"The joy of cruelty ends with cruelty."
When the Battle of Jingnan broke out, I believe many people would guess Zhu Di in this way, because that war should not have broken out. Of course, in the eyes of many politicians, Zhu Di has a lot of rationality for the outbreak, but in the eyes of the people, how brutal it is to provoke war at the time of peace.
In the end, Zhu Di won the victory, and he got the world he wanted. However, the displacement of millions of people and the horrific massacre of the entire city of Beijing became a traumatic event in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
But coincidentally, it seems to confirm the opening sentence, 22 years of emperor career, Zhu Di can be described as the limelight, but he did not leave a descendant.
Many people are lamenting that this is the cruel retribution that makes Zhu Di die in pain. So the question is, in the brutal retribution that was widely circulated in that year, what did Zhu Di experience?
Historical questions
In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, Zhu Yuanzhang, a generation of male lords, returned to heaven, and when the old emperor left, he had already calculated everything and handed it over to a good grandson who had no thorns in the jiangshan to himself.
However, he did not count his son Zhu Di and a monk Yao Guangxiao, who was not in the invisible mountain dew.
The two men immediately hit it off, and when the emperor died, they immediately raised an army to rebel. At that time, the world was in peace for a long time, Zhu Yuanzhang also built the so-called ideal country, from the perspective of people's hearts, no one wanted the world to be chaotic, and everyone was not optimistic that Zhu Di could succeed.
Unfortunately, Zhu Di is a rare figure who has reversed history, and in the Battle of Zhengcunba, Zheng and Yao Guangxiao suddenly rose up, and actually reversed the number of enemies killed by 100,000. Then, Zhu Di swept away the leaves like a fierce wind, breaking 300,000 regular troops, defeating the famous general Geng Bingwen, and then breaking the 500,000 troops and ravaging Li Jinglong, the son of the famous general.
A series of victories, and a series of smoke, Zhu Di finally won the victory, and finally, the traitor Li Jinglong exchanged his dignity for his title, but buried the last hope of the Jianwen Emperor, and the Battle of Jingnan took 4 years and finally succeeded.
In 1403, Zhu Di officially ascended the throne and changed the yuan to the first year of Yongle. From this moment on, the Yongle Era officially arrived, during which countless wonderful times were opened, until the twenty-second year of Yongle, Zhu Di died on the way to the 5th Northern Expedition.
Judging from these records, Zhu Di was emperor for 22 years, and his harem also had countless favored concubines. Moreover, the history books also record his pursuit of Empress Xu's sister Xu Miaojin, and it can be said that the emperor did not reject the harem, and even spread interesting stories at that time.
However, no matter how full the harem was, Zhu Di was always alone. Except for the children born before he became emperor, Zhu Di actually did not have any offspring.
For this phenomenon, countless folk and later historians have ridiculed it, and scholars are also puzzled by it, in a feudal era, a king did not leave offspring, which is really unreasonable. So why?
Possible conjectures
In response to this phenomenon, in fact, there was a saying at that time, as the opening paragraph said, the beginning of brutality must end with brutality. Back then, in order to launch this unjust war, Zhu Di almost let all the people of the world dance with it.
According to records, when entering the city of Beijing, Zhu Di beheaded 873 of Fang Xiaoru's relatives and friends, and involved Huang Zicheng and others, killing 51 people. After that, it was a big deal, killing more than 2,000 people, and the Jinyi guards came and went between the official palaces, and the people were even more frightened to stop crying.
Moreover, the great wars at that time led to the devastation of Shandong, Beiping, and Henan, and most of the people died and countless exiles.
Therefore, at that time, countless people accused Zhu Di, and the reason why this person had no queen was because he was punished, which was a cruel accusation from heaven against him.
Of course, this statement seems strange now, but in the documentary records of the time, and even in some biographies, it is indeed everywhere, and it is even cited as the destiny of heaven. It even became a mainstream view at the time.
However, it is certainly unreasonable to look at it from a modern point of view. But through these records, we can still see some clues, that is, Zhu Di may really have physiological problems, which led to no descendants after becoming emperor.
Moreover, this is not an exaggeration, it is recorded in the history books.
The last words of the palace maid
In fact, there are many objective historians who have already conducted research during the Ming Dynasty or even the Qing Dynasty. Judging from many records, Zhu Di did not give birth to offspring after he ascended the throne in his 40s, but since he was 32 years old before boarding, he no longer had descendants.
This is a very interesting record, which means that it is not that Zhu Di is not interested in women, but that there are really problems with his body, and it has nothing to do with the so-called revenge of heaven.
In addition, there are records of this in North Korea, when North Korea recorded such a story. At that time, Zhu Di had a concubine, who was afraid that the world would not be chaotic, and slandered his competitors with the death of Zhu Di's concubine. The incident was so violent that the harem caused a massacre.
However, the informers were accused of having adultery with others, and as a result, wave after wave, Zhu Di's harem was dyed red.
In this massacre, many women were killed, including some innocent people involved. In this massacre, some palace women were not willing to die like this, and they revealed a secret before dying. The reason why the harem women had adultery was because of boldness, but only because the emperor was incompetent.
This was cited as a mystery at the time, and it became a shocking secret of the Li Dynasty, so the theory of Zhu Di's physical illness slowly passed down.
So the question is, is this record true? Personally, I think it should be very credible.
First of all, as mentioned above, Zhu Di did not have children after the age of 32, which can never be the result of self-control, only other people. Moreover, after staying in the imperial palace, Zhu Di carried out a large-scale harem expansion, but there were still no descendants, which is also worth scrutinizing.
Of course, the history books also mention Zhu Di's pursuit of Xu Miaojin, which seems to imply that the emperor did not lose interest in the harem. But perhaps, we can think from another perspective, Zhu Di was not fatally injured like Zhao Shuo, but also because of the years of conquest with the north, he suffered from infertility, not losing his physiological function.
Epilogue:
Therefore, combined with the records at that time, we can probably draw a conclusion that Zhu Di had a physical problem, so there were no more descendants, and this incident caused him to be stimulated, so he began to sink into the Yongle reform, and later became enthusiastic about the battlefield, which further led to the lack of descendants.
As for the history books' emphasis on Zhu Di's condemnation by heaven as a way to satirize his Battle of Jing, we can only see the benevolent and the wise.