The Jinyi Wei is famous and should be regarded as the most famous royal secret agent organization in history. Although it is very famous, the combat effectiveness of the Jinyi guards has never been comparable to that of the regular army of the Ming Dynasty, and the strongest is not at all, and the number is not as many as the legends. At the time of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, they were not completely inactive, but the great tomorrow at that time was no longer something that jinyiwei could save. To elaborate on this issue, you need to start at the beginning.
The development of Jinyiwei
The Jinyi Guards were first developed from the Emperor's honor guard, the Arch Guard Division. In the early years of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang was not at ease with the ministers, so in the fifteenth year of Hongwu, he abolished yiluan wei and the pro-military capital Wei mansion and changed it to Jinyi Wei, which was specifically responsible for spying on the words and deeds of the ministers at home, and was directly responsible to the emperor. In this regard, Jinyiwei was an expert, and often what the chancellor said at home, who to party with, and even what to eat for dinner, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang would fully grasp the next day. Under this close surveillance, the ministers trembled all day long, lest they be caught by the Jinyi guards.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang realized that the power of Jinyiwei was too great and unfavorable to the state, so he deprived Jinyiwei of his judicial power in the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu and essentially abolished Jinyiwei. However, during the reign of the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, in order to monitor the courtiers and the forces opposed by the world, the emperor restarted the Jinyi Guard, and further increased its power, built a prison for him, and expanded the scope of surveillance to the people of the whole country. Flying fish suits, embroidered spring knives, these jinyi guards' equipment, began to become everyone's nightmare.
After the Jinyi Wei gained power, the Yongle Emperor also began to be uneasy about them, so he set up a secret service agency led by eunuchs, Dongchang. The power of the East Factory later overshadowed the Jinyiwei, so the Jinyiwei began to become the executive agency of the East Factory to a certain extent, and at that time the two were collectively called "factory guards". During the Ming Dynasty's apocalypse, the Power of the East Factory under the command of the Great Eunuch Wei Zhongxian reached its peak, and his henchmen and spies were all over the country. The so-called Jinyi Wei has 150,000 people, and I am afraid that it really had this scale during the Wei Zhongxian period. But with the succession of the Chongzhen Emperor, Wei Zhongxian was eradicated, Donglin Party officials began to take power, and Dongchang and Jinyiwei began to go downhill at the same time.
It can be seen from the development process of Jinyiwei that Jinyiwei is only a secret service organization, and criminal investigation, interrogation, and inspection are its own duties. However, I had never heard of the Jinyi guards being dragged into the battlefield to fight the enemy. Maybe personal martial arts, Jinyiwei is really not bad, but the skills such as platooning and deployment required to kill the enemy, sorry, Jinyiwei has not been practiced.
Before the fall of Chongzhen, the final struggle of jinyiwei
Before the fall of Chongzhen, the number of Jinyi guards was already much worse than in its heyday, even to the point where the number of ordinary guards was not as good. According to the military system of the Ming Dynasty, a wei has jurisdiction over three to five thousand households, and the full amount of a thousand households is 1,200 people, that is to say, a guard is about 5,600 people. However, in the last year of the Ming Dynasty, the economy collapsed, and the state could not even get the 100,000 taels of silver that mobilized the Guanning army to attack Li Zicheng, and the other soldiers were also in a state of unpaid wages for many years. At this time, it is unimaginable to raise a full-fledged guard. Some people say that there are more than two thousand Jinyi guards at this time, which is probably more than calculated, after all, it is a norm for Ming Dynasty military commanders to eat empty salaries, and the number of silver paid on the report will sometimes have more than half of the vacancies.
Since this was the case, in the vast city of Beijing, how could these two thousand or so people defend Against Li Zicheng's hundreds of thousands of troops? It should be known that at this time, the 10,000 or so regular troops responsible for defending the city were already in a state of strike because of unpaid wages. In the face of the enemy's attack, the defenders deliberately released their artillery and only made a gesture of resistance. Li Zicheng attacked, and a large number of Ming defenders surrendered on the spot. Morale is so strong that the Ming Dynasty has no cure. At this time, most of the imperial court officials who were holding Feng Lu had already fled. The only eunuchs who said they wanted to fight the enemy to the end were just a few eunuchs.
People's hearts are scattered to such a point that Jinyiwei will not become the last scenery of the Ming Dynasty, and most of them have already run away and hidden. Among them, the most influential is the Zuo Du Luo Yangsheng, who is in charge of the Jinyi Guard. According to the author, this is the time when he died and repaid the country. However, Luo Yangsheng hid at home and became the Duke of Yu, allowing Li Zicheng to attack the city of Beijing. Obviously, he also saw that the Ming Dynasty was bound to perish, and did not want to be cannon fodder for the Chongzhen Emperor anymore. If this is the case, the others are even more imaginable.
Of course, there are no loyal and good generals in the Jinyi Guard. A Jinyi wei named Li Ruolian commanded Tongzhi and became the last person to be martyred for the Ming Dynasty. Li Ruolian was in charge of defending Chongwen Gate at that time, but when he arrived at the place, the defenders were pitifully small and demoralized. Soon, the news came that the Guangning Gate had been opened and Li Zicheng had captured the city of Beijing. Li Ruolian knew that it was difficult to turn the tide, so he sorted out his official clothes, bowed down in the direction of the palace, and then found a rope to commit suicide. Before he died, he left a desperate word: "Death! That is, today's thing; woe! Why should it be known. ”
The last state of the Kinnikushi
After the destruction of The city of Beijing, Luo Yangsheng, who was in charge of Jinyiwei, first surrendered to Li Zicheng. However, soon after, Li Zicheng's subordinate Liu Zongmin was greatly plundered. In order to avoid the pain of skin and flesh, Luo Yangsheng took out thirty thousand taels of silver. Although Liu Zongmin did not beat him, he still kept him under guard. However, many other Jinyi guards were not so lucky, such as Sun Guang, the viceroy of Xisifang, Liu Yingxian, Ma Guoyao, and Qi Changguo, the commander of Xisifangtang, Liang Qinghong, the commander of Beizhen Fusi, and Zhao Sizhou, the commander of Dongchang Zhangyin, who lost their lives under Liu Zongmin's torture.
Soon, Li Zicheng was defeated by the Manchu Qing, and the regent of the Qing Dynasty, Dolgun, entered the city of Beijing, and Luo Yangsheng surrendered to Dolgun for the first time, becoming a Qing dynasty minister from then on, and finally died in the tenth year of Shunzhi. The other Jinyi guards who followed Luo Yangsheng's surrender were changed to "Luan Yiwei", deprived of the power of criminal investigation and inspection, and returned to their old profession to manage the honor guard.
In the end, the Jinyi wei who could still have some power was Ma Jixiang, the commander of the Guangdong capital of the Southern Ming Dynasty. This person participated in the establishment of the Longwu Emperor and the Yongli Emperor, and later became a university scholar and entered the cabinet. It's just that this person has the inherent vices of Jinyiwei, greedy for money and power, provoking right and wrong, and continuing to toss the small court of the Southern Ming for his own selfish interests, and finally being killed by the Burmese army. The once beautiful JinyiWei has since completely entered history.