Touched By The
Misfortunes With Which I Saw Them Oppressed, I Took Up Arms, Not So Much
Against The Yuens As Against The Rebels Who Were Engaged In War With Them.
It Was Over The Same Foe That I Gained My First Successes.
And if the Yuen
prince had not departed from the rules of wise government in order to give
himself up to his pleasures, and had the magnates of his court performed
their duty, would all honorable men have taken up arms as they did and
declared against him?
The misconduct of the race brought me a large number
of partisans who were convinced of the rectitude of my intentions, and it
was from their hands and not from those of the Yuens that I received the
empire. If Heaven had not favored me should I have succeeded in destroying
with such ease those who withdrew into the desert of Shamo? We read in the
Chiking that after the destruction of the Chang family there remained more
than ten thousand of their descendants who submitted themselves to the
Chow, because it was the will of Heaven. Cannot men respect its decrees?
Let them put in the public treasure-house all the spoil brought back from
Tartary, so that it may serve to alleviate the people's wants. And with
regard to Maitilipala (Chunti's grandson), although former ages supply
examples of similar sacrifice, did Wou Wang, I ask you, when exterminating
the Chang family, resort to this barbarous policy? The Yuen princes were
the masters of this empire for nearly one hundred years, and my
forefathers were their subjects, and even although it were the constant
practice to treat in this fashion the princes of a dynasty which has
ceased to reign, yet could I not induce myself to adopt it."
These noble sentiments, to which there is nothing contradictory in the
whole life of Hongwou, would alone place his reign high among the most
civilizing and humanly interesting epochs in Chinese history.
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