In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, died, leaving him with the posthumous order to establish the emperor's eldest grandson Zhu Yunjiao as emperor, known as Emperor Jianwen in history. After Emperor Jianwen ascended the throne, in order to prevent the kings from rebelling, he planned to take back the power of the kings, but unexpectedly, Zhu Di, the king of Yan, led an army to resist, and even launched the Battle of Jingnan under the banner of the Qing Emperor's side and Jingguonan.
From the first year of Jianwen (1399) to the fourth year of Jianwen (1402), the four-year Battle of Jingnan finally ended with the army led by Zhu Di, the King of Yan, to invade Nanjing, but when the army entered the city of Nanjing, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao mysteriously disappeared.
Historically, there have been doubts about the disappearance of the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, and many theories have arisen on this issue. One theory is that Zhu Di, the King of Yan, set himself on fire and died after he invaded the city of Nanjing.
There is also a saying that Zhu Yunjiao saw that he could not resist Zhu Di, so he set himself on fire and faked death, fled the palace, and then shaved his family to travel around the world, and even Zhu Di sent Zheng He to the West to search for Emperor Jianwen.
There is no historically accurate answer to this question, but self-immolation and death are more convincing. Because after Ming Chengzu Zhu Di ascended the throne, several sons of Zhu Biao, the prince of Yiwen, either died in a fire or died suddenly. It is not difficult to imagine that this may be Zhu Di's means.
And all this must start from Zhu Biao, the prince of Yiwen, who is the eldest son of Zhu Yuanzhang, the grandfather of the Ming Dynasty, and the most powerful prince in history. Those who are familiar with Zhu Yuanzhang may know that Zhu Yuanzhang has a strong desire to control power and has many suspicions about people. However, he was able to give Zhu Biao enough trust and great power, which showed that Zhu Yuanzhang had high hopes for the crown prince Zhu Biao.
Unfortunately, in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu (1392), the crown prince Zhu Biao died at the age of thirty-eight.
Zhu Biao had two wives in his lifetime, one was the daughter of Chang Yuchun, the founding general of the Ming Dynasty, and when the two were not yet born, they were set by Zhu Yuanzhang and Chang Yuchun as dolls. The second was Lü Shi, the daughter of Lü Ben, the secretary of the Taichang Temple, and was made a concubine by the crown prince Zhu Biaona.
The two wives bore Zhu Biao a total of five sons and four daughters, of whom the eldest son Zhu Xiongying and the third son Zhu Yunxi were born to the concubine Chang Shi, and the second son Zhu Yunxi, the fourth son Zhu Yunxi, and the fifth son Zhu Yunxi.
In ancient times, the succession to the throne was honored with the primogeniture system, so Zhu Xiongying, as the eldest son of the concubine, and his mother was born after the shogun, so he was highly expected by Zhu Yuanzhang from an early age, and planned to train him as a successor. Unfortunately, Zhu Xiongying died when he was eight years old.
In the eleventh year of Hongwu (1378), Chang died of illness after giving birth to Zhu Biao's third son, Zhu Yunxi, so Lü Shi, who was a concubine, became a crown princess, and because of Zhu Xiongying's premature death, Zhu Yunjiao was also regarded as the eldest grandson of Zhu Yuanzhang.
Due to the early death of the crown prince Zhu Biao, the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang could only re-choose the heir between his son and grandson, because Zhu Yunjiao was generous and benevolent, and was very similar to his father Zhu Biao, so Zhu Yuanzhang decided to skip his son and make his eldest grandson Zhu Yunjiao the crown prince.
When Zhu Yunjiao became the emperor's grandson, he began to worry about the kings supporting the army and wanting to reduce the power of the king of the domain. Zhu Yuanzhang once said to Zhu Yunjiao: "Shuo will entrust the great task of defending against Hu Yu to the kings, so that the border will not be chaotic and leave you with peace." Zhu Yunjiao asked, "Hu Yu is unstable, so the kings are not defensive, so if the kings are restless, then who will resist?" ”
Zhu Yuanzhang was silent after hearing this, so he asked Zhu Yunjiao's opinion, and Zhu Yunjiao said that he should first be gentle and inspired, and if not, then take back their power, and if not, then send troops to requisition.
Therefore, after the death of The Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao succeeded to the throne, and the first thing he did was to take back the power of the princes of the clans, which also caused the dissatisfaction of Zhu Di, the king of Yan, and then launched the Battle of Jingnan, which was "difficult for the Qing Emperor and the Jing Dynasty".
When Zhu Di led his army into the city of Nanjing, he sent someone to take Zhu Yunjiao's biological mother Lü Shi to the military camp, and in the face of his sister-in-law, Zhu Di claimed that he was trying to save the Daming River and eliminate the traitors around Zhu Yunjiao.
And when he personally escorted Lü Shi back to the palace, the news of Zhu Yunjiao's self-immolation came out, and at the same time, Empress Ma and her eldest son Zhu Wenkui also set themselves on fire, and Zhu Di cried at Lü Shi and said: "Idiot, I am your uncle, how can I harm you?" ”
After the situation subsided, Lü Shi announced to the world as empress dowager, condemning his son Zhu Yunjiao for favoring traitors and causing the country to fall into chaos, and now that Emperor Jianwen had set himself on fire and died, the country could not be without a monarch for a day, and Zhu Di, the king of Yan, was forced to raise an army in order to defend Daming Jiangshan, and he was supposed to inherit the throne.
In the fourth year of Jianwen (1402), Zhu Di, the King of Yan, ascended the throne as Ming Chengzu, and the era name was changed from Jianwen to Yongle.
When Zhu Yunjiao succeeded to the throne, he posthumously honored his father Zhu Biao as Emperor Kangxiao and the temple name was Ming Xingzong, but after Zhu Di succeeded to the throne, because there could not be two emperors in the same period, Zhu Di withdrew the imperial title of his eldest brother Zhu Biao and restored him to Prince Yiwen, and lü shi, who was the empress dowager, was naturally demoted to crown princess.
Later, like other kings in history, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di also began to eliminate the existence that threatened his rule.
At this time, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao had already set himself on fire and died, and Zhu Di set his sights on the remaining three nephews. Zhu Yunjiao had made his three younger brothers princes during his reign, but now that Zhu Di had succeeded to the throne, even his father had been demoted to prince, and his sons naturally could not avoid being demoted to the rank of prince.
The third elder Zhu Yunxi was demoted from King Wu to King Guangze, and the fief was changed to Zhangzhou, Fujian.
The fourth elder Zhu Yunxi was changed from King Heng to King Huai'en, and the fief was changed to Jianchang, Liaoning.
The youngest, Zhu Yunxi, was demoted from King Xu to King of Ouning, and he was the most miserable, not even having a fief.
After the three brothers were demoted, they had to go to their respective fiefdoms, but Zhu Di gave the two nephews a fief, one in the north and the other in the north, perhaps deliberately separating the two brothers to prevent the two from rebelling together in the future. Zhu Yunxi, who had no fiefdom, took his mother with him to guard the tomb for his father Zhu Biao under Zhu Di's will.
However, just after sending the two nephews to the fiefdom, Zhu Di regretted it, and he felt that sending the two too far was not conducive to his control, so as soon as the two arrived at the fiefdom, they received Zhu Di's will to summon them back to Beijing.
The two complained about this, but they could not resist the will, so they set off to return to the capital, and inevitably made a few complaints on the way, but they did not expect that this matter was known to Zhu Di. Therefore, Zhu Di used the excuse that the two were not grateful but complained, and stripped the two of them of their clan membership, reduced them to shuren, and lived in Zhu Yuanzhang's hometown of Fengyang for generations.
The two who were demoted to shuren did not end up in Fengyang, Zhu Yunxi had been depressed and depressed after arriving in Fengyang, and died inexplicably soon after, and there was no record of the cause of death in history, and he did not even leave a single heir at the age of twenty-nine.
In the fifteenth year of Yongle (1417), Zhu Yuanzhang's two sons, Zhu Sui the Prince of Gu and Zhu Chun the Prince of Shu, plotted a rebellion to overthrow Zhu Di and establish Zhu Yunxi as emperor, but the plot failed before the Shu king Zhu Chun took the initiative to expose zhu Di. Because of this incident, Zhu Di became suspicious of Zhu Yunxi, and in this year Zhu Yunxi also died inexplicably. Zhu Yunxi was thirty-nine years old when he died, which was the longest-lived of Zhu Biao's sons.
Although Zhu Biao's youngest son, Zhu Yunxi, lived with his mother in his father's mausoleum, when he was sixteen years old, the house inexplicably caught fire, so Zhu Yunxi was buried in the sea of fire, while his fifty-year-old mother Lü Shi was safe and sound.
Thus a suspicious point arises, a sixteen-year-old teenager is buried in the fire, but the elderly mother is unscathed, so whether this is artificial or accidental can be imagined.
The three princes died one after another, and the death was extremely strange, and the time was also very coincidental, so it can be guessed that it was Ming Chengzu Zhu Di's secret poisoner.
Among Zhu Biao's four daughters, the third and fourth daughters all died prematurely, and the eldest daughter, Princess Jiangdu, gave it to Geng Xuan, the son of the founding general Geng Bingwen of Changxing, as his wife during the reign of Zhu Yuanzhang, and the name of the princess was also sealed after Zhu Yunxiu succeeded to the throne.
During Zhu Yunxiu's reign, he sent Geng Bingwen to recruit Zhu Di for the general, but the father and son were defeated in the Battle of Zhending and replaced by Zhu Yunxiu.
When Zhu Di successfully ascended the throne after invading the city of Nanjing, Geng Bingwen's father and son no longer entered the dynasty as officials on the grounds of illness, so Zhu Di was very dissatisfied, but because Geng Bingwen was a founding hero, he was not explicitly targeted.
Later, at zhu Di's behest, the left deputy capital, Yushi Chen Ying, and the punishment department Shangshu Zheng Ci went up together to impeach Geng Bingwen for trespassing, and Geng Bingwen guessed that this was Zhu Di's revenge and committed suicide. His sons were also convicted and executed, so Princess Jiangdu died of depression shortly after her husband was executed.
Zhu Biao's second daughter, lord Of Yilun County, was the one with the best ending among the brothers and sisters, because when Zhu Di ascended the throne, she was still young, and Zhu Di, in order to prove that she did not intend to usurp the throne, so he adopted the lord of Yilun County in the palace, and when she grew up, Zhu Di married her to The Jinyi Wei Baihu Yuli.
There are still two descendants left in this line of Zhu Biao, that is, Zhu Wenkun, the heir of Zhu Yunxi, and Zhu Wengui, the second son of Zhu Yunxi, who although they did not die inexplicably, they also experienced some suffering.
After Zhu Yunxi's violent death, the old eunuch in the palace risked death and fled Fengyang with Zhu Wenkun, who was still a child, and then he hid his name and lived in seclusion in Laiyang, Shandong, until Zhu Di's death, and after his son Emperor Mingrenzong Zhu Gaozi succeeded to the throne, Zhu Wenkun changed back to his real name, but he was always reluctant to admit that he was a son of the imperial family, and his descendants were not named according to the genealogical characters arranged by Zhu Yuanzhang.
Compared with Zhu Wenkun, Zhu Wengui was much more miserable, when Zhu Di ascended the throne, Zhu Wengui was only two years old, but Zhu Di did not ignore him because he was a young child, and after deposing Zhu Wengui as a shuren, Zhu Di ordered him to be imprisoned, so Zhu Wengui grew up in a closed environment, and was not released until after Emperor Mingying's zhu Qizhen ascended the throne.
Zhu Qizhen was also imprisoned for eight years by his younger brother Zhu Qiyu, the Jingtai Emperor, so he felt empathy for Zhu Wengui's suffering, so Zhu Qizhen released Zhu Wengui, who had been imprisoned for more than fifty years, despite the dissuasion of his courtiers.
But Zhu Wengui, who had been imprisoned for more than fifty years, had no way to integrate into society at all, because he was not only illiterate, but also did not know cattle and sheep, nor did he have life skills.
But fortunately, Zhu Qizhen also took this into account, although he did not restore Zhu Wengui's clan status, but rewarded him with a lot of money, not only built a house for him, but also married her and had children, and placed him in Fengyang's hometown for the elderly.
Zhu Wengui died two years later, but before his death, he gave birth to a son, leaving a legacy for Zhu Biao.