In 1585 AD, it was the thirteenth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming Empire reached its 218th year.
Romance In this year, Zhang Juzheng, who was in charge of the empire, was no longer in power. The person who nominally ruled the empire was Zhu Yijun, the "Emperor Wanli". Zhu Yijun was promoted by later generations as a faint king who ignored government affairs. In fact, his evaluation can be seen from his posthumous title. He is called "Ming Shenzong", and taking "God" as his posthumous title is obviously not a very good thing.
1585 was the third year that Emperor Wanli took charge. The year before, the young emperor visited the mausoleum with great fanfare to supervise the imperial army. This behavior aroused great vigilance among the ministers of the day. This imperial army was directly controlled by the emperor of the empire and was formed with the consent of the former "chief assistant" Zhang Juzheng. The supreme commander of the imperial army is the imperial eunuch. In other words, this army is in the hands of the emperor's entourage.
The Royal Forest Army has continued to expand in size in recent years, and has exceeded the tolerance of court officials.
In 1585, the highest official in the empire, Chief Assistant Shen Shixing, was a man who believed in moderation. In the era of the former chief assistant Zhang Juzheng, Shen Shixing was once considered to be Zhang Juzheng's confidant. But in fact, Shen Shixing was selected as Zhang Juzheng's successor, not because of his ability to faithfully implement Zhang Juzheng's policies, but because of his ability to communicate between the emperor and civilian officials. What Shen Shixing actually did was not to assist the emperor in governing, but to compromise with the civilian officials. In the political environment where Zhang Juzheng was liquidated immediately after his death, Shen Shixing did not have the courage and ability to turn the tide like Zhang Juzheng.
Facing the collective pressure from the court officials, Shen Shixing did not want to offend the emperor, and did not dare to allow the imperial army to continue to develop. Shen Shixing found the generals in charge of the Royal Forest Army and said, "Don't you wait until Jiang Bin is overthrown?"
This seemingly light sentence made all the eunuchs who "had their swords and bows in their hands" shudder.
In the later years of the empire, the physically disabled eunuchs, or eunuchs, were the only personnel over whom the emperor had complete control. Eunuchs who lacked fertility did not have the ability to accumulate power from generation to generation. All their power came from the appointment and dismissal of the emperor. This system made the emperor's control over them more effective. But this does not mean that these eunuchs are ignorant. In fact, as senior administrators of the empire, eunuchs were equally aware of the empire's past and present. Therefore, they can understand the meaning of Shen Shixing's words.
Jiang Bin¡¯s story is well known to everyone in the empire. This history made the eunuchs feel unsafe about their situation. As the highest representative of the civil service group, Shen Shixing's words were undoubtedly a warning against the eunuchs' military power. Relying on rational judgment, the eunuchs changed their stance. As the generals chosen by Emperor Wanli, they turned to Emperor Wanli to persuade him. If the emperor of the empire wanted to control the military, he was the only eunuch he could rely on. But now these eunuchs were not only unwilling to complete their tasks, but also repeatedly suggested to the emperor to give up military power.
Soon, the imperial guard army lost its systematic command and action capabilities. The emperor was nominally supreme, but in fact he was unable to move forward. The imperial power lost the armed force it could rely on.
This failure of the Royal Forest Army greatly disappointed the emperor of the empire. The empire has a vast territory of thousands of miles, and the power in all aspects is huge. Without the support of the army, the authority of the emperor is just an empty tablet without any actual power. Emperor Wanli gave up all his forge ahead in despair and hid in the Forbidden City, not even bothering to leave the city. He began to hate civilian officials and adopted the strategy of passive resistance to the greatest extent. In the politics and military affairs of the empire, he refused to cooperate with civilian officials and for a time did not appoint local officials when there were no governors in various places.
In terms of the empire¡¯s finances, the emperor made a last-ditch effort to save the empire. He decided to accumulate some national fortune for the "descendants" of the Zhu family, abandoned the traditional tax policy of light corvee and small taxes, and used eunuchs to collect commercial taxes from the empire's emerging industry and commerce. Tax inspectors, who were eunuchs, traveled across the country to collect taxes from those wealthy industrial, commercial and mining tycoons.
In fact, from the towns in the south to the gateways in the north, the industry and commerce of the empire have long been controlled by the gentry passed down from generation to generation. Not only industry and commerce, but also Jiangnan scholarly families, Shanxi merchant and official families, and even the imperial examination system for selecting imperial officials have been controlled by this group. Under such circumstances, the industrial and commercial taxation that directly harmed the Jin gentry-civilian group was naturally greatly obstructed by the civil servants.
"The harm of tax supervision" was quickly described as disastrous by civil servants who had control of public opinion. For the first time in human history, people who resisted taxes were praised as heroes by government officials. Especially after the Manchus entered the customs, a large number of civil servants surrendered to the Manchus, adding fuel to the fire in the official annals to describe the tax system as a scourge. But what those historians deliberately concealed was that this sum of "inner treasury" money actually extended the life of the Ming Dynasty.
Decades later, when the Ming Dynasty was about to collapse due to war, Fu DeBut the situation in the empire was always changing, and the Jurchens soon saw their opportunity. In the early years of Chongzhen, in the hands of the "patriotic" civilian supervisors of the Donglin Party, the Jurchens not only escaped hunger and poverty, but also continued to grow. The two governors claimed that the defense that cost millions of taels of silver was like a decoration. The Great Wall that should have been heavily defended was vulnerable to attack, and the Jurchens marched straight in.
Gyeonggi plundered again and again, tens of thousands of light rides did not queue to put the hoofs and Mercedes -Benz thousands of miles near the Daming Kingdom's Beijing Division, grabbing the food of the population, such as no one. The easy victories not only restored their strength, but also inspired their ambition to sweep the Han world. In the 17th year of Chongzhen's reign, Manchuria's Beldorgun entered the capital with strong troops and horses, and then swept down. In Yangzhou, Jiading, Sichuan, and Guangzhou, the butcher's knife was raised again and again, and then the hair was left intact.
The Jurchens, with a population of hundreds of thousands, turned tens of millions of Han people into slaves in the land of the Han people. This kind of conquest with less to defeat more is enough to put other self-proclaimed great conquerors in human history to shame.
You must know that just a few decades ago, the Jurchens in Jianzhou were still in the age of fishing, hunting and cave-dwelling, almost like a tribe in primitive society. Such a rapid rise and honesty will put other conquerors in the world to shame.
On the day when the Qing army arrived in Nanjing, Qian Qianyi, the leader of the civil service of the Ming Dynasty and the leader of the Donglin Party, was at a loss in the gorgeous courtyard of the city and was in a dilemma. Liu Ru, a concubine who was famous all over the Yangtze River, was quite disdainful of her husband's behavior as a daughter. She persuaded Qian Qianyi to throw himself into a well and die for his country, so as to live up to Qian Qianyi's usual talk of benevolence, justice, morality, and loyalty to the emperor and the country.
Although Liu Rushi is famous for her beauty, she is still a vain woman who grew up immersed in moral articles, so she said this. She had previously abandoned Chen Zilong, an upright and unappreciated late Ming genius, for Qian Qianyi's reputation and power. She probably thought that Qian Qianyi, the leader of civil servants in the world, would be as passionate and passionate as Chen Zilong who fought to the death in the face of a national crisis.
But the answer she waited for was "the water is too cold."
When the Ming Dynasty fell, Qian Qianyi contacted everywhere and led the Donglin Party to surrender to the Qing Dynasty.
In fact, the Donglin Party was not the only one who surrendered. Almost all the important officials of the civil service group surrendered. The day before Jianzhou Jurchen leader Dorgon Qingqi entered Beijing, he doubted whether he could enter Beijing. There are not many Jurchens who believe that they can enter the capital so easily. After all, the population of Beijing is millions, which is more than all the Jurchens combined. On that day, Dorgon had made plans to return outside the customs when encountering difficulties.
But when the Jurchens arrived at the gate of Beijing, what they saw made them stunned for a long time. What they saw was the wide open city gate, and the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty. Those civil servants who kept singing "morality", calling themselves "loyal ministers", and always claiming to "remonstrate to death" and insulting the emperor of Ming Dynasty were opening the city gate. Kneeling in the aisle to welcome the Jurchen princes into the Forbidden City in Beijing.
The only one who thought of dying for his country at the last moment was the emperor.
The young emperor, who was full of ambition and worked hard all day long, was the last emperor of the Han people, but he was unwilling to accept such an ending. On the day when the capital city fell, there was a chaos of war and chaos, and the emperor did not choose to escape. He walked up Meishan Mountain, hung a rope on a crooked old locust tree, and hanged himself to death. There was no civil servant beside him, and the only one who accompanied him to death was an eunuch who served the emperor day and night.
Having just defeated the Mongols in the north, the Yi people in the west, the Dutch in the south, and the Japanese in the east, the Ming Dynasty was so powerful and prosperous that the West was in awe, but now it was suddenly as fragile as paper.
In the east of Eurasia, the splendid civilization of the Han people collapsed like a dazzling firework.
When he hanged himself on the old locust tree with a crooked neck, the emperor Zhu Youjian said "I am ashamed of my ancestors" and put his hair in front of his forehead. At that moment, did he hate himself for not being able to turn the tide with his own strength and prevent the Tatars from continuing the ruins of the Ming Dynasty? I still hate myself for not being able to bravely fight against civil servants like Emperor Zhengde, Emperor Wanli, Emperor Taichang, and Emperor Tianqi, and refuse to retreat until they are ruined and disgraced.
"Perhaps he blames himself too much. He is just a staunch young man trained by civil servants. He is conceited, staunch, fearful, suspicious, and constrained at every turn. The situation is far from what he alone can change. The end of the empire was already doomed when Shen Shixing said those words in the thirteenth year of Wanli.
"Don't you see Jiang Bin's overthrow?"
Pushing forward sixty-five years from the thirteenth year of Wanli, it is the sixteenth year of Zhengde. That year, Emperor Zhengde of the Ming Dynasty, who relied on military power to weaken the power of civilian officials in every possible way and personally conquered Mongolia several times, was strong and self-proclaimed a general. He accidentally fell into the water from a boat and contracted an illness. He died at the age of thirty. Emperor Zhengde passed away only a few days ago. General Jiang Bin, who Emperor Zhengde relied on to train his troops and intimidate hundreds of officials for his repeated military exploits, was kidnapped and sent to Beijing by the civilian officials Wuhua Da, and was brought to the city.
This public demonstration shocked the entire Ming Dynasty, changed the direction of the empire, and finally ended that era. In those yellow history books full of absurdities, you can¡¯t even see the full picture of this process. Now, let us get up close and peel away the lies of history bit by bit, and see clearly how the Ming Dynasty, the last empire of our Han civilization, fell.
You can find us quickly at "89"
You can find us quickly at "89"
? www.piotia.com?The direction in which the empire was headed ultimately ended that era. In those yellow history books full of absurdities, you can¡¯t even see the full picture of this process. Now, let us get up close and peel away the lies of history bit by bit, and see clearly how the Ming Dynasty, the last empire of our Han civilization, fell.