As we all know, compared with the mighty and mighty Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the death of the last emperor chongzhen at the end of the Ming Dynasty can be described as a humiliating death. He was not neglectful of state affairs, but on the contrary, he was a very diligent and good emperor. It was only because he listened to the words of the courtiers and made a misjudgment in the military field that he ended up with the end of the country. After Li Zicheng broke into the capital, the Chongzhen Emperor personally rang the bell to summon hundreds of officials, but none of them came, and finally hanged himself in a tree. At that time, the Ming Dynasty general Zuo Liangyu still had 800,000 troops in his hands, but he chose to refuse to support the Ming Dynasty and submit to the Qing Dynasty.
First of all, the first reason is that it is too late. When the capital of the Ming Dynasty was breached, Zuo Liangyu was in Hubei. Li Zicheng's army had a lot of cavalry, so their march was very fast, and they attacked Xuanfu in less than three months. At this time, the Chongzhen Emperor began to get nervous and hurriedly dispatched Wu Sangui and the entire northern army to rescue him. But by this time it was too late. Not long after, Li Zicheng led his army to the city of Beijing, and Shangshu, a soldier of the Ming Dynasty who was greedy for life and afraid of death, chose to open the door and surrender. The Chongzhen Emperor saw that the general trend had gone, so he had to choose to commit suicide.
Second, Zuo Liangyu's army was strong in the middle of nowhere, and did not have the determination and courage to face the enemy. Zuo Liangyu's 800,000 troops, which seemed to be many, were actually mostly old, weak, sick and disabled, as well as prisoners of war, and their actual combat effectiveness was not strong. Moreover, at this time, there were very few generals under the Chongzhen Emperor left. Seeing that the counterattack of the peasant army and the Qing army was becoming more and more intense, Zuo Liangyu was afraid that he had long lost his confidence and determination to pacify the Central Plains. And this team of external strengths and middle cadres also made him feel powerless.
Finally, there is a deeper reason, that is, when Zuo Liangyu led his army to garrison Shaanzhou, due to the deficit of the Ming Dynasty treasury for a long time, there was no grain payment, resulting in a rebellion in Xuchang. Zuo Liangyu's entire family was wiped out, leaving only one son, who was also involved in the war, to survive. At this time, Zuo Liangyu, from the head of a clan, suddenly changed into an empty lonely man behind him, and it was inevitable that he would blame the demise of the family on the inaction of the Ming Dynasty. And his military tendencies also changed significantly after this. Except for his only son, he didn't seem to care about anything, and sometimes even his son couldn't take care of it. The final attack on the Ming army was likely to be out of revenge.
However, patriotic blood never stopped flowing in Zuo Liangyu's body. After the Ming Dynasty really fell, Zuo Liangyu first wept at the former emperor, and then rejected the suggestions made by the major generals, saying that he must defend Wuchang and block the Manchu Qing. Unfortunately, at that time, the traitorous minister Ma Shiying and others deliberately suppressed Zuo Liangyu, forcing Zuo Liangyu to go east to Nanjing, and finally vomited blood on the way to death.