In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, there was a famous army, Pingwukou and Jingbei, and this army was the Qi Family Army. But later this unit was strangled, and the Qi family army was brutally slaughtered, starting from a mutiny! Behind the mutiny was the discord between the "north and south" generals and factional disputes, and the bureaucratic disputes within the imperial court; it was even more caused by the corruption and rigidity of the ming army system and political system.
Jizhou
During the Wanli Emperor's period, the northeast and northwest borders have been harassed by the Houjin and Mongols in the south, and Jizhou, as the border defense town of the Ming Dynasty, has an irreplaceable role in defending the central government and defending Gyeonggi, it can be said that "guarding Jizhou is guarding Gyeonggi", it is conceivable that the weight of Jizhou is heavy! As the top priority of the ming dynasty's nine border defenses, Jizhou has the unique function of "moving the whole body with one shot"!
However, the northern generals who guarded the border here, when dealing with the fierce Mongol soldiers in the south, appeared to be very "incompetent" and suffered many defeats. Qi Jiguang was famous at home and abroad for his outstanding military achievements in the battle against the Southern Wokou. Later, at the recommendation of the imperial court, Wu Shilai was transferred to Jizhou as the deputy general of the Shenji Battalion, and the Qi family army from the south sat in Jizhou from then on.
Qi Jiguang
However, why was such a strong qi family army brutally annihilated after being transferred to the north?
A Mutiny in Jizhou led not only to a crisis in the frontier, but also to a crisis in the imperial court
The Records of the Wanli Records recorded: "In October of the twenty-third year of the Wanli Calendar, before the sea guards threatened to threaten the double grain, the Governor of Jizhen, Fu, and Daochen captured the advocates of the rebellion to rectify the law, and the Yu Dang drove back to the south, and the soldiers replied to the request and reported it. From the "Wanli Records", we can see that the "sea defense soldiers" actually refer to the Qi family army from the south, "double grain is noisy", indicating that the Qi family's southern soldiers are due to arrears of military salaries, which causes the crowd to be excited, and then "resigns and does not do it". The result of the aftermath was that all the military and political leaders in the Jizhou area were involved: from the governor, the inspector, to the Daoist ministers, all "those who are chaotic are to the law, and the remaining parties are driven back to the south."
How should we understand "rectifying the Fa-rectification of the disorder"?
The Records of Xuanzu records that "the Jianchang battalion transferred three thousand southern soldiers to stay in preparation for the emergency of the Wu Dynasty." And in October, after being away from home for a long time, the money and food were not added, and the rebellion was intrigued. Killed more than three thousand three hundred mouths. Judging from this record, the 3,000 southern soldiers (Qi Jiajun) of the Jianchang battalion at that time were brutally killed for asking for money and food, that is to say, the number of soldiers who "violated the law" alone reached 3,300.
The southern soldiers of the Three Associations in Jizhen were all specially transferred from the south by Qi Jiguang, and the number of them was as many as tens of thousands of people, which could be described as the main force of the Qi family army, and the purpose of the transfer was originally to be a "teacher" to train the northern soldiers. However, only a week after the incident, Chen Yunhong, who was attacked by the Beijing camp, was awarded the title of guerrilla, and together with the former guerrilla Ji Jin, he "commanded the defense of Hainan soldiers and sent back to his hometown." There are those who do not obey orders, and they are engaged in military law. ”
Ji Jin
Not long ago, this mighty Qi family army was still in the battlefield of the Renchen Rebellion, but only a week later, it was actually imprisoned, reduced to a prisoner, and spilled blood on the West Market, which is not a sad thing!
So who was the executioner of this mutiny? It is Wang Bao, the governor of Northern Jizhou!
The Ming Shi Wang Bao records that "Zhang Bangqi, the commander-in-chief of Jizhen, was impeached, and Feng Bao and Yi Ren ... The JisanXie Southern Barracks, recruited by Qi Jiguang, dispatched to attack Korea, withdrew, daoshimen, clamored, threatened to increase the monthly salary, and ordered them to go to the martial arts field, attack them, and kill hundreds of people to counter-hear. The "Ming Shi Wang Bao" has clearly recorded that Wang Bao was the commander-in-chief of Jizhou, and that the southern soldiers "threatened to increase the monthly salary, and bao lured orders to go to the martial arts field and attack them." Wang Bao was ostensibly because the southern soldiers "gathered the crowd with grain to make trouble" and cruelly "booby-trapped and attacked" tens of millions of soldiers, but behind them was actually the discord between the generals of the northern faction and the "southern faction" headed by Wang Bao, and the deep contradictions between them were the product of the profound contradictions between them.
On the surface, the main reason for the mutiny was "to reward the gathering" and "threaten to increase the monthly salary", and to ask for "double grain", but the double grain and silver reward were originally special treatment of the Eastern Crusade, and have been implemented since the first term of the Eastern Crusade, Song Yingchang.
In the Battle of Pyongyang, the Southern Soldiers achieved a great victory, but Song Yingchang could not fulfill the words of the Southern Soldiers for a long time.
Song Yingchang
In February of the twenty-first year of the Wanli Calendar (1593), the Eastern Expedition was promised to the Southern Soldiers before the Song Yingchang War, and after the war, it was also recognized, and the Southern Soldiers had the merit of "first narrative", but in the end it was attributed to Yang Yuan, saying: "Menxia and General Qi and other adventures were the first to ascend, and the merits ranked first." ”
Yang Yuan was a Middle-ranking officer who was slightly versed in Song Yingchang, and arranged the merits of the Qi family army on the heads of others, which naturally caused the public in the army to be unfair and difficult to convince.
The result of this treatment is: "The generals of the north and the south are divided into two hearts, and they mediate each other's sins, and they are confused by merit and sin." This shows from the side that Pyongyang's uneven remuneration is the main reason for the discord between the generals of the north and the south, but the discord between the generals of the north and the south is in essence the product of the dispute between the north and the south factions, just as the so-called" can be used: "How can one mountain accommodate two tigers!" ”
The southern soldiers of Jizhen were recruited by Qi Jiguang, but as soon as Qi Jiguang's immediate superior Zhang Juzheng died, Qi Jiguang immediately transferred south, the deputy general Wu Weizhong was also deposed, and the southern soldiers were slaughtered.
Because the Northern Zhi Yushi- Guo Shi's impeachment of the Eastern Crusade against Song Yingchang was the beginning of the dispute over "the state is", a manifestation of the Zhao and Zhang cabinets who "the relationship between the cabinet and the six ministries is very problematic", and a process in which the opposition Donglin Party members were accumulating strength in their struggle to ensure freedom of political criticism, independent supervision rights, and expand the channels of speech as much as possible. Therefore, there is no doubt that it is also the process of the growth or formation of political groups and forces such as the Zhejiang Party, the Chu Party, the Kun Party, and the Qi Party.
Zhang Juzheng
Because of their distinct regional characteristics, in the political struggle with considerable regional characteristics, we can imagine that they cannot stay out of the matter. In the Jizhou Mutiny, the shadow of the geographical division behind the political interest group was a microcosm of the bureaucracy within the Ming court!
However, this incident was obviously not handled well, indicating that the Ming Dynasty also had problems not only in politics, but also on the road of military reform.
As the nine-sided important town of the Ming Dynasty, Jizhen was the center of the strategic defense system of the Ming Dynasty, and in the long and ten thousand years, Qi Jiguang had been stationed here and trained troops for sixteen years, and Jizhen had become an indisputable military center of gravity. This undoubtedly gave the Ming Dynasty a hint or hint: that is, the military defense system of the Ming Dynasty must have had problems and serious loopholes. Only twenty years after the mutiny, in the forty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar (1616), the Jianzhou Jurchens in the northeast declared the founding of the country, and more than ten years later, in the second year of Chongzhen (1629), the Army of Houjin had already driven straight into Beijing. The time of the Ming Dynasty will soon come, and the brutal killing of the Qi family army undoubtedly accelerates the pace of the Ming Dynasty!