In the fourth year of Jianwen (1402), rebels led by Zhu Di, the King of Yan, attacked the capital of the Ming Empire, Nanjing, and the imperial palace was on fire, and the legitimate emperor Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao disappeared. For hundreds of years, out of sympathy for Emperor Jianwen and dissatisfaction with Zhu Di's usurpation of the throne, people were always curious and concerned about The ultimate outcome of Zhu Yunjiao. As everyone knows, compared with Emperor Jianwen himself, the suffering of his family and descendants is more tragic and more worthy of sympathy.
In this catastrophe pushed by Zhu Di, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao, who was in the center of the storm whirlpool, finally had to destroy his family and die. Zhu Yunjiao's wife, Empress Ma, was burned alive in a palace fire at the age of 33.
Zhu Yunjiao had two sons, the eldest son Zhu Wenkui and the second son Zhu Wengui. Zhu Wenkui was born at the time of the eclipse, so he hated the love of his great-grandfather Zhu Yuanzhang. However, as the eldest son, Zhu Wenkui was still crowned prince in the first year of Jianwen. Without the rebellion of his uncle Zhu Di, Zhu Wenkui would basically have followed the path of the prince-emperor and become a Taiping Tianzi.
But unfortunately, Zhu Wenkui was not so lucky, he and his mother Empress Ma, buried in the raging fire, only 7 years old. Of course, there is also a more romantic version, that is, Zhu Wenkui and his father Emperor Jianwen escaped from the palace together and have since disappeared from all over the world.
The encounter with Zhu Wengui, the second son of Zhu Yunjiao, is even more lamentable, and it is more worth telling you in detail.
Zhu Wengui, the second son of Emperor Jianwen, was generally referred to as the "Jianshu people". When Zhu Di seized the throne, Zhu Wengui was only two years old, and in the chaotic palace, his father Emperor Jianwen and his mother Empress Ma had little time to take care of him. He wasn't taken away, he wasn't burned, and he was lucky enough to survive.
However, surviving also became the greatest misfortune of Zhu Wengui's life. When Zhu Di's army stormed the palace and found two-year-old Zhu Wengui, he had become a prisoner, and a prisoner forever. Zhu Di ordered that Zhu Wengui be deposed as a Shuren and called him "Jianshuzi", also known as "Jianshuren".
Soon after, in order to break the hearts of those loyal to Emperor Jianwen, Zhu Di moved the two-year-old Zhu Wengui to Fengyang, the capital of Zhongdu, and imprisoned him alone in a high-walled compound, completely isolated from the world. Time flickered, the vicissitudes of the sea, 55 years have passed. Outside the high walls, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty have been replaced several times, Ming Chengzu Zhu Di, Ming Renzong Zhu Gaozi, Ming Xuanzong Zhu Zhanji, Jingtai Emperor Zhu Qiyu are all dead, and even Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen has already been enlightened twice, once again becoming emperor.
Feeling the tragic experience of the years when he was imprisoned by his brother, Zhu Qizhen suddenly felt kind, remembering that there were two other wasters in Fengyang City who had been locked up for decades, one was the "Jianshu people" Zhu Wengui, and the other was "Wu Shuren" (probably a descendant of Emperor Jianwen's younger brother Zhu Yunxi).
Zhu Qizhen decided to release these innocent and imprisoned people, but some people actually objected, and Zhu Qizhen said quite smugly, "Those who have a mandate of heaven, let themselves do it." In fact, these people who have been locked up for decades are no different from the wasted people, where will there be any threat? Zhu Qizhen was just a Shunshui person, and was also praised by Li Xian in college as a saint like Yao Shun.
After Zhu Wengui was released, he still lived in Fengyang, surrounded by twenty eunuchs given by the imperial court and more than a dozen maids for the envoys. Due to his imprisonment for too long and isolated from the world, Zhu Wengui could not even distinguish between cattle and horses, and not long after he was released, he fell ill and died. This is reminiscent of the babies and babies in the last years of the Western Han Dynasty, where children are innocent and guilty.
Let an innocent child never understand the world, until the age of huajia, who should be responsible for Zhu Wengui's tragedy.
There is no doubt that the first person responsible is Zhu Di, a traitor. It is precisely because of his desire for profit and too much power that he would disregard human morality and openly rebel and march south, causing Emperor Jianwen's family to be destroyed, Zhu Wengui to become a prisoner, and thousands of lives to be destroyed.
It was also Zhu Di who, in order to consolidate his position of power, chose to lock up a two-year-old child in the deep wall compound and turn him into an idiot.
In addition to Zhu Di, the Jianwen Emperor Zhu Yunjiao also had an unshirkable responsibility. Indecisive in doing things, regardless of priorities, pedantic emphasis on etiquette and morality, and forgetting the great responsibility of being the emperor of the world and the lives of many people and families, he finally forced himself to a dead end, and also returned the people around him, including Zhu Wengui.
In fact, there is another person who is also inseparable, he is Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang. As the founding emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang lacked the courage he deserved and was too superstitious about the family world. He raised his sons to be hungry wolves one by one, although to guard against the Mongols in the north, but he forgot the balance, forgot the most important principle of governing the country.
Zhu Yuanzhang magnified the power of the princes, but cleaned up the civilian and military generals around the emperor, leaving only some pedantic literati and wine bags and rice bags, and the serious imbalance of imperial power was the fundamental reason why Zhu Di dared to rebel and successfully seize the throne.