Later generations of history buffs actually found the fall of the Manchu dynasty quite strange. [No pop-ups]

In terms of strength, the Manchu dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century was not so weak. As the leader of the Manchu central government at that time, the Beiyang Group under the leadership of Yuan Shikai, Minister of Military Aircraft, was constantly promoting the new policy measures of the Manchu Dynasty.

After the signing of the Treaty of Xincho, the Manchu government was forced by the internal and external situation to implement a new policy. Yuan Shikai was fully supportive of the Manchu dynasty as a senior leader.

In 1901, Yuan Shikai founded Shandong University Hall (now Shandong University) in Shandong.

In 1902, Yuan Shikai concurrently served as the Minister of State Affairs and the Minister of Military Training, and organized and trained the Beiyang Standing Army (referred to as the Beiyang Army) in Baoding. The following year, the Qing government set up a military training office in Beijing, with Prince Qing Yixuan as prime minister and Yuan Shikai as the minister of the conference office. During this period, he founded various military academies and hired a large number of Japanese officers as instructors.

By 1905, the six towns of Beiyang were organized into an army, with more than 12,500 people in each town, and the Manchu government had obtained nearly 100,000 advanced armed forces.

During the same period, Yuan Shikai concurrently served as the Minister of Electricity, the Minister of Railways, and the Minister of Conferences. During this period, he was quite effective in developing the Beiyang industrial and mining enterprises, building railways, establishing patrol police, rectifying local political power, and opening new-style schools.

Yuan Shikai vigorously praised the new policy, including the abolition of the imperial examination, the supervision of the new army, the construction of schools, the establishment of industry, etc., the first Chinese police force was also established in Tianjin, and also planned to build China's first self-built railway, the Beijing-Zhangjiakou Railway.

In other words, under the leadership of Yuan Shikai, the strength of the Manchu government, which had suffered heavy losses because of the "Gengzi Incident", quickly recovered.

But one cannot but be stunned that the Manchu government, with such absolute power, collapsed almost instantly under the influence of the Wuchang uprising led by a few unknown officers of the Hubei New Army.

The answer to this question by some historical researchers in later generations is that the Xinhai Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, a revolution in the sense of progress, a revolution between the new productive forces and the old productive forces, and the new relations of production against the old relations of production. So the Manchu dynasty easily fell.

Wang Shuhui himself is scornful of this statement. In his view, if we look at the historical facts of the more than 30 years from the beginning of the Xinhai Revolution to the founding of New China, it can be made clear at first that the Xinhai Revolution itself did not have any significance in promoting the development of the productive forces in Chinese society.

The Xinhai Revolution was initiated by a group of New Army officers who were Han Chinese landlords who were not full of ethnic oppression by the Qing government. The fall of the Manchu government was due to the fact that the Han landlords and bureaucrats, who were part of the feudal ruling class, from top to bottom, from Yuan Shikai to ordinary Han New Army officers, lost hope in the Manchu Dynasty and completely abandoned the Manchu Dynasty, so it eventually led to the fall of the Manchu Dynasty.

After the end of the Xinhai Revolution, whether it was the period of Beiyang rule, the warlord war, or the last period of the skinhead rule, the economic structure of the whole China was still a feudal economy with feudal land ownership as the main body and bureaucratic capitalism and comprador capitalism as the supplement. From the perspective of economic structure, it can be made clear that the Xinhai Revolution was actually a change of dynasty within the feudal ruling class. Even if you want to put some gold dust on the face of the Xinhai Revolution as much as possible, it is already very reluctant to describe this change of dynasty as a national revolution.

The rise and fall of the feudal dynasty under the cyclical law of feudal dynasties is actually the same. In the era of feudal agriculture, any change of dynasty was a process of internal division of the feudal ruling class, the feudal landlord class betraying the old dynasty, joining the peasant uprising in a different guise, and usurping the fruits of the peasant uprising to establish a new dynasty.

The leaders of the Wuchang Uprising, Jiang Yiwu, Sun Wu and Liu Gong, actually played the same role as Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, Wang Xianzhi, Huang Chao and the like in this change of dynasty of the feudal ruling class itself.

When both the ruling class itself and the masses of the people as the ruled class abandon a regime, the demise of the regime will take on an avalanche character. For this, the fall of the Ming Dynasty is also a corroboration.

However, unlike in history, in the time and space where the Baath Party existed, the fall of the Ming Dynasty was even more rapid and drastic, so much so that Wang Shuhui, who thought that the Ming Dynasty could survive for a few years, miscalculated.

After all, Wang Shuhui always believed that the fate of the Ming Dynasty would be ended by the peasant rebels such as Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and Gao Yingxiang.

But history, which has been altered, has finally shown itself to be sufficiently uncontrollable in detail. The fall of the Ming Dynasty was accomplished by the 200,000 soldiers in Beijing who had become urban paupers, and the 50,000 Liaodong troops led by Yuan Chonghuan, a "loyal minister" of the Ming Dynasty, stationed outside Beijing.

For this, not to mention that Wang Shuhui did not think of it, in fact, no one thought of it.

One day in November 1631, after more than thirty more people had been taken away from the slums of Nancheng, Beijing, a rumor began to spread from Nancheng and then to all the military families in Beijing.

According to this rumor, the imperial court was preparing to use the robbery of Zhou Guozhang's grain store as an excuse to transfer 200,000 nominal soldiers from Beijing out of Beijing and transfer them to serve in Liaodong.

The so-called rumors, this kind of thing is so unreliable. Let's take this rumor that the Beijing camp will be transferred to Liaodong, even if there is a traditional practice of the Ming Dynasty's central army and the border army being transferred, but anyone in the upper echelons of the Ming Dynasty knows that the Beijing camp is now a force that exists on paper, and this force itself is very deeply entangled with the powerful officials of the Ming Dynasty, and no one will believe that this army will be transferred to Liaodong.

Even if the soldiers of the Beijing camp themselves think about it seriously, they will feel that this matter is very unreliable, after all, when Emperor Chongzhen tried to rectify the Beijing camp several times in the past, less than 10,000 of the 200,000 soldiers of the Beijing camp could be present. Under such circumstances, it makes no sense at all to transfer less than 10,000 soldiers from the Beijing camp who are pretended to be beggars and homeless people out of the Beijing division.

But the reason why rumors are widely spread and accepted is that there is no trust between the rulers and the ruled anymore. When the ruling class, which has been oppressed, exploited, damaged, and humiliated for many years, begins to "speculate with the greatest malice" about the ruling class, no matter how strange the rumors between the two parties without any trust, will be believed.

As a purely consumptive city, the price of food in Beijing itself is very high. This was especially evident in the late Ming Dynasty, when food prices soared. The food crisis, which is 100 times worse than history, is really much worse and more serious for ordinary people living in Beijing. The reason why Song Gouzi and others had no scruples to rob the grain of the emperor's relatives was like this.

Under this serious food crisis, for more than a year from 1630 to 1631, the military rations of 50,000 Liaodong Army, 30,000 Shandong New Army, and 20,000 Tianxiong Army had to be borne by Beijing. In order to ensure the supply of military rations, the price of grain in Beijing has risen further, and the price of rice has climbed to 40 to 50 taels per stone.

The common people are not fools, although unlike the common people of later generations, the citizens of Beijing in the late Ming Dynasty would not scold the government when they encountered something, but those who opened the grain store were all relatives of the emperor and officials of the imperial court, and they all knew it.

When everyone can't eat and can't afford to buy food, these grain stores are hoarding. The hatred of the people of Beijing for them is very strong.

The cleverness of this rumor created by the newly emerged "Dog-headed Military Division" around Song Gouzi is that he linked everyone's hatred of the grain store with Zhou Guozhang, and also linked the possible terrible encounter between Zhou Guozhang and 200,000 soldiers in the Beijing camp.

The characteristic of hating this irrational emotion is that, because it is non-ideal, any plausibility that seems possible can be easily established.

In this way, as this rumor spread, the military families in the entire city of Beijing began to surge emotionally.

At this time, Song Gouzi suddenly led a group of "heroes" with good skills to appear among the people of Nancheng who were being tortured by Dongchang Fanzi and Jinyi Guards. It's just a slogan of "grab grain, eat big households", and under the leadership of Song Gouzi, the Nancheng military households who beat more than a dozen Dongchang fans into R mud made a fuss under the leadership of Song Gouzi.

Tens of thousands of people in Nancheng, whether they were from military families or not, were driven by the pressure of survival and involuntarily joined the team of Song Gouzi to "grab grain and eat big households".

Zhou Guozhang's family's grain store in Nancheng bore the brunt. But a single grain bank cannot meet the needs of tens of thousands of people.

In this way, with the bloodshed in the process of "grabbing grain", the people stimulated by blood began to enter an irrational state, and the large households and grain stores in the entire southern city became the targets of robbery by the rioters.

Riots, especially when the general environment is in despair, can be very contagious. Ninety-nine percent of the millions of people in Beijing are on the verge of dying of cold and starvation. Even if there were no riots, the "road down" of the five cities of the Beijing Division was also three-digit every day.

With the people of Nancheng as an example, the soldiers of the Beijing camp, who belonged to the same line as the people of Nancheng, participated in this action of "grabbing grain and eating big households" under the guidance of people with good intentions. Driven by these 100,000 or 200,000 people, most of the poor people living on the verge of death in Beijing took the initiative to join this action.

At the end of 1631, the "Kyoshi Rebellion" broke out in full force.

As the ruling center of the Ming Dynasty, the military power of Beijing should have been the strongest. However, under the death of the strange people in the upper echelons of the Ming Dynasty, they occupied the army, withheld the service, withheld the salary, and destroyed the Beijing defense force, which should have been the largest number and the most powerful, into the main force of this great uprising.

Unlike the armed forces in the local cities, which were relatively able to reluctantly undertake the task of internal suppression, the violent machines in Beijing could not find any other armed forces except for the soldiers and horses of the five cities who were less than a few hundred and less than a thousand, the Jinyi guards of the Jinyi Guards of each thousand households, and the officials in the Shuntian Mansion. You must know that the soldiers of the Beijing camp, who are the armed forces nominally defending the Beijing Division, are all among the rioting people.

Hundreds of thousands of people looted and burned in the capital, causing tremendous damage to the city. Moreover, the rioters who were out of control were no longer able to be commanded by Song Gouzi, the initiator of the riots. Of course, because of the people's fear of the imperial court, the Forbidden City has not yet been impacted.

Under these circumstances, Sun Chengzong himself went out of the city and ordered Yuan Chonghuan to lead the Liaodong army outside the city into the town to suppress the riot.

But no one expected that the entry of 50,000 Liaodong troops into the city did not restore order to the city of Beijing, which had fallen into complete chaos. With the entry of these Liaodong soldiers, especially when these Liaodong soldiers slaughtered the people while participating in the robbery themselves, Yuan Chonghuan actually lost control of the Liaodong soldiers like Song Gouzi.

Originally, the large families that could not be captured because of the lack of weapons of the rioters, as well as the major yamen in Beijing, were all opened after the wolf-like Liaodong soldiers joined. With the guidance of the well-intentioned people to the uprising, all the government offices and yamen in Beijing were paralyzed.

At this time, a group of more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, under the leadership of Gao Yingxiang, suddenly appeared outside Beijing, which had completely lost its city defense strength.

When the roar of the explosion of Wang Gongchang, which had occurred once in the year of the Apocalypse, sounded in Beijing again, more than 10,000 heavily armed elite soldiers entered the city of Beijing, which was in full chaos, without hindrance.

However, unlike in history, Emperor Chongzhen, who had already understood that the general trend was gone, under the protection of hundreds of Yuan Chonghuan's personal soldiers, took some important materials, and Empress Zhou and two princes, with Sun Chengzong and several other civil ministers, took advantage of the chaos to escape from Beijing, which had fallen into irrational destruction and killing, and fled to Tianjin.

At this time, Gao Yingxiang, who had just entered Beijing and was busy suppressing the civil rebellion and massacring the Liaodong rebels, could not spare any strength to intercept and kill Emperor Chongzhen and his party. You must know that it is definitely not easy to use more than 10,000 people to deal with hundreds of thousands of rioters who have fallen into chaos and 40,000 or 50,000 rebels who have lost their organization.

And at this time, the threat in Gao Yingxiang's eyes was definitely not Emperor Chongzhen and his entourage, who did not have any combat effectiveness, but Sun Yuanhua's Shandong New Army and Lu Xiangsheng's Ascending Heavenly Army, who were fighting against Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong on the front line.

In Gao Yingxiang's view, as long as his surprise attack was successful, he finally occupied the city of Beijing, and after preventing the attack that might come from Liaodong, Sun Yuanhua and Lu Xiangsheng, who had lost the logistical supply of grain and grass and the emperor had lost their traces, would definitely collapse without a fight.

Standing on a city gate, looking at the gradually pacified city of Beijing, Gao Yingxiang regarded Li Yan, who was standing beside him and comprehensively planned this operation, as his "lucky star".

Thinking that he was a few steps away from his dream of becoming the Ninth Five-Year Venerable, Gao Yingxiang, a pure rough man, said a sentence that was extremely level for him in excitement,

"Mr. is really Zhang Liang and Xiao He of a certain family!"

After listening to Gao Yingxiang's words, Li Yan, who hurriedly saluted and was modest, heard what he thought in his heart:

"There is the Liaodong Army in the north, the Shandong New Army and the Tianxiong Army in the south, and their own logistics supplies are all pinched in the hands of those obviously dissident revival party members, this mud leg is actually the emperor's dream now!"

"Why am I so unlucky to follow such a group of monkeys?"