In the Ming Shi, Chongzhen's appointment of Yang Sichang is regarded as an extremely wise move, and indeed the biggest problem of the Ming Dynasty before Chongzhen reused Yang Sichang was strategic chaos. Dealing with internal rebellions, southwestern Tusi, and Guanwai Houjin, the Ming Dynasty can be said to have fallen into a situation of three-front warfare. Such a situation is that no matter how strong your national strength is, sooner or later it will be dragged down, so which is more important than who comes first, and how to get rid of this dilemma is the most important problem that Chongzhen should solve first. However, before Chongzhen reused Yang Sichang, there had never been a clear strategy, but whoever made a fuss would first concentrate on dealing with whom, and then no problem was solved but became bigger step by step.
At first, I also had the same feeling, why didn't Chongzhen use Yang Sichang earlier? However, when I carefully understood Yang Sichang with this kind of thought, I slowly found that this was not the case. After further understanding, I felt more and more that it was after Chongzhen reused Yang Sichang that Daming's demise began to accelerate.
Yang Sichang was a weak chinese character from Wuling, Hunan (present-day Changde, Hunan). In the thirty-eighth year of the Wanli Dynasty (1610 AD), zhongjinshi was the son of Yang He, the right attendant of the Chongzhen Heavy Minister's army, and the governor of Shaanxi. Because Yang He's strategy of appeasement failed and he was imprisoned, Yang Sichang wrote three times to try to take over his father and was noticed by Chongzhen.
Chongzhen was appointed as the military governor of Shanhaiguan in May of the fifth year; Chongzhen was appointed as the inspector of Guanguan and Yong, the capital of the Right Guard, to rectify the defense and build the wings on both sides of Shanhaiguan; Chongzhen was promoted to the post of Right Attendant of the Army department and governor of Shanxi, Xuan, and Da, in September of the seventh year; during his tenure, he wrote chen bianshi six times, proposing measures to prohibit the recruitment of miners to disintegrate the rebels, so Chongzhen even more believed that he did not see the wrong person at the beginning; Yang Sichang returned home to Worry about his father; Chongzhen in the ninth year of the Qing army entered the Fortress and plundered, and Zhang Fengyi, then the military department Shangshu Zhang Fengyi committed suicide. In October of the ninth year of Chongzhen, the emperor issued an edict to regain his love and orderEdang Sichang to take over as bingbu Shangshu.
In March of the tenth year of Chongzhen, Yang Sichang took office in Beijing, and immediately entered the cabinet and became Chongzhen's most trusted minister in the seventeenth year. At this time, Chongzhen and Yang Sichang were faced with a situation in which the internal rebel king Gao Yingxiang had 300,000 people, the generals had 50,000 heavy armor and elite horsemen, and Zhang Xianzhong's troops were more than 100,000, and all the rebel armies crisscrossed Jin, Shaanxi, Yu, Sichuan, Huguang, and other places, and the officers and troops only dared to look at it from a distance and did not dare to engage them; after the rebellion in the southwest direction of The Suan'an Rebellion was put down, the Shapu Rebellion broke out again, causing chaos in the southwest; although the Ming Dynasty outside Guanwai still protected the ningjin line, but with Yuan Chonghuan and Mao Wenlong being killed one after another, the Ming Dynasty established from the apocalyptic era from Guanning Jin through Tianjin. The strategic defense system from Den Lai to Phi Island collapsed.
Yang Sichang gave Chongzhen a good explanation for this situation: "The internal rebellion is chaotic in the heart, and if the heart is bad, the world will perish." The pain outside the guanwai is in the shoulder and arm, and the disease of the shoulder arm can be slowed down and treated, if the abdomen is bad, what is the use of the shoulder arm? This actually pointed out a clear path for Chongzhen, first to quell the internal strife and then to resist external humiliation, to free the empire from the dilemma of multi-front combat, to distinguish the priorities and subordinates, and to break through each one. Zhan Ge believed that this was indeed a point worth affirming for Yang Sichang, which was also the only choice for Chongzhen at that time. But then Yang Sichang gave Chongzhen several strategies, but no doubt kicked Chongzhen behind Chongzhen, who had reached the edge of the cliff.
The change was due to the equal loss of grain
Originally, the Chongzhen Dynasty adopted the law of grain in Lu Xiangsheng to make up for the financial deficiency, but when Yang Sichang came, he was afraid that the grain would be used by traitors to evade the grain wages, and all of them had to be levied and no one could escape. Originally, the number of levies they formulated was fully taken into account the affordability of the people of the Empire, and it was not very large. However, they turned a blind eye to the accumulated evils of the end of the dynasty, and the regulations were very few, but when they were implemented, the actual burden of the people of the empire was often a hundred times or even a thousand times what they prescribed. At that time, both Lu Xiangsheng and Sun Chuanting directly wrote to point out these problems, but Yang Sichang did not listen at all, but instead resented and waited for revenge in his heart. The result was an endless supply of soldiers to the rebels within the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty's efforts to quell civil unrest became an impossible task.
Pit Lu Xiangsheng, Sun Chuanting
Because he was afraid that Lu Xiangsheng would successfully resist the Qing soldiers, he ruined his own peace plan. Under the arrangement behind Yang Sichang's back, Lu Xiangsheng, the commander of the Governor's Division of the Qin King, could only fulfill his loyalty with a weak pawn who had been deprived of grain for more than five thousand days.
Within two months of Sun Chuanting's arrival, he completely annihilated Wang Gao Yingxiang and then captured The Jing Division. Hearing the news, Chongzhen happily rushed to the Taimiao Temple, feeling that he had finally seen the dawn of ZTE. Subsequently, it also straightened out the military tuns, vigorously developed water conservancy, reclamation and other projects that required a lot of manpower, and at the same time attracted commercial brigades to solve the problem of disasters and famines. For a time, Shaanxi under Sun Chuanting's rule changed from a paradise for rebels to a forbidden land for rebels. This is the way to fundamentally solve the problem of rebels within the Ming Dynasty. However, because he pointed out the problems with Yang Sichang's strategy, he was framed and imprisoned by Yang Sichang. When the elite generals of the Ming Dynasty gathered in Songjin, only zuo Liangyu was left in the Ming Dynasty, which led to the rebellion to grow again. If at the time of the Songjin War, Chongzhen had Hong Chengzu, Sun Chuanting, and Lu Xiangsheng all been in his hands, even if Songjin was defeated, Chongzhen could stabilize the internal situation.
Increase troops and salaries
In order to cooperate with the implementation of his strategy of four squares and six corners and ten faces, Yang Sichang proposed to Chongzhen that more troops should be increased. Sun Chuanting pointed out that in order to have elite troops to cooperate with the strategy, it is only necessary for local supervisors and general soldiers in various towns to draw elite troops on the basis of the original, and there is no need to re-recruit them. Yang Sichang still did not listen, and had to increase his troops and pay. This extra silver must also be solved by equal loss, which once again provides fertile soil for the breeding of rebels.
The mishandling of the control not only hurt Zuo Liangyu but also chilled He Renlong's heart
When Yang Sichang was ordered to supervise the encirclement and suppression of the rebels, at first he believed that Zuo Liangyu was a dependent of the imperial court, and treated Zuo Liangyu's soldiers with defeat and loss of seal. Yang Sichang not only did not punish, but instead gave Zuo Liangyu the title of General ping thief before leaving the division, in order to show his popularity, hoping that Zuo Liangyu would know that He would repay the imperial court.
However, the victory in the Battle of Agate Mountain allowed Zuo Liangyu to see through the unreality of this overseer, and from then on, he only obeyed Yang Sichang's orders and believed that he was right. Yang Sichang was extremely angry about this, so he thought of replacing Zuo Liangyu with He Renlong from Shaanxi to hang the seal of General Ping Thief, and he also revealed this news to He Renlong in advance. He Renlong was quite happy to hear this, and he actively fought in the hope of getting this title as soon as possible. And Yang Sichang also wrote to Chongzhen, and Chongzhen also approved his idea.
Subsequently, Yang Sichang thought about it for a moment, Zuo Liangyu's forces were powerful, and if he did not handle it properly to provoke a mutiny, it would be more than worth the loss. Therefore, after Chongzhen approved it, he hurried to write a letter to maintain the original state. In this way, they offended zuo Liangyu and He Renlong at the same time, and after that, these two people basically stopped obeying Yang Sichang's orders. Without the support of these truly knowledgeable people, Yang Sichang besieged and suppressed Zhang Xianzhong's battle to attack and defend, and was constantly led by Zhang Xianzhong's nose to run around, and finally fell into the domain and died. Zhang Xianzhong, Luo Rucai, and the Fifth Battalion of Ge Zuo, who had been repeatedly defeated by Zuo Liangyu, He Renlong, and Meng Ruhu, and who were about to be appeased, developed and grew, and it was difficult to suppress it.
To be fair, compared to other corpse vegetarians, Yang Sichang's vision and ability are ok. His measures did indeed accumulate sufficient strength for the later Ming Dynasty's Songjin War. However, with or without the four positive and six corners he proposed, Hong Chengzu, Sun Chuanting, and Lu Xiangsheng could also quell the rebel army, but what he did really hurt Chongzhen's foundation.
This is why it is said that Yang Sichang's heavy use hastened the demise of the Ming Dynasty. You want to solve the internal problem first, but your strategy is not to strengthen the rebel army first. If you do not solve the fundamentals, only rely on the strong pressure of the military, the result can only be to press the gourd to float up the scoop. The strategy is right, but to act like this, when will the civil unrest be put to rest? Finding the right pathology but using the wrong medicine can only be wrong and chaotic!