The Ming Dynasty: Starting with the border troops, it was overthrown and the Qing Dynasty was destro

Chapter 213 Chaos in the Central Plains and Chaos in the Imperial Court
While Jiang Han was quietly farming, training troops, and building infrastructure in Long'an Prefecture, the outside world was already in complete chaos.

Since Wang Ziyong, Gao Yingxiang, and other leaders of the Thirty-Six Battalions feigned surrender on the banks of the Yellow River and successfully broke through the Ming army's Yellow River defense line into Henan, it can be said that "the dragon returned to the sea and the tiger entered the deep mountains."

The rebel army first set up an ambush in the Matiwo area of ​​Mianchi County in western Henan, and wiped out the pursuing river defense troops under Yuan Daquan.

They then dashed out of the encirclement set up by Xuan Mo, the governor of Henan, and entered Henan territory.

At that time, Henan was a living hell.

According to records, in the third, fourth, fifth and sixth years of the Chongzhen reign, there were consecutive years of severe drought. "There was no harvest in autumn, and it was difficult to plant wheat. There was no green grass in the fields, and nine out of ten houses were empty."

In the heart of the Central Plains, a province that should be a major grain-producing region, the price of a dou (a unit of dry measure) of rice has skyrocketed to five qian (a unit of weight) of silver.

The people worked hard for several days, but in the end, they couldn't even afford a liter of rice.

Left with no other choice, they could only dig up grass roots and peel tree bark to fill their stomachs.

Hundreds of thousands of people, like locusts, left nothing but barren land wherever they went. After the grass roots and tree bark were gone, they could only eat clay to fill their stomachs.

For a time, looking around, one could see people everywhere in the Central Plains who were sallow-faced, emaciated, and had bloated bellies.

They huddled by the roadside, wailing in agony, and died from bloating.

In the end, even clay was gone, so the starving people had no choice but to hang themselves or fill ditches to commit suicide.

However, instead of providing relief, local officials in Henan intensified their extortion efforts.

Local governments, under the guise of "suppressing bandits," imposed heavy levies, ordering the people to hand over military provisions, weapons, cloth, and other supplies to fund the army.

Because of the Ming Dynasty's bizarre "living beyond one's means" tax system, the previous year's levies had not yet been paid before the new year's taxes would arrive one after another.

Contemporary records:

"Daily quotas not yet met, new pay already demanded; new taxes barely collected, old debts already piling up."

"No barking dogs in the village, yet they still knock on the door to urge people to leave; cuckoos sing in the trees, their cries echoing the blood of those who have been whipped."

On this land of despair, the rebel army that crossed the river from Shanxi became the only savior in the eyes of the starving people of Henan.

Once the rebel army entered Henan, it united with the local poor peasants, forming an unstoppable tide of rebellion.

Previously in Shanxi, the various rebel armies that had suffered heavy losses due to the encirclement and suppression by Hong Chengchou's large forces received a massive replenishment of troops in Henan and gradually grew stronger.

In just a few months, the rebel army had taken hundreds of thousands of people hostage!

After receiving reinforcements, the eight battalions, including Hengxinglang, Yidougu, Saodiwang, and Mantianxing, gathered more than 100,000 troops and immediately marched west into Wuguan, heading straight for the Guanzhong area.

Shanyang, Zhen'an, and Shangnan fell simultaneously, and the rebel army then marched north, its forces heading straight for Xi'an Prefecture.

To their utter surprise, Hong Chengchou was currently suppressing bandits in Guanzhong.

After Jiang Han led his troops from Hanzhong into Shu, Hong Chengchou had no choice but to abandon the pursuit.

Sichuan was not his jurisdiction after all, and he couldn't overstep his bounds and enter Sichuan to suppress bandits.

Therefore, he could only vent his anger on the unruly people in the Guanzhong and Hanzhong areas.

Upon learning that the rebel army from Henan dared to set foot on his territory and even intended to attack the prefectural city of Xi'an, Hong Chengchou was furious.

Damn it, now any Tom, Dick, or Harry dares to provoke him?
Hong Chengchou was already seething with anger because his beloved general Cao Wenzhao had been captured and killed, and he had nowhere to vent his anger.

Just then, Sweeping King, Starry Sky, and others ran into them, and the result was predictable.

They suffered a terrible fate. Under Hong Chengchou's iron-fisted suppression, they were slaughtered in less than half a month, their armor and weapons scattered, and blood flowed like a river.

When they first entered Shaanxi, they brought a massive force of 100,000 men, but in the end, only less than 30,000 survived by sheer luck and escaped from Hong Chengchou's clutches.

The other rebel army, led by Wang Ziyong, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, and others, was much smarter.

Taking advantage of their superior numbers and mobility, they targeted the weak points in the Ming army's defenses.

Zuo Liangyu, who was in charge of guarding the area around Song County, had no time to organize an effective interception and rescue, and the rebel army plunged headlong into the complex terrain of the Lushi Mountains.

Within the Lushi Mountain area, a group of "mining thieves" have been entrenched for many years.

Taking advantage of the high mountains and long, treacherous roads, they waged a guerrilla war against the government in the mountainous areas.

After Wang Ziyong and his troops arrived, these "mining bandits" responded enthusiastically, acting as guides and leading the rebel army through mountain paths to successfully bypass Neixiang, and then headed straight for Yunyang and Xiangyang in Huguang.

In the latter half of the fifth year of the Chongzhen reign, while Jiang Han was still venturing into the forests of Hanzhong and Sichuan, this rebel army successively captured Pinxi, Shangjin, and Baokang counties, and then set its sights on Yunyang Prefecture.

Yunyang Prefecture, located at the junction of five provinces—Shaanxi, Henan, Sichuan, Hubei, and Guangdong—is a typical "no man's land."

Its jurisdiction is characterized by towering mountains and deep valleys, a place where people live in poverty and has long been a haven for thieves.

Now, hundreds of thousands of bandits are about to storm Yunyang, but the entire Yunyang prefecture only has a mere five hundred soldiers.

Jiang Yunyi, the governor of Yunyang, was powerless to resist the overwhelming bandit army.

Seeing that the surrounding prefectures and counties were being captured one by one, Jiang Yunyi even wrote his last letter and ordered it to be delivered to the capital.

It reads:

"...I am at my wit's end and can only submit this petition to die."

The wise and powerful Chongzhen Emperor, upon receiving this final letter, was not immediately filled with sympathy and regret, but rather with immense anger.

What does it mean to be helpless?

This is clearly a bunch of officials shirking responsibility and trying to abandon the city and flee!
Therefore, Zhu Youjian immediately ordered the Embroidered Uniform Guard to be dispatched to Xunyang to dismiss Jiang Yunyi from his post, arrest him, imprison him, and send him to the border.

In fact, Jiang Yunyi was not an mediocre person.

During his tenure in Yunyang, he achieved remarkable political success, including developing water conservancy projects and accumulating grain to provide relief to the people, which won him the hearts of the people.

Moreover, after writing her suicide note, Jiang Yunyi did not give up and wait to die.

Instead, he actively defended the city, recruited militia on a large scale, repaired the city walls, and manufactured weapons, vowing to live and die with Yunyang Prefecture.

Therefore, when the Imperial Guards traveled a long distance to arrest him, the local people wept bitterly, almost to the point of writing a lengthy petition.

It can only be said that Jiang Yunyi was unlucky. She worked hard for most of her life, but in the end she encountered the great Zhu Youjian.

But Zhu Youjian had no time to care about Jiang Yunyi's injustice; he was currently holding a court meeting in the Chongzheng Hall to discuss the current situation.

The atmosphere in the imperial court was so oppressive it was suffocating.

Emperor Chongzhen's face was grim as he slammed the memorial in his hand to the ground.

"Trash! A bunch of trash!"

"Look, all of you! Show yourself properly to me!"

His voice trembled slightly with anger.
"We've been suppressing bandits for so long, yet the Central Plains are now in ruins, and bandits are rising up everywhere!"

"The thieves have actually entered Huguang!"

"Huguang is the granary of our Great Ming Dynasty. If even Huguang is occupied by bandits, tell me, how can this country survive?!" "How can we recover the lost territory of Liaodong?!"

His Highness's civil and military officials were all silent, none of them daring to speak.

But Zhu Youjian's roar continued:
"What's even more worrying is that little thief surnamed Jiang. Not only did he conquer Yinchuan and slaughter the Qing Prince's faction, but now he has calmly sneaked into Sichuan and occupied Long'an Prefecture!"

"Recruiting soldiers and buying horses, distributing land, they are just like a bandit!"

"He's just short of establishing his own government, declaring himself king or emperor!"

The emperor's roar echoed throughout the Chongzheng Hall, startling all the civil and military officials, but none of them could come up with a concrete solution.

They knew very well that the Ming army was now a disorganized mess.

Hong Chengchou suppressed peasant uprisings in Guanzhong and Hanzhong; Xuan Mo, the governor of Henan, suppressed bandits in western Henan.

Zuo Liangyu, the deputy commander of Changping, was led by the nose by the main force of the bandits in Henan and was exhausted from running around.
Deng Qi, the deputy commander-in-chief of Sichuan, stagnated in the Hanzhong Prefecture area, going through the motions but not putting in any real effort.

Faced with the rebel army entering Sichuan, Zhu Xieyuan, the governor-general of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, and Hou Liangzhu, the general of Sichuan, were bogged down in the border region by the rebellious chieftains of Yunnan.
Currently, the various Ming Dynasty government armies are fighting independently and are unable to form a united force.

Faced with this situation, several cabinet ministers once again raised the age-old issue of unifying authority.

Officials, led by Grand Secretary Zhou Yanru, believed that the reason why the bandits were able to roam freely and flee in all directions was because the jurisdiction of the provinces and towns was not equal, and they looked at each other and shirked their responsibilities.

Therefore, it is imperative to appoint a senior official to oversee the campaign against the rebels.

After much deliberation, Zhu Youjian agreed with this opinion.

The main reason he hadn't opened this door was because he was worried that his subordinates would have too much power and cause trouble.

But now the rebels are growing stronger and stronger, and the two major grain-producing areas of Sichuan and Huguang are under threat. Zhu Youjian can no longer care about checks and balances of power and can only suppress the rebels first.

However, the officials in the court had different opinions on the selection of the governor.

The debate over the selection of the governor-general quickly escalated into a factional struggle between the Grand Secretary Zhou Yanru and the Second Grand Secretary Wen Tiren.

By the fifth year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, the conflict between Zhou Yanru and Wen Tiren had escalated to a complete breakdown.

Taking advantage of the imperial examination fraud case in the fourth year of Chongzhen's reign, Zhou Yanru launched a massive attack on Wen Tiren's faction.

Among them, Wen Tiren's fellow townsman and relative by marriage, Min Hongxue, was removed from office and forced to resign and return to his hometown.

Wen Tiren, of course, was not to be outdone. He remained outwardly calm but secretly used the military examination as a pretext to imply that Zhou Yanru was involved in cheating.

Speaking of the military examinations, this was a major reform personally spearheaded by Emperor Chongzhen.

Seeing the increasingly rampant bandits, Zhu Youjian felt that his generals were useless and decided to cultivate a group of generals who would truly obey him.

Previously, Zhu Youjian's order to reorganize the Beijing garrison failed. The reforms touched upon the interests of the powerful groups in Beijing, leading to a collective petition from many nobles who resisted the reforms and were filled with complaints and slander.

In the Jisi Incident of the second year of Chongzhen's reign, Li Banghua, a pioneer of reform, was ousted from office and left the capital in disgrace.

Seeing that the capital garrison was deeply entrenched and difficult to reform, the emperor had no choice but to start afresh and establish the military examination system.

Although the Ming Dynasty had always had military examinations, Emperor Chongzhen elevated them to a new level by creating a separate military examination, modeled after the imperial examinations.

There were thirty-two Chinese practitioners in total, but only two of them could wield a hundred-pound broadsword.

These two are Wang Laipin and Xu Yanqi.

However, just as the martial arts imperial examination was proceeding as scheduled, a major change occurred: Xu Yanqi, who was also skilled in martial arts and could wield a hundred-pound broadsword, was surprisingly eliminated.

The candidates for the military examination were indignant and discussed the matter extensively, believing that cheating had occurred.

Emperor Chongzhen, who was then keen on emphasizing military prowess, was furious upon hearing the news. The first-ever imperial examination for military officers was found to be rife with cheating. Was this a deliberate attempt to antagonize him?

Emperor Chongzhen then imprisoned and dismissed a large number of officials, including the examiners and supervising censors, and then ordered someone to preside over the re-examination.

After the second round of examinations, one hundred people were selected and, according to the established rules, ranked into three categories and awarded a banquet.

Ultimately, Wang Laipin was ranked first in the first class, which is also known as the martial arts champion.

Zhu Youjian was overjoyed to see Wang Laipin's exceptional martial arts skills and immediately promoted him fourteen ranks, appointing him as deputy commander-in-chief.

Cheating occurred in both the civil and military examinations, which became the best weapon for factional struggles and infighting in the imperial court.

The two factions of Zhou Yanru and Wen Tiren attacked each other fiercely in the court, completely forgetting about the important affairs of the country.

Now, at this crucial moment of electing a governor, this factional strife has been brought to its extreme.

Zhou Yanru was the first to step forward, and he recommended Lu Xiangsheng, who was then the military commissioner of Daming.

His reasons for recommending Lu Xiang-sheng were quite grand, saying that Lu was both a scholar and a warrior, and had made outstanding military achievements.

But anyone with a discerning eye knows that the real reason Zhou Yanru recommended Lu Xiangsheng was because they were from the same hometown, Yixing County, Changzhou Prefecture, Southern Zhili.

Wen Tiren, on the other hand, was much more reserved; he did not immediately stand up to object.

Instead, he gave a signal to those behind him, indicating that Censor Shi Fan, Gao Jie, and others should step forward and lead the charge for him.

Wen Tiren's faction didn't even understand military affairs. The only thing they knew was that they had to oppose anyone recommended by Zhou Yanru.

Although everyone has heard of the name Lu Xiang-sheng, he is said to be brave and resourceful, a truly talented person.

But precisely because he is a talented person, we must not let him become Zhou Yanru's assistant!
What does this bandit suppression have to do with us officials in the capital?
In order to compete with Lu Xiang-sheng, Wen Ti-ren's faction put forward Zhu Da-dian, the then governor of Shandong.

Zhu Dadian was from Zhejiang. As a fellow Zhejiang native, Zhu Dadian was naturally closer to Wen Tiren's "Zhejiang Party" in terms of political inclination.

Chaos erupted once again in the imperial court.

Officials from various parties argued heatedly, their faces flushed and spittle flying, all for their own interests.

Emperor Chongzhen, sitting on the dragon throne, looked at his ministers below, who were behaving so disgracefully, and felt utterly exhausted.

He rejected all of them.

Originally, the best candidate in his mind was Hong Chengchou.

However, Hong Chengchou suffered heavy losses in his campaign to suppress the notorious bandit Jiang Han in Ningxia, allowing the bandits to escape. This made the naturally suspicious Emperor Chongzhen hesitant to entrust him with important responsibilities again.

After much deliberation, another name came to mind for Chongzhen: Chen Qiyu.

"enough!"

Emperor Chongzhen slammed his hand on the dragon throne, interrupting all the arguments.

He stood up and declared unilaterally:

"I have made up my mind!"

"Chen Qiyu, the governor of Yansui, was promoted to the position of Vice Minister of War, and was appointed as the overseer of military affairs in five provinces: Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Huguang, and Sichuan. He was to suppress and pacify the rebels as they went!"

Thus, in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, the highest-ranking official position in the civil service system, the Commander-in-Chief of the Five Provinces and the Great Ming Bandit Suppression Commander-in-Chief, was born.

(End of this chapter)