Why did the Jiashen Change trigger the Jiashen Change? What was the impact of the Jiashen Change?
The Jiashen Change of Jiashen Change was the year of Jiashen in the late Ming Dynasty in China. That is, 1644, the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty, the first year of Shunzhi in the Qing Dynasty, and the first year of Yongchang in Dashun. In the spring of this year, on the land of China, the three major regimes of the Ming Dynasty headed by Zhu Youjian, the Qing Dynasty headed by Fulin, and the Dashun regime headed by Li Zicheng launched a fierce battle for the supreme power of the country.
The origin of the Jiashen Incident
The leaders of the Jiashen Incident
In the late Ming Dynasty, various social contradictions intensified unprecedentedly, especially among farmers. Class conflict with the landlord class. Under the oppression of the decadent feudal landlord class, resistance struggles emerged one after another across the country, and Shaanxi became the center of the peasant uprising.
Shaanxi has long been the focus of social conflicts in the country. The land here is barren, production is backward, taxes and corvee are serious, and years of famines have occurred. Farmers’ lives are more difficult than in other areas, and class conflicts are acute.
This area is also an area inhabited by Mongolians, Hans, and Japanese. It is a site of fierce ethnic struggles. There are deep conflicts between the people of all ethnic groups and the rulers of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, Shaanxi became the first region where peasant uprisings were brewing and breaking out.
In March of the seventh year of the Apocalypse (1627), there was a severe drought in Shaanxi. Zhang Douyao, the magistrate of Chengcheng County, regardless of the life and death of the hungry people, still pressed for taxes and exploited the farmers. Wang Er, a farmer in Baishui County, gathered hundreds of peasants who could not survive to fight. He asked everyone loudly: "Who dares to kill the county magistrate?" Everyone said in unison: "I dare to kill."
So Wang Er led the hungry people into the county town and killed Zhang Douyao, which opened the prelude to the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty. Wang Ershou's righteousness ignited the spark of the peasant war, and various places responded one after another. In the eighth year of Tianqi (1628), Shaanxi Fugu Wang Jiayin, Hannan Wang Daliang, Ansai Gao Yingxiang and others led the hungry people to revolt. Zhang Xianzhong also uprising in Yan'an Mizhi, and Li Zicheng later joined Gao Yingxiang's army.
The most influential person during this period was Wang Jiayin's rebel army. They once occupied Fugu, proclaimed themselves king and set up officials, and established a temporary regime. However, the peasant rebel armies did not have a unified command, they fought independently, and their composition was complex. They lacked a clear goal of overthrowing the Ming Dynasty regime.
The course of the Jiashen Incident
After the death of Emperor Tianqi, his younger brother Zhu Youjian came to the throne, with the reign name Chongzhen. Emperor Chongzhen was good at calligraphy and poetry, good at playing the piano, and lived a simple life. In times of peace, he might have become a good emperor with certain achievements. However, what he inherited after ascending the throne was a mess where the people were poor and financial, and internal and external troubles were intertwined. In the face of difficult times, he had no way to make a comeback. His suspicious, stingy, and self-willed character led to his lack of determination and ability to get things through to the end.
The most typical example is his handling of the Wei Zhongxian case. During the Tianqi period, the eunuch Wei Zhongxian colluded with the Hakka family, causing harm to the country and the people. After Emperor Chongzhen came to power, he also slashed three axes, eliminated Wei Zhongxian and the Hakka family, removed the eunuchs guarding various places, and removed the eunuch admirals in the third year of Chongzhen. But soon after thinking about it, I felt that eunuchs were the most considerate, so I appointed eunuchs again, even worse.
This is prominently reflected in the entrustment of military power to eunuchs, allowing them to supervise the capital camp and supervise the military command, as well as serve as guards and garrison. The so-called Beijing Camp refers to the troops transferred from all over the country to defend the capital. Moreover, if there is a major war in other provinces or frontiers, the Beijing camp will have to send some of its elite troops for reinforcements if necessary. Therefore, it is not only large in number, usually maintaining more than 300,000 horses, but also well-equipped. During the reign of Emperor Chongzhen, the eunuchs in charge of the self-supervision of the Beijing camp, the prime minister, the admiral of the forbidden gates, and the patrol officers of the army were all served by the eunuchs of the royal horse supervisor, the ceremonial supervisor, and the clerk's office.
These eunuchs, as Dong Ji, the head of the Ministry of Punishment in Wanli, described them, "live in peace and enjoy good food, and their muscles are soft and supple" and "if they encounter a strong soldier riding a strong horse, they will be invincible immediately." As soon as Dashun's artillery fired, these people immediately dispersed. Another well-known typical example is that in the second year of Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian fell into Huang Taiji's counterintuitive plan. He believed the words of eunuch Yang who was deliberately released by the Qing Dynasty, and concluded that Yuan Chonghuan had a secret agreement with Hou Jin. In August of the following year, Yuan Chonghuan was sentenced to the most brutal punishment (Lingchi). From then on, there was no outstanding commander who could resist Hou Jin.
Li Zicheng has experienced hundreds of battles and is an excellent military commander. However, as a politician, he lacked strategic vision and made a series of mistakes, which led to his rapid collapse shortly after entering Beijing. Li Zicheng ascended the throne as emperor in Xi'an on the first day of the first lunar month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen. "The country's name was Dashun, and the name of the country was changed to Yongchang. All officials' rituals and music followed the Tang system." After Li Zicheng established his power, he put forward the slogan of "three years of tax exemption", which certainly had great appeal to the people.
After marching into Henan, Li Zicheng even asked his soldiers to spread the slogan "Eat his mother, wear his mother, open the door to welcome King Chuang, and King Chuang will not pay for food when he comes." This kind of extreme egalitarianism, The slogan of anarchism can only further lead the Dashun army to use torture and looting to raise military expenses, so that on the way to Beijing, especially after entering Beijing, they tortured Ming Dynasty dignitaries, dignitaries, wealthy businessmen, gentry, etc. , extorting money, causing social chaos and unrest among people.
When Li Zicheng came to Beijing, he sent the surrendered eunuch Du Xun into the palace to negotiate with Emperor Chongzhen. The conditions proposed by Li Zicheng are recorded by historians Dai Li and Wu Ji in the early Qing Dynasty: "Li (Zicheng) wanted to secede the northwest area, so he ordered him to be crowned king, rewarded his army with millions of silver, and retreated to Henan. After being granted the title, he was willing to serve as a deterrent for the imperial court. A group of thieves tried to control Liao and Shen, but they were not summoned to the imperial court. Li Zicheng once said: "Shaanxi is my hometown. Wealth and honor must return to our hometown, that is, ten swallows are not enough to change one Xi'an." !" and constantly transporting large amounts of gold and silver obtained by collecting stolen goods in Beijing to Xi'an, which shows Li Zicheng's short-sightedness! The purpose of his coming to Beijing was to make a fortune and live up to the emperor's addiction in the Ming Palace.
The impact of the Jiashen Incident
Li Zicheng went to Beijing
On March 19, 1644, the Dashun Army captured Beijing, and Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian hanged himself He died on the same day that Dashun Emperor Li Zicheng entered Beijing, marking the fall of the Ming Dynasty. In just two or three months, the Dashun regime relied on its military prowess and popular support to quickly take over large areas of the entire Yellow River Basin and part of the Yangtze River Basin. The ruling area includes the current Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, All of Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong and parts of Hubei, Jiangsu and Anhui.