Among nearly 500 emperors in the history of China, only Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang were the real grassroots. However, Liu Bang is a small village head, but Zhu Yuanzhang is a beggar, and his life experience can be regarded as a brilliant legend. It is precisely because Zhu Yuanzhang was born in a turbulent grassroots family that he saw the ugly faces of many corrupt officials in the Yuan Dynasty from an early age.

When he was a teenager, his parents died of the plague. Because he has no money to bury his parents, he hopes that Liu De, the landlord in the village, will allow him to find a place to bury his parents, who have worked for his family for half their lives. However, Liu Delian couldn't make such a small request. It can be said that he was the turning point that drove Zhu Yuanzhang to the wall. Therefore, after Zhu Yuanzhang became emperor, his ruthless measures to control corruption were unique in ancient China.

So how cruel Zhu Yuanzhang was to corrupt officials, so that people nicknamed him "Zhu skinned"?

Zhu Yuanzhang hated corrupt officials most in his life because of his tragic experience in his early years and knowing the sufferings of the people. So as soon as he became emperor, he warned bureaucrats that anyone who embezzled 60 taels of silver would be punished! How much is 60 taels of silver worth? In fact, it is only the purchasing power of 10 thousand yuan today, which shows Zhu Yuanzhang's determination to cure corruption.

It is not enough to set the bottom line of corruption. In order not to turn a deaf ear to officials, Zhu Yuanzhang directly peeled off the human skin of the corrupt officials' bodies, put them in piles of haystacks, made scarecrows and put them in the yamen to monitor the incumbent officials. In China, there is an old saying that "doctors cannot be punished", but this law does not take effect in front of Zhu Yuanzhang, a cruel man. The corrupt official who was first made into a scarecrow was the son of Zhu Liangzu, the founding general who made great contributions to Zhu Yuanzhang.

After Jiang Shan was settled in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Liangzu was made a marquis, guarding Guangzhou. However, there is a very upright county magistrate named Daotong, who is an honest official. Because he was not afraid of power, he offended the local squire and Zhu Liangzu who was in cahoots with them.

Zhu Liangzu claimed to be the hero of the founding of the People's Republic of China, so he deceived the court and let Zhu Yuanzhang kill Daotong by mistake. Zhu Yuanzhang, who learned the truth, regretted and was very angry. When Zhu Liangzu and his son Zhu Xian were about to be detained, he went to Beijing and entered the palace. He didn't say that Zhu Liangzu was beaten alive with a whip, but he remembered his merits and left him a whole corpse. Zhu Xian was not so lucky. Zhu Yuanzhang was the first to make a scarecrow out of human skin.

However, even so, Zhu Yuanzhang was worried that bureaucrats did not take corruption seriously, so he made an unprecedented decision directly. As long as there is a corrupt official, ordinary people can directly escort him to Beijing, and officials along the way need to give the green light. Although this is a bit unrealistic, it also shows that Zhu Yuanzhang cares about the people.

Although Zhu Yuanzhang formulated a strict criminal law to cure corruption, corrupt officials still appeared in front of him in an endless stream, which made Zhu Yuanzhang feel that his criminal law was nothing new, so he came up with a lot of abnormal torture, which was inhuman, but it must be said that it was really creative, among which the more famous ones were "pumping intestines", "scrubbing" (sprinkling boiling water on people and then brushing their skin with an iron brush), * *, digging knees and killing people.

However, these are not the most cruel. I don't know if you know the "death in the middle of the year" often mentioned in TV dramas. Maybe some people don't understand. This is not only a capital punishment for the punished, but also a test for the punished.

This criminal law refers to cutting off a person's flesh piece by piece to ensure that corrupt officials cannot die while suffering. In addition, the emperor has to cut many knives, and the punisher has to make many knives. If the punisher dies of pain, then the punisher will be punished. According to historical records, the highest record is that someone has been cut more than 3 thousand times and has not died. It's really terrible!

However, even if the criminal law is very abnormal and cruel, corrupt officials still send their heads one after another, which makes Zhu Yuanzhang, who doesn't understand the economy, very puzzled.

In fact, when Zhu Yuanzhang fixed their salaries at that time, he only thought about letting corrupt officials and their families live a sufficient life, but did not consider that they had to pay their servants. At the same time, there are extracurricular activities to visit relatives and friends, which inevitably leads to interpersonal communication. Coupled with market inflation, officials are not greedy and can only wait to starve to death. Therefore, when Zhu Yuanzhang was in office, many honest officials were killed by mistake, which made the officials explain the funeral to their families the day before they went to court, and then the family was sent to court in tears. This had to be said to be a strange sight in the Hongwu period.

When Zhu Yuanzhang was in office, he killed hundreds of thousands of "corrupt officials", saying that he killed so hard that the government was short of manpower. Zhu Yuanzhang directly asked these officials to handle the case on behalf of the crime, and then killed them. So don't be surprised if you see that some officials in Hongwu period were still handling cases in the morning and were killed in the afternoon, because this was a very common sight at that time.

Although Zhu Yuanzhang did work hard for the people and let them live and work in peace and contentment, he was always limited by the times and considered the issue from the perspective of defending the country. Although his achievements are commendable, I have to say that he is really inhuman, ignoring the livelihood of officials and making them miserable. Of course, his efforts to fight corruption have indeed made great contributions to Judy's martial arts.