In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), the Ming Dynasty was declared extinct with the rebel leader Li Zicheng attacking the capital Beijing.
Immediately afterward, the Qing regime in the north, which was dominated by Manchus, entered the guanguan from the south, expelled Li Zicheng from Beijing, established a new Central Plains Dynasty, and gradually unified the whole country, which was the Qing Dynasty.
The demise of the Ming Dynasty was caused by internal and external troubles, and the combination of human and natural factors.
As the last emperor, the Chongzhen Emperor was considered a "blessed" monarch, and he tried hard to govern, but during his reign there were large-scale droughts and floods throughout the country. The demise of the Ming Dynasty was due to devastating disasters, incurable corruption of officials, the rise of peasant rebel armies, and the Later Jin in the north also preached the "Seven Great Hates" and "invasion of the south."
However, there is also a theory that the Ming Dynasty itself died. Why? Because after the traitors of the Ming Dynasty arrived in the Qing Dynasty, they were brave and invincible.
When it comes to the Ming rebels in the Qing regime, there are countless of them. The reason why they betrayed the motherland and defected to the enemy camp was not that they were spineless. For example, Kong Youde was chilled by Mao Wenlong's innocent killing, Zu Dashou was angry because Yuan Chonghuan was unjustly imprisoned, and Shang Kexi was framed and harmed by Shen Shikui's secret plot.
In short, many of the Ming generals who defected to the Qing Dynasty had some of their own grievances, and it can even be said that the Ming Dynasty forced the generals away by themselves.
So, let's see how brave these generals behave.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was a general in Liaodong who had no culture but great combat ability, named Mao Wenlong.
In the second year of Chongzhen (1629), Yuan Chonghuan came to Mao Wenlong's station. Because Mao Wenlong was not very respectful to him, he was resentful in his heart, and because Mao always did not listen to his orders, he sought an opportunity to kill him. As soon as Mao Wenlong died, his two old subordinates, Geng Zhongming and Kong Youde, felt chills.
Two years after Mao Wenlong's death, Kong Youde launched the "Wuqiao Mutiny", and immediately led an army to attack Dengzhou, while Geng Zhongming responded in Dengzhou, and the two men's armies soon became small in size. Over time, with the ming general Huang Long's large-scale conquest, they had to defect to Houjin without success. After surrendering to the enemy, Kong Youde was given the title of King of Gongshun and Geng Zhongming was given the title of King of Huaishun, and was incorporated into the Zhenghong Banner and the Zhenghuang Banner of the Han Army, respectively. After that, Kong and Geng followed the Qing army around to suppress the remnants of the rebel army and the Southern Ming.
In the end, Kong Youde was named the King of Dingnan, and was posthumously honored as "Wu Zhuang" because he was besieged and committed suicide by the Southern Ming general Li Dingguo, and as for Geng Zhongming, he was the King of Jingnan, becoming one of the three major kings of the Qing Dynasty in the south.
In addition to Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming, Emperor Taiji also made another demoted king of Zhishun, and the three of them were called "King of Sanshun", and this person was Shang Kexi.
Shang Kexi's family has been farming for generations, and he joined the Ming Army's marine division during the Apocalypse and became Mao Wenlong's subordinate.
Unlike Kong and Geng, Shang Kexi's father, Shang Xueli, died at the hands of the Later Jin people. When Huang Long rebelled against the self-reliant Kong Geng, Shang Kexi was responsible for countering the rebellion as his beloved general. After Kong and Geng surrendered to Houjin, they remembered that Huanglong was unwilling to accept his request to submit, so they led an army to attack. Under the impact of the Houjin Iron Horse, the Huanglong soldiers committed suicide in defeat, and hundreds of people in shangkexi mansion, including their families and servants, also threw themselves into the water and died after the city was destroyed.
Shang Kexi, who was stationed in Hiroshima, learned of the battle, but at this time, it was Shen Shikui, who had a vendetta against him, who succeeded Huang Long as the chief soldier. In order to avenge the hatred of that year, Shen Shikui wanted to frame Shang Kexi. After learning the news, in order to protect himself, Shang Kexi secretly contacted and defected to Houjin. Shang Kexi entered the pass with the above-mentioned Geng and Kong suijun, conquered a large area of land with great momentum, made great military achievements, and was eventually enfeoffed as the King of Pingnan and became a feudal governor in Guangdong.
Among the rebellious qing generals, the bravest and most helpless is perhaps Zu Dashou. He came from a family of military generals, and for generations he defended against foreign enemies in Liaodong, and he himself grew up with outstanding martial courage and outstanding performance officers to become the general of the Liaodong forwards, and hung up the seal of the Liaoqian generals. After Yuan Chonghuan was unjustly imprisoned, Zu Dashou returned to Liaodong in a fit of rage, despite the danger of Beijing being besieged by Emperor Taiji. It was not until Yuan Chonghuan wrote a letter recalling that he agreed to relieve the siege of Beijing.
In the fourth year of Chongzhen (1631), Zu Dashou refused the emperor Taiji several times while being surrounded by Houjin and isolated and ran out of food. However, in the end, due to the ineffective rescue of the Ming army, he was forced to surrender falsely, and soon sought an opportunity to continue to resist the Qing in Jinzhou. After a year of siege in Jinzhou, the Ming army still did not effectively rescue Zu Dashou, and he had no choice but to surrender for the second time.
This time, he was given the title of Commander-in-Chief of the Yellow Banner of the Han Army and invaded Beijing with the Qing army.
Finally, there is Hong Chengyu. Originally a civilian official, he showed outstanding military talent in the peasant revolt during the Chongzhen years, so he threw himself from Rong to the governor of Jiliao. He and Zu Dashou were in a similar situation, both surrendering after being besieged for many days without rescue. After the surrender, he put forward the strategy of "taking care as the main and suppressing as the supplement", which reduced the casualties of the Han people to a certain extent. During the Shunzhi period, Hong Chengzu took the place of the Qing court and went to various places to appease and govern military affairs, and made great achievements.
In short, if these talents can be brought to the fullest by the Ming Dynasty, perhaps the Ming Dynasty will not go to extinction so quickly.