"History of the Ming Dynasty" said: The court died and the Ming died. Sun Chuanting is the last hope of the Ming Dynasty. Sun Chuanting once wiped out 15 rebels in a row, captured the older generation of "King Chuang" Gao Yingxiang, and together with Hong Chengchou and others, the late Ming uprising was at a low ebb. Even at the last moment when the building was about to collapse, he still showed remarkable military and political qualities, which caused great trouble to Li Zicheng. However, in the end, he was defeated by Li Zicheng in succession and died in defeat.
Sun Chuanting, the governor of the Ming Dynasty, has almost no defeats, but why can't he still defeat Li Zicheng, who has been defeated repeatedly?
1. Sun Chuanting is difficult to support alone
When Sun Chuanting was released from prison in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Lu Xiangsheng had died in battle, Hong Chengchou had surrendered to Huang Taiji, although Sun Chuanting was a famous general who was not born in the world, but in the face of the Ming Dynasty that the building was about to fall, Sun Chuanting, who was fighting alone, was unable to support himself.
2. Recruitment, unbearable use
When Sun Chuanting went to Shaanxi for the second time to serve as the governor of the three sides, the elite army he brought out had already been buried in the Battle of Songjin, and he had to recruit a large number of new soldiers.
It takes enough time to build new recruits into elite divisions, but Emperor Chongzhen, who grabbed Sun Chuanting's life-saving straw in despair, repeatedly urged Sun Chuanting to send troops to attack Li Zicheng, hoping that Sun Chuanting could repeat the old story of capturing Gao Yingxiang.
In the ninth year of Chongzhen, the reason why Sun Chuanting was able to capture Gao Yingxiang alive was mainly because Sun Chuanting occupied the terrain advantage and Gao Yingxiang was hit hard by Lu Xiangsheng and Hong Chengchou one after another.
In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting led the army to Henan to attack Li Zicheng, but he had no terrain advantage to occupy, nor could he cooperate with Lu Xiangsheng and Hong Chengchou, and he had to face Li Zicheng, whose strength was far superior to Gao Yingxiang. In this case, the large number of recruits recruited by Sun Chuanting is very unusable.
Third, Sun Chuanting is angry
After Sun Chuanting captured Gao Yingxiang, Yang Sichang's strategy of "four positive and six corners, ten sides of the net" formulated by Yang Sichang to completely sweep away the liukou began to be implemented. Sun Chuanting did not agree with this strategy, believing that it was to quench his thirst.
Sun Chuanting's disapproval made Yang Sichang hold a grudge against him, and as a result, although Sun Chuanting had repeatedly made military exploits, he was often rewarded for his merits and punished heavily under Yang Sichang's manipulation. In the eleventh year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting and Hong Chengchou received an edict to lead the army to the king.
Under Yang Sichang's arrangement, Hong Chengchou received considerable courtesy, but Sun Chuanting couldn't even see Emperor Chongzhen. In the twelfth year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting was wrongfully imprisoned under Yang Sichang's false accusation. has suffered a series of injustices, can Sun Chuanting not be angry in his heart!
In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen and the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, a large part of the reason why Sun Chuanting was defeated by Li Zicheng twice was that Emperor Chongzhen repeatedly urged Sun Chuanting to go to war, which caused Sun Chuanting to not have enough time to prepare for the war.
However, Emperor Chongzhen's repeated urging of Sun Chuanting to go to war did not get the support of the courtiers, and most of the courtiers believed that the Shaanxi official army under Sun Chuanting was the last family belongings of the Ming Dynasty and could not be used easily.
In this case, if Sun Chuanting could defend himself and know the benefits, it was very likely to succeed if he could buy himself more time to prepare for the war, but after the angry Sun Chuanting received the edict of Emperor Chongzhen urging him to send troops, he hurriedly raised troops to attack Li Zicheng, and finally suffered two defeats.
Fourth, logistical supply difficulties
At the end of the Ming Dynasty, due to years of war and natural disasters, Henan was already thousands of miles of red land and starvation, and was unable to provide food and salary to Sun Chuanting's army, so Sun Chuanting had to rely on Shaanxi to transfer logistics supplies.
In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen and the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Sun Chuanting led the army to attack Li Zicheng twice, in fact, they all had a great chance of winning, but in the end, they all fell short due to the fact that the logistics supplies could not be delivered to the front line on time due to rainy weather.
Sun Chuanting's failure was a defeat in the fortunes of the country, but he took office with all his heart and soul for the country. At that time, the army had no food, so he gathered all the big landlords to borrow food, but no one was willing to give it. Food was the lifeblood of the troops, and later they obtained evidence of the landlord's misappropriation of land through land measurement. All of them were killed on the spot, and the grain confiscation and confiscation finally solved the problem of grain and grass. Who knew that people were not as good as heaven, and the plague broke out. The soldiers of the army suffered serious casualties, and the emperor kept urging the bandits, the situation in Luoyang was very bad at that time, and he hoped that the pressure on this side of the battle would be reduced. In the end, he fought to the death with insufficient troops and was defeated!
The country is very fragile in the face of natural disasters, and no matter how powerful the national fortunes are, no matter how powerful the generals are, they are powerless to reverse it.