When it comes to the ancient emperors in Chinese history, perhaps the first people think of are ancient emperors such as Qin Shi Huang, Han Wudi, Tang Taizong, etc., and in a more recent era, people only notice emperors such as Genghis Khan, Ming Taizu and Kangxi Emperor.
As everyone knows, in the corner of history, there is an emperor, the country he governs, has a prosperity more prosperous than the Han and Tang Dynasties, his merits are comparable to the Qin Emperor Han Wu, even Kangxi praised his great deeds "Far away from the Han tang", admired it to the fullest, but posterity only remembers his cruelty. This emperor who has been underestimated and forgotten by people is Zhu Di, the ancestor of Ming Chengzu in the recent "Daming Style" TV series.
The image of Zhu Di in the film and television drama "Daming Style"
Speaking of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, perhaps people who do not know history do not even know who he is and what great deeds he has done, and the situation is slightly better, so he knows a "Battle of Jing", but this also leads to his first impression of rebellion and king-killing. However, for such an emperor, Kangxi gave him a lifelong evaluation of "far away Han Tang", but Kangxi's summary to Zhu Yuanzhang was only "Zhilong Tang Song".
Although Kangxi's evaluation of Zhu Yuanzhang was already quite high, why did he give Zhu Di the evaluation of "Far Away Han Tang"? You must know that the four words "Yuan mai Han Tang" are not something that any emperor can afford, unless it is an emperor throughout the ages. Even the First Emperor Kangxi of the Ages recognized him so much, so what did Zhu Di do that was worthy of being so highly regarded by Xinjue Luo Xuanye?
The Kangxi Emperor loved Xinjue Luo Xuanye
Zhu Di lived in the military camp since he was a child, and because his father fought everywhere in the war, he was like Liu Ying, the Emperor of Han Hui, from an early age. When Zhu Yuanzhang's career improved slightly, he was still just a hairy boy who was mixed up in the army with the famous generals Li Wenzhong and Lan Yu, although he could recognize a few words, he was a rough person after all compared to his eldest brother Zhu Biao.
Although Zhu Di was as turbulent and displaced as Liu Ying when he was a child, he did not have Liu Ying's good luck. After all, Liu Ying had a strong mother, Lü Hou, no matter how tyrannical Lü Hou was, she supported Liu Ying as emperor. On the other hand, Zhu Di, because the eldest brother has taken good care of their group of younger brothers since he was a child, although Zhu Yuanzhang is jealous of Zhu Biao, Zhu Di can only be a person who is fine.
Zhu Di's eldest brother Zhu Biao
After the crown prince Zhu Biao left, the second brother and the third brother also stepped down in a series of infighting, seeing that this was the closest time for him to the throne, but Zhu Yuanzhang still supported the emperor's grandson Zhu Yunjiao to the throne. As the fourth prince, he only fished one to defend Beiping for Zhu Yunjiao and deter the Mongols.
However, after Zhu Yuanzhang's death, Zhu Yunjiao killed his bullying imperial uncles, and the "captivity" of "captivity" finally forced Zhu Di to be anxious, and he could only take two hundred people from Beijing to the northeast to deceive King Ning's Duoyan Sanwei and arm himself to "get rich", which was the general experience of the Battle of Jingnan. Then Zhu Di did what many kings of China wanted to do but failed to do in more than two thousand years since the Qin Dynasty—a successful rebellion in a unified and politically stable dynasty, and became emperor.
Zhu Di Buddha-figure
Although he became emperor, Zhu Di also bore the insult of rebellion and murder. In order to stabilize the jiangshan, Zhu Di even invented the torture of the Xueshi clan (the victim was Fang Xiaoru, a loyal minister of the Ming Dynasty), which is unique in thousands of years. Therefore, Zhu Di, who started by relying on military generals, completely offended the Ming Civilian Officials Group, and even the Civilian Officials Group for thousands of years. You know, it was the civil officials who wrote history, so from now on, if Zhu Di was not too capable, perhaps he would have been hacked for a thousand years like the Sui Emperor.
Zhu Di, who was enthroned on the throne, did not feel overjoyed, and was as eager to enjoy himself as the emperors of history, on the contrary, he had a heavy responsibility in his heart. After all, although some people scolded him for killing the king, he was also a foggy water about the whereabouts of Emperor Jianwen, and in order to avoid his return to seize the throne, he had to do something deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
Forbidden city
As a king who had just put on a white hat, Zhu Di could not wait to move the capital to Beiping to stabilize the stability of northern Xinjiang. You know, after the war in Peiping at that time, except for the remaining Forbidden City, there was no infrastructure, and there was no value compared with the bustling Nanjing. But Zhu Di himself had suffered all his life, so he didn't mind this.
From then on, "the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country, and the king dies" has become the saying of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, so even if the northern cavalry invaded the Beijing Division after the change of Tumu Fort, the Jingtai Emperor also defended the Beijing Division together with Yu Qian; and the Chongzhen Emperor preferred to hang himself on the coal mountain rather than leave the capital. This is all incomparable to the later Qing Dynasty Xianfeng and Guangxu Second Emperor's integrity! The Ming Dynasty was therefore called "Gangming" by later generations, in order to show the respect of posterity for the integrity of the Ming Dynasty.
The Transformation of the Civil Fort
Although the Ming Dynasty's civil servants were not very good, its emperor had his own stubbornness, and Zhu Di began his grand cause after he was completely settled in Beijing.
Zhu Di's first thing was the Shutong River, because after the civil unrest at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and more than thirty years of Hongwu, the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, which had been built in the Yuan Dynasty, was once again silted up, and it was difficult to undertake the work of transporting grain and salt. So if the capital is moved to Beijing, then this problem cannot be ignored. Recall that the Sui Dynasty Emperor a thousand years ago led to the fall of the country because he built a grand canal, but Zhu Di quietly did it, so that the economy of the north and south was integrated, and the transportation of materials was convenient and efficient.
For famous emperors in history, most of them must make cultural achievements in order to be worthy of the throne. For example, kangxi revised a "Kangxi Dictionary" during the time, and Qianlong left the "Four Libraries of Quanshu", these books have made great contributions to the inheritance of Chinese civilization, and Yongle, as an emperor throughout the ages, naturally must be equipped with a "Yongle Canon".
The Yongle Canon was originally named "Literature Dacheng", similar to the Baidu Encyclopedia of ancient Chinese books, which includes 7,000 or 8,000 kinds of books, a total of 11,095 volumes, about 370 million words. It is precisely because of the existence of this book and the "Four Libraries complete book" that we have preserved many valuable classics after the Hundred Years' War. However, because the war was too merciless, many of the priceless books recorded in the book can only disappear into history.
Some people may say that compiling a book is just worth bragging about? First of all, the compilation of a huge work was not easy in the ancient era of inefficient transportation and backward communications, because to compile a huge book, it was necessary to take the premise of a unified and stable political situation to mobilize the country's top elites, which took many years to complete.
As far as the Yongle Canon is concerned, the editor-in-chief of this book is Yao Guangxiao, the number one meritorious hero of Jingnan, and Xie Jin, one of the three talents of the Ming Dynasty, who can be described as one of the most outstanding elites in the history of the Ming Dynasty in terms of ability and intelligence, while the other compilers add up to more than 3,000 people, and many officials of the Hanlin Academy are exhausted and disabled. How could a dynasty with little national strength and even difficulty in eating be able to compile this book? In addition, according to the "History of Ming" compiled by the Qing Dynasty, during the Ming Dynasty, there was so much grain that could not be eaten in the warehouse.
Since there were no internal worries, Zhu Di's next job was to strive to stabilize the war in all directions and to complete the peace of the Ming Dynasty. As mentioned above, in order to prevent the Mongol army from moving south, Yongle directly moved the capital to Beiping. At this time, even though the Northern Yuan had retreated to the desert, the bravery of the ancestors in the blood of the Mongols was revived on the steppe, and they still had one of the most powerful cavalry in the world at that time. Even the Duoyan Sanwei who helped Zhu Di lay down the Jiangshan were all Mongol elite horses, so the Northern Yuan at this time was still the biggest threat to the Central Plains Dynasty.
Of course, as an emperor of the ancients who had been a horseman for a lifetime, Ming Chengzu had a strategic and tactical vision no less than that of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and he also attached great importance to the development of cavalry. It should be known that the reason why the Yuan Dynasty lost to Zhu Yuanzhang at the beginning was precisely because famous generals such as Xu Da and Lan Yu were also good at using cavalry, so they could ride against the Yuan Dynasty, so the Daming cavalry with a solid foundation could still maintain its peak state during the Zhu Di period. Therefore, under the personal leadership of Zhu Di, 500,000 Daming cavalry conquered the desert north five times, killing the former grassland sky and fleeing, fragmented, and fell into civil unrest.
Some people may think that the 500,000-strong army has conquered the desert five times in a row, during which Zheng He has gone to the West, and also has to revise the "Yongle Canon". In fact, to some extent, Zhu Yuanzhang can also be regarded as a considerable contribution to Zhu Di. Because in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang wantonly brutalized corrupt officials, and the punishment was extremely perverted, so the Daming officials were killed by Zhu Yuanzhang out of a power vacuum.
Ruins of the Ming Great Wall
We know that in ancient times, an official was often a large landowner, and according to the royal family's preferential treatment of the gentry, if there were many officials, the dynasty tended to have less tax revenue. Because of Zhu Yuanzhang, after Zhu Di became emperor, the Daming landlord class did not grow, the people's tax burden was lighter, and more taxes were also able to fall into the national treasury because of the weakness of the landlord class, coupled with the dredging of the Grand Canal, so Ming Chengzu's 500,000-strong army went to Mongolia five times, and the army's grain was still continuous. Looking at other dynasties, this is something that cannot be imagined.
It was precisely because of its national strength that in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the territory of the Northern Danurgandusi encompassed the entire Outer Northeast and Sakhalin Island; south to Siam and Jiaotong, including half of the territory of present-day Vietnam and Thailand; and the west encompassed the whole of Tibet. Because the territory and strength of the Northern Yuan dynasty were still strong, xinjiang and Mongolia were still under the control of the Mongol compatriots.
Territory of Daming in the Yongle period
In 1424, Zhu Di died of illness during his sixth expedition to Mongolia and was buried in Changling, with the temple name Taizong. "Born in the fire of war, died in the journey" is the best portrayal of the life of this great king! As for the temple name of "Chengzu", it was later changed by the Jiajing Emperor. Regardless of whether Jiajing was selfish or public interested, Zhu Di's temple title of "Chengzu" was indeed well-deserved, after all, he was even more capable than his father Zhu Yuanzhang. Looking at the five thousand years of China, the founding kings are not good to the second generation, only Tang Gaozu and Ming Taizu'er!
According to the Ming Shi Chengzu Benji, Zhu Di's life was "a strategy of heroic martial arts, the same as that of Gao Zu." The Sixth Division has been out repeatedly, and the desert north is clear. By the end of the season, Wei De was appointed by the four parties to serve, and was ordered by the dynasty to pay tribute to the Thirty Kingdoms. The vastness of the territory, far away from the Han Tang Dynasty. Success is fierce, outstanding and prosperous.". It is worth noting here that according to the Chinese custom of revision history, the History of the Ming Dynasty was revised by the Qing Dynasty, that is, this is the qing Dynasty's accepted view of Ming Chengzu.
Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, he has a fierce side to the enemy, but also a side to the people like a son; he can sweep the world on horseback, seal the wolf and live in Xu, get off the horse to govern the country and the country, "go out and enter the picture"; he not only revised the "Yongle Canon", which condensed the essence of Chinese culture, but also rebuilt the Forbidden City, which represents the essence of Chinese architecture; under his leadership, the Ming Dynasty was not only the dynasty that dominated the land, but also the only dynasty in Chinese history that dominated the sea power. It was Zhu Di who created the unprecedented Yongle prosperous world.
How can an emperor with such merit not be called an emperor of eons? If you don't believe me, ask the ancient emperors of the ages, who has achieved his deeds at the same time? As the tide of history recedes, we will eventually see who is swimming naked. Zhu Di is the most underrated emperor in Chinese history!
Resources:
Ming Shi Chengzu Benji
Ming Tong Jian, Vol. XII
"Chunming Dream Yulu Volume XIII" Sun Chengze
Records of emperor Ming Dynasty, vol. 512
"Ancient Chinese Books" Xu Qian
Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty