prepared to be built there. However, Kaifeng also has a fatal weakness, that is, it is attacked on all sides, there is no danger to defend, and the reason why the Northern Song Dynasty was weak at that time had a lot to do with the Dingdu Bieliang. In order to defend against enemy invasion, the Northern Song Dynasty gathered heavy troops in Bieliang, claiming to be as many as 800,000, so that the consumption was too large, and eventually dragged the country down, so some historians believe that the Northern Song Dynasty died in "raising troops". The lesson of the Song Dynasty was still in front of him, and Zhu Yuanzhang weighed the pros and cons and gave up the idea of fixing the capital.
After much deliberation and consideration, Zhu Yuanzhang decided to make his hometown of Linhao (濠州, which was renamed Linhao Prefecture in 1367 to fengyang County, Chuzhou, Anhui Province) as the capital of Zhongdu. In the second year of Hongwu (1369), with the power of the new dynasty, he concentrated manpower and material resources and sent Li Shanchang and others to supervise the construction of the capital Fengyang. The palace room was built in a big way, the dragons were carved and phoenixes were carved, and everything was exquisite.
Not wanting this move to be refuted by the courtiers, everyone thought that Fengyang was not suitable for the capital, and what was the difference between creating such a luxurious and powerful project and the arrogant and lascivious steps of the Yuan Dynasty and the end of the Yuan Dynasty? The slow resemblance of the group of ministers was drunk, and Zhu Yuanzhang woke up, so he stopped building Zhongdu.
In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu (1391), Zhu Yuanzhang sent the crown prince Zhu Biao to inspect Guanzhong and inspected the terrain of Xi'an in detail, preferring to choose Xi'an as the capital. However, the world was unpredictable, Zhu Biao unfortunately died of illness in April of the following year, and Zhu Yuanzhang, who was nearly seventy years old, was hit hard, and the matter of moving the capital was stopped.
It was not until the end that Zhu Yuanzhang officially made Nanjing the capital. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the city of Nanjing was from the outside to the inside, with four floors: the outer city, the capital (inner city), the imperial city, and the palace city. The inner city had a circumference of ninety-six miles and the outer city of one hundred and eighty miles, making it the largest city in the world at that time.
It is rumored that Zhu Yuanzhang ordered Liu Bowen to divinate the site when he built the capital in Nanjing. When the city wall was repaired, Liu Bowen accompanied Zhu Yuanzhang on the tour. Zhu Yuanzhang was very happy to see that the project was solid, and said, "Who can cross this wall?" Liu Bowen replied casually, "Unless the swallows fly by!" "The walls of Nanjing are very strong, after more than 600 years of wind and rain, even under the japanese artillery fire, they have stood resolutely. However, at that time, Liu Bowen's words were full of words, and a few years later, the "swallow" did fly over the city of Nanjing. This "swallow" was Zhu Di, the King of Yan, who attacked Nanjing and took Jiangshan.