Author: Our team Zhang Lan
In the vicissitudes of the three centuries of the Ming Dynasty, if we want to talk about the historical picture of great "educational significance", it is "Chongzhen burial".
On March 22, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty (1644), Li Zicheng, the "Emperor Dashun", who had been attacking Beijing for three days, finally found the corpse of Emperor Chongzhen, the emperor of the Ming Dynasty, on the coal mountain. Li Zicheng then ordered his men to drag Chongzhen's corpse down coal mountain and display it at Donghua Gate with the corpse of Empress Zhou (Empress Chongzhen). The officials and people of Beijing City also saw the "last side" of the Chongzhen Emperor and his wife: the body of the Chongzhen Emperor was covered with hair, barefoot, and his clothes were messy, and the scene was very miserable.
If you refer to the note on the sleeve of the Chongzhen Emperor when the corpse was found, "Because of the loss of the country, there is no face to see the ancestors, do not dare to finally go to bed", and the picture of "Donghua Gate shows the public", the scene at the scene can be called miserable home.
But what is more educational than this "miserable scene" is first of all the reaction of those beijing officials who "watch chongzhen" outside the Donghua Gate, theoretically speaking, the Chongzhen Emperor was still a "son of heaven" a few days ago, and no matter what, he had to have some feelings. However, the attitude of the officials outside the Donghua Gate was very indifferent, basically just looking at them and leaving in a hurry. In the end, Li Zicheng's soldiers could not see it, so they found two peddlers selling clothes and socks and dressed them for the Chongzhen Emperor and his wife, which made the king of the fallen country "walk neatly."
As for the lively "former Ming officials"? Except for Liu Yangzhen, the chief of the military department, who cried a lot, the others were all cold and cold, and they were not as good as the ordinary people in Beijing City. The next day, many people gathered outside the Donghua Gate to weep bitterly and ask for the burial of Chongzhen and his wife. Li Zicheng then pushed the boat along the water and dialed two coffins to bury the Chongzhen Emperor and his wife. After that, until the three burials in early April, only a few former Ming officials came to mourn.
At the time of the three burials in the beginning of April, Chongzhen's "aftermath" was even more "cold" to his home. Although Li Zicheng ordered Chongzhen to be buried with "imperial rites", the attitude of former Ming officials in Beijing, these not-so-long "Chongzhen courtiers", was more than "cold". The scene was simply "a hundred officials without a single executioner", and all of them were hidden cleanly. Only Yin of Shuntianfu was ordered to hire thirty-six servants to carry Chongzhen and his wife to the tomb of Tian Guifei in Changping for burial, during which time because the Dashun regime did not allocate enough funds, and even did not pay enough wages, fortunately, the local squires pooled "three hundred and forty thousand dollars" to let Chongzhen and his wife bury for safety.
In this whole process, the elite of high-ranking officials and ministers who had received the favor of the Ming Dynasty in the past, especially the elite of high-ranking officials and ministers who had received the "imperial favor" of Chongzhen, and even the "real relatives" such as princes and nobles, did not show their faces.
So what are they busy with? Except for a small number of people who committed suicide and martyred abroad, most of them are busy with their own future. As far as the eunuchs who were extremely important during the Chongzhen Emperor's lifetime, although there were also Wang Cheng'en who "accompanied the death", most of the eunuchs sought out Li Zicheng to sell themselves to him. There were also clever eunuchs who compiled the "materials" of the concubines in the palace into a book early and gave them to Li Zicheng as an "alternative". However, Li Zicheng was not cold to this kind of courtesy, and most of the thousands of eunuchs in the palace were beaten out by Li Zicheng. The East Factory, which used to be talked about by the Ming Dynasty people, was also shoveled clean by Li Zicheng.
But compared to these ugly attitudes of the eunuchs, the performance of the princes and nobles and ministers was not much better.
In the last few years of Chongzhen's reign, in addition to reusing eunuchs, he also particularly reused Xun Gui, such as Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chengguo, Xiangcheng Bo Li Guozhen and others, who were Chongzhen's confidants. However, it was this Lord Zhu Chunchen, when Li Zicheng attacked Beijing, he took the initiative to sacrifice the Chaoyang Gate, and later gave Li Zicheng many times "persuasion", and Li Guozhen even took the initiative to say to Li Zicheng that "Your Majesty came into being at the right time, and I am willing to stay the rest of my life to serve Your Majesty." Such a show of loyalty was exchanged for Li Zicheng's scolding: "If you are the Lord, what should I do?" The thief of the wrong country is still surviving? ”
Moreover, this performance of the two of them is really not an isolated phenomenon, that is, in the days when the Chongzhen couple "showed the public" and "mourned", most of the officials of all sizes in the capital were busy running in the "Great Shun Dynasty". At that time, there were more than 1,200 officials of all sizes, who ran upside down to the Huiji Gate to wait for selection. These "official masters" who were usually high above the heavens were humiliated by the peasant army at the Huiji Gate, and they were tossed and turned hungry, and in the end, almost all of them lay on the Huiji Gate, and all kinds of ugly states were everywhere. This is the "good courtier" under Chongzhen's rule.
Ordinary ministers were like this, and high-ranking officials were also unbearable, and Chen Yan, Wei Zhaode, the most favored university scholar in Chongzhen's lifetime, and others had sold themselves to the people long ago. They usually pretended to be incorruptible in front of Chongzhen, and also gave a large amount of wealth to Li Zicheng. Then he was tied up by the peasant army, beaten to death, and all the property in the family was stolen by the peasant army, which became the laughing stock of history.
It is worth mentioning that there are also several young talents during the Chongzhen period, typical of Wei Xuelian and Zhou Zhong, Zhou Zhong is a Shu Jishi, a serious Tianzi protégé. After Chongzhen's death, instead of being sad, he was elated and raised his horse in front of Chongzhen's coffin. As for Wei Xuelian, he was even more deeply favored: his father was Wei Dazhong, a Member of the Donglin Party who died at the hands of Wei Zhongxian, and it was the Chongzhen Emperor who rehabilitated their family and restored their innocence. However, after Li Zicheng entered the city, Wei Xuelian became Li Zicheng's close confidant literati, and even many edicts were written by him, so ugly, just like the angry scolding of the late Ming dynasty writer Feng Menglong: Shang He's face is secretly born between heaven and earth.
Can this matter be said to be Chongzhen wronged? Then again, which of these was not chosen by Chongzhen himself. A desolate scene fell on himself, so many worlds were cold, in fact, it was not unjust.
Behind Chongzhen's desolate funeral, there were so many "lively" scenes, and there was a rotten dynasty.
References: Gu Cheng's History of peasant wars in the late Ming Dynasty, Mei Yi's Ming: Prosperity and Collapse, Miao Di's Biography of the Chongzhen Emperor: A History of the Fall of the Ming Dynasty