In 1647, Kong Youde, who was the general of Pingnan, spent half a year pacifying Hunan, severely damaged and surrendered most of the Southern Ming army loyal to the small court of Yongli, and went deep into Guangxi, planning to capture Guilin and destroy Yongli. The Southern Ming army repelled the Qing vanguard who had come to attack at the Battle of Jeonju, but surprisingly, Kong Youde did not lead the main force of the Qing army to counterattack, but quickly withdrew from Guangxi and left Hunan, so that the Yongli small imperial court was saved.
Kong Youde did not have good intentions and deliberately spared Nanming, but at this time there was turmoil in Jiangxi. Jin Shenghuan, then the commander-in-chief of Jiangxi, led his subordinate Wang Deren to announce his return to Ming in Nanchang anyway, and Kong Youde, fearing that the rear would be attacked, hurriedly withdrew the main force and lifted the threat.
Kong Youde
In the late Ming Dynasty, during the "Xiaoice River Period", the temperature dropped sharply, grain production decreased, famine continued, and the victims of the disaster rose up. Jin Shenghuan, a native of Yulin, Shaanxi, was also involved, and in order to survive, he participated in the local peasant uprising. Jin Shenghuan fought and forgot his life and death, mixed up in the rebel army, and called himself "a bucket of millet".
In 1632, the Shaanxi rebels advanced into Henan, and Zuo Liangyu, who was fighting in Liaodong, was transferred by the imperial court to Guannei to quell the rebellion. Jin Shenghuan surrendered to Zuo Liangyu and was recruited to serve as the governor of Tongzhi, so he made outstanding military achievements, was promoted to the rank of general, and became a general in Zuo Liangyu's army. In 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor made Zuo Liangyu the son of NingNanbo and his son Zuo Menggeng the general of Ping Thief, and promised that once the thief was successful, he would let Zuo's father and son guard Wuchang for generations. Unexpectedly, Jia Shen was in difficulty, Chongzhen committed suicide, and Zuo Liangyu, who was stranded in Wuchang, took the opportunity to recruit troops and horses, and tried his best to expand the army.
Chongzhen Emperor
At that time, Warlords such as Gao Jie and Huang Degong supported Zhu Yousong the Prince of Fu as the overseer of the state, and later called Emperor Shi the Hongguang Emperor. The Hongguang Emperor made Zuo Liangyu the Crown Prince taifu and regarded him as a fence, but Zuo Liangyu was ostracized by Ma Shiying, Ruan Dacheng and others. Zuo Liangyu, who claimed to have used millions of troops, led his troops to the east to take Nanjing on the grounds of "Qing Jun's side", and as a result, Zuo Liangyu fell ill halfway through, and his son Zuo Menggeng was elected as the military lord by his generals, but was blocked by Huang Degong, who was loyal to the Hongguang Emperor. Zuo Menggeng was forced by the situation to surrender to the Qing court, and the generals, including the general Jin Shenghuan, surrendered to Qing at the same time.
Ming Dynasty general
Although Zuo Liangyu was mostly a ragtag group after the expansion of the army, Jin Shenghuan's troops were a strong force in the "Zuo Zhen". In order to please his new master, Jin Shenghuan did not follow Zuo Menggeng to surrender his military power and went to Beijing. Instead, he led his subordinates, who had been reorganized into "Green Battalion Soldiers" through Jiangxi for the Qing court, and soon captured more than seventy prefectures, including Nanchang, captured and killed officials loyal to The Southern Ming, and participated in the slaughter of The City in Ganzhou.
Jin Shenghuan, who regarded himself as a high-ranking official of hard work, reached out to the Qing court to ask for officials, hoping that the imperial court would have a reward, and it was best to control the military and political power in Jiangxi alone, and could restrain the civil and military officials. However, Dorgon was not at ease with the newly attached Southern Ming rebel general, and only perfunctorily changed his official position to the green camp admiral general, and his deputy general Wang Deren was not rewarded.
Moreover, Jin Shenghuan also had to be subject to the control of the Inspector of Jiangxi and the Inspector, and his subordinate generals were allowed to be appointed by the two of them, and Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren were dissatisfied with this. Moreover, at that time, once the Southern Ming generals were suspected of colluding with Yongli by the Qing court, they were often immediately killed without confirmation and interrogation, and Huang Zhaoxuan, Liu Chengyin and others were ambushed. Moreover, at that time, Dorgon "admired Manchuria", reused the Manchurian nobles and the Hanchen who had been attached to Guanwai in the past, and even the slaves in the Eight Banner Army dared to arbitrarily rebuke the former Southern Ming officers who had bullied and oppressed the Qing.
The newly appointed Inspector of Jiangxi, Zhang Yutian, and Inspector Dong Xuecheng saw that Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren had seized a lot of gold and silver jewelry, so they forcibly extorted them. Jin Shenghuan believed that Zhang Yutian and Dong Xuecheng had not made any achievements, and they were favored because they belonged to the Hanchen who were subordinate to Guanwai.
General of the Qing Army
Dissatisfied and worried about his future, Jin Shenghuan consulted with the deputy general Wang Deren and, on the 27th day of the first month of 1648, announced that he would return to the Ming Dynasty in Nanchang anyway, cut off the whip, change into the official clothes of the Ming Dynasty, kill Inspector Dong Xuecheng, coerce Inspector Zhang Yutian to rebel against the Qing, and appoint the Yongli Emperor Zhu Youluo as the king. Jiang Yueguang, a scholar of the Hongguang Imperial Court and a scholar of Dongge University who was newly retired in Nanchang, also participated.
Most of Jiangxi was thus separated from Qing rule, and even the Southern Ming generals and anti-Qing forces in nearby Anhui, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong and other places echoed each other. In stark contrast to the Qing court, the Yongli Emperor did not hesitate to award rewards, and made Jin Shenghuan the Duke of Huanchang and Wang Deren the Marquis of Xinyu, and the two were overjoyed and planned to lead the army down the river to attack Nanjing.
However, Jin Shenghuan took into account that ganzhou, an important town in Jiangxi, was still in the hands of the Qing court, and if it was left unchecked, it was afraid that it would attack the rear. Moreover, this place is easy to defend and difficult to attack, located at the junction of Jiangxi, Hunan and Guangdong, and is a place where soldiers and families must fight. Therefore, Jin Shenghuan led a large army of water and land to besiege Ganzhou in the third month of the lunar calendar.
However, the city of Ganzhou was deep, and the local garrison commander Hu Yousheng, like Zhang Yutian, was a Han courtier who was attached to Guanwai and died for the Qing court. Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren were unable to attack for a long time and made no progress, and the Qing court at this time appointed Zhenghuangqi Gushan Ezhen Shu Mulu TanTai as the general of Zhengnan, responsible for suppressing the rebellion in Jiangxi and Guangdong.
Qing army
If Jin Shenghuan overseers went down the river and led the water division to take advantage of the natural dangers of the Yangtze River to block the Qing army, there was still a chance to overturn. However, Jin Shenghuan made a mistake in decision-making and led his troops to besiege Ganzhou for two months, in vain and missing the fighter. I heard that the main force of the Qing army drove straight in, and the momentum was like a broken bamboo, easily attacking the Jiujiang. Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren led their troops to break the siege and return to Nanchang, although they rushed back to Nanchang in time, but lost the battle to expel the Qing forwards outside the city, Jin Shenghuan gave up control of Poyang Lake and the Yangtze River, and led his troops to nanchang.
The Qing army used the Yangtze River to transport materials and siege tools from the Jiangnan region to Jiangxi for the purpose of besieging the city, although Tan Tai encountered fierce resistance from Jin Shenghuan under Nanchang City, and suffered many casualties. However, Tan Taiqiang recruited the people, dug trenches, and the water around Nanchang could not be drained, and relied on the superiority of materials and personnel to fight a war of attrition with Jin Shenghuan. After the siege of Nanchang for more than eight months, the He Tengjiao department in Hunan and the li chengdong department in Guangdong were either not sent reinforcements for various reasons or were blocked by the Qing army.
Yongli Emperor
The Ming army in the city ran out of food and morale, "the grain and grass were exhausted, killing people and eating", and the price of one stone of rice was as high as six hundred taels. Jin Shenghuan ordered the people to be released, and many Ming deserters mixed in. Before the Qing army went out on the expedition, it had made a rule that those who were forced to surrender should also be killed without mercy. Therefore, whether it was the defecting Ming army or innocent people, the Qing army only left the young women among them and distributed them to each battalion to listen to them, and the other soldiers and civilians were all killed.
On the nineteenth day of the first month of 1649, Jin Shenghuan heard that the Qing army had broken through the city, knew that the general trend had gone, killed his wife and children, and threw two arrows into the lotus pond to commit suicide. Wang Derenli was captured in battle, regarded death as a homecoming, and was tortured to death. Jiang Yueguang, a university scholar, led the whole family of thirty-two and threw themselves into the water to martyr the country. Afterwards, the Yongli Emperor posthumously awarded Jin Shenghuan the title of King of Yulin and Yu Zhonglie; Wang Deren as the Duke of Jianguo, Yu Zhongzhuang; and Jiang Yueguang as Jin Xianbo and Tan Wenzhong.