1. In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644 AD), Li Zicheng, the king of Chuang, entered Beijing, and in the flames inside and outside the city, Zhu Youzhen, the emperor of Chongzhen, saw that the general trend had gone, so he had to sigh in the palace and wander speechless.
On the night of the city break, Emperor Chongzhen sent the crown prince Zhu Cihong and several other sons away, and ordered the Empress of Zhou to hang herself, and stabbed the young daughter Princess Zhaoren to death, and slashed the eldest daughter Princess Changping.
In the early morning of the next day, Li Zicheng entered the inner city from the Zhangyi Gate, in a hurry, Emperor Chongzhen with more than a dozen eunuchs intended to flee, but was blocked by random arrows at the Donghua Gate, and when he was in the Chaoyang Gate, Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chengguo, closed the door and fled to the Anding Gate but could not open, and finally had to return to the palace.
After the bell rang in the front hall to summon hundreds of officials to no avail, Emperor Chongzhen gave up all hopes, and finally, accompanied by the eunuch Wang Chengen, stumbled to the top of the coal mountain (Jingshan), hanged himself, at the age of 34, the Ming Dynasty continued the country for two hundred and seventy-seven years, and it ended.
After the death of Emperor Chongzhen, Wang Chengen bowed three times to Zhu Youzhen's body, and then, on a tree next to him, he chose to hang himself like Zhu Youzhen.
2. Throughout the Ming Dynasty, there are really a lot of famous eunuchs, and in the distance, there is Wang Zhen when Ming Yingzong Zhu Qizhen, and Liu Jin is closer, and Wei Zhongxian is even closer.
On the other hand, Wang Chengen, in history, he did not appear as powerful as Wei Zhongxian and others, during his lifetime, the highest position was the official to the eunuch of the ceremonial supervisor Bingbi, even so, he did not control the government, but in the end it was this loyal old eunuch who accompanied Zhu Youzhen on the road.
Many years ago, Wang Chengen, who was still very young, was introduced to the Xinwang Mansion to serve the fifth son of Mingguangzong, and from the moment he stepped into the Xinwang Mansion, his fate was tightly tied to Zhu Youzhen, who was still the prince.
Wang Chengen is a native of Xingtai County, Shunde Prefecture (now Xingtai, Hebei), and he is also from a poor family.
At first, Wang Chengen was a subordinate of the great eunuch Cao Huachun, but because Wei Zhongxian was in power, Cao Huachun was relegated to Nanjing because he was implicated in a case, and Wang Chengen was placed under the management of Dongchang.
With the gradual growth of Zhu Youzhen, the king of letters, Wang Chengen was sent to the palace of the king of Xinchang by Dongchang, named to serve Zhu Youzhen, which was actually the eyeliner used by Dongchang to monitor Zhu Youzhen's actions, but as Wang Chengen and Zhu Youzhen got along for a long time, the relationship between the two became deeper and deeper, and Wang Chengen gradually became more and more loyal to Zhu Youzhen.
In August of the seventh year of the Apocalypse (A.D. 1627), Ming Xizong Zhu died by school, because he had no heirs, therefore, according to the ancestral law of "brother to brother and", King Zhu Youzhen inherited the throne in the same year, it was for Ming Sizong, the year name Chongzhen, that year, he was seventeen years old.
3. After Emperor Chongzhen ascended the throne, he first recalled Cao Huachun, who was still in Nanjing, and entrusted him with important tasks, and at the same time, Wang Chengen, who had followed him for many years, also became one of the people that Emperor Chongzhen trusted very much, and his status rose.
During this period, Wang Chengen's alertness and thoughtfulness made Cao Huachun and Emperor Chongzhen very praised, and at the same time, he was extremely low-key, treating the princes and ministers and the people inside and outside the palace with respect, which won him a lot of praise, which also laid a solid foundation for him to succeed Cao Huachun in the future.
Therefore, in the twelfth year of Chongzhen (1639 AD), Cao Huachun recommended Wang Chengen to Emperor Chongzhen to take over as the eunuch of Sili Bingbi before returning to his hometown, and obtained the consent of Emperor Chongzhen, and at the same time, Emperor Chongzhen also appointed Wang Chengen as the governor of Dongchang.
The reason why this position is so powerful is that in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, especially the Emperor of the Apocalypse and Emperor Chongzhen had great trust in the eunuchs, coupled with Emperor Chongzhen's distrust of the ministers, therefore, after eradicating Wei Zhongxian, Emperor Chongzhen still could not get rid of the road of reusing eunuchs, but chose Wang Chengen, who he trusted.
At this time, the Ming Dynasty was already in decline, and the country was dying, although Emperor Chongzhen was a more diligent king, but he still failed to stop the Ming Dynasty from going downhill.
Houjin continued to invade, Li Zicheng got closer and closer, making the internal and external troubles of the Ming Dynasty crumbling, and a few faint moves made by Emperor Chongzhen pushed the Ming Dynasty closer to the abyss.
first killed Yuan Chonghuan, and then because he was found out because he secretly negotiated peace with Houjin, he killed Chen Xinjia, the secretary of the military department, because of his face, and in the Chongzhen Dynasty, he changed 14 military department secretaries before and after, and none of them ended well.
And the cabinet changed 54 like flowers, which also happened during the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, this kind of operation can be described as rare in ancient and modern times.
During this period, Zhu Youzhen can be said to have a very low degree of trust in anyone, and he suspected that they had ulterior motives, so he had to do everything big and small, but he tossed so blindly, but he accelerated the demise of the Ming Dynasty.
However, he had unconditional trust in Wang Chengen, which was the main reason why Wang Chengen was later put in charge of the city defense affairs of Beijing.
4, a series of operations of Emperor Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty finally waited for the moment of destruction, in January of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng was proclaimed emperor in Xi'an, and then all the way to Datong, Xuanfu and other places, and in March of that year, smoothly hit the city of Beijing.
After the soldiers arrived in Beijing, Li Zicheng had asked Zhu Youzhen to negotiate peace, asking him to be named the king of Shaanxi, and the imperial court allocated three million silver taels of military expenses as a reward, if Emperor Chongzhen agreed, he would retreat to Henan, and assist the Ming army to eliminate the "Jianyu".
But this condition was rejected by the stubborn Emperor Chongzhen, and finally, on March 17, Li Zicheng launched an attack on the city of Beijing.
On March 18, Li Zicheng personally commanded the siege of the city, and Wang Chengen was entrusted with the "important task" by Emperor Chongzhen, so that he was responsible for supervising the defense of Beijing, but most of the soldiers defending the city at that time had fled, and few were still on the city wall, while Li Zicheng's troops drove the ladder and began to attack Xizhimen, Pingzemen and Deshengmen.
"Li Zicheng committed a crime, and the emperor ordered Chengen to supervise the Beijing camp. At that time, the situation had gone, there were few guards in the city, and the thieves set up flying ladders to attack the three gates of Xizhi, Pingze, and Desheng. --- "History of the Ming Dynasty"
To say that Wang Chengen was indeed loyal to Emperor Chongzhen, even though the situation was unfavorable, he still personally commanded the battle, and also took the lead, commanding the artillery to kill several enemy soldiers who climbed the wall.
At the same time, while he fought bravely against the enemy, other officers and soldiers were derelict in their duties, so in the end, the city wall fell.
"Seeing the thief's wall, he hurriedly bombarded it, killing several people in a row, and Zhu Jue vented freely...... At night, the inner city fell into the "---History of the Ming Dynasty"
After the fall of the city, Emperor Chongzhen tried to escape, but as mentioned above, ran a few doors, either guarded by enemy troops, or could not be opened, the most hateful, as the Ming Dynasty Chengguo Duke Zhu Chunchen, actually closed the door, let Emperor Chongzhen's desire to escape be shattered.
During this period, it was Wang Chengen who had been waiting by Emperor Chongzhen's side, he did not run away like others, but accompanied Emperor Chongzhen to run back and forth, and finally, after breaking through the hopeless, he accompanied Emperor Chongzhen back to the palace.
In the early morning of the next day, most of the inner city had fallen, and Emperor Chongzhen knew that the general trend had gone, so he placed the prince properly, and then stabbed the queen, concubines, princesses and others to death, and then, together with Wang Chengen, came to the coal mountain.
Looking at the continuous fires in the Forbidden City, as well as the cries one after another, Emperor Chongzhen was sad and said, "The ministers are mistaken!", and then he was sent to his feet and hanged himself from a tree with a crooked neck.
And Wang Chengen, who had been guarding the side, saw that the emperor was dead, and bowed three times and nine times to Emperor Chongzhen, and then hanged himself not far away.
"The emperor collapsed in the Shouhuang Pavilion, and Cheng'en hanged himself. --- "History of the Ming Dynasty"
Since then, this huge empire established by Zhu Yuanzhang has come to an end after 277 years.
The self-hanged Emperor Chongzhen and Wang Chengen were not discovered until three days later, but because of his feat of loyalty and martyrdom, he became the only eunuch in the history of the Ming Dynasty who could accompany the burial of the imperial tomb.
5. In September 1644, Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing Dynasty Aixinjue Luo Fulin entered Beijing from Zhengyangmen and officially moved the capital to Beijing, and Shunzhi also became the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty to enter the customs.
Before Emperor Shunzhi arrived in Beijing, Prince Rui Dolgon took the first step to deal with the government in the Wuying Palace, for the posthumous affairs of Emperor Chongzhen, Dolgon had ordered that Emperor Chongzhen mourn in accordance with the imperial rites, and at the same time, in accordance with the corresponding regulations, according to the rites of the Empress Zhou and other concubines were buried one by one.
In the second year of Shunzhi, Emperor Shunzhi, who had been in the customs for more than a year, specially issued an edict to allocate 60 acres of land to bury the eunuch Wang Chengen, who was martyred for the country, next to the mausoleum of Emperor Chongzhen.
"This dynasty gave sixty acres of land, built an ancestral hall and erected a monument to its loyalty, and buried the side of the old lord's mausoleum. ”
In the Kangxi period, Emperor Kangxi also re-erected a monument for Wang Chengen's tomb, so that he would always be "guarded" by the side of the deceased.
After all, when the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, the banner was "to uphold the mandate of heaven and hang the people to fight crimes", and Wang Chengen, who was martyred, was the best object that could be used for propaganda.
But in any case, Wang Chengen is also a well-deserved death, compared to Liu Jin, Wei Zhongxian and others, Wang Chengen's death, it seems more heroic, in the Ming Dynasty when it was in danger, countless soldiers "unloaded", only he stepped forward, waited by Emperor Chongzhen's side, and died to Mingzhi, which can be called heroic.
Therefore, we are now in the Ming Ming Tombs, in addition to the tombs of the thirteen Ming Dynasty emperors, there is also a mausoleum of eunuchs, which is exactly where Wang Chengen, who was martyred, was buried.