As the saying goes, "one dynasty and one courtier", in the feudal dynasties in ancient history, after each new emperor ascended the throne, the courtiers of the former dynasty faced the embarrassing situation of standing on the sidelines, not to mention the imperial thrones that were seized through the coup and the ministers who were originally loyal to the previous dynasty.
During the Ming Dynasty, a rebellion broke out between Wang Ye's uncle and his nephew Emperor, and he overthrew his nephew Emperor and made himself the new emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who was the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Prince of Yan, zhu di, the Prince of Yan.
After Emperor Jianwen ascended the throne, he implemented a policy of cutting off the domain. Zhu Di launched the "Battle of Jingnan" in the name of Fengtian Jingnan and raised an army to attack Emperor Jianwen. In the fourth year of Jianwen (1402), he attacked Nanjing, officially ascended the throne, and became the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, which was for Ming Chengzu.
It should be known that after Zhu Di raised an army, Emperor Jianwen had a large group of loyal and loyal military generals around him, and they fought to the death with Zhu Di in order to defend Emperor Jianwen's orthodox dynasty.
Unfortunately, in the end, it was the courtier Zhu Di, the southern generals who were loyal to Emperor Jianwen, who were in a post-war situation as a post-mortem statement put it:
"The Eight Precepts of the Pig Look in the Mirror - Inside and Out Are Not Human"
Let's start with a brief account of the outcome of the representative generals of the Confederate Army.
Geng Bingwen, one of the founding heroes of the Ming Dynasty, was also one of the few remaining military generals after Zhu Yuanzhang's massacre, and after Zhu Di launched the "Battle of Jingnan", Geng Bingwen was the first general of the Southern Army to go north to resist the Yan army.
According to the Zhengshi records, Geng Bingwen returned to Nanjing to stay at home after the defeat of Zhending (真定, in modern Zhengding, Hebei). After Zhu Di ascended the throne, the chancellor impeached Geng Bingwen for daring to act on the grounds that the clothes in his home had ornaments such as dragons and phoenixes for the royal family, and this veteran officer committed suicide in fear after hearing the news.
But there is also another theory, saying that Geng Bingwenzhan died in Zhending, and Emperor Jianwen was deeply saddened and buried him thickly. When Zhu Di claimed that the empress dowager thought that the standard of his funeral was too high and violated the etiquette system, he ordered his tomb to be destroyed.
Li Jinglong, the founding general and son of Li Wenzhong the Duke of Cao, after the defeat of Geng Bingwen, Li Jinglong became the main general of the Southern Army, but unexpectedly, this "noble prince, who did not know the soldiers, but had great self-respect", was dismissed by Emperor Jianwen after a series of defeats in the battle with the Yan army.
Later, when the Yan army crossed the Yangtze River and entered the Jinchuan Gate in Nanjing, Li Jinglong, who was assisting Zhu Sui, the king of Gu, in the task of defending the city, saw the wind and turned the helm, and even opened the door to surrender.
After Zhu Di ascended the throne, Li Jinglong retained his original position because of his meritorious service in supporting the new monarch. However, Li Jinglong did not hesitate to continue to actively participate in the major affairs of the DPRK and China, which not only caused dissatisfaction among the generals under the former King of Yan, but also turned the attention of his former colleagues in Nanjing, and was soon impeached by a number of ministers.
Believing that this man had lost his reputation and had lost his use value, Zhu Di cut his official title and put him under house arrest. Li Jinglong once went on a hunger strike, but did not starve to death, and did not die until the last year of Yongle.
Guo Ying and Geng Bingwen were also founding heroes, and he followed Geng Bingwen and Li Jinglong to fight Zhu Di, which also ended in failure. However, he was luckier than Geng Bingwen, and after Zhu Di seized the throne, he did not settle accounts with Guo Ying, who was idle at home, so he was able to die well, and Yongle died of illness at the age of sixty-seven in the first year.
After Li Jinglong, sheng yong, the main general who commanded the southern army, also had a miserable fate, he defeated the Yan army many times on the front line, and killed several generals of the Yan army (the most famous of which was Zhang Yu), but unfortunately failed to stop the Yan army's southward trend in the end.
After Zhu Di occupied Nanjing, the dust settled, and those southern troops loyal to Emperor Jianwen gave up resistance. Sheng Yong saw that the general situation had gone, so he had no choice but to declare his surrender and guard Huai'an on Zhu Di's orders. In the same year that Zhu Di ascended the throne, Sheng Yong resigned and returned home.
Unexpectedly, some ministers in the new dynasty impeached Sheng Yong with resentment and different plans, and Sheng Yong was helpless and committed suicide in the first year of Yongle (1403).
At that time, in addition to Geng Bingwen, there were also several generals who had fought with Zhu Yuanzhang, such as Gu Cheng, Ping An and He Fu.
Gu Cheng joined the army before Zhu Yuanzhang crossed the river, and because of his superior arm strength and good horsemanship, he became Zhu Yuanzhang's personal soldier in front of the tent, and made a career in this way. Before becoming a prisoner of the Yan army under Zhending City, he had become the governor of the left army.
Zhu Di personally untied the veteran and claimed
"God gave you a helping hand"
and sent him to Beiping to assist his son Zhu Gaozi in defending the city. Gu Cheng was given the title of Marquis of Zhenyuan after the end of the Jingnan War.
Gu Cheng left guizhou during the Yongle years, repeatedly quelled rebellions in Bozhou and Duyun, and was later recalled to Beijing to assist the crown prince during Zhu Di's expedition to Mongolia. In the twelfth year of Ming Yongle (1414), Gu Cheng died at the age of 85, and after his death, he was posthumously awarded the title of Duke of Xia, with the nickname "Wuyi". However, Zhengshi's evaluation of him is "honor is not enough to be humiliated", which contains the meaning of irony for his apostasy.
When Sheng Yong's deputy Ping'an also came from the Meritorious Family, his father was a veteran soldier who followed Zhu Yuanzhang's uprising and was killed in the battle against Yuan Dadu. After losing his father in Peace, he was adopted by Zhu Yuanzhang as an adopted son, and because he was born with strong martial arts and could lift hundreds of pounds, he was known in the army for his bravery and good fighting.
He had followed Zhu Di out to conquer the Northern Yuan, and had a certain understanding of Zhu Di, so he was used by Emperor Jianwen after the outbreak of the Jingnan War and became the vanguard of the Southern Army.
When Zhu Di fought against the Southern Army, he personally charged into the battlefield many times, and was invincible, but he was defeated at the hands of Sheng Yong and Ping An. In particular, at the Battle of Tuohe, Ping'an commanded his troops to shoot archers at Zhu Di in unison, causing the flag around Zhu Di to be filled with arrows like hedgehog hair.
Zhu Di, who escaped death after the war, sent people to send Wang Qi back to Beiping, and instructed Zhu Gaozi to keep it properly in the palace, so as to show that future generations will not forget the difficulties of their predecessors in starting a business. There were also several Yan generals who died at the hands of Ping'an (the most famous of whom was Wang Zhen).
When Ping An became a prisoner in the Decisive Battle of Lingbi, the Yan army cheered from top to bottom, and the generals competed to kill Ping An in front of Zhu Di.
However, Zhu Di took the high posture of recognizing heroes and heavy heroes, leaving a peaceful life and sending him back to Beiping. After the end of the Jingnan War, Ping'an served in Beiping as a military envoy to the capital and jinshi, the governor of houfu.
In the seventh year after Zhu Di ascended the throne, he went north to inspect Peiping, and one day when he saw Ping'an's name while reading the song, he casually said a word to the left and right
"Is Peace still alive?"
Who would have guessed that a simple question would be passed on ten or ten times a hundred times, and when it reached the ears of Peace, it would cause him tremendous psychological pressure, and soon he would commit suicide out of fear and uneasiness.
He Fu, a general of the Southern Army who had fought with Sheng Yong and Ping'an, was also a general who followed Zhu Yuanzhang to fight the world, and one of his impressive battles in the Jingnan War was to fight the Yan army in Lingbi, and finally broke through and fled.
After Zhu Di ascended the throne, he believed that He Fu had been in the battlefield for a long time and knew about military affairs, and successively let his towns guard Ningxia, Gansu and other places. During the Yongle period, when Zhu Di was invading Mongolia in the north, he also ordered He Fu to accompany him. He Fu violated Zhu Di's combat arrangements several times during the Northern Expedition, and was quickly displeased by the impeachment of the chancellor, and he was uneasy after the return of the banshi to the dynasty, and finally hanged himself.
Among the generals of the Southern Army, the more positive figure was Xu Da's eldest son Xu Huizu, who not only led his troops to fight against the Yan army, but also did not welcome Zhu Di who entered Nanjing after the city was destroyed, but sat alone in his father's ancestral hall and refused to come out.
Even though Zhu Di was furious, he considered that Xu Huizu's father was the first hero of the founding of the Ming Dynasty and his brother-in-law (Xu Da's daughter was Zhu Di's wife), so he opened his net and only stripped him of his title and imprisoned him in the mansion. Xu Huizu fell ill and died five years later.
In contrast, the generals of the Southern Army under Emperor Jianwen were not only dwarfed by the generals of the Yan Army on the battlefield, but also their overall performance after surrendering to Zhu Di was not comparable to that of the main civil servants who assisted Emperor Jianwen.
After Zhu Di replaced Emperor Jianwen as Emperor Daming, the courtiers who had been Emperor Jianwen fought fiercely.
We all know that after Zhu Di took the throne, he asked the great Confucian Fang Xiaoru to draft an announcement of his accession to the throne for him, and Fang Xiaoru, who was orthodox in thought and loyal to the former emperor, resolutely refused, and Zhu Di, in a fit of rage, shouted that if he did not surrender, he would curse the Nine Tribes, and Fang Xiaoru was even tougher, and answered what about the Ten Tribes, and as a result, more than eight hundred people from the Ten Tribes associated with Fang Xiaoru were killed.
There was also an iron-boned Wenchen Tiexuan, who preferred to die rather than submit to Zhu Di, and finally died of torture at the age of 37.
As for the "traitorous ministers" Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng who were attacked by Zhu Di in the name of "the side of the Qing Emperor", their bones were very hard, and even if they became prisoners of the order after the city was destroyed, they would not bend to death.
Wen Chen, who worked with Tie Xuan, also refused to cooperate with the new dynasty when the Yan army entered the Jinchuan Gate in Nanjing, and died of observance of the festival.
Although history was written by the victors, and although history was "kings and kings and defeated", the courtiers during the Jianwen Emperor period adhered to the confucian traditional theory of the program and refused to support the rebellious Zhu Di.
Similarly, after Zhu Di raised an army, there was not a single influential Confucian among his staff, but rather monks, Taoists, and other outsiders.
Fortunately, Zhu Di is also a generation of male lords,
"Ming Chengzu was a great talent, and after inheriting Emperor Gao, the world was initially determined, the national strength was great, and the Naisi Yang Weide was outside the territory, which was similar to the era of Han Xiaowu (the nickname of Emperor Wu of Han) and Emperor Taizong of Tang."
(Liang Qichao).
This article refers to: "Daming God of War Spectrum"