Preface
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the emperor can be said to be more wonderful than the other, first the old Taoist Jiajing Emperor Zhu Houxi, who was obsessed with cultivating immortals, and then the Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun, who had not been in court for decades, and then the carpenter emperor Zhu Youxiao.
But among this group of emperors, there is an emperor who is wonderful at the same time, and his political achievements can be regarded as the best one in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, he is Jiajing's son Zhu Zaikun, the son of Longqing Emperor.
Zhu Zaikun really has no sense of existence in the history of the Ming Dynasty, people are familiar with his Laozi, and they also know his son, but there are always people who don't know that there is a Zhu Zaikun who reigned for six years in the middle.
Zhu Zaikun, the emperor, deserves to be a collection of all the shortcomings of the emperor, lustful and passive, but the last prosperity of the Ming Dynasty was achieved during his reign, why is this?
1. The unfavored prince
Zhu Zaikun was born in the sixteenth year of Jiajing, and his mother was Concubine Du Kang, an unfavored concubine of Emperor Jiajing, so it can be seen that Zhu Zaikun will not be a favored prince.
Before him, Jiajing also had two sons, the eldest son died at birth, and the second son Zhu Zaili was only less than a year older than Zhu Zaili, but he still sat firmly on the throne of the prince.
After Zhu Zaikun, many younger brothers were born, but perhaps because Jiajing Xiuxian ate too many drugs of unknown origin and damaged his body, only Zhu Zaizhen survived among the sons in the back.
Therefore, there are only three princes in the palace for a long time, the crown prince is held by people because of his noble status, and the fourth son Zhu Zaizhen is favored because of his mother, so he is also very liked by Jiajing, only Zhu Zaikun is unknown.
I don't know whether it was lucky or unfortunate, when Zhu Zaikun was twelve years old, the prince died of illness, so only Zhu Zaikun and Zhu Zaizhen were left to compete for the throne.
After losing many of his sons, Jiajing, who was superstitious about Taoism, became more and more convinced that he could not establish a prince too early, thinking that this would violate the taboo of "two dragons do not meet", so he drove all the remaining two sons to live outside the palace.
This is good and bad for Zhu Zaikun, the good thing is that he no longer has to tremble under the nose of his father, but the bad thing is that it is not conducive to him competing for the storage position.
Because Jiajing can't really see his son after all, but Zhu Zaizhen is more favored than Zhu Zaikun, so many times Jiajing only summons Zhu Zaizhen and hangs Zhu Zaikun aside for a long time.
In the thirty-third year of Jiajing, after the death of Zhu Zaikun's mother, his situation was even more difficult, and Du was not favored, so after his death, Jiajing was not even willing to hold a decent funeral for her.
And after that, even the courtiers could bully Zhu Zaikun, Yan Song relied on his high power and even dared to deduct the prince's fortune and reward, or Zhu Zaikun lowered his voice to bribe Yan Song to get his share.
Second, the battle for storage positions has come to an end
At the same time that Zhu Zaikun was trembling, the courtiers were also standing in line for the prince, Yan Song and his party targeted Zhu Zaikun so much, the purpose was to support Zhu Zaizhen, and Xu Jie and others supported Zhu Zaikun.
Xu Jie and other officials realized that only by bringing down Yan Song could Zhu Zaikun have a chance to take the position, so Xu Jie decided to kill two birds with one move.
He first asked people to spread the word that Yan Song wanted to assassinate Zhu Zaizhen in the capital to ensure that Zhu Zaizhen could become the crown prince steadily, and then looked at the right time to use this matter as a guide, and asked Zhu Zaizhen to become a vassal and establish Zhu Zaikun as a prince.
Jiajing was very angry after knowing about this, although he didn't want to see Zhu Zaikun, but Zhu Zaikun was the prince after all, and assassinating the prince was a big crime, and Yan Song's support for Zhu Zaizhen all the time also made the rumors more true.
So although he was reluctant to let Zhu Zaizhen become a vassal, he considered that if he didn't do anything, he would be acquiescing to Zhu Zaizhen as the prince, so he ordered Zhu Zaizhen to go to his former domain to become a vassal.
Then, Jiajing became more and more distrustful of Yan Song, so only two years later, Yan Song's forces fell, Xu Jie became the first assistant of the cabinet, and Zhu Zaikun turned over and became the dominant party in the competition for the reserve.
But this does not mean that Zhu Zaikun will stabilize the position of the crown prince, because Jiajing began to suppress him after seeing Zhu Zaikun gradually gaining momentum, so Zhu Zaizhen seized the opportunity to please his father again, which made Jiajing very satisfied with his understanding.
But the dramatic thing is that Zhu Zaizhen fell seriously ill after this, and died of illness not long after, so Zhu Zaikun became the only living son of Jiajing, whether he likes him or not, the throne only belongs to this one.
In the forty-fifth year of Jiajing, with the death of Jiajing, Zhu Zaikun finally ascended to the throne, but after being suppressed for so many years, Zhu Zaikun did not become a hard-working Ming monarch as the ministers expected, but bottomed out and began to wander.
After Zhu Zaikun ascended the throne, he didn't care much about politics, but handed over all government affairs to the ministers, and immersed himself in pleasure.
Third, the political achievements are remarkable
Even if Zhu Zaikun did not go to court for many years like his father, even if he went to court, it was useless, he sat there like an ornament and listened to the ministers arguing, and did not express any opinions himself.
Later, I didn't want to go to the court at all, and indulged in pleasure all day long, but at the same time, the ministers of the court were doing business, and Zhu Zaikun was faced with three main messes to clean up after he ascended the throne.
On the one hand, the Mongol-Tatar tribes in the north are constantly encroaching on the border, and on the other hand, the Japanese along the coast are also constantly invading, in addition to the national economy and people's livelihood in their own country is also a big problem.
It was impossible to expect Zhu Zaikun to work, so the ministers during this period of time were under great pressure, so much so that the party and government problems among the officials were eliminated to a certain extent, and they were allowed to unite to work.
The problem of the Tatar invasion of the northern frontier was actually a legacy of several generations of emperors, when the Tatar invasion caused the Ming Dynasty to cut off trade with them in a fit of rage, making life even more difficult for these nomads.
In the Longqing Dynasty, there was another civil strife within the Tatars, so the officials discussed taking advantage of this good opportunity to threaten the Tatars to become vassals to the Ming Dynasty on the condition of resuming border trade.
Zhu Zaikun had no opinion, he didn't care about anything at all, so he did it according to the advice of the ministers, and sure enough, the Tatar rulers quickly agreed in order to restore border trade.
So Zhu Zaikun named the Tatar leader as the "King of Shunyi" and resumed trade, so that the Tatars naturally stopped attacking in order to maintain trade, and even took the initiative to maintain the stability of the border.
In fact, the problem of the Japanese in the southeast coast also has something in common with the problem in the north, the Ming Dynasty implemented a policy of closing the sea and banning the sea, so the maritime trade was close to none, which led to many neighboring countries coveting the wealth of the Ming Dynasty but did not have trade opportunities, so they became pirates.
The best way is to let go of the sea ban, but the sea ban is the law of the ancestors, and Zhu Zaikun didn't want the law of the ancestors to be abolished here, so he thought of a compromise and only opened the ports of Fujian to trade.
After all, there were a lot of people who wanted to do business with the Ming Dynasty, and with the opportunity to do serious business, the number of thieves naturally decreased, supplemented by the suppression of officers and soldiers, and most of the problems of the Japanese were solved.
With the increase of these commercial activities, the wealth in the society was gradually accumulated, and there were no natural disasters during Zhu Zaikun's reign that caused the grain harvest to fail, which directly reduced the price of grain more than twice as much as that of the Jiajing period, and the people lived a relatively prosperous life.
epilogue
Although Zhu Zaikun's political achievements during his reign were quite good, in fact, he himself didn't do anything at all, he had been obsessed with women, and no one could care about him after he ascended the throne, so he began to accept concubines extensively.
After all, indulging in bed all day long will make Zhu Zaikun's body unbearable, but he doesn't know how to stop in moderation, but takes a lot of aphrodisiacs when he is getting weaker and weaker and continues to work day and night.
This led to a serious deficit in Zhu Zaikun's body, and he finally died in the sixth year of his accession to the throne.