History is interesting, it is not like the positive and negative numbers on mathematics, and it is not black and white. So much so that we can always disagree on a certain historical figure and find black spots and highlights. Just like Huo Guang, who has the mouth of a powerful minister who assists the government, Li Shimin, who murdered his brother and married his sister-in-law, Zhao Kuangyin, who connived at his brother-in-law to eat people, and Zhao Guangyi, who insulted Xiao Zhou, is more like Zhang Juzheng, a corrupt official and powerful minister who can continue the Ming Dynasty for decades as Zaifu, wei Zhongxian, who is a powerful "nine-thousand-year-old", and the upright and outspoken Donglin Party.
What is right and wrong? Faithful and evil? And when the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on the coal mountain and shouted out the sentence "The king of the country is not a mistaken country, and the subjects are all the subjects of the country", the Ming Guozuo finally died. But the debate about the people in the last years of the Ming Dynasty has never stopped. And this is especially yuan chonghuan.
In 1630, after the change of the Emperor, Yuan Chonghuan, the governor of Jiliao and the Shangshu of the Bingbu, was finally ordered by the Chongzhen Emperor to lingchi - 3543 swords after being imprisoned for 9 months. A knife or two pieces of silver, the people scrambled to eat.
The Records of Chongzhen - The Third Year of Emperor Chongzhen of Huaizongduan says, "癸海, who killed Yuan Chonghuan, the head of the imperial army, was sentenced to death... Yuan Chonghuan entrusted him with no favors, specialized in deception, and the city did not fight, dismissed reinforcements, and sneaked lama monks into the city. ”
This pile is all related to major crimes such as treason and deception. Yuan Chonghuan, is there any merit? Yes. In the last year of the Ming Dynasty, on the first day of the first lunar month in 1616, Nurhaci, who was once a "Jiannu and slave chief", finally survived Li Chengliang and established Houjin. As a result, this tribe, which was not valued, dealt a heavy blow to the Ming Dynasty, which had already decayed to the extreme, in the Battle of Salhu, the Battle of Guangning, and the Battle of Liaoshen, and the land of Liaodong was all for it.
In 1626, at the Battle of Ningyuan, Yuan Chonghuan faced Nurhaci's 60,000 elite soldiers with less than 20,000 troops. Yuan Chonghuan ordered Man Gui to guard the east, Zuo Fu to guard the west, Zu Dashou to guard the south, Zhu Mei to guard the north, each of them took care of each other, and he himself wrote a blood letter to inspire everyone. The city was full of red artillery ammunition, and the walls outside the city were clear, burning all the houses and transferring the people, and Yuan Chonghuan put the silver of the treasury of the palace 11,100 taels on the city, and there would be brave men under the heavy reward.
Nurhaci, on the other hand, wrote to Yuan Chonghuan, threatening 200,000 men to attack the city and surrender. However, from Yuan Chonghuan's intelligence, he received information that Nurhaci had 130,000 people, but he still chose to refuse to surrender.
Contrary to reality, the intelligence is not outstanding; but there is courage to resist. The outcome of this great war is even more confusing.
As recorded in the Qing Shilu Qing Taizu Shilu written by the Qing people themselves, Nurhaci returned with great resentment after ningyuan's great defeat. In the Ming Dynasty, which desperately needed a victory, it was recorded that "it is a slave and a thief who has eroded and lost more than 17,000 people." (Xu Guangqi Collection, vol. 4, "Draft II for Military Training") "In the sixth year of the Apocalypse, Ning Yuan defended the city and annihilated more than 17,000 thieves. (Qu Shiyun "Qu Zhongxuan Gongji" Volume II "Request for Firearms Evacuation")
This is Yuan Chonghuan Gong, but one point that cannot be ignored is the neighboring Juehua Island, which is not far away. War has never been a gain or loss for a city and a place, let alone a separate one. On the 26th day of the first month, Nurhaci took advantage of the cold winter, the sea was frozen, and 7,000 people of the Ming Dynasty navy were martyred, 80,000 stones of grain, and more than 2,000 warships were burned. The most important point is that the destruction of Juehua Island, a logistics base outside the Ming Dynasty's Guan, also made Ning Yuan's victory seem insignificant. At the time of the Battle of Ningyuan, Mao Wenlong, who was later killed by Yuan Chonghuan, chose to send Lin Maochun and Wang Fu to haizhou, and Du Gui and Qu Cheng'en went straight to Shenyang. This made Nurhaci look bad.
As a strategic support point for each other, we actually understand Yuan Chonghuan's difficulties, the enemy is in front, the Eight Banners are brave and numerous, but one thing we can be sure of, he is not Yue Fei, let alone Han Xin, he is just an ordinary marshal, not to mention the "five years of Pingliao" that he boasts about.
In the Battle of Ningjin, facing the Siege of Jinzhou by Emperor Taiji, yuan Chonghuan took Zu Dashou and others to encircle him, and after taking the water division out of the east, shelled countless times, and then relieved the siege of Ningyuan. During the siege of Jinzhou, Huang Taiji was repulsed by Zhao Lijiao's Hongyi cannon.
So what did the Chongzhen Emperor give Yuan Chonghuan? Because of his youth, he trusted this "Daming Yue Fei" for five years to pingliao, and in the good harvest years of the Ming Dynasty, the revenue of the national treasury was only 4 million taels of silver, not to mention that at the beginning of his term of office, it was the Chongzhen Dynasty that was plagued by locusts and droughts, but it was just like this, in the year and a half that Yuan Chonghuan was in charge of Liaodong, the Chongzhen Emperor had already allocated more than 10 million taels of silver, 680,000 pairs of armor, and rice grain. At this time, Yuan Chonghuan had 130,000 soldiers.
And what kind of strategy did Yuan Chonghuan implement? Keeping is right, fighting is strange, and being beside. In fact, there is nothing wrong with that. However, after spending huge national strength and financial resources to create many barriers to the Guanning Defense Line, in 1629, Huang Taiji crossed the Guanning Defense Line and directly approached the Beijing Division.
Unaware of it, what was even more fatal was that after Yuan Chonghuan led his army to Jizhou, he did not immediately rush to Tongzhou, the closest (more than forty miles) to Beijing, but went to Hexiwu (one hundred and twenty miles from Beijing). The capital of the country is in danger, and the emperor and the dynasty are worried, why is this? The Shoshu of the Army, the King of a Nation, and the Humerus of a Nation, which is more important? After Zhao Lijiao was martyred with 5,000 horses and Man Gui was defeated, Yuan Chonghuan finally arrived outside the Guangqu Gate in Beijing.
The cruelty of history is that he never valued your efforts, but looked at the results. Ben was criticized, but also with heavy troops, many times to avoid the Emperor Taiji Army, the rescue is slow, and occasionally asked to enter the city, the bane has been planted.
Is it the counter-plot of the two eunuchs? Yes and no. Emperor Chongzhen was able to depose The Chongzhen Emperor after Yuan Chonghuan had trespassed on the ancestral system and corrected the edict to kill Mao Wenlong, and even after Yuan Chonghuan's rice enemies, he simply issued a ban and did not condemn it, but this time Yuan Chonghuan finally endangered the Chongzhen Emperor himself, and inevitably died.
Qian Longxi, the last straw that crushed him, was impeached by Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru. The courtiers and frontier generals, and what is even more ridiculous is that Zu Dashou fled with his troops after hearing that Yuan Chonghuan was imprisoned. This was an instinctive avoidance, but it was also a signal to the Chongzhen Emperor that the frontier army was warlordized. After Yuan Chonghuan wrote a letter recalling Zu Dashou, finally in June 1630, Jin completely withdrew from the Great Wall line, and Zu Dashou led his troops back to Liaoxi.
Thus there are many of the major crimes of "treason and deception" mentioned earlier, as well as the murder of Yuan Chonghuan. "Entrustment is ineffective", for the Emperor Taiji invasion and do not know, interception and unfavorable, in fact, there is far-fetched, but "monopoly and deception", The Emperor Taiji can easily enter the Kou, saying that its defense is useless, and it is not too much to deceive the saints; as for the city rice enemy and the plot to cut the marshal, in 1629, the Kanto was already famine, the price of rice was high, the Ming Dynasty could have relied on a protracted war to drag the Emperor Taiji to death, but Yuan Chonghuan sold the grain to the Mongolian tribes that were good friends with the Emperor Taiji under the result of refusing to sell grain at all major border passes. In the process of selling rice, the Jurchens were discovered and did not stop, and as a result, Emperor Taiji survived the crisis safely; the consequence of killing Mao Wenlong was that there were no rear forces to contain Emperor Taiji, and what was the use of Yuan Chonghuan's desire to monopolize Liaodong, and how could the rebellion of Mao Wenlong's subordinate Kong Youde and others be put down? The fact is that when you have something to use and can be used by Chongzhen, he may be secretly patient, but after you Yuan Chonghuan can't recognize your own positioning, these solid evidence of guilt is enough, and as for the soldiers who do not fight, the reinforcements are four episodes, they are dismissed, they sneak the lama, and they insist on entering the city.
But it is enough to have a city enemy and kill the manager. Yuan Chonghuan has merit, but he is also great. He also had a reason to die. It's just that in the chaos of the last years of the Ming Dynasty, it seems that the achievements he made are excellent and incomparable. But this does not mean that his military strategy or military quality can be compared with Yue Fei and Han Xin, and the consequences caused by the killing of Mao Wenlong and Shimi are far from being compensated by the two great victories. The demise of the Ming Dynasty was not the so-called murder of Yuan Chonghuan, but the outbreak of various contradictions at the threshold of the historical cycle law. The black and white of historical figures have always been like mirrors. The back is not clean, and no matter how bright it is, it will not help, but the strange thing is that we like to shine.
References: "Qu Zhongxuan Gongji", "Qing Shilu Qing Taizu Shilu", "Xu Guangqi Collection", "Chongzhen Shilu - Three Years of Emperor Huaizongduan"