In the eleventh year of the Mandate of Heaven, in 1626 AD, Nurhaci died at the age of 68. It is reasonable to say that the death of the founding father is not a small blow to the developing country. Moreover, Nurhaci's death was somewhat accidental, he suddenly fell ill after Ning Yuan's defeat, and many subsequent events were not arranged, and even the heir was not designated. There is a precedent for this in history, for example, qin shi huang died, and the qin state soon fell into civil unrest. However, for Hou Jin, Nurhaci's death is actually a good thing. Why? Because Nurhaci fell into a state of fainting in his later years, many of the policies he promulgated were harmful to the newly established Houjin and did not benefit any of them.
Today, we will talk about a big mistake nurhaci made in his later years.
Nurhaci was undoubtedly an amazing man, the founder of Houjin. Without him, there would be no Houjin; without him, the Jurchens would not have been unified so quickly. When he was young, Nurhaci was able to fight well, had both civil and military skills, and was a brilliant strategist, and was an outstanding general among the Jurchens. However, with the unification of the Jurchen tribes, Nurhaci's arrogance became heavier and heavier, the contradictions within the ruling class became more and more intense, and when they were older, people were prone to confusion, or how to say that they were old and confused.
Nurhaci's biggest mistake in his later years was his failure to properly manage the relationship between the Manchus and the Han Chinese.
The Jurchens belong to the ethnic minority, the productive forces are relatively backward, the production relations are single, and the culture is not developed. Compared with the Han Chinese, they are really backward and poor. If a backward nation wants to develop and grow, it must learn from the advanced nations, learn from their advanced experience, and learn from their advanced culture. This is an immutable truth. Nurhaci before the founding of the country was very clear about this. Although the Liaodong region is a gathering area for Jurchens, there are also many Han Chinese living and doing business in these areas. Before and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Nurhaci adopted a tolerant attitude towards these Han Chinese. The Jurchens called the Han "Nikan", and Nurhaci's policy was "Enyang Nikan", which was parallel to the Han people's Enwei and made the Han people obey the jurchen rule. At this time, the Ming Dynasty was already very corrupt, the state apparatus was rotten, and the people's lives were very difficult. For the Han people in these areas, as long as they can not exclude them and treat them equally, they do not feel that there is anything wrong with accepting the rule of the Jurchens.
During this period, Nurhaci appointed a number of Han Chinese to enter the Post-Jin bureaucracy, some of whom were ming generals, some of whom were ming dynasty officials, and some of whom were more talented readers. These people entered the ruling clique of Houjin, gave advice to Nurhaci, helped Houjin formulate various systems, established a perfect administrative system, and greatly improved the administrative efficiency of Houjin. These people played a big role in the establishment of the post-gold.
Among the Han officials of the Later Jin Dynasty, Li Yongfang is a typical one. Li Yongfang was originally a guerrilla general of the Ming Dynasty, and in the forty-sixth year of the Wanli Calendar (1618), he surrendered to Nurhaci and expressed his willingness to serve Houjin and be loyal to Nurhaci. Li Yongfang was the first Ming general to surrender to later Jin. Nurhaci appreciated him so much that he appointed him adjutant general of the third rank, recruited him as his granddaughter-in-law, and married his granddaughter to him. Li Yongfang was loyal to Nurhaci and followed him in his conquest of Daming, where he was later awarded the rank of commander-in-chief.
However, as the later Jin regime was consolidated, and as Nurhaci grew older, he began to reject the Han chinese and no longer trusted the Han officials. From "Enyang Nikan" to hostility towards the Han people. In his later years, Nurhaci massacred Han Chinese. Nurhaci ordered that the Han chinese should be "condemned, rich or poor." Once the mouth of the massacre is opened, it is difficult to clean up. In the Liaodong region, the Han "resisted and those who took captives were enslaved."
At the same time as the massacre of the Han Chinese, Nurhaci also issued the "Land Enclosure and Jiding Acceptance Order", through which the Jurchens wantonly robbed the Han people of their land. In an agrarian society, land is the most important resource, and with land comes wealth. And the arable land is limited. Nurhaci enclosed all the land and then implemented the "Order of Counting Dings and Receiving Fields", that is, allocating the fields according to the number of male dings, and each ding was divided into six acres.
In June of the eighth year of the Later Jin Dynasty (1623), nurhaci was reported that the Han people in Fuzhou were persuaded by the Ming dynasty's traitors and prepared to defect. When Nurhaci heard this, he was furious, and he sent Great Belledesan and others to lead an army of 20,000 to kill all the men in Fuzhou, and the women and livestock were plundered.
In dealing with Han officials, Nurhaci also changed from trust to suspicion and discrimination. In his later years, he often reprimanded Han officials, often cursed Them with hateful words, and distrusted them extremely. Or take Li Yongfang as an example. Since the surrender, Li Yongfang has been conscientious, diligent, and loyal, but Nurhaci still does not trust him, and only because he advised Nurhaci not to massacre the Han people, he was dismissed from his post and investigated by Nurhaci, and ordered his people to be imprisoned.
Nurhaci treated his granddaughter and son-in-law in this way, not to mention other Han officials.
Nurhaci's policy of rejecting the Han chinese provoked strong resistance from the Han.
Among the Han officials, no one gave Nurhaci advice or advice. All the Han officials were silent and did not dare to say a word. They ignored and ignored Nurhaci's mistakes, and over time Nurhaci became more and more faint.
Nurhaci treated the Han people so cruelly, the Han people are not fools, they can resist, they resist, and if they can't resist, they flee in a hurry.
The Han constantly rebelled against the brutal rule of the Manchus by means of sneak attacks, poisoning, and arson. In 1621, the two Xiucai of Jinzhou organized the Han people to rebel against the Manchus, and as a result, nearly a hundred people responded, and the nearby Han people joined in, and after killing some of the defenders, they all joined forces and threw themselves to the side of the Ming Dynasty. In 1623, thousands of Han Chinese in the Xiuyan area organized a rebellion against the Manchus, and they took wooden boats up the Xiuyan River to attack Houjin's sentries. Also in 1623, a group of Houjin officials who were urging public grain were kidnapped by the Han and then killed.
In Nurhaci's later years, the Manchu-Han contradictions were very sharp, which had affected the stability of Houjin. However, nurhaci not only did not reflect on his own policies, but instead believed that the Han people were ambitious and sinister, and adopted a more extreme way to suppress it.
Nurhaci's sons, vying for power and profit, all hoped to become heirs, and did not dare to give nurhaci any opinion, let alone the slightest rebuttal. After Jin went up and down, there was silence.
Just when the civil unrest was getting more and more serious, Nurhaci personally led his troops to conquer the Ming Dynasty and met Yuan Chonghuan at Ningyuan City. Eventually, the arrogant Nurhaci was defeated by the young Yuan Chonghuan and died not long after.
After Nurhaci's death, Emperor Taiji succeeded to the throne and changed his course in time, he vigorously studied Han culture, ordered Confucian subjects to translate Chinese character books, tolerated and treated Han Chinese people, vigorously developed agricultural production, and limited the power of manchu nobles. In his hands, Hou Jin gradually got rid of internal and external troubles and gradually developed and grew. He was the founder of the Qing Dynasty. If Nurhaci had lived a few more years and continued to pursue his set of mediocre policies, it was really difficult to say whether Hou Jin could defeat Daming.