In the early morning of March 19, 1644, the 33-year-old Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself from a crooked neck tree in the middle of the Coal Mountain. Before his death, the Chongzhen Emperor wrote a will:
"In the seventeen years since he ascended the throne, although he was a bandit and angry, all the ministers were mistaken, causing the rebels to directly attack the Capital Division. Death, faceless ancestors in the ground, to remove the crown, to cover the face. Let the thief split the corpse, and do not hurt the people. ”
The Chongzhen Emperor was emperor for 17 years. In 17 years, he did a terrible job in the art of emperorhood.
First, let's see what the Art of The Emperor refers to.
According to the view of Han Feizi, in general, the art of emperors includes 3 aspects. The first is to govern the people, so that the people can live and work in peace and contentment, and be rich and obedient; second, they must control officials, and let officials be diligent in government affairs and better serve the political power; third, they must work hard to consolidate their own power, cultivate their own virtue, and balance the political forces of all sides.
Secondly, let's look at the performance of the Chongzhen Emperor in these 3 aspects.
The first is to govern the people.
We have to admit that emperor Chongzhen's luck was really not good. Affected by the climate of Xiaoice Sichuan, since the year when the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, droughts, locusts, and floods have continued throughout the country, and various plagues have been prevalent, resulting in famine. In his 17 years on the throne, 14 years of disasters occurred.
In any dynasty, disaster relief was an unshirkable responsibility of the imperial court. The Chongzhen Emperor was indeed trying his best to provide disaster relief. But disaster relief requires money, where does the money come from? In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the finances were tight, and the Chongzhen Emperor "had difficulty cooking without rice" and could not come up with money to relieve the disaster.
However, the Chongzhen Emperor did not take money to relieve the disaster, but instead made a series of tricks.
Initially, he announced the abolition of the industrial and commercial tax as soon as he took office. The move pleased wealthy businessmen, but it cost the state treasury a large amount of revenue.
At that time, the Ming army was fighting against the Later Jin (Qing Dynasty) army in Liaodong. Later, the peasant rebel army rose and fell. In order to raise military salaries to resist and rebel against the peasant rebels, the Chongzhen Emperor made another trick and ordered that in addition to the normal taxes, additional revenues should be increased, such as Liao's salary, suppression salary, and training salary, and the "three salaries" were combined.
The combination of the two tricks is equivalent to "robbing the poor and helping the rich".
Although some commentators pointed out that the "three salaries" were 9 cents of silver per mu, which was less than 10 catties of rice according to the grain price at that time, this was nothing less than worse for the people who were already struggling in a state of hunger.
The worse effect of the "three salaries" was to send a signal to everyone: the imperial court did not care whether the common people were dead or alive. Is such a court still worth existing?
Therefore, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and others ascended to the top and called out, and the responders gathered.
The second is the driver.
How did the Chongzhen Emperor treat his ministers? Just 4 words: mean and unkind.
It is true that at the beginning of his succession, the Chongzhen Emperor used a large number of loyal generals and good generals to strike at the "castration party" represented by Wei Zhongxian, making the atmosphere inside and outside the imperial court a new one. However, the Chongzhen Emperor, out of a suspicious and suspicious character, while reusing loyal generals, was extremely distrustful of them. To this end, the Chongzhen Emperor frequently changed ministers. During his 17-year reign, he transferred 50 cabinet ministers and 17 criminal shangshu.
For the ministers who made mistakes, the Chongzhen Emperor was even more willing to kill the killer.
The Chongzhen Dynasty had 3 outstanding military talents: Yuan Chonghuan, Sun Chuanting, and Lu Xiangsheng. Their fate is not good. Yuan Chonghuan was sentenced to Ling Chi for "conspiracy to rebel"; Sun Chuanting was once dismissed from his post by the Chongzhen Emperor for the crime of "bullying" for three years; Lu Xiangsheng was too suspicious of the Chongzhen Emperor and was outnumbered in the absence of reinforcements, and died in Hebei.
According to statistics, the Chongzhen Emperor killed a total of 7 governors, 11 inspectors, and 7 bingbu Shangshu in 17 years.
The chongzhen emperor's harsh and unkind fate to his ministers was that no one was willing to give him his life, and he was like a commander of a light pole.
Therefore, in the spring of 1644, when Li Zicheng was suppressing the territory, the Chongzhen Emperor called on the ministers to donate money for military pay, and the ministers pretended to be deaf and dumb, as if they had not seen it. After Li Zicheng's army invaded Beijing, the Chongzhen Emperor was so anxious that he summoned his ministers to discuss countermeasures, but no one was willing to come to see him...
When the emperor comes to this point, it is also possible.
The third is Gong Self.
To be fair, the Chongzhen Emperor's personal conduct was qualified. After he took the throne, he was diligent and frugal, working overtime to approve documents, which was a common thing for him. In order to save money, the Chongzhen Emperor was reluctant to eat meat and ate with the empress. He is not a good woman, and there are only a few concubines in the palace.
The Chongzhen Emperor was tireless in learning, read a lot of books, and often participated in Daily lectures and sutra feasts. One day, when he was listening to a lecture by Shiwen Zhenmeng of Dongkaku University, he was too tired and put his feet on the table. When Wen Zhenmeng said of the sentence "It is disrespectful for the superior" in the Book of Shang, he looked at him. He immediately covered his robe sleeves and slowly lowered his feet.
The Chongzhen Emperor was also careful to consolidate his power.
When the Chongzhen Emperor became emperor at the age of 17, Wei Zhongxian was like a sun in the sky. On the one hand, the Chongzhen Emperor constantly rewarded Wei Zhongxian and others, and on the other hand, he tried to weaken Wei Zhongxian's power. When Wei Zhongxian's forces were eliminated one by one, the Chongzhen Emperor took the opportunity to clean up Wei Zhongxian, consolidate his rule, and stabilize the situation.
However, the Chongzhen Emperor only managed to consolidate his power and cultivate his own virtues, but he did not perform well in balancing the political forces of all sides.
Since the Wanli Emperor, the Ming Dynasty has been caught up in endless party strife, accumulating heavy burdens and difficult to return. In the Chongzhen Dynasty, it was still like this: "Each is what is, each is not what is wrong, the grievances are sought, and the ice and charcoal are at each other's throats." The Chongzhen Emperor could neither take effective measures to quell the party strife, nor could he let the party strife be used for himself. Eventually, as a result of the intensification of party strife, the Chongzhen Emperor himself lost the ability to control the internal and external situation, so that the building collapsed, ruining the Ming Dynasty for nearly 300 years.
[References: History of the Ming Dynasty, etc.]