In recent years, costume dramas on the theme of Ming Dynasty Jinyiwei have been highly sought after on the Internet. In the past, there was the Jinyi wei "Qinglong" played by the well-known action star Zhen Zidan, and then there was the "Embroidered Spring Knife" series played by Zhang Zhen and Zhang Yi.
In these works, Jinyi Wei each wears a flying fish suit, carries an embroidered spring knife around his waist, is strong in martial arts, and completes an impossible task, leaving a deep impression on the audience and friends.
However, on March 18, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644 AD), a peasant army led by Li Zicheng attacked Beijing, and the desperate Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian climbed the coal mountain (Jingshan) and hanged himself.
When the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, there was only one eunuch by his side, called Wang Cheng'en. The fact that the Ninth And Fifty-Year Sect of the Hall has fallen to this point cannot help but make people sigh.
Then speaking of this, the question arises, why did the legendary Jinyi Wei, who was highly skilled in martial arts and bold and loyal, not defend the safety of his master when the Chongzhen Emperor was imprisoned?
Jinyiwei refers to a special secret service of the Ming Dynasty, not a person or a separate organization. The predecessor of jinyiwei was "Gongwei Division", which was later changed to "Pro-Military Duwei Mansion", which ruled over the Yiluan Division and was in charge of the emperor's honor guards and bodyguards. In the fifteenth year of Ming Hongwu (1382 AD), Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang abolished the pro-military capital Weifu and Yiluan Division, and changed it to Jinyi Wei.
"History of Ming": "Hongwu fifteen years, strike Yi Luansi, and replace the Jinyi Guard".
In the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the duties of the Jinyi guards were mostly "bodyguards" and "arrests and prisons", and they were also responsible for protecting the safety of the emperor. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, due to the excessive power of eunuchs and the rise of the civilian official clique, Jinyiwei became a party in the court.
According to the Ming Huidian records, the Jinyi guards in the middle and late Ming Dynasty were also responsible for guarding Caoyun, and even responsible for raising elephants for the imperial palace, intelligence work, military smiths and a series of other tasks.
Unlike another secret service agency of the Ming Dynasty, the East Factory and the West Factory, JinyiWei could not only fabricate crimes to kill people. For example, during the "Defense Of Beijing" during the Jingtai period, many Jinyi guards were born and died, in order to obtain important information for Yu Qian and help Daming defeat the enemy.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the number of Jinyi guards had become more and more inflated, the internal organization was also unusually bloated, and the combat effectiveness was sharply reduced, as if it were a scattered sand. According to incomplete statistics, in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the total number of Jinyi guards may not exceed 4,000.
However, by the end of the Ming Dynasty, especially around 1600 AD, the number of Jinyi guards had reached as many as 100,000.
Looking through the notes of many literati at the end of the Ming Dynasty, it is clear that there seemed to be Jinyi guards in various towns at that time. As long as the people heard someone with a Beijing accent and wearing a brocade costume, they avoided it one after another, lest they be targeted by the jinyi guards and their heads would not be protected.
Then some people may ask, why in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the Jinyi Weihui suddenly soared from the previous few thousand people to 100,000 people.
The answer is simple, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty (around the Jiajing period), Jinyiwei became the only way for many of the sons of the xungui and bureaucrats to want to be promoted.
Those second-generation officials knew that it was impossible to obtain an official and a half-job through the imperial examination, and The Jinyi Guard was like a piece of "water-injected meat." Not only does it have the taste of meat, but it can also be injected with water at will to achieve its own ulterior motives or use power for personal gain.
During the Jiajing period, the first assistant minister Yan Song had several grandchildren. These second-generation officials do not do anything serious in their daily lives, and they cannot read a basket of big characters. Yan Song used his connections to send these children who were still minors to Jinyiwei.
Because after entering the Jinyi Guard, even an ordinary deputy thousand households can occupy more than 20 establishments. Since the Ming Dynasty practiced the "Weishou system", in simple terms, these second generations of straw bales could just occupy the quota and eat empty pay.
Not only was Yan Song so bent on favoritism, but even Yang Bo and Fei Hong, who were well known to posterity, these famous courtiers and talents, they also forced their descendants into the Jinyi Guard.
If you think about it, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there were 100,000 Jinyi guards, and most of them were removed from the "virtual fabrication", and the actual total number was only more than 20,000 people.
In addition, as early as the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Wu Jiao, the left attendant in charge of the Beijing City Military Department, had already exposed the secret of the Ming Dynasty's 100,000-strong army.
In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, there were about 100,000 people in the Beijing camp. However, this is only a figure on the surface, and the real strength is only about 1/10, no more than 20,000 people (because a soldier has a quota of 10 soldiers).
In this way, these hundreds of thousands of Jinyi guards (imaginary) were all "young master soldiers", and when Li Zicheng conquered Beijing, they scattered one after another, where did they still think about defending the Beijing Division and defending the emperor?
Another point is that in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, official positions at all levels became commodities, such as the Donglin Party and the Castration Party, which began to sell officials and knights. As long as someone can come up with 5,000 taels of silver, he can be made up as an official and become the prefect of Zhengsi pin.
If you want to find a "fat" errand, go to some good places to be a parent official, and loot the people's fat and people's ointment, then you have to take out 6,000 taels of silver. Those who are zheng liupin or from seven pins are worth about 1000 to 1500 taels of silver.
In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643 AD), the Chongzhen Emperor originally wanted Wu Sangui's father and son outside Guanwai to quickly lead an army to the city of Beijing to defend against the enemy.
Wu Sangui was not in a hurry, and asked the Chongzhen Emperor for 300,000 taels of silver. The Chongzhen Emperor actually couldn't come up with this money, and always pushed Wu Sangui into Beijing, and then tried to find a way to raise money for him.
Of course, Wu Sangui did not really want to rush to the capital to defend the Chongzhen Emperor, he just wanted to use this excuse to delay time. But interestingly, after Li Zicheng entered Beijing, many Ming officials took the initiative to send real money and silver to the leaders of the Dashun regime in order to save the lives of their families.
Li Zicheng scavenged in Beijing for nearly a month, obtaining countless silver gold and other rare treasures.
By taking this example, students can deeply understand that during the Chongzhen period, the country will not be a country, the emperor has no money in his hands, and the ministers are all ghostly and unwilling to serve the emperor.
In the same way, when the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, there was no one around him at all. There is no way to talk about any million troops, or hundreds of thousands of Jinyi guards to defend the emperor and kill a bloody road.
More importantly, the Jiashen Chuanzhi Records records that when Li Zicheng's peasant army was attacking the city of Beijing, two leaders of the Jinyi guards were defending the city on the front line.
One was Jinyi Wei Nantang's command of Tongzhi Li Ruolian (JinyiWei commanded Tongzhi subordinate Subordinate Sanpin, second in command after the commander), who was responsible for guarding Chongwen Gate.
The other was Gao Wencai (from Wupin), the head of the Jinyiwei Street Fang, who was responsible for guarding xuanwu gate in town. On the day the city was destroyed, Li Ruolian and Gao Wencai, along with their entire families, hanged themselves after the Chongzhen Emperor. (Kou Zhi, seventeen members of the family hanged themselves.) ”）
These two men were loyal to the Ming Dynasty and died in battle. The other part of the Jinyi guard greeted the king with a big swing. For example, jinyi weidu commanded luo Yangsheng to surrender immediately after the destruction of the city.
It is clearly recorded in the "Biography of the Qing Dynasty and the Biography of the Second Minister": "The Prince of Rui, Dolgun Dingjing, and the eunuch Zhang Zemin of the Imperial Horse Guard surrendered outside the city. Xuan and Jin Yiwei commanded Tongzhi Wang Pengchong and other flag lieutenants to set up honor guards, guide the introduction of Wuying Hall, and Wang Lingyang was appointed as a former official. ”
It can be seen that when Li Zicheng attacked Beijing, some of the Jinyi guards, including other defenders, were martyred. But a large number of people first surrendered to the king and then to the Qing Dynasty.
Speaking of which, we must have figured out why when the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, there was only one eunuch by his side. First, Chongzhen is arrogant and conceited, has empty ambitions, but he misbelieved others, one wrong step, one wrong step, so that he lost everything.
Secondly, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the officialdom was corrupt, and the forces on all sides only cared about their own money, and did not care at all about the safety of Jiangshan Sheji and Li Min. He resigned himself to watching Li Zicheng attack Beijing.
Moreover, Li Zicheng was a fast soldier, and when he attacked Beijing, Shi Kefa, who was far south, was preparing to lead his troops north. But Shi Kefa had not yet raised money, food and supplies, delaying the rescue time.
In addition to Shi Kefa, Zuo Liangyu and Wu Sangui were each pregnant with ghost fetuses. In this case, millions of troops of the Ming Dynasty have become decorations, not to mention that one person is expected to stand up to ten places in the Jinyi Guard.
Everyone should also be clear that movies and TV series are film and television works after all, and they are also entertainment products artificially invented by screenwriters. Although it is close to the main history, it still adds many fictional elements.
The Jinyi guards in the movie are strong in martial arts and loyal to the liver and courage, which does not mean that the jinyi guards in history are the same.
Although the Ming Dynasty Jinyi Guards were powerful and were responsible for many functions and tasks, the more they reached the end, with the corruption of the official system, the people were not happy, and the people in power could not come up with practical and feasible favorable policies. These national institutions, such as the Jinyiwei and the Donglin Party, have long since decayed and degenerated, and have no combat effectiveness to speak of.
The reason why the "Defense War of Beijing" was successful was because of the combined forces of Yu Qian and Zhu Qiyu of the Ming Dynasty, and everyone hated the enemy and repelled the Mongol Wallachians.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, such a situation had long ceased to exist. The Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian lost the hearts of the people, the military, and the officials, and he became a real loner. In a superstitious way, this is called the exhaustion of qi.
Even if Chongzhen were lucky enough not to die and escape from Beijing, his ending would not be too good. The Ming Dynasty has long since weakened and is destined to be replaced by a new regime. This is the will of the people, and no one can resist it!