Wei Zhongxian was a high-ranking eunuch during the Ming Dynasty's Apocalypse, and his hands were stained with all kinds of blood, and the crime could be said to be huge and heinous. When reading through the history of the Ming Dynasty, many people found a problem, after Wei Zhongxian committed suicide, it seemed that the Ming Dynasty was in a passive beating situation.
Some people also proposed that Wei Zhongxian, even if he was full of sins, continued to live for the Ming Dynasty for 20 years.
Wei Zhongxian's biggest patron was the Emperor of the Apocalypse of the Ming Dynasty, and he became a story with excellent carpentry means. After the death of the Emperor of the Apocalypse, his younger brother The Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne. The first thing he did after he ascended the throne was to suppress the power of the eunuchs, and Wei Zhongxian naturally became the first person he opened the knife.
During Wei Zhongxian's lifetime, he could suspend the demise of the Ming Dynasty, which had something to do with the policies he implemented, especially the management of Liaodong. From the middle and late Wanli, the Later Jin rose in the north, and after gradually growing, began to develop into Liaodong, due to the backwardness of various military systems in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the corruption of army commanders, the combat effectiveness of the Ming Army was very low, and the biggest problem of the Liaodong army was the problem of grain and salary.
Wei Zhongxian attached great importance to Liaodong, and during his reign, the prosperity of Liaodong's operations was mainly due to the fact that the supply of various types of military supplies, grain and wages was very sufficient, and the soldiers on the front line could be basically guaranteed. Only by running Liaodong well can we ensure the stability of the Ming Dynasty, which is a truth that Wei Zhongxian deeply knows, and the formation of the Ningyuan defense line was during the apocalypse period.
Since the middle and late Ming Dynasty, there have been party struggles in the imperial court, of which the Donglin Party in Jiangnan is the most powerful, and the eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian has very well restricted the development of the Donglin Party, not only in terms of policy, but also in various rulings.
The eunuch party led by Wei Zhongxian and the Donglin party were completely different in political upswing. Many literati of the Donglin Party and some local merchants are related to interests, and in the late Ming Dynasty, the commodity economy developed rapidly, and this part of the merchants obtained a lot of wealth, but on the contrary, they had the least tax expenditure, in order to maximize their own interests, they could not let the expenditure of the national treasury appear vacant, and when the Donglin Party came to power, it collected various taxes to many peasants, which only left them with a road of rebellion for the peasants who were relatively poor in themselves.
The eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian would obtain a large amount of taxes from these merchants through various means, but on the contrary, in the peasants' taxes, it made a great reduction, and the tax collection directly from the merchants had a fast effect and good results, making the national treasury more substantial, and the various expenditures on Liaodong were also not stingy, so at the time of the Emperor of the Apocalypse, the defense line of Liaodong was very peaceful. On the contrary, with less exploitation of the peasants, the number of peasant uprisings in various places also decreased sharply.
After the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, he began to attack the eunuch party headed by Wei Zhongxian, the power of the Donglin Party suddenly swelled, the overall political weather vane changed, the Donglin Party people took the protection of their own interests as the main purpose, frantically increased taxes among the peasants, and for Liaodong's military salaries, it was also regularly sharply reduced, and the Internal Personnel faction of the Donglin Party was complex, there were frequent fights, and many policies were changed from day to day, allowing a group of civilian officials without military ability to manipulate behind their backs, which directly restricted the military layout of Liaodong.
On the contrary, the generals who used martial arts in Liaodong were often implicated in the situation between the DPRK and China when implementing relevant policies, and many times they were in a very passive state. During Chongzhen's reign, he repeatedly replaced the commander of Liaodong and the replacement of Shangshu of the Bingbu Even as many as three times a year. Chongzhen relied on the Donglin Party to emasculate the Party, and many of its political positions were consistent with the Donglin Party.
History was written by the literati, and in order to consolidate their political position, Wei Zhongxian and others dealt a great blow to the literati and others, and the means were very cruel, so in the history books, this type of person is a living evil person. But from the perspective of the overall situation, although Wei Zhongxian was an evil person, many policies that ran counter to the Donglin Party were very beneficial to the continuation of the Ming Dynasty.
Ironically, when the Chongzhen Emperor was hanging on coal mountain, there was only one eunuch who followed him. In the end, Chongzhen understood that it was these literati who really misunderstood themselves, "the king of the fallen country, the ministers of the country", when the building will fall, the party struggle will continue, the exploitation of the peasants, the deduction of military salaries on the Liaodong front, the misleading military policy, which is not the fuse that led to the demise of the Ming Dynasty.