In the last year of the Yuan Dynasty, the Jiangnan region fell to Hu Chen, nearly a hundred years; The fall of Hu Chen in the Central Plains has passed 250 years since the last year of the Northern Song Dynasty; And the Yungui, Hexi, Liaodong, Yanyun, and Hetao regions, counting from the five dynasties of the late Tang Dynasty, have been lost for four or five hundred years!
The Chinese people in the north and south of the Yangtze River were divided into "Southerners" and "Han Chinese" by the Mongolian Yuan, and they were almost on the verge of becoming two distinct ethnic groups.
Zhang Hongfan, a "Han" general in the north, led a large army south to destroy the Southern Song Dynasty, and after the Battle of Yashan, he carved a stone inscription, "The great general of the Zhenguo State Zhang Hongfan destroyed the Song here", and he was self-satisfied, and did not have the slightest guilt.
If by the end of the Yuan Dynasty, there was no Zhu Yuanzhang and the Ming Dynasty he established, there was no Xu Da's often encountered spring in the Northern Expedition to the Central Plains, Ma Ta Shuo Desert, the wind and lightning, and the ploughing court sweeping the caves.
At that time, in the eyes of those who lived in this land, most of those whose blood and ancestors were Han Chinese, but whose living customs and national consciousness had been completely Hu:
The glory of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty may well have been reduced to the dust of history, just like the Roman Empire/Eastern Roman Empire in the eyes of Istanbulites now.
This is by no means alarmist, and the question is clear if you look at the current situation of the descendants of the Eastern Romans in Asia Minor.
According to dna test results in recent years, the vast majority of the people of modern Turkey are descendants of the ancient "Greeks" and "Eastern Romans", or more precisely, the original indigenous peoples of the Anatolian Peninsula, accounting for the vast majority.
In the era of ancient Greek civilization and alexander the Great's crusade, they were "Hellenized" and regarded by the subsequent Roman Empire as "Greeks", that is, the main ethnic group of the subsequent Eastern Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages, these citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire always called themselves "Romans". Until they were assimilated and conquered by the Seljuk Empire, the Sultanate of Roma, the Ottoman Empire and other Turkic states for hundreds of years, and they were completely "Turkified". After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was left to the European powers to divide and slaughter, leaving only the mainland of Asia Minor and the capital of Istanbul around it, forming a modern Turkish state. In terms of the country's ethnic origins, the indigenous population of the Anatolian Peninsula, once the citizens of the Eastern Roman Empire, accounted for an absolute majority.
Although the contemporary Turks, and the historical Ashina family ruled, once occupied the north and south of the desert, and finally the Turkic Khaganate was destroyed by the Tang Dynasty, those ancient Turks who originated in the Altai Mountains and were mainly were completely different from race to blood.
But this did not prevent them from using the Turkic language equally, identifying with Turkic culture, and even in official diplomatic occasions, 16 warriors representing 16 "Old Turk empires" as their ancestors:
The Hun Empire, the Western Hun Empire, the Hun Empire, the White Hun (Zhāda) Empire, the Avar (Rouran) Khanate, the Turkic Khaganate, the Uighur Khaganate, the Khwarazm Khanate, the Golden Horde, the Qarakhanid Empire, the Ghaznavid Kingdom, the Seljuk Empire, the Timurid Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Ottoman Empire...
The medieval capital of Europe, Constantinople, once the "New Rome", became the current Istanbul,
The blood descendants of those ancestors who once created the glorious ancient Greek/Roman civilization are now convinced that they are the westward descendants of the nomadic tribes of the East Asian steppes.
The ancestors of the nation they identified were not Caesar of their own people, not Augustus, not Constantine or Justinian, not the Emperors of the Ancient And Eastern Roman Empire.
It became the ancestors of nomadic peoples including Mudun ShanYu, Attila, Rouran Khan, Turkic Ashina, HuarazImo Koma, Golden Horde Khan Battus, lame Timur...
It is precisely because the entire nation has been completely tamed ideologically and culturally, and it believes that the descendants of the Turks have become their "ideological steel seals".
Even at the beginning of the 20th century, even if there were such geniuses as Mustafa Kemal, who turned the tide, promoted secularization, and tried to re-enter Europe, they could not revive the "Roman Empire of the Romans" in the end, but could only stand on its opposite side and create a "Turkic Turkey".
Even the "Imperium Romanum", which has been called for more than a thousand years, has been easily changed by German historians to the Byzantine Empire, which is popular in the history books of the world! ——This scene is enough to make onlookers shudder!
To refute the historical nihilistic fallacy that "there is no Zhu Yuanzhang, there is also Chen Yuanzhang, Li Yuanzhang", is actually very simple:
From Qin Shi Huang and Han Gaozu to Emperor Wu of Han, five generations of people have established such a remarkable foundation for the unification of China in hundreds of years, from the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty for a thousand years.
Then, why, after the Anshi Rebellion, Tang Xianzong Li Chun, Tang Wuzong Li Yan, Later Zhou Taizu Guo Wei, Later Zhou Shizong Guo Rong, Song Taizu Zhao Kuangyin, Song Taizong Zhao Guangyi, Song Zhezong Zhao Xu, Song Xiaozong Zhao Xuan...
So many aspiring kings who are trying to rebuild the empire have failed one by one,
Why did it take a full 600 years for the Chinese nation to finally wait for Zhu Yuanzhang, who allowed the nation to be revived and the empire to be rebuilt?
Zhu Yuanzhang acted in a peaceful life, and did not know how many bad governments: indiscriminate killing of heroes, bloody strains; Indiscriminately sealing relatives and treating children and grandchildren; Indiscriminate issuance of treasure money, retro people martyrdom... It can even be said that extreme self-interest, selfish self-use, no matter how diligent the government is, cherishing the small people, is only the private property of their own family and surname. However, in the end, the merit is far greater than the excess, and the flaws can not be hidden.
Huanghuang Daming, the Northern Expedition army galloped, the cloud-breaking building ship seven times in the South China Sea, the land and water divisions, swept southeast Asia, and threatened the Indian Ocean.
Daming not only recovered all the lost territory in China, but also rebuilt the tributary system that ruled all of Asia five hundred years after the fall of the Tang Dynasty, with a sphere of influence from Lake Baikal to the Equatorial Islands, and its prestige extended to the emirates of South Asia, the Middle East and East Africa along the Indian Ocean coast.
Today, we can calmly argue about the past and the present, such as "whether the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty are a better dynasty than the Ming Dynasty" and "whether the Qin Shi Huang Emperor Han Wu Emperor Tang Taizong is a greater emperor than Ming Taizu" and so on.
This in itself is the greatest and most immortal historical feat of Zhu Yuanzhang, Xu Da, and Chang Yuchun, a whole generation of national heroes, far exceeding the brilliant Wenzhi martial arts of their lifetime!