Zhu Yousong is like Zhu Yousong (?) ~1646) was the grandson of Emperor Mingshen Zhu Yijun and the cousin of Emperor Mingxi Zhu Youxiao, who was known as Emperor Hongguang of Yuan, known as Emperor Hongguang, and was the first emperor of the Southern Ming regime in history.
Zhu Changxun, the father of Emperor Zhu Yousong, was the loser of the "battle for the origin of the country" during the Ming Dynasty. At that time, Emperor Mingshen favored Concubine Zheng Guifei and regarded her son Zhu Changxun as a pearl in his hand, plus she blew the wind all day by the pillow of Emperor Mingshenzong, which made him have the idea of abolishing Chang Li and making Zheng a noble concubine, while the mother of the eldest son Zhu Changluo was still a concubine. Not only that, after Zhu Changluo grew up, the Ming Shen Sect did not let him go to school for a long time. Soon, he came up with the idea of the three kings and crowned them together, and made all the princes kings in order to lower the status of his eldest son Zhu Changluo, but was blocked by the ministers led by the Donglin party and did not succeed. Later, on the issue of supporting the crown prince, the two sides competed fiercely, and the Donglin party members resolutely opposed the establishment of Zhu Changxun as the crown prince according to the principle of the feudal patriarchal system of "having a concubine and not having a concubine", so that it was delayed for more than ten years.
It was not until the twenty-eighth year of the Wanli Calendar (1600) that the eldest son, Zhu Changluo, was made crown prince by Emperor Mingshenzong, and Zhu Changxun was finally made the Prince of Luoyang in the twenty-ninth year of the Wanli Calendar (1601). According to historical records, Zhu Changxun's life was brutal and decaying, lascivious, and unscrupulous. In the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641), Li Zicheng led a peasant rebel army to attack Luoyang and kill Zhu Changxun, and the angry starving people once drank his blood. At the time of the destruction of Luoyang City, Zhu Yousong had the privilege of escaping out of the city and wandering into Jianghuai. In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643), he succeeded to the title of Prince of Fu. After the Qing soldiers entered the pass, under the escort of his own soldiers, he took refuge in Huai'an (淮安, in modern Huai'an County, Jiangsu Province).
In April of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng led a peasant rebel army to conquer Beijing and overthrow the Ming Dynasty. The news of the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian's hanging of Coal Mountain reached the south, and a group of Ming ministers gathered in Nanjing, not willing to let the regime perish, decided to support the Zhu family's royal family and rebuild the Ming Dynasty. Since none of Zhu Youjian's three sons had escaped from Beijing, the ministers had to choose only from among the princes of the domain, and the four surviving descendants of Emperor Shenzong at that time were Fu Wang, Hui Wang, Rui Wang, and Gui Wang, and the latter three were ma Shiying in the remote Guangxi and Sichuan provinces, and the only people close to Nanjing were Zhu Yousong, the Fu King, who had escaped from Henan, and Zhu Changxun, the nephew of the collateral clan, The King of Lu. After a fierce quarrel, Ruan Dacheng, the powerful eunuch in Nanjing, and Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, contacted the generals Huang Degong, Liu Liangzuo, Gao Jie, Liu Zeqing and other powerful factions, and decided to support Zhu Yousong, the Prince of Fu, as emperor.
On the first day of May, Zhu Yousong, the Prince of Fu, was welcomed into Nanjing by Ma Shiying and others. On the third day of the first month of May, Zhu Yousong was inaugurated as the superintendent of the state, and five people, including Shangshu Shi Kefa of the Nanjing Bingbu and Gao Hongtu of the Hubu Shangshu, Ma Shiying, the Governor of Fengyang, and Jiang Riguang and Wang Duo, the former ministers, were the members of the Grand Cabinet University, and at the same time divided the Ming army in Northern Jiangsu into four towns, with a total of 300,000 troops. On May 15, Zhu Yousong officially assumed the title of emperor and changed his name to Hongguang, so that the first regime of the Southern Ming Dynasty, the Hongguang regime, was established.
The absurd and unscrupulous masters should say that when Zhu Yousong was in power, he was at a time when internal and external troubles were deepening, and the monarchs and subordinates could have done something. At that time, the area controlled by the Hongguang regime of the Southern Ming Dynasty, from the south of the lower reaches of the Yellow River in the east to the south of the Yangtze River in Wuchang in the west, was also stronger in material resources, wealth, and manpower than in the areas controlled by the Qing court. But in fact, the Hongguang government and opposition not only did not cheer up because of the fall of the northern capital, but on the contrary, they far surpassed the Chongzhen period in corruption, infighting, and power struggle, so extreme corruption was very fragile.
Zhu Yousong, who was elevated to the throne of the emperor, did nothing politically, entrusting great power to Ma Shiying, Ruan Dacheng and other eunuchs, and at the same time, as the son of Zhu Changxun, the Prince of Fu, he had no psychological good feelings for the Donglin party members, and tried his best to exclude the Donglin party members headed by Shi Kefa, but he ignored the government and politics, and spent all day indulging in wine, eating, drinking, and having fun, and living a desolate life. According to historical records, when Zhu Yousong had just ascended to the throne of the emperor, in the name of "great marriage," he sent internal officials to select "ladies" in Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, and other places, while his traitors took the opportunity to do a great job of blessings, gather money, and take people's lives. "In the capital city, all the women's families, regardless of their age, sealed their doors, were released by gold, and cared for other rooms. The neighbor cries, but the profit is the plan. According to the "Jiashen Dynasty Chronicle", "The Chinese New Year's Eve of the Fu King was quietly unhappy, and it was urgent for all the officials to enter the meeting, and all the courtiers thought that the soldiers were defeated and fell, and they all looked up and apologized." Liang Jiu said: "Those who have not had time to worry about the north, those who are worried, there is no one who is good in the pear garden." It is intended to select a wide range of good families to fill the court, but the secretaries of state have already acted in the ears. The ministers said, "The ministers think that His Majesty is worried about the enemy and is worried about the emperor, but does this mean this?" ’”
In addition, in order to satisfy his lustful desires, Zhu Yousong also ordered the eunuch Tian Cheng to send people out of the city every night to catch shrimp and toads everywhere and prepare "toad crisp and charming" aphrodisiacs. Because Tian Cheng was afraid that the officers and soldiers guarding the city would not allow these people to go out of the city, he specially made a number of lanterns, and the lanterns were written with the words "Hunting Toads by Will." As soon as the officers and men guarding the city saw this lantern, they opened the city gate and released it. For this reason, the folk call Zhu Yousong "shrimp and toad tianzi".
In September of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), in order to seize the people's wealth, at the suggestion of the chancellor Ma Shiying, Zhu Yousong actually approved the "big sale of officials" in the government and the public, the specific method was to cancel the trial system of students who had lasted for hundreds of years) Xiucai) and change it to the amount of silver to determine the "rank". For a time, "students" gathered all over the world. More than a month later, he also ordered that all officials at the county level and above should compete with silver. As a result of the massive sale of officials, the bureaucracy was huge and redundant. At that time, folk songs in Nanjing were everywhere: "Zhongshu is everywhere, all supervise the streets, supervise disciplines like sheep, and officials are as cheap as dogs!" The new official was waiting for vacancy, and the old official wanted to consolidate his position, so he desperately paid bribes upwards, causing the people's resentment to boil. Zhang Dai, a contemporary, once scolded Zhu Yousong bitterly, saying: "Since the ancient subjugation of the country and the fall of the king, the one who has not surpassed me to promote the glory, the weakness of the Han Xiandi, the dementia of Liu Chan, and the absurdity of Yang Guang, merged into one person... It's really possible to set it up too! ”
At the time of the fall of the country, because Zhu Yousong did not attach importance to state affairs, stole peace, and was absurd, he was extremely partial to Ma Shiying, Ruan Dacheng and other eunuchs in the dynasty, and did not make preparations for defending the Qing army externally, which directly led to the rapid demise of the private light regime.
In the second year of Qing Shunzhi (1645), the so-called "three doubtful cases" arose in the stormy Hongguang small imperial court, namely the Great Compassion Case, the Prince Case, and the Tong Concubine Case. The first is the Great Compassion Case. Da Compassion is a monk, commonly known as Zhu, who was once recognized by Zhu Yousong as his own family. Because the Donglin party once wanted to make Zhu Changshu the Prince of Lu emperor, Zhu Yousong always guarded against him, fearing that he would seize his throne. King Lu believed in Buddhism, and when the monk of Great Compassion came to Nanjing, Zhu Yousong suspected that he had come to spy on King Lu, so he sent him to prison and sentenced him to death. The second was the case of the crown prince, where a young man who claimed to be Zhu Ciliang, the crown prince of the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian, came to Nanjing from the north. Zhu Yousong was also afraid that his throne would be taken away by him, so he hurriedly determined that he was a false prince and threw him into prison. Finally, there was the tong concubine case, when Li Zicheng attacked Luoyang, Zhu Yousong, who was then the son of the Prince of Fu, escaped and made a private pact with the zhou royal palace girl clan in Kaifeng, but now that the tong concubine Qianli was looking for a husband in Nanjing, he insisted on not admitting it, and threw him into prison and tortured him to death.
These three cases have caused a storm in the city and caused a series of chain reactions. In particular, the case of the prince hastened the demise of the Hongguang regime. Zuo Liangyu, who was guarding the upper reaches of Nanjing at that time, was pulled up by Hou Ke, a Member of the Donglin Party, and had a good relationship with the Donglin Party, and was suspicious of Ma, Ruan, and other eunuchs and the Hongguang Emperor, and the prince's case provided him with an excuse. At the same time, the Qing army led by Duo Duo, the Prince of Yu of the Qing Dynasty, after occupying Xi'an and defeating Li Zicheng's peasant rebel army, was sweeping through the Central Plains with a stormy momentum, directly attacking the north of the river, and entering the Huai River. At this time, Zhu Yousong, Ma Shiying and others ordered the Ming army of the Jiangbei defense line to return to the division to attack Zuo Liangyu, so that the Jiangbei defense line was wide open and there was no war and chaos.
In May of the second year of Qing Shunzhi (1645), Duo Duo, prince of Yu of the Qing Dynasty, led the Qing army to wash Yangzhou in blood and crossed the river to attack Nanjing. When the alarm sounded, Zhu Yousong was still drinking and having fun. He hurriedly packed his bags, took Aifei with him late at night on the 10th, secretly ran away from Tongji Gate, abandoned the city and fled to the army of Huang Degong, the defender of Wuhu. The next day, the Qing army chased after zhu yousong and Aifei into Huang Degong's boat. The two armies engaged in a water battle, Huang Degong was killed by a cold arrow, and the general Tian Wei took the opportunity to rebel, bound Zhu Yousong and his concubine, and sent him to the Qing army to ask for merit. On 25 May, he was escorted back to Nanjing. In September, he was escorted to Beijing. The following year, he was killed in Chai City, outside Beijing's Xuanwu Gate, ending his short and faint life.
![Rumor-busting: The body of King Fu of the Ming Dynasty was not eaten by Li Zicheng's rebel army into "Fulu wine"[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)