Why did the Ming Dynasty perish? Zhu Zhiyu, the widow of the Ming Dynasty, explained the reason in his later years after fleeing to Japan

Qing Palace drama can be described as a regular on the TV screen, the last dynasty of China's feudal society, there are many folklore about it, I believe that the phrase "chong guan is angry and red", everyone is certainly not unfamiliar. It is said that the late Ming general Wu Sangui was angry because his beloved woman was captured by Li Chuang and led the Qing soldiers into the pass, and gave the great rivers and mountains of the Han people to the Manchus, which laid the foundation for the Qing Dynasty. But is that really the case? Is there only one reason for the ming dynasty and the rise of the Qing Dynasty, Wu Sangui?

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a famous scholar, seeing that the Ming Dynasty had exhausted its strength and there was no possibility of revival, he resolutely left his homeland and went into exile in Japan, during which he conducted a profound reflection on the reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and this person was Zhu Zhiyu.

He was originally a tribute student at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and he also sought to repay the imperial court for his meritorious name, but seeing that the late Ming Dynasty was corrupt and peasant uprisings were emerging in an endless stream, it looked like a scene of the fall of the end of the dynasty, and he knew that he was powerless to return to heaven, and he refused the call of the Chongzhen Emperor and planned to live in seclusion in the mountains.

However, I did not expect that in just a few years, the pattern of the world changed greatly, the king entered the capital, the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide, and then the Qing army entered the pass and took the Han people's Jiangshan. He deeply felt that he had the obligation to resist the Qing, so he actively threw himself into the great cause of resisting the Qing, and in order to resist the Qing court, he also planned to go to Japan or Vietnam to borrow troops to restore the Han family.

But later, as several anti-Qing forces were broken, the disheartened Zhu Zhiyu finally chose to go into exile in Japan, where he settled in Nagasaki and never returned to China.

During his time in Japan, he was respected by the Japanese shogunate for his profound knowledge, and many people came to listen to his lectures, many of whom asked questions about the causes of the turmoil at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

Zhu Zhiyu objectively reviewed the historical lessons of the Ming Dynasty, and at the age of 62, he wrote the article "Nine Narratives of the Central Plains", which summarized the reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty, made a detailed description of the corruption and degeneration that existed in the Ming Dynasty at that time, and explained why the people did not resist the invasion of foreign tribes and ignored the demise of the imperial court.

Because Zhu Zhiyu completed his writing in Japan, he was not interfered with by any external forces, and it can be said that this article is still in line with the attitude of seeking truth from facts.

Although many scholars have listed many martyrs when revising the history of the Ming Dynasty, and there are many feats of loyal martyrs who have sworn to death, in fact, in the various wars that lasted in the late Ming Dynasty, most of the people held a rather indifferent attitude. Zhu Zhiyu, as a party, made a detailed analysis and description of this phenomenon in the article.

First of all, the failure of the Ming Dynasty's policy, the end of the Ming Dynasty repeatedly appeared natural disasters, the peasants' lives were already miserable, but the official government not only did not have any disaster relief and other acts to appease the people, the Chongzhen Emperor insisted on opening the national treasury to allocate military salaries to fund the war between Liaodong and qing soldiers.

From the beginning of the Wanli Period, the people's taxes were quite heavy and never reduced, and although the Chongzhen Emperor said that he wanted to reform, he never reduced taxes. Although the imperial court has always been in a difficult situation of financial expenditure, the wealth of the elite has not decreased but has become more and more tired.

The reason why Li Chuang was able to have the support of a large number of people was because the policy of exempting the land and exempting the people from the land he proposed successfully bought the hearts of the people. When Li Chuang's rebels attacked King Fu and King Chu one after another, the wealth accumulated by these magnates was simply shocking, and the people found that these rulers had long been hopelessly corrupt.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, social contradictions intensified, and the people complained bitterly, for them, whether it was the Zhu Ming Dynasty or Li Chuang, it was just a change of person to collect grain, and they had long been numb and did not care.

The second is the corruption of the scholar class, these readers after the examination of meritorious names, not to consider how to be loyal to the king and love the country, to sympathize with the people, but to only want to climb the magnates, resulting in more and more contradictions between the officials and the people, the children of the clan oppress the people and arbitrariness, and finally abandoned by the people.

Zhu Zhiyu believes that the people are oppressed by the bureaucratic class and cannot survive, and there is no place to complain about grievances, and the horizontal and vertical are all a death, so they risk joining the liukou and may be able to gain a glimmer of life. It is precisely the centrifugal detachment of the scholar class, so when the Manchus entered the customs, although the Manchus only had hundreds of thousands of people, while the Han people had tens of millions, among these tens of millions of people, the strength of resistance was very little, for example, the twenty-four counties in Hebei can be said to be looking forward to the wind and surrendering, and there was no resistance at all.

The people already hated the corruption of the Ming Dynasty and were not willing to accept Li Chuang, so it was not difficult to understand that they adopted a policy of non-resistance to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, which had the same heart.

Zhu Zhiyu also pointed out that the Ming Dynasty died at the hands of the people, not the Manchu Qing, in other words, the Ming Dynasty began to disintegrate from within.

Frequent natural disasters and wars at the end of the Ming Dynasty made the people's lives miserable, and later Li Chuang, in the early days, could still put forward the slogan of free grain in the fields, but later also began to wantonly loot and slaughter the people, compared with the Ming Dynasty, it was not much better, at this time the Manchu Qing, although not an ideal choice, but fortunately in the end is the end of the war, at least can let the people live a peaceful life, so they can reluctantly accept, at least the days are better than before.

Although as early as the Mencius period, the idea of the people being precious was put forward, how many emperors could really take the suffering of the people as their responsibility?