Opening: After Yuan Chonghuan was convicted, he led his men and horses away, and Chongzhen and his ministers tried to persuade him to turn back. Emperor Taiji exhibited his talent to surrender, forcing him to surrender, during which he betrayed the "surrender treaty" with Emperor Taiji, and did not please him in both dynasties. Behind him, the evaluation of it is very low, the "History of Ming" has no biography, and the "Qing History Draft" lists it as a "biography of the second minister". He was zu Dashou, the general of the Liaodong Han army in the late Ming Dynasty, a crucial figure in the Ming Dynasty and the Qingxing War in the 17th century, and also became the main Liao army general that Chongzhen and Emperor Taiji fought hard for, and once became a key factor affecting the course of history.
Sodaiju Image
(1) Yuan Chonghuan was arrested, and his confidant Zu Dashou quickly chose to flee, and chose to remain loyal to the Ming Dynasty in the midst of grievances.
As Yuan Chonghuan's beloved general, he was so surprised to see his marshal being arrested that he was "trembling and confused"[1] On the third day, Zu Dashou was worried about being connected by Chongzhen and led his men and horses to flee back to Ningyuan. Chongzhen was very shocked when he received the report, and Yu Dacheng, an official of the military department, told Chongzhen: "Zu Dashou did not dare to rebel against the imperial court, but because Yuan Chonghuan was arrested and was worried about being implicated, if he wanted to call Zu Dashou back, he had to write a letter from Yuan Chonghuan himself." ”【2】
Portrait of Yuan Chonghuan
After receiving Chongzhen's authorization, the nine secretaries of the cabinet came to prison to do Yuan Chonghuan's ideological work and asked him to persuade Zu Dashou to return. At first, Yuan Chonghuan insisted on refusing, and refused with quite high-sounding reasons: "The reason why Zu Dashou listened to me was because I was a supervisor, and now that I am a sinner, how can I still ask him to listen to me?" Yu Dacheng was well aware of Yuan Chonghuan's thoughts, so he gave him a "top hat" and said: "Do the people of the world disobey the righteousness of justice, the righteousness of the courtiers, the life and death of the ming king, the interests of the country, the recklessness of the skin, and the death of the enemy or the death of the Fa Deye? [3] Only then did Hong Chengzu write a letter of dissuasion to Zu Dashou. The messenger chased after the starry night, catching up with Zu Dashou not far from Jinzhou, after reading Yuan Chonghuan's letter, Zu Dashou could not cry, the whole team was also crying, and at this time, this wandering team was still overwhelmed.
Images of Chong
When Zu Dashou's eighty-year-old mother asked for the reason, she said decisively: "The reason why we have reached this point today is because of Inspector Yuan, why don't you make meritorious contributions to atone for his sins now?" Zu Dashou then ordered a return to Guanguan and recovered the areas around Yongping and Zunhua. [4] Chongzhen not only did not hold him responsible, but in order to honor him and comfort the hearts of the army, he was specially promoted to prince Taibao [5] and rewarded him with 40,000 taels of silver, and Chongzhen personally wrote the four words of "heroic loyalty and courage" to him. All this shows the importance of Zu Dashou's position after Yuan Chonghuan, but since then, the mutual trust between the monarchs and courtiers has been quite low.
(2) Emperor Taiji cut down trees as a metaphor for the Ming Dynasty, and played the digging of the foot of the wall to the extreme, and spent ten years to descend to Zu Dashou.
Zu Dashou was originally a descendant of Zu Di, the General of Zhenxi in the Jin Dynasty, and with this great glory, he appeared particularly dazzling among the Generals of the Ming Dynasty. However, from his great-grandfather Zu Zhen, he was a senior military general of the Ming Dynasty, who was promoted to Zuo Du for his merits and later posthumously awarded the title of Ronglu Doctor. Zu Dashou's father, Zu Chengxun, was initially the commander-in-chief of the Liaodong Army, repeatedly resisting the Mongol tribes and achieving outstanding military achievements. This family also earned the reputation of "Fourth Yuan Rong".
Portrait of Wu Sangui
In addition, Zu Dashou not only had a strong brigade, known as the "Zu Family Army", but also had a "very strong clan party" outside Guanwai, such as Wu Sangui, the general of Ningyuan, who was his nephew, Zu Dashou's son and nephew and Wu Sangui's cousin, and most of his subordinates with non-ancestral surnames had deep intersections with Wu Sangui. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, there were three Liao forces in the Liaodong region: one was the Liao army of Li Chengliang's system, the second was the Guanning Liao army of the Zu Dashou system, and the third was the island soldiers of the Mao Wenlong system, all of which had strong clan colors.
Zu Dashou's status in the Liao Army was old and high, and his rank in the Zu Clan Party was high, making this group of people and horses very grouped and strong in combat effectiveness. It was precisely because of this that he received high attention from Emperor Taiji of the Qing Dynasty. After the Battle of Songjin, Emperor Taiji said, "Those who are bullied by the Ming Kingdom are the only soldiers of the ancestor Dashou." [6] Beginning in the fourth year of Tiancong (1630), Emperor Taiji began to visit Zu Dashou's clansmen after occupying Yongping, assigning them houses, and thus began to send letters to Zu Dashou to persuade him to surrender, directly embarking on the road of persuasion for ten years. Using the method of drawing salaries from the bottom of the cauldron, gradually recruiting the relatives of the Guan Ning Army, treating them kindly and in captivity, has become a means of containing Zu Dashou and his officers and men.
Zu Jiajun
For persuading Ming generals to surrender, digging the foot of the Ming Wall was not a whim of the Emperor Taiji, but a far-reaching strategy. In September of the seventh year of Chongde (1642), just after the end of the Decisive Battle of Songjin, Manchurian officials together played a song to the Emperor Taiji, suggesting that they take this opportunity to quickly send a full-scale army to "lead a large army directly to Yanjing, control the Mountain Customs, and make great achievements." For such an impatient rush to achieve quick success, Huang Taiji showed a high degree of military strategic vision, and he instructed: "Er and other suggestions, take Yanjing directly, and think that it is impossible." Then he compared Daming to a thick tree and said, "No matter how much strength and how anxious you are, you will never cut down the big tree with an axe, but from the sides of the big tree, axe axe down, hit to a certain extent, this big tree naturally falls on its own." [7] Summoning is an important axe for Emperor Taiji to "cut down trees". At the beginning of his reign, Emperor Taiji tried to make contact with Zu Dashou, and at that time, coinciding with the death of Emperor Mingxizong, Emperor Taiji wrote a letter to Zu Dashou expressing his intention to send envoys to mourn and congratulate Chongzhen on his ascension to the throne, but Zu Dashou replied and refused. [8] Emperor Taiji showed great patience and determination in the surrender of Zu Dashou, and according to the statistics of the Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, in the past ten years, he wrote to Zu Dashou 10 times, 8 of which were in the name of Emperor Taiji, and the other two were ming dynasty generals, and even Huang Taiji wrote letters to Zu Dashou's wife to persuade him to surrender, and almost all possible conditions were launched. In the fourth year of Chongzhen (1631), Zu Dashou was ordered by Sun Chengzong to build the city of Dalinghe, and as a result was surrounded by the Army regiment of the Emperor Taiji. Emperor Taiji inspected the fortifications inside the City of Dalinghe from a high place outside the city and exclaimed, "Mingshan's ejaculate soldiers are all in this city." Therefore, Huang Taiji did not dare to rush to attack the city, but only adopted the siege method. He said, "The soldiers of this city have a sharp edge of the gun, and the sharp and frustrated handles are still there, and what will be the help?" In the first hundred days of the siege, Zu Dashou did not show weakness, personally supervising the army to go out of the city and engage the Qing soldiers dozens of times, each with casualties. After four failed breakthroughs, Emperor Taiji intensified his persuasion, promising his high-ranking official Houlu to "stand side by side with Zhu Belle, not with the officials", and guaranteed that the sons and subordinates who had surrendered would "do their best to support the poor country." [9] Zu Dashou ignored the letters that were rather earnestly written. The grain in the city ran out and began to kill the horses to eat. When the horses were finished, they began to eat the common people, and finally they were cruel to the point where the soldiers killed each other and fought for food. All the generals, except for the deputy general He Kegang, believed that they could only surrender. Zu Dashou sighed and said, "There is no reason for life to not die, but for the sake of the country, the three are equally important." Now that he has done his best to serve the country, he has spared this life. Finally, he swore an oath with the Emperor Taiji City to set up an altar outside the city to express surrender. At this time, the original 30,000 people in the city were surrounded for 82 days, and only more than 10,000 people were left.
After the surrender, Zu Dashou used the excuse that his wife's family was in Jinzhou, and offered advice to the emperor Taiji, willing to lead people and horses to change into the clothes of the Ming army and blend into Jinzhou so that they could make internal responses in the city. Emperor Taiji agreed and gave him five thousand centaurs. Zu Dashou used the fog on the way to shake off the Qing army such as Belle Abatai and other Qing troops, ran into Jinzhou Cheng alone, and then began to lead the Ming army to resist the Qing army. In November of the third year of Chongde (1638), Emperor Taiji again wrote to Zu Dashou: "Although the general has repeatedly fought against our army, it is appropriate for the general's way, and he will never mind this without doubt." [10] For Emperor Taiji, eight years have passed, and Zu Dashou has no reply to his "persistence and enthusiasm". After that, Emperor Taiji increased the reward for the "ancestral generals" who surrendered to him. These include Zu Zerun as the third class Ang Bang Zhangjing, Zu Kefa sheng first class Meile Zhangjing, Zu Zehong as the first class Meile Zhangjing, Zhang Cunren as the first class Meile Zhangjing. [11] These are all manifestations of Emperor Taiji's "bloody capital" on Zu Dashou.com. Until 1641, under the overall layout of the Emperor Taiji, a long-term siege of Jinzhou was carried out, the wall was cleared, and the siege was reinforced, and Chongzhen sent Hong Chengzu to lead the 130,000 elites of the Ming Dynasty to break the siege, and the decisive battle of Songjin broke out, and the result was that the commander Hong Chengyu was captured and surrendered half a year later. Zu Dashou was once again exhausted, and after helplessness, he once again chose to surrender the city. Emperor Taiji paid a huge endurance and price to finally make Zu Dashou completely submit, but still did not kill Zu Dashou from the heart to approve of him said that "long-term keeper, the effect of reading and reasoning", in addition to Wu Sangui on the front line of Shanhaiguan, the GuanNing Army has been incorporated into the hands of the Qing Dynasty.
(III) Zu Dashou's inner struggle of surrendering twice, the surrender of deception and true surrender, has nothing to do with loyalty to the essence of Daming, but a measure of moral and human endurance.
Speaking from the heart, Chongzhen has always been suspicious of Zu Dashou, although after Yuan Chonghuan was captured, Zu Dashou fled and returned again, and the distrust between the monarchs and the courtiers has been fixed. Zu Dashou later reported Zu Dashou's behavior to Chongzhen after the surrender of Qiu Hejia, the governor of Liaodong, to Chongzhen, and although he later planned to escape and return to Jinzhou, his sons and nephews remained in Houjin, and could make Zu Dashou defect again at any time. In this regard, Chongzhen did not surrender his guilt, and also promoted him to the rank of Viceroy of The Young Fu Zuodu. The empress dowager attacked Jinzhou twice, but Ning Yuan returned without success, but did not kill the imprisoned Zu Dashou relatives, but instead treated her children and grandchildren kindly. Because of this, Zu Dashou never eliminated Chongzhen's suspicions about him, and this low degree of mutual trust among the monarchs was completely caused long after his departure. After that, Chongzhen issued three edicts and ordered Zu Dashou to enter the capital to see him, and Zu Dashou had resigned on the grounds that he had already done military affairs. Later, Chongzhen sent Hong Chengzu to guard Ningyuan for the original purpose of monitoring Zu Dashou and preventing him from surrendering to the Qing Dynasty like other members of the Zu clan, [12] Ironically, he also accompanied a large member like Hong Chengzuo. "The Ming Dynasty is like a carriage running downhill to a cliff, and all the potential energy points to a node of doom." "The problem of the Ming Dynasty was not floods, droughts, or locust plagues everywhere, nor was it the swarming thieves, nor was it about the regents or the emperors who were on the throne. These are just appearances. Behind all this, the spiritual pillar that underpins the normal functioning of society has decayed. ”【13】
What made Zu Dashou choose to surrender for the first time? It was his deep-rooted orthodoxy and feudal integrity that made him always have a humiliating heart for the surrender of the "barbarians" in his heart. "Starvation is small, and loss of temperance is big." "One minister does not serve two masters" is a universal value of all parties. Zu Dashou's concept was tortured in the face of human nature's life and death decisions, until human nature could endure to the extreme, and when it was on the verge of collapse, Zu Dashou was different from those loyal subjects in that he chose to live in the last moment rather than commit suicide and martyrdom. At the time of the final surrender, Zu Dashuai's spirit and willpower had completely disintegrated, and although this time it was still "the Ming reinforcements were exhausted, the food in the city was exhausted, and the hungry people were cannibalistic" [14], Zu Dashou completely chose to surrender, but he was still worried about the final treatment of him by Emperor Taiji.
Biography
Kneeling in front of Emperor Taiji, he confessed: "The sins of the subjects are different from those of Hong Chengzuo, and the subjects have several sins to die for. Once trapped in the Daling River, the grain ran out of cannibalism, dying to die, the skill was poor and begging, the Emperor did not kill the favor, ordered the ministers to recruit his wife and brothers from the clan to surrender, sent to Jinzhou, the subjects not only turned their backs on Hong'en, but also repeatedly fought against the enemy of the army, and now they are besieged in Jinzhou, the grain is exhausted, and the party should die. Emperor Taiji comforted me, "Er's back is on me, one is the Er Lord, and the other is the ear of his wife's clan." However, if you do not add the meaning of condemnation, you will be nostalgic for a long time. [15] At this point, Zu Dashou's ten-year surrender road was finally completed, and after shaving his hair, he officially entered the arms of the Qing Dynasty. At that time, after more than a hundred years of spanning to Qianlong forty-three years, the "capitulation faction" of Daming was once again included in the official tone of the "second subjects", which all showed that the reason why they did not want to surrender in the first place, and in the end they could not but surrender, was worried and helpless. Compared with other surrender factions, Zu Dashou's ten-year surrender road has suffering and helplessness that are difficult for ordinary people to understand. Compared with his nephew, he lived more quietly, and compared with Hong Chengzuo, he lived more idyllic. But after all, this name was nailed to the shame rack by the remnants of the Ming Dynasty and Qianlong, and the dirt and stains could not be washed away, and history was so completed.
exegesis:
[1] The History of the Ming Dynasty, vol. 259, biography of Yuan Chonghuan.
[2] Yu Dacheng's "Liver Section Record".
[3] Yu Dacheng's "Liver Section Record".
[4] The State Pavilion, vol. 90.
[5] The State Of The Kingdom, vol. 90.
[6] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 64, Chongde 8th Year 133.
[7] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 66, February of the ninth year of Chongde.
[8] The Secret Records of the Old Archives of Manchuria, The Book of Taizong and Zu Dashou.
[9] "Manchu Old File" Tiancong five years leap November 24.
[10] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 44, Chongde 3rd Year November Ding Di.
[11] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 42
【12】Notes on Sanyuan
[13] "Wu Sangui: Nowhere to Take In" Zhang Hongjie.
[14] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 59, March of the seventh year of Chongde.
[15] Records of Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty, vol. 60