In Chinese history, there are very few emperors who can start from scratch, and Zhu Yuanzhang is one of the lucky ones. In the peasant revolt at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang relied not only on his own strength, but also on his own civilian and military generals. After the establishment of the Ming Empire, Zhu Yuanzhang was canonized as a thirty-six meritorious heroes in Nanjing, and gave each of them a gold medal (iron coupon) for avoiding death, including Li Shanchang, Tang He, Xu Da and others.
However, the problem is that Zhu Yuanzhang is also a very suspicious person. Since his nephew Zhu Youwen betrayed him, Zhu Yuanzhang's psychology has a serious trust defect, this trust defect once amplified by some unintentional or intentional time, will cause a "river of blood" scene, the so-called "wrath of the son of heaven" to make tens of thousands of people fall to the ground is not a joke. To say that the most representative of these cases is undoubtedly the "Hu Weiyong" case.
As we all know, in the power struggle at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Li Shanchang's "Huaixi faction" and Liu Bowen's "Zhejiang Eastern faction" had a fierce conflict, and the final result was that Liu Ji was forced to retire, and Li Shanchang also retreated in a hurry and chose to withdraw from the government and wanted to return home to spend his old age. The successor Hu Weiyong was bold and arrogant, which aroused Zhu Yuanzhang's disgust and dissatisfaction, and under secret trepidation, Hu Weiyong decided to pull all the ministers of the whole dynasty into the water.
Therefore, at this time, Hu Weiyong co-opted Li Shanchang's relative Li Cunyi and asked him to lobby Li Shanchang. At the beginning, Li Shanchang naturally refused, because he knew better than anyone what was terrible about Zhu Yuanzhang. But later, he couldn't resist the temptation of Houlu, a high-ranking official of Hu Weiyong, but it was inconvenient for him to express his position, so he said this sentence: "I am old, you can do whatever you want!"
A few months later, Hu Weiyong's conspiracy was exposed, and Zhu Yuanzhang naturally calculated the old account of Hu Weiyong, the new account of the jumping beam clown, and not only destroyed Hu Weiyong's nine clans, but also took the opportunity to cancel the post of prime minister. With the expansion of the liquidation behavior, Li Shanchang's sentence "Ru waits for himself" has become ironclad evidence of the conspiracy and rebellion, and Li Shanchang hurriedly found the death-free gold medal that Zhu Yuanzhang gave him that year, hoping to let Zhu Yuanzhang spare his life.
However, Zhu Yuanzhang smiled and said to Li Shanchang, "Have you forgotten the 7 words on the gold medal of avoidance of death?" Li Shanchang reacted to this and looked at the back of the deathless gold medal, only to find that there were 7 words engraved on it: "Avoid death, except for plotting against the great rebellion." After Li Shanchang read it, his eyes suddenly went black: When it is over, his reputation and family business will be destroyed. In the end, Zhu Yuanzhang exterminated more than 70 members of Li Shanchang's family, and in a sense, the significance and value of the Ming Dynasty Hongwu I Death-Free Gold Medal were more like a one-way ticket to hell.