According to historical records, the mainland has experienced four Xiaoice periods in its history, combined with the meteorological history data of the famous scientist Zhu Kezhen and the rise and fall of dynasties, it is not difficult for us to get a result: every time we enter the Xiaoice period, it will basically cause large-scale social turmoil.
For example, the first time is from the end of the Yin Shang Dynasty to the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the second is from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the beginning of the Western Jin Dynasty, the third time is from the end of the Tang Dynasty to the beginning of the Northern Song Dynasty, and the last time is from the late Ming Dynasty to the middle of the Qing Dynasty.
The so-called "Xiaoice period" refers to the global climate into a fixed cold period, because the last appeared in the Ming and Qing dynasties, so scholars also call it "Ming and Qing Xiaoice period". In this process, the most serious was basically during the Ming Chongzhen period, when the temperature plummeted and caused a large number of disasters, which directly affected the "lifespan" of the Ming Dynasty, so how terrible is this "Xiaoice Age"?
Image: Stills of snow falling from the plummeting temperatures
First, the terrible Xiaoice weather
1. Earth-shaking changes
Presumably, for those of us who live in the four seasons like spring, we would like to know what the climate of the Xiaoice Age was like and how cold it was. Let's put it this way, according to the existing historical records, it can be said that the mainland was full of snow at that time, and the main lakes, including Taihu Lake, Poyang Lake, and Dongting Lake, were basically frozen in a state, and as for the "summer cold" and "summer frost and snow", it was even more normal.
There is a relevant description in the "Guangdong Tongzhi", in the first year of Zhengde in the Ming Dynasty, that is, in the winter of 1506 AD, the Qiongzhou Mansion of Guangdong at that time was ten thousand miles of rain and snow, and in the winter of the fourth year of Zhengde, the snow thickness in Chaozhou was several feet thick.
You must know that the ancient Qiongzhou Mansion is now Hainan Island, and Wanzhou with thousands of miles of rain and snow is now Wanning County, Hainan Province, and the back Chaozhou is now Chao'an, Chaoyang County, Guangdong Province, which is a typical subtropical climate, but in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, but the rain and snow are endless, and the degree of cold can be seen.
Image: Stills of rain and snow
Another historical material, "Jiangnan Tongzhi", records that in the twelfth and fifteenth years of the reign of Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, that is, in 1499 A.D. and 1502 A.D., the winter was so cold that the water of the Qiyang River and the Yuyao River were all frozen.
If you think these are not enough, then take a look at the records in the "History of the Ming Dynasty": "In the fourth year of Jingtai (1453), from the winter of November to the next year, Mengchun next year, Shandong, Henan, Zhejiang, Zhili, Huai, and Xu snowed a few feet, and the sea ice of Huaidong was more than 40 miles, and people and animals froze to death. In the first month of the fifth year (1454), the heavy snow in the Jiangnan provinces was even forty years, and the Su and Chang froze and starved to death were not counted. ”
In other words, during the Jingtai period, there was widespread snowfall in all parts of the Yangtze River for more than a month, and this kind of strange weather, can you dare to believe it? In addition, in the local state and county records, there are many similar records, and interested friends can also find some information to learn more about it.
Image: Screenshot of lake ice data
2. One thing makes matters worse
In this Xiaoice Age, which lasted for more than a hundred years, the coldest year was the 21st year of Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, that is, in 1816 AD, because volcanic eruptions exacerbated climate changes.
In April of the twentieth year of Jiaqing, the Tambora volcano on the island of Bawa, Indonesia, suddenly erupted after thousands of years of sleep, with an index as high as 7, which directly brought a catastrophe to the local people and the ecological environment, and the volcanic ash rushed into the earth's stratosphere in an instant, causing a violent impact on the global climate.
Because the stratosphere is full of volcanic ash, the global temperature began to drop rapidly, to Jiaqing 21 August time, the original summer suddenly cold as a cold winter, in the territory of Heilongjiang, the summer lunar calendar in June, July actually appeared strong frost weather, resulting in almost the destruction of agricultural production, a large number of people displaced, and Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces even appeared in the summer snow "strange scene".
Image: Stills from the eruption
Second, the accompanying secondary disasters are more powerful
1. Terrible and persistent drought
In fact, compared with the cold weather that occurred during the Xiaoice Age, the accompanying secondary disasters had a greater impact on people's production and life, and in the hundreds of years of the Xiaoice Age, in addition to the severe cold weather resulting in a large number of human and animal casualties, more terrifying secondary disasters began to occur one after another.
Therefore, at the beginning of the chapter, it was said that climate disasters directly accelerated the demise of the Ming Dynasty, and among the many secondary disasters, Dahui believed that plague and drought hit the Central Plains society the most.
Let's start with the drought. Throughout the Xiaoice Age, the drought was basically "shadowy", for example, during the Ming Chongzhen period, there was an unprecedented ten years of drought, needless to say that various lakes dried up, and even the main stream and tributaries of the Yellow River showed signs of breaking the flow.
The precipitation in the whole of North China has generally dropped by 11 to 47 percent compared with the same period in the past, and as many as 10 provinces and dozens of regions have experienced drought conditions for more than four consecutive years, and the drought situation appeared in a certain point in the Yellow River basin in the early days and quickly spread to all parts of the country.
For example, Henan Province has reached the point where "all plants and trees are withered" and "animal skins, insects and ants are eaten", and Shaanxi Province is even more ruthless, and there is no food to buy in the market in a large number of cities, and people live on wooden skins, and there is even a human tragedy of relatives killing each other and eating meat to survive.
According to historical records, from the first year of Chongzhen to the eighth year of Chongzhen, in just a few years, there were 13 large-scale peasant uprisings on the land of the Central Plains, with more than 300,000 participants.
Picture: Stills of the drought during the Chongzhen period
2. Sudden plague
Due to the extinction of food, no vegetation, many animals in order to survive on the choice of living and human beings to live together, after a long time began to affect each other, the biggest problem is the rat, from the Ming Wanli years, there were many outbreaks of large-scale plague, to Chongzhen years into the "peak of the plague".
Among them, in the sixth year of Chongzhen, that is, in 1633 AD, bubonic plague broke out in Shanxi, and the disease quickly spread to Shaanxi, Hebei, Beijing and other places along with the fleeing people, and in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, in 1644 AD, the plague escalated into the terrible "pneumonic plague".
Regarding this catastrophe, there is such a sentence in "Ming Tongjian": "The Great Epidemic in Beijing, the dead are not counted." and another "Chongzhen Record" wrote: "The Great Epidemic in Beijing, the number of deaths is tens of thousands." In any case, the plague really happened, and people really paid a huge price.
Image: Stills of people infected with the plague
According to the conservative estimation of later scholars, this great plague caused tens of millions of people to die in Shaanxi, Gansu, Jin, Hebei and other provinces, and also destroyed the border defense of the Ming army one after another.