The Event Root of Shen Jia's Reform
The leader of the rebellion in Shen Jia
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, all kinds of social contradictions intensified unprecedentedly, especially the class contradiction between farmers and landlords. Under the oppression of the decadent feudal landlord class, resistance struggles broke out one after another all over the country, and Shaanxi became the center of peasant uprising.
Shaanxi has long been the focus of social contradictions in the whole country. Here, the land is barren, the production is backward, the taxes are severe, there are years of famine, the life of farmers is more difficult than other areas, and the class contradictions are sharp.
This area is also a mixed area of Mongolian, Han and * * *, and it is a place where ethnic struggles are fierce. The contradiction between the people of all ethnic groups and the rulers of the Ming Dynasty is very deep. Therefore, Shaanxi became the earliest area where peasant uprisings were brewing and erupting.
In the seventh year of the Apocalypse (1627), in March, there was a drought in Shaanxi, and Zhang Douyao, the magistrate of Chengcheng County, ignored the lives of hungry people and still pressed taxes and squeezed farmers. Wang Er, a farmer in Baishui County, gathered hundreds of farmers who could not survive to fight. He asked everyone loudly, "Who dares to kill the magistrate?" Everyone said in unison, "I dare to kill."
So Wang Er led the hungry people into the county seat and killed Zhang Douyao, which opened the prelude to the peasant uprising in the late Ming Dynasty. Wang Er's first words ignited a single spark in the peasant war, and all localities responded in succession. In the eighth year of the Apocalypse (1628), Wang Daliang and Ansai in Fugu, Shaanxi Province led a famine uprising, Zhang also rebelled in Mizhi and Yan 'an, and Li Zicheng later joined the army.
The most influential in this period was the rebels in Wang Jiayin, who once occupied the valley of government, called the king an official and established a temporary regime. However, the peasant uprising army did not have a unified command, and its composition was complex, lacking a clear goal of overthrowing the Ming regime.
The course of events in Shen Jia.
After the death of Emperor Apocalypse, his younger brother Zhu Youjian succeeded to the throne, with the year number Chongzhen. Emperor Chongzhen was good at calligraphy and poetry, good at playing the piano, and lived a simple life. If he was in Chengping period, he might become a good emperor with certain achievements. However, after he ascended the throne, he inherited a mess, with poor people and poor wealth, and domestic and foreign troubles intertwined. 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.
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 no * * * doctrine can only further lead Dashun to raise military expenses through looting and reimbursement by force, so that he was severely punished by politicians, dignitaries and wealthy businessmen and gentlemen in the Ming Dynasty on his way to Beijing, especially after his arrival.
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! "There will be a lot of gold and silver recovered from Beijing Kaoxiang to Xi 'an, which shows 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.
The influence of changes in Shen Jia
Li Zicheng went to Beijing.
1March 644 19, Dashun Army captured Beijing, and Emperor Zhu Youjian of Chongzhen hanged himself. On the same day, Dashun Emperor Li Zicheng entered Beijing, marking the fall of the Ming Dynasty. In just two or three months, the Dashun regime, with its military strength and popular support, quickly took over a large area of the entire Yellow River basin and a part of the Yangtze River basin. The ruling areas include Shaanxi, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong and parts of Hubei, Jiangsu and Anhui.