Chongzhen has many famous soldiers. Why did the Ming Dynasty perish?

The late Ming Dynasty of Emperor Chongzhen has always been a period that many readers talked about, and it is also a knot in most people's hearts. Because, as the most in the history of China? Car-scrapping A dynasty, at the end of its rule, also had many contemporary celebrities, but in the end it could not escape the tragic situation of extinction.

As most scholars say, Emperor Chongzhen is not? The king of national subjugation? , is the last generation of the Lord, in the last ten years of his rule, has been committed to how to restore the inheritance of ancestors, can be described as painstaking. However, in the end, we all need to know that he ended his life at the foot of Jingshan Park, leaving the last dignity for Daming:

Ding Wei, ignorant, is trapped in the inner city. The emperor fell in Long Live Mountain, and Wang Chengen died. The imperial book skirt said:? I am cool and modest, and my work has been criticized, but all the ministers have misunderstood me. I'm ashamed to see my ancestors when I'm dead, and I have to go to the crown to cover my face. Let the thieves split up and no one will get hurt. ?

Then, even an emperor who worked so hard, why didn't he save the declining Daming in the end? We might as well re-examine that ups and downs of history according to historical materials.

First, the root of the collapse: the exhausted economy in the late Ming Dynasty

In any feudal dynasty, economy was the foundation of maintaining political power. Only when the people have an economy can they live and work in peace and contentment without disloyalty. Only when soldiers have an economy can they defend their borders with peace of mind. Bureaucrats also need the economy as the basis for sticking to their posts. Therefore, the economy is the lifeblood of the effective operation of this regime.

When Emperor Chongzhen took over Daming, the military situation was relatively stable:

For example, the Manchu Eight Banners Army outside the customs was blocked from Ning Guan's defense line; The Ming Army in Liaodong, the Lee Dynasty in Korea and the Ridan Khan in Mongolia compressed the living space of the Eight Banners Army from three directions. Although these three forces sometimes win or lose in the process of fighting with the Eight Banners Army, overall, the Eight Banners Army has not changed the situation of third-line operations at this stage. Although the front situation is anxious, it is also relatively stable. In addition, the two Beijing and thirteen provinces of Daming are actually under the control of the central government. Although the local refugees revolted from time to time, they were all under the control of the imperial court. In other words, on the surface, it seems too early for Daming to perish.

However, this is only the surface. We might as well put aside our illusions and look at the economic situation in the last years of Daming.

Since the war between Daming and the Manchu outside the customs in the forty-sixth year of Wanli, the Ming court began to collect from the whole country? Liao Xiang? 2 million taels for Liaodong border guards. In the next two years, that is, the last two years of Wanli, a total of more than 9 million yuan was collected from the local government. In the third year of Chongzhen, the imperial court levied another 6.6 million taels of silver for the war-torn Liaodong front.

More deadly, the collection of these huge amounts of silver is based on frequent local disasters. For example, since the forty-seven years of Wanli, natural disasters have occurred in the provinces of Gyeonggi. From the first year of Chongzhen to the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, droughts, floods, earthquakes and locusts continued to attack the economies of northern provinces frequently.

As an expensive place in the Central Plains: Henan, its epidemic situation is more serious. Throughout Chongzhen, the locust plague and drought that ravaged the Central Plains almost never stopped, leading to? There is no grass in the wild, and ten rooms are empty; Those who beg with quail clothes and plates, those who escape with mud doors, and those who eat each other? .

In a wider range, such as Shanxi, Shandong, Hubei, Guangdong, Guangxi, Ningxia and other places, there have been different degrees of drought, which has triggered a series of chain reactions and vicious cycles: rice prices have soared, government revenue has decreased, and taxes have to increase. On the basis of collecting tens of millions of Liao salaries, we continue to collect taxes, resulting in heavy taxes, which in turn led to a large number of civilians who could not afford heavy taxes becoming refugees. At the same time, a serious phenomenon of refugees was formed, which further reduced the tax sources of the Ming Dynasty and formed a vicious circle. To some extent, this is tantamount to self-destruction of the foundation.

Now we know that successive disasters in the late Ming Dynasty are actually closely related to climate change. The Chongzhen period coincided with the fourth cold period in history, during which the rainfall was greatly reduced and the average drought index ranked first in 500 years. Under the double influence of natural disasters and wars, the economic situation of the Ming Dynasty in Chongzhen period was obviously exhausted.

Today, when people talk about the reasons for the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty, they will think that the abolition of postal services in Chongzhen made a postman unemployed and forced by his livelihood to join the uprising, and this postman was Li Zicheng.

But in fact, judging from the living conditions of the people in Chongzhen period, even without the name of Li Zicheng, there would be Wang Zicheng and Zhao Zicheng. The peasant uprising in Chongzhen dynasty is like a barrel of gunpowder, except for a fuse.

For this barrel of gunpowder, if Chongzhen can predict it, he has no super ability to make up for the financial vacancy and eliminate natural disasters.

Feichi's Military Equipment: Has Daming become a veritable Daming? Paper tiger?

The decline of Daming's economy is inevitable, and the outbreak of natural disasters has triggered several peasant uprisings across the country. Faced with this situation, the only thing Emperor Chongzhen can rely on at this time is his hands? Millions of troops? .

However, the so-called million-strong army is not strong. By the end of the Ming dynasty, with the decay of the Ming court in all aspects, this army actually became a veritable army in the eyes of the enemy? Paper tiger? .

For example, since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, according to the quota reported by the health guards all over the country, the number of soldiers on the books should be 310.4 million, but after the actual check, there were only 845,000 soldiers, and the vacancy rate of soldiers exceeded 70%.

The sharp decline of military households and the shrinking of military resources is not the biggest crisis facing the Wei system. More deadly, with the deepening of land annexation in the late Ming Dynasty, a large number of military households lost their cultivated land, and then chose to flee, eventually becoming a refugee force. What's more, they do not hesitate to become bandits. The only military households became servants of health officers, helping them to cultivate the land, but the income gained had nothing to do with the fiscal revenue of the Ming government.

Faced with such a result, the first thing that the Ming government thought of was to increase military spending again to recruit new soldiers. During the Chongzhen period, peasant uprisings broke out frequently in the customs, and the Eight Banners of Manchu Dynasty outside the customs were eyeing up. Under the pressure of the double-track war, the imperial military expenditure was particularly tight and unsustainable.

In addition to the loss of troops, the logistics system of the Ming army is also a frequent problem:

Since the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the army has learned the historical lessons of the autocratic power of military commanders in previous dynasties, so it attaches great importance to the technique of separation of powers and checks and balances in the construction of the army team. For example, the right to unify the army in local provinces was handed over to the Governor's Office of the Fifth Army, which was restricted by the Ministry of War. The generals in daily training are no longer responsible for the whole army, but will choose others to supervise with civil servants, governors and officials; When the army went out to war, because each army belonged to different guards and their subordinate governors' offices, the supply of food and grass was entirely provided by the guards where the soldiers were located, which led to uneven logistics supply efficiency. It is hard to imagine how Emperor Chongzhen could rely on such an army with no skills and chaotic logistics to destroy the Eight Banners of Manchu and suppress the domestic uprising. If the young emperor wants to make a comeback, the challenges he faces will follow.

Take the most critical war horse against the late Jin cavalry as an example. Due to the chaotic management of the Northern Racecourse and the encroachment of the local aristocratic families, this northern border town, which could have supplied 20 Maneba, could not even get together during the Chongzhen period.

The consequences of the lack of cavalry are particularly profound. On the one hand, it leads to the lack of cavalry troops in Liaodong front line to resist the post-gold. On the other hand, in the face of the invading army moving around the pass, the Ming Dynasty also lacked strong mobile power to stop and chase the peasant army.

Such a depressed war made the already poor Ming court even more stretched. Emperor Chongzhen's comeback seems to have no chance of winning.

Move south? Still talking about peace? Facing the historical choice, Daming ruined the last chance.

In front of us, we analyzed the irreversible decline that Daming encountered when the river went from bad to worse, which doomed the failure of Emperor Chongzhen to make a comeback.

However, the interesting thing about history is that it is full of infinite possibilities, and the key even lies in whether you can grasp it. Therefore, although Emperor Chongzhen faced the above-mentioned series of difficult challenges, his comeback was not impossible. Unfortunately, however, in the face of these historical opportunities, Chongzhen did not seem to grasp it.

(1) The first chance for Chongzhen to make a comeback was in the ninth year of Chongzhen.

In June of the ninth year of Chongzhen, the late Jin fighters rushed into the North China Plain, once forcing them to the gates of Beijing. Fortunately, the diligent king of the border guards successfully repelled the invading enemy in time. After the retreat of the late Jin army, Emperor Chongzhen began to think about whether to put down the war in Shanhaiguan Pass and concentrate on resisting foreign enemies, or whether to transfer the border guards into Shanhaiguan Pass to suppress the refugee uprising.

As Chongzhen hesitated, Yang Sichang, then Minister of War, proposed three schemes to him:

First, you must be safe before you can be outside; Second, enough food can make enough soldiers; Third, in order to protect the people, we can plunder. These three schemes now look right in the middle. For example, in the first article, Yang Sichang has set up a defensive network with Sun Chuanting as the main force, which is linked by various local forces to limit and block the marching range of Li Zicheng, so as to achieve the effect of locking the rebels.

In order to weave this big net, Yang Sichang deliberately released a conciliatory gesture to Houjin, so as to reduce the pressure on border defense and let more troops enter the customs. And this has always been the default of Emperor Chongzhen.

As early as the fifth year of Chongzhen, Huang Taiji wrote to the Ming Dynasty in order to make peace. Emperor Chongzhen had intended to consider it, but there were many discussions in the DPRK, which repelled the emperor's idea. It's just that history keeps repeating itself. Yang Sichang's proposals and demands are still strongly opposed by courtiers this time. The voice of criticism in North Korea was like a thunder, and the attitude of the emperor became wavering for a while, and the negotiation process was interrupted again. The impact of this meeting and interruption was not fully reflected until several years later.

As the situation in Shanhaiguan Pass was slightly calm, the late Jin was stirring at the border. Emperor Chongzhen waved his hand and, despite Yang Sichang's strong opposition, transferred the troops that had originally carried out the blockade back to the border town to defend the late Jin. This is a fatal misjudgment, because the civil strife in the Central Plains is far from calming down. When the Ming army in the Central Plains was empty, Li Zicheng and Zhang Yizhou made a comeback, and even pulled up a bigger momentum than before.

When the Ming court hurriedly transferred the border troops back to Shanhaiguan to quell the chaos, the situation was irreversible, the rebels had become a climate, and it was difficult to destroy them again. Strictly speaking, Emperor Chongzhen missed two opportunities to make a comeback in one breath, one was Yang Sichang's blockade plan, and the other was the negotiation and plan in the late Jin Dynasty. Missed two key opportunities, and finally made the situation of the Ming Dynasty slide to the end of extinction step by step.

But to be fair, it is really impossible to make peace with the latter. Since the Battle of Salhu at the end of Wanli, the late Jin Dynasty slaughtered countless Han people in Liaodong and owed countless blood debts. If Chongzhen talks about peace hastily, it will be a heavy blow to people all over the world. On this issue, no matter how Emperor Chongzhen chooses, it will always bring bad results.

(2) The last chance for Chongzhen to make a comeback: moving south? Discuss it.

The voice of the proposal to move south was weak at first, and then it expanded with the gradual intensification of the war in the north. In February of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, it was like the sound of thunder. On February 28th, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Emperor Chongzhen held a serious discussion in Wenhua Hall to demonstrate the possibility of moving south. After all, at this time, the situation in the southern provinces is fairly stable. Even if the northern expedition is weak, the strength of river management can still be guaranteed. Records show that the emperor was very anxious and impatient at this time, perhaps because he had a hunch in his heart that the day of the collapse of the dynasty might come.

This is the last chance for Emperor Chongzhen to make a comeback. If we can reach Nanjing smoothly, we can mobilize the resources of the military towns in the south, guard the Yangtze River ferry, and then sit back and watch the invading army engage with the Qing army (1636, later renamed Qing). No matter how good the Ming Dynasty is, it can at least achieve the confrontation between the South and the North in the Southern Song Dynasty. But he still missed it.

Emperor Chongzhen failed to make up his mind to move south for two reasons:

One is the resolute opposition of a large number of courtiers, a considerable number of whom have family property in the north, and it is difficult to give up for a while; Second, Emperor Chongzhen's own misjudgment of the situation was already manifested in Yang Sichang's time, that is, he still had unrealistic illusions about the current war situation, and believed that the front-line ministries still had hope of defeating the enemy soldiers. This illusion is like a bloody hero who always believes that he can kill the enemy, but in the end he sends a wave of heads. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to describe human head delivery. When the war in the north was completely hopeless, none of the entire royal lineage of the capital Zhujiachao was able to escape to Nanjing and was completely handed over to the invading army.

This one? Mass extinction? The direct result is that the cohesion of the southern provinces has been completely disintegrated, and prisoners from all walks of life in the south have come forward to compete for orthodox status. Even under the pressure of the Qing army, their infighting never stopped, which finally gave the Qing army a chance to break one by one. It only took more than ten years to wipe out the whole of Daming, and declared the complete demise of the Ming Dynasty. Fortunately, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't see all this, otherwise he would be furious before hanging himself.

Conclusion:

In short, Chongzhen's dream of making a comeback was shattered by the misfortune at that time and the difficulties of the current situation. He left countless regrets and reverie to future generations, but in any case, all this can't escape. What is the fate of the dynasty? This eternal historical law. ?