The more people who have lived at the bottom, the more they cannot withstand the test of human nature.
When he was poor, he only wanted a bowl of hot porridge and a hot kiln; after turning himself into a master, he used his power to kill all the people close to him.
Zhu Yuanzhang's life was not peaceful, he was poor when he was a teenager, he was turbulent and displaced in middle age, and he struggled with his old age. His life has witnessed the complexity of human nature and verified the greatness of power.
Forced to take the road of rebellion and no return
Zhu Yuanzhang, whose real name is Zhu Zhongba, has three older brothers and two older sisters, and his family is poor.
Zhu Zhongba began to herd cattle for the landlord Liu Dejia's family from the age of four, and has been releasing them for twelve years. Sixteen-year-old Zhu Zhongba's wish for a better life is that Mrs. Wu of the village mouth will be a matchmaker, find a diligent daughter-in-law, give birth to her own children, and then go to Xiao Liu De's house to herd cattle when she grows up.
When Zhu Zhongba was seventeen years old, there was a severe plague and drought around his home. The Yuan Dynasty government allocated grain for disaster relief, but the Yuan Dynasty officials exploited it layer by layer, and in the hands of Zhu Zhongba, only the chaff was left.
As a result, Zhu Zhongba's father, eldest brother, and mother starved to death one after another.
Zhu Zhongba's two older sisters were already married, and the third brother made an upside-down door, leaving only Zhu Zhongba's second brother in the family.
Poor and desperate, Zhu Zhongba went to the landlord Liu De, hoping that Liu De would find a place to bury his father for the sake of herding cattle for their family for more than ten years.
Liu De rejected him cleanly, the reason is simple and simple, your father is dead, what is the matter with me?
Zhu Zhongba could only carry his father with his second brother with a straw mat and wanted to go out and find a place to bury it, but the world was so big that there was land everywhere, but none of it belonged to them.
At this point, the flame of revenge burned in his heart and never extinguished it for a lifetime.
In order to have a mouthful of food to eat, the desperate Zhu Zhongba chose to become a monk.
However, after only eating a stable meal for more than fifty days, because of the serious famine, all the monks had to go out to make friends, so Zhu Zhongba began a three-year career of going out to beg for food.
In this world, no matter what class, it will not be fair.
Because Zhu Zhongba was a new monk, he was sent to Huaixi and Henan, where the famine was most severe.
It's a profession that has to be severely tested, and knocking on someone's door means insulting, and not knocking on that door means death.
The dignity of life or the pressure to survive, which is more important? Zhu Zhongba asked himself again and again.
In the second year of Zhu Zhongba's begging, the Yellow River flooded. The Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty ordered 170,000 migrant workers along the coast to repair the river embankment.
This was not a good thing, but the officials at all levels along the Yellow River were extremely excited. The wages for the construction of the river embankment and the rations of migrant workers have been stripped clean.
So the migrant workers began to rebel. In the year when Zhu Zhongba begged for food, dozens of peasant riots broke out, and millions of people joined the rebel army.
Zhu Zhongba was anxious in his heart, but he knew that if the uprising did not succeed, he would be killed.
At this time, his young friend Tang He wrote a letter to Zhu Zhongba, which was to let Zhu Zhongba join the rebel army.
That night, Zhu Zhongba's brother told him that someone knew that the rebel army had written a letter to him and was ready to denounce him.
In this way, Zhu Zhongba was forced to a dead end.
Twenty-year-old Zhu Zhongba took a big stride on the road of uprising.
Bloody rain and wind hit a world
After weighing it up several times, Zhu Zhongba defected to Guo Zixing, the largest rebel army at that time. The initial position was Guo Zixing's guard, which was quickly reused because of his outstanding performance.
Twenty-two-year-old Zhu Zhongba changed his name to Zhu Yuanzhang.
And married Guo Zixingyi as a wife.
Zhu Yuanzhang's talents became increasingly prominent, and he developed a certain position in the army, and Guo Zixing, fearing that Zhu Yuanzhang would replace him, detained Zhu Yuanzhang.
However, unable to withstand the many intercessions of the righteous daughter, Guo Zixing finally released Zhu Zhongba.
Zhu Zhongba saw Guo Zixing's rat eyes and decided to personally lead the troops out on the expedition, and he selected twenty-four people in his ranks, Xu Da, Tang He, Zhou Dexing, Li Shanchang... These twenty-four people played a pivotal role in Zhu Yuanzhang's rebellion.
At this point, Zhu Yuanzhang began his twenty-year conquest.
The war was cruel, and in the war Zhu Yuanzhang gave full play to his military talents and also verified the favor of god for him.
Twenty years of rebellion, Zhu Yuanzhang fought hundreds of battles, large and small, and experienced several lives and deaths.
He defeated the rebels Zhang Shicheng and Chen Youyu, who were several times more powerful than him;
He destroyed the Yuan Dynasty, which ruled the Central Plains for nearly a hundred years.
Zhu Yuanzhang's vision was unique, he knew people and was good at his duties, and the twenty-four generals he selected were brave and good at fighting, daring to kill and dare to do. Without these brothers who were born into death, there would be no success for Zhu Yuanzhang.
When Zhu Yuanzhang was forty years old, he declared that he was the emperor and the name of the country was Ming. Thus the Ming Dynasty was established.
Brutal rule Kill all the loyalists around you
After more than 20 years of scuffle, the land of China is full of hunger and waste.
Zhu Yuanzhang encouraged farming, resumed the imperial examination, and created the Eight Strands of Literature, the Ming Dynasty soon recovered economically, the people lived and worked in peace and contentment, and the ming Dynasty was a beautiful scene of prosperity.
But the struggle will not stop. After killing the foreign enemy, Zhu Yuanzhang began to eliminate the people around him who threatened him for the sake of power and the stability of the country.
He was the first to strike his brother who accompanied him from birth to death.
Because these people have been commanding the army for many years, those who do not have a unified army also have deep roots.
Let's look at the end of these people.
Liu Ji was good at power and plotted, and advised Zhu Yuanzhang many times After Liu Ji fell ill, Zhu Yuanzhang sent heart-warming Chinese medicine in the form of care and condolence, and liu Ji fell ill and died soon after.
Hu Weiyong accompanied Zhu Yuanzhang on his rebellion journey throughout the whole process. After the Ming Dynasty stabilized, he participated in the infighting controlled by Zhu Yuanzhang and was executed. Zhu Yuanzhang also looked
Li Wenzhong charged into battle in the war, sacrificing his life and forgetting his death. He was executed for accusing Zhu Yuanzhang of killing innocent people indiscriminately.
Zhu Liangzu was a great general who founded the country and made great contributions. He was flogged for embezzlement and skinned for everyone to see.
Fu Youde, the Duke of Yingguo, the Duke of Yingguo, and Feng Sheng, the Duke of Song, were killed successively.
Zhu Yuanzhang remembered Tang He, the man who had led him on the road of rebellion, and went to visit him. At this time, Tang He could only lie on the chair, salivating at the corner of his mouth, supporting him to salute. For such soups, there is no need to kill. Tang He was also the only one who followed Zhu Yuanzhang to fight the world without being killed by him.
Zhu Yuanzhang was well aware of the hardships of his throne, he was no longer satisfied with eating and wearing warmth, he wanted the empire he built to continue forever, and he had to establish his authority.
The most effective means of establishing authority is to kill people.
The first is to brutally kill Hu Weiyong's fellow party. By finding out the same party members who are involved with Hu Weiyong, more than 10,000 people were killed.
The second is to eliminate corrupt officials. Zhu Yuanzhang hated corruption the most, because he clearly remembered that the disaster relief grain that should have been given to his parents was embezzled by the officials, causing his parents to starve to death. Therefore, all corrupt officials will be put to death. Therefore, tens of thousands of officials were killed during Zhu Yuanzhang's reign. In the nineteenth year of Hongwu, the imperial court recruited 364 officials, and a year later all 364 were killed.
The third is to solve the empty printing case. The Ming Dynasty stipulated that local finances should check the accounts with the household department of the imperial court every year, and they should be completely consistent, as evidenced by the local official seal. In order to avoid mistakes and running back and forth, local officials stamped their official seals on empty ledgers and brought them to the capital to fill in the report. After Zhu Yuanzhang knew about it, he thought that local officials were opportunistic. Therefore, at that time, all the main Indian officials in 13 provinces, 145 provinces, and more than 1,000 counties in the country were killed.
The fourth is to handle the Guo Huan case. Guo Huan, a servant of the household department, was good at corruption, and dragged the officials of the six departments of the imperial court to embezzle together, in order not to spare any of the corrupt elements, Zhu Yuanzhang made a big fuss, and more than 30,000 officials were killed in this case.
Zhu Yuanzhang was an outstanding figure of that era, and established Daming with his bare hands. But his life also allows us to see the greed of human nature. In order to ensure that his children and grandchildren would no longer suffer, he used his power to kill countless zhongliang.
The philosopher Schopenhauer said: Life is a lump of desires, and when desires are satisfied, they will be bored, and desires that are not satisfied will be painful. Power is a tool for obtaining desires. Therefore, from ancient times to the present, countless people have struggled on the road of pursuing power. And those who have power use it exquisitely.