When Chongzhen hanged himself on Coal Mountain with great resentment, no one in the vast southern region would think that the Ming Dynasty was so dead, because in Nanjing, there was still a complete set of administrative teams.
This backup system in Nanjing was made by Zhu Di in the Battle of Jing, originally the capital of the Ming Dynasty was in Nanjing, and as a result, after Zhu Di usurped power and seized the throne, he moved the capital to Nanjing, but he did not dare to completely abandon Nanjing, after all, Nanjing was the capital city under Zhu Yuanzhang.
So the Ming Dynasty had a two-capital system, and there was still a trap of administrative teams in Nanjing, so when Chongzhen died more than a month later, the imperial court in Nanjing finally had their emperor died.
Ma Shiying was politically opportunistic, leading the army to meet king Fu, a head fell, and from then on the Southern Ming court was born, and at this moment everyone felt that this court was very promising, not to mention the immediate restoration of the Central Plains, at least there was no problem in standing firm.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > "powerful" Nanming</h1>
The era name of the Southern Ming Court is Hongguang, because there are several Southern Ming court in the back, so this court is called the Hongguang regime, and at the beginning of the establishment of the Hongguang regime, everything looked so beautiful.
After all, the Hongguang regime at that time controlled a large area of land south of the Huai River, which was the most developed place of the Ming Dynasty, which was originally a tax area of the imperial court, and now there was no need to move to the north to pay taxes.
Moreover, chongzhen dynasty fought with Li Zicheng and followed the later Jin dynasty, and the war did not affect the south, and the economic and political culture here was still prosperous and rich, and it was not affected by the war.
At this time, Li Zicheng was defeated, and Houjin only occupied Beijing and the surrounding areas, and there was a large vacuum in the middle that was unoccupied.
The Southern Ming Dynasty was even more powerful in terms of military strength, and at the beginning of the establishment of the imperial court, the four towns in Jiangbei were established according to the suggestions of Shangshu Shi Kefa of the Bingbu, and there were ladders and levels of defense against the Jin army, which was temporarily defended first and later in order to move north.
The generals of the four towns were Liu Zeqing, Gao Jie, Liu Liangzuo, and Huang Degong, who were stationed in Huai'an, Sizhou, Linhuai (Fengyang), and Luzhou (Hefei), forming a fan-shaped defense system, with Shi Kefa in the center of Yangzhou overseeing the division.
Although we later learned that Nanming lost miserably, it did not mean that the design of the original four towns was problematic, and this arrangement can be said to be very orderly, and it was completely perfect at that time.
The combined strength of the four towns is at least a million people, and most of them are battle-hardened warriors, and their generals are not mediocre.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > four town generals</h1>
First of all, a general of the four towns, Liu Zeqing, a native of Cao County, Shandong, was the commander-in-chief of Shandong at the time, and when Beijing fell, this person led his troops to flee to the south.
Gao Jie, Mi Zhiren, Li Zicheng's compatriot, is also the elder brother of Li Zicheng's uprising, Chongzhen surrendered to the government army in eight years, he surrendered not greedily and feared death, on the contrary, because he was too brave and bold, he abducted Li Zicheng's concubine, this is a figure who is licking blood with a knife edge, very brave, and sometimes known as Lü Buyou.
Liu Liangzuo, a native of Hebei, was a former governor of Caoyun and a subordinate of Zhu Dadian, the governor of the four provinces of Lu, Feng, Huai, and Yang, unlike Liu Zeqing and Gao Jie, who had retreated from the north, and he was a general stationed in the local area, who had been fighting between Jianghuai and Huai in recent years, and had been fighting between Jianghuai and Huai, with officers to general soldiers.
Huang Degong, a native of Kaiyuan, whose ancestral home was Hefei, was the most accomplished in the four towns, and Chongzhen almost captured Zhang Xianzhong in Tongcheng in the sixteenth year, and was also a fierce general.
Except for Liu Zeqing, who was a little bit worse than Liu Zeqing, the other three people were all honed from the battlefield in a down-to-earth manner, especially Gao Jie, who was from the peasant army and was now in the imperial court, which was the tactics of the rebel army and the tactics of the officers and soldiers.
If this was only a purely military arrangement, the deployment of the four towns was indeed impeccable, but the war was a comprehensive quality consideration, and these four towns also had a term called warlord at that time.
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, in the face of the peasant rebel army and the liaodong war situation, a large number of excellent military generals were born, and the perennial conquest had caused the country to wither, but at the same time, it also cultivated generals who were good at fighting.
This may be a good thing in peacetime, but in times of national crisis, it is a double-edged sword, these military generals each support their own troops, they have hundreds of thousands of troops, and many times the imperial court can only turn a blind eye when employing people.
By the time the Southern Ming court was established, these two armies from the north, plus the two that already existed, the meaning of the imperial court and Shi Kefa was to grant them great power, which was already difficult to restrain, so they simply let go and let them develop on their own.
At that time, the practice was that the defensive areas of these four towns were completely under their own management, and the civil affairs of the taxation army were all entrusted to them with full authority, and in the future, the counterattack on the Central Plains and the places they laid down were also under their management.
This is obviously the reappearance of the fanzhen at the end of the Tang Dynasty, when the situation of the Southern Ming was that even if there were fanzhen in the future, at least the banner of the imperial court was still there, and in the face of such a big temptation, the imperial court thought that these generals would definitely kill the enemy bravely and strive to protect their own interests from loss.
Given such a high position, and such a big option, but no one expected that these people were like crazy, completely out of control, even if there is a person like Shi Kefa sitting in Yangzhou, it can not stop all kinds of infighting in these four towns, once the warlord this devil is released, no one can take it back.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > infighting in the four towns</h1>
The essence of the warlords is to lose their original rule, unable to gain support through normal order, and once formed they have only one purpose, to preserve themselves and expand their strength, and the rest is left alone.
And these originally low-ranking military generals, once they broke free from the original shackles, they would be completely unrestrained and would not pay attention to the imperial court at all.
They did not despise the imperial court, they despised everyone, these military generals were rough people, low level of education, reckless, the Ming Dynasty's long-term policy of emphasizing literature and light military force, at this time the evil consequences finally appeared.
How low is the status of the ming dynasty military generals, - the military ministers see the civilian subjects, although the other party's rank is much lower than their own, they must also go in the most solemn way, speed up their pace forward, perform the greeting ceremony, to show their humility, cast their names and posts to call themselves "lackeys", and retire to the civilian officials' servants as brothers and brothers.
This deliberate suppression, the imperial court only regarded them as thoughtless eagle dogs, but now suddenly, they seemed to be free, but the price after freedom was disastrous.
Taking Huang Degong as an example, his encounter can best explain that the martial generals at that time were a strange group, Huang Degong was a person, he was definitely not a bad person, but he and Gao Jie just didn't deal with each other.
Where there are people, there are disputes, the disputes of the literati are mutual scolding wars, the disputes of the military generals are really wars, and there are many things between Huang Degong and Gao Jie, but to put it bluntly, it is difficult to distinguish between right and wrong.
The only "Northern Expedition" of the Southern Ming Court was Gao Jie, who had a good relationship with Shi Kefa, who used his personality charm to impress him, so he finally decided to take the initiative to cross the Yellow River to fight.
This matter is also a mess, Gao Jie is a Lü Bu-style figure, there is no one in sight, but this time in order to show his determination to the Northern Expedition, he is willing to abandon his previous suspicions with a person named Xu Dingguo, when Gao Jie only brought a small number of people into Suizhou.
This Xu Dingguo was really blind to this name, and that night he set up a banquet to entertain Gao Jie, but he did not expect to suddenly lay black hands and kill Gao Jie, crossed the Yellow River overnight, took some people and horses to defect to the Qing Dynasty, and turned his head to become the vanguard of the south.
Shi Kefa heard the news, rushed to Xuzhou overnight, and made Gao Jie's son the son of the son, so that the army was stabilized again, the matter had just stopped, and suddenly the news came that Huang Degong joined forces with Liu Zeqing to seize Yangzhou, where Gao Jie's family was located.
Gao Jiebu of Xuzhou was shocked to hear the news, the general Li Chengdong and others pulled out of the camp, Shi Kefa was caught off guard, the river defense was empty in an instant, the Qing army easily crossed the river, if it were not for Huang Degong's death in the end to protect the Hongguang Emperor, you have reason to suspect that he would have surrendered to the Qing Dynasty long ago.
At such a fragile and chaotic moment, why did Huang Degong attack Gao Jie's old lair, or for the sake of his previous grievances, and even he thought that he was a righteous act.
The status of the military generals is low, the learning is low, the official is regarded as a porcupine and a healthy dog, there is no slightest overall view, and the final outcome of the four towns in Jiangbei is basically the total annihilation of the army, and the defense system is useless.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="45" > the Nanming finale</h1>
Their ending is very lamentable, Gao Jie was killed by traitors, died in a confused way, Huang Degong was protecting the emperor, was shot through the throat by an arrow, Liu Zeqing surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, and later the Qing Dynasty felt that this person was capricious, so it executed him, and the same Liu Liangzuo also surrendered to the Qing Dynasty.
The end of the four towns is like this, basically no battle, all surrendered, except for the surprise that the eyeballs are going to fall out, I really don't know what mood to use to express this feeling.
The defense system of the four towns in Jiangbei was easily criticized, and Zuo Liangyu was also a great "merit", as a Hubei warlord, as a Ming Dynasty general, he threatened to attack Nanjing, which frightened Ma Shiying to quickly dispatch troops back to defense.
Later, he fell ill and died, and his son Zuo Menggeng led his troops to qing, which was also hundreds of thousands of troops who had experienced hundreds of thousands of battles, the army was finished, and Nanming was like this, from its establishment to its demise, it took only one year, the million-strong army was thousands of miles, the finance and taxes were sufficient, and it was over.
It can only be said that Nanming up and down, all have been rotten, military generals are only one side, the political aspect is even more unbearable, Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng do not dare anything except to get power and money, Nanming is the collapse of the whole system, can not prevent any effective resistance, the whole system when it is most necessary to stop, but can not do one thing.
At that time, there was a folk song: "The governor is like a dog, the officials walk all over the street, xianggong only loves money, the emperor eats wine", the imperial court is like this, centrifugal and detached, it is no wonder that the military generals and soldiers have all surrendered on a large scale.
The fall of Hongguang, the complete demise of the Ming Dynasty, which marked the complete demise, originally hoped to survive like the Southern Song Dynasty, you always laugh at the Southern Song Dynasty when it is not good, but you do not know that it is not easy to stabilize your position.