Wu Sangui is a very controversial figure in the history of our country, he was originally the Liaodong commander of the Ming Dynasty in his early years, after Li Zicheng attacked the city of Beijing and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on the coal mountain, as a result, Wu Sangui led the Qing army into the pass, defeated Li Zicheng's Dashun army, and eventually led to the Manchu Qing entering the Central Plains.
The late Ming and early Qing dynasty poet Wu Weiye (1609-1672) wrote in his poem "Yuanyuan Qu" that "weeping for the six armies are full of silk, and chong guan is angry and red." It is said that Wu Sangui was originally preparing to surrender to the Dashun army, but after his concubine Chen Yuanyuan was occupied by Li Zicheng's general Liu Zongmin, Wu Sangui became angry and turned to surrender to the Manchu Qing, who had resisted desperately before.
This poem became the reason why Wu Sangui led the Qing soldiers into the guan, so was it really because of a beautiful concubine that caused Wu Sangui to ignore the national righteousness and turn around and surrender to the Manchus outside the guan?
Is it really "a red face" that "rushes to the crown and becomes angry"?
Chen Yuanyuan was originally one of the "Qin Huai Eight Yans" in Suzhou, she had a beautiful appearance, was good at singing and dancing, and was later adopted as a concubine by Wu Sangui. In Ye Shi, when Wu Sangui promised to surrender to Li Zicheng, after hearing that his concubine Chen Yuanyuan was occupied by Li Zicheng's subordinates, Liu Zongmin, Chong Guan was furious: "The eldest husband can't protect himself. So he switched to the Qing army and went to war with Li Zicheng's peasant rebel army.
However, in several books that record the events of the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there are different records.
The Ming Dynasty Records that after Li Zicheng entered Beijing, Liu Zongmin went to Wu Sangui's house to ask for Chen Yuanyuan, but Wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang refused, so Liu Zongmin brutally tortured Wu Xiang. When Wu Sangui learned of this, he immediately rebelled against Li Zicheng. According to this account, Wu Sangui did not "flush the crown with anger and turned red", but because his father was severely tortured.
According to the "Jiashen Chronicle and Appendix", Wu Sangui sent people into the capital to inquire about his father and the Chongzhen Emperor, and the secret agents saw that there were thieves arresting the Minister of Culture and Martial Arts in Beijing, torturing and demanding money, and his father Wu Xiang was also tortured for silver. Wu Sangui was furious when he heard this, and threatened to fight to the death to avenge the emperor and his father. There is no mention of chen yuanyuan here.
In his article "On the Yuanyuan Qu", the novelist Yao Xueyuan determined that Chen Yuanyuan was no longer in Beijing at that time, had arrived in Ningyuan long ago, and died of illness shortly after. If this is the case, then there will be no matter that Chen Yuanyuan was occupied by Liu Zongmin, and the so-called "rushing to the crown and anger" is just a posterity's ridicule of Wu Sangui.
Wu Sangui broke with Li Zicheng
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), when Li Zicheng's Dashun army occupied the city of Beijing, his general Liu Zongmin and others wantonly demanded a large amount of ransom from the Ming courtiers, and once they could not reach the apportionment amount, they were severely tortured, and a large number of Ming vassals were tortured and killed.
Wu Sangui's father, Wu Xiang, was also among those who had been demanded, but Li Zicheng also noticed the importance of Wu Sangui at ZhenshouShanhaiguan to consolidate his power, and he sent someone to ask Wu Xiang to write a letter to persuade Wu Sangui to surrender to the Dashun army. Then, Li Zicheng sent emissaries with Wu Xiang's handwritten letters and a large number of military salaries to Shanhaiguan to persuade Wu Sangui to surrender.
Wu Sangui had been guarding the border pass for a long time and had little contact with the newborn Dashun regime, and since the Ming Dynasty had perished, the newborn regime wanted to surrender itself, and it was the same to which emperor to give allegiance, so Wu Sangui was ready to agree to surrender to Li Zicheng.
However, Wu Sangui had more eyes, he sent secret agents into the capital to understand the situation, and when he learned that a large number of Ming Dynasty subordinates had been tortured and chased after stolen goods, and even his own father was also tortured, this showed that it was impossible to protect himself by defecting to the Dashun regime, and going to Beijing was undoubtedly a self-casting net.
Therefore, Wu Sangui raised his arms and rebelled against the Dashun army, preparing to welcome Prince Chongzhen to rebuild Daming.
Although Wu Sangui's troop strength at this time was claimed to be 150,000, it was actually only 50,000. He swore an oath in front of the whole army, beheaded Li Zicheng's emissary Li Jia, and Chen Yi cut off his ears and released them back.
At the same time, Wu Sangui also personally wrote a reply letter to his father Wu Xiang, indicating that he had broken with Li Zicheng, saying: "The father cannot be a loyal subject, and the son can be filial piety. Son and Father, please today. ”
Wu Sangui's letter, ostensibly aimed at his father, was actually written against the Dashun regime. In his letter, he reprimanded his father for secretly surrendering, saying that he had severed ties with his father since the date of writing. This letter was not only a farewell to his father, but also a complete break with Li Zicheng's Dashun army. Of course, this letter also has the meaning of protecting Wu Xiang in disguise.
On May 11, 1644, the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen,1644, Li Zicheng learned the news that the emissaries he sent had been executed by Wu Sangui, and at the same time, after seeing Wu Sangui's letter to Wu Xiang, he felt the seriousness of the matter, because he also knew that at that time, the elite troops of the whole country were placed in liaodong to defend the Manchu Qing, if not, where could he easily attack the capital.
Li Zicheng was very angry and blamed Liu Zongmin for misconduct, and he personally released Wu Xiang from prison and set up a banquet to show his co-optation. But it was all too late, and Li Zicheng knew that only he could lead the army against Wu Sangui.
On the eighteenth day, Li Zicheng led Liu Zongmin, Li Ban and other generals, and 200,000 Dashun troops out of zhengyang gate and marched towards Shanhaiguan.
Wu Sangui himself was also very clear that with the 50,000 horses in his hands, he was definitely not the opponent of the morale of the Dashun Army. However, at this time, Wu Sangui was also unwilling to bear the name of the ancients and surrender to the Manchu Qing, he was originally a loyal vassal who was bent on being a Great Ming, and had been at war with the Manchu Qing for more than ten years, and it was also reluctant to turn around and surrender to the foreign tribes at this time.
Wu Sangui borrowed troops
The Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty records That Wu Sangui decided to borrow troops from the Qing Dynasty's regent Dorgon. In a letter to Dorgon, Wu Sangui clearly expressed the meaning of unintentional surrender to the Qing, he called the Manchu Qing "Northern Dynasty", corresponding to the "I Dynasty", which can be described as clear and distinct, indicating that even if the Chongzhen Emperor is dead and the Ming Dynasty is destroyed, he still belongs to the Ming Dynasty and has nothing to do with the Qing Dynasty.
Moreover, Wu Sangui arranged the route of the Qing army's troops, focusing on himself, and put the Qing soldiers in the position of "guest soldiers". When talking about the honorarium, Wu Sangui stated that in the future, "I will repay the Qing soldiers, not only for the property, but also for the cession of territory to reward.
At this time, Wu Sangui was bent on restoring daming, according to which it was inferred that Wu Sangui at this time only wanted to borrow Qing troops to defeat the Dashun army and then restore the Ming Dynasty, and at this time Wu Sangui could not talk about surrendering to the Manchu Qing.
So, after Dorgon received Wu Sangui's letter of borrowing troops, what did he plan?
According to the Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty, on May 14, Dorgon personally led Dordor, Azig and other generals to set out from Shenyang with all their national strength. On May 19, Dorgon received a letter from Wu Sangui borrowing troops. However, he did not easily believe Wu Sangui, but first sent people to Shanhaiguan to investigate the facts, and at the same time changed the route of the march, and dispatched the red-clad cannons used for the siege of the city to rush to Shanhaiguan.
Dorgon's reply set aside the conditions put forward by Wu Sangui, but instead made clear to Wu Sangui the original intention of sending troops from the Qing Dynasty, and put forward the banner of "destroying thieves in the future, and out of the water and fire of the people", thus achieving complete consistency with Wu Sangui's slogan of "avenging the father of the king" and not sharing the heavens with the "rogue thieves".
The theme of the letter, however, is at the end: to persuade Wu Sangui to "return (surrender)" and to seduce him with the highest reward for the king of the split earth.
Wu Sangui returned to Shun Daqing
Wu Sangui's idea of "borrowing troops" could not be fully realized, so how should he face this rapidly changing situation at this time?
At this time, Wu Sangui fell into a situation of being attacked from the belly and back: in front of them were more than 200,000 troops of the Dashun regime led by Li Zicheng, and behind them were hundreds of thousands of elite soldiers of the Eight Banners who had been fighting with him for many years.
Strategically, Wu Sangui had already broken with Li Zicheng, and Dolgun did not agree to his request to "borrow troops", but instead put forward the conditions for surrender after the soldiers came to the city, which made Wu Sangui suddenly fall into a dilemma.
Therefore, Wu Sangui wrote a second letter to Dolgun, in this letter, Wu Sangui already had the idea of surrender, but it was not clear, which showed that he was also in a dilemma at this time.
On May 26, a large army led by Li Zicheng arrived at Shanhaiguan and fought the Battle of Shanhaiguan with Wu Sangui's Ming army, and after a day of fierce fighting, Wu Sangui suffered heavy losses, and he could not see the Manchu Qing troops, so he personally went to meet Dolgun.
After meeting Dorgon, Wu Sangui clearly put forward the conditions for inviting the Qing Dynasty to send troops: After the Qing soldiers entered the customs, they should not slaughter the people and not invade the tombs of the Ming Emperors; once the prince of the Chongzhen Emperor was found, he would rebuild the Daming regime in Nanjing, and when the two sides took the Yellow River as the boundary, the north would return to the Qing Dynasty, and the south would return to Daming, and the two countries would be in good communication and would not invade each other.
Dorgon also took the opportunity to put forward his own conditions, he believed that the Dashun army and Wu Sangui's army were similar in attire, unrecognizable, afraid of injuring friendly troops by mistake, and Qing Wu Sangui shaved his hair to distinguish himself from his generals. Wu Sangui shaved his hair immediately.
The Battle of Shanhaiguan ended with the complete rout of Li Zicheng's Dashun army, but Wu Sangui also fell into Dorgon's ruse and fell into it, so he had no choice but to continue to submit to the Qing Dynasty and continue to lead his army to conquer the remnants of Li Zicheng's peasant rebel army. The so-called search for the Chongzhen Emperor and the rule of the river after he crossed the river was just a dream of Huang Liang.
This article refers to: "Unsolved Cases in Chinese History"