How harmful was the plague at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and how terrifying was the disaster? It's more cruel than you think

Plague is a natural foci disease, this disease is distributed in more than 60 countries in the world, even today there is no way to completely eradicate it. It appeared very early, and it was a pandemic that caused high mortality in ancient times. In the 14th century, Europe had a disease called the Black Death. This disease caused the death of 50 million Europeans, and it is actually another name for the plague, which shows its horror.

Not only in Europe, but also in the history of China, the plague also broke out. There was a large-scale plague outbreak at the beginning of the 17th century in the late Ming Dynasty. From historical data, we can know that starting from the Jiajing period of the Ming Dynasty, the border between the Ming court and Mongolia was often disturbed. As a result, many Han people fled to the Mongolian grasslands. After they arrived, they reclaimed large areas of pastures into farmland, but changed the ecological environment of the pastures. The living space of the mice that originally lived in the grassland is compressed, and the chance of human contact with the mice is greatly increased.

Unfortunately, at the end of Ming Dynasty, we encountered , the Little Ice Age , and there was heavy snow in Guangdong in the 46th year of Wanli (1618). Immediately after the continuous drought and low temperature invaded China, there were three severe droughts during the Wanli year, and the droughts became more frequent during the and Chongzhen years. In the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, the Yellow River actually withered, the Yangtze River and the Huai River were all frozen, and the outbreak of drought was followed by locust plagues and famines. Refugees had to leave their homes in order to survive. Rats also left with them. After all, they wanted to live too.

From this Yersinia pestis was transferred to refugees. What's more terrifying is that the hungry people had to steal food from mice and rats. The horror of this rat epidemic is that it is not only wide, but also very long. It began in the sixth year of Chongzhen (1633). At first it was only Shanxi, and then spread to Shandong, Anhui, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and other places.getting bigger. In the 14th year of Chongzhen (1641), the plague was transferred to Hebei and Beijing. So how serious was the damage?

The place where the plague occurred began to eclipse people. The population of the place with the largest number of dead reached 90%, and even the imperial capital was also released. The once bustling and lively streets, let alone night and winter, even during the day and March, no one was seen walking on the road. Moreover, this thing is still contagious. If one person is infected, the whole family may die. The death even happened in an instant, and there was no time for diagnosis and treatment, so no one in the family dared to help collect the body.

"Chongzhen Records" has records: death pillows, ten rooms and nine empty spaces, and even households are exhausted, no one has taken the dead. This is still the case of Beijing, the imperial capital, not to mention other cities. The death toll is not accurately recorded, but historians have estimated the approximate death toll in Beijing based on records and speed. It was about 200,000 people, and the population of Beijing at that time was estimated to be between 800,000 and 1 million, that is, one in four or five Beijingers would die.

According to estimates by foreign scholars, drought, locusts, plague, smallpox, and famine caused about 40% of the national losses, resulting in a population of only 60 million in 1651. . At that time, the technology was not enough. In such a scene, the court did not know where to start properly. In any case, this rat epidemic brought irreversible disaster to the Ming Dynasty, and it can also be said to be the last straw to overthrow the Ming Dynasty.

After this time, the remaining forces, soldiers and horses were greatly reduced, and the combat effectiveness was greatly reduced. So the Dashun Army, which was beaten to the ground by the Ming Army, easily 's captured the city of Beijing.But it was only 43 days. The strange thing is that after the Qing soldiers entered the customs, the drought and plague that swept the country disappeared without a trace, and the social economy began to gradually recover. But what is interesting is that in October 1910, a rat epidemic occurred in the northeast of the Qing Dynasty, which was not seen in a century, and the Qing Dynasty perished the following year.

Reference materials: "Records of Chongzhen", "Northern Strategy of Ming Dynasty", "Ming History"