If the Chongzhen Emperor did not hang himself, was caught by the King of Chuang, and watched the performance of this group of white-eyed wolf ministers under him, then, even if the poor Chongzhen Emperor had ten thousand pounds of blood in his stomach, it would not be enough for him to vomit.
On April 25, 1644, chongzhen hanged himself on the coal mountain with his hair over his face, and accompanied him to Huangquan with only a loyal eunuch, Wang Cheng'en.
In January before that, Li Zicheng had already suppressed the border with a large army. Faced with an empty treasury, the penniless Chongzhen Emperor mobilized patriotic donations among high-ranking officials.
The Chongzhen Emperor first thought of his father-in-law, Zhou Kui, who was given a first rank to the old man before making a request, and the earl became a marquis. Then send someone to collect donations, hoping that the father-in-law will take a good lead and donate a hundred and eighty thousand. Zhou Kui faced the eunuch Xu Gao who came to the door, and kept sighing and crying, refusing to spit out. The eunuch Xu Gao was angry: "If the state is gone, what is the use of you guarding this money?" Zhou Kui seemed to be moved, and his heart ached like a pain and he donated ten thousand taels of silver.
Chongzhen was obviously dissatisfied with zhangda. After Empress Zhou learned the truth, she privately asked someone to send five thousand taels of silver to her father, and brought a message to her father, hoping that her father would understand the great righteousness and add another five thousand taels to repay the emperor's favor. This week, However, Kui came to a great righteousness to kill his relatives, and he first took out two thousand taels from his daughter's silver, and then donated three thousand taels.
The first assistant Chen Yan used naked donations to show that he was a clean official and lived in poverty. Zhejiang Province suddenly became less wealthy, and the province donated 6,000 taels and Shandong 4,000 taels. Of the other ministers and eunuchs of five hundred and one thousand, the Chongzhen Emperor received a total of 200,000 taels of silver in this vigorous plan to save the country. Comrades, remember this two hundred thousand.
After Li Zicheng entered Beijing, he did not commit any crimes in the autumn of the previous few days, and soon began to loot the whole city. Li Yan, the general under King Li Chuang, was responsible for torturing Zhou Kui, but in fact, Zhou Kui, who had just entered the capital, had already shown his heart and offered him 100,000 taels of silver to help the army. Li Yan could send it with 100,000 taels, he clipped zhou kui's heel head, and Zhou Kui vomited another 100,000 taels. This old man was not honest, Zhou Kui ordered people to burn an iron iron, ironed on Zhou Kui once, Zhou Kui came up with ten thousand two, according to statistics a total of forty irons, came up with four hundred thousand two silver, a total of six hundred thousand two silver.
The first assistant Chen Yan, who had originally had a poor family and occupied Chen Yuanyuan, was personally interrogated, and after being tortured several times, the family suddenly had thirty thousand two silver and three thousand two gold. There was also a retired eunuch Wang Zhixin, and everyone said that he hid 300,000 taels of silver, after which he had donated 10,000 taels to Chongzhen. How could Liu Zongmin let go of this big tiger, used a sentence for a while, confessed 150,000 taels, did not tell the truth, and then used the punishment, and soon hung up. It seems that all of Beijing has wronged him, and there are really only 150,000 retired eunuchs.
Li Zicheng's troops tortured day and night, and the final report card was 70 million taels of silver. Liu Zongmin and Li Guo arranged for thousands of blacksmiths and silversmiths to work with full firepower, melting gold and silver and recasting them, one thousand and two cakes, leaving holes in the middle, and stringing them together with large iron rods, making tens of thousands of cakes in total. Three thousand ox carts, one thousand camel carts, and ten thousand cavalry were escorted back to Shaanxi, covering the sky with dust along the way.
The Manchu Qing Dorgon buried Chongzhen with the etiquette of the emperor, most of the original ministers had already surrendered to Li Zicheng, and at the ceremony when the ministers bid farewell to Chongzhen, more than a dozen people cried out, twenty or thirty were a little sad, and most of them looked at Chongzhen with disdainful squinting eyes for the last time.
No wonder Chongzhen has a famous saying, "The king of the fallen country is not the king of the country, and the subjects are the ears of the subjects of the country." After that, the Ming Dynasty, which still had an army of more than a million, had almost no resistance except Shi Kefa and fled.
The Ming Dynasty became a lantern of paper paste in the wind and rain.