The monarch is not very dark, isolated and the stove is constant; the subjects are selfish, and there is little loyalty than the party and the public. - "The Edict of the Ascendant"
When it comes to the Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, many people will think of him as the king of the Ming Dynasty. Indeed, under the attack of li zicheng's army, the palace wall of Daming was breached, and the rule of the Ming Dynasty was ended.
However, many people only know it but do not know why, and they do not have a thorough understanding of the political situation at that time. In fact, before Li Zicheng supported the army and destroyed the Ming Dynasty, he had sent someone to discuss with Chongzhen the conditions for him to submit to himself.
He made it clear that as long as Chongzhen could accept the three conditions, he would give up his plan to destroy the Ming Dynasty and become a prince in peace and stability. However, Chongzhen did not accept Li Zicheng's conditions, but chose to commit suicide.
So, what exactly are Li Zicheng's conditions? Why did the Chongzhen Emperor prefer to commit suicide rather than accept his offer. Today, let's talk.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > Li Zicheng</h1>
Li Zicheng was born in the countryside, and his hometown is Lijia Station in Mizhi County. People here have lived by farming for generations, and this kind of life is also regarded as a safe way to deal with the world.
However, despite living in such an environment that advocates stability, Li Zicheng likes to dance knives and sticks since he was a child, and is keen on practicing martial arts, but reality does not give him the opportunity to become famous.
When Li Zicheng was young, his hometown was long in hunger and poverty, so he had long given cattle to landlords in exchange for the opportunity to have a full stomach. Once, because he could not repay a debt, he was even severely tortured by the officials.
Later, he was forced to have no way out, and eventually killed the lifter in anger and fled to the border to join the army. After that, Li Zicheng went farther and farther on the way to join the army, and he defected to many local governments before and after, such as Wang Zuo's peasant army and Zhang Cunmeng's army.
It was only the first few times that the people he had turned to accepted the court's offer, so Li Zicheng had to find another good place. At this time, his uncle Gao Yingxiang had his own army in Shanxi, so Li Zicheng went to his uncle.
At that time, he accompanied Gao Yingxiang in various places, leading the soldiers to birth and death, and escaped from danger many times. In the ninth year of Chongzhen, Gao Yingxiang was unfortunately defeated in the course of fighting the enemy, and he was also killed by Sun Chuanting.
Some of the remnants escaped death, and this group of people defected to Li Zicheng, who was fighting elsewhere, and supported Li Zicheng as the "King of Breaking". From this, Li Zicheng began his own rebellious life.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="12" > the Ming Dynasty accumulated shortcomings and was difficult to rebel, and Li Zicheng was under the city</h1>
Looking at the Ming Dynasty, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen was in power, because there were many drawbacks in the imperial court, so it made the Ming Dynasty difficult to return and precarious.
Taking the system of electing officials as an example, in the process of development in the Ming Dynasty, the imperial examination gradually formed a bad atmosphere of fraud and favoritism, especially in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, and even the selection of talents such as Yuanyuan and Bangyan became a profitable thing.
Such a thing greatly damaged the imperial examination system of the Ming Dynasty, and since the jinshi was obtained by relationship, it was even more difficult for the Hanmen disciples to have a head start. This move has also aggravated class contradictions, and the "party and government" have become more serious.
In addition to the above man-made disasters, during the Chongzhen administration, natural disasters in Shaanxi and Shanxi continued to occur, resulting in the continuous deterioration of peasant uprisings.
For this kind of natural disaster, the Chongzhen Emperor not only did not manage, but also in order to calm the foreign troubles (the Qing Dynasty), he wantonly levied taxes from the disaster-stricken people, and also called it "suffering our people for a year," the result of which was more than ten years.
From the above introduction, it can be seen that Li Zicheng, the king of Chuang, is trying to rebel, while the Chongzhen Emperor is harming his own people. As the saying goes, "There is more help for the Tao, and less help for the wrongdoers", without the support of the people, Daming and Chongzhen have only one way to perish.
When Li Zicheng led the army to attack one city after another, the Officials of the Ming Dynasty did nothing but open the city gates to meet Li Zicheng's army.
The people of the Ming Dynasty sided with Li Zicheng because of "if the Ming Dynasty ruled for a long time". What's more, tens of thousands of Ming army generals have defected to the king, the reason is that the salaries of these soldiers have been owed for a long time, and Li Zicheng can give them what they want.
In this way, in 1644, Li Zicheng led his troops to the city of Beijing. It is worth mentioning that before Li Zicheng launched a general offensive, he had proposed 3 conditions with the Chongzhen Emperor, and if the Chongzhen Emperor agreed, then he would immediately withdraw his army.
However, seeing Li Zicheng's conditions, the Chongzhen Emperor directly refused. As a result, Li Zicheng launched an all-out attack on the city of Beijing, and when the city was destroyed, the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide and the Ming Dynasty collapsed.
So the question is, judging from the situation at that time, Li Zicheng had already taken full advantage, so why did he put forward three conditions for retiring troops? What is even more strange is that Li Zicheng's conditions are what makes the Chongzhen Emperor prefer to die than agree.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > three conditions for Li Zicheng</h1>
Let's first look at the first question (Li Zicheng He proposed three conditions for retiring soldiers)! As the saying goes, the skinny camel is bigger than the horse, and although Li Zicheng has surrounded the city of Beijing, his situation is also very dangerous.
There are 150,000 Jinyi guards on the outside of Beijing, Zuo Liangyu's hundreds of thousands of troops are also walking on the road, and there are Manchu Qing Tartars outside Shanhaiguan.
In addition, as the capital of the Ming Dynasty, the walls of Beijing City were tall and strong, and it could not be attacked at all in a short period of time, and if it fell into a bitter battle, it would be extremely unfavorable to Li Zicheng, so he put forward three conditions to retreat and advance.
These three conditions were to cede a large tract of land in the northwest to him, to reward him with a million taels of silver, to be a vassal but not to be courted, and not to be commanded.
According to the "Supplementary Examination of the XiaoYi Chronicle", Li Zicheng put forward the following conditions: "Break into the people and strengthen the masses, negotiate to cut off the king in the northwest and reward the army with millions, and retreat to Henan... Since he was enthroned, he was willing to suppress the group within the imperial court, especially to help suppress the Liao Domain with strong troops. But not commandments and ears. ”
The first condition was to recognize that Li Zicheng's political status was legitimate, and he was equivalent to the princes of the Zhou Dynasty, dominating the northwest region and having autonomy.
The second condition was that Li Zicheng's military salary was already running out, so he wanted the Chongzhen Emperor to pay this money, which could not only weaken the national strength of the Ming Dynasty, but also reward his own three armies, killing two birds with one stone.
The third condition is even more outrageous, although Li Zicheng admits that he is a courtier of Daming, but he only enjoys the power of being a courtier, but does not fulfill the obligation of being a courtier, of course, this is also in line with his style of tyrant.
However, since Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty has always had the unspoken rule of "no peace, no indemnity, no land cutting, and no tribute", and chongzhen did not dare to violate this "ancestral precept".
In addition, during the Ming Dynasty Zhu Di period, The Yongle Emperor also put forward the phrase "the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country, and the king dies in the society", and Chongzhen did not dare to disobey it.
Thus there is the picture of "Chongzhen Ning would rather die than agree to Li Zicheng's conditions, and Li Zicheng began an all-out offensive in anger", the former perished, and the latter established the Dashun regime.
Perhaps at the time of the attack, Li Zicheng did not expect that it would be so smooth, and the hundreds of thousands of troops outside Beijing were motionless and watched from the sidelines, so that the king had no worries.
The defenders in Beijing, because of the plague, have long lost their combat effectiveness, although they sit on the strength of the city wall, but they still can't withstand the onslaught of the king, and they failed in just 2 days, and a generation of the Ming Dynasty died out...