Ming Xianzong Zhu Jianshen, the eighth ruler of the Ming Dynasty, reigned for twenty-three years, and can be called a generation of Ming monarchs. Zhu Jianshen is the eldest son of our Daming war god Zhu Qizhen, who was once deposed as a prince, and Zhu Qizhen only did two things right in his life, one was to abolish the martyrdom system, and the other was to give birth to a good son and find a qualified successor for Daming!
Zhu Jianshen in the records of Ming history was relatively clear in politics in the first half of his life, ruled the world and had the style of benevolence and propaganda; However, in the second half of his life, the rule was dim, and he favored the eunuch Wang Zhi and the noble concubine Wan, which led to the disaster of the women's temple in the Ming Dynasty; In fact, there is still an element of smear, especially in the records of these deeds of Wan Guifei and Wang Zhi. The history of the Ming Dynasty was compiled by the Qing Dynasty, and Zhu Jianshen twice sent Wang Zhi and others to quell the rebellion of Jianzhou Jurchen twice in the fifteenth and sixteenth years of Chenghua, which made the rise of Later Jin more than a hundred years late. As for the record of Wan Guifei Wan Zhen'er, it may be that the historical official deliberately smeared that Wan Guifei was seventeen years older than Zhu Jianshen and could be the kind of mother. He began to accompany Zhu Jianshen when he was two years old, and even if he was later abolished as prince by Zhu Qiyu, he never abandoned him, and it can be said that in Zhu Jianshen's childhood, it was almost Wan Zhen'er's memory. Later, Zhu Jianshen took the throne, originally wanted to make Wan Zhen'er empress, but because of the opposition of the empress dowager and courtiers, he had no choice but to give it to a noble concubine, but he still favored Wan Zhen'er, resulting in Zhu Jianshen having no descendants (Wan Zhen'er gave birth to a son, but unfortunately died), which caused dissatisfaction among the courtiers.
In the early days of Zhu Jianshen's reign, he faced a big mess left by his father Zhu Qizhen. After the restoration of Zhu Qizhen, he not only killed Yu Qian and deprived Zhu Qiyu of his imperial title, but also wantonly killed other ministers of the Jingtai dynasty, causing panic among the people of the imperial court. At the beginning of Zhu Jianshen's accession to the throne, he faced a faltering Daming with internal and external troubles; In order to solve internal worries and stabilize the court, Zhu Jianshen took the throne in order to rehabilitate Yu Qian, and at the same time restore Zhu Qiyu's imperial title. After two waves of operation and the complete stabilization of the court, Zhu Jianshen began to appoint wise ministers such as Shangchen to govern the country, and implemented the national policy of leniency and exemption of taxes, reduction of punishment, and rest and recuperation, and the social economy quickly recovered.
After the internal troubles were resolved, there were external troubles, and during the Chenghua period, he repeatedly used troops abroad, and achieved great victories, so there are historical records that Xianzong's courage is no less than that of Zhu Di. After the Battle of Tumu Fort, Daming's elite was almost completely lost, and after Emperor Xianzong took the throne, he began to rectify, and by the twenty-third year of Chenghua, he died, leaving Daming with nearly 400,000 elite divisions. During the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Xianzong faced external troubles not only from the repeated invasion of the border by many tribes in Mongolia, but also from the rebellion of the Jurchen tribes of Jianzhou, which had slowly risen, and the rebellion of the indigenous people in the northwest region, Sichuan, and Guangxi. These rebellions were successively quelled by Zhu Jianshen's army, especially against the Jurchen tribes in Jianzhou, and Zhu Jianshen used troops against the Jianzhou Jurchens three times in the third, fifteenth, and sixteenth years of Chenghua, and basically killed the prestige and capable tribal leaders in the Jurchen region three times, and from then on, the various Jurchen tribes of Jianzhou were scattered and weak, only until the rise of Nur Hachi in the Wanli years.
Zhu Jianshen's several foreign military uses not only stabilized Daming's border defenses and stabilized the internal people, but also brought a relatively stable development environment for decades to subsequent successors. Of course, Zhu Jianshen also had some improper measures, such as the establishment of the West Factory, which did have a good monitoring effect at first, but as Wang Zhi's power increased, he killed the courtiers basically without interrogation, as long as there was suspicion that he was caught, he was killed, which brought a lot of panic to the court, and it was not until Wang Zhi fell out of favor in the eighteenth year of Chenghua that the West Factory was abolished. For example, in his later years, he was obsessed with Taoism, abandoned dynastic politics, etc., in fact, this problem is not big, the Ming Dynasty has a cabinet, the emperor is sometimes a walker, the recitals are all approved by the cabinet, and it seems that the emperors of the Ming Dynasty are very interested in Taoist Buddhism.