In the eyes of everyone, the name of the hero will be the emperor's dependent and the object of the people's praise; and the person who has made great contributions to the establishment of the dynasty is even more famous in history. However, in the midst of the rolling river of history, there is such a great hero, his merits in fighting the country and mountains can be called the first, loyal to the emperor, but he is spit on by the people of the world, and even the emperor he serves looks down on him.
This miserable minister was named Hong Chengyu, who was born in Nan'an Yingdu, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, and studied very hard since he was a child; he set up a lofty ambition to govern the country and the world from an early age, and this grand ambition was greatly appreciated by his teacher Hong Qiyin, who commented that he was "a family of thousands of horses, and the country is full of stones."
In the forty-fourth year of the Wanli Calendar (1616), Hong Chengyu went to Beijing to participate in the examination, and Lian Jiedenke, the fourteenth place in the second division of the Examination of the Yingchen Branch Temple, was born as a jinshi, and from then on he began his career.
First, there is merit in suppressing Kou
In the second year of Chongzhen (1629), a large-scale peasant uprising broke out for various reasons. In order to suppress the uprising, the imperial court sent Yang He, the governor of Shaanxi at the time, to implement the strategy of "suppressing and giving care to the main one", but it did not work. In the second year of Chongzhen (1629), the leaders of the peasant army Wang Zuohang and Miao Mei led troops to attack Hancheng. At this time, Yang He did not have any generals in his hands that could be appointed, and in a hurry, Yang He sent Hong Chengzu, who was still participating in politics at that time, to lead the army to fight. Unexpectedly, Hong Chengzu actually killed three hundred enemy soldiers and lifted the siege of Hancheng, which was a famous battle for Hong Chengzu.
After this war, Hong Chengzu was valued by the Chongzhen Emperor. In the following years, Hong Chengzu defeated the armies of Wang Zuogui, Zhang Xianzhong and others, and gradually became the mainstay of the Ming Dynasty's resistance to the peasant army.
However, after all, Hong Chengyu is not a god of war, and he will not only win battles without defeat in his life. In the Battle of Songjin, Hong Chengyu originally fought to adopt a strategy of fighting and defending, under this operational policy, the Ming Army took the battalion step by step, but the DPRK did not support his way of fighting. The Bingbu Shangshu Chen Xinjia promoted the war, and the Chongzhen Emperor also hoped that Hong Chengyu could make a quick decision. In August of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641), Emperor Taiji learned that Hong Chengzu's reinforcements had arrived, so he personally led a large army from Shengjing to garrison Songshan and Xingshan, and deployed the large army to the south of the Ming army, and the large army of Zilharang attacked the outer city of Jinzhou, in order to cut off the connection between the Ming army of Song and Xing, cut off the food route of the Ming army, and cut off the return route of Hong Chengyu. Forced by this, Hong Chengzu advocated a decisive battle, while the commanders-in-chief of various departments advocated retreating southward, and finally gathered to break through the mountain, but they were defeated.
2. Captured and surrendered
In January of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), Hong Chengzu heard that the reinforcements of the imperial court had arrived, and sent 6,000 horses out of the city to attack at night, but was defeated by the Qing army. After Matsuyama was besieged for half a year, the city ran out of food, and Matsuyama's deputy general Xia Chengde sent someone to tell the Qing army that he was willing to take his son as a hostage. In March, the city of Songshan was destroyed, Hong Chengyu was captured, and the general Cao Changjiao and other generals were killed.
After Hong Chengyu was captured, he went on hunger strike for several days, and no matter how much the Emperor Taiji sent people to persuade him, he refused to surrender, and the people sent by the Emperor Taiji to persuade him to surrender scolded the dog bloody head. However, Emperor Taiji still did not give up, and ordered the most favored official Shangshu Fan Wencheng to go to persuade him to surrender, and also accepted Fan Wencheng's suggestion, and cared for Hong Chengzuo very much. Once, when Emperor Taiji saw that Hong Chengzuo's clothes were thin, he immediately took off his mink fur and draped it on Hong Chengzuo's body.
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On the other hand, on the side of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court thought that Hong Chengzu had died in battle, and held a large number of mourning activities. The Chongzhen Emperor also personally thanked him: "Wenqing went on hunger strike for several days, breathing heavily, falling to the ground and dying, still blind. Death is heavier than Tarzan, and the intention turns into a long rainbow. How could he know that just when he was about to prepare to build an ancestral hall to commemorate him, the news of Hong Chengzu's surrender came from the enemy's side, and at this time, the Chongzhen Emperor was stunned, and the loyal subjects he trusted so much had done such a disgraceful and humiliating thing, and the common people were angry from it, smashed his statue fiercely, and never worshipped it again.
The court he was loyal to and the court he attacked treated themselves so differently that Hong Chengzu felt a chill in his heart and surrendered to Qing.
3. Effectiveness for the Qing
After Hong Chengyu surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Taiji ordered him to be subordinate to the Yellow Flag-encrusted Ox-Clad Cattle Record. However, Emperor Taiji's kindness to Hong Chengyu was only superficial, and in fact, he did not relax his guard against him. In the final taiji dynasty, in addition to consulting him on some military and political affairs, he did not give him any official positions.
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After Shunzhi succeeded to the throne, the Ming Dynasty was already on the verge of extinction. Dorgon led an army of 100,000 men to attack Ming, and Hong Chengzu offered him a plan: "Unexpectedly, from Jizhou and Miyun near Beijing, rush forward." After the Qing army entered Beijing, the Shunzhi Emperor attached great importance to Hong Chengzu, and appointed him as the Crown Prince Taibao, bingbu Shangshu and the right capital of the Capital Inspection Yuan, entered the Inner Courtyard to handle military affairs, and was awarded the secretary of the Academy, so Hong Chengzu became the first Han prime minister of the Qing Dynasty.
In the second year of Shunzhi (1645), the regent Dorgon believed that the world of the Qing Dynasty had been stabilized, so he issued a shaving order and forced the Han people to shave their hair. However, the shaving order made it very difficult for the Han people to accept, which made the Han people everywhere rise up one after another, and for a time the south set off a wave of anti-Qing and restoration. At this time, the Qing court sent Hong Chengzu to suppress these peasant uprisings, and Hong Chengzu's methods were very tough and he was killed if he did not obey, so a large-scale slaughter of the city broke out.
Hong Chengzu did make great contributions to the consolidation of the Qing dynasty's regime, but as a Han, he betrayed the Han regime and slaughtered the Han for the Manchu regime, which made the Han people very disgusted with him. However, not only the Han people looked down on him, but even the Qing Emperor looked down on him, and the Qianlong Emperor directly beat him into the "Biography of the Second Minister". Looking at the ups and downs of Hong Chengzu's life, we do not deny his ability, not even his loyalty, but he touched the reverse scales of the Han people for the sake of the Manchu regime, and he himself was jealous of the Manchus as a Han, which led to the embarrassing situation that he was a hero but did not please both sides.