The Ming Dynasty was the last dynasty established by the Han Chinese on the land of China.
It can be said that its establishment enabled the Han people in the land of China to get rid of the brutal rule of the Mongol nobility and once again won the independence of the nation; its demise made the Han people the object of slavery and oppression of the Manchurian nobility, and made China gradually lag behind the world stage.
As we all know, the Ming Dynasty had two diligent emperors: one was Zhu Yuanzhang, and the other was the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian. At the beginning of the Chongzhen Emperor's succession, he purged the castration clique headed by Wei Zhongxian, bringing some fresh air to the dark political arena at that time. After that, the Chongzhen Emperor used a large number of talents, hoping that this move would change the fate of the Ming Dynasty, but his later massacres directly led to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty.
In 1643, the Ming Dynasty had reached its penultimate year.
In this year, the famous general Sun Chuanting, at the repeated request of the Chongzhen Emperor, led troops into the Shaanxi region to fight against Li Zicheng's peasant rebel army. The result: the Ming army was defeated, and Sun Chuanting, the leader of the army, was killed. After that, Daming no longer had anyone to compete with the peasant army. With the threat of victory, Li Chuang's army drove straight in from Tongguan, and the troops pointed directly at Beijing.
At this time, the Ming Dynasty was already weak like a dying old man, but it was still half a year away from its official demise. Within half a year, if the Chongzhen Emperor could make some useful decisions, such as relocating the crown prince to the southern region and leaving a legal heir for the Ming royal family, then the crisis of the Ming Dynasty was entirely likely to be solved.
However, the Chongzhen Emperor did not do so. As a result, many people who studied Ming history criticized the Chongzhen Emperor for only caring about his own dignified death in the city of Beijing and gaining a good reputation for himself, while ignoring one of the most important things, that is, arranging things for the empire after his death, which is a bit of "after I die, let him flood the sky".
It was precisely because of this intentional or unintentional negligence of the Chongzhen Emperor that the later Southern Ming quarreled over the issue of heirs, and finally, the only half of the remaining rivers and mountains were ceded to the Manchus. Speaking of which, this is not as good as the Southern Song Dynasty hundreds of years ago. Just imagine, if the Chongzhen Emperor had sent the crown prince to Nanjing in time before fighting Li Chuang's army to the death, then even if the Chongzhen Emperor died, the Ming Dynasty would not have really perished.
Because Nanjing, as the capital of the Ming Dynasty, had a bureaucratic system similar to Beijing, the prince did not need much time to reorganize a new leadership team here. Then, in the name of avenging his father, he thought bitterly and integrated the soldiers and horses of the world, so that he could gain a foothold south of the Yangtze River. If in time, a figure like the Guangwu Emperor appeared in the Southern Ming Dynasty, then it would not be necessary to recover the lost land.
History once had a chaotic situation similar to that of the late Ming Dynasty, that is, the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty. When the Anshi Rebellion occurred, after Tang Xuanzong handed over the affairs of the world to the crown prince Li Heng, he took refuge in Shudi. Li Heng, on the other hand, took a group of civilian generals to the Lingwu area and used this place as a base camp to run the world. Later, with the passage of time, with the efforts of a loyal and brave general of the Tang Dynasty, the war situation tended to stabilize.
During this period, the crown prince, at the instigation of some people, succeeded to the emperor's throne at Lingwu and called his father Tang Xuanzong the Emperor Taishang.
At the beginning of the Anshi Rebellion, the officers and soldiers could be said to be vulnerable in front of the thieves, and they were gradually defeated. However, fortunately, Tang Suzong had such famous generals as Li Guangbi and Guo Ziyi under him at that time, which made the Tang army reinvigorate and slowly stabilized the situation.
A few years later, the world was a little quieter, and Tang Xuanzong returned to the long-lost Chang'an, but this place was already a place of human nature. At this time, the situation of The Tang Dynasty was very embarrassing, Tang Xuanzong himself was not dead, but he was no longer the emperor. And Li Heng, in the process of quelling the Anshi rebellion, had already accumulated a lot of popularity, and wanted him to return the throne to Tang Xuanzong, even if he himself was willing, I am afraid that his subordinates would do everything possible to dissuade him.
However, no matter how tang Xuanzong was also the lord of a generation of prosperous times before, before the turmoil, it was also the son of heaven who was in a moment of turmoil. Now, however, he has no power and no power, and he still has to watch his face act under the eaves of his own son, which inevitably makes him feel a little unbalanced, and no one can stand it. As a result, he died of depression within a few years of Chang'an City.
Hundreds of years later, the Chongzhen Emperor should have known about this history, perhaps because he was afraid that after his son arrived in Nanjing, he would follow the example of Li Heng before him, call himself a lonely widow in Nanjing, and turn himself into the second Tang Xuanzong.
Therefore, the Chongzhen Emperor always disagreed with the ministers' suggestion that the prince be sent to Nanjing.
However, although the Chongzhen Emperor never allowed the crown prince to go to Nanjing, he himself always had the idea of going to Nanjing.
Of course, as the king of a country, this kind of escape from the battle cannot be initiated by himself. According to the rules of the officialdom, such a thing should be suggested by the ministers, and then, after pretending to lament, the emperor reluctantly agreed.
Before, such a thing had happened, and the Chongzhen Emperor sent people to negotiate peace with the Manchus outside Guanwai. Originally, things were said to be good, and I didn't want to, but later the Chongzhen Emperor changed his mind halfway, changed the national policy of peace, and killed the minister who helped him do this. Based on such precedents, although the ministers had the idea of abandoning Beijing and moving south, no one dared to mention it, for fear that in the future, the Chongzhen Emperor would turn his face and not recognize the account, bringing himself the disaster of killing himself.
In this way, the Chongzhen Emperor was naturally very unhappy. Then, according to people's common sense, if someone proposes to let the prince move south first at this time, then he will never agree to it for the reason of gambling. From this point of view, although the Chongzhen Emperor was still a good monarch in the eyes of many people, in my opinion, he was not a real politician.
Because a true politician is not swayed by his emotions when making decisions. Whether the Chongzhen Emperor had previously negotiated peace or later moved south, he made decisions unfavorable to the country because of his own emotions, and in the end, directly led to the collapse of the Ming Dynasty, which is beyond doubt.
Resources:
[Ming Shi, Vol. 23, 23, Zhuang Liedi, Ming Ji Beiluo, Chongzhen Shilu]