In March of the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen (1644 AD), the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian martyred himself at Coal Mountain after Li Zicheng's army invaded the city of Beijing.
Since then, a number of regimes have emerged in the south, and the ming dynasty kings who have fallen to the south, with the support of some scholars and doctors who are reluctant to surrender, or call themselves emperors, or in the name of the supervision of the country, carry the banner of the Southern Ming resistance to the Qing.
In these successive regimes, most of the Ming Dynasty kings who came out to carry the throne did not have the courage to lead the way and oppose the Qing Dynasty and restore the Ming Dynasty, and when the Qing army killed them, their first thought was to flee, and those who could not escape surrendered.
Among them, the most famous is the Yongli Emperor Zhu Youluo (cousin of the Chongzhen Emperor), who finally ran abroad and played a play "The Son of Heaven Abandons the Country".
In the environment of the Ming Dynasty, the Emperor could not take the lead in insisting on resisting the Qing, but would only flee, and the impact on the great cause of resisting the Qing Dynasty, which was already unfavorable, was fatal.
The emperor had no confidence in resisting a strong enemy, and how could most ordinary soldiers and civilians who had no patriotic education and could not read big characters give up their lives to protect Nanming?
This is also the main reason why after struggling for nearly twenty years, the Southern Ming dynasty has never been able to compete with the powerful enemies in the north like the Southern Song Dynasty, and finally perished.
There are so many descendants of the Zhu family, although most of them have been abandoned because of the Ming Dynasty's relatively special feudal king system, but there are still some backbones.
For example, the three brothers of the Tang Dynasty Zhu Yu (pronounced "jade") key (descendants of Zhu Huan, the twenty-third son of The Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang), were all more suitable for leading the Southern Ming army and people to resist the Qing Dynasty than the Hongguang Emperor Zhu Yousong and the Yongli Emperor Zhu Yourong.
In the gradual defeat of The Southern Ming against the Qing Dynasty, they used their indomitability to finally earn some face for the Southern Ming.
Zhu Yujian was the Longwu Emperor, who was taken to Fujian by Zheng Zhilong and Huang Daozhou after the collapse of the Hongguang regime in the Southern Ming Dynasty, and succeeded to the throne in Fujian.
Judging from the historical data currently disclosed, this Longwu Emperor, the Hongguang Emperor before him, and the Yongli Emperor after him were somewhat different.
His talent and backbone were far superior to those two, including the successive Emperors of the Jianguo Sect, and none of them could match the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian.
In the evaluation of Zhu Yujian by later generations, he also had a mostly recognized attitude, believing that he was the most Zhongxing Emperor of the Southern Ming.
But his biggest weakness is as commented in the "History of Ming": "The power is in the Zheng clan, and it cannot do anything."
He ascended the throne in Fujian, the whole of Fujian was Zheng Zhilong's territory, and the Longwu regime could only be a puppet regime from the beginning.
Zhu Yujian had the heart to rejuvenate Nanming and also had the heart to organize resistance to the Qing, but he had no soldiers, no grain, no money, and could not do anything.
As a result, all he had left was backbone.
In the second year of Longwu (1646 AD), because Zheng Zhilong was unwilling to resist the Qing, when the Qing army killed Fujian, and also intended to surrender to the Qing army, Zhu Yujian was forced to lead a few thousand miscellaneous soldiers temporarily recruited and forcibly sent out the Northern Expedition.
The destination of his Northern Expedition is said to have gone to Hunan, because the Ming Dynasty ministers He Tengjiao and Tuoba Yinxi, who were in charge of Hunan, were all insisting on resisting the Qing and recruiting the remnants of Li Zicheng's Dashun army, and the anti-Qing situation in that area far exceeded that of Fujian.
It is also said that it was to recover Jiangxi, and then to integrate the anti-Qing forces in Fujian, Liangguang, and Huguang in Jiangxi to oppose the Qing and restore the Ming Dynasty.
However, Zhu Yujian was unable to reach any of his destinations, because Zheng Zhilong surrendered and opened all defensive passages, and the Qing army was able to smoothly enter Fujian and intercept Zhu Yujian and his party in Tingzhou.
Zhu Yujian, who only had a few thousand miscellaneous soldiers, was obviously not an opponent of the Qing army, and Zhu Yujian was killed together with his wife Zeng Shi and his only son Zhu Linyuan (who was born less than two months ago).
After the death of the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian, Zhu Youluo (Yongli Emperor), who was originally in Guangdong, carried the banner of Southern Ming, and he first called himself a supervisor, but after learning that the Qing army was coming to Guangdong, he turned around and ran.
There was no way, the Ming ministers in Guangdong could only support Zhu Yujian, the brother of the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian, who did not escape, to succeed him as the overseer, and then before Zhu Yuluo, who escaped from Guangdong, became emperor, Zhu Yulei was proclaimed emperor in Guangzhou, and Zhu Yulei was the Shaowu Emperor.
A few days after Zhu Yulei (聿, 鐭都同 "玉") ascended the throne, Zhu Youluo, who had escaped from Guangdong, heard the news and immediately returned to Zhaoqing, and with the support of a group of supporters, Yu Zhaoqing proclaimed himself emperor as the Yongli Emperor.
That is to say, in just a few days, two emperors suddenly appeared in the Southern Ming, both in Guangdong.
From the perspective of the ming dynasty's imperial succession system, the Yongli Emperor Zhu Youluo was more qualified to be emperor than the Shaowu Emperor Zhu Yulei, but he abandoned Guangdong and fled before the Qing army entered Guangdong, and it seemed that he lost the hearts and minds of the people in Guangdong.
However, for the sake of the throne, the supporters of emperor Zhu Yulei of Shaowu and Zhu Youluo, the yongli emperor, could not care who was right and who was wrong, so before the Qing army entered Guangdong, the two emperors first started a civil war.
As a result, the civil war between them gave the Qing army an opportunity to march into Guangdong.
The Shaowu regime pulled the main army under its command to Zhaoqing to fight the Yongli regime, resulting in the emptiness of Guangzhou, and was captured by the Qing general Li Chengdong (a general of Gao Jiebu, one of the four towns in the north of the Southern Ming River, who participated in the "Ten Days of Yangzhou" and "Three Massacres of Jiading" with the Qing army, and then rebelled against the Qing and returned to Ming, and was surrounded and suppressed by the Qing army) with three hundred people, and the Shaowu Emperor Zhu Yulei was captured. Then he martyred himself, and he was emperor for only forty-one days.
When Zhu Yulei was proclaimed emperor, he made his brother Zhu Yuyi the King of Tang, and Zhu Yuyi fled from Guangzhou after the Qing army entered Guangzhou.
Originally, in order, he was able to inherit the throne of the Shaowu regime, but he did not compete with the Yongli regime for the throne (the Yongli Emperor ran to Guangxi after the Qing army entered Guangdong), but instead recognized the throne of the Yongli Emperor in the above table, preferring to continue to resist the Qing in Guangdong as the king of the clan.
Since then, Zhu Yuye has been insisting on resisting the Qing in Taishan Wencun (Wencun Town) in Guangdong, and in order to maintain the unity of the Southern Ming, he has also insisted on the Yongli regime as Zhengshuo.
Zhu Yuyi resisted the Qing for eleven years in the Wencun area, during which time he cooperated with Li Dingguo in attacking Guangdong and repelled many encirclements and suppressions by the Qing army.
In the twelfth year of the Southern Ming Dynasty (1658 AD), Wencun was attacked by the Qing Dynasty's Pingnan King Shang Kexi, who was guarding Guangdong, and Zhu Yuyi martyred himself after the mountains and rivers were exhausted.
At this point, from the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian to the Shaowu Emperor Zhu Yulei, and then to the last Tang King Zhu Yuyi, the three brothers of the Tang King who fled to Jiangnan were all martyred.
Although they failed to save the Southern Ming and failed to restore the Ming Dynasty, the backbone of these three people was incomparable to that of the many Zhu clan kings of the Southern Ming who called the jianguo and the emperor.
Compared with the Hongguang Emperor Zhu Yousong abandoning Nanjing and fleeing, the Yongli Emperor Zhu fleeing to Burma by abandoning the state, and the Overseer King Zhu Changshu surrendering to the Qing army in Hangzhou, the three brothers of the Tang Dynasty had the courage to lead the Southern Ming dynasty against the Qing.
However, because the bloodline is relatively far away from the Chongzhen Emperor, according to the order of the imperial succession system, they cannot convince the public, otherwise, if any of them replaces the Yongli Emperor, the outcome of the Southern Ming may change dramatically.