At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing army finally entered the customs to complete the unification, and from then on began manchu rule. At that time, the Ming Dynasty had 100 million people, while the Qing army only had 300,000 people, why was the Ming Dynasty finally defeated by the Qing army? One of Chongzhen's guards gave the answer.
The Manchus were originally Jurchens, and after Nurhaci became the leader, he had the intention of seizing the power of the Ming Dynasty, so he summoned the leaders of the Jurchen tribes for consultation, and also held a heavenly sacrifice meeting, ordering the clans to shave their heads and braids, and change the Jurchen to Qing, which also showed a clear line with the previous weakness. Since then, Nurhaci has begun to fight against the Ming army on behalf of the soldiers.
At that time, the Ming Dynasty had advantages in manpower and financial resources, but in the 26 years of operations before the Qing army entered the customs, the Qing army had the upper hand everywhere, and the Ming army was beaten so bitterly that later the national treasury was empty and the troops were short, and finally Li Zicheng took advantage of the false attack and died. In fact, on the surface, Li Zicheng overthrew the Ming Dynasty, in fact, the Qing army defeated the Ming army, if there was no Perennial battle of the Qing army, Li Zicheng would have been eliminated by the Ming government long ago, so the Ming Dynasty was actually defeated in the hands of the Qing army.
According to the Manchu old file "Eight Flags Compilation and Review of Male Ding Book", when the Manchus entered the customs, there were only more than 50,000 soldiers in the Eight Banners, and according to the ancient calculation method of "one Ding to five mouths", it was roughly estimated that all the Manchus at that time did not exceed 300,000. According to the literature of the "Investigation of Population Changes in the Ming Dynasty", the population of the Ming Dynasty reached about 120 million during the Ming Jiajing and Longqing years.
The famous French scholar Perefit wrote in the book "Stagnant Empire" that "300,000 Tatars ruled 100 million Central Plains people", which is also a very image. On the question of why 100 million Ming Dynasty people lost to 300,000 Manchus, a Jinyi guard next to Chongzhen also answered with four words.
This Jinyi guard was called Wang Shide, and Wang Shide succeeded his father as Jinyiwei and later became the commander of Jinyiwei. In the Chongzhen era, Wang Shide was assigned to be in charge of the palace guards, and he was in and out of the Forbidden City all day, and he was also able to meet the civil and military officials and have contact with them.
Wang Shide once said that "the ministers and ministers, the emperors of the Japanese service, witnessed the difficulties of the times, and knew where the disasters came from", and it was precisely because he was circling between the emperor and the ministers that he also witnessed the reasons for the fall of the Ming Dynasty, so after the fall of the Ming Dynasty, he wrote a collection of memories, "Chongzhen's Testament", and made his own unique analysis of the events of that year.
In the anthology, Wang Shide used four words to explain the answer to the fall of the Ming Dynasty, and these four words are "there is a king and no subjects." The Chongzhen Emperor was a very hard-working emperor, and what he did far exceeded that of his fathers, but at that time, the Ming Dynasty officialdom was corrupt, and Chen Zhijian fought with each other, each pulling together gangs, not focusing on state affairs, and only caring about his own struggles. Wang Shide also lamented in the anthology, "The so-called Confucian subjects are like this, and the affairs of the world are still possible?" ”
In fact, not only Wang Shide, Chongzhen himself also said that "the king of the subjugation of the country is not the king, and the subjects are the subjects of the subjugated country", even Li Zicheng also said that "the king is not very dark, but the subjects do their best". It can be seen that the phenomenon of "having a king and no subjects" is also well known to people, and this is the crux of the Ming government, which is the real reason why the Ming Dynasty lost 100 million people to 300,000 Manchus.