At the beginning, the Manchu Qing Dynasty's uncivilized tribes and people outside the Guanguan Dynasty actually rose up in just a few decades, entered the Central Plains, and soon stabilized the pattern, relying on the two major weapons, in addition to the policy of "using Han to control Han", the most inseparable from the heroic and good warfare of the "Eight Banners and Heroic Soldiers".
The so-called Eight Banners is a kind of social organization that integrates soldiers and civilians, similar to the "Spartan" system, producing and training when there is nothing to do, and riding horses to the battlefield as soon as there is chaos. Coupled with the fact that the Ming Dynasty teammates at that time were too garbage, the iron horse was almost a horse.
In the past, when Guo Moruo wrote "The Three Hundred Years of Jiashen Festival", he lamented that the number of eight banner troops was not large, and it was a strange thing that they could conquer the Central Plains and rule China for 300 years.
However, what is even more tragic is that the Chinese Empire has never been able to jump out of reincarnation, and the "Great Qing" that took the Ming Dynasty as a substitute has not been able to bring about fundamental changes in the system, let alone improve the evil consequences of the "stupid and weak people".
The Manchu Tradition was "shangwu", but after conquering the country, it could not escape the law of dynastic cycles and the danger of self-burnout. However, in just a hundred years, the Eight Banners, which were once mighty and fierce and fought all over China, and the Eight Banners, which were self-proclaimed by the top level of the Qing Dynasty as "the eight banners are the foundation of the dynasty", also quickly declined, and they were not vulnerable at all.
The famous story, in 1860, the monk Greenqin led the Qing soldiers with the Eight Banners of Manchuria as the main force, and fought with the British and French allies, and as a result, the Qing army suffered nearly 10,000 casualties, and the other side only died 5 people, which was almost like a child's play. It is precisely because the combat effectiveness of these "Great Qing" descendants can be ignored that there has been the rise of regimental training of township soldiers led by Zeng Guofan and other Han Chinese.
Therefore, why the Eight Banners Soldier was depressed so quickly was just as aggressive as how it was so strong in the first place!
The most core reason, of course, is that after the Manchu Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the Eight Banners disciples of "their own people" were implemented with a policy of "nurturing", so that they did not produce anything, were on high, had good and bad work, consumed their will, and their lives became decadent.
What's more, the so-called "life, old age, illness and death, with waste in and out", the father is tough, the son is not necessarily as brave, several generations of people in the superior living situation, several times "replaced", that bit of bloodthirsty genes have long been depressed. You see, in the late Qing Dynasty, the outstanding talents among the Eight Banners were also mostly famous for their literary talents, and the literary quality was even more excessive than that of Jiangnan Scholars.
This kind of favor policy is really like a reward for the robber's merits after he has won the hand. As pointed out in the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty and Chronicle of Food and Goods", the Great Qing National Policy, "about the Eight Banners, was raised with national strength", and this huge number of imperial court eagle dogs was fully privileged.
They never gave up taxes, received grain regularly, received relief money from time to time, and so on, which were promised by the nobles and enslaved to the Han. Their privileges are inherited from their descendants, and all kinds of preferential treatment are unprecedented in ancient times.
After the middle of the Qing Dynasty, the children of the Eight Banners not only could not become the "pillar of the country", but in fact, they were reduced to national parasites and social moths.
Originally, the education of the Eight Banners of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was militarized, and these disciples were able to do nothing except practice martial arts, guard, and fight. However, in the middle and late period, the vast majority of the Eight Banners gradually relaxed under the Huairou policy and became a group of privileged dependent groups that did not serve, did not farm, did not work, did not trade, and did not serve the people.
They pursue luxury, sit and wait for subsidies, in the past every day to practice knife exercises, so far is a daily idle, not to mention cage birds, or to raise flowers and eat tobacco, not to brag in tea houses, or to play in the song theater to pick up girls, or even most of them are infected with opium smoke, not to mention killing enemies for the country, even livelihood is a problem, even their lives are maimed by themselves.
In this way, the descendants of the Eight Banners, who were once heroic and good at war, gradually became three and more deified and Hengdian wanderers. In Lao She's famous work "Under the Red Flag", the Beijing Eight Banner Gunner Zhao Shuangyin, who is lazy and lazy, and thinks of himself as a "high race", that is, he would rather not marry a wife for a lifetime than participate in a little labor, which is obviously explained.
It can be said that the Ming Dynasty died as a result of party strife and harsh taxes; without party strife, it will not be serious to internal friction, and without harsh taxes, it will not be boiling against the people. And the history of the decline of the flag people, the road they took, is also the Qing Dynasty's increasingly decadent grass gray snake line.