Regarding Yuan Chonghuan's evaluation, there was a great controversy during the Ming Dynasty, and the evaluation was polarized, some people said that he was a great hero who could turn the tide, Chongzhen killed Yuan Chonghuan belonged to the self-destruction of the Great Wall, and some people said that Yuan Chonghuan collaborated with the enemy and betrayed the country, was a standard traitor, and deserved to be killed. However, in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, most of the ministers were wandering between gray, it was difficult to use good and bad words to generalize, plus the party at that time was the same, the party struggle was very fierce, so the Ming people who knew Yuan Chonghuan's situation the most were somewhat suspicious. Today, more than 400 years since Yuan Chonghuan, it is difficult to see the true appearance of the flowers on the other side, and many evaluations of Yuan Chonghuan in the literature are full of personal selfishness, so until now it is difficult to give Yuan Chonghuan a more recognized evaluation.
So, in the end, how to evaluate Yuan Chonghuan, traitor or anti-Qing hero, in fact, the Qing Dynasty's attitude towards Yuan Keli at the end of the Ming Dynasty has given a more accurate answer.
In the "History of Ming", Yuan Chonghuan was put on the altar, almost becoming the only Optimus Prime of the Ming Dynasty to resist the Qing, and was the great hero of the Ming Dynasty's anti-Qing Dynasty, leaving a strong and colorful stroke, Yuan Chonghuan was portrayed as the biggest enemy of the Emperor Taiji, the enemy he wanted to get rid of the most, Chongzhen killed him naturally self-destructive foundation, self-destruction of the way.
During the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court gave preferential treatment to Yuan Chonghuan's descendants, incorporated them into the Eight Banners, and became the "people on the top" at that time, and has always been favored. The Draft History of the Qing Dynasty records that when Qianlong ordered to find Yuan Chonghuan's descendants, the chancellor inquired and reported that "Fuming'a, Zi Zhi'an, Yuan Shi, Han Junzheng White BannerMan, Ming Bingbu Shangshu Chonghuan descendants." Chonghuan died, his family lived in Runing, he had a son Wenbi, served in the army, and was incorporated into the Ningguta Han Army. Five passes to Fuminga. ”
It can be said that the Qing Dynasty completely overthrew the official evaluation of the Ming Dynasty, and not only praised Yuan Chonghuan, but also "nurtured" Yuan Chonghuan's descendants, which can be called "how good it is", and it is better to treat a Ming Dynasty general who has caused huge losses to Later Jin than to repay this with virtue. It is reasonable to say that if the Qing Dynasty really attached importance to heroes and was open-minded, then it was necessary to describe other anti-Qing heroes in a colorful way. However, when the Qing Dynasty dealt with the problem of another anti-Qing hero, Yuan Keli, it was "how fierce to be fierce", and even to the point of madness, not only did there be no relevant records of Yuan Keli in the "History of Ming", but also his biographies and writings were banned and destroyed in a frenzied manner during the Qingxing "Literal Prison", and it was even more crazy during the Qianlong period, and the "Jiehuan Yuan Gongxing" about Yuan Keli and yue Fei's "Records of the Jingzhong Ancestral Hall of the King of Yue'e" in the Song Dynasty were simultaneously banned by the Qing court.
Yuan Chonghuan and Yuan Keli were both anti-Qing generals, so why did the Qing court treat the two of them with very different attitudes?
Yuan Keli was a genius of the Ming Dynasty, who could do a good job in any position, who was still upright for the official, who dared to ask for the people's life, who dared to sail a ship out to inspect Ryukyu when he was an official in Suzhou, who dared to disobey the Wanli Holy Will and behead the relatives of the emperor and the state who had broken the law when he inspected the Western City of Beijing as an official, and who had handled many cases impartially with the law, and was praised by all the people as "Yuan Qingtian". Yuan Keli's personality was naturally vulnerable to many attacks, and Wanli was deposed and returned to his hometown in his later years, but Taichang was reinstated after succeeding to the throne.
Taichang died shortly after succeeding to the throne, and Tianqi Zhu succeeded to the throne, due to the large number of Donglin party members at that time, he attacked the Jing party's Liaodong Jingluo Xiong Tingbi, causing Xiong Tingbi to step down, and the Donglin party member Yuan Yingtai acted as Liaodong Jingluo. However, Yuan Yingtai did not understand the military at all, and self-righteous chaos came and went, and a few months later Liaoyang, Shenyang, and Guangning fell one after another. At this time, Liaoshen and Guangning fell one after another, the whole Liao fell, everyone regarded Guanwai as a place of death, and hundreds of officials silenced themselves in an attempt to protect themselves, and Yuan Keli immediately made seven suggestions to the Emperor of the Heavenly Revelation after returning to Beijing, and the Emperor of the Heavenly Revelation adopted them all.
After Nurhaci occupied the Liaodong Peninsula and coastal islands, the threat to the Ming Dynasty became more and more serious, and the Denglai region in Shandong became more and more important. After that, the Apocalypse sent Yuan Keli to serve as the inspector of Deng Lai, during this three-year period, Yuan Keli promoted Mao Wenlong to start Dongjiang Town, using Qi Jiguang's method of "water army first learning land warfare", accumulating 4,000 warships and forming a marine division and land army of more than 50,000 people.
At the beginning of the third year of the Apocalypse, Yuan Keli took advantage of the Ming Dynasty's naval superiority and kept attacking Jin soldiers in lushun, Jinzhou, Fuzhou and other southern Liaoning regions; Yuan Keli "fought at night and took countless prisoners" in Fuzhou, and in Fuzhou and Lushun, he "burned the enemy camp Qiuhe with rockets, and was transparent all night, killing the heavens, and then Jin was defeated"; then he set up an ambush outside Fuzhou City, and after the defeat of the Jin army in the night three more fires, Houjin "threw away his equipment and cannons and ran away", which the history books called "setting up a town to come from this victory." In the same year, he also plotted against Nurhaci's in-laws Liu Aita, making Nurhaci jump like thunder. In the fourth year of the Apocalypse, Yuan Keli ordered the Ming army to set up an ambush at a dangerous pass outside Lushun City, and Shen Yourong led his sailors to wander between the coastal islands to make a surprise attack, and finally Hou Jin had no way to do anything, sent envoys to negotiate peace, and was beheaded by Zhang Panli, and Hou Jin was defeated and fled into the wilderness. In short, the history books record that Yuan Keli "every surprise soldier, a lot of prisoners", "riding the wind and setting fire to the cunning slaves gathered in the air, setting up ambushes and night battles and angry soldiers' camps", among the anti-Qing generals at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Yuan Keli killed many enemies and made outstanding military achievements.
Regarding the role of Yuan Keli, the zodiac at the end of the Ming Dynasty said on Monday: "The gong went to Deng Lai for not many years, and Deng Lai was defeated." Gong Yizhi ruled the division, blocked the key points, burned and stole grain, contacted the islands, and recovered Lushun, while the sea was quiet. More than ten years later, Korea fell. It is no exaggeration to say that Yuan Keli was there, Nurhaci was difficult to move, and he kept losing troops and breaking generals, Houjin was extremely difficult, Yuan Keli was not there, nurhaci was able to cross liaodong.
After reading Yuan Keli, let's take a look at Yuan Chonghuan. Yuan Chonghuan only had two great victories, namely the Ningyuan Great Victory and the Ningjin Great Victory, both of which were later Jin siege battles, the Battle of Ningyuan took place before Nurhaci's death, and the history books record that "Chonghuan ordered Min to stand up, send out Western cannons, and wound the troops outside the city", after which Nurhaci withdrew, and the Ningjin Great Victory occurred after Nurhaci's death, and the history books recorded that Huang Taiji "with the heat could not be overcome, and the soldiers were more damaged" and retreated, and destroyed the two cities of Linghe by the way. The legend that Yuan Chonghuan killed or seriously injured Nurhaci is actually pure nonsense, the Battle of Ningyuan broke out in February 1626, and Nurhaci died in August 1626, the cause of death was poisoning gangrene.
Compared with Yuan Keli, Yuan Chonghuan still had great problems, the most widely known being to negotiate peace with Emperor Taiji and kill Mao Wenlong. At the same time, in order to "unify power", Yuan Chonghuan killed Mao Wenlong, but killing Mao Wenlong without authorization was not the biggest crime, the biggest sin was that he failed to consider "how to play the combat effectiveness of Dongjiang Town without Mao Wenlong", and as a result, after killing Mao Wenlong, the Dongjiang Town army was distracted, and the Ming army could no longer threaten Hou Jin behind his back, which was equivalent to helping Hou Jin achieve a strategic victory, which should not be Yuan Chonghuan's subjective desire to help Hou Jin And it is probably a matter of Yuan Chonghuan's personal ability.
Obviously, Yuan Chonghuan's military achievements were not large, and the damage to Houjin was limited, far from being comparable to Yuan Keli, and yuan Keli's military merit was indisputably the first among the generals of the late Ming Dynasty. At the same time, Yuan Chonghuan was a traditional scholar, a student of Sun Chengzong, and the Liaodong Jingluo of the Ming Dynasty, and the benefits and reputation of defecting to Houjin could not be more than that of the Ming Dynasty, so he could not have helped Houjin's subjective will, but he and Mao Wenlong objectively helped Houjin, which should be related to Yuan Chonghuan's lack of personal ability. Generally speaking, Yuan Chonghuan's actions were more beneficial to Houjin, and Yuan Keli only destroyed Houjin without any help.
In summary, it can be seen that the reason why the Qing Dynasty's attitude toward Eryuan was diametrically opposed was that Yuan Keli let Houjin suffer heavy losses, and Houjin hated him to the bone and was afraid of him, but Yuan Keli was not as blemished as Mao Wenlong, and could desperately smear his deeds in the history books, and his deeds could not be smeared, so after seizing Jiangshan, he simply banned his deeds, at least in the mainstream discourse system to ban and destroy his history; and Yuan Chonghuan's actual losses to Houjin were not large, inversely proportional to his huge prestige, and even his behavior was objectively more favorable to Houjin. The hype for such a person not only shows the broad mind of the Qing court, but also reflects the so-called famous generals at the end of the Ming Dynasty, but also satirizes Chongzhen for having eyes and no pearls to destroy the Great Wall, which can be described as a lot of things. In the final analysis, the hype of Yuan Chonghuan has more political motives, and banning Yuan Keli is the real attitude of the Qing court towards anti-Qing heroes.
Comparing Yuan Keli's encounters, it is not difficult to reach such a conclusion, Yuan Chonghuan will not be a traitor, but he cannot be called a great hero, but should be an anti-Qing general with low eyesight and insufficient ability. Due to the vicissitudes of history, Yuan Chonghuan became famous, but from time to time there was a great hero Yuan Keli, but he was banned by the Qing court, so he "made The Shuzi famous".
References: "History of the Ming Dynasty", "Jiehuan Yuan Gongxing", "Records of the Ming Dynasty", "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", etc