In the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen, the rebel army led by Li Zicheng, the "King of Chuang", invaded the city of Beijing, and the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian, accompanied by his confidant eunuch Wang Cheng'en, hanged himself on the coal mountain, achieving the posthumous reputation of "King Death Sheji".
On his deathbed, Zhu Youjian left a sentence to shirk his guilt: "The ministers have mistakenly degenerated, the monarch has died, and once the world has been abandoned, it has been mistaken by the traitors, so that this is the case"; and Wang Cheng'en, who was with him, gave an incomprehensible sigh: "If the loyal are there, the current affairs will not end here."
The Martyrdom of the Chongzhen Emperor
The "Zhongxian" in Wang Cheng'en's mouth is the famous "Nine Thousand Years Old" in the history of the Ming Dynasty, one of the famous "Ten Traitors" in Chinese history, and the "Eunuch of Si Li Bingbi" during the Apocalypse Period - Wei Zhongxian.
How bad was Wei Zhongxian in history? The Chongzhen Emperor called him "a man who steals the handle of the state, commits adultery, frames Zhongliang, has many lives in the grass, and is as fierce as a wolf and a tiger"; Liang Qichao called him "clever words, flattering the lord, stealing the handle of the country, and poisoning the people"; Mr. Cai Dongfan called him "full of evil, cutting teeth at home and abroad". But why did such a traitorous minister such as "Zhao Gao of Qin and Ten Constant Attendants of Han" be able to win such praise from Wang Cheng'en, and why could he affect the development of the Ming Dynasty's national power?
In other words: Why did the Ming Dynasty collapse just after killing Wei Zhongxian?
Let's first look at the specific performance of the Ming Dynasty when Wei Zhongxian came to power:
1. During this period, the focus of the imperial court's defense was in the Liaodong region, the resolution of "Guixiaoshan Customs" was overturned, and Sun Chengzong led his army to advance to Guanwai; then, Yuan Chonghuan, who succeeded Sun Chengzong's overseer liaodong, fought several beautiful victories outside Guanwai, and even bombarded Nurhaci, the lord of Later Jin, with one shot.
2. During this period, guanning iron horses were fully manned and grain was sufficient; not only did the Phi Island army not need to be streamlined, But Mao Wenlong could even carry out black market trade on a large scale, plunder the Korean border merchants, and build Phi Island into a military town, effectively clamping down on many cities in the eastern region of Houjin.
3. During this period, Yuan Chonghuan built the famous "Guanning Jin Defense Line", from Ningyuan to Jinzhou, almost all the cities were renovated and reinforced. Fire bolts, chariots, mines, bombs, and even advanced weapons such as the "red cannon" were also carried to the head of the city.
Under such a background, the Daming army has almost been suppressing the Eight Banners army of Houjin, and Nurhaci, Huang Taiji, Amin, and so on have all lost to varying degrees. During this period, Huang Taiji could only temporarily shrink to Shengjing and did not dare to take it easily.
Such a good situation outside the border is naturally inseparable from strong financial support. So, where did Wei Zhongxian get his money?
Instead of taking silver from the poor people like the Chongzhen Emperor, he extended his hand to the Jiangnan region, where industry and commerce and foreign trade were developed, and restored the industrial and commercial taxes and sea taxes that were deposed at the end of the Wanli Calendar.
With such a move, the soldiers in the Eastern Liaoning region were naturally happy, and the people who did not have to be plundered were naturally happy, so a climax of building a "shrine" for Wei Zhongxian was set off all over the country. Note that this is not for Wei Zhongxian to overturn the case, in all the "ancestral halls" built, it belongs to the Liaodong soldiers and the people of Henan to build the most carefully. Why? It was because Wei Zhongxian ensured the supply of money and grain for the Liaodong generals and single-handedly created a great situation at that time; it was because Wei Zhongxian, instead of raising taxes on the people, ordered that "taxes be waived and the internal treasury should be allocated for disaster relief" when Henan was affected.
However, Wei Zhongxian's actions hurt the largest bureaucratic class political group at that time, the "Donglin Party". This group of forces composed of "Jiangnan scholars" is not worried about the rise and fall of the country, the situation on the battlefield, and even less the finances of the imperial court, and they are worried about only one thing: they cannot let the imperial court collect taxes in the Jiangnan region, because there are all the enterprises we invest in.
As a result, the "Donglin Party" and the "castration party" they called them did not share the same heaven and regarded Wei Zhongxian as a mortal enemy. Therefore, as soon as the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, the "Donglin Party" took advantage of the heavenly opportunity of the new emperor's centralization of power to overthrow Wei Zhongxian in one fell swoop and regain control of the imperial court's right to speak.
The holy land of the "Donglin Party" - Donglin Academy
After the "Donglin Party" came to power, what did the Ming court look like?
The industrial and commercial taxes and sea taxes in the Jiangnan region were once again abolished, and all the financial revenues of the imperial court were transferred to the people in the northern region, and in addition to the normal taxes, the famous "three salaries" were added - "Liao's salary, training salary, and suppression salary". Abolishing the rich southeast taxation, but sending the army to the arid and disaster-stricken areas in the northwest where poverty is fraught, to increase taxes and levies, this is the "Donglin Party" that was evaluated by later generations as a "moral model"!
In addition, the "Donglin Party" also advocated peace with Houjin, and even believed that the effective control of the situation by the Liaodong generals was to work hard and hurt the people and money; to the peasant uprising was an ambiguous attitude of "getting by and getting by", and vigorously advocated "Zhao'an" so that the rebel army gradually developed and grew. More importantly, in the face of this chaotic situation, almost everyone in the "Donglin Party" was corrupt except for a very few clean officials, desperately fishing for silver and preparing for the back road.
Seeing this, some people can't help but ask, the Chongzhen Emperor is not stupid, why do you have to listen to the "Donglin Party" and can't govern the country and collect taxes according to your own ideas?
Don't forget what the "Donglin Party" does? They are literati and scholars who eat by "mouth", old foxes who have been running the official field for a long time, and when it comes to reasoning, it is absolutely difficult for the world to meet opponents. However, the Chongzhen Emperor's measures that hurt the interests of the "Donglin Party" a little bit, these people did not count what the Chongzhen Emperor said to the "Second Patriarch" and the Shame on the Daming Jiangshan.
Therefore, the Chongzhen Emperor was confined to a circle by the "Donglin Party", and within the circle, you are a wise monarch who has never met in a thousand years; out of the circle, you are a pathless emperor, a historical sinner who corrupted the ancestral jiangshan. As a result, the Chongzhen Emperor became a poor spectator who was blinded by the dark, and watched as the "Donglin Party" staged a great drama of disaster to the country and the people.
Many later scholars believe that the reason why the Ming army of the Chongzhen Dynasty was gradually defeated in the Liaodong region was nothing more than a "money" word. Because of the financial difficulties, the Chongzhen Emperor was afraid of his head and tail, and even suspicious, and executed Yuan Chonghuan Lingchi, the only one who could change the situation; because of financial difficulties, the Liaodong generals were short of food and pay, and it was difficult to sustain themselves, so how to face the Eight Banners army like a wolf! Because of financial difficulties, the Chongzhen Emperor could only agree to the courtiers' proposal to streamline local institutions, of which Li Zicheng, who directly overthrew the Ming Dynasty, was within the scope of this streamlining.
The imperial court had no money, but the "Donglin Party", which almost controlled the fundamentals of Daming's finances, had money! But when the Chongzhen Emperor reached out to these "loyal subjects" and "models" for money, they almost all replied the same:
The minister is a clean official, and the minister has no money; you kill me, and I have no money!
Here, we give an example to illustrate that Empress Zhou's father, the abbot of the Chongzhen Emperor, and the representative figure of the "Donglin Party", Zhou Kui, faced the Chongzhen Emperor's "donation" request, but asked his daughter Empress Zhou for 5,000 taels of silver, and also withheld 2,000 taels and "donated" 3,000 taels to the imperial court. However, when Li Zicheng invaded the city of Beijing, he snatched out three million taels of silver from Zhou Kui's hands. The abbot is still like this, and the performance of the rest of the courtiers can be imagined.
This is the difference between Wei Zhongxian and the "Donglin Party", Wei Zhongxian has never been "unreasonable", everything is based on reality, where there is money, where I can get money, I will reach out to wherever I am. What loyalty, morality, reputation, influence, the fall of the Ming Dynasty, everything is empty talk. However, it was not until the Chongzhen Emperor was forced to go up the coal mountain that he remembered his brother, the Emperor of Tianqi, who had confessed on his deathbed, that "Wei Zhongxian was scrupulous and loyal, and could count major events"; only then did he realize that "the world of two hundred and seventy-seven years was mistaken by the traitors".
At this point, I can't help but sigh that history is really a little girl dressed up at will, how to write, how to tamper with, and even how to smear, all up to the victor. Later generations' identification of Wei Zhongxian's image as a "traitor" came largely from the "History of Ming"; the "History of Ming" was written by the literati group of the early Qing Dynasty; and the literati group of the early Qing Dynasty, the original "Donglin Party", was the main component. Therefore, what kind of image Wei Zhongxian really is, can only be seen by the benevolent, and the wise can see the wise.