The Jianwen Emperor, whose life and death were extremely controversial
On June 13, 1944, the Jinchuan Gate of Nanjing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, was breached by the Yan army, and Zhu Di, the King of Yan, marched to the imperial palace surrounded by more than 100,000 troops. Who expected that a fire broke out in the direction of the imperial palace, black smoke rose, and the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, who had become a turtle in an urn, was cornered and chose to "self-immolate the palace" to die and martyr the country.
However, Zhu Di, who rushed to the scene, searched around to identify after extinguishing the palace fire, but did not find the body of Emperor Jianwen at all. In desperation, Zhu Di could only hastily collect the corpse of Empress Ma of Zhu Yunjiao, and after pretending to cry and complain, he ascended the throne as emperor.
There are many doubts about the records of "Jianwen martyrdom" in the "History of Ming", and the records of Zhu Yunjiao's whereabouts in the "Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty" and various local chronicles are even more different, which has caused countless controversies among later scholars. Where did Emperor Jianwen go after the destruction of Nanjing? The author presents a different answer to the reader by consulting a large number of historical materials. The article is longer, please be patient!
First, how Zhu Yunjiao escaped
After the fire broke in Nanjing, it was rumored that Zhu Di could not find Zhu Yunjiao's body, so he left a suspicious case and various guan
The record of Yu Zhu's whereabouts extends to this record of unknown whereabouts. So how did Zhu Yunjiao escape from the city of Nanjing, which was already surrounded by the Yan army? Gu Yingtai's "The End of the Chronicle of the Ming Dynasty" records the most widely circulated and detailed version.
After the Jinchuan Gate in Nanjing was opened and surrendered by Zhu Qi, the King of Gu, Zhu Yunjiao sighed for a long time, walked restlessly, and even wanted to commit suicide and martyrdom at one point. At this time, The Hanlin Academy's editor Cheng Ji offered to flee the city, while the young overseer Wang Yu proposed that Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang leave a red box before his death in case of an accident. After opening the red box, Jianwen Qunchen found that there were three dudu inside, and the robes, razors, shoes and hats were all available, and it was clear that Zhu Yunjiao was shaved as a monk to escape from the ascension to heaven. In a hurry, Zhu Yunjiao did not think much before he cut his hair and escaped from the dark passage, just in time to find that the god optimistic Daoist Wang Sheng was holding a boat to greet Emperor Jianwen. Thirteen of Zhu Yunjiao's subordinates quickly boarded a ship and left the city of Nanjing, and then went to Liyang, Jingkou, Liuhe and other places, and took the land route to Xiangyang.
A generation of male lords Ming Chengzu Zhu Di
Gu Yingtai described jianwen's escape as a chisel of the text, but if you think about it carefully, you can see that there are many loopholes in it. The author lists two questions, and it can be seen that Gu said that it is just a vain statement.
One was that when Emperor Jianwen was discussing the strategy, there were more than fifty or sixty people in the palace, and most of these people subsequently defected to Zhu Di. If the secret passage did exist, after Emperor Jianwen escaped from it, Zhu Di could fully know the location of the secret passage from these people, and it would be possible to determine whether Zhu Yunjiao escaped from the secret passage, then naturally a large number of military horses would be sent to capture it separately, but Zhu Di did not rush to capture Zhu Yunjiao after capturing the city of Nanjing, indicating that it was really suspicious whether Zhu Yunjiao really escaped;
The second is that Zhu Yuanzhang had previously been a monk, and he had always admired Buddhism after he had the world, and he left a bag for Zhu Yunjiao to become a monk and escape. But what is quite puzzling is why this secret passage leads to the Taoist god optimism, and why Zhu Yuanzhang let the godly optimistic Daoist priest meet Zhu Yunjiao instead of the monk of the Emperor Jue Temple? Isn't it quite strange that a Taoist priest flees with a group of monks? Moreover, this Daoist priest actually said that zhu Yuanzhang had ordered him to wait here in a dream, and such a reason was not absurd.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that It is by no means impossible for Zhu Yunjiao to escape from the secret passage by shaving his hair in the "Ming Chronicle", and Gu Yingtai's statement is only a modification of hearsay.
Second, the rumors of Zhu Yunjiao's wandering
But no matter how Zhu Yunjiao escaped from Nanjing, the legend of his footprints in various places is truly recorded in the local chronicles. If Zhu Yunxiong could really escape from the city of Nanjing, because of his father Prince Zhu Biao's relationship with the Mu family in Yunnan, the direction of his escape must be the southwest direction, which is also consistent with the rumors of Emperor Jianwen in the southwest region.
Mu Ying grew up in Zhu Yuanzhang's army since childhood, because Zhu Yuanzhang and his wife had not yet had children at that time, and the clever and clever Mu Ying was adopted as a righteous son. When Zhu Yuanzhang's eldest son Zhu Biao was born, Zhu Mu and Zhu Mu lived together for a long time and had an extremely close relationship. When Zhu Biao died in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu' death, Mu Ying, who heard the bad news, was extremely saddened and died of illness, so Zhu Yuanzhang posthumously named Mu Ying the King of Qianning and ordered Mu's descendants to guard Yunnan for generations.
The founder of the foundation of the Ming Empire was Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang
It can be seen from this that Zhu Yunjiao's close relationship with the Mu clan in Yunnan is not surprising that he fled to the southwest.
Feng Su of the Qing Dynasty said in "Dian kao Jianwen Emperor's Hidden Relics on The Lion Mountain": "(Emperor Jianwen) first arrived in Dian... Self-proclaimed and General Mu have old... When the secret language is long, the envoy is sent to Wuding Province." He believed that Emperor Jianwen had gone to Yunnan to defect to the Mu clan, so he left a series of activities in the Lion Mountain in Wuding County. In addition, the "Dianluo" and the "Wuding Fu Zhi" also have additional explanations for this, and the records are more detailed.
The Zhou Zhi of Songming County, Yunnan Province, also records that Emperor Jianwen once asked for food here, and even left a village called "Dezhi Village".
In addition, Guangxi's "Chronicle of Fumin County And Monuments" records that Lingzhi Temple has futon grass left by Emperor Jianwen, and after the heat and winter, this futon is still strong as ever. At the same time, the Yiwen Zhi also recorded a poem describing the futon where Emperor Jianwen sat.
Since then, there have been many records of Emperor Jianwen in the county records of Chongqing, Guangxi, and Yunnan, and according to the sequence of time recorded in these county records, it can roughly outline the traces of Emperor Jianwen's activities in the southwest direction. In the second year of Yongle, Emperor Jianwen left Yunnan for Chongqing, and then went to Dazhu County, Sichuan. Yongle returned to Bailongshan in Baoshan County, Yunnan Province in four years, Yongle went to Dazhu Shanqingli again in seven years, and soon returned to Bailongshan because local officials burned down Bailong'an, and traveled to Eryuan County, Yunnan in the seventh year of Yongle.
After that, Emperor Jianwen was even more uncertain, and his footprints spread all over Yunnan, Chongqing, Guangxi and other places, until he did not know the end, but it is also said that in the fifth year of Emperor Ming's orthodoxy, Zhu Yunjiao took the initiative to go to Beijing and was imprisoned in the palace to die well.
Through the records of the spirits of the various local states, we can clearly see that Emperor Jianwen did not really come to these places. I believe that every scholar who truly explores the real historical data will not take the events recorded in the local state records as conclusive historical materials.
Compared with the official history, the local history has more subjectivity and uncertainty, and the ancient Chinese people pay the most attention to the name of the posthumous, so almost every time the revision of the state history will be some things that have no conclusive evidence to be exaggerated and supplemented, the reader if he has seen the family tree can know that the folk revision history is not vain.
Zhu Di, the King of Yan, attacked the city of Nanjing
This is because the records of the state do not need to be reviewed extensively and many records cannot be examined, and exaggerated and unruly words will be included regardless of their authenticity if they are beneficial to themselves. Therefore, for historical events, if the main history has been recorded and the local historical materials are more detailed, then naturally the state chronicle can be cited as supplementary evidence; but if other recognized historical records have no record, the local historical records, even if they are long and extensive, as if the evidence is conclusive, is only for the sake of isolated evidence and difficult to be sure.
In addition, even if Emperor Jianwen did flee to the southwest, through the records of his whereabouts over the past ten years, where Emperor Jianwen seemed to be dressed as a monk, he was simply touring the south and playing around. After Ming Chengzu succeeded to the throne and owned the world, the imperial power was concentrated and the ears and eyes were everywhere, and Zhu Yunjiao's whereabouts were so bold, how could he escape Zhu Di's legal net! With Zhu Di's viciousness and bitterness, he would never be like Zhu Yunjiao, foolishly telling his subordinates to meet on the battlefield and not to kill, Zhu Yunjiao would definitely die if he was caught.
Therefore, the author believes that it is absolutely impossible for Zhu Yunjiao to escape from the city of Nanjing to the southwest!
Third, a bold conjecture
Later scholars often gave an example of Zhu Yunjiao's escape from the city of Nanjing when Ming Chengzu Zhu Di ordered Hu Ji to visit Emperor Jianwen. According to the History of Ming, in the twenty-first year of Yongle, Hu Qi, who had visited the whole country, brought back the exact news of Emperor Jianwen, and at this time Zhu Di was leading his army to launch the Fifth Northern Expedition and was stationed at Xuanfu. Zhu Di, who was already asleep, immediately summoned Hu Qian to see him when he heard that he had arrived, and the monarch talked until dawn, and the history books even wrote that "the doubt is the beginning of the explanation."
If you think carefully about this statement, you can see that if Zhu Di is relieved, it is nothing more than two points: one is the death of Emperor Jianwen, and the other is that Emperor Jianwen has no intention of restoring. First, if Zhu Yunjiao escaped from Nanjing, according to later records, he did not die at the time of Yongle twenty-one years, but Zhu Di had already entered his old age. The second is that Emperor Jianwen's unintentional restoration is even more absurd, even if Zhu Yunjiao has no intention of restoration, the elderly Zhu Di will never let go of Zhu Yunjiao, who is in his prime.
It is necessary to know the case of The Third Prince of Zhu during the Kangxi Dynasty, when the Qing Dynasty had been in the customs for more than sixty years, and such unfounded rumors were not spared, and the suspects were arrested and killed. During the orthodox years of the Ming Dynasty, the monk who had reached more than ninety years of age claimed to be the Jianwen Emperor, and Ming Yingzong did not hesitate to put him in prison, and even his great-grandson Ming Yingzong, who was confused for half a lifetime, could vigorously extinguish this suspicious thing.
This speculation about the extreme ignorance of politicians is nothing more than the unwarranted conjecture of a group of naïve intellectuals!
Based on the above analysis, the author provides a bold conjecture: Zhu Yunjiao was already dead and martyred as early as the destruction of Nanjing, whether he committed suicide or not, but he must have died.
In June of the fourth year of Jianwen, the Yan army went deep into the Jing Division, but most of the world was still controlled by Emperor Jianwen, Sun Yue controlled the capital Fengyang, Tie Xuan controlled the Shandong region, and Ma Meiyin "still supported the army Huaishang". In addition, before the destruction of Nanjing, under the circumstance that Xu Da's eldest son Xu Huizu led the garrison in Nanjing, Zhu Yunjiao was still able to personally kill Xu Zengshou, the second son of Xu Da, who had defected to Zhu Di, which showed that At this time, Zhu Yunzhuo did not go to the end of the mountain.
If Zhu Yunjiao was allowed to escape from the Beijing Division, even if he himself had no intention of competing for the throne, a large number of his ministers and generals who were still loyal to Emperor Jianwen would never give up, which is why even if Zhu Yunjue escaped from the Beijing Division, Zhu Di would certainly kill him and never let him wander around.
There is also a point that can be used as evidence to show that Zhu Yunjiao was indeed martyred. Four days after Zhu Di attacked the city of Nanjing, that is, on June 17, 194, Jianwen ascended the throne as emperor, and on June 20, he buried the corpse of Zhu Yunjiao (the corpse of Empress Ma of the Jianwen Emperor) with the Tianzi Ceremony. Just after The funeral of Emperor Jianwen, these generals such as Xu Huizu, Tie Xuan, Mei Yin, Sheng Yong, and others no longer resisted, and although they did not surrender, they all tied their hands and captured them.
If Emperor Jianwen had already fled, there were more than fifty people witnessing this in the main hall at that time, and Fang Xiaoru, Xu Huizu and others were present, and the news of Zhu Yunjiao's escape would surely reach the army soon. Judging from the fact that Xu Huizu, Tie Xuan, and others were unwilling to surrender to Zhu Di until the end, if they heard that Zhu Yunxiu was alive, would they let them resist? It was precisely because they received the exact news that Zhu Yunjiao was dead that they knew that the general trend had gone, and even if they resisted, it was futile.
Therefore, Zhu Yunjiao must have died in the city of Nanjing, and even if he did not commit suicide, he would be secretly executed by Zhu Di. The reason why Zhu Di was reluctant to publicize Zhu Yunxiu's death was that through the melancholy attitude recorded in the Records of Emperor Taizong, it can be seen that he was also unwilling to bear the charge of rebellion and killing his nephew, and the disappearance of Zhu Yunjiao would minimize the rejection and opposition of Jianwen Qun's subjects to his succession.