The Ming Dynasty was a very powerful dynasty in Chinese history, and even its rival Emperor Qing dynasty called it "Yuanmai Han Tang, Shenglong Tang Song", believing that the Ming Dynasty was even more powerful than the Han Dynasty and Tang Dynasty in ancient history.
However, no matter how powerful the dynasty is, it is still impossible to avoid the end of its demise, the Ming Dynasty created by Zhu Yuanzhang in 1368, after 276 years of inheritance, finally perished in 1644, and the last emperor, Ming Sizong Zhu Youjian (Chongzhen), became the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
In fact, the Ming Dynasty as early as the Chongzhen Emperor before, there were signs of the fall of the country, Chongzhen's grandfather Wanli Emperor for decades, all stayed in the harem without going out, did not go to the office at all, and even many officials of the imperial court left their posts, he did not know at all, even if they knew and did not care, so that many of the yamen did not have officials to work, even the major departments of the central government of the imperial court were completely lax, and the state apparatus of the Ming Dynasty gradually began to decay.
Emperor Chongzhen's father, Emperor Mingguangzong Zhu Changluo, indulged in wine during his reign, so that his health gradually deteriorated, and he eventually took an inexplicable drug to make himself live longer and died. Emperor Chongzhen's brother Emperor Tianqi, Emperor Zhu Youjian, indulged in carpentry all day long, and even the eunuch Wei Zhongxian killed some ministers who were loyal to the imperial court and adhered to the correct strategy, making the situation in the Ming Dynasty, which was already turbulent, even more severe.
By the time the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne in 1627, the Ming Empire was no longer a powerful dynasty in the hands of Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di, but was caught in a crisis of many internal and external troubles, with the elite cavalry of the Manchu Qing Dynasty constantly spying on the border pass, and there were endless peasant rebels inside, and the Chongzhen Emperor finally fell into the predicament of no one to use and no money to use.
The capital of the Ming Empire, Beijing, was attacked by a peasant rebel led by Li Zicheng in March of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), and had made great efforts to save the situation, but the Chongzhen Emperor, who was getting worse and worse, finally despaired, and he refused the advice of his ministers to flee to the south and call on the Qunchen in the name of Tianzi, but chose to martyr himself, and on March 19, he hanged himself on a crooked neck tree on the coal mountain, and the Ming Dynasty perished.
The Book of Rites says that "when a kingdom is about to perish, there will be demons", and on the eve of the demise of a dynasty, there will often be all kinds of strange things happening. Before the fall of the Ming Dynasty, there was a farmer in the south who suddenly appeared in the home of a chicken weighing 40 kilograms, much larger than the ordinary chicken, and the crown, chicken feet, and chicken feathers were all extremely bright red, and the farmers were complacent because of this, thinking that this was a good symbol of auspiciousness, so they have been raising this chicken.
However, when passing by this farmer's house, a Taoist monk accidentally saw this chicken and exclaimed on the spot: "The Ming Dynasty is going to die..." The farmer was surprised to ask him for the reason, and the Taoist replied that the real name of this "chicken" was called the eagle, which was a creature recorded in the Ancient Qi book "The Classic of Mountains and Seas", and when this bird suddenly appeared in the human world, it meant that a dynasty would perish.
The farmer was noncommittal to the Taoist monk at that time, but when the Ming Dynasty really collapsed in 1644, when he went to the courtyard to look for the chicken, he could no longer find it.