In 1398, Zhu Yuanzhang ended his glorious life and passed the throne to his grandson Zhu Yunjiang.
At the suggestion of Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng, Zhu Yunjiang began to cut the domain.
Zhu Di, the king of Yan, was forced by the pressure of the situation to hide his eyes and ears by pretending to be crazy, and then raised troops against the imperial court in the name of "the side of the Qing monarch, the Yasukuni is difficult".
After more than three years of war, Zhu Di the King of Yan finally replaced his nephew Zhu Yunjiang as the third emperor of Daming.
In this internal struggle within the royal family, Zhu Yunjiang, as the defeated party, is missing.
And what happened to his brothers and sisters, that is, Zhu Biao's other children?
Unusual generation-skipping standing storage
When it comes to Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, it can be described as a rare ruler in ancient China.
He created the famous "Reign of Yongle" in Chinese history, a Yongle Grand Classic, which forged a peak that was difficult to reach in China's cultural undertakings.
As a pioneer of ocean navigation in Chinese history and even in the history of world navigation, six of the seven ocean activities aimed at promoting the prestige of the Ming Dynasty occurred during Zhu Di's reign.
At the beginning of Zhu Di's accession to the throne, the remnants of the Yuan Dynasty, which had retreated to the desert, remained a potential threat to Daming.
When he was still King of Yan, he led his army to fight against the Northern Yuan many times, and he was well aware of the combat effectiveness of this force, which was once under the central government of all of China.
For the long-term stability of Daming, he spent more than ten years to rebuild a magnificent imperial capital on the site of the Yuan capital.
And in 1421, the capital was moved from Nanjing, which Zhu Yuanzhang spent his life building.
Since then, he has created the magnificent and bright spirit of "the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country, and the king dies"!
As an emperor, Zhu Di is a rare master of keeping.
Zhu Di was born in the late Yuan dynasty.
At that time, although his father Zhu Yuanzhang was also a prince, he did not dare to slack off in the midst of strong enemies, and he worked hard to create his own dynasty.
Zhu Di, who grew up in blood and rain since he was a child, knows the difficulties of entrepreneurship; Living in the barracks since he was a child, he was also used to his military career.
In his teens, he was named King of Yan by his father, and the fief was in the old capital of the newly fallen Dayuan, Yuan Dadu.
This carries his father's ardent expectations for him, and his recognition and trust in his military talents.
He lived up to his trust and vowed to guard the northern gate of the empire for his father.
If everything goes according to Zhu Yuanzhang's established plan, Zhu Di and his twenty-four brothers and a nephew will become a powerful clan for the eldest brother Zhu Biao, helping the eldest brother push the cause of the empire to a higher level.
But the day was not a holiday, and the eldest brother Zhu Biao died in 1392 AD.
This disrupted Zhu Yuanzhang's plan and made many of his sons coveted.
With his strong military strength and the strategic location of his fiefdom, Zhu Di the King of Yan seemed likely to become the successor of the empire, and Zhu Di was eager to look north, looking forward to his father, who was far away in Nanjing, to set his sights on the north.
But Zhu Yuanzhang was a very traditional feudal emperor who was almost obsessed with the Han family inheritance system.
"There is a concubine, and there is no concubine."
As a non-concubine, Zhu Di seems to be very close to the imperial throne, but he is close to the end of the world.
Although this inheritance system is very unscientific, it is also pedantic and rigid compared with the secret reserve system implemented after the middle of the Qing Dynasty.
But there is also its rationality, especially for Zhu Yuanzhang.
In addition to fighting in the world, Zhu Yuanzhang also spared no effort to extend his heirs.
He had twenty-six sons and sixteen daughters during his lifetime.
If the prince is not selected according to the traditional system of establishing heirs and building a reserve, it will inevitably lead to a situation in which many clan kings covet the throne.
Although the dynasty was founded, although relying on strength and more than twenty years of painstaking management, Daming has been on the right track.
But the lessons of the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms of the Western Han Dynasty and the bitter lessons of the Rebellion of the Eight Kings of the Western Jin Dynasty made Zhu Yuanzhang have to be cautious about this matter.
It didn't take long for all the lords to get the news in disappointment.
A new Crown Prince has been born, that is, the second son of his eldest brother Zhu Biao, Zhu Yunjiang, who is only sixteen years old.
The kings of the clans were naturally dissatisfied with this result, but the dying man on the throne was their father, and they did not dare to make a mistake.
It is not so much that they dare not show dissatisfaction out of obedience to Zhu Yuanzhang, who is also a father and king, but rather that they can only obediently obey orders because they know the ruthlessness of their father's methods.
Everything seemed calm as water, and the empire did not seem to be in turmoil because of the sudden death of the crown prince.
But the good times did not last long, and six years later, Zhu Yuanzhang, who had founded the empire and ruled China for thirty years, died.
An unprecedented rebellion against Wang Ye
Zhu Yunjiang, who took over the imperial throne, was full of spirit and wanted to make a career.
Grandpa's decades of arbitrary actions laid a good foundation for his administration, but it does not mean that the empire is free of potential dangers.
The lord of the clan, this problem that was not a problem in Zhu Yuanzhang's time, gave the young Zhu Yunjiang a headache at this moment.
When Grandpa was alive, although these clan kings had soldiers and money in their hands, after all, the emperor Laozi was not only the emperor, but also Laozi.
If Zhu Yunjiang's father had not died young, it would not have been a big problem, after all, he was the eldest brother of these twenty or so clan kings, and the eldest brother was like a father, and the resources and majesty that Zhu Biao had in his hands over the years could still deter these younger brothers.
But all this Zhu Yunjiang did not have, twenty-five uncles of the lord of the clan, everyone looked at his position.
So at the suggestion of Qi Tai and Huang Zicheng, Zhu Yunjiang began to cut the domain.
This step is an inevitable step for every dynasty that establishes a vassal king.
But there are two ways, one urgent and one slow.
It is as urgent as a storm, and it is necessary to destroy the decay so as not to give the lord a chance to breathe.
Slow as a trickle, in a moisturizing and silent way, let the clan king eliminate on his own, losing the ability to fight the center.
There were precedents for the urgent method, and the way Emperor Jing of the Western Han Dynasty cut the domain was that it provoked the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms.
However, Emperor Jing himself and his father Emperor Wen were both powerful monarchs in the feudal era.
Treat the people with cherishing the people's strength, and treat officials with grace and authority.
In addition, the founding hero Su and his descendants have not yet been revived, so in just three months, the unpopular Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms was suppressed.
There are also precedents for the slow method, and the Tui En Order of Emperor Wudi of the Western Han Dynasty is.
Due to the Rebellion of the Seven Kingdoms caused by the cutting of his father Emperor Jing, it almost caused chaos to the Western Han Empire.
Emperor Wu adopted a more soothing but more effective and less costly approach – the Tui En Order.
The so-called Tuien is to dilute their threat to the central government from generation to generation on the basis of not weakening the territory and power of the original clan kings. The specific method is that after the death of a generation of clan kings, it is no longer only the son of the clan king who inherits the royal title, but the rain and dew.
All the princes and concubines were given kings, and they were all crowned kings of the split soil, and the land that was split was naturally to be cut from the old land of the kingdom.
In this way, the strength of the kingdom will decline sharply, and it can only bow down to the central government, and no longer dare to covet.
Zhu Yunjiang is young and vigorous, eager to show his ambitions, so he chose to use the urgent method.
But the situation at this time was very different from that of Emperor Jing of Han.
First of all, when Emperor Jing cut the domain, the descendants of the meritorious generals left by Liu Bang were still the mainstay of the army, and with the strong support of Emperor Jing's maternal brother King Xiao of Liang, this quelled the turmoil.
In contrast, looking at Zhu Yunjiang's situation, his grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang slaughtered tens of thousands of meritorious figures in order to clear the administrative obstacles for the crown prince.
As a result, when Zhu Yunjiang hired people, it was already difficult to find generals who could go into battle and kill the enemy.
And several of his younger brothers were still young, and they were simply not capable of sharing the emperor's brother's worries.
Secondly, when Emperor Jing cut the domain, the empire had been running for half a century, and the blood relationship between the clan king and the emperor was not very close, so the public opinion of the government and the public unanimously turned to the emperor.
And Zhu Yunjiang faced his own uncle - especially Zhu Di, who had a heavy army, and his command had honed his actual combat experience in the war with Mongolia for many years.
In terms of seniority and bloodline, Zhu Di is not inferior to Zhu Yunjiang.
Moreover, after Zhu Di raised his army, Zhu Yunjiang did not know whether he was pedantic or benevolent, and he repeatedly told the generals in front not to hurt Zhu Di and let himself bear the notoriety of killing his uncle.
For this kind of "standing and standing" combat deployment, the forward generals can only execute it as a rat thrower.
This allowed Zhu Di to escape death many times and make a comeback.
After more than three years of fighting, Zhu Di finally entered the city of Nanjing.
He became the first and only clan king in history to successfully rebel.
The Yongle Emperor who was completely killed
On the day of the destruction of the city, the city of Nanjing was in shambles, and the fire in the palace made Emperor Jianwen not know the end.
But his younger brothers are still alive, which is undoubtedly a big trouble for the usurper Zhu Di.
From a dialogue, you can imagine the dissatisfaction of the DPRK and China with Zhu Di's usurpation of the throne at that time.
Fang Xiaozi was the leader of the scholar at that time and a minister of Emperor Jianwen.
Zhu Di wanted to whitewash his usurpation by plotting a rebellion.
So he found Fang Xiaozi and asked him to draft an edict of accession for himself.
But Fang Xiaozi issued a series of loud questions to this rebel:
Zhu Di: I want to imitate the Duke of Zhou and become Wang Er.
Fang Xiaozi: Where is King Cheng?
Zhu Di: The son set himself on fire.
Fang Xiaozi: Why not become the son of the king?
Zhu Di: The country is the chief prince.
Fang Xiaozi: Why not become the brother of the king?
Zhu Di: This is a family affair!
Seeing that he couldn't get the slightest bargain, Zhu Di began to threaten Fang Xiaozi, if you don't draft this edict, you will be cursed by the Nine Tribes.
Fang Xiaoxiao was even more tough, and replied that don't say it's the Nine Races, even the Ten Races, I won't write to you.
At this time, Zhu Di had already made Fang Xiaoxiao tremble with ridicule.
Well, I will fulfill you, and ten tribes will be ten tribes.
Thus, the only case in Chinese history that was condemned to the Ten Ethnic Groups was born.
In addition to the traditional Nine Ethnic Groups, Fang Xiaoxiao's protégés and former officials were included in the Tenth Ethnic Group and went to Huangquan with Fang Xiaoxiao.
While lamenting Fang Xiaoxiao's iron-clad strength, it also allows us to clearly see that even though he has successfully usurped the throne, in the face of a series of questions from the scholars, who regarded traditional etiquette as heaven, Zhu Di was still poor in reason, and could only become angry and suppress public opinion with a butcher's knife.
Because of this, he began a long and cruel persecution of the three younger brothers left behind by Emperor Jianwen.
Zhu Biao had five sons before his death, and the eldest son, Zhu Xiongying, died at the age of eight.
Otherwise, in the Ming Dynasty, which pays attention to standing long, it will not be Zhu Yunjiang's turn to inherit the throne;
The second son was Zhu Yunjiang, the Jianwen Emperor;
The third son, Zhu Yunxi, was created King of Wu during the reign of Emperor Jianwen;
The fourth son, Zhu Yunxi, was created King of Heng during the reign of Emperor Jianwen;
The fifth son, Zhu Yunxi, was created King of Xu during the reign of Emperor Jianwen.
Because the one-character king of Daming could only be granted to the prince, as soon as Zhu Di ascended the throne, it was logical to demote Zhu Yunxi to the title of King of Guangze, Zhu Yunxi to the King of Huaien, and Zhu Yunxi to the King of Ouning.
In order to divide and rule the three younger brothers of the former emperor who were demoted to the rank of county king.
Zhu Di split the three brothers, one in the north, one in the south, and one guarding the tomb.
But three months later, Zhu Di felt very uneasy about putting them tens of thousands of miles away, so he recalled the third and fourth to Nanjing, and as for the fifth, he was guarding the tomb in Fengyang, not far from Nanjing, the capital at that time, so he ignored him for the time being.
But Zhu Yunxi and Zhu Yunxi on the way back to Nanjing were quite critical of the capriciousness of the fourth uncle.
This gave Zhu Di a pretext, cutting off the clan status of these two "ungrateful" nephews and degrading them to commoners, and imprisoned them in the royal family's ancestral home of Fengyang for life.
In this way, Zhu Biao's three surviving sons were nominally guards of the tomb.
It is said that things have developed to this point, the three brothers have no power and power, and they can no longer set off any storms.
But Zhu Di did not stop because of this, perhaps Fang Xiaozi's phrase "why not become the brother of the king" echoed in his ears for a long time.
So, in the fourth year of Yongle (1406), the fifth elder Zhu Yunxi was inexplicably buried in the fire, saying that the fire was inexplicable because his mother, who was in her fifties, escaped unharmed in the fire, and the sixteen-year-old Zhu Yunxi, who should have been agile, was burned to death in his residence "accidentally".
Eight years later, in the twelfth year of Yongle (1414), the fourth elder, Zhu Yunxi, died of depression in his hometown of Fengyang at the age of 29.
At this point, Zhu Biao's surviving son is only the third elder, Zhu Yunxi.
It stands to reason that Zhu Di, who has been an emperor for more than ten years, whether it is out of brotherly affection or guilt for taking away his nephew Jiangshan, should open his net and leave a bloodline for his eldest brother Zhu Biao.
But the phrase "why not become the brother of the king" continues to ferment.
In the fifteenth year of Yongle (1417), Zhu Yunxi was unknowingly involved in the rebellion of Zhu Yuanzhang's nineteenth son, Zhu Qi, the king of Zhu Yuanzhang, and was imprisoned for life under the indictment of Zhu Chun (Zhu Yuanzhang's eleventh son).
It seems that Zhu Yunxi was not further persecuted, but soon after this incident, Zhu Yunxi died violently in his apartment, which makes people suspect that there was Zhu Di's instruction.
At this point, Zhu Biao's sons have all gone offline.
However, Zhu Di was still not conscionable, and finally left a trace of incense for Zhu Biao.
That is Zhu Yunxi's only son Zhu Wenkun and Zhu Yunjiang's second son Zhu Wengui.
Zhu Wenkun escaped from his hometown in Fengyang after his father was "violently killed", and has since changed his name and surname to endure humiliation and steal his life.
This also shows from one side that Zhu Yunxi's death is very strange.
And Zhu Wengui, as the son of Emperor Jianwen, the orthodox line of Daming, naturally still has some appeal.
It is precisely because of this that he was banned by Zhu Di.
This confinement is more than 50 years.
It was not until Zhu Qizhen, who had a similar experience, was restored that he was able to see the light of day again.
But after being banned since childhood, he knew nothing about the outside world, and even couldn't tell the difference.
The tragic situation is also visible.
As for Zhu Biao's four daughters (three daughters and four daughters died), because they could not threaten the imperial power in the feudal era, they escaped Zhu Di's intentional persecution.
However, the eldest daughter, Princess Jiangdu, was still hit by Zhu Di because her husband's family sided with Emperor Jianwen in the Battle of Jingjian, and Princess Jiangdu was naturally implicated.
Since ancient times, the prince is the loser and the thief.
As the flesh and blood relatives of the previous emperor, the day of the new emperor's coronation is usually when they go to the Yellow Spring.
However, the emperor who ascended to the throne in the Battle of Jing was somewhat special, he was the uncle of the previous emperor, and due to family affection, he could only use some hidden means to achieve his goal of cutting grass and roots.
It is precisely because of this that Zhu Biao and Zhu Yunjiang have left bloodlines.
When the dynasty is changed, even if it is only a struggle within the royal family, it may make these Tianxun nobles fall into mud and dust, and they want to live the life of a peddler's pawn.
Bibliography:
History of Ming
"Records of Ming Chengzu"
"Those Things in the Ming Dynasty"