For hundreds of years, people have had the doubt that the Ming Dynasty, the former hegemon of East Asia, was replaced in less than fifty years by the Houjin Dynasty, which was established by its former vassal Nurhaci, the later Qing Dynasty.
The speed of this replacement is simply staggering. However, in a generation's time, the land of China, which had been restored by Zhu Yuanzhang to the crown of the Han people, was once again deeply colored.
And in this deep doubt, people feel most incomprehensible is why the Land of Liaodong, which was heavily guarded by the Ming Dynasty, could not suppress the development of Houjin from beginning to end, but eventually became a stepping stone for the rise of Houjin?
Today, this ancient era will analyze for everyone, why the Ming Dynasty could not hold liaodong?
Tianshi: The arrival of the Xiaoice River period affected the Ming Dynasty's material support capabilities for the Liaodong region
Since Zhu Yuanzhang established the liaobian town of Liaodong, the Ming Dynasty has relied on Liaodong's continuous operation and control of the northeast region, but most of this control is based on the Economic Assistance of the Ming Dynasty to Liaodong with the strength of the whole country.
In the first two hundred years of the Ming Dynasty, this situation was relatively good, after all, in terms of the national strength of the Ming Dynasty at that time, it was more than enough to use the strength of the whole country to assist a province.
However, this situation began to change dramatically after the arrival of the Xiaoice River period.
According to Mr. Zhu Kezhen's research on China's meteorological historical data, we can find that since the middle of the Ming Dynasty to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, there have been more than 180 flood disasters, more than 80 droughts, more than 60 wind disasters and more than 60 frost disasters in South China alone, so that there have been more than 70 large-scale famines.
All kinds of extreme weather began to ravage the entire Ming Dynasty, the Yellow River was even diverted because of it, in the face of uncontrollable natural disasters, a large number of people were displaced, forced to abandon a large amount of land, which undoubtedly caused a great impact on the Ming Dynasty, which mainly relied on agricultural taxes, which also made the state's material support capacity for Liaodong gradually decline, which in turn limited the expansion ability of Liaodong, and then chose to shrink the defensive situation.
Geographical advantage: The geographical environment hanging alone at the end of the Ming Dynasty's territory is not conducive to the Ming Dynasty's gathering of military forces
We can see from the territory of the Ming Dynasty that since the establishment of the Nuer Gandu Division and then abolished, Liaodong has become a lonely boat of the Ming Dynasty in the northeast, hanging alone in a corner of the northeast land.
Because the town of Liaodong mainly relied on the Liaodong Peninsula and the western Liaoning Corridor, limited by the poor shipping level of the Ming Dynasty, most of the Ming forces and materials to support Liaodong needed to rely on land routes and travel thousands of miles to Liaodong. As a result, a large number of military operations carried out by the Ming Dynasty in Liaodong were often detected by the Later Jin dynasty very early, and then devised countermeasures.
Later, before the Jin Dynasty rebelled against the Ming Dynasty, he had already gained the dominance of the Jurchen tribes through war and deception. When Nurhaci established Houjin and attacked the Ming Dynasty, the Eastern Liaoning Town of the Ming Dynasty was basically under the semi-encirclement situation of Houjin, and for the Liaobian Town, which was blindly defending at this time, the strategic mobility advantage of Houjin was also confirmed in a series of sneak attacks that followed.
Renhe: The internal party strife of the Ming Dynasty caused the Policy of Liaodong to change overnight
In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, especially since the death of Wanli, domestic party struggles became normalized, and the struggles between political parties often did not lie in the correctness of state affairs, but on whether they were proposed by hostile parties.
To this end, both the Donglin Party and the Eunuch Party are taking the Liaodong region, which is extremely easy to achieve results and extremely easy to produce bad deeds, as the main battlefield for the struggle between the two sides.
Whether it is Xiong Tingbi, Wang Huazhen, Yuan Chonghuan, Sun Chengzong and others, they are all the last victims of the party struggle.
As a result of the intensification of the party struggle, most of the Ming ruling institutions in Liaodong were unable to adapt to changing policies and were mostly in a state of confusion.
It also created a political foundation for Later Jin to invade Liaodong and quickly conquer the Liaodong region.
Financial shortage: The deformed state financial structure has led to a stagnation in the military construction of Liaodong
Since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, it has been dominated by agricultural taxes. The commercial tax was not taken seriously, so the commercial tax was set at a very low level, but due to the development of the past two hundred years, in the face of the increasing population, the increasingly inflated clan and the increasing military expenditure of the border towns, the unchanged agricultural tax has long been unable to bear the increase in state expenditure year by year.
In the face of the obstruction of powerful vested interests and the inability to collect commercial taxes, the Ming Dynasty had to put the solution to the state's financial problems on the peasants, who were already overwhelmed.
This made the peasants' burdens heavier and heavier, and the good years were good, but once they encountered a disaster year, the people who had no grain to harvest could only do the opposite in the face of the official differences levied by the imperial court.
In order to suppress the peasant uprising, the Ming Dynasty had to spend money to recruit people to encircle and suppress, and the state was busy suppressing the peasant uprising. As a result, military assistance to Liaodong was reduced again, and its military construction was mostly stalled.
Military unrest: The corruption of the liaodong military clique
Because in the early years of the Wanli Calendar, Zhang Ju was in the process of reforming the country, not only reforming the economy, but also reusing a large number of young generals, Qi Jiguang and Li Chengliang were the two most dazzling generals.
However, since Zhang Juzheng's death, those vested interest groups that had violated his interests had used slander and frame-up to negate Zhang Juzheng's reforms, and at the same time impeached Qi Jiguang, who had trained soldiers at Jimen Gate, built the Great Wall, and threatened the Mongol tribes, and returned to his hometown, and eventually died of illness in his hometown.
After seeing Qi Jiguang's miserable end, Li Chengliang, who was originally in Liaodong to suppress the Jurchen departments to death, saw the end of the cunning rabbit dead lackey cooking, in order not to make himself Qi Jiguang's second.
As a result, Li Chengliang opened his way of self-respect in Liaodong. He would never kill the rebellious Jurchen tribes in Liaodong at once, only defeat them, and then support the weak tribes, constantly gaining merit in support and attack, but he would not completely eliminate the threat of the Ming Dynasty like Qi Jiguang, and even won the honor of the Ming Dynasty's first general in two hundred years.
However, it was also under the guidance of his strategy of raising Kou and self-respect that Li Chengliang gradually cultivated liaobian town into the largest military independent group of the Ming Dynasty, and this military independent group was bound to bring internal decay and degeneration, which also made the army combat strength of liaodong town gradually decrease, and even in the later period when Li Chengliang sat in Liaodong, he also directly abandoned the Kuandian area that the Ming Dynasty had worked hard to open up for nearly a hundred years, and gave it to Nurhaci, further contributing to Nurhaci's strength.
And Nurhaci was also very faceless in the second year after Li Chengliang's death, before raising the anti-flag and establishing Houjin.
epilogue
Therefore, from the perspective of the above points, the Ming Dynasty's inability to defend Liaodong was actually the result of the joint influence of the time and place of Liaodong and the entire Ming Dynasty at that time, as well as human and financial, military and other factors.
However, no matter how the natural environment affects, the most fundamental impact on the Liaodong region is still the impact of the national political environment, if the politics are clear and the state finances are sufficient, how could the Ming Dynasty lose the land of Liaodong and sit back and watch the rise of the Later Jin.
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