Great time travel

Chapter 86. The Despair of Emperor Chongzhen

Facing the defeat reports from all directions, Emperor Chongzhen felt very tired, very tired, really utterly exhausted.

You must know that although Emperor Chongzhen Zhu Youjian has been on the throne for five years, even this year, he has just turned 22 years old. In future generations, at most he will be the age of just graduating from university.But Zhu Youjian had to sit on the high position of the Ninth Five-Year Master since he was a high school student, and fight with a group of old foxes, big foxes, and little foxes in the court, and at the same time control the broken ship of the Ming Empire, which is full of holes. Struggling in the stormy sea.

To be honest, Comrade Zhu Youjian did a very bad job as the supreme leader of the Ming Dynasty.First, there were too many entanglements during the cleansing of the Eunuch Party, which not only led to the vicious expansion of the Donglin Party's power, but also seriously paralyzed the government's functions.Then he made a series of fatal mistakes in the internal and external wars. He gave too much trust to people who should not be trusted, but was too harsh on trustworthy loyal ministers. The chaos in the world eventually ruined this huge empire... But if you consider his age, I'm afraid it's hard to blame Zhu Youjian for being too stupid-when we were 17-year-old high school students, we didn't start from the Imperial Han Dynasty, the United States and the United States. There are everything from cents, literary youths, secondary illnesses to otaku?Which one is qualified for the post of county and city leaders?Not to mention being a national leader—and a national leader in a time of war!
Compared with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China who ruined the Soviet Union in five or six years, Emperor Chongzhen's level of governance is already quite passable.

It's a pity that what the Ming Empire needs at this moment is not a decent emperor, but a genius who can turn the tide!

——Never-ending frequent famines, civil uprisings and mutinies blooming in all directions, decayed and dilapidated state machinery that cannot function, powerful foreign enemies who are eyeing, greedy scholar-bureaucrats... The whole country is madly heading towards death, It can be said that the number of lives is exhausted.

Such a situation is no longer able to be maintained by a decent emperor, but a super strong man who has great courage, great wisdom, and great perseverance, who can sever a man's wrist and survive death, such as Napoleon and Hitler. There are so few glimmers of hope to save the fate of the country.

It is a pity that Emperor Chongzhen did not have such a super ability, and this mess was too heavy for him.He didn't have a good recipe to get rid of the country's ills. He only had a headache to heal his head and a foot to heal his feet. Wherever there was trouble, he dispatched troops to suppress it.

In order to follow the ancient Mingjun, Emperor Chongzhen lived a frugal personal life. His clothes and socks were patched, gold and silver ornaments in the palace were melted down as military pay, and the ostentation of meals was reduced and reduced.He worked very hard. He went to court every day and worked overtime at night to approve memorials. According to historical records, he had to work for seven or eight hours ([-] to [-] hours), and he was so exhausted that he was half dead.And no matter how tired you were the day before, after sleeping for four or five hours, you have to continue working the next day, rain or shine, all year round, and you don't even have time to pamper your concubine.

Alas, after Emperor Chongzhen ascended the throne, he worked in such a job, with no scope of work, no boundaries of work, the huge Ming Empire, and he was in charge of everything. He went to work every day, either quarreling with people (speaking officer), or Watching people quarrel (partisanship), but it is difficult to hear a single truth.I don't wear very well, I don't eat well, I don't have enough sleep, and there are bad news every three days. Some people invaded from the north, people rebelled from the west, the city was destroyed, and relatives (vassal princes) were killed. Yes, things were robbed and so on.The good news is that it is close to zero.

No matter who does this kind of work, I'm afraid they will feel physically and mentally exhausted, and even their lives will be shortened.

However, he still tried his best, went all out, day and night, day and night, diligently, hard-working, never giving up until the Great Wall, and never turning back when he hit the south wall.No matter how many setbacks he encountered, he gritted his teeth and refused to give up... The problem is that he is facing a mess that is difficult to deal with. Although he is very diligent and supervises everything personally, no matter how busy a person is, he can't do much.If a person's ability and knowledge are not enough, or his position is wrong, and he is not qualified for his position, then no matter how hard he works, it will be useless, and the more he does, the more serious his mistakes will be.

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All in all, after losing his temper, Emperor Chongzhen finally rubbed his forehead and thought about a strategy to deal with the current crisis.

Although he was as naive as an ordinary high school student at the beginning of his ascension to the throne, he even thought that as long as the world was handed over to the management of the honest gentlemen of the Donglin Party, he would be able to sit back and relax.But after suffering so many painful lessons in the past few years, Emperor Chongzhen still has some experience and skills:

First, the imperial court has nothing to do with the defense lines of Liaoxi and Jizhen facing the Jurchen captives for the time being.If you want to increase troops to deploy defenses, the capital already has no soldiers to use; if you want to abandon Ningyuan and Jinzhou and shrink back to Shanhaiguan, you are afraid that the Guanning Army will mutiny immediately.The only way right now, other than trying to appease the morale of the army, is to remain calm and maintain the status quo—anyway, after the consumption of the Daling River battle, it is true that Daming suffered a big loss, and Jiannu should also suffer a lot. Xiao, before recovering his vitality, Jiannu probably won't attack again for a while.

Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen gritted his teeth, squeezed out another [-] taels of money, and sent someone to the front of the Liaoxi Army as a reward to prevent the soldiers from changing.

Second, on the battlefield in Shandong, the court officers and troops had to deal with both the Dengzhou rebels in the east and the Wenxiangjiao monsters entrenched in Jining in the south. However, neither side was a fuel-efficient lamp. , has been advancing furiously, and has already broken through Laizhou and entered the territory of Pingdu Prefecture. With the strategy of besieging the city and fighting for aid, it has defeated two imperial reinforcements in Pingdu Prefecture.In Jiaozhou, Weifang and other places, a small group of rioters took advantage of the situation and rose up, making the situation even more chaotic.And the Dengzhou Navy launched a massive attack, defeating the Tianjin Navy in World War I and completely cutting off the shipping.

As for the Wenxiangjiao demon who raised troops in the south of Lunan, they were even more arrogant. They fought all the way to the Huaihe River in the south, and they were evenly matched with the blocking troops put together by Fengyang, the central capital, and Nanjing, the remaining capital.In the west, they entered Guide Mansion and Kaifeng Mansion in Henan Province, engulfing hundreds of thousands of hungry people in an instant, and it is said that they have joined forces with the Shaanxi bandits.In Shandong, Wen Xiangjiao not only captured Jining, the hub of the canal, but also captured Zou County, slaughtered the Yasheng Mansion Manmen (descendants of Mencius), seized the Yasheng Mansion's reserves, opened warehouses and released grain, and attracted over a million hungry people in a short time crowd.At present, demons, thieves and bandits have blossomed and spread wantonly in southern Lu, and the officers and soldiers can only barely hold Ziyang, where King Lu's mansion is located, and Qufu, where Duke Yansheng's mansion is located.

Therefore, after Zhu Dadian went to Shandong alone as the governor, although he tried his best to cheer up, it was a pity that he was short of major generals, and the Shandong army had been at peace for a long time. Can't beat them all the time.What's more terrible is that Shandong is currently suffering from successive years of drought, and hungry people are everywhere. Wenxiangjiao's rebellion is really pervasive. Not only is there a rebellion in Jining, but there are few completely safe places in the whole province from south to north.Even in the city of Jinan, some members of the Wenxiang sect rose up secretly, burned official warehouses, and assassinated officials, causing panic among the people.

If it wasn't for Wen Xiang's banditry to go south along the canal with their main force, in an attempt to sweep the rich lands of Jianghuai and Jiangnan, and then use partial forces to engulf the hungry people in Henan, and cooperate with the bandits in Shaanxi, even the leader moved south to Xuzhou, and really stayed in Shandong. The strength is not too much, otherwise Zhu Dadian, the governor of Shandong, will no longer have to consider how to go south to open the canal, but how to strengthen the city defense of Jinan, so as to ensure that the provincial capital is not lost.

But even so, the forces to quell the two rebellions were still not available.As a result, the Ministry of War in Beijing issued one official document after another, urging Zhu Dadian to open the canal as soon as possible and wipe out the religious bandits.And Zhu Dadian is one urgent report after another urgent report, almost begging for reinforcements in vain.

But how can the current capital get any reinforcements for him?Thinking of this, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't help but smiled bitterly again.

——Theoretically speaking, there is a "Beijing camp" in Beijing, which is equivalent to the imperial army in the Northern Song Dynasty and the modern capital group army.In the era of Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang, the total strength of the Beijing camp was as high as 40 (the capital was still in Nanjing at that time).After Ming Chengzu Emperor Yongle moved the capital to Beijing, there were about 20 people in the Beijing camp.Later, because there was no war in the capital for a long time, the Beijing camp was cut to more than 3 people during the Zhengde period. However, due to lack of pay and other reasons, the actual number of troops was far less than this figure. In the Chongzhen period, the actual number of the Beijing camp was the largest There are only [-] people left.

Moreover, just like the local guard soldiers, by the end of Ming Dynasty, they had been reduced to serfs who could not fight at all.The last 300 to [-] so-called "soldiers" in the Beijing camp, in fact, have not practiced or paid for a long time. Most of them are old, weak, sick and disabled. To be a servant, even the legendary Shenji Battalion equipped with a large number of "advanced firearms" is the same.As for how many truly capable soldiers were left in the Beijing camp at the end of the Ming Dynasty, there are different opinions-according to the most optimistic view, there are probably three to four thousand strong men who can fight casually in the entire Beijing camp; A pessimistic view. At that time, there were only two to three hundred soldiers in the Beijing camp, which was only enough to cope with the military parade on the emperor's whim...Of course, the private servants who were supported by military officials at all levels were not counted. ...

In any case, such an army that only exists on paper obviously cannot be reinforced to the Shandong battlefield to quell the rebellion.

In addition to the Beijing camp, there are only Jinyiwei who are the "Son of Heaven's pro-army" left in Beijing, as well as the internal prison soldiers under the Yumajian, the soldiers who patrol the city on a daily basis, and various yamen guards and other miscellaneous troops. Add up, there are more than 2 people.But this is already the minimum force to suppress the order of the capital and ensure the safety of the royal family. Once it is transferred out, there will be chaos in Beijing, so it cannot be moved lightly.

Moreover, Beijing is the largest city in the world, and the circumference of the city wall is tens of miles. With this amount of troops, it is very difficult for only one person to stand ten steps away from the city wall to defend the city.If the garrison is to be reduced, the invading enemy will not be able to defend the city as long as they build siege equipment and surround the attack on all sides: no matter how strong the city is, it must be defended by soldiers—so, the few defenders in the capital city wall, It is really impossible to move outside.

Outside the city of Beijing, there are still some reinforcements from other provinces who came to Beijing this spring and King Qin did not return. However, because the Ministry of War and the Ministry of Finance refused to provide food and salaries to King Qin's army for a long time, most of these chilled reinforcements had already collapsed. He became a bandit and horse thief, burning, killing and looting everywhere in Gyeonggi.The remaining provincial officers and soldiers were also full of resentment and did not listen to the dispatch at all. It was difficult to expect them to fight well, and even had to beware of their rebellion.

Right now around Gyeonggi, or the entire North Zhili, there are only two mobile forces left in the imperial court, but they also have important responsibilities: one is led by Qiu Jiahe, the governor of Liaodong, and stationed in Shanhaiguan. The Guanning Army, which tends to be unstable, is the last line of defense when the Tartars attack; the other is the Tianxiong Army organized and trained by Lu Xiangsheng in the south of Beizhili, stationed in the three prefectures of Daming, Guangping, and Shunde. Right now, they are fighting repeatedly fiercely with the Shaanxi rogue bandits who crossed the Taihang Mountains, and they also want to suppress the Wenxiang believers in the territory to revolt, and they are also inseparable.

However, given the rapidly collapsing situation in Shandong, and Beijing and China's eagerness to open up water transportation, it is obviously impossible not to send reinforcements there.Therefore, Emperor Chongzhen had no choice but to bite the bullet and ordered the Jiuqianchuan Army stationed in Shanhaiguan to withdraw from the front line. Led by Qin Yiming (the younger brother of the female general Qin Liangyu), the leader of the white pole soldiers, he walked to Tongzhou by land and went south to reinforce Jinan by water boat.As for the safety of the Liaodong front line, we can only count on the loyalty of the Guan Ning army and the Liaoxi generals... By the way, he also ordered Qin Yiming to summon the Qin Wangjun from the other provinces who were stranded on the outskirts of the capital, and pack up all these troublesome ghosts and put them together. There are about 2 people.As for how to control this gang of mobs from all corners of the country... let Zhu Dadian have a headache!
At the same time, an edict was issued to urge Hong Chengchou, the trilateral governor who had already arrived in Taiyuan, to lead the Qin army to cross the Taihang Mountains as soon as possible, continue eastward to Gyeonggi, and then cooperate with Lu Xiangsheng's Tianxiong Army to eliminate the bandits and civil unrest in Beizhili as quickly as possible. Return the capital to a bright future.

In addition, in order to relieve Zhu Dadian's pressure from being flanked by two sides in Jinan, Emperor Chongzhen hesitated for a long time, but finally let go of his face and sent veteran Xu Guangqi to Jinan to try to negotiate to appease Dengzhou Town. Allow Zhu Dadian to free up his hands to deal with the demons of Wenxiangjiao.Or persuade Chen Xin, a traitor, to stop the blockade of Tianjin port and allow the southern grain shipping fleet to transport grain to Beijing by sea.

Third, with regard to resisting the demons of Wenxiangjiao from the southern front, and suppressing the Shaanxi rogue bandits who fled into the Central Plains, and the Fujian war after Huangshi led the Funing Army to pull up the flag and riot, due to the long distance and poor news, the Beijing side In fact, it is no longer possible to command by remote control. At this time, the Dengzhou rebels blocked the sea route, and the demons of Wenxiangjiao blocked the canal. paralysis.Now there are a large number of Shaanxi bandits crossing the Taihang Mountains and invading northern Zhili and various counties in Henan Province. As a result, it is very unsafe for messengers who enter Beijing from the south to go north by land.Therefore, the news received by the capital here is also intermittent, and there are often mistakes and omissions.

Under such circumstances, no matter how strong the desire to control the Chongzhen Emperor in Beijing was, he could only delegate power to his subordinates, pinning his hopes on Lu Weiqi, Shangshu of the Ministry of War in Nanjing, and Han Zanzhou, the eunuch of the Nanjing Garrison, hoping that they could Good job, good news as soon as possible.

In the end, we must try to stabilize the price of grain in the capital and stabilize people's hearts... Thinking of this, Emperor Chongzhen suddenly felt powerless: what the capital is currently short of is not ten thousand shi or 300 thousand shi of grain, but millions of shi Food—Because the imperial court is responsible for solving the problem of food and salaries for more than [-] frontier troops in Xuanhua, Jibei, and Liaodong, more than [-] officials in Beijing, tens of thousands of eunuchs in the palace, and at least [-] to [-] military horses. To support such a large non-agricultural population, more than [-] million stone grains and rice are needed for one year's rations plus the loss of land transportation after arriving in the capital.

Originally, the Yanji Plain around the capital was also a very important grain-producing area in the north. This was also the basis for Ming Chengzu to move his capital to Beijing.Although with the passage of time, the land has been merged fiercely, and the better farms in the Gyeonggi area are in the hands of the royal relatives and wealthy dignitaries, and the court cannot collect any taxes, but at least a lot of surplus grain will be trafficked to the capital. Solve the ration problem of a considerable part of the people in Beijing.

However, in the past two years, northern Shaanxi and Henan are of course a thousand miles of red land, and there are also constant droughts and floods in Beizhili, and slaves and bandits come to visit one after another. Millions of refugees waiting to be fed are waiting for relief from the imperial court!
This addition and subtraction made the food shortage crisis in Gyeonggi even worse and added fuel to the fire.However, all sea and water transportation is cut off at the moment. Even if there is grain in the south of the Yangtze River, there is no way to transport it to the north. Although theoretically speaking, it is still possible to transport grain from the Huguang grain-producing area across the entire Henan Province, and then pass through Daming Mansion to the capital by land. Even in the year when grain transportation was at its lowest ebb, the capital had to transfer about 300 million shi of grain from the south.Based on a horse-drawn cart with a capacity of ten shi, 300 million grain carts, 30 mules, and 60 coachmen are needed to transport 30 million grains. Such huge carriages are lined up in a long line and walk on the post road. A long line of five or six thousand miles... And this has not taken into account the rations consumed by the mules, horses and coachmen along the way!

Not to mention the dilapidated and chaotic times during the Chongzhen period, even the Yongle period when the national power was at its peak, the Ming Empire could not afford such exaggerated and absurd expenses!

Therefore, when the sea routes and canals have not been opened up, Emperor Chongzhen, who can't change the grain, has no way to stabilize the grain price at the moment, and can't even establish a grain rationing system... Now, officials in Beijing and China Salary and food can only be paid in full in silver (of course, according to the usual food price), and a discount has to be made.The rations of the Xuanhua, Datong, Jibei, and Liaodong armies have already stopped or been reduced for several months.At this time, the rich and powerful in the capital still hoarded and drove up the price of grain, but they couldn't punish them at all, which made Emperor Chongzhen very depressed.

In short, Emperor Chongzhen soon discovered that before the sea and water transportation were opened up, the food crisis in the capital could only be borne by the people tightening their belts.This helpless sense of powerlessness made the emperor feel very depressed, but there have been too many such things in recent years, so he is no stranger to it.