In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, it was always in a state of internal and external troubles, including two peasant rebel armies led by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, and the Nurhaci Eight Banner Soldiers who were eyeing the tiger. The situation in the stormy Ming Dynasty was already precarious, and at this time, there was a person who offered a good recipe to the Chongzhen Emperor that could prolong the life of the Ming Dynasty, and this person was Huang Jingfang, the Hubu Shangshu.
Huang Jingfang was a native of Dongshi, Jinjiang, Fujian, who was a great loyal minister, and at that time there were two incidents of official appointment and dismissal in the Ming Dynasty, the first was the official who managed the Yangtze River in Nanjing, there were originally two officials of Wen and Wu, and later Chongzhen was ready to lay off Wen Chen, and the second was that the deputy capital Yushi Huishiyang did not take office after being appointed, and Chongzhen cut his official status. Huang Jingfang, as an assistant minister, naturally disagreed, pointing out that the Chongzhen Emperor was too hasty in dealing with these two things, and Chongzhen was very unhappy after seeing this performance, and then he did not have a good face for Huang Jingfang.
However, the worried Huang Jingfang was still worried about the imperial court, and at the end of the year, he also played a long recital to the Chongzhen Emperor, in which Huang Jingfang said that if the emperor wanted to break the chaos, he might as well delegate power and let the local tyrants and gentry run the township soldiers and allow them to create their own armed forces. If you think about it, this suggestion was that when the Ming Dynasty was about to fall apart, it might be possible to suppress the peasant uprising and the Manchu Qing soldiers outside Guanxi with the help of local forces.
Moreover, Huang Jingfang also made a very serious analysis to the Chongzhen Emperor, the first, the perennial peasant uprising, the security system in various places has been destroyed, the second is that the post station has been interrupted for many years, the official government has been reducing the number of personnel, and successive years of natural disasters and man-made disasters have made no taxation, and under the vicious circle, it is the end of the officials forcing the people to rebel. The third is that if the local gentry are given a policy, let them prepare their own funds to recruit troops, prevent Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong from two powerful armies, and also reduce the burden on the imperial court. However, Chongzhen did not agree with this at all, and Chongzhen believed that doing so would only bring greater disasters.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty sent all the grain and grass to the front line of Shanhaiguan, and had long been unable to support the northwest war, and although Huang Jingfang's plan was risky, it might also inspire the gentry to think of self-reliance and autonomy, and thus prevent Li Zicheng's army from advancing eastward. In the last year of the Ming Dynasty, Qin Liangyu, a hero from Sichuan, proposed to fight, willing to take out half of his family property, and then asked the imperial court to fund the other half, leading 20,000 of his own soldiers to break Zhang Xianzhong's rebel army. However, at that time, there was no harmony between the officials and the treasury was empty, so they rejected Qin Liangyu's proposal. Although the Ming Dynasty did not become a township soldier, it did so in the late Qing Dynasty 300 years later.
In the face of the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, the Qing Dynasty granted and rewarded local gentry on a large scale to establish regimental training to deal with the rebel army. Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang all started by practicing in the regiment. If Chongzhen had adopted Huang Jingfang's suggestion, the history of the Ming Dynasty might have been rewritten. What do you think?