In the history of Hong Kong martial arts films, there are two classic works that tell the story of the fierce battle between the martial arts warriors in the middle of the Ming Dynasty and the Dongchang forces (based on the eunuch Cao Jixiang). One is "Dragon Gate Inn" directed by Hu Jinquan in 1967, and the other is "New Dragon Gate Inn" directed by Xu Ke and directed by Li Huimin in 1992, and the story background of both works is derived from the change of the door during the Ming Jing Emperor.
As we mentioned earlier, in the fourteenth year of orthodoxy (1449), the Ming army was defeated at Tumu Fort, and the ming Emperor Zhu Qizhen (1427-1464), who was personally marched by the imperial conquest, was captured and became a prisoner of the order of Vala. The kingdom could not live without a monarch for a day, and with the support of Qian and other ministers, he persuaded Empress Sun to make Zhu Qiyu (1428 – March 23, 1457), who was in charge of supervising the state in The Capital Division, as emperor, and to honor his brother Emperor Mingying as Emperor Taishang, and the following year changed his name to Yuan Jingtai.
Lucky Emperor Zhu Qiyu
Zhu Qiyu was a lucky man. He said that he was lucky because at a time of national crisis, he picked up the position of emperor, and also met Yu Qian, a loyal and courageous minister, who helped him save Daming's country. As we all know, Yu Qian was a famous politician during the reign of Emperor Jing of Ming, and after the Tumu Revolution, he performed well and turned the tide of the tide, becoming a "prime minister to save the time", and his prestige was rising day by day, and he was promoted to shangshu of the military department on August 21 of that year. After Emperor Mingjing ascended the throne, Yu Qian vigorously advocated resistance, defended the Jingshi, and refused to move south, and his performance during the Jingtai years basically represented the administrative intentions of Emperor Mingjing.
As the political situation on the northern border gradually stabilized, the Ming Emperor's Wallachian was captured, and since then he has not been able to get any more oil and water from the Ming Empire. In the first year of the Ming Dynasty, the captured Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen was released back to the dynasty after being imprisoned for one year by Wa Lai. According to the History of the Ming Dynasty, "In August, the Emperor hunted in the north and died for one year. I also saw that China was not provocative, and it was a desire to beg for peace, and the messengers came frequently, please return to the emperor. The chancellor Wang Zhi and other envoys were greeted, and the emperor was not pleased: "Shuo Ben did not want to ascend to the throne, but at that time he saw the push, and the real qing and so on." ’”
Looking around, who would be the biggest threat to his throne? At this time, Zhu Qiyu's mood was extremely troubled, because Emperor Yingzong Zhu Qizhen and he were originally half-brothers, and the brothers were like brothers and sisters. However, under the shadow of imperial power, the brotherhood began to twist, and the brotherhood mutated from normal to abnormal. Zhu Qiyu, who was persuaded by the chancellor to become emperor as the eldest son of a non-concubine in a special historical background, although he and Yu Qian vigorously advocated the war of resistance, repelled many attacks by Vala, and turned the jiangshan sheji into a safe place. But once the national contradictions are alleviated, and their predecessors have successfully returned, the sense of imperial crisis will certainly be difficult to hide in the heart.
Incompetent Emperor Zhu Qiyu
It can be said that Zhu Qiyu is an incompetent person, and the throne he accidentally obtained was temporarily stabilized with the help of Yu Qian and others. However, when emperor Yingzong of Taishang was welcomed back, he was afraid of losing his power and was unwilling to return the throne to Emperor Yingzong Zhuqizhen, so he placed Zhu Qizhen and imprisoned him in the Nangong, and took various measures so that Emperor Zhu Qizhen, who was only one year older than himself, could not have any contact with the outside world to prevent restoration.
Not only that, after Zhu Qiyu welcomed back Emperor Yingzong, he also had the idea of making his son the crown prince, and repeatedly tested the reaction of the ministers, looking for opportunities to change the crown prince. It is reported that Zhu Qiyu did whatever it took to do anything to this matter, and even bribed his ministers to block the mouths of the ministers. The ministers received the money, and things were naturally much easier. In the third year of Jingtai (1452), Zhu Qiyu, under the pretext that "the father has the whole world will be passed on to the son", abolished the crown princeship of Zhu Jianshen, the son of Emperor Mingyingzong, and crowned his only son Zhu Jianji as crown prince. However, less than a year later, Zhu Jianji died prematurely, and the crown prince was vacant again. This made the Ming Jing Emperor Zhu Qiyu embarrassed, and it was he who personally deposed his nephew Zhu Jianshen, and now his own son died prematurely, and he faced the problem of re-establishing the reserve. Under the influence of various factors, Zhu Qiyu maintained a high degree of vigilance against the restoration of the crown prince. This incident also showed that Zhu Qiyu had always wanted to straighten out the imperial lineage in his heart, inherit the imperial system from generation to generation with his descendants, cut off the imperial unity of Emperor Yingzong, create a fait accompli, and lay the foundation for himself for generations.
Chen Xuewen of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences analyzed in the article "A Brief Discussion on Yu Qian's Tragic Historical Fate" that "Yu Qian, who holds great power, has a warm and ambiguous attitude on the issue of Yi Chu, which is also a pretext for posterity,...... The Ming people already had two different views on qian on the issue of easy storage. ...... Yu Qian was closer to Emperor Daizong, and since then it has led to the root cause of Emperor Yingzong's emotional hatred of Yu Qian. In short, Yu Qian made a mistake between the succession of the imperial throne and the choice to support the lineage of the Second Emperor, which was also one of the excuses for the later Shi and Xu generations to lowly destroy Yu Qian in front of Emperor Yingzong. ”
The change of the door and the change of the throne
Emperor Mingyingzong Zhu Qizhen was placed under house arrest in the Southern Palace, and Zhu Qiyu did not allow his courtiers to see him, but in fact, Emperor Mingyingzong still had an influence in the dynasty that could not be underestimated, and Ming Yingzong, who was in his young age, was also unwilling to be this "Emperor Taishang" for a lifetime. After the Yi Chu storm, Zhu Qiyu, who had an improper reputation, was even more intolerable to the feudal ministers.
In the first month of the eighth year of Jingtai (1457), the Ming Jing Emperor Zhu Qiyu was seriously ill, and because the crown prince was undecided, the civil and military officials inside and outside the court were very worried, and everyone had different plans in their hearts. Later, some scholars believed that before the seizure of the gate, the ministers of the DPRK were divided into three forces: the "Fuli Yiwang (former crown prince Zhu Jianshen) faction", "another Xiangwang Shizi faction", and "Fengying Emperor Restoration Faction".
The change that launched the seizure of the door was carried out by the "Fengying Emperor Restoration Faction", of which Shi Heng, Xu Youzhen and the eunuch Cao Jixiang were representatives of this faction. At that time, Shi Heng was the Marquis of Wuqing, as a military general, outstanding and ambitious, Xu Youzhen, although knowledgeable and good at drilling camps, was later promoted to the position of imperial envoy of the left deputy capital, and once advocated moving south to be despised, and the eunuch Cao Jixiang was a disciple of the former grand eunuch Wang Zhen. In this way, a group of courtiers and eunuchs who were good at spying on the situation colluded with each other, and The Marquis Of Wuqing Shiheng, the Governor Zhang Rail, the eunuch Cao Jixiang, the Taichangqing Xu Bin and Xu Youzhen conspired to launch a "change to seize the door" on the evening of the sixteenth day of the first month. According to the Ming Tongjian, Xu Youzhen bid farewell to his family at that time: "When things come to fruition, the society is extremely beneficial; No, the curse of the Gate Clan. Gui, man; No return, ghost. At dawn on the seventeenth day, just as the ministers were waiting for the Jing Emperor Zhu Qiyu to announce the issue of the crown prince, they overheard Xu Youzhen shouting loudly, "The Emperor is reinstated", and in this way, Ming Yingzong returned to the throne of the Fengtian Temple surrounded by Shi, Xu and others, and returned to the emperor's throne that had been separated for a long time, which was the "change of the Nangong".
At this time, the Jing Emperor Zhu Qiyu, who was seriously ill, had no choice but to abdicate, was deposed as the King of Qi, and returned to heaven a month later (for the cause of Emperor Mingjing's death, the Ming people were often evasive, saying that they were poisoned and died, and the other said that they died of illness. A feud for the throne between brothers finally came to an end under the co-direction of the courtiers and eunuchs. On the twenty-first day, Emperor Mingying's Zhu Qizhen decreed that Yuan Tianshun should be changed. All five cabinet members during the Jing Emperor period were cleared out, the six ministries and the nine number one figures in the Metropolitan Inspection Yuan were all dealt with to varying degrees, and Yu Qian and other backbone forces who originally supported Emperor Jing were all executed. Xu Youzhen, Shi Heng, Cao Jixiang, and other officials were promoted to the throne because of the meritorious service of Emperor Yingzong, and the large and small officials above the entire court were "one of the new".
Absentees of the Ming Tombs
Emperor Mingjing Zhu Qiyu should be said to have been doomed to failure long ago. The first is his own physical problems, and he is no longer able to control the situation. After the early death of the crown prince, because there was no successor, the mental blow was huge, the behavior was extreme, and he was busy adding another imperial heir and collapsing his body, which naturally gave the restorationists great confidence. Secondly, for the sake of Yi Chu, the Ming Jing Emperor Zhu Qiyu paid a price that was not light, and in the Yi Chu storm, Zhu Qiyu's obstinate behavior made a group of courtiers who had been deeply influenced by Confucian ethics and morality extremely dissatisfied and lost their "mass base". These also gave confidence to Zhu Qizhen, who was not willing to be a "prisoner of the Emperor Taishang". Finally, there is a key figure, that is, Empress Sun's support for Zhu Qizhen (historians have disputed Zhu Qizhen's lineage, and his mother-son relationship with Empress Sun is debatable).
According to records, Emperor Mingjing had originally built his own mausoleum in the area of changping ancestral mausoleum (thirteen tombs), but because the Taishang Emperor Zhu Qizhen re-ascended the throne through a coup d'état, he did not bury him in the standard of the emperor, but buried him in the Western Mountains on the outskirts of Beijing with royal ceremonies.