Those Stories of Ming. Volume II (en Inglés)
Reseña del libro "Those Stories of Ming. Volume II (en Inglés)"
Having successfully usurped the throne from his nephew, Zhu Di, the third emperor of Ming, like his father, deeply worried about the security of the seat under him. One of the first things he did after he occupied the capital was to execute one of the most renowned scholars at the time. Not only did he execute the scholar, who refused to recognize his status as the new emperor, he also executed all of his relatives, students, and friends. About eight hundred people were executed by him in this single bloody affair.
But executing the officials of the former emperor still didn't give him much solace. For the rest of his over twenty years of reign, he was haunted by the thought that the former emperor was still alive and planning a comeback to reclaim the lost throne. To find the former emperor, he launched perhaps the largest manhunts in world history. The manhunt made Zheng He, one of his eunuch confidants, a hero to the later generations of Chinese.
He then decided to move the capital to the north and built the Forbidden Palace of Beijing. He was a warrior emperor and personally commanded expeditions into the Mongolian steppes. Although he was able to completely destroy the remnants of the former dynasty, he also had exhausted the treasury of the empire. After his death, his son and grandson reversed his policy and was able to allow the country to be at peace for a brief period.
But the peace didn't last long, Zhu Qi Zhen, the sixth emperor of the dynasty, was led to a war with the Mongols and was captured and imprisoned. But after he was released by the Mongols, he came back and found out that he was no longer the emperor, his beloved brother had taken his place and was enjoying the experience of being at the top of the world. The brotherly love now took a new form, the newly released emperor was imprisoned again. This time, not by a foreign power but by his own brother. But in a few years, with the help of some officials, he retook the throne.
This was a period when the Empire of Ming reached to the zenith of its glory and was at the start of its slow decline. In addition to moving the capital to Beijing, another legacy of this period that is still impacting the China of today was the creation of a secret policy organization. If the first volume was about wars and bloody politics, the first half of this second volume is the continuation of that theme and the second half establishes a new theme, which is more about power struggles among the officials, eunuchs, and the women of the inner palace, in addition to abundant absurdities.
