When it comes to the Ming Dynasty, many people say that the Ming Dynasty is very backbone, such as "no peace, no indemnity, no land cutting, no tribute, the son of heaven guarding the gate of the country, and the king dying in the community." Now this sentence is very widespread and seems to have become true. Then, the paper can't contain the fire, and I'm here to debunk this rumor today.
First of all, was the Ming Dynasty really not friendly? At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the Northern Yuan and the Later Goryeo Dynasty on the Korean Peninsula had good relations. In order to divide the relationship between the Northern Yuan and Later Goryeo, Zhu Yuanzhang expressed his wish for peace to the emissaries of The Later Goryeo and married the princess of the Ming Dynasty. Unexpectedly, Later Goryeo soon perished and was replaced by the Li Dynasty, and then Zhu Yuanzhang made a request for peace with Li Chenggui. However, Li Chenggui feared that the princess would control the government with the support of the Ming Dynasty, so he rejected this family affair. After that, Zhu Di once again proposed to make peace with Li Chao, but was still rejected. This is not a harmony, obviously want to marry the princess did not marry well.
Li Chenggui
In fact, during the Ming Yingzong period, the Ming Dynasty and The Wallachians were friendly. After the change of Tumu Fort, Ming Yingzong was captured. In order to welcome back Emperor Yingzong, Zhou Shushang, a scholar of Hanlin' attendant, wrote: "For the sake of the present, we must first choose a debater, humble and heavy money, temporarily be a father and brother, and because of the good old times, the grace is so thick, and now because the traitors have misled the country, the army has raised grievances, and the joy of the north and the south has been lost, and if you can return to the holy car immediately, you will be reconciled and close, and the world will be profitable." After the change of the gate, Emperor Mingying regained the throne and began to fulfill the agreement reached with Heya first, he was a relative. For the sake of face, Emperor Ming Yingzong described heqin as a mutual market, and the Yang Ji Biography records that "the mutual marketer, and the relative alias also".
After Ming Yingzong returned, he not only made peace with Vala, but also lost a lot of money, but changed his name just for the sake of face. Emperor Mingmuzong's Zhu Zaizhong period of the Bingbu Shangshu Fang once clearly said, "Peace and humiliation are also, and bribes and shame are also." Now the tribute is not peace, and the city is not bribed." That is to say, peace and affinity and indemnity are all shames, but we do not feel ashamed when we change our name to tribute and mutual market. This shows that the Ming Dynasty is still very shameless.
The Ming Dynasty's reparations were more than this time. Let me give you another example. During the Jiaqing period, the Mongol Utah Khan constantly attacked the frontier. In 1550, When the Khan attacked Datong, the commander-in-chief of Theo province of Datong, Qiu Luan, was "afraid and helpless", so he bribed the Khan with a large amount of money to let the Khan attack other places. As soon as he was happy, he directly hit Beijing, which is known in history as the "change of Gengji".
In the face of the fierce Mongol army, the 50,000 forbidden troops in Beijing of the Ming Dynasty "wept and did not dare to go forward" and cried together. So the army recruited 40,000 troops to the front, and as a result, the Ming army was "timid and did not dare to fight." The Jiajing Emperor gave Qiu Luan command of the army, but Qiu Luan did not dare to engage the Khan of Qida, did not dare to put an arrow at the army of the Khan of TheOdya Khan, and disguised his army as a Mongol army, entering the vicinity of Beijing to "plunder the people's wealth" and "the people suffer more than the prisoners.". Later, emperor Jiajing's policy was to first let the Khan grab enough in Beijing, and then send a large number of "leather coins and pearls" to beg for peace. In the end, the Khan of Uttar Khan sacked Beijing and received compensation from the Jiajing Emperor and happily returned to the desert. This change in Gengshu was one of the most humiliating events in the history of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1570, there was the Incident of Tribute to the Ming Dynasty, ostensibly because the Khan of the Ming Dynasty declared himself a vassal, and the two sides exchanged markets. But the strange thing is that the Ming Dynasty also handed over a certain amount of money to the Khan every year, which was called "city reward" and "year gift". In fact, "city reward" and "year gift" means that the Northern Song Dynasty paid "year coin" to the Liao and Western Xia, which means that the name has changed, so that the face of the Ming Dynasty can barely be hung.
Regarding how much the "year gift" is, there is no clear record of the Ming Dynasty officially, after all, it is not a glorious thing. Later, the Mongols also used various conditions to blackmail the Ming Dynasty into increasing the "year gift". In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, Lin Dan Khan became the Great Khan of Southern Mongolia, and the Ming Dynasty gave Lin Dan Khan an annual "city reward" of more than 1 million taels. It was not until 1635 that Lin Dan Khan was destroyed by the Qing Dynasty that the Ming Dynasty's "city reward" for Mongolia was terminated. From Uttar Khan to Lin Dan Khan, the Ming Dynasty paid 60 years of compensation to Mongolia, which is equivalent to paying 60 years of protection fees.
Lin Dan Khan
Finally, let's take a look at the land cut? During the Zhu Di period, the territory of the Ming Dynasty was about 6 million square kilometers, but during the "reign of Ren xuan", the Ming Dynasty abolished the Nuer Gandu Division and the JiaozhiBu Political Envoy Division, and the area shrank to 4 million square kilometers. Of course, according to the official saying of the Ming Dynasty, this is "abandoned land", not land cutting, and there is no difference in essence.
In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the Seven Guards of Kansai were completely lost, and the Hetao Plain was lost. During the Wanli Dynasty, Burma continued to attack Yunnan, resulting in the fall of all the Tusi in Yunnan. At this time, the territory of the Ming Dynasty was only more than 3 million square kilometers. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty lost a total of 3 million square kilometers of land.
Moreover, in the Ming Dynasty, it is impossible to say that the lost land was recovered. During the Jiajing period, the governor of the three sides, Zeng Milling, asked the Jiajing Emperor to send an army to recover Hetao, but Yan Song falsely accused Zeng Milling of "befriending close servants" and "recklessly committing greed", so the Jiajing Emperor executed Zeng Milling, and from then on none of the Ming ministers dared to say anything about recovering the land.
To sum up, the Ming Dynasty had peace and affinity, indemnity, and land cuts, but just for the sake of face, it was changed to "mutual market", "city reward" and "abandoned land". So did the Ming Dynasty have a vassal? I think that the Ming Dynasty did not claim the title of subject before 1644, after all, the Ming Dynasty was a face-loving dynasty, and calling the subject would not do such a thing. However, if Nanming is also included, it is difficult to say. The Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty directly converted to Christianity for the sake of the emperor and claimed subjection to the Pope of Rome, which can be said to be unprecedented and unprecedented.