Since three generations, china has been the most righteous, only Han and Ming. Why? The historian Meng Sen wrote in the Lecture Notes on the History of the Ming Dynasty:
Pifu started an incident without the suspicion of relying on the authority; to eliminate violence for the people, there was no intention of foreseeing the artifact.
That is to say, Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang were originally just ordinary people, and had no power to rely on; at the same time, because they were not powerful generals of the former dynasty, nor were they usurpers like Yang Jian and Zhao Kuangyin.
In the history of our country, like Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang, there are many chaotic tyrants who started from the grass, and the closest to success is Li Zicheng.
Due to the thinking of chengwang and the psychology of rebellion against textbooks, many people despised Li Zicheng, directly denouncing him as a "rogue Kou", and simply attributed Li Zicheng's failure to the rapid corruption after entering Beijing, and Li Zicheng's people were blinded by victory. But this is not the whole of historical facts, in fact, Li Zicheng has almost completed the change of dynasty.
So why did Li Zicheng ultimately fail after capturing the city of Beijing? Why did the bureaucratic gentry of the late Ming Dynasty eventually fall to the Qing Dynasty? Next, we will analyze the reasons for Li Zicheng's failure.
1. Greet the king, who comes without grain
In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, in 1643 AD, Li Zicheng formulated a tax policy of "three years exemption" in Xiangyang, which was supported by the broad masses of the people. Therefore, "greeting the king, the king coming and not paying grain" is real in history, and it is precisely this point that lays the groundwork for Li Zicheng's failure.
It should be said that the Sixteenth Year of Chongzhen's Great Ming still has considerable strength, and has not reached the point where the country is about to be destroyed, and is mainly divided into three parts in terms of military strength:
Liaodong had Wu Sangui, which was used to defend against the Qing army's seizure of customs
In the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, there was Zuo Liangyu, threatening the rear of the peasant army and preventing it from attacking the southern wealthy lands
In Shaanxi, there was Sun Chuanting, who attacked Li Zicheng
However, in these three parts, Wu Sangui could not move, and Zuo Liangyu became more and more self-respecting, so Daming's real trump card against Li Zicheng was actually only Sun Chuanting.
But it was also this year that Chongzhen made a major decision: Yan ordered Sun Chuanting to go out of Tongguan and Zuo Liangyu to attack Li Zicheng. Chongzhen was too eager to defeat Li Zicheng, and Sun Chuanting did not agree to this risk, but Chongzhen believed that Sun Chuanting would eat imperial food in vain if he did not move. Therefore, Sun Chuanting had no choice but to send troops.
In this battle, Li Zicheng won a great victory and annihilated Sun Chuanting's troops at Tongguan, and Sun Chuanting was killed in battle. After this battle, Daming no longer had the main force to attack Li Zicheng, and the History of Ming wrote:
The court died, and the Ming died.
Everyone saw this, and the bureaucratic gentry of Daming were no exception. As a result, from the winter of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng not only won the wholehearted support of the peasants, but also Daming's bureaucratic clique in the north also began to climb the dragon and attach himself to the phoenix. History records the situation at that time:
Zhen Ruopei was the chief of the pavilion and the prince of Taiyuan came back. The soldiers and the people are more anxious to look forward to the thieves.
The chief of Pei Shang Pavilion is Liu Bang; the Prince of Taiyuan is Li Shimin. At that time, the world believed that the time had come to change dynasties, so Li Zicheng took over the three provinces of Shanxi, Shandong, and Hebei (Beizhi) in just three months, plus Henan and Shaanxi that he had previously occupied, and Li Zicheng had completed the unification of the north.
Li Zicheng's rapid success after defeating Sun Chuanting was due to the collective defection of the Daming bureaucracy. And it was this that later led to Li Zicheng's rapid death.
2. After Li Zicheng captured Beijing, there was no time to corrupt
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, in 1644 AD, the city of Beijing was destroyed and Chongzhen hanged himself.
At this time, there were thousands of bureaucrats in the Ming court, and only about twenty people were martyred, and all the others surrendered to Li Zicheng, including Wu Sangui.
So does Li Zicheng have time to quickly corrupt? Let's take a look at the schedule:
On March 19, 1777, Li Zicheng entered Beijing.
On April 13, 1777, Li Zicheng led his army to the Battle of Shanhaiguan.
So, could Li Zicheng's hundreds of thousands of troops have become corrupt enough to fight in less than twenty days? Obviously, corruption is not the main cause.
On the contrary, according to historical records, Li Zicheng's military discipline during his time in Beijing was strict, and individual corruption and discipline violations did not represent the whole story. Moreover, in the Battle of Shanhaiguan, Liu Zongmin personally risked an arrow and was seriously injured, which is not a corrupt image at all!
Li Zicheng's defeat at Shanhaiguan was indeed due to the paralysis of the enemy and the underestimation of the Qing army's troops, but the subsequent defeat of the army was by no means a proud and complacent explanation.
3. Tax exemption for three years, so what about grain and grass and the money and grain for maintaining the operation of the regime?
Li Zicheng's "three-year exemption" tax is not empty talk, but has really been implemented. However, with the growth of the Dashun army and the acceptance of the whole north, how to maintain the expenditure of government agencies at all levels and the grain and grass of the army became a big problem.
There are only two ways:
First, we should withdraw the "three-year exemption" and follow the old road of lightly dispensing with the small endowments of the founding of the country in previous dynasties.
Second, chase after the stolen money.
Li Zicheng did not adopt the first method, but began to raid and recover the entire bureaucratic gentry in the northern region. When they raided and recovered stolen goods, the scholars and masters lost not only money, but also disgraced, which was unexpected by the rebellious Daming bureaucrats, and it was also the biggest hidden danger of Li Zicheng's "Dashun" regime.
The old ministers of Daming submitted to Li Zicheng and simply wanted to find a new patron, and Li Zicheng's approach obviously made them feel that they were "not trusted by others". Therefore, when Li Zicheng's army was in full swing, the old ministers of the Ming Dynasty did not send out, and once Li Zicheng was defeated, the result was that the wall fell and everyone pushed, and how quickly the victory was won, how quickly it perished!
4. Wu Sangui took the lead in attacking
Wu Sangui rebelled on the way back to Beijing after returning to Beijing after returning to Li Zicheng, and the reason was that he knew the truth about the city of Beijing: raiding his family, confiscating his wealth, and robbing his concubine Chen Yuanyuan, all of which shattered Wu Sangui's dream of becoming a new upstart in Dashun.
Wu Sangui has always been a very realistic person, otherwise Li Zicheng would not have moved slowly on The Qinwang Road when he besieged the city of Beijing. If Li Zicheng treats Wu Sangui kindly, Wu Sangui will definitely not oppose it.
Wu Sangui fell to the Qing Dynasty, the fundamental reason is Li Zicheng's attitude and policy towards the old ministers of daming, "rushing the crown and anger into a red face" is only the fuse. It was Wu Sangui's alliance with the Qing Dynasty's Dolgun and the defeat of Li Zicheng at Shanhaiguan that caused a chain reaction.
As a result, the old ministers of the Ming Dynasty who suffered from Li Zicheng's "pursuit of stolen goods" in the entire northern region openly rebelled one after another and quickly threw themselves into the arms of the Qing Dynasty. The Ming dynasty went from falling to Li Zicheng to all falling to the Qing Dynasty, but it took half a year.
Many people say that Li Zicheng was proud and corrupt after he captured Beijing, and lost the hearts and minds of the people, and this "people" is very appropriate if it is interpreted as the gentry class of the Ming Dynasty.
5. Is there any possibility of Success for Li Zicheng?
The entire bureaucratic clique in Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan rebelled and surrendered, causing Li Zicheng's "Dashun" regime to collapse rapidly.
In stark contrast to Li Zicheng, the Qing Dynasty, in the name of "avenging Daming", quickly announced its policy of protecting Daming's former ministers, and at the same time recruited officials from the Dashun regime and the Southern Ming regime through officials who had already surrendered, and it was this that made the former ministers of Daming follow the Qing Dynasty with iron heart.
Li Zicheng's defeat stemmed from the incomplete transformation into a ruling class, which still regarded the old ministers of the Ming Dynasty as the opposite. If Li Zicheng had stopped chasing after his home after occupying the city of Beijing and narrowed the scope of the attack, it is believed that the old ministers of the Ming Dynasty would have chosen Dashun between "Dashun" and "Daqing", after all, Dashun was a Han regime.
But history does not have the if, Li Zicheng did not seize the opportunity, or history did not have enough time for Li Zicheng to choose. Because when Zhu Yuanzhang raised an army, he initially treated the bureaucracy the same, but Zhu Yuanzhang finally completed the transformation to the ruling class.
Li Zicheng's failure was due to the fact that after entering Beijing, he still attacked the old Ministers of Daming and did not complete the transition to the ruling class; it was because Daming's old bureaucratic clique finally fell to the Qing Dynasty in 1644 AD.
However, from the continuous defection of the old ministers of the Ming Dynasty, it is not difficult for us to see the beginning of the demise of the Ming Dynasty.