For five thousand years, China has had many dynasties, each of which has its own founding king and subjugated king, generally speaking, everyone likes the founding king and hates the king of the subjugated country. However, there is an exception in history, that is, the Chongzhen Emperor, the king of the fallen country who was martyred in 1644, even his opponents, had to admit that he was not a emperor. His subjects were even more nostalgic after his martyrdom, as Yu Yu of the Southern Ming Dynasty said:
"The former emperor (Chongzhen) is wise and divine, and the people are admired, but the inside is silent and the dogs and horses are good, and there is no camp of gods and immortals outside, and the generosity of the dying of the united kings is the righteousness of the society." The Holy Lord, who has never existed in the ages, should be honored with a emblem that has never existed in the ages. ”
It is certainly biased to say that the Chongzhen Emperor is a generation of holy kings, but we have to admit that the Chongzhen Emperor has always demanded himself by the standard of a holy king. The so-called holy kings, according to the Liutao, are "those who are good for the country, and who govern the people like their parents and sons, like brothers who love their brothers." Chongzhen apparently did this, he himself was thrifty and thrifty, his clothes were sewn so much that they could not be sewn again, and demanded that the rebel army be "thief and naked". However, why did such a Ming Jun still fail?
This is a question that confuses many people, but after hundreds of years of exploration, many of us have discovered a phenomenon: Chongzhen just killed Wei Zhongxian, and Daming collapsed. From this phenomenon, we know at least one problem: the demise of Daming had a lot to do with the Chongzhen Emperor's killing of Wei Zhongxian. What does it matter? After the research of later generations, everyone found such a problem: Wei Zhongxian never extended his hand to these people.
Wei Zhongxian, alias 9,000 years old, was born in 1568. His origins were not good, and he often wandered the streets, so he was more aware of the sufferings of ordinary people. How bad is he mixing? It was not good enough to survive through the palace, the Ming Dynasty strictly forbade the palace to enter the palace as a eunuch, but Wei Zhongxian had no choice, he could only take this road, and even had good luck to become a eunuch. At first, he was only a minor eunuch serving Zhu Youxiao in the palace, but with Zhu Youxiao's succession, he became a eunuch of The Ceremonial Supervisor Bingbi.
Since then, the Ming court has started a protracted war between Qingliu and the castration party. As the representative figure of the castration party, Wei Zhongxian has become the focus of the attack of the Qingliu Donglin Party - of course, in fact, he is indeed worthy of attack. Wei Zhongxian was illiterate, greedy for money, and liked to engage in secret agent politics, particularly vicious to officials, special dependence on the emperor and even doting, from these points of view, Wei Zhongxian was a big bad guy.
But why, since Wei Zhongxian was executed by Chongzhen in 1627, the ming dynasty's national fortunes have been much worse than before? You know, even during the Zhu Youxiao period, in fact, the Ming Dynasty was still the largest country in Asia, and it was also the first powerful country, and the Later Jin Dynasty could not hurt the Ming Dynasty at all, let alone have the ability to destroy the Ming Dynasty. Why, after Wei Zhongxian's death, did Li Zicheng start a rebellion in 1629 and Enter the City of Beijing in 1644?
Because Wei Zhongxian was not a good man, he never extended his hand to the peasants. Wei Zhongxian, including many eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty, maintained an inherent warmth toward the peasants, who either came from peasant backgrounds or lived with them. For example, Wang Zhen in the change of Tumu Fort, although he was also a bad eunuch, he was able to ask the soldiers not to trample on the crops when marching, which showed his feelings for the peasants.
The same was true of Wei Zhongxian. He formally took power in 1620, during which time he did a lot of bad things, such as he went to the civil officials to get angry when he was fine, either by beating them up or removing them from their official positions, and there was no serious reason. Even the civilian officials Daxing were tortured, such as Yang Lian, Zuo Guangdou, Wei Dazhong, Zhou Chaorui, Yuan Huazhong, Gu Dazhang, and others, who were severely tortured to death. At the same time, he also constantly raised taxes on merchants and Jiangnan gate valves, on the one hand, to earn money for the emperor, on the other hand, he would also take some.
However, he had little oppression of the peasants. In fact, this was quite normal, at that height, Wei Zhongxian could clearly see that the peasants had no oil and water to squeeze, because the agricultural taxes they painstakingly paid every year were only one or two million taels of silver. However, industry and commerce are different, casually engage in a few large factories or gate valves, Wei Zhongxian can get this data.
Therefore, at that time, Wei Zhongxian actually objectively became a kind of "income rebalancing" role of the Ming Dynasty, and he collected the money of the civilian official group that had won huge profits through torture, thus indirectly alleviating the heavy pressure on the peasants. Therefore, although the peasants had a very bad life at that time, they could always live a little hard life. And because he got a lot of money from industry and commerce and door valves, the Ming Dynasty was also able to pay high war costs, and the Ming Military and Government could barely maintain it.
However, once the Chongzhen Emperor killed Wei Zhongxian, this income rebalancing immediately collapsed and became "polarized" according to the Donglin Party. In the name of benevolence, they attacked the emperor's taxation of industry and commerce, thus forcing the emperor to increase taxes on the peasants who were already struggling with the brink of life and death, and the peasants finally could not survive. As a result, Li Zicheng was unemployed, and without food to eat, he suddenly remembered the soul deception of Chen Sheng Wu Guang more than 1,000 years ago:
"And if the strong man does not die, he will raise a big name when he dies, and the prince will have a kind of xiangning!"
It can be seen that from a personal level, Wei Zhongxian is not a good person, but from the national level, what he is doing is to save the world, and the Donglin Party is corrupting the world.