Chapter 85: Emperor Chongzhen’s despair (Part 1) In August of the fifth year of Chongzhen, the capital In the summer of this year, the street scene in the capital was extremely bleak.
Due to the martial law in the city, there are far fewer street vendors.
Apart from the dust and the smell of excrement, the remaining feeling on the streets is a sense of depression.
Every street and alley has the same sparse pedestrians, and most shops are deserted.
Many shops simply closed their doors.
It's hard to say whether it's because there are no customers or because there are no goods.
Because the demon bandits of the Wenxiang Sect raised troops in southern Shandong and cut off the water transportation to Beijing; Chen Xin in Dengzhou Town rebelled again and repeatedly defeated the imperial navy and blocked the shipping to Tianjin, so all the food and supplies to the capital were imported from the south.
Almost cut off.
Unexpectedly, the previous operations of Abatai, a Tartar, who broke through the border and went south to fight with the imperial army, consumed most of the capital's originally small grain reserves.
The original plan was to replenish them as soon as possible.
Unexpectedly, this year's new grain has not yet arrived in Beijing, and sea and water transportation will be difficult. have been cut off together.
What's even worse is that the wealthy businessmen in Beijing are still hoarding food and speculating on grain prices.
As a result, the price of rice in Beijing has skyrocketed to ten taels of silver per stone, and the price of wheat is eight taels of silver and one stone.
Many poor people have starved to death, and all industries in the city have withered. , the market is extremely depressed.
As the world becomes more and more difficult, the public security in the capital market is also deteriorating day by day.
Various rice-grabbing trends occur one after another.
Driven by hunger, those ordinary people who are usually honest and good-natured have also turned into fierce thugs.
They have gathered spontaneously, Armed with sticks and kitchen knives, groups rushed to the grain store, burned, killed and looted.
The green-skinned idlers in the city even appeared one after another, acting as the vanguard of the rioters.
The Shuntian Mansion in the capital had no choice but to make up its mind.
In troubled times, they used heavy rituals to chop off hundreds of heads at once and hang them outside the government office for public display.
Relying on the bloody and terrifying butcher knife, the most basic order was barely maintained.
As for the villages and counties of Shuntian Prefecture outside the capital, it was even more miserable.
First, there were severe droughts for many years, and then they were tortured to death by the Tatar invaders.
There were also various Qinwang officers and soldiers who came to the capital, and they also caused harm to the place along the way.
Finally, The roads were full of beggars, people died of hunger everywhere, and corpses were floating in the canals.
The refugees peeled off the bark of elm trees to make cakes, the bran bark to make porridge, and the rotten residue of bad grains as a delicacy.
Extremely hungry, people gathered to besiege official warehouses and intercept grain supplies one after another.
There was another rebellion, and all the manors in the countryside of Shuntian Mansion were plundered, even the imperial manor was not spared.
In the Forbidden City, the situation was also gloomy.
The palace maids, guards and eunuchs were all trembling with fear.
Even the concubines had temporarily given up their thoughts of competing for favor.
In recent days, several unlucky people have offended the emperor because of minor offenses. , he was actually dragged down and beaten to death.
"Kill, kill, I want to kill Chen Xin, kill Huang Shi, kill Zu Dashou and those bastards."
In the Forbidden City and the Hall of Cultivation of the Heart, broken porcelain fragments were everywhere on the ground.
Emperor Chongzhen's pale face had a sickly flush, and he kept roaring crazily.
The Battle of Dalinghe, fought from last summer to early spring of this year, cost the imperial court millions of taels of military support each year and almost emptied the emperor's private treasury, but the Guan Ning Army only gave Emperor Chongzhen the money on the battlefield.
The disappointments again and again turned into despair in the end: a full 150,000 elite soldiers supported by the imperial court were wiped out on the battlefield of Daling River, and countless gunners, artillerymen, horses and vehicles were lost in desperation.
The Liao salaries that the officials in the mainland had collected through strict performance appraisals and forced civil unrest were quickly wiped out in these defeats.
After the defeat in the Battle of Dalinghe, the former chief minister Zhou Yanru and the emperor's master Sun Chengzong took the blame and resigned, and Wen Tiren succeeded him as the chief minister.
Emperor Chongzhen originally thought that as long as there were new people in the cabinet, there would be some new atmosphere.
However, what was waiting for him was one after another more terrifying and shocking news.
Chen Xin, the commander-in-chief of Dengzhou in Shandong who had been personally praised by him, suddenly rebelled.
He first raised his troops to attack Dengzhou City, forcing Sun Yuanhua, the governor of Denglai, to flee in a boat and go to sea, where he ended up unknown.
Afterwards, the Dengzhou Navy bombarded Dagukou, causing shock in the capital.
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And Huang Shi, the best general in the world from Fujian who once swept across Liaodong alone and killed Nurhaci, has now turned against him.
In view of the corruption of the Liao Dynasty, someone in the DPRK even proposed to use this person to go north to Ping Liao.
Before Emperor Chongzhen could decide whether to adopt this proposal, the explosive bad news came from Nanjing that Huangshi had colluded with overseas gangsters to rebel, conquer the provincial capital of Fuzhou, and kill Fujian Governor Zou Weilian.
These two pieces of bad news were delivered to Emperor Chongzhen one after another, who was still struggling with the defeat of Dalinghe.
His Majesty was immediately so angry that he fell down.
At the subsequent court meeting, the ministers and officials shirked each other's responsibilities and blamed their opponents, which made Emperor Chongzhen even more dissatisfied.
Finally, after a quarrel, he decided to appoint Zhu Dadian as the governor of Shandong, responsible for supervising the division and pacifying Deng Deng.
State chaos.
As for the chaos in Fujian, the Nanjing Ministry of War tried to mobilize troops to put it down.
At the same time, an order was sent to the Yamen of the Governor of Guangdong and Guangxi to immediately expel the merchant ships of the Kun thieves and to prohibit private trade with the Kun thieves.
Unexpectedly, it rained all night long, and before Zhu Dadian could arrive in Jinan to take office, the Wenxiang Cult demons once again rebelled in Lunan, attacked Jining, cut off water transportation, and killed the people who transported grain and rice from Jiangnan to Beijing.
As a result, the rebel army that was scheduled to enter Dengzhou had not yet been assembled, so they had to turn around and deal with the Wenxiang Cult rebellion first.
Moreover, because they underestimated the power of the cult bandits, they lost several battles in a row.
Next, several groups of Shaanxi bandits also began to break into Henan, and they seemed to have a tendency to join forces with the Wenxiang Sect bandits.
After repeated discussions, the imperial court decided to dispatch Trilateral Governor Hong Chengchou to lead the Qin army out of Tongguan and take charge in view of the increasingly stable ground in Shaanxi.
Put down the chaos of bandits and religious bandits in the Central Plains.
At the same time, Nanjing, the remaining capital, and Fengyang, the central capital, also managed to organize all their forces and march north to the Huaihe River to block the southward route of the Wenxiang Sect rebels.
As for the rebel general Huang Shi who was far away in Fujian, he could not take care of it for the time being.
The most important thing was to save the lifeline of the canal and the colorful world of Jiangnan.
After holding on until July, the Wenxiang Rebellion has still not been put down, the canal has not been opened, not a single grain of grain from the south has been delivered to the capital, and the price of grain in North Zhili has skyrocketed.
How is the war situation in Fujian?
Even more ignorant.
Although Hong Chengchou won a victory at Luoyang City and severely damaged a group of rogue bandits, hundreds of thousands of rogue soldiers had poured into Henan at this time, enslaving the local hungry people.
Coupled with the Wenxiang Sect's uprisings everywhere, there were almost no people in Henan Province.
Which government It was peaceful, and there was no way to deal with it for a while.
But at this juncture, the border troops of Xuanfu and Datong actually broke out in internal strife over two silver mines, and it was really unbelievable that they killed tens of thousands of soldiers and horses in one go.
Take court laws and regulations seriously Next, before the cause of the civil strife in Xuanfu and Datong towns was clearly investigated, another even more terrible news came from Shanxi.
Another group of Shaanxi bandits did not go to Henan to wreak havoc, but went straight to Taiyuan and wiped out Shanxi in one fell swoop.
The provincial capital also massacred the whole family of the King of Jin After learning about this incident, Emperor Chongzhen's eyes darkened again.
He almost vomited blood on the spot.
Such a disaster, such as the loss of his vassal and the murder of his vassal king, had never happened in the Ming Dynasty for a hundred years.
But now it happened under his own rule.
How could he deal with it in the future?
Have a face to meet the ancestors Just when Emperor Chongzhen was furious, even more terrifying bad news came from the Liaodong front line that broke his heart: the insidious and cunning slave leader Huang Taiji, known as the reincarnation of the Nine-tailed Fox, passed through Daling Many Ming Dynasty generals who surrendered in the Battle of He began to lobby the remnants of the Guanning Army in western Liaoning to surrender, causing rumors and confusion in Jiliao border towns for a while.
In addition, due to the interruption of sea and water transportation, the money and food allocated by the imperial court to Guan Ning's army was suspended for two months.
The governor of Liaodong, Qiu Jiahe, and the eunuchs in charge of the army repeatedly reported secretly, saying that the morale of the army was unstable and there was fear of unforeseen disasters.
In order to prevent Guan Ning's army from defecting to the enemy and opening the country's gates, I hope that the emperor will quickly allocate money and food and reward the sergeants heavily to reassure him.
In response to this, Emperor Chongzhen, in addition to angrily scolding Guan Ning's army for being unfaithful and unjust, could only smile helplessly: What he said about rewarding the sergeant with heavy rewards was that the treasury in Taicang had been so poor since the end of Wanli that the emperor's inner treasury was also poor.
There are only a few taels of silver left.
Now that water transportation has been cut off, taxes from various provinces cannot be sent to the capital.
How can there be any money left?
Guan Ningjun, a bunch of bastards who only take money and do no work, how can they be just a few rewards?
It can be comforted In short, seeing so much bad news coming one after another, and the situation deteriorating rapidly day by day, Emperor Chongzhen couldn't help but feel powerless.
He felt that although he was a great man who kept his promises on the surface, in fact he seemed to have become a The trapped animal in the cage, no matter how hard he struggled, could not escape his tragic fate.
But besides sitting behind the desk, throwing tea bowls and losing his temper, he still could do nothing.
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At this time, seeing the emperor being furious again, all the maids and eunuchs hid far away.
Only Cao Huachun knelt on the ground and cried with tears streaming down his face: "Your Majesty, please calm down and take care of yourself.
If you are hurt by those vulgar things, If a warrior hurts his body, the slave's sin will be great."
Looking at the sad look on the face of the great eunuch, Emperor Chongzhen stayed for a moment, and finally sat down slumped, and picked up the newspaper forwarded by the Ministry of War.
Each one was either about an emergency or the fall of a certain county, which made his mood even worse. .
The only thing that can be regarded as good news is probably the "good news" that Hong Chengchou, the governor of the three sides, recently led his troops to drive out the rogue bandits and regain Taiyuan.
But even with Emperor Chongzhen's purely layman's military knowledge, he knew that this was just a matter of rogue bandits trying to get ahead of the official army.
Before arriving in Taiyuan, they voluntarily abandoned the city and evacuated because these bandits soon appeared on the North Zhili Plain on the other side of the Taihang Mountains, causing those prefectures and counties that had just been ravaged by the Jiannu Tatars this spring to suffer again.
A disaster.
The area around the capital along the Taihang Mountains in Dengzhou, Lunan, Liaodong, Xuanfu, and Beizhili seems to have been completely eroded by endless wars.
On the southern side of Zhili, the demon thieves of the Wenxiang Sect were also arrogant.
They not only captured Xuzhou, which produced refined iron, but also marched all the way along the Huaihe River.
They had the momentum to attack the south of the Yangtze River, killing the officers and soldiers mobilized in Fengyang and Nanjing.
He was beaten to a pulp.
As for Lingnan and Fujian, which are further away, due to the blockage of news, it is still unclear how far Huangshi and those overseas thieves have been in trouble recently.
With the current situation so rotten and out of control, Emperor Chongzhen no longer knew how to deal with it.
It was impossible to rely on the corpses in the court to eat nothing.
Five years after he ascended the throne, the young Emperor Chongzhen had initially seen through.
The so-called "gentlemen" can talk eloquently on weekdays, but on paper, "everything goes up in smoke while talking and laughing."
If they were really faced with such a situation, they would all be dumbfounded.
They would be unable to do anything but engage in internal strife, talk and shirk responsibility: in their view, the decline and collapse of the country is The emperor is immoral, the eunuchs are meddling in politics, and the generals are incompetent.
They will never reflect on their own lives, but will only mess around with you based on the words of saints.
Of course, there are only a few ministers who are really willing to do things, but only God knows whether they can get the things done.
"Hey, the country's affairs are really difficult.
I have obviously tried my best.
Why does God still want to punish me?"
Emperor Chongzhen put down the newspaper from the Ministry of War and looked at Cao Huachun who was still kneeling on the ground.
A feeling of great decadence suddenly came to his heart.
He couldn't help but began to miss the time when he was still King Xin.
At that time, all countries All the important responsibilities are shouldered by the emperor's brother, and I only need to read and play every day.
But now he seemed to be living a revered life as an emperor, but he was in endless panic every day.
There was always bad news like thunder coming from time to time, but he had no way to deal with it.
Emperor Chongzhen really felt that he Very tired, so tired that I almost collapsed. oshow7: