In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng invaded Beijing, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Dynasty perished as a unified state power, and then the Qing army entered the customs. This happened in the late Ming Dynasty during Shen Jia's reign, and was later called "the change of Shen Jia".
According to the northeast, the Qing dynasty entered the customs four times and returned home in triumph, seeking the strategy of having national sovereignty. Li Zicheng's peasant army defeated the main force of the Ming army six times on the battlefield in the Central Plains, entered the Guanzhong area, won the founding of the People's Republic of China with great victory, and then sent troops to the north to force Beijing. The Ming dynasty, struggling on both sides, was sandwiched between the north and the south and was on the verge of collapse. It continues to do its best to save the crisis. In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (the first year of Dashun Yongshun 1644), the Ming Dynasty, which ruled China for 276 years, was declared dead.
Only 40 days later, the Qing army went south and quickly wiped out the Dashun regime of the rebel army and the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in the south of the Yangtze River. From then on, the Qing Dynasty began to rule the whole of China.
process
After the death of Ming Xizong, his younger brother Zhu Youjian succeeded to the throne, with the year number Chongzhen. After he acceded to the throne, he inherited a mess, poor people and poor wealth, domestic and foreign troubles. In the face of difficulties, he is helpless, and his suspicious, stingy and willful personality leads to his lack of determination and ability to do things to the end.
The most typical case is his handling of the Wei Zhongxian case. During the Apocalypse period, eunuch Wei Zhongxian colluded with Hakkas to bring disaster to the country and people. After Emperor Chongzhen came to power, he also cut down three axes. Except Wei Zhongxian and Hakka, he was relieved of eunuchs guarding all parts of the country. In three years of Chongzhen, he was relieved of eunuchs as magistrates. But I thought about it and thought that eunuchs were the most intimate, so I began to use eunuchs again, even worse. This is manifested in giving eunuchs military power, making them the prefect of the Beijing camp, supervising the army and unifying the soldiers, and serving as guards and garrisons.
The so-called Beijing Battalion is the army transferred from all over the country to defend Beijing. Moreover, if there is a major war in other provinces or frontiers, the Beijing camp will have to deploy some elite reinforcements when necessary. Therefore, it is not only large in number, usually maintaining more than 300,000 troops, but also well-equipped. During the Chongzhen period, the eunuchs in Beijing camp, the prime minister arrested, the magistrate banned the door, and some military officers inspected, all of them were eunuchs from the Imperial Horse Prison, the Li Si Prison and the secretarial office. These eunuchs, as described by Dong Ji, a senior minister of Wanli Punishment Department, are "prepared for danger in times of peace, full of food all day long, but weak in strength" and "riding hard when they are healthy, and being invincible when they see it".
As soon as the guns of Dashun Army rang, these people fled at once. Another well-known example is that in the second year of Chongzhen, he was deceived by Huang Taiji, listened to Yang, the eunuch who was deliberately put back by the Qing Dynasty, and decided that Yuan Chonghuan had a secret agreement with the latter. In August of the following year, Yuan Chonghuan was sentenced to the most cruel torture (year number), and there was no outstanding commander to resist the late Jin.
Besides, his attitude towards the peasant uprising army. Zhu Youjian treated the peasant army just like the emperors of past dynasties, but he always hesitated to suppress and caress. Generally speaking, he never seized the opportunity to carry the peace talks through to the end, so as to achieve the purpose of disintegrating the peasant army. As early as the spring of the second year of Chongzhen, Yang He, the governor of Shaanxi province in the Ming Dynasty, put forward the policy of appealing to the peasants who revolted, supplemented by chasing them.
Zhu Youjian admitted it and even said, "Kou is my son, too. I should caress him." . In the first month of the fourth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian sent the Imperial Sacrifice to Shaanxi, but the Tang Yin allocated to him was only102,000 yuan. In the face of hungry people everywhere, it is a drop in the bucket, "not as good as eleven."
Soon, the rebellious peasants who had surrendered rebelled again to survive and robbed large families of food to survive, and the rebellion gradually became a prairie fire. In the following ten years, the Ming court, Li Zicheng, Zhang and others held many peace talks, all of which ended in failure, which was largely related to the improper decision-making of Emperor Chongzhen.
Li Zicheng has been through many battles and is an excellent military conductor. However, as a politician, he lacked strategic vision and made a series of mistakes, which led to a rapid rout shortly after entering Beijing.
On the first day of the first month in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng proclaimed himself emperor, that is, he ascended the throne in Xi 'an. "The name of the country is Dashun, and it is changed to Yongchang. Officials all follow the Tang system." Li Zicheng put forward the slogan of "three-year exemption from service" after establishing political power, which of course has great appeal to the people.
After entering Henan, Li Zicheng even asked his foot soldiers to spread the slogan of "Eat his mother, wear his mother, open the door to welcome the king, and the king will not receive food". This slogan of extreme egalitarianism and anarchism can only further lead Dashun to raise military expenses through looting and reimbursement by force, so that on the way to Beijing, especially after entering Beijing, he severely tortured and blackmailed the dignitaries, dignitaries, wealthy businessmen and gentlemen of the Ming Dynasty.
Historians have different opinions about how many troops Li Zicheng brought to Beijing. Gu Cheng (an expert in Ming and Qing history) estimates that there are 65438+ 10,000 people, which is well documented. This fully embodies Li Zicheng's thought of underestimating the enemy, especially his ignorance of the Qing court outside the customs. The Qing court sent a letter of credentials to the leader of Dashun Army, suggesting a joint overthrow of the Ming Dynasty, but Li Zicheng ignored it.
In the Shanhaiguan War, he brought 60,000 troops at most, while Wu Sangui's army was 50,000, plus Xiang Yong's 30,000, and the Qing army was 65,438+10,000, which was three or four times more than Li Zicheng's army. Moreover, the first encounter with the Dashun Army and the powerful Qing Army caught me off guard, and the last World War I collapsed and embarked on the road of extinction.
Li Zicheng arrived at the gates of Beijing and sent the surrendered eunuch Du Xun to the palace to negotiate with Emperor Chongzhen. According to the records of historians Dai Li and Wu Yi in the early Qing Dynasty, Li Zicheng put forward the following conditions: "Li (Zicheng) wants to cut the northwest region, make a king, and save millions of troops to retreat to Henan. After being blocked, I am willing to stop thieves in the court and control Liaoshen from abroad, but I am not asked to go on a pilgrimage. " Li Zicheng once said, "Shaanxi is my hometown. Wealth must return to my hometown, that is to say, ten swallows are not enough to make it easy! " ? As well as transporting a large amount of gold and silver recovered from Beijing Kaoxiang to Xi 'an, it can be seen that Li Zicheng is short-sighted! The purpose of his coming to Beijing is to make a fortune, and he had an emperor addiction in Ming Palace.