When Zilharan received an urgent military order from Dolgon, he hurriedly gathered his troops and retreated north. The Yongli monarch, who did not know the reason, thought that the ancestor had blessed him from a calamity, but he was just secretly rejoicing, so he continued to spend his days drinking and did not ask about the war situation.
The sad and hateful Yongli court did not want to forge ahead. I don't want to take this opportunity to immediately rectify the soldiers and horses and recover the lost territory. Or actively contacted the anti-Qing forces in the north and gave support to the Shanxi rebels represented by Jiang Jiao, but instead indulged in the struggle for power and profit, spending days and wine. Do not sigh: the anti-Qing and revival forces in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties were pathetic, and they angrily rose up against the tyrannical rule of the Qing court because they did not want to die in the world, but they could only choose to be loyal to the Yongli court, which could not be supported.
The essence of this imperial court was a group of frustrated politicians and a small exiled court formed by a down-and-out sect. There is no unified political ideology, no solid base, no strong politicians. Despite the political slogan of reviving Daming, there is no viable strategic plan. The important reason why it can survive for more than ten years is that the opponent's rule is too brutal, provoking fierce resistance from the people under its rule, thus making it possible for the regime to survive.
The Yongli court only knew that a large-scale uprising broke out in Shanxi anyway, but it did not know that this was the most painful time for the Qing court. Dolgon was in a state of distress at that time, and there were many Manchu nobles who suggested returning to Luan Shengjing and making other plans. Dolgon tried to arrange for the crowd and insisted on mobilizing heavy troops to encircle the anti-Qing rebels in Shanxi.
However, before Dolgon could react, he had just dealt with the aftermath of Dordor and received an urgent report from Meng Qiaofang, the governor of Shaanxi: Wang Yongqiang, a general in Yan'an in northern Shaanxi, rebelled.
Wang Yongqiang was a general in Yan'an, a native of Wubao, Shaanxi, who followed the leaders of the displaced people in northern Shaanxi to revolt in his early years. Later, he was recruited by the Ming court and became a general of the Ming Dynasty. Subsequently, after Li Zicheng defeated Sun Chuanting, he led his troops to surrender to the Shun army. In the first year of Shunzhi, after Azige crossed the Yellow River and reached northern Shaanxi, Wang Yongqiang defected to the Qing court. However, Wang Yongqiang himself was very dissatisfied with the discriminatory politics of the Qing court, and Wang Zhengzhi, the governor of Yansui, was his enemy. After learning that Jiang Jun had rebelled, Wang Yongqiang immediately launched a rebellion under his command.
On February 21, the sixth year of Shunzhi (1649), Wang Yongqiang rebelled and captured Yulin City, and then took Yan'an Prefecture, which gained great momentum. Upon hearing the news, the anxious Dolgon immediately ordered Wu Sangui, who was stationed in Hanzhong, to immediately march north, and together with Gushan Erzhen Li Guohan and Shaanxi Governor Huang Erzhi, he sent troops north to suppress Wang Yongqiang's army. However, after Wang Yongqiang successfully captured Yan'an Prefecture, he began to rush to the ground and led some of his elite troops south to try to attack Xi'an Prefecture. Wu Sangui, Li Guohan, and others immediately assembled their troops and marched to Fuping County in an attempt to intercept Wang Yongqiang's troops. In an encounter between the two sides in Fuping County, Wang Yongqiang, who only had some soldiers and horses, was defeated by the Qing army, and he himself was killed in the melee. Due to the careless death of the commander, the Northern Shaanxi Anyway Force lost its backbone, and the anti-Qing troops in Northern Shaanxi were then brutally suppressed and finally failed.
After Wang Yongqiang's defeat, the Qing army was able to deal with the crisis in Shanxi with all its might. Among them, the Shandong Green Battalion led by Shandong General Tong Yangliang attacked Daizhou City as a symbol, successfully relieved the worries of the Datong Qing army, and gradually turned the situation in Shanxi around.
After the Daizhou rebel Liu Qian raised his army, he was unstoppable for a while. Because the main forces of the Qing army besieged the city of Datong, there was no main force to encircle Liu Qian's headquarters. Liu Qian then rushed left and right, rampaging through the northern Jin region, and threatened the back of Azige, Nikan and others. Shanxi governor Zhu Shichang repeatedly asked Dolgon to transfer Azige and Nikan to relieve the siege of Datong and rush to Taiyuan for reinforcements. Dolgon refused. The reason is that Dolgon understands that the root cause of the chaos in Shanxi lies in Jiang Jiao in Datong City. If the siege of Datong is withdrawn and the troops are divided to reinforce Taiyuan, Zhu Shichang will be safe (and Taiyuan City will also be safe), but Jiang Jiao will be like a fierce tiger out of the cage, completely breaking through the confinement, and it will be difficult for the Qing army to curb its next development.
Dolgon ordered Zhu Shichang to resist, and then mobilized troops to surround and suppress the rebels throughout Shanxi. The general army of Shandong of the Qing Dynasty and the governor of Shandong led troops to reinforce Shanxi, and his target was Liu Qian's headquarters in Daizhou. Liu Qian's troops and horses were obviously not Tong Yangliang's opponents, and were defeated by Tong Yangliang in three battles, and then the city of Daizhou was also conquered, and Liu Qian was finally forced to abandon Daizhou, and then the soldiers were defeated and killed.
The liberation of the siege of Daizhou made the Qing army have no worries about besieging Datong, and also cut off the connection between Datong and the Jinzhong and southern Jin. This made Jiang Jiao unable to call on the forces of the whole Jin Dynasty to jointly resist the Qing. Dolgon then personally conquered Datong again, and although Dolgon returned again in August, Datong was almost exhausted due to the long siege and the extreme shortage of food and grass in the city. At that time, Dolgon concentrated almost all the heavy army groups of the Qing court in Shanxi, and almost all the famous generals in the early years of the Qing Dynasty were mobilized by Dolgon to suppress the rebellion in Shanxi.
In fact, Dolgon is very anxious, he believes that if Shanxi cannot be attacked for a long time, it will inevitably cause a chain reaction, and it will be difficult to end if there is turmoil in the rest of the region. However, the heavens eventually favored the Qing dynasty, and on August 26, the sixth year of Shunzhi, Yang Zhenwei, the general under Jiang Jiao, believed that there was no chance of victory against the Qing Dynasty, so he led 600 of his own soldiers to raid Jiang Jiao's residence, killing Jiang Jiao's entire family, and surrendering Kaecheng. After the Qing army entered the city, they went on a killing spree. Slaughtered tens of thousands of people in the city (except for Yang Zhenwei's subordinates).
After Jiang Jiao's defeat and death, the situation in Shanxi completely improved for the Qing court, and hundreds of thousands of elite soldiers of the Eight Banners were instantly liberated and sent to various regions of Shanxi to quell the rebellion. In September, Prince Heshuo Mandahai pacified Shuo Prefecture and Mayi; Meng Qiaofang, the commander-in-chief of Shaanxi, conquered Puzhou and other places; October, Bolok Fenzhou, Mandahaikelu'an Province; November Shitingzhu Keze Prefecture; In December, Wu Sanguike Yulin. At this point, the anti-Qing forces in the Shaanxi region were destroyed by the Qing army, and it took the Qing army a year to finally quell the Jiang Jiao Rebellion.
The large-scale rebellion in Shanxi was a typical anti-Qing activity in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. After Jiang Jiao raised his army, most of the troops who responded to his call were not directly related to it, and it can even be said that most of them were local Shanxi gentry and people, because they were extremely dissatisfied with the harsh government of the Qing court in Shanxi for several years of exhaustive exploitation of the Shanxi region, and responded to Jiang Jiao's rebellion. It can be said that the anti-Qing activities in Shanxi were an uprising in which the people spontaneously rebelled against the tyrannical rule of the Qing court.
The general Niu Guangtian under Jiang Jiao hid in the depths of the Taihang Mountain and continued to carry out anti-Qing activities until he was defeated and killed in the fifteenth year of Shunzhi.
After solving the chaos in Shanxi, Dolgon's attitude towards Shanxi was only one word: kill!
The Qing court carried out a large-scale and indiscriminate massacre in the Shanxi region, causing the people of Shanxi to fall into a sea of corpses and blood. After the destruction of Datong City, the Qing army carried out a thorough slaughter order, and later Datong City Prison was ignored in the massacre, leaving five felons behind. Since the bitter lord had been slaughtered, both the plaintiff and the defendant had been killed, and the magistrate had to close the case.
In the seventh year of Shunzhi (1650), Tong Yangliang, who was the governor of Xuanda at the time, described it as follows: The three cities of Datong, Shuozhou, and Hunyuan had been slaughtered by Wang Shi, and the people did not exist. Tong Yangliang reported to the imperial court that as much as 80% of the ownerless abandoned land in Shanxi was because most of the locals were killed by "Wang Shi". Due to the sharp decline in population, countless abandoned fields and no one to cultivate them, Shanxi's taxes have been greatly reduced.
The "Jingle County Record" during the Kangxi period recorded that the rebellion in the year of Jiashen (1644) was only to recruit grain and coolies, while the imperial court soldiers and horses in the year of Yixi (1649) completely slaughtered the local area and cut off the household registration; The difference between the two phases can be seen.
The "Fenyang Fu Record" records that when Li Zicheng's army broke through Fenyang Mansion in the first year of Shunzhi, someone in the Shun army tried to insult a local Li woman, and Li Zicheng immediately executed him after learning about it. However, in the year of Yixiu, the entire family of this woman surnamed Li was slaughtered by the Qing army, and the woman was taken captive to the military camp to become a trophy. The woman could not bear the humiliation, in order to protect her name, she voluntarily jumped on the road and committed suicide, and the "Fenyang Fuzhi" recorded her as a festival woman. From this story, we can peek into the comparison of the military discipline of the Shun army and the military discipline of the Qing army. The "Fenyang Fuzhi" was written during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and in the era of cultural horror and Daxing literary prison, the "Fenyang Fuzhi" was officially revised into a book, and the records in it can show the tyranny of the Qing army.
Therefore, it is not difficult to answer why the Han people in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties had such successive large-scale anti-Qing struggles. And why did the Kangxi Emperor try his best to ease national contradictions as soon as he became pro-government. Implicit behind the four words of ethnic contradiction is the wanton behavior of the Qing court rulers against the people of the Central Plains in the early years of the Qing Dynasty. The inhumane oppression and exploitation provoked the strong resistance and continuous struggle of hundreds of millions of Han people, which is an important reason why the Southern Ming power can continue for many years.
The gaze shifted back to the south to see the situation in Nanming at this time.
The loyal battalion led by Li Guo, because it carried out the order of the Yongli court to rescue Changsha, withdrew from Changsha in November of the fifth year of Shunzhi and entered Jiangxi. However, in the first month of the sixth year of Shunzhi, after the defeat of Jin Shenghuan, the Zhongzhen camp had lost its goal of rescue and was forced to stop and wait for the next instructions. Before the Yongli court could continue to issue orders, Zilharang led an army into Hunan, captured He Tengjiao, and broke the Southern Ming army. In the midst of the chaos, the loyal battalion, which had lost its supplies, was forced to retreat south into the Guangxi territory.
However, after entering Guangxi, the Zhongzhen camp learned how chaotic the Southern Ming was. When Li Guo led his army through Wuzhou, Dongyuru, the prefect of Wuzhou in the Southern Ming Dynasty, tried to block the passage of the loyal battalion into Guangxi with the general Ye Chengen. But it was repulsed by Li Guo's army. And Li Guo did not want to attack Wuzhou, so as not to make the Yongli court think that it was a chaotic army. Subsequently, Chen Bangfu, who was fighting for the city of Nanning with his chaotic army, invited Li Guo to join him in repelling the chaotic army and capturing Nanning Province.
Chen Bangfu recruited the displaced people to use them for his own use, but the leader of the displaced people tried to fight against the guests for control of Nanning Province. The two sides fought a lot.
At this point, Li Guo and the others found a stronghold where they could live after fighting for thousands of miles. Nanmyeong University scholar Gao Yinxi, who had always acted as a liaison between the Yongli court and the loyal camp, fell ill. Gao Yinxi was already angry because he lost his master. While retreating into Guangxi, he was attacked by the local army of the Southern Ming Dynasty, resulting in heavy losses. After arriving in Zhaoqing, Guangdong to report to the Yongli Emperor, Qu Shiyun and Li Yuanyin impeached him for being extremely incompetent.
The Yongli Emperor trusted Gao Yinxi, but he was helpless. Because in fact, he could not really grasp the real power of the Yongli Imperial Court, Qu Shiyun and Li Yuanyin, as local powers, firmly held the power of the Yongli Imperial Court. The two people were afraid that after an old minister like Gao Yinxi entered the center, he would weaken his own power, so he planned to squeeze Gao Yinxi. Emperor Yongli knew that Gao Yinxi could not play a role in the center, so he ordered him to continue to oversee the army abroad.
Before leaving, the Yongli Emperor decreed that the military pay be given to supply Yinxi. However, the real power faction within the imperial court made every difficulty, and only gave 3,000 taels of silver as a military salary. Before leaving, Li Yuanyin even sent troops to rob 3,000 taels of silver again, and the Yongli Emperor could not do anything after learning about this. In desperation, he personally saw off Duan Yinxi and gave his imperial dragon flag to Gao Yinxi for his mighty deeds.
Under a series of blows, Gao Yinxi was eventually overwhelmed and fell ill in the army, and then died in Xunzhou on November 26, the sixth year of Shunzhi. The Yongli Emperor posthumously created him the Duke of Xun Guo and gave him the nickname: Wen Zhong. In his legacy before his death, he severely condemned the arbitrariness of the internal power ministers of the Yongli Imperial Court, which made the great cause of opposing the Qing Dynasty and restoring the Ming Dynasty difficult, and even more strongly expressed his strong indignation and helplessness at the chaos in the internal affairs of the government and the public.
And Gao Yinxi is by no means the last minister to die in the internal party struggle of the Southern Ming, and in the days to come, there will be many tragic figures like Gao Yinxi.