The most diligent and tragic emperor of the Ming Dynasty-Chongzhen.
Chongzhen has always been controversial during his reign, and was sympathized by many people. They believed that the death of the Ming Dynasty at his hands was not his personal fault. Many people also believe that Chongzhen was a king who worked hard and accomplished a lot, but the emperors before Chongzhen were too inactive and accumulated too many incidents. During the Chongzhen period, everything broke out again, coupled with natural and man-made disasters in various places. As a result, the Ming Dynasty was declining, the building was about to collapse, and there was no way to recover. But this view is also very doubtful.
When the Qing army entered the customs , it was under the banner of revenge for Emperor Chongzhen. The Qing army tried to win over the hearts of the Han people through the people's respect for Emperor Chongzhen, so they asked historians to beautify Chongzhen in various ways. Then we can also look at how Chongzhen lost his country.
At the beginning of Chongzhen's accession to the throne, Chongzhen did indeed accomplish something, which was to eradicate the Wei Zhongxian eunuch group without any blood.
Chongzhen's actions at the time brought his prestige to its peak, and he was called "the sage." But apart from this incident, Chongzhen's other actions were lackluster. In fact, there are many doubts about Chongzhen's so-called efforts to govern. In fact, if we look deeper, Chongzhen only made some superficial remarks, but in fact he did not really govern the country.
What Chongzhen admired most was frugality. According to records, Chongzhen has always maintained the virtue of frugality since he ascended the throne. Wu Weiye, who was the editor of the Hanlin Academy at that time, recorded this: In the past, relatives or married princesses had to bring food on time to the monthly and quarterly ceremonial banquets in the harem. However, after Chongzhen ascended the throne and took power, a special edict was issued to prohibit this behavior.
Moreover, the clothes Chongzhen wore in the court were sometimes patched. It is said that the sleeves of the underwear he wore in the court were torn and unsightly when exposed, so Chongzhen had to tuck it in from time to time to cover it up. Sometimes, even his socks were sewn with cloth soles.
He often said: "I am calling for the world to return to simplicity from luxury. I want to let future generations know the difficulties. This matter should start from myself."
In the 16th year of Chongzhen, considering financial difficulties, Chongzhen also announced that his meal expenses would be reduced by half, concubines and other concubines would be reduced by 4/10, and palace ladies and eunuchs would be reduced by 3/10. A month later, he once again advocated frugality and opposed luxury. He set an example by himself. In addition to adhering to the previously announced "reduce meals and eliminate pleasures", he stipulated that only gold and silver utensils could be used for major festivals and tin utensils wood utensils and porcelain should be used in daily life, and he asked ministers to follow suit. He also emphasized that if you continue to turn a deaf ear and spend extravagantly in the future, you will be severely punished. Chongzhen also ordered that the harem ladies learn spinning techniques to make money in order to increase national fiscal revenue.
Looking at it this way, as an emperor, these things he did seem really touching. However, when we see another part of the facts, we have to have a deep question.
According to historical records, when the peasant uprising army Li Zicheng's army entered Beijing, they discovered that such a "frugal" emperor actually maintained more than 30,000 maids and concubines in the harem. At the same time, Chongzhen's private treasury (different from the national treasury) actually contained more than 30 million taels of silver and 1.5 million taels of gold. At that time, the national finance was already stretched to the point of being stretched. When Li Zicheng besieged Beijing, he needed 1 million taels of military expenses to transfer Shanhaiguan's Wu Sangui to Beijing to serve the king. The national finance could not afford it. Chongzhen, who was "frugal" on major national affairs, was even reluctant to spend his moldy silver. From this, I am afraid we have to raise a question mark about his "frugality".
In addition, many people think that Chongzhen was a diligent emperor. The so-called "diligent in government affairs and doing everything by hand". But behind his hands-on approach is his stubbornness, impatience and suspicion. After he eradicated Wei Zhongxian's eunuch group, because he did not trust the ministers, he re-appointed another group of eunuchs and let them exercise the power of supervising the army and admiring the capital camp. A large number of eunuchs were sent to various places to override local governors.What's more, he also sent eunuchs to manage the Household and Work Departments, and then put aside the Household and Work Department ministers. The final result of his operations was that the eunuchs' power increased day by day, and the internal conflicts within the ruling group intensified.
Another major mistake of Chongzhen was that he fell into the conspiracy of the Manchus and unjustly killed the famous general Yuan Chonghuan. The reason for this may be related to Chongzhen's impatient and suspicious character. After Chongzhen ascended the throne, he discovered that the biggest enemy of the Ming Dynasty was the Hou Jin Dynasty in the Northeast, which later became the Qing regime.
At that time, Nurhaci, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty, had passed away, and Huang Taiji was in power. The two sides have been engaged in tug-of-war all year round. The Ming army suffered more defeats than victory. The main reason was the lack of a capable military commander. Yuan Chonghuan was a rare handsome man in the late Ming Dynasty, and was also called "Yuan Changcheng" by the people. He once wounded Qing Taizu Nurhachi with a cannon in Ningyuan City. Later, Yuan Chonghuan was forced to resign due to the persecution of the eunuch party . At the time of crisis, Emperor Chongzhen re-appointed Yuan Chonghuan. As soon as Yuan Chonghuan took office, he arranged the defense of Northeast China in an orderly manner, so that Hou Jin did not dare to peek at the front line of Ningjin. Faced with Yuan Chonghuan's strict defense, Huang Taiji had no good solution, so he bypassed Shanhaiguan and crossed the Great Wall from the north of Gyeonggi to threaten Beijing. Yuan Chonghuan led his troops back to King Qin in Beijing. At the foot of Yanjing City, Yuan Chonghuan fought fiercely with the Qing army. Although the soldiers were very exhausted after running thousands of miles, they still defeated the Qing army's attack.
A frontal attack failed, so Huang Taiji resorted to a counterintuitive strategy . He deliberately hinted in front of the Ming army prisoners that Yuan Chonghuan had colluded with the Qing army, and then secretly let the prisoners escape. The prisoners "escaped" back to Yanjing and reported the "news" to Chongzhen. This time Chongzhen couldn't sit still.
As for Yuan Chonghuan and the Qing army appearing in Yanjing almost at the same time, Chongzhen had doubts about this matter. Now when the prisoners complained, Chongzhen became more convinced that Yuan Chonghuan was a spy. Therefore, he lured Yuan Chonghuan to the capital in the name of "discussing salary". Without any verification, he ordered Yuan Chonghuan to be brutally executed and his family exiled to Fujian. As a result, the pillars of the Ming Dynasty collapsed, and the Ming Dynasty's northeastern barrier disappeared in an instant. The Eight Banners army was able to gallop across the northeastern land as if there were no people in it.
While foreign troubles are intensifying, internal troubles have also reached a very serious level. The peasant uprising army led by Chuang King Li Zicheng also became more and more powerful, and the Ming army also repeatedly failed in its "suppression of bandits". Although Li Zicheng's peasant army began to push into the capital, Chongzhen still had hope, but at this time Chongzhen played "little cleverness" with the ministers, which completely ruined this last hope.
In order to fight against Li Zicheng's armed forces, Chongzhen thought of Wu Sangui, who was good at fighting. Wu Sangui guarded Shanhaiguan for many years after Yuan Chonghuan, and also kept Huang Taiji out of the pass. His practical experience and ability were very good. It is also a good strategy to transfer this person to command the army to fight against Li Zicheng.
But at this critical moment, Chongzhen actually made another small calculation: transferring Wu Sangui to the pass would be equivalent to giving up Ningyuan to the Qing army. He did not want to bear the crime of losing his country, so he secretly discussed peace with the Qing army with the Minister of War Chen Xinjia, and then transferred Wu Sangui and Li Zicheng to fight. However, he did not expect that the news of this incident was leaked. Chongzhen was cunning and did not want to be charged with "favoring foreigners", so he immediately executed Chen Xinjia.
In this case, who is still willing to work hard with Chongzhen? The ministers who were already alienated from Chongzhen became even less interested in political affairs. Finally, it was decided to transfer Wu Sangui to Beijing to serve as king, but the court could not come up with the one million taels of silver. Chongzhen was reluctant to take out his moldy private money and actually asked the ministers to donate money. None of the ministers were willing to buy it, and they kept stalling for several months. By the time Wu Sangui led his army to set off, Beijing had already fallen.
In despair, Emperor Chongzhen killed the queen, concubines, and princesses, and then hanged himself on a coal mountain.
What's interesting is that before he died, he bit his finger and left a blood letter to Li Zicheng, saying that he was not the king of the country's subjugation. The reason why he was here today was because of his mistakes.However, considering Chongzhen's behavior mentioned above, on the surface, this statement seems to have some truth, but if analyzed carefully, it is not the case. Chongzhen's frugality and diligence were just superficial words. The real key point shows that he is not a wise king. He has many concubines in the harem, which is a kind of "excessive desire"; he has a suspicious temperament, is suspicious of others and is eager for success; he is headstrong and does not distinguish between loyal and traitorous, which is obviously not what he wants. Finally, he wants to negotiate peace with the Qing army but does not want to bear a bad reputation. After the secret agreement was leaked, he killed the Minister of War to preserve his reputation. This is a strategy of "ruling the country with wisdom", which caused his ministers to play tricks on him, and the court completely lost its cohesion, etc.
The statement that Chongzhen’s fall was due to his bad luck, incompetence of his ministers, and his own inability to save the country should be taken with a grain of salt.
In fact, the reason for the collapse of the Ming Dynasty was due to what we call the general trend, Chongzhen's inability to recover, and other factors, but it was also largely attributed to the emperor himself, who had a "good" reputation for "frugality" and "diligence."
