Zhu Yuanzhang's appearance in the TV series "Daming Fenghua".
In the book "Essays on the Pavilion of the Pavilion", Mr. Lu Xun wrote an article "Miscellaneous Talks after Illness", in which he talked about the gruesome ancient torture: "peeling the skin and pulling the grass". That is, the skin of a living person is peeled off alive and then stuffed with grass. Imagine the scene of the execution, it must have been horrible. In history, probably only some extremely ferocious tyrants, cool officials, and murderous rogues and thieves have been able to do this kind of poison. However, in the Ming Dynasty, starting with Zhu Yuanzhang, several emperors had officially adopted this barbaric criminal law. The ruler of a dignified great country has reached the point of losing his humanity in such a way, which is rare in the history of world civilization. Therefore, Mr. Lu Xun said: "The ancients told us how prosperous the Tang Dynasty was and how good the Ming Dynasty was. (Correspondence with Mr. Cao Juren)
Zhu Yuanzhang
It is appropriate to call this little monk-born emperor a scoundrel. To be honest, there are few politicians who are not scoundrels, and it is not enough to be a scoundrel! Count on them to be sincere, generous, kind, and simple, and they are no different from each other. After Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, according to Zhao Yi's "Twenty-two Historical Notes", the history of the introduction of the wild "Cao Muzi" contains: "The Ming ancestor was strict with the rule of officials, and those who obeyed the order and were greedy and cruel, Xu Min went to Beijing to complain, and those who stolen more than sixty taels were shown to the public, and they still peeled the skin and grass." Fuzhou County Weizhi Zuo, a special temple, to worship the land, for the peeling field, called 'leather field temple'. Next to the official seat of the government, each hangs a bag of peeling skin and grass, so that it is alarming. "Inheriting the bloody criminal law of the Yuan Dynasty and carrying out his reign of terror, its murderous nature is not an ordinary scoundrel.
Therefore, Zhao Yi thinks: "Gai Mingzu is alone, a sage and a hero, and a thief, and he is also a person who has both." This "thief's nature" is what hit Zhu Yuanzhang's key point. A thief is an armed scoundrel, whose characteristic is to destroy at all times, to be suspicious all the time, to do everything to achieve his goal. Zhu Yuanzhang, born as a lumpen-proletarian since childhood, came from the bottom of the society who did not do his job, grew up under oppression, and was full of hatred for society, this desire to destroy and destroy, especially allergic hostility, cunning and changeable character, and vicious behavior that is not afraid of using the most despicable means, is more prominent, this is Zhu Yuanzhang in history.
Therefore, when everything around him is enough to endanger his bottom line of safety, his most-important, most commonly used, first-thought, cleanest, and most trouble-free and simple solution is one word, kill. Historically, not only this Emperor Zhu, but also all rulers with poor cultural quality and low level of civilization often have the evil nature of their human nature that they are often unable to control themselves, and they want to kill people, they want to kill people on a large scale, and they want to let the executioner prolong the death process of the killed as much as possible, and exhaust the last life bit by bit in infinite suffering, which is extremely miserable. To put it bluntly, the "thief's nature" is the anti-civilization beast nature. A little more civilization, a little less animality; And if there is less civilization, or if the least civilization is lost, society will fall into darkness and blood.
The cruelty of this ruler is the root cause of the suffering of the Chinese for generations.
Zhu Yuanzhang went to the temple to be a little monk, although he was not good at chanting, stealing chickens and dogs, robbing and stealing, but he was classified as a destitute class, when there was no doubt, would he steal if he was not poor? Liu Bang doesn't steal, he can still work as an errand in the grassroots government and get a salary, and his father has a little land in the countryside, and there is always a rich peasant component. The education status of these two people is not recorded in history. But Liu Bang can "try to be an official, for the head of the Surabaya Pavilion", and he can stand up to a try, which shows that he knows a few big characters or has a certain culture, otherwise, he would not have yelled at the villagers when he returned to his hometown, "The wind is blowing and the clouds are flying". It's no wonder that Chinese emperors write poems, and even Huang Chao, who didn't become an official emperor, also has a "Chrysanthemum Poem" that "I kill a hundred flowers after my flowers bloom". Compared with Liu Bang or Huang Chao, Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't help but be ashamed.
Although, Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang both have a kind of paranoid rejection mentality of workers and peasants for people who are literate and hyphenated. Liu Bang also used the Confucian hat as a urinal, intending to disgust the intellectuals, which was an arrow of revenge for his "all-encompassing insults by the court officials", but when the urine was spilled, the anger came out, and it was pulled down, but Zhu Yuanzhang did not, this is the class feelings shown by three generations of poor peasants. Both hold grudges and hold grudges, you will repay it, kill when you fight the country, kill it when you sit on the country, cut off the head too quickly, but it is not enjoyable, and you have to "peel the skin and pull the grass", and slowly have a pastime.
Zhu Di
Mr. Lu Xun said, "Ming is a scoundrel", which is not bad at all, Zhu Yuanzhang's son Zhu Di is even more vicious, not only taking away his nephew's country, but also loyal to his nephew's subordinates such as Fang Xiaoru, such as iron strings, such as Jingqing, "peeling skin and pulling grass". The death of the party is not counted, and the family members will not let it go, and they will be cleaned up together. The ancient plant is much more powerful than the current plant. And after encountering the scoundrels of the Ming Dynasty, such as the university scholar Fang Xiaoru and others, Yongle actually gave instructions to send their wives and daughters to the barracks, and let the soldiers gang rape, asking them to give birth to "little turtles" and "lewd and cheap children". What the fuck is this kind of emperor, who is doing it like this?
Therefore, Zhu Yuanzhang, Zhu Di and the like, the "thief nature" has not changed, but they are just rogues who have become emperors. When they inflict their torture on the subjects they want to suppress, they should be in a state of mind no different from the rogues who are desperate to do all kinds of evil in the process of slaughtering along the way.
So, I remembered the debate between this sub-sage and his disciple Gaozi in Mencius about the inherent goodness of sex, and Gaozi said: "There is no goodness in sex, and there is no goodness in nature." He also said: "Sex can be good, it can be bad, so the people are good and good; If you are prosperous, the people will be violent. "What he said, I think makes a lot of sense. Because, when a person is in a big environment, what is like around him roughly determines what the person will be like. If there are many gentlemen, there is a benign interaction, and kindness and goodness are mutually beneficial; If there are many villains, the vicious dog will be in charge, and the vicious circle will be in charge. History proves that when the evil of human nature swells and spreads to the point of irrepressibility, the evil deeds of the whole society converge into a terrible turbid current, and the cruelty, ferocity, viciousness, perverseness, perversion, abnormality, madness, and madness of the human heart are everywhere...... The evil of all ends will burst out.
This may be just as the confession said, human nature can be good or not; If you advocate good, you will get good, and if you advocate not good, you will be evil. What's more, if there is something good at the top, it will be very bad at the bottom, and the degree of evil will become worse and worse. The cruelty of Emperor Zhu also came from the general cruelty of the Chinese people who were in war at the end of the Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of the Ming Dynasty.
From a cannibalistic record in the "Nancun Dropout Record" written by Tao Zongyi, we can also get a glimpse of Zhu Yuanzhang's cruelty: "The soldiers in the world are Yin, and the Huaiyou army is addicted to cannibalism, with children as the top, women second, and men second. Or sit between two cylinders, and force the fire outside. or on an iron frame. Or tie their hands and feet, first pour boiling soup with it, but brush it with a bamboo broom to remove the bitter skin. Or put it in a bag and cook it in a giant pot. Or drown in an incident. Or the man will stop his legs, and the woman will cut off his breasts, which is so poisonous that it cannot be spoken. The general name of the day is 'want meat', and it makes people think about it for food. ”
"The soldiers of the world are Yin A", "the army of Huaiyou is addicted to cannibalism", this environment, this background, made Zhu Yuanzhang, who originally had the spirit of a scoundrel and the nature of a thief, let go of his hands to kill. Even cannibalism is not surprising, so "peeling the skin and pulling the grass", he will not feel barbaric at all. According to Mr. Lu Xun's article, we know that there is a difference between Sun Kewang's official style and Zhang Xianzhong's liukou style. Zhang Xianzhong's style is, "From the beginning to the jiri, a wisp of cracking, Zhang is in front, like a bird spreading its wings, and the rate is more than a day", and "there are those who are killed, and those who are executed sit to die". Sun Kewang's style is "urging the servant to the ground, cutting the spine, and reaching the buttocks...... and cut off to the hands and feet, and turn the anterior chest...... to the neck and died. Then it was stained with ash, sewn with thread, and then it went into the grass."
Sun Kewang is not a good thing, he was a bandit earlier, and then he followed Zhang Xianzhong as a rogue, or Zhang's righteous son and general, killing people is not counted, and its cruelty can be imagined. However, he later became the protector of the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and was named the king of Qin by Emperor Yongli, but his "thief's nature" did not change, "he killed the generals without courtesy", and was impeached for the imperial history Li Ruyue. Emperor Yongli saw that it was okay, in order to please this military master, he first beat Li Ruyue forty boards, and Sun still did not give up, so he "peeled the skin and pulled the grass".
Both, both are skinned alive. But in order to make the tortured person suffer so much and not die, the executioner must really have some professional experience in dissection. Otherwise, before the skin is peeled off, the condemned person dies first, and the executioner is finished. Mr. Lu Xun couldn't help but sigh that in ancient China, the diagram of the five organs of the human body on the medical book was really "so sloppy and wrong that it was impossible to see people", but he peeled the skin and did not kill immediately, Ling Chi and did not stop being angry, he was tortured without showing his marks, and the palace was closed but not giving his life, and his "method of torture and punishment was often as if the ancients had already understood modern science". Behind this emotion, I don't know how many people died tragically, and I don't know how many on-the-spot experiences there are, so that this kind of butcher is in line with modern science. All this can only show that in the feudal society, the rulers (including the rogues who want to become rulers) are cruel, vicious, murderous, and treat people as inappropriate.
So, Mr. Lu Xun concluded: "At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Yongle peeled the skin of Jingqing, who was loyal to Emperor Jianwen, and used this (referring to Sun Kewang) method. In the Ming Dynasty, it began with peeling and ended with peeling, which can be said to have always remained the same. In fact, the Ming Dynasty used this punishment, not starting with Zhu Di, according to the Ming history expert Wu Han's research, to say that the "peeling and grass" is the most energetic, the little monk with a rogue and stubborn heart, is the pioneer of the torture of the Zhu Ming generation.
His sadistic and killing maniac, after ascending to the pole, intensified, and even went on a killing spree. Zhao Kuangyin in the Song Dynasty, a glass of wine released the military power, the buddies have been pampered since then, thank you behind closed doors, don't trouble me, it is the best policy. Liu Bang of the Han Dynasty, those who left his wishes, such as Xiao He, and those who went to his wishes, such as Zhang Liang, who had a difficult head like Han Xin, simply sent to the guillotine, which was the middle policy. And Zhu Yuanzhang is indiscriminate, regardless of whether he is close or close, he will unify the net and leave no grass, I am afraid it is the next policy. The ruthlessness of killing heroes, the poison of ruthlessness, and the person who does not remember old friends are none other than Zhu Yuanzhang. Of course, he was not the first one, nor will he be the last. However, like him, even his children and in-laws such as Li Shanchang and Lan Yu did not let go, and they also "peeled the skin and pulled the grass", and their evil can be known.
Li Shanchang and him Huai right to raise things, is his general manager, after the capital of Nanjing, the merit of the king, he set down, Li has the greatest merit, placed above the generals. He said that Li was his Xiao He, and without Li there would be no Ming Dynasty today. But in the end, Su Li colluded with others to rebel, so he was beheaded all over the house. Others can't understand that this crime can be established, and a royal historian risked his life to say that Li is already a very human minister, he has everything, and he can't have it anymore, even if he helps others overthrow Zhu, can he get more? Zhu Yuanzhang has always been unkind to the person who wrote the book, and if he is a little resentful of heaven's will, the end will be the head on the ground. It has only been a year since Li Shanchang was killed, and he dared to ask for rehabilitation, and people sweated for this imperial historian. Zhu Yuanzhang was uncharacteristic this time, he didn't get angry, but he didn't implement the policy. It seems that whoever has the "nature of a thief" will not admit his mistake.
And Lan Yu, who fought in the south and in the north, fought in the east and west, wiped out the main force of the Yuan army, and expelled the rest to the north of the desert, and was a marshal who made great contributions. But what about the marshal, he also tried to misbehave, and the end was worse than Lee's, he was skinned, put grass on it, and spread it to the whole country. According to Wu Han's "The Reign of Agents in the Ming Dynasty", Ouyang Zhi's "Shu Chaos" was quoted: "At the beginning, the thief (compiler: Zhang Xianzhong) entered the palace of the king of Shu, and saw a statue on the Duanli Gate, the prince was dressed in gold, human leather, and his head and hands and feet were fleshy. According to the internal supervisor Yun, in the early Ming Dynasty, the Duke of Liangguo Lanyu, the father of the concubine of Shu, was suspicious of Taizu, sat in order to rebel, peeled off his skin, and spread the news to the provinces, returned to Shu from Yunnan, and Wang Song stayed there. It proves that Zhu Yuanzhang has no remorse at all for peeling the skin of blue jade.
Zhu Yuanzhang's Hu Weiyong case, Lan Yu case, Li Shanchang case, etc., are widely implicated, from the imperial court to the farmhouse, a total of about 100,000 people. The only exception, in the previous case, Zhu Yuanzhang was afraid that his daughter would be a widow, so he pardoned his son-in-law and grandson, and they were not among the beheadings; In the later case, it seems that Lan Yu's daughter, who married his son, was fortunately not sitting, which finally let us see a little bit of the emperor's pitiful humanity.
Shang Ying's prisoner, the water is red, this cruel punishment maniac, the terrifying scene he created, is shocking. Weishui in the Qin period was not as threatened by soil erosion as it is now, making it difficult for Xi'an to drink water. The Weishui Basin, all the way to the Tang Dynasty, from Wang Weishi's "Weicheng Dynasty Rain and Light Dust", can also prove that the forest vegetation at that time was good, the water conservation was good, and the river was reckless and blue. Just imagine, how many people does this Legalist who has been popular for a while have to kill in order to dye the boiling river red? But when I thought of Emperor Zhu, he couldn't punish the nine clans at every turn, often one village and one township, one surname and one clan killed to the point where no chickens and dogs were left, and when I looked around, I saw ten rooms and nine emptiness, the population was cut off, the bones were thick, and the ghosts were towering.
Therefore, the emperors of the Ming Dynasty, the scoundrels, also knew the truth of being a fool of their venerable, and they often avoided talking about Emperor Zhu's cruelty, as if nothing happened; Even if it is occasionally involved, it is understated and brushed aside. The most uninteresting person is Hai Rui. Although he was a clean official, although he was upright and commendable in his life, although he was penniless after his death, and even the funeral expenses were paid by others; However, Wang Shizhen, a literary giant of the same era, commented on Hai Rui, saying that he "is not afraid of death, does not love money, and does not form a party, which is his strength; is not modest, does not know things, does not read, is his shortcoming", but also painted a portrait of this stubborn and rotten Mr. Hai Gangfeng.
Hai Jui
In his later years, he was re-employed, according to Shen Defu's "Wanli Ye Ed.": "Haigang Peak started from the Southern General Constitution, and after he took office, he suddenly set up two big red benches, and he wanted to flog the lawless people in the imperial history, and he was shocked for a while, thinking that there was nothing strange. This correspondent, who is equivalent to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, felt that the spanking on the bench was not enough to deter criminal behavior, so he went so far as to ignore the times and ask Emperor Wanli to "peel off the skin and grass at the beginning of the restoration of the country", that is, to bring out Zhu Hongwu's set of torture again.
Shen Shixing, who took over Zhang Juzheng as Zaifu, is an extremely sophisticated bureaucrat, and the reappointment of Hai Rui, who is not liked by Zhang Juzheng, is just a matter of subservience to public opinion. When he saw his sloppiness, he must have laughed and cried: "This Haigang Peak!" He may have persuaded him, "Dudetai, you are already an old man who is over the age of old, so you can save it!" Don't open a pot and mention a pot! He couldn't listen, and sat upright, taking on a great responsibility, and being upright.
Anyone with a cruel personality is more self-righteous and self-righteous, and this punishist is sent to Ouchi in the end. Sure enough, there was a big uproar, and Yushi immediately impeached Hai Rui for "leading to extrajudicial prostitution punishment". Fortunately, Zhu Yijun was in a good mood that day, but he only blamed "Rui Puppet's gaffe" and was not punished, "still staying in service". and excused his cruel ancestor: "According to the original system of Taizu, there is also an occasional line of ears." The so-called ancient, but not feasible today, this kind of is also. (All of the above see "Wanli Ye Ed.")
No matter how the emperors of later generations bent to protect him, Zhu Yuanzhang's cruelty could not be erased. Judging from his life of endless life and incessant killing, it can be judged that he is a patient with defects in personality, psychological problems, thinking disorders in IQ, and serious mental injuries. Because they are keen to obtain spiritual satisfaction through abuse and revenge, this is also the root cause of the rampant use of extra-criminal punishment in China.
In a 24-year history, the cruelty of all Chinese who hold power to treat people as human beings abounds, so much that even historians are too lazy to record them. Qin Bai pit Zhao descended 400,000 to Changping, in a word, 400,000 people were brutally buried alive, Chu Xiangyu pit Qin descended 200,000 to Xianyang, also in a sentence, 200,000 people were brutally cut off their heads. By the time Emperor Zhu arrived, the units of measurement for killing people were still in the tens of thousands, but the total amount was decreasing. In the Qing Dynasty, Mr. Lu Xun said: "In the Qing Dynasty, there were exterminations and Ling Chi, but there was no punishment of skinning, which the Han people should be ashamed of." "Although there are many deaths in the prison of words, the unit of measurement for killing is in the thousands. In the Republic of China, taking "In Memory of Liu He Zhenjun" and "In Memory of Forgetting" as examples, the one-time massacre of the rulers dropped to 100 and 10.
This decreasing trend does not indicate that the rulers have relented when they raise their butcher's knives, but is the result of the general awakening of mankind, and it also shows that history is bound to continue the general law of civilization and progress, and the farther the age, the heavier the darkness; The times are approaching, and there is more and more light. (This article is excerpted from "The Truth of History", author: He Yanhong/Li Guowen, Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, abridged.) ）