Spoiling History: Starting from the Three Kingdoms

"Dad has said that before."

Zhu Biao was unsure of his father's attitude, but he tried to appease him with a few words as a precaution:

"Hu Yuanyong's mediocre politics has brought disaster to the world, and the Ming Dynasty should restore its rule."

"Since we are restoring our rule, we should rectify the lawlessness to purify the government and the world, and there will inevitably be many slanders."

Zhu Yuanzhang was silent for a while about his eldest son's words. He knew this simple truth.

At this time, the words written by Han general Zhao Yun on the light curtain were remembered again:

"Don't be impatient..."

Taking a breath, Zhu Yuanzhang shook his head and said seriously to his son:

"I am not impatient. What I have done should be recorded in history books for future generations. Praise and criticism are also expected."

The emperor laughed instead:

"Tang Taizong often said that history can be used as a mirror to understand the rise and fall, and few previous emperors can know the final conclusion. So we should be happy."

He said so, but the words at the beginning of the light curtain made Zhu Yuanzhang lose his smile.

【Nowadays, when we discuss the achievements of emperors in the feudal era, we often use the words "the greatest emperor in the ages" for those who have made great contributions.

This evaluation title was created by Li Zhi, a thinker in the Ming Dynasty, and was used to make a final conclusion on Qin Shihuang in his work "Book Collection".

Only after his creation did others use it widely. For example, Wang Zhijian, a contemporary scholar, followed suit in his works and called Li Shimin "the only emperor in the history of the ages".

However, this is just adding the word "true". Later, Li Zhi evaluated Zhu Yuanzhang in his work "Continuation of Collection of Books". Perhaps he felt that the newly created word was not enough to evaluate Zhu Yuanzhang, so he simply wrote without hesitation:

"My Taizu Gaohuangdi is the only emperor in the history of the ages".

This title can be said to be extremely high. Although Li Zhi was called the first madman in the Ming Dynasty and had the experience of giving up his official position to teach, he was indeed a master of the time in terms of academic attainments. He had thousands of followers, and his assertions could more or less represent the views of a considerable number of people in the Ming Dynasty at that time.

If you want to summarize the image of Zhu Yuanzhang without just reading history books, the most intuitive method is of course to look at the historical materials at that time. If we talk about the Hongwu period, the most eye-catching ones are the four major cases.

Although they are classified into one category, their natures are not the same. For example, the case of the empty seal and the case of Guo Huan are clearly related to the rectification of official administration, and there is also the saying of the Hu-Lan case, and the overall nature of the case is to take action against the founding heroes.

However, the four cases have one thing in common, that is, there have been many critics for hundreds of years.

Among them, the positive arguments are not mentioned, while the opponents believe that the four cases are all false and wrong cases, and Zhu Yuanzhang often implicates tens of thousands of people and even massacres counties. The four cases implicated more than 100,000 people and killed more than 100,000 people, so it is concluded that Zhu Hongwu is the absolute first butcher executioner of the Ming Dynasty.

The most well-known of them is the remarks of Zhao Yi, a historian of the Qing Dynasty.

In his "Twenty-two Historical Notes", he bluntly said that Zhu Yuanzhang "used the meritorious officials to take over the world", but when the world was peaceful, he "took all the people in the world and killed them", saying that Zhu Yuanzhang "was cruel and unprecedented in history".

But this is not the end. After this paragraph, there is another smooth connection with a heart-piercing comment:

"Gai Xiongcai likes to kill, which is his nature."

If the previous words can still stand on the premise of historical data, this eight-word comment is a bit like cursing for the Qing Dynasty, which is somewhat lacking in the professional qualities of a historian.

So, is Zhu Yuanzhang a bloodthirsty monarch who is "cruel and unprecedented in history"? How many unjust, false and wrong deaths are there in the four major cases?

Today, let's try to trace the source and look at the four major cases in the early Ming Dynasty from the source. 】

"One of the emperors in the ancient times." Zhu Biao muttered this title, feeling a little envious.

Being called this by the people shows how great his achievements were, but Zhu Biao also knew that his father would not see it given his temperament, and he might care more about...

"Butcher? Executioner?"

Zhu Yuanzhang repeated with a strange look on his face:

"Cruelness never seen before, and a man with a heroic nature who likes to kill?"

Instinctively, he almost immediately wanted to utter a few Huaixi swear words.

Firstly, this was an accusation that he thought was almost nonsense.

Secondly...it had only been a few years since the Ming army entered Dadu and destroyed the rule of the Hu Yuan Dynasty? The seals and ribbons of the Song, Jin and Yuan dynasties were still lying in the treasury of the Ming Dynasty, but the one who was cursing was a man with a Chinese name under Hu Qingzhi.

But in the end, Emperor Ming fell silent. He thought of those fools who would rather die for Hu Yuan, those fools who tried every means to bypass the garrison and run to Mobei to serve Hu Yuan, and those who relied on their talent and fame to retreat to the mountains and forests and not serve the Ming Dynasty. For a moment, his mind was not here.

Zhu Yuanzhang said nothing, but Empress Ma was not happy:

"Did Chongba dig up his Zhao family's ancestral grave? Or did he imprison his Zhao family's ancestors? Why are you saying such hateful words?"

"And Chongba has always been kind to his old ministers, how could he kill people in the world? Such sarcastic remarks are not biased and are not fair to scholars."

Zhu Biao was the first to jump out and agree with his mother's words:

"The matter of the empty seal is originally a mistake made in the previous Yuan Dynasty. Daddy is just correcting the original rule. How can it be called an injustice?"

"Before and after the empty seal, there were only a few hundred criminals involved and they were all guilty. There are evidences and documents. How can it be said that tens of thousands of people were implicated?"

With his elder brother as an example, Zhu Di also spoke quickly:

"Since it is for the purpose of rectifying the administration of officials, then I think the Guo Huan case must not be groundless."

"I think it's up to my eldest brother to investigate him based on his name. I don't think it can break the bad habits of officials like an empty seal."

After Zhu Di finished speaking, he glanced at the third brother. The meaning was self-evident, but this made Zhu Di a little dumbfounded.

Later generations would talk about the Hu Lan case lightly, but when it fell into the Huagai Palace, it felt like it weighed more than a thousand catties.

After all, less than a year has passed since the Hu Weiyong case, and he knew that this Hu must be Hu Weiyong just by guessing. This was not something he could easily discuss.

As for Lan, this surname is really uncommon, but for Li Wenzhong, Li Shanchang and Xu Da, they almost immediately remembered the great victory of Lan Yu in the 21st year of Hongwu, which was mentioned casually by future generations three months ago. thing.

Moreover, Lan Yu is not in the capital now - in the first month of the year, His Majesty had decided to conquer Yunnan, and together with the Marquis of Yingchuan, Fu Youde, decided on the strategy of sending an advance general to lead an army to Wusa, and separate the key points with the main army to win by surprise.

This brave general is naturally Lan Yu. Before the Lantern Festival, Lan Yu had already gone to Bashu to prepare for the war.

However, compared to these, what Li Shanchang cares more about is the evaluation of later generations on Hu Lan's incident as "taking action against the founder of the country."

Nowadays, only he, Li Wenzhong and Xu Da can hold this title in Huagai Hall.

But now it is known that Xu Da died of back gangrene, and the relationship between Li Wenzhong and His Majesty is no longer indescribable, so to sum it up...

Li Shanchang couldn't help but feel a little regretful: Can he take back the famous assassination he committed to Lan Yu's Mansion during the Chinese New Year?