Zhu Yuanzhang grew from a commoner to become the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. His belief in the beginning was that officials forced the people to rebel in order to survive. When the tide rose and his horizons broadened, he changed dynasties and founded a country and proclaimed himself emperor.
In the long history of China, Zhu Yuanzhang is definitely the most legendary grassroots emperor and the most successful counterattacker in Chinese history.
Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398) was born in Zhongli, Haozhou, Anhui (renamed Fengyang after the establishment of the Ming Dynasty). He ranked eighth in the family and emphasized generation, so his father named him Chongba, Zhu Yuanzhang. His name was later changed by his father-in-law Guo Zixing.
Zhu Chongba was born into a poor family. He worked with Xu Da, Tang He, Zhou Dexing and other playmates to make a living by herding cattle for the landlord Liu De's family since he was a child. He did not attend private school for a few days.
In 1343, there was a severe drought in Haozhou, and the crops failed. In the spring of the following year, there was a serious locust plague and plague. Zhu Yuanzhang's father, eldest brother, and mother died of illness one after another, but there was no place to bury him. Fortunately, his neighbor Liu Jizu showed his kindness. After being given a cemetery, the Zhu family buried their parents and brothers hastily. In order to survive, Zhu Yuanzhang, his second brother, sister-in-law and nephew were forced to separate and escape separately.
With nowhere to stay, Zhu Yuanzhang went to the nearby Huangjue Temple to become a young monk. Before fifty days, the temple also ran out of food, so he had to wander around begging for alms for three years.
In three years, he traveled to every corner of Huaixi, saw the world, broadened his horizons, experienced the ups and downs of the world, and accumulated experience in social life. The devastated social reality also made him realize Social chaos is coming.
Three years of hard wandering life created Zhu Yuanzhang's perseverance and courageous character, but it also made him cruel and jealous. This period of wandering life had a profound impact on Zhu Yuanzhang's life.
In 1347, he returned to Huangjue Temple. At this time, Faxiao Tanghe, who had joined Guo Zixing's Red Scarf Army, wrote to him to persuade him to stop being a monk and join the rebel army to conquer the world.
Zhu Yuanzhang, who had long been eager to become a master, impatiently defected to Guo Zixing's Red Scarf Army, and began his vigorous uprising journey. He was 25 years old this year.
Before the age of 25, Zhu Yuanzhang had nothing and struggled to survive at the bottom of society. But gold will shine. After the age of 25, Zhu Yuanzhang's life was smooth sailing. This is of course inseparable from his bravery and foresight in combat.
In fact, I think there are three most important reasons why Zhu Yuanzhang could stand out from the crowd of heroes in the late Yuan Dynasty, and finally became the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from a commoner.
The first reason is that he is good at winning the hearts and minds of the people.
We all know that those who win the hearts of the people win the world. But in the tide of peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, when people "didn't know the true face of Mount Lu, just because they were in the mountains", it was very difficult to understand and do this.
The reckless heroes who were born in peasants have little education and no education, which determines that their common problems are low vision, narrow-mindedness, short-sightedness, no lofty ideals, and look down on scholars.
As a result, their army discipline after the uprising was generally very poor, and they did not know how to win over the people and gain their support.
Guo Zixing's team was like this at the beginning, with very poor discipline. After they occupied Haozhou, they "snatched and plundered the neighbors", not only depriving the landlords and wealthy people, but also robbing the property of ordinary people.
"In less than two months, they crossed the border and invaded other cities, and the same happened to them." After capturing Hezhou, they burned, killed, looted, and raped women. The people's wives were scattered and their families were separated, and the people were in panic. Zhu Yuanzhang is different. He himself came from a poor background and knew what kind of army the common people liked. Therefore, not long after Zhu Yuanzhang led the troops alone, he began to pay attention to military discipline issues.
After Zhu Yuanzhang captured Hezhou, his soldiers, like other rebel groups, robbed property and women as usual. Zhu Yuanzhang was very angry and severely punished the generals whose military discipline was lax. After killing the plundering soldiers, he summoned all the men in Hezhou to the Yamen to claim his wives and daughters.
This caused the people in Hezhou City to rush to tell each other how grateful they were. People rushed to say that Zhu Yuanzhang's troops had strict military discipline, and many young people joined his troops.
Zhu Yuanzhang understood that the support of people in war depends on the discipline of the army.
He often said to his generals: "Every time I hear that after you capture a city, you don't kill people randomly or rob people of their property, I feel happy in my heart. If there are eagles in the forest, other birds will Not coming. If your military discipline is not good, the people will run away."
The second reason is to recruit talents from various sources and make important use of scholars.
The second reason for Zhu Yuanzhang's success, and the biggest difference between him and other peasant uprising leaders, was the way he treated scholars.
The most common mistake that peasant uprising leaders make is their attitude towards scholars: on the one hand, they themselves have not read many books, and they look down on the "poor" and "pedantic" of scholars from the bottom of their hearts; on the other hand, they Their rough and arrogant temperament is incompatible with scholars, they can't talk to each other, and there are communication barriers.
Therefore, most of the rebel leaders did not have a good impression of scholars, and most of them would kill them once they caught them.
Zhu Yuanzhang was different. His parents respected scholars very much and sent him to a private school. Zhu Yuanzhang also liked reading, but his family was too poor to do so.
Through his interactions with scholars, Zhu Yuanzhang deeply realized that scholars have a lot of knowledge and have many strategies. "Use them to become powerful, and drive them to become enemies."
Moreover, most of these scholars are wealthy local squires, with high popularity and great influence, and can influence the attitudes of the people in one area. Win them over, and the people of the area will follow.
Therefore, during Zhu Yuanzhang's battles, when he met scholars, he tried his best to recruit them to his account. When the generals went on an expedition, Zhu Yuanzhang heard that there were famous scholars somewhere, and he must ask the generals to invite them back. Zhu Yuanzhang specially built the Lixian Hall in Yingtian Mansion to receive these landlord class intellectuals.
These scholars played an important role in Zhu Yuanzhang's unification of the country, such as Li Shanchang, who was comparable to Xiao He, the prime minister of the Han Dynasty, "Zhuge Liang, who divided the world into three parts, and Liu Bowen who unified the country, Zhuge Liang, the military advisor of the former dynasty, and Liu Bowen, the military advisor of the later dynasty" Liu Ji, Zhu Sheng, who proposed the Nine-Character Classic of "Build the wall high, accumulate grain widely, and slowly become king", as well as Hu Weiyong, Song Lian, Lu Chang, Fang Xiaoru, etc.
The third reason is that Zhu Yuanzhang has a far-sighted and far-sighted view of the overall situation.
The third reason for Zhu Yuanzhang's success is that he has a far-sighted view of the overall situation, is good at seizing opportunities, and has the ability to make decisions. Just this one point puts him ahead of all the other heroes!
Zhu Yuanzhang successfully ascended the throne, and he made three key moves correctly: first, he left Jianghuai, crossed the river to capture Nanjing, and opened up a new base; second, he conquered east and west, and eliminated Chen Youliang and Chen Youliang in the right order. Zhang Shicheng; The third is to attack the south and fight in the north to eliminate Bei Yuan steadily.
After Guo Zixing's death, Zhu Yuanzhang took command of Guo Zixing's troops. He resolutely left the Huaixi base he had operated for many years, crossed the river and captured Jiqing (later renamed Yingtianfu, today's Nanjing).
This opportunity was grasped extremely accurately, and it was an "incomparably wise" decision. It was this decision that showed Zhu Yuanzhang's superb strategic vision and also determined Zhu Yuanzhang's future life destiny.
It turns out that at this time, all of Henan and Huaibei in the Yuan Dynasty were captured by the Red Turban Army, and the main force of the Yuan Army in the north was blocked in the Central Plains and unable to go south. In the Jiangnan area, which is rich in food, there are very few Yuan troops stationed and they are divided by various rebel armies, which is conducive to Zhu Yuanzhang's defeat.
Zhu Yuanzhang seized this opportunity and quickly captured Changxing, Changzhou, Ningguo, Jiangyin, Changshu, Huizhou, Chizhou, Yangzhou and other places, and established his own base. While others were eager to become king, he adhered to Zhu Sheng's strategy of "building walls high, accumulating food widely, and becoming king slowly", keeping a low profile, keeping a low profile, and quietly expanding his strength.
After two years of fighting, he captured the prosperous eastern Zhejiang and doubled his territory. Together with Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng, he became the three giants of Jiangnan. Zhu Yuanzhang adopted Liu Jixian's suggestion of concentrating his efforts to eliminate Chen Youliang. In the water battle of Poyang Lake, 200,000 people versus 600,000 people, with the help of the northeast wind, burned Chen Youliang, and eliminated the most dangerous enemy with many soldiers and generals in thirty-six days.
Then he attacked Zhang Shicheng, captured Pingjiang City (today's Suzhou) in 1367, and captured Zhang Shicheng. In the first month of 1368, the 40-year-old Zhu Yuanzhang worshiped heaven and earth and ascended the throne in the southern suburbs of Yingtian. The founding name of the country was Daming, and the name of the country was changed to Hongwu, with Yingtian Mansion as Nanjing.
After sixteen years of bloody battles, Zhu Yuanzhang finally became the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from a shepherd boy who played a flute and an ox-backed monk, and begged for help from all over the world, achieving a perfect counterattack in life.
Conclusion:
In Zhu Yuanzhang’s life and his beliefs, at the beginning, the government forced the people to rebel in order to survive. When the tide rose and his horizons broadened, he changed dynasties, founded a country and proclaimed himself emperor. People's ambitions and beliefs mature step by step through struggle, and Zhu Yuanzhang is no exception.
There are three main reasons why Zhu Yuanzhang was able to establish the Ming Dynasty and become emperor in Nanjing from a humble citizen. The first is that he is good at winning the hearts and minds of the people. The second is that he recruits talents from many sources and reuses scholars. The third is that Zhu Yuanzhang has a far-sighted view of the overall situation. .