Spoiling History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

"It is called a country, but it is not a country."

Listening to these hard words, without even distinguishing the tone, Li Shimin knew that these words must have come from Wei Zheng.

As a Confucian scholar, especially a Confucian scholar from Shandong and Hebei who adheres to the kingly way, it is normal to have opinions about the Mongols.

In Li Shimin's view, although the Yuan Dynasty was born out of Mongolia, its grassland habits are too obvious.

The leaders of the grassland tribes have unparalleled prestige and no rules, and almost anything can be decided by a word. In essence, isn't it similar to the official promotion law?

Kublai Khan has been in office for a long time but has not eliminated this problem and has frequently used troops. It is conceivable that whether it is the court or the army, the important positions are probably controlled by the nobles.

The problem that ultimately led to it is the same as that of the former Han Dynasty.

The common people are slaves of the powerful, and they only know the powerful but not the king. In the end, the powerful and the central government went to war.

Compared with the former Han Dynasty, Emperor Yuan was far inferior to the Han emperor in terms of skills.

He did not know how to use cruel officials, nor did he know how to live in harmony with the people. He only wanted to eliminate the evils with a royal decree, but he never thought about where the emperor's power came from.

The result was that the three generations of Han emperors reduced the powerful and suppressed annexation and eliminated the feudal states, which became the achievements of Emperor Wu of Han.

Emperor Yuan was assassinated after three years in office, and the demise of the Yuan court was inevitable.

With a sigh, Li Shimin could not help but tell his son:

"You must know that the court is like a battlefield, and eliminating evils is like a war. Those who can accomplish things must shed blood and die."

These words are very important, but they are undoubtedly too advanced for the fourteen-year-old prince.

Li Shimin did not care about this. After all, he still had a lot of time, and there was plenty of time to slowly regulate this prince.

And these words only need to be remembered in mind, and there will be a day in the future when you will remember them.

Later generations will only say how unwilling the Mongolian nobles were when their interests were damaged, but can the emperor and the crown prince willingly accept the damage to their own interests?

When Cheng Gan travels around the world and encounters corrupt officials who damage his prestige, he will understand the meaning of today's words.

Wei Zheng, who was standing aside, opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but thinking back to what he knew about the Song and Yuan dynasties from the light curtain, he finally sighed.

Du Ruhui seemed to have guessed Wei Zheng's thoughts and whispered:

"Being gentle and kind and fond of Confucianism is not a shortcoming of people, but a shortcoming of the king, which is enough to disrupt the Han family."

Wei Zheng was immediately shocked. He was also familiar with history books, so he naturally knew that Du Ruhui's saying that being gentle and kind and fond of Confucianism was an evaluation of the crown prince Liu Shi in the "Book of Han", and Emperor Xuan even sighed "The one who disrupted my family is the crown prince."

Then how can we not disrupt the family? Wei Zheng softly repeated what Emperor Xuan of Han had said when educating the prince:

"The Han family has its own system, which is originally a mixture of hegemony and kingly way..."

[The Yuan Dynasty was the only one who officially inherited the throne from the eldest son after the father's death, and he was assassinated.

But seriously speaking, the fact that his father's "Yanyou Manager" didn't even last a year already shows how big the internal problems of the Yuan Dynasty were.

And the problem faced by Emperor Yingzong of Yuan was still the old tune of the Song Dynasty's reform. The redistribution of interests was destined to be accompanied by bloodshed. If you don't let the powerful bleed, the powerful will only make you bleed.

How strong the Mongolian nobles are in murder, how weak they are in political struggle.

If the emperor was killed, the next step would naturally be to support a puppet emperor. If the easiest to control is undoubtedly a child who is still wet behind the ears, the Eastern Han kindergarten has already laid a template, just copy it.

But the Mongolian nobles did not want to do that. After they assassinated the 20-year-old emperor, they promoted the 30-year-old grandson of the crown prince Zhenjin.

After taking office, Emperor Taiding of the Yuan Dynasty did not hesitate to kill all the rebels who helped him to the throne. However, when it came to the actual governance, he was the one with the lowest degree of sinicization among the emperors of the Yuan Dynasty, so the Yuan Dynasty fell into the struggle of sinicization or not.

But all this is not very important, because thanks to the excellent style of Mongolia, Emperor Taiding of the Yuan Dynasty died in a hurry after eight years in office. What happened next basically exposed the nature of the Yuan Dynasty's grass-roots team.

As soon as Emperor Taiding died, the prime minister who was in charge of the government looked at the nine-year-old crown prince and thought, why can't I sit on the throne?

But on the road to usurping the throne, there were countless people such as Wang Mang, Cao Cao, Cao Pi, Sima Yi, Sima Shi and others who set examples for him. However, this prime minister of the Yuan Dynasty chose the stupidest one and forcibly suppressed the crown prince from holding the coronation ceremony, leaving the throne vacant for more than a month.

This gave another chancellor, Yan Temur, an opportunity to take advantage of. He quickly welcomed Yuan Wuzong's son to Dadu to ascend the throne, that is, Yuan Wenzong.

This move caught the regent prime minister off guard, and he could only hastily hold a coronation ceremony for the nine-year-old prince, intending to kill the traitors first.

The two emperors fought, and the regent prime minister was quickly defeated and beheaded. The victorious Yuan Wenzong said that according to the agreement between his father and uncle, the throne should have been mine, and you were the traitors.

Emperor Taiding and his son were deprived of their posthumous titles and temple names and thrown out of the ancestral temple by Yuan Wenzong, which is why they are called so now, using the reign title.

But Yuan Wenzong was not done yet. Maybe he read too many Confucian books. He said that his brother was the eldest son and he was the second son, and the throne should be given to his brother. So he forcibly welcomed his brother He Shili, who was herding sheep in the Mobei grassland, back to the throne. He was known as Yuan Mingzong in history. Wenzong officially abdicated after being emperor for three months with his brother.

Wenzong voluntarily abdicated, and Mingzong, who was replaced by him, was very surprised. He named his younger brother the crown prince, saying that his brother would not take the throne for nothing and that he would eventually give it to him.

After playing this trick, when Wenzong stood at the steps as the crown prince and greeted his brother with all the civil and military officials, he regretted it again. He wanted to wait for his brother to die instead of being a good emperor. Wasn't this cheap?

So just three months later, Yuan Mingzong died suddenly, and Yuan Wenzong ascended the throne smoothly again. Later generations unanimously believed that Yuan Mingzong died of a joint murder by Yuan Wenzong and Prime Minister Timur. After all, it was Mongolia, and this trick was considered old-fashioned, not surprising.

But Yuan Wenzong's work was not over yet. After only three years in office, he was exhausted by alcohol and sex. Before he died, he regretted that he was sorry for his brother and wanted to return the throne to his brother's descendants. At that time, the ministers of the Yuan Dynasty were all numb. Was it going to end?

However, Yuan Wenzong's queen overcame all objections and found Yuan Mingzong's seven-year-old son to ascend the throne, but this unlucky child died again after two months in office, that is, Yuan Ningzong.

The young emperor died suddenly, and the ministers could only hold their noses and go through untold hardships to welcome back the eldest son of Yuan Mingzong from Guangxi. This was the last emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, Yuan Huizong, but now generally called another posthumous title bestowed by Zhu Yuanzhang: Yuan Shundi.

As we said before, since the death of Emperor Taiding, the fate of the Yuan Dynasty has been like a wild dog that can't be stopped.

In addition to the major event of the death of Emperor Taiding and the simultaneous birth of two emperors, another major event this year was that the old Zhu family in Randengsi Village, Fengyang, Anhui, gave birth to a son, who was named Zhu Chongba. 】