The fuse of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty - the construction of a river that burst its banks and flooded

The Yuan Dynasty was the first unified dynasty established by ethnic minorities in Chinese history.

Genghis Khan

In 1206 AD, Genghis Khan relied on force to unify the scattered tribes of Mongolia and establish the Mongol Empire. And successively destroyed the Western Liao, Western Xia, Khorezm, Jin Dynasty and Dali Kingdom, approached the Southern Song Dynasty, and formed an encirclement of the Southern Song Dynasty in the terrain.

Yuan and Song confrontations

In 1260 AD, Kublai Khan ascended the throne and became emperor, founding the Great Yuan Dynasty, and the era name Zhongtong.

忽必烈

In 1279 AD, the Yuan army completely destroyed the Southern Song Dynasty, and the last little emperor of the Southern Song Dynasty also committed suicide at sea. The famous anti-Yuan hero Wen Tianxiang was also arrested.

Since then, the Yuan Dynasty has started the 98-year rule of the Central Plains, until Zhu Yuanzhang, who was born in cloth, overthrew the rule of the Yuan Dynasty step by step, drove the Mongols out of the Central Plains, and established the last unified feudal dynasty founded by the Han people - the Ming Dynasty.

Under the 100-year rule of the Yuan Dynasty, the people were in dire straits.

The Mongol conquerors did not seem to consider their common people to be human, and they often even considered killing all the occupiers and grazing the surplus land.

Under the Yuan dynasty, they divided the people into four classes:

Superlative: Mongols

Sub-Senior: Color-eyed people

Intermediate: Han Chinese

Lowest: Men

Four levels

The highest-ranking Mongols refer to the Mongols themselves, the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty.

The Semu people refer to ethnic minorities other than the Mongols in the Northwest and the Western Regions.

The middle-level Han people do not refer to the Han people today, but to the Han people, Khitan, Jurchen, and Yunnan and Sichuan under the rule of the original Jin Dynasty.

And the lowest-level Nanren, as the name suggests, were the common people under the rule of the Southern Song Dynasty.

At that time, the Yuan Dynasty had a law that stipulated that the Mongols and Semu people could beat the Han and Nan people at will, and the Han and Nan people who were beaten were not allowed to fight back against the beaters.

This is no longer purely ethnic discrimination, this is simply a naked beastly act!

In the minds of the Mongol rulers, even if they occupied China, it seemed that they still regarded themselves as the guests of the invaders on the spot, and they could grab and take whatever they wanted anytime and anywhere, and the common people at that time did not dare to resist anyway, and they could not resist.

If you rob it, you rob it, and if you kill it, you kill it, what else can you do but endure it?

But they are wrong, the slave will also rise up and resist, when the anger and resentment in the heart exceed the limit of what can be tolerated, resistance is the only way to live, resistance is to survive, to survive.

Since ancient times, it is difficult to establish a dynasty, but it is relatively easy to destroy a dynasty.

In the fourth year of Zhizheng (1344 AD), at the beginning of this year, the Yellow River flooded, and hundreds of thousands of people in Shandong and Henan along the coast all became refugees.

The Yellow River is overflowing

The repair of the river embankment became the top priority of the imperial court at that time.

According to our current thinking, the Yellow River burst its banks, flooding large tracts of farmland and houses on both sides, and the people were displaced and turned into refugees. If the river embankment is not properly managed and these refugees are properly handled, it is very likely to become an unstable factor affecting social stability and greatly threaten the rulers of the dynasty.

No matter which dynasty it is in, from the Qin Emperor and the Han Dynasty to the Ming and Qing dynasties, the river bursts, and you don't have to think about it, it must be repaired.

However, what is surprising is that under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, two different opinions appeared in the imperial court.

One side thinks it should be repaired, and the other side thinks it shouldn't be repaired.

It seems inconceivable now, the flooding of the Yellow River does not want to be repaired, and allowing the Yellow River to divert and drown so many people has too many incredible things in China's 5,000-year history, and of course this is no exception.

When we analyze it in combination with the background at that time, objectively speaking, excluding other factors, in terms of maintaining the rule of the Yuan Dynasty, those who advocate the repair of the Yellow River are not necessarily loyal ministers, and those who advocate not repairing the Yellow River are not necessarily traitorous ministers.

The matter of repairing the Yellow River has dragged on for nearly five years, the political situation is corrupt, the active disaster management has not received a response from the government, the disaster relief materials have been withheld at various levels, natural disasters and man-made disasters have soon become a scene of corpses lying everywhere, starving everywhere, and the people changing their children and eating.

He can be said to be the last minister of the Yuan Dynasty, who implemented a lot of reform policies (but the effect was not very ideal), and he was very capable of being honest and honest.

Former Imperial Chancellor Escape

In the ninth year of Zheng (1349 AD), Tokhtar was officially appointed as the prime minister of the Yuan Dynasty and began to vigorously promote the repair of the Yellow River.

In the eleventh year of Zhizheng (1351 AD), the fuse of the fall of the Yuan Dynasty came!

What is the fuse, to repair the Yellow River?

No!

What is that?

Rotten!

That's right, it's corruption, corruption that has existed since ancient times, and this corruption is the shackles that have squeezed the people for more than 80 years, and it is the last darkness before dawn.

When the Yuan Dynasty ordered 170,000 laborers along the river to repair the embankment, officials at all levels were extremely excited.

First of all, the silver allocated by the imperial court to repair the river embankment can be deducted layer by layer, the wages of migrant workers can be deducted, and even the food that migrant workers eat every day can also be deducted. As long as your wallet is bulging, you don't need to worry about anything else.

This is responsible for repairing the river embankment, so how can those who are not responsible for repairing the river embankment make money? Actually, it is easy to do, and such a big project as the Yellow River must need people, and a large number of people must be needed, so where do so many laborers come from? Go to the village to catch it, and take it away when you see a man, because the reason is to repair the river embankment, and you don't want to go? Then you have to give money.

No money? what is worth taking away!

Poor Tokhtar is a good theoretician, not a qualified practitioner.

Didn't a great man once say that practice is the only criterion for testing truth?

So the old trick appeared, a routine used by Chen Sheng and Wu Guang as early as the Qin Dynasty. When the laborers dug to Shandong, they dug out a stone with one eye from under the river, and the back of the stone was engraved with the words "One eye of the stone man, instigating the Yellow River to rebel against the world." ”

Vulgar, this routine is indeed vulgar, but it's easy to use if you can't stand it. Before the uprising, it was always necessary to engage in some feudal superstition, who let the common people at that time eat this set.

The next thing is so natural, Han Shantong and Liu Futong rebelled, they suddenly turned into royal descendants of the Song Dynasty, although they were also suppressed as quickly as Chen Sheng and Wu Guang's uprising, but history will remember that they were the first to raise the banner of anti-Yuan.

Peasant uprising

Over the course of a year, millions of people joined the uprising.

The rebel armies were mainly divided into Red Turban Army and Non-Red Turban Army. The Red Turban Army is divided into the Northern Red Turban Army, the Southern Red Turban Army, the Northern Zo Red Turban Army, and the Southern Zo Red Turban Army.

Zhu Yuanzhang, Xiao Ming, Wang Han Lin'er, Xu Shouhui, Ni Wenjun, Chen Youliang, Zhang Shicheng and so on all participated in this uprising.

Zhu Yuanzhang

For a time, the Yuan Dynasty was like a wall falling down and everyone pushed it, and the former Mongolian iron cavalry had long since lost its glory.