Preface
After the Tumubao Incident, Zhu Qizhen was captured by the Warat people, becoming another emperor in Chinese history to be captured by the enemy after the capture of the two saints of Huiqin in the late Northern Song Dynasty.
It's just that Zhu Qizhen was captured this time, and I don't know how to evaluate it, he is an emperor who has to go to the expedition in person when there is no need for him, and he can still be defeated and captured with 500,000 Ming troops escorted, which is really incompetent.
However, don't look at Zhu Qizhen being captured by Warat as a hostage, it seems that he will be treated harshly and retaliated, in fact, Zhu Qizhen was not only not wronged after being captured, but was even treated politely by the Warat people, and he didn't worry about his life at all.
As the emperor of the enemy country, it is still an important political bargaining chip that threatens the Ming Dynasty, why is Zhu Qizhen treated so well? What was his life like in Warat?
1. The Civil Fort was captured
In the fourteenth year of orthodoxy, in the face of Warat's repeated rebellion on the border of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Qizhen, under the influence of the favored eunuch Wang Zhen, was determined to drive the royal expedition to Warat and promote the prestige of his ancestors of the Ming Dynasty.
The emperor's personal conquest is not a trivial matter, if the emperor who personally fought on the battlefield like Zhu Di, the pro-conquest will also be pro-conquest, although the ministers can't stop it, they also know that the emperor is very good at fighting.
However, Zhu Qizhen is not his great-grandfather, he succeeded to the throne at the age of eight, and the civil and military forces of the Manchu Dynasty watched Zhu Qizhen grow up on the throne, knowing that Zhu Qizhen is just an ordinary emperor, how can he have the ability to go to the battlefield to kill the enemy and show his prestige?
However, Zhu Qizhen overrode public opinion, and finally succeeded in realizing his dream of pro-conquest, and entered the battlefield with 500,000 Ming troops.
However, Zhu Qizhen still has points for his own level, and he did not plan to go to the battlefield in person after the personal conscription, but played the role of a mascot in the barracks, supervising the army and encouraging the soldiers, which is good for everyone.
However, the reality is so dramatic, originally it was not a very difficult thing for the Ming army to attack Warat, but the emperor himself came, and it was two different things.
Some people want to behave well in front of the emperor and seek promotion opportunities, and it takes a lot of energy for the army to protect Zhu Qizhen while fighting.
Therefore, in the end, a war that had no suspense about the outcome was defeated by the Warat people, and even Zhu Qizhen himself was captured by the Warat people in the chaos, which became a shame and disaster for the Ming Dynasty.
After Zhu Qizhen was captured, the imperial court can be said to be in chaos, the royal family members are advocating the redemption of Zhu Qizhen, and the ministers have advocated moving south to prevent the Warat people from continuing to attack south, directly breaking through the Beijing division, leading to the demise of the country.
Among them, Zhu Qizhen's mother, Empress Dowager Sun, and his wife, Queen Qian, took out a large amount of treasures and gave them to the Warat people, asking them to release Zhu Qizhen, but Warat did not do anything after receiving the money with peace of mind.
The Ming Dynasty became a pot of porridge, and even pushed Zhu Qizhen's younger brother Zhu Qiyu to the throne to solve the crisis of the court in order to calm the panic of the ministers.
However, what the Ming Dynasty monarchs and ministers didn't know here was that Zhu Qizhen's life in Wara was quite good, not only was he not abused as Empress Dowager Sun feared, but he was even treated as a distinguished guest.
2. Zhu Qizhen's catering in Warat
As the emperor, Zhu Qizhen used to live quite comfortably in the Ming Dynasty, no matter what good things he had, he would come to him and raise Zhu Qizhen with fine clothes and food.
As a nomadic people, Warat is far from catching up with the Ming Dynasty in terms of material conditions, spiritual needs and even civilization and education, so this makes Zhu Qizhen, who was already frightened, quite uncomfortable, thinking that he will definitely die.
In addition, it is not without precedent for the emperor to be captured by ethnic minorities, and the two sages of Huiqin in the Song Dynasty are not a good example? They were insulted by the Jin people after they were captured, and Zhu Qizhen was quite familiar with this history.
However, what he didn't expect was that he originally thought that the backward tribe of Warat would get carried away after capturing the enemy emperor, but the reality was that the Warat people were more worried about what would happen to him than Zhu Qizhen himself.
Although the Warats are still in a relatively backward state as a nomadic people, and their toughness and good fighting make them look quite fierce, this does not mean that they are fools with no political experience.
When the Yuan Dynasty unified the whole country, their Warat ancestors also recognized the situation and took the initiative to submit to the tribes ruled by the Mongols, and gained a lot of benefits, so their understanding of politics and diplomacy was far from being as barbaric as the Jin people in those years.
After capturing the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, of course they were quite happy, but at the same time, they were not prepared to do anything unfavorable to Zhu Qizhen, after all, Zhu Qizhen was quite valuable to them.
For Zhu Qizhen, the Warat people can be said to have shown the best hospitality, and the treatment given to Zhu Qizhen is even more advanced than that of their leader.
As a nomadic people, grain and vegetables are quite rare, and their eating habits are mainly meat and dairy products, especially when marching and fighting, meat is better to carry.
But when they served Zhu Qizhen, they not only took care of Zhu Qizhen's taste very much, but also took out all the good things, even when there was no food that Zhu Qizhen was used to, the food provided by Wara was the freshest.
The nomadic people's most livestock are cattle and sheep, so most of the meat eaten is also beef and mutton, but in order to preserve the meat for a longer time, the Warat people air dry the meat and eat it as jerky.
But they knew that the Han people were not used to eating jerky, so they gave Zhu Qizhen freshly slaughtered beef and mutton, and killed a sheep for them almost every two or three days, which was quite a luxury for the not wealthy Warat people.
What's even more extravagant is that they even sometimes slaughter horses and give them to Zhu Qizhen to eat horse meat!
You must know that horses are one of the beliefs of the Warat people, and they are their lifelong companions, all of them are regarded as family members, and only during the festival will horses be slaughtered and eaten horse meat, so although the taste of horse meat is not as good as beef and mutton, but the status is very high, and the Warat people are willing to use horse meat to entertain Zhu Qizhen is actually the highest etiquette.
3. Zhu Qizhen's life in Warat
Due to environmental and cultural restrictions, the Warat people are not rich in spiritual life and cultural activities, but they know that Zhu Qizhen, as the emperor, has never lived a hard life on the grassland.
Therefore, he first came up with a way, hoping to relieve Zhu Qizhen's boredom and at the same time bring the relationship between Warat and the Ming Dynasty closer - that is, to relieve the boredom of Zhu Qizhen's beauties.
It just so happened that one of the younger sisters of the first was quite beautiful even among the windy and sun-exposed grassland women, so she also wanted to give her sister to Zhu Qizhen as a "temporary wife".
His abacus is quite good, as the sister of the leader of Warat, she herself is the best tool to be sent to make peace with other tribes, and at this time, His Majesty the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty is in front of him, who else is more noble than Zhu Qizhen's identity? The marriage was quite a bargain.
What's more, they also have points against Warat's strength, especially when they wanted to attack the Ming Dynasty with Zhu Qizhen as a threat before, but they were defeated in the defense of Beijing, they realized the strength of the Ming Dynasty.
Therefore, if my sister and Zhu Qizhen can give birth to a son and a half daughter - of course, the son is the best, then Warat and the Ming Dynasty are real in-laws, so for the sake of the prince's mother's face, the Ming Dynasty will not destroy Warat.
But it's a pity that although Zhu Qizhen was detained to the point of being extremely bored, he still adhered to his discipline as the Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (in fact, he was already the Emperor Taishang at the time), and did not accept this interracial beauty sent to the door.
I also felt quite a pity at first, but I couldn't force Zhu Qizhen to be lucky with his sister, so he had to give up, but fortunately, it didn't take long for him to come up with other tricks.
On this day, he also found Zhu Qizhen and his captured courtiers first, and said that they would be sent back to Daming, which undoubtedly shocked Zhu Qizhen and them, and at the same time doubted what they were planning first.
But not only did he not use them as bargaining chips to threaten Daming, but instead asked his subordinates to personally escort them, and sent Zhu Qizhen and his party back to Daming intact and left.
So after Zhu Qizhen returned to China, because the throne had been inherited by his younger brother Zhu Qiyu, the emperor with his sense of identity was under house arrest under suspicion, and just eight years later, the Ming Dynasty was in chaos again.
Zhu Qizhen successfully restored through the change of seizing the door, and after the restoration, Zhu Qizhen even set up a temple in order to show goodwill to Wara, and executed a number of ministers, including Yu Qian, who presided over the defense of Beijing.
In fact, this is exactly the purpose of Yexian, after the defense of Beijing, Zhu Qizhen has lost his direct use role for Warat, and keeping him in Warat is just a hot potato.
Therefore, it is better to throw this hot potato back to the Ming Dynasty and kill the current emperor of the Ming Dynasty who kicked him to the throne, so that Warat can make a profit, which is really quite politically wise.