The Ming Dynasty was a particularly magical dynasty.
The first one is that the founder Zhu Yuanzhang is very magical. Born as a poor peasant, one has no money, the other has no education, he has also been a monk, he has been a thief, and once he turns over as an emperor, he even becomes a special cow.
In addition to killing meritorious heroes and punishing them harshly, which have made posterity somewhat criticized, he is still a workaholic with his strategy, far-sightedness, offensive warfare, army management, establishment, social welfare, and education.
It's just that now when everyone mentions Zhu Yuanzhang, the first thing that comes to mind is often how he killed the heroes, such as Li Shanchang, Lan Yu, Fu Youde, zhou Dexing, and these people, none of them have a good ending.
But in addition to these people, in fact, many heroes are naturally sick and die, Zhu Yuanzhang did not "exhaust the net", every time he started to have a clear purpose, not to kill indiscriminately. Zhu Yuanzhang left a suspicious and fierce impression on posterity, more because he was very strict with people and things, and he could not rub sand in his eyes.
Yuan Kai, a close minister of Zhu Yuanzhang, was particularly aware of this. Yuan Kai, also known as Yuan Baiyan, was a native of Huating, Jiangnan (present-day Shanghai), born during the Yuan Dynasty, with ink in his belly and good at writing poetry, and became famous for a poem called "White Yan":
The old kingdom is no longer a thing, and in the old days, the king thanked him for seeing it.
There is no shadow at the beginning of the Moon Ming Han Water, and the snow full of Liang Garden has not yet returned.
The willow pond is fragrant and the pear blossom garden is cold.
The sisters of the Zhao family were jealous of each other, and Mo flew to the Zhaoyang Hall.
Before the Yuan Dynasty fell, Yuan Kai served as a government official for a while. In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang was proclaimed emperor, and the newly opened company always needed to recruit some talents, and someone recommended Yuan Kai to Zhu Yuanzhang. After Yuan Kai became the imperial historian, he witnessed Zhu Yuanzhang's killing, and he was a little unbearable.
In Yuan Kai's view, many of these ministers who were killed were wronged. For example, some people write a congratulatory table, and there is a sentence in the middle of the sentence "Born a saint, leading for the people", and this "then" word violates Zhu Yuanzhang's taboo "thief" sound, and then it is whimpering.
But he couldn't always jump in front of Zhu Yuanzhang and say, "Emperor, you can't kill people so casually anymore!" "The one who whines like that should be him." What to do? Yuan Kai pondered a solution, and he said to Zhu Yuanzhang:
"Emperor, the cultural level of these meritorious warriors is worrying, how can they do things for you well?" Besides, I made up my mind tomorrow, the etiquette system can not be less, these people are not familiar with etiquette, and then lose your face. Why don't you give them a study class and tell them to learn the etiquette of the king? ”
——“
The generals practiced military affairs, and did not know the etiquette of the monarchs, so please go through the ancient people in the governor's mansion and order the warriors to go to the capital hall to listen to the lectures.
”
Zhu Yuanzhang listened, this idea was good, and approved it. In fact, Yuan Kai could not stop the emperor from killing people, but could only find a way to make these meritorious warriors learn more things, don't say the wrong words and write wrong words without moving, and then anger Zhu Yuanzhang to lose his head, "The way of the whole body of the Shu de Bao clan", which is considered to be well-intentioned.
The emperor was the worst boss in the world, and Yuan Kai himself was tested by Zhu Yuanzhang, which was very thrilling.
It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang looked up to his eldest son, Zhu Biao, the Prince of Yiwen. Zhu Biao and his old father have different personalities, one is cruel, one is benevolent, Zhu Yuanzhang let Zhu Biao "practice state affairs", "every time there is a big prison, pay for it", sometimes see Zhu Yuanzhang is cruel, Zhu Biao will go around from it, try to reduce people's guilt.
Once, Zhu Yuanzhang reviewed a list of convicted prisoners, and after approving the sentencing, asked someone to send the information to his son to see, which was equivalent to a review. Zhu Biao felt that the sentence was a bit heavy after reading it, so he reduced it somewhat, and Zhu Yuanzhang knew that his son was benevolent and was not at all surprised that he did so.
But he couldn't help but wonder who this son really looked like! Thinking about it, he asked Yuan Kai, "You said that you want severe punishment, but the prince wants to forgive, is my approach right, or is the prince's approach right?" ”
Yuan Kai's heart jumped, one is the current emperor, one is a future emperor, this is not easy to pick up. So he replied slowly, "
The righteousness of His Majesty's Law, the kindness of the Heart of the Eastern Palace.
According to common sense, these 10 words are wonderful, neither the current emperor nor the future emperor, and by the way, they both are exaggerated.
Unexpectedly, these 10 words made Yuan Kai almost suffer a catastrophe. Zhu Yuanzhang heard this watertight answer and snorted coldly: "Dealing with such ambiguous words shows that the heart is old." ”
Yuan Kaixin said that the dish was broken, and the emperor did not play his cards according to the routine. Sure enough, after That, Zhu Yuanzhang often scolded him in the court as "a person with two ends"! Yuan Kai pondered bitterly, the emperor was already tired of himself, how could he escape the disaster and avoid the separation of body and head?
This time, Yuan Kai was smarter, he knew that he could not remedy anything he said, so he simply pretended to be crazy, and Zhu Yuanzhang was a little unconvinced: A good person says that crazy is crazy? Send people to see the truth or false, come people with carpenter drills to greet Yuan Kai, see Yuan Kai does not even know the pain, stupid and stupid, go back to report Zhu Yuanzhang, saying that this person is really crazy.
Since then, Yuan Kai has been able to return to his hometown and spend the rest of his life in peace. Although he pretended to be crazy and stupid and suffered a lot, he saved his life. "Accompanying the king is like accompanying the tiger", it is not easy to make a living under the hands of a boss like Zhu Yuanzhang, Yuan Kai is also a rare smart person, this art of speaking, if it is not met with Zhu Yuanzhang, changing posts should be very popular.