From a crutch and a broken bowl to a million soldiers in hand, a powerful empire has been shaped. From a cowherd to an emperor with power. Generally speaking, if any author writes such a reversal paragraph, I am afraid that it will be sprayed by the reader. But this has happened in history. The person who experienced all this was Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
As a cloth-clad tianzi, Zhu Yuanzhang's childhood could not find another adjective except for the two words of misery. So how tragic was the childhood of the young Zhu Yuanzhang, and how he came out of the tragic childhood and embarked on the anti-Yuan road? What impact did this poor origin have on Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang?
There was once a question online, if you can travel back in time to a historical figure, how many lives do you need to complete their exploits? This seemingly simple question has stumped history buffs. The few understated strokes we see in the history books were written by historical figures throughout their lives. Nowadays, even if there is really that kind of time and space machine, let him take Zhu Yuanzhang back to the end of the Yuan, I am afraid that few people can complete the road of Zhu Yuanzhang, and may not even be able to pass the childhood.
According to the history books of the Ming Dynasty, on the day Zhu Yuanzhang was born, his home was full of red light, as if it was on fire. Depicting Zhu Yuanzhang's birth can be said to be a god. However, those who know what the historians are doing should know that this is all a kind of processing technique, just to make Zhu Yuanzhang, who has no background, look more destined. So what is the real Zhu Yuanzhang?
On a very ordinary night in 1328 AD, in a small village in Fengyang, Anhui Province, a farmer named Zhu Wusi was anxiously waiting. After a while, the cry of the baby boy was heard, and Zhu Yuanzhang was born. Although he was a man, Zhu Wusi was not as excited as he seemed, because there were already five children in the family, and this time there was one more, which made the already poor family even worse.
This newborn child's original name was not Zhu Yuanzhang. At the time, names were cultured. Only the children of people with status deserve it. As a peasant's son, Zhu Yuanzhang did not seem to have the power of a name, so for the sake of government registration, the newborn was called Zhu Zhongba. Zhu Zhongba's family is poor and cannot support any child to study, if at this time, someone tells Zhu Wusi that your son Zhu Zhongba will be an emperor in the future, I am afraid that he will only be regarded as a madman. How can such a good thing get their turn?
At that time, the Zhu family did not have their own land, and nearly ten people in the family were huddled in a broken thatched hut to survive, and all the sources of livelihood were renting land from the landlord's family or working long-term jobs for the landlord. After Zhu Zhongbagang had a little ability to work, he was also sent to work in the landlord's house, after all, this could reduce the pressure on the family a little. Zhu Zhongba thus obtained his first career in life - cattle herding. If nothing happens, Zhu Zhongba is afraid that he will not change his name to Yuanzhang in this life, and he will continue the life that his grandfather and father have experienced, and spend this life under the landlord. However, heaven did not seem to want Zhu Zhongba to live in peace like this.
When Zhu Zhongba was born, the Yuan Dynasty had already had various social problems, the mood of resistance in society had intensified, and the Yuan Dynasty, which had just been established less than a hundred years ago, was already in turmoil, but for the low-level people like the Zhu family, it was just more labor and more patience, and it seemed that there was no other difference. As long as you can survive, you don't want anything else, most people, including Zhu Zhongba, think like this.
The change of events occurred in the third year of the Yuan Shun Emperor's reign, that is, in 1343, when Zhu Zhongba, who was only fifteen or sixteen years old, slowly opened the curtain on the most tragic stage of his tragic childhood. This year, the heavens were not beautiful, and Haozhou was in a great drought. Thousands of peasants worked hard for a year, but in the end they almost did not harvest anything. However, the rent of the landlord and the servitude of the government still had to be paid, and countless peasant names were forced into a desperate situation. Although the rulers of the Yuan Dynasty ordered disaster relief, under the corrupt bureaucratic system of the Yuan Dynasty, few grains of disaster relief grain issued by the imperial court could reach the bowls of the victims.
However, the so-called blessings are incomparable, and the misfortunes are not alone, just after experiencing a major drought, people hope that the spring of the next year will be able to make a good start and be able to survive this difficult time, but at this time, a locust plague broke out in the Huai River Valley. At that time, there was no locust repellent technology today, and in the face of locusts covering the sky, people were helpless, and they could only see that the crops they had just planted were ruined. Thought it would end here? No, the locust plague had just left, and the plague had spread again in the villages near Zhu Zhongba, and this heavy burden fell on these ordinary people, completely crushing the lives of these suffering people.
Zhu Zhongba's life also became completely desperate under this successive blows. As soon as the plague began, someone from Zhu Zhongba's family was recruited. His father, Zhu Wusi, was infected with the plague, and Zhu Wusi, who was already 64 years old, was not in good health, and at this time it was even more serious, and he could not afford to be infected for a while, and it was not long before his father died. But this was only the beginning of the nightmare, at this time the Zhu family was not only short of food, but also the plague was very frightening. In a short period of time, his eldest brother and mother also died of illness one after another, and in less than half a month, the Zhu family, which was originally prosperous, was left with only Zhu Zhongba and his second brother. Zhu Yuanzhang, who had just turned sixteen, suddenly felt the despair of his family being destroyed.
Zhu Zhongba wanted the landlord to help bury his dead parents, but how could the vampire landlord be so kind, even if it was only a dime of money, they were not willing to come out. Zhu Yuanzhang and his second brother had to wrap up the bodies of their parents in disappointment and beg around for burial. Maybe it was because they were pitiful, and when it wasn't too long, there were well-meaning people who buried their parents for them, which was also a wish of Zhu Zhongba. After the burial, Zhu Zhongba and his second brother also parted ways and embarked on different paths of survival.
In that chaotic world at that time, there were not a few people like Zhu Zhongba, and many of them died in the chaotic world, and the corpses were in the wilderness. Zhu Yuanzhang had nowhere to go for a while, so he surrendered to the Huangjue Temple. Although he is said to be a monk, he does not have any status in the temple, but only the lowest level of miscellaneous servants. The old monks in the temple were no different from the former landlords, and they were even more harsh on the poor people like Zhu Zhongba. But Zhu Zhongba didn't care, after experiencing life and death, he just wanted to be able to survive in this chaotic world. Although the temple was severely oppressed, it could at least give him a mouthful of food to eat.
However, with the severity of the disaster, the life of the Huangjue Temple was not good. Temples generally rely on rent collection and foreign alms to survive, in the year of disaster, the temple's real estate has no food income, foreign alms are almost cut off, and the temple is almost unable to open the pot. In desperation, the abbot of the temple, Pharaoh, had no choice but to order the monks to be dismissed and the monks to go out on a tour. The beautiful name is Yunyou, but in fact, it is even begging, and at this time, Zhu Zhongba has just arrived at the Huangjue Temple for more than fifty days. Because of his low status, when Zhu Zhongba chose the location of the cloud tour, it was difficult to get the opportunity to choose a good place first. After the other monks had picked and chosen, Zhu Zhongba took a stick and a broken bowl and embarked on the road of begging.
After three years of upheaval and displacement outside, although Zhu Zhongba had a hard time during this time, he also saw the customs and customs of different regions and also exercised his tenacious will. At that time, there were mutinies all over the Yuan Dynasty. After three years of wandering, I heard that my hometown had gradually emerged from the disaster, and the temple gradually became operational. Once again, he was back in that familiar land. But this time it didn't last long.
When he was a child, he had a playmate called Tang He. At this time he was working as a small leader in a peasant rebel army. When he learned that his brother Zhu Chongba was still begging for a living in the temple, he wrote a letter inviting Zhu Zhongba to join the rebel army, but at this time, Zhu Zhongba still had fantasies about ordinary life. At first, he did not choose to join the rebel army, but continued to live in the temple.
However, at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, various rebel armies fought and fought, and the war soon burned to Zhu Zhongba's hometown, and the Huangjue Temple, which had been hard to regain its vitality, was also in ruins in the fire of war. Zhu Zhongba can be said to have been tossed to the extreme by fate, and in desperation, he finally joined the rebel army. At first, it was only a small soldier, and at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, no one could have imagined that this fallen monk, who had just finished begging life and had no background, would become the final winner of this group of deer, and complete the only successful Northern Expedition from south to north in Chinese history, establishing a powerful empire with more than two hundred years of national zuo.
After entering the rebel army, although he often died nine times and often had no place to live, for Zhu Zhongba, this was much more tragic than his childhood. During the days of the rebel army, he changed his name to Zhu Yuanzhang, and he also met Empress Ma, who would accompany him throughout his life. He knew who was the culprit who had killed his own family, and he knew who had turned the people of the world into this. Finally, he overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and restored the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, which had been occupied by northern nomads for hundreds of years, and a powerful empire set sail from here.
Some people say that Zhu Yuanzhang was tyrannical by nature, treated officials too harshly with corruption, and showed no mercy to the founding heroes. Moreover, the three major cases of Hongwu have landed countless heads. However, was Zhu Yuanzhang born tyrannical, or was Zhu Yuanzhang's tragic childhood, that made him always try to do everything he could to make those ordinary people who had a tragic experience with him better?