Read the history of the Ming Dynasty and the Qing Dynasty, you will have a very strange feeling: The Southern Ming regime has countless times made people feel that they are about to win, but in the end, they failed without exception. The Qing government has countless times made people feel that they are about to collapse, but in the end, they have turned the risk into a barrage.
If this situation only happens once or twice, it can be explained by luck, but it happens again and again, which means that there must be a complete set of logic to support the failure of the Southern Ming Dynasty and the repeated failure of the Qing Dynasty. The root of this set of logic is the general logic of Chinese politics since Qin Shihuang : centralization.
People on the frontier
Qin Shihuang abolished the feudal and established counties, the central government confiscated most of the local power. Under normal circumstances, there is no possibility of local governments competing with the central government.
. Since all power belongs to the central government, the closer the distance is to the central government, the more resources you can obtain. The closeness here includes geographical distance and cultural identity. However, Nurhaci , a minority chief in the border area of the empire, was destined to be limited in achievements under the normal operation of the centralized system of the Ming Empire.
Nurhaci likes to read "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". When he first reads the Three Kingdoms, he may see heroic deeds, but if he reads the Three Kingdoms carefully, he can find out the power code contained in it: Once the centralization of an empire begins to decline, this process will be almost irreversible. Any ambitious "capable person" can bring together a team to establish a new centralization, and an important sign of the decline of centralization is the weakening of the central government's control over the border areas of the empire.
Eastern Han Dynasty regimes were unable to suppress the surrounding Xiongnu , Qiang people , and Wuhuan. Then the Yellow Turban Uprising , the world was in chaos and the heroes were in power. At this time, the control of the Ming Empire on Mongolia in the north and the Jurchens in the northeast (in fact, many people just named the Jurchens, but they were actually other ethnic groups) was also weakening.
When the control of centralization weakens, for ambitious people, being in the frontier may not be a disadvantage, but an advantage, because a longer distance means being controlled by the central government.
In this way, these ambitionists on the border of the empire can build their own power, and as long as they do not do too much, the empire rulers will turn a blind eye. During the Three Kingdoms period, there was a very magical existence called "vassals". "vassals" means the country in the country. The zombie is the vassal of Cao Cao and has its own power. Taishi Ci is the vassal of Sun Ce and has its own power. To put it in a big way, Yuan Shao , Cao Cao, Sun Jian , Dong Zhuo , which one is not a vassal of the Han Empire? They all used the name of the Han ministers, but in fact they were local emperors who held great military and political power.
Nurhaci annexed the Jurchen tribes, but as long as he still regarded himself as a minister of the Ming Dynasty, the Ming Empire would let it go, because killing him was time-consuming and labor-intensive.
warlord Li Chengliang
When it comes to Nurhaci's expansion, one person has to be mentioned: Li Chengliang, who has served as the general of Liaodong for a long time.
Nurhaci was made bigger under Li Chengliang's nose, so there has always been a saying that Li Chengliang "raising the enemy and respecting himself". This statement certainly makes sense, but if you say that Li Chengliang is a fool who harms the country and the people, then you can only say that you still don't understand the political pattern of the late Ming Dynasty: At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the court actually began to become a warlord, and to a certain extent, the Li Chengliang family was the Liaodong warlords.
"Bandit" is a key factor in the expansion of local warlords. In the late Eastern Han Dynasty, there were powerful people in various places, but they only dared to secretly engage in some private armed forces. No one dared to do the matter of public recruitment of troops. They had to wait until the Yellow Turban Rebellion and the Han Empire had to decentralize financial and military power before they dared to recruit soldiers with great fanfare.
Nurhaci was Li Chengliang's "gang" or just one of the "gangs". In the late Ming Dynasty, the relationship between the warlords and the Ming court had quietly changed from affiliation to a cooperative relationship. was the strength of the Ming court at that time. The quasi-warlord Li Chengliang dared not really break up with the court, but dared to do it secretly.
A dynasty comes to the end, two results will surely appear: , one is a financial collapse, the other is a decline in control , of course, these two are complementary, and the key to the decline in control is the decline in control junction. Once warlords reappear in a centralized empire, it almost marks the demise of this regime.
The difference between the late Han Dynasty and the late Ming Dynasty was only that the warlords made great contributions in the late Han Dynasty, while the warlords in the late Ming Dynasty secretly made many strange things happen. After the battle of North Korea, a group of Qi Family Army soldiers were lured and killed by the "Northern Army" because they asked for military pay. More than 2,000 Qi Family Army soldiers died under the swords of the comrades. Of course, in the eyes of those "Northern Army" who were fighting, they did not kill any comrades, but the people of another warlord.
As centralization is constantly weakened, the trend of local military warlordization will become more and more obvious. By the last few years of the Ming Empire, it can be described as warlords everywhere. After understanding this point, it is not difficult to understand why Zuo Liangyu held hundreds of thousands of troops and remained silent when he wanted Zuo Liangyu to return to Beijing to help Beijing that as long as the capital was rescued, their family would be allowed to lead troops in Hubei. This shows that even Emperor Chongzhen, who was particularly persistent in power, had to accept the fact that at the last moment, the Ming Empire had become a country where he was nominally governed by the emperor and various warlords, and his relationship with various warlords was no longer a subordinate relationship, but a cooperative relationship.
Nurhaci, a minority frontier warlord, jumped left and right in the process of the seemingly powerful Ming Empire completing the collapse of centralized power, but the Ming Empire was powerless. Although the Eight Banners system established by Nurhaci still has the shadow of the nomadic tribal system, Nurhaci, who has carefully studied the Han culture, is always building the centralized system .
Initially, Nurhaci maintained the unity of the Jurchen tribes under his command through his personal prestige, but despite this, the later Jin regime in the white mountains and black waters is hard to be called a complete centralized system of .
The most dangerous moment of the centralization of the Later Jin regime was when Nurhaci had just died and Huang Taiji had just succeeded to the throne. At that time, the military population in the hands of the princes of each banner were generally equivalent to personal property, but fortunately, Huang Taiji had more political and economic minds than his father Nurhaci. Through a series of reforms, he changed the Later Jin regime from fishing, hunting, and nomadic to half farming and semi-pesticism. The social nature of the Later Jin regime also transformed from semi-slavery to feudalism.
Why did China establish a centralized system more than 2,000 years ago? It is not because Qin Shihuang was so wise and powerful, but because the centralized system is really suitable for agricultural countries. It is difficult for countries with nomadic as the main economic activity to establish a stable centralized system. Even if it is established, it is a personal prestige that is also a ruler. Once the strong ruler is gone, the centralized system will become precarious. In an agricultural country, once the centralized system is established and its state machine begins to operate effectively, this system will continue for a long time.
Nurhaci used his personal ability and prestige to sow the seeds of centralization for his regime. His son Huang Taiji allowed the Later Jin regime to truly establish an effective centralization system from the perspective of economic and institutional.
Of course, it was not entirely natural for the Later Jin (Ming Qing) regime outside the pass to establish a centralized system. The Ming Empire did not successfully crack down again and again, and also became a booster for the Later Jin (Ming Qing) regime to establish a centralized system.
Although the Ming Empire is already corrupt, its size advantage is still there. If the Later Jin regime is not careful, it will be crushed to death by the huge Ming Empire. Therefore, the rulers of the Later Jin regime must try their best to concentrate all their strength to confront the Ming court. What system can concentrate its strength to the greatest extent? There is no doubt that there is centralization.
The Ming army's repeated battles outside the pass forced the Later Jin regime to carry out centralized reforms, and the increasingly corrupt Ming army suffered losses every time they went to the expedition, which was equivalent to constantly giving the Later Jin regime the opportunity to correct mistakes and improve the system.
Warlords fought melee
. While the Qing regime continued to strengthen and improve its centralized system, the centralization of the Ming Empire was accelerating its collapse. The collapse of the fiscal system of made it difficult for the court to spend enough money to support the army to suppress the uprising of peasants everywhere. Therefore, private armed forces and local warlords began to emerge. These forces were undoubtedly weakening the centralization of the Ming Empire. However, for the Ming Empire, which had already collapsed, not only could they not punish these quietly rising ambitious people, but they also had to try to use them.
pirate Zheng Zhilong was recruited by the Ming court after dominating the southeastern provinces. However, after recruiting, Zheng Zhilong was not left behind. He still held real power in the southeastern provinces. It is no exaggeration to say that Zheng Zhilong is a warlord, a thorough warlord. Therefore, the battle between the Qing soldiers entering the pass was not so much a battle between the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
After Emperor Chongzhen hanged Meishan, the actions of the Southern Ming Hongguang regime formed in Nanjing were to unite various warlords to fight against the Qing Dynasty. The four towns of Jiangbei, which were highly anticipated by the Hongguang regime, were actually the four warlords of Huang Degong, Liu Liangzuo, Gao Jie, and Liu Zeqing, and Liu Zeqing. The four warlords all had independent military power, recruitment and financial power. Their relationship with the Southern Ming court was only nominal recognition. The Southern Ming court had very little binding force on them, so there was a situation where three towns of Jiangbei surrender. After the four towns of Jiangbei were taken down, the Hongguang regime could hardly organize any large-scale resistance.
The completely different manifestations of the Qing Dynasty and the Southern Ming regime illustrate a cruel reality: once the centralized power begins to collapse, this process is difficult to reverse. In the process of the disintegration of centralized power, it not only fails to form a synergy, but also enters an endless internal consumption mode.
In the process of the Qing Dynasty and the Southern Ming Dynasty fighting for national control, there was a very strange phenomenon: Among the many Southern Ming regimes, the one that posed the greatest threat to the Qing Dynasty was the weakest on paper Yongli regime . Li Chengguo was famous for his two famous kings, and the world was shocked. Emperor Shunzhi even had the idea of placing a river with him.
Compared with the Hongguang regime that owns the entire southern China, the initial sphere of influence of the Yongli regime was only concentrated in the southwest corner, but the feats of the two famous kings only appeared in the Yongli regime. To understand this phenomenon, we must first analyze an eternal topic that runs through the historical period of the Ming and Qing dynasties: Infighting.
Different internal fighting
" Nanming History " The author Mr. Gu Cheng gave the evaluation of the Nanming regime: Intra-fighting will destroy the country, and the country will also be destroyed. The sentence is true at all. The history of the Southern Ming Dynasty, which is less than 20 years old, is a history of internal struggle, but at the same time, there was also internal struggle within the Qing regime, and even the cruelty of its internal struggle is quite high.
After Huang Taiji's death, Dorgon's party suppressed another auxiliary minister, Jirhalang, and brutally purged the Haoge faction, the eldest son of Huang Taiji. After Dorgon's death, Emperor Shunzhi and joined forces with Jirhalang and others to clean up the Dorgon faction. Since there were internal struggles in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, why did the Southern Ming collapse and the Qing Dynasty's combat effectiveness seem to have not been significantly affected?
If you carefully analyze the internal struggles in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, you will find that the internal struggles in the Qing Dynasty were internal struggles under centralization. After Huang Taiji's death, although the Dorgon faction and Haoge faction were divided into two groups in the court, the opinions of these two groups were unified on the issue of taking over the Central Plains. The decision to support Huang Taiji's youngest son Fulin as the emperor ensured that the regime had a unified center in name and in reality. Although the power center staged two purges of Haoge and Fulin of Dorgon, the central government's control over the local area was not weakened.
The internal struggle of the Southern Ming regime is different. Starting from the Hongguang regime, the emperor of Zhu surnamed became a decoration. The warlords of all parties are truly in power, but the embarrassing thing is that there are usually more than one of these warlords. These warlords all have their own complete system of leading, conscription and tax collection, which can be called a "small central government". The special situation of the Southern Ming regime has led to the fight between the warlords being completely out of control of the central government, and the internal struggle between them directly disintegrated the combat effectiveness of the Southern Ming regime.
In the context of the era when the central government of the Southern Ming Dynasty was in name only, the warlords that were temporarily pieced together could not be transformed into the effective combat power of the entire Southern Ming regime. The frequent internal struggles between them made the Nanjing regime not only not become stronger because of pieced together more warlords, but may weaken the overall strength due to the mutual struggle between the warlords.
The Hongguang regime, which nominally holds most of the country, is about to collapse in the confrontation between the Qing Dynasty, while the Yongli regime, which only occupies a corner of the southwest, performed outstandingly in the battle against the Qing Dynasty and even made a climax of the anti-Qing Dynasty.
Among these two regimes, Hongguang Emperor Zhu Yousong and Yongli Emperor Zhu Youlang have no real power, but there are too many factions of the Hongguang regime: the four towns in Jiangbei, the Donglin Party, Ma Shiying Ruan Dacheng, and Zuo Liangyu all want to take power, so they fight each other constantly and consume each other. Although there are many nominal forces, they cannot form a joint force, and they will even constrain each other and attack each other, and their strength becomes a negative number.
The Yongli regime initially had only one corner in the southeast, but its power was relatively single. The actual power of Sun Kewang , Li Dingguo and other people in power were all generals of the former Daxi regime. Even if they could not cooperate with each other at the beginning of the war, they could at least not fight in the internal struggle. Of course, as Li Dingguo continued to achieve military achievements and Sun Kewang's status was affected, this situation was also broken, and the internal struggle between Sun Li and the two completely ruined the last chance of the Southern Ming regime's turnaround.
Summary: The Qing Dynasty and the Southern Ming Dynasty both had internal struggles, but most of the internal struggles in the Qing Dynasty were limited to the center of power. The central government could still effectively exercise power over local governments, while the central government of the Southern Ming Dynasty had already died in name only. The emperor Zhu, who was promoted to the throne, was completely a puppet. The central government could not exercise power over local governments. The internal struggle between local governments allowed their own power to consume each other, and finally went to destruction.
So, it led to a question that has been circulating on the Internet for a long time: Since the internal struggle in the South Ming Dynasty was because the central government lost control of the local government, if Emperor Chongzhen moved the capital to Nanjing before the city of Beijing was broken, or sent the prince to Nanjing, could the Southern Ming Dynasty be as stable as the Southern Song Dynasty and gain a century of national destiny?
The empire’s twilight years
believes that if Chongzhen moved the capital in advance, the Southern Ming Dynasty would be able to enjoy a century of national destiny like the Southern Song Dynasty. People who ignored an important factor: time.
The Jin army conquered Northern Song capital Bianliang When the Northern Song Dynasty was founded in 167, and the Jin army conquered Bianliang itself had an unexpected element. The Western Route Army, which had the strongest combat effectiveness in the Northern Song Dynasty, had already begun to return to aid. Of course, the key to the problem is not who is stronger and who is weak, but the Western Route Army was still able to return to aid when it was besieged in the Northern Song Dynasty capital. This incident itself shows that the Northern Song regime still had control over the local area at that time. Later, when Yue Fei was in the Northern Expedition, Zhao Gou even if he tightened his belt, he had to ensure that the military pay of the Yue Family Army was provided by the court. Whoever paid the food pay was responsible to whom. This is the iron law of ancient military. Therefore, although Yue Family Army was led by Yue Fei , it was the army of the court after all, which proves from another aspect that the Southern Song Dynasty financed at that time did not completely collapse.
When Emperor Chongzhen hanged Coal Mountain, the Ming Empire had already enjoyed a national life of 276 years, which was very close to the 300-year limit of the ancient feudal dynasty in China. At this time, the Ming court's finances had long collapsed, and there were already many warlords everywhere. Emperor Chongzhen had the resources of the country but could only sit idly by and watch the situation get worse and worse. How could he expect him to only half of the country but his ability to turn the tide?
300 is the end of a feudal dynasty based on agriculture. No centralized feudal dynasty can truly break through this limitation. No matter how wise and powerful the rulers of a dynasty are, how diligent the officials are, and how brave and good the generals are, 300 years are enough to allow this empire to release all its vitality, exhaust all possibilities, and finally obediently towards destruction.
The demise of the Northern Song Dynasty was an emergency when its centralization could still play a role. Therefore, as long as Zhao Gou reorganized his regime in the south, he could still withstand the Jin army with the strong cohesion brought by centralization; and the demise of the Ming Dynasty was the inevitable result of the natural collapse of centralization after the complete life cycle of a feudal dynasty. Even if Chongzhen crossed south, he could not change the fate of the Ming Empire.
"The Art of War" says: Those who are good at fighting should first be invincible, and wait for the enemy to win. The invincible lies in themselves, and the enemy can win.
In the agricultural society, centralization is undoubtedly the most combative system. The establishment of a centralized system by the Qing Dynasty was to put itself in a "invincible" state, and the natural collapse of the centralized power of the Ming court was a process from "invincible" to "invincible". The Qing Dynasty first ensured that it could be in the separatist state, and then waited for the Ming Empire to give him the opportunity to win the world.
From this perspective, the Qing rulers were able to become the supreme rulers of the land of China from the hunting nations between the white mountains and the black waters in just a few decades. was not only because of their outstanding abilities, but also because they raised their swords at the last moment of the life cycle of the Ming Empire.
