The Ming Dynasty was a fascinating and enigmatic dynasty in Chinese history.
In the Ariake Generation, there were many events that were unsolved mysteries for people at that time and now, the most famous of which are known by academics as the "Four Mysteries of the Ming Dynasty": the mystery of the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen; the red pill case and the death of Ming Guangzong; the mystery of the whereabouts of the original copy of the Yongle Canon and the mystery of the explosion of Wang Gongchang.
In the first place is the mystery of the whereabouts of The Second Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Jianwen.
According to the records of the Ming Dynasty, in June of the fourth year of Jianwen, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty who was then the King of Yan, won the Battle of Jingnan and led his army to attack the capital Nanjing, while Emperor Jianwen disappeared in the raging fire in the imperial palace, and his whereabouts are unknown.
According to ming officials, Emperor Jianwen and his empress Ma Shi, crown prince Zhu Wenkui, set themselves on fire and died. However, judging from the subsequent historical developments, both the Yongle Emperor himself and the scholars and historians of later generations were skeptical of this statement.
The Yongle Emperor once sent two men and horses to find the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen.
One of these was Zheng He, who led his fleet south to the West several times, and it is said that one of his tasks was to find Emperor Jianwen who might flee to sea.
On the other hand, the Yongle Emperor sent his close subordinate Hu Qi (胡濙) to various places in search of immortals to track down the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen.
Later generations of scholars and historians have put forward many different accounts of the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen. Some say that after Emperor Jianwen escaped from the palace, he became a monk; some say that Emperor Jianwen did burn himself to death in the fire of the palace; some say that after Emperor Jianwen escaped from the palace, he did not become a monk, but became a Taoist.
These statements have their own arguments, and it is difficult to judge whether they are right or wrong.
First of all, it was Hu Qi's people and horses who searched for the process and results of Emperor Jianwen.
From the fifth year of Yongle (1407) onwards, Hu Was secretly visited by Emperor Jianwen on the orders of Zhu Di for 14 consecutive years. Wherever he went, he occasionally reported folk secrets to Zhu Di. When his mother died, he asked to go back to guard the funeral, but Zhu Di did not allow it, and promoted him to the position of Left Attendant of the Rebbe. In the seventeenth year of Yongle (1419), Hu Qi again toured the provinces and prefectures of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hu, and Xiangzhou, and visited again. In the twenty-first year of Yongle (1423), he returned to the imperial court and immediately rushed to Xuanfu to meet Zhu Di. At that time, Zhu Di was already asleep, and when he heard that Hu Hao had arrived, he immediately got up and summoned him. Hu Qian told Zhu Di all he had learned, and did not come out until he missed four drums.
The history books also clearly state that after this conversation, Zhu Di's doubts about the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen disappeared. There is no doubt that Hu Qi found out the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, and Zhu Di was also clear about the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, but he did not say it, and the minister did not ask, and everyone tacitly agreed.
Although we do not know what Hu Said to Zhu Di, we can make some cautious speculations about the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen and the contents of Hu's report from another account.
During the Ming Dynasty, our neighbor Korea was the reign of the Lee Dynasty, which was a vassal state of the Ming Dynasty, and they often sent envoys to visit the Ming Dynasty, and they recorded some of the events that happened in the Ming Dynasty, which were included in the Korean history book "Records of the Lee Dynasty".
During the reign of Ming Yingzong, the sixth emperor of the Ming Dynasty, a major event occurred in the Li Dynasty.
The reigning monarch of Korea at that time was Emperor Duanzong of Joseon, Lee Hong-wei, a relatively soft king who had a fairly strong uncle, Li Yao, the Prince of Shouyang. How, is it a bit similar to the relationship between the Jianwen Emperor and the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty? What happened later in Korea was the same as in the Ming Dynasty, when the Prince of Shouyang, Li Yao, launched the Jing Dynasty and seized real power in the imperial government, and two years later Li Hongwei was forced to sit in Zen at Li Yao, and although he was revered as the King of Taishang, he was tantamount to house arrest.
A year later, some ministers who were dissatisfied with Li Yu secretly conspired to launch a coup d'état to welcome Emperor Duanzong's restoration, but the matter leaked out, and Li Yu executed all these ministers, and soon after, Emperor Duanzong Li Hongwei was also deposed as king of Taishang, demoted to Lushan Jun, exiled to Gangwon Province, and was killed shortly after.
Li Yan officially became the king of Joseon, and according to international practice, he sent envoys to the Ming Dynasty to request the canonization of Emperor Ming. At that time, the minister of ceremonies asked the Korean envoys this question: "Where did your previous king Duanzong go?" "
The Korean envoy's answer was: "King Duanzong went away in search of Emperor Jianwen and rode on the white clouds." "
According to the Records of the Li Dynasty, hearing this answer, neither Emperor Ming Yingzong nor the ministers of the Ministry of Rites dared to ask anything more.
I am afraid that there are two reasons why they dare not ask more, one is that the Korean envoys are obviously deceiving Ming officials, and if the Ming Dynasty approves of Duanzong's legal system, then it means that they oppose Li Yan's behavior of stealing the throne of his nephew.
Second, the Korean envoys said that Duanzong had gone to look for Emperor Jianwen, and according to the official Ming Dynasty, Emperor Jianwen had already set himself on fire and died, that is to say, Duanzong was killed by his uncle, and the Ming Dynasty, as the suzerainty of Korea, undoubtedly could not support such an act. And there is another possibility, Emperor Jianwen did not die, but fled into seclusion, that is to say, although Li Yan did not take the throne of his nephew without righteousness, but like the Yongle Emperor at that time, he did not harm his nephew and let him keep his life alive.
Of course, this was what the Ming Dynasty was willing to accept, so Emperor Ming Yingzong and the Minister of Ceremonies did not pursue the matter and recognized the legitimacy of Li Yan's throne.
Thinking back to how Hu Xian had been looking for Emperor Jianwen for so many years and had reported to Emperor Yongle for so long, if Emperor Jianwen was really sure that he had been burned in the fire of the palace, he would not need to go through so much trouble to reach a conclusion in any case.