Zhu Di's "five out of the desert north, three ploughs of the court" was mighty, but for his own selfishness, he gave up the land under the jurisdiction of the Daning XingduSi to Wuliangha, which fundamentally disintegrated the defense system of northern Xinjiang built by Zhu Yuanzhang and laid a serious hidden danger for the security of the ming empire in the future.
That has to start when he rebelled. Zhu Di was a meticulous man, and when he started his army, he looked forward and backward, not only carefully considering the decision to rebel, but even considering whether Peiping would be taken advantage of as his rear after fighting the government army in the south.
At that time, Zhu Quan, the King of Ning, who was enfeoffed in Daning, had a heavy army and was second only to himself in strength. In case Zhu Quan had the heart of "the sandpiper and the clams hold each other, and the fishermen gained profits", then the enemy would be attacked on his stomach and back.
Zhu Di thought left and right, and came up with a ruthless plan, not only teaching Zhu Quan not to stab a knife in the back, but also making daning's soldiers for his own use, which would greatly enhance his military strength, the so-called "killing two birds with one stone."
In order to achieve this goal, Zhu Di formed a secret agreement with Daning's Wuliangha Sanwei, using the latter's 6,000 Mongol cavalry to coerce Zhu Quan into the pass.
So, on what favorable terms did Zhu Di make the Wuliangha tribe agree to cooperate with him? The "History of Ming" is written in black and white, and the record is very clear: "The king of Nanchang, the king of Ningning, moved to Baoding, and then cut off the three guards of Daning to pay for the previous labor." ”
That is, the fiefdom of king Ning was changed to Nanchang, the seat of the Capital Division of Daning was moved to Baoding in Guannei, and all the land under the jurisdiction of Daning was ceded to Wuliangha Sanwei. These three "rewards", after Zhu Di took the throne, were indeed cashed in one by one.
If such an incident of luring wolves into the house and cutting up land for glory were left in modern times, Zhu Di would surely end up with the infamy of being a "traitor."
Even ordinary people rarely know that he has such a stain, only because the Wuliangha tribe is relatively weak and not a fierce enemy, if Wuliangha is similar to the Jurchens in the Liao State or the late Ming Dynasty in the Song Dynasty, Zhu Di is doomed to be infamous.
However, the evil points of Zhu Di's deeds are, first, that although Wuliangha is not enough to constitute a major disaster for the Ming Empire, the nature of this matter is no different from the "traitor" in history; second, Zhu Di betrayed the interests of the state purely out of personal need to seize power; third, he migrated the king of Ning to Nanchang and the capital of Daning to Baoding, gave up the three guards of Daning to foreign nationalities, and tore a large opening in the defensive line from the north to the northeast of Beijing, and the consequences were endless.
Gu Yanwu's monumental work, The Book of The Diseases of the Tianxia County, is an extremely important work for the study of Ming history. He has a particularly deep examination of the geography of the military, and all the situations in various localities, dangerous points, guardhouses, castles, customs villages, islands and reefs, beacons, militia, patrol divisions, horse administration, grasslands, troop allocation, grain and grass supply, tuntian, etc., are all described in detail.
When talking about the significance of Daning to the northeast border defense of the Ming Dynasty, Gu Yanwu said:
Daning, a hundred miles north of Juzunhua, along the mountains and seas to catch the monolithic stone (that is, the Great Wall Dushikou, in the north of present-day Chicheng County, Hebei, is an important pass of the Ming Great Wall in Xuanfu Town), all beyond the wall. Dushi and Shanhai are seven hundred miles away from Beijing, which is equal to Daning. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (referring to the early years of the Ming Dynasty), the three kings of Jiangu, Ning, and Liao... To the northeast of ping fan, it is a deep calculation.
The military geography of Daning was reflected in the fact that it could simultaneously suppress the Mongols and Jurchens, and Zhu Di's retreat of Daning Xingdusi was tantamount to completely exposing the Ming Kingdom from the front, and the foreign Kou could drive south at any time to invade.
Therefore, "Orthodox self-righteousness, Jiajing Gengji, and all enemy prisoners have come from here." "Not only was it related to the intrusion of Mongol tribes in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, but what was particularly tragic was that the rise of the Jurchens in the northeast of the late Ming Dynasty until it led to the fall of the Ming Dynasty was also directly related to the emptiness of the defense of this area.
After Ming's death, Fu Weilin's Book of Ming pointed the spearhead directly at Zhu Di:
Looking back on the past, would you rather sigh? In the case of thousands of miles of strict frontiers, once the waves sink the land and the sea, then the Secret Play of the Border Ministers in the Ming Dynasty, there are those who cannot bear to speak. And trace its beginning, it is better not to sin and return!
Was Zhu Di aware of the potential danger of cutting off Daning? Absolutely aware.
The flashy five northern expeditions were probably set up to cover up the fact that the abandonment of Daning had caused a lack of border defense, as if patting his chest and saying: You Shuo personally sat in Beijing and consulted them from time to time, and the mere "Hu Yu" was not worried enough.
It may also be that in his mind, the real big problem is a potential challenger like King Ning who has a heavy army, as for the Han Ling "Zhuyi", as long as he engages in "royal conquest" from time to time, that is, enough to suppress.
