Huang Taiji bypassed the Shanhai Pass, crossed the Great Wall from the north of Gyeonggi, threatened Beijing, Yuan Chonghuan led the troops back to Jingqin Wang, just when Yuan Chonghuan's troops drove to the city of Beijing, the Qing army suddenly made a ghost appear, creating a false impression to Chongzhen, it was Yuan Chonghuan's troops who led the Qing army to attack the city.

Therefore, the defenders of the city resolutely did not allow the troops outside the city to enter the city, and the Yuan army, which had been attacking for thousands of miles, was exhausted at this moment, that is, it could not enter the city to rest, and it had to face the powerful Eight Banners army, but the Yuan army still successfully repelled the attack of the Qing army. On this night, Huang Taiji sent his henchmen and generals to trumpet in front of the Ming army prisoners how to agree with Yuan Chonghuan to surrender the city, and then deliberately let the prisoners escape.

How could the captives know that it was a counter-plot, and after returning to the city, they reported to Emperor Chongzhen in 1510. Chongzhen, who was already suspicious, connected several things together, and decided that Yuan Chonghuan must be a traitor, so he sent Yuan Chonghuan into the city, put him in prison, and executed him a few months later. Since then, the Ming Dynasty has lost the only northeast barrier, and the Eight Banners army has been able to gallop through the northeast land as if it were no one.

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there was a three-day simultaneous situation, one was the Ming regime headed by Emperor Chongzhen in Beijing, the second was the Qing regime headed by Huang Taiji in Shenyang, and the third was the Dashun regime headed by Li Zicheng in the northwest.

Speaking of Li Zicheng, the peasant army started, originally under his uncle Gao Yingxiang, the king of the old Chuang, as a general, and after his uncle was captured and righteous, he was promoted as the new king. The Ming Dynasty's record against the peasant army was much better than that of the Qing army, and the generals of the Ming army, Hong Chengchou, Chen Qiyu, Sun Chuanting, Lu Xiangsheng, and Xiong Wencan, all had brilliant victories over the peasant army.

Chen Qiyu once forced the peasant army into the Carriage Gorge and almost trapped Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong in it; Sun Chuanting defeated the peasant army at Tongguan and captured the old king Gao Yingxiang alive; Xiong Wencan chased the peasant army desperate and surrendered one after another, and Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai were among them; Lu Xiangsheng won a great victory in Chuzhou, and the corpses of the peasant army were strewn all over the field. There are also generals Zuo Liangyu, He Renlong, Cao Wenzhao, Cao Bianjiao, and Gao Jie conflicting left and right.

It was not impossible to extinguish the spark of the peasant army, but it was the urgency of Emperor Chongzhen, who helped the peasant army at a critical moment, and the generals of the Ming army were slightly defeated, either dead or degraded, and the pillars of the Ming Dynasty were lost, Chen Qiyu was demoted, Xiong Wencan was beheaded, Sun Chuanting was imprisoned, and the fall of the stars one by one doomed the demise of the Ming Dynasty.

Li Zicheng was chased by Xiong Wencan with nowhere to hide, and was forced to hide in Shangluo Mountain, when Li Zicheng came out of the mountain again, Xiong Wencan had become a ghost of unjust death, Li Zicheng once again formed his own army, absorbed Li Yan, Song Xiance, Niu Jinxing and other intellectuals, washed away the inherent banditry of the peasant army, a momentum of the heavenly generals descending to the throne of the Forbidden City.

He occupied Luoyang, beheaded the king of Fu, broke Xiangyang, took Wuchang, played Kai all the way, and officially proclaimed himself emperor in Xi'an, with the country name Dashun. After being proclaimed emperor, Li Zicheng marched all the way east, only in Ningwu was hit hard, and other important towns such as Xuanda were all passed on. Finally, in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, after burning the tombs of the twelve emperors of Changping Ming, they surrounded the city of Beijing.

Although Emperor Chongzhen had single-handedly eradicated the Wei Zhongxian group at the beginning of his accession to the throne, his distrust of the ministers of the court still led him to the road of destruction of his cronies and eunuchs, and the huge eunuch team of more than 10,000 people in the Ming Dynasty did not bring any good luck to Chongzhen, but slowly consumed the blood of the giant of the Ming Dynasty. Until the last moment, it was also the rebellion of the eunuchs guarding the gates, which completely ruined the Ming Dynasty.

After the peasant army invaded the capital, Emperor Chongzhen entrusted the prince to his relatives Zhou Kui, Tian Hongyu, ordered Empress Zhou and Empress Dowager Zhang to commit suicide, and personally hacked Yuan Guifei to death and cut his daughter. Then he hurriedly fled to Jingshan, and committed suicide on a crooked-necked tree on the east side of the Shouhuang Court, and his personal eunuch Wang Chengen was accompanied by him on the opposite side.

Emperor Chongzhen is not an absurd emperor, nor is he a lazy emperor, his eagerness for the revival of the Ming Dynasty, everyone who has read his deeds can clearly feel, but history always likes to joke with people, his grandfather, brother, although absurd, but spent his life peacefully, but the bitter fruit made by the ancestors, to be tasted by the descendants, in the face of such a mess, how can you ask the young Chongzhen Emperor to do anything?

Huang Taiji took a detour to the Great Wall to invade Beijing, and Yuan Chonghuan urgently returned to confront Huang Taiji at Guangqu Gate in Beijing. After the trial of the six ministries and nine qing, Yuan Chonghuan was finally killed, and the history called the change of his own life. Later, Huang Taiji made many expeditions to Mongolia, and finally completely defeated Lin Dan Khan six years later, proclaimed himself emperor in Shengjing the following year, changed the name of the country to the Qing Dynasty, and invaded the Ming Dynasty through the Great Wall five times in Beizhili, Shandong and other regions, known as the Qing army into the fortress.

At that time, the Northern Zhili was plagued by famine and epidemic for many years, the people were not able to make a living, and the situation in western Liaoning was also deteriorating day by day, the Qing army fought with the Ming army many times, and finally occupied Jinzhou and other places, the main force of the Ming army, Hong Chengchou and others, surrendered, and the Ming Dynasty retreated to Shanhaiguan.

It was not a pleasant thing to be a high-ranking government official in the Chongzhen era, especially the kind of high-ranking official who was in charge alone. There were far more high-ranking officials in the Chongzhen Dynasty who died unnaturally than in other eras in Chinese history, such as Xiong Tingbi, Wang Huazhen, and Yang Hao, who either died in unjust prisons created by those in power, or died in a paper edict from Chongzhen, or died in fear of suicide after defeat. But compared with the death of a generation of famous generals Yuan Chonghuan - Ling Chi's death, their death can be regarded as very decent and very humane.

In the third year of Chongzhen, the Beijing city was slaughtered, and the news of Ling Chi Yuan Chonghuan had long since spread. In their opinion, Yuan Chonghuan, a traitor who led the wolf into the house, was finally going to be punished, and Yuan Chonghuan was arrested on charges of colluding with the Houjin and conspiracy to rebel.

When Yuan Chonghuan was delayed by Ling, when his skin and flesh were exhausted, he had not yet lost his breath, and the screams between his heart and lungs were endless, and the people bought a piece of meat with a penny of silver, which was as big as a finger, and swallowed his stomach. When he ate it, he would scold, and it didn't take long for Yuan Chonghuan's meat to be sold out.

Yuan Chonghuan is a native of Dongguan, Guangdong, because he was born black, thin and short, Chongzhen once affectionately called him Yuan Manzi. Like most officials of the Ming Dynasty, Yuan Chonghuan also entered the official career through the imperial examination, he was a jinshi in the forty-seventh year of Wanli, and in the same year was awarded the title of Shaowuzhi County in Fujian.

In the forty-sixth year of Wanli, Nurhachi issued seven hatreds and announced that he would not stand with the Ming Dynasty, which was like a landmark of the city and a landmark event of the late Ming Dynasty. For Yuan Chonghuan, it means that this stubborn and conceited southerner, even if he is a magistrate in Fujian, thousands of kilometers away from Liaodong, still pays infinite attention to the border affairs of Liaodong in addition to dealing with money, food and lawsuits.

In the second year of the Apocalypse, not long after Yuan Chonghuan was promoted to the head of the military department, he happened to encounter the defeat of the Ming army in the Battle of Guangning, and the imperial court discussed sending people to guard Shanhaiguan. After Yuan Chonghuan learned of this, he rode alone to Shanhaiguan to investigate and secretly visit, because he did not ask the head of the military department for leave, the army did not know where the chief had gone, and of course the family did not know. After a while, Director Yuan came back and said to the chief: "Give me money and food for the army and horses, and I will be enough to guard this pass." ”

When Nurhachi died, Yuan Chonghuan, who was the supreme commander of the Ningyuan front, sent people to mourn without the authorization of the imperial court.

Yuan Chonghuan is an excellent doer, a activist, he is full of ideals and passion, but he often ignores the rules of the game for the sake of ideals. As a high-ranking official in the system, he likes to act alone and arbitrarily, and with his talent and passion for serving the country, he has indeed done a good job.

But he doesn't understand the fact that he is a self-righteous person, and it just so happens that his master Chongzhen is also a self-serving person. When the situation is tense outside, they may have a honeymoon of cooperation, but mutual suspicion will surely grow with the passage of time, and this hidden suspicion is destined to one day lead to an inevitable tragedy.

In the first year of Chongzhen, Chongzhen appointed Yuan Chonghuan as the secretary of the military department and the right deputy capital of the imperial history, supervising Ji Liao, and supervising the military affairs of Deng, Lai, and Tianjin. After dozens of days of long journey, Yuan Chonghuan came from his hometown to the familiar city of Beijing, and Chongzhen immediately summoned him on the platform. However, this platform call once again exposed Yuan Chonghuan's character weaknesses, and his unthinking rhetoric became one of the inducements for capital punishment in the future.

After Chongzhen politely greeted Yuan Chonghuan, he couldn't wait to ask Yuan Chonghuan: "It has been ten years since Houjin was strong, the feudal territory fell, and the Liao people were devastated. Qing Wanli went to the call, loyal and courageous, and all the strategies of Pingliao can be played. ”

Yuan Chonghuan replied: "All the strategies have been written separately, the ministers are favored by the emperor, and the ministers are summoned thousands of miles away, if the emperor can give the ministers the right to act cheaply, five years and Liaodong's external troubles can be calmed, and the whole Liao can be recovered." ”

He must have been the first person to set a date for the pacification of Liaodong in front of Chongzhen, and when he heard that it would only take five years to resolve the big trouble in Liaodong, Chongzhen, who was overwhelmed by the raging world, was overflowing with joy, and the cabinet ministers who accompanied him were also overjoyed.

However, some people are skeptical of Yuan Chonghuan's five-year plan, and this person is Xu Yuqing in the military department. He took advantage of the break when Chongzhen returned to the harem to rest halfway through the meeting, and quietly asked Yuan Chonghuan what his plan was, but Yuan Chonghuan's answer was much beyond Xu Yuqing's expectations: "It's just to comfort the sacred heart." ”

Xu Yuqing was shocked when he heard this, and he reminded Yuan Chonghuan: "The emperor is extremely wise, how can you waste it?

When Chongzhen returned to the platform again, Yuan Chonghuan immediately put forward considerable conditions for the five-year plan, the first is to guarantee money and food from the household department, the second is to guarantee weapons from the military department, and the third is to guarantee the initiative in employing personnel. Chongzhen agreed to these almost harsh conditions one by one, and gave him the Shang Fang sword that was cut first and then played, and it was this formidable Shang Fang sword that later cost Yuan Chonghuan's life, and also ruined the Ming Dynasty in a sense.

Although Yuan Chonghuan, who was born as an intellectual, has been on the battlefield for a long time and has lived a life in the army in an iron vest, he still has the characteristics of an intellectual's unique rhetoric and good talk. Such intellectuals, whose loyalty to the state and the monarch are unquestionable, and who do their best to be responsible, cannot conceal the ironclad fact that they are often suspected of being ambitious and talented.

They believe too much that their loyalty and sincerity can turn the tide of the tide, but they do not know that when the edifice is about to fall, it will be difficult to sustain itself. What's more, Yuan Chonghuan, who was holding Shang Fang's sword in his hand and went to Liaodong in Chongzhen's ardent expectations, was facing an extremely troublesome mess.

First of all, money and food, if you want the horses to run, you have to let the horses eat grass, but the soldiers guarding Liaodong have not received military salaries for many years, so the main line that almost runs through the military history of the late Ming Dynasty is that the soldiers who are short of pay continue to mutiny and flee. Just when Yuan Chonghuan rushed to Liaodong, Bi Zisu, the supreme administrative head of Liaodong, and Zhu Mei, the chief soldier, were caught by soldiers who had been short of pay for four months and were beaten to the point of bleeding.

After Yuan Chonghuan arrived, the imperial court did allocate part of Liaodong's military salary, but it was still a drop in the bucket compared with the huge expenses. Yuan Chonghuan had no choice but to write to Chongzhen, asking Chongzhen to use his internal money for Liao affairs, otherwise mutinies would continue to occur. And Chongzhen hated the ministers the most for proposing to use his private money, even if it was used to protect their Zhu family's country and the Zhu family's life.

So it is conceivable that Yuan Chonghuan's proposal will not be adopted by Chongzhen at all, but will cast the first shadow of dissatisfaction in Chongzhen's heart.