Chapter 151: The Flash in the Pan of the Qing Empire (Part 2)
On the evening of September 18th, the sixth year of Chongzhen, Beijing, which had just planted the flag of the Qing Dynasty less than a year ago, once again heard loud shouts of killing.
——Under the banner of "rescuing Liaodong", the 30,000 Guanning Army claimed to rush to Shanhaiguan to deploy defenses. When passing through the capital, they suddenly launched a mutiny and launched a surprise attack on Beijing. The internal response pre-arranged by Beijing also opened the city gate, allowing Guan Ning's army to fight all the way into the alleys of Beijing. Immediately, the Han troops stationed in the city also dispersed or defected one after another, and followed the Guan Ning army to launch a fierce attack on the Eight Banners of Manchuria entrenched in the inner city!
For a moment, the city of Beijing seemed to be in chaos. Thousands of torches were lit in the streets and alleys, illuminating the whole city. Soldiers with various accents let out murderous shouts. Hundreds of thousands of people in the city were The cries of the surname shook the sky, and the cannons originally aimed at the outside world at the top of the Beijing city actually turned their direction at this moment, and violently bombarded the inner city one after another, smashing all the exquisite and luxurious mansions into pieces. Fly.
Amidst the smoke and the flash of swords, the Qing Empire's short-lived rule of less than a year in Beijing finally came to an end.
Although since taking control of Beijing, the Qing court has been wary of Han Chinese power becoming stronger. Unfortunately, the Jurchen Eight Banners had a limited population, and their political acumen and cultural level were even more tragic. Without relying on the bureaucratic system left over from the Ming Dynasty, it would be impossible to rule this vast country. Especially after Huang Taiji's southern expedition, even part of Beijing's daily defense and security patrols had to be handed over to the surrendered Han army.
If the Qing Empire was victorious and triumphant, the loyalty of these traitorous troops should still be guaranteed. However, when the entire territory of Liaodong fell in an instant and the glorious coat of the Jurchen Eight Banners was bloodyly torn off, except for a few hardcore traitors, I am afraid that anyone would think that these Liaodong barbarians who had become losers would probably end up in the Central Plains. Rabbits can't grow tails.
Therefore, as Guan Ning's army rebelled once again, all the civil and military officials in Beijing refused to be buried with the Qing Dynasty. They either hid at home and watched, or joined in the counterattack together, preparing to take advantage of the Qing Empire's collapse. Get another benefit.
About three thousand Eight Banners soldiers who were ordered to stay in Beijing put up a desperate resistance. However, due to the haste of the incident, they could only fight on their own, and the city gates had been lost from the beginning. The Eight Banners of Manchuria have always been proud of The art of riding and shooting has no advantage in the extremely chaotic night street fighting. Therefore, no matter how hard they risked their lives and fought desperately, they were still beaten back step by step by the swarming Guan Ning army.
Therefore, after some desperate resistance, the inner city of Beijing was also declared to have fallen. The more than 60,000 Eight Banners dependents in the city had to retreat hastily into the Forbidden City. Although most of these people were old, weak, women and children, they still showed extraordinary courage in such desperate situations. Even children and the elderly took up sticks, swords and guns, especially Queen Zhezhe and Princess Dayu'er. He put on the armor himself and called on everyone to fight until the last moment!
However, as the famous chameleons and wallflowers in history, Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou have already slashed their swords at the Tatars, but they have no intention of making things happen. Instead, they know how to "leave a thin line in life so that they can meet each other easily in the future." The truth - therefore, just when the "remnants of the Jurchens" trapped in the Forbidden City were preparing to die collectively with sadness, they did not receive a massive attack by Guan Ning's army, but waited for the messenger sent by Zu Dashou to persuade them to surrender.
According to the envoy who persuaded people to surrender, although the two sides are now at war with each other, God has good intentions. Based on their past friendship, Guan Ning's army does not intend to kill all the Eight Banners family members, but prepares to make way for them. Road, all the Manchu and Mongolian bannermen in Beijing will be "sent out of the country as gifts", and their belongings can also be kept. After leaving the city, whether they planned to return to their hometown or go to Shandong to find their emperor, it was up to them.
Only Huang Taiji's concubines and children, as well as the wives and concubines of the eight Manchurian banner lords, had to be temporarily detained. Because Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou needed to use them as bargaining chips to exchange with the Qing court for the disciples of General Guan Ning who were currently accompanying Huang Taiji. In order to make them feel at ease, Wu Xiang and Zu Dashou were willing to swear to heaven in public that they would treat them politely. Of course, if the families of the Eight Banners in the Forbidden City refused to accept Guan Ningjun's "good intentions", then they had no choice but to let the Eight Banners exterminate their families.
As soon as this announcement came out, the 68,000 Banner family members who retreated to the Forbidden City immediately began to feel shaken.
Before, everyone thought it was a dead end this time, so they prepared to fight to the death with full heart and solemnity. Even if they went to see the King of Hell, they would still have to drag a few people with them. But since it seems that there is still a way to survive, why not give it a try? Compared to the annihilation of the whole family, no matter how bad it is, how bad can it be?
Besides, tens of thousands of people are now trapped in the Forbidden City, with no food and no reinforcements inside or outside, and not even a single weapon per person, and the Guan Ning Army outside has set up all the Hongyi cannons. Even if everyone resists desperately, How long can it last? Didn't he die in vain?
In the end, under the desire to survive, the Eight Banners family members in the Forbidden City agreed to Guan Ningjun's recruitment, and opened the palace gate in fear, hoping that the other party would keep his word and fulfill his promise. And Guan Ningjun actually fulfilled his promise. After placing Huang Taiji's harem concubines and some of the wives and children of the Eight Banners' dignitaries under house arrest, he ordered the city gates to be opened, the passages cleared, and even some ships were collected to let these flags People can be evacuated from the canal.
At this point, this short-lived "Beijing Change" has completely settled. In the early morning of the next day, with the "Request for Capture" posters posted all over the streets, Beijing citizens who hid under their beds and shivered all night amid the shouts of death and explosions finally learned that the city had once again changed its owner.
"...In the past, the Ming Dynasty was unruly, treated its good ministers harshly, and exploited all the people. The people of the world were in dire straits. We raised our troops and had no choice but to make a bloody alliance with the Tartars. We temporarily borrowed tens of thousands of barbarian soldiers in order to send troops to the capital to eliminate the traitors and correct the course of the government. Who is it? cunning The captives betrayed the alliance against heaven, took advantage of my internal weakness, occupied Yandu, stole my Chinese artifacts, and turned them into Chinese crowns. Only then did we realize the wrongness of rejecting the tiger and advancing into the wolf. We must not make the mistake of holding firewood to put out the fire. We can only weep and endure it for the time being. , did not dare to act lightly.
Nowadays, the puppet Qing Tartars pamper their treacherous ministers, covet their wealth, and punish them severely. He is unable to save the people from fire and water, but instead spends his entire army and robs people of their money, sucks their marrow and peels off their skin, and rapes their wives and daughters. How is he any different from an animal? Therefore, there was General Huang in front of him who plowed the courtyard and swept the caves to eliminate the demonic atmosphere outside the pass and restore a bright and bright world to Liaodong. This shows that the Tatars have exhausted their energy. Later, our army rushed to recruit benevolent and righteous troops to save the people from misery. Now that the capital has been decided, I sent a sign to inform everyone: Scholars and people, do not be alarmed, and please take care of yourself. If any of your people abandon the secrets and turn to the light, and report the Manchu barbarians hiding among the people, they will immediately receive a heavy reward. The rest will not be given military uniforms. It is difficult to distinguish jade from stone. I regret it too much. This message! ”
Immediately afterwards, after Guan Ning's army suppressed them in all directions and killed a few green-skinned gangsters who took advantage of the chaos, order in Beijing was stabilized again.
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On the other side, although tens of thousands of Eight Banners women, children, old and weak people in Beijing finally left the city safely, Guan Ning's army had no intention of breaking the contract and pursuing them. But that doesn't mean these guys really escaped. Because after learning the news of the Beijing Incident, the gentry and landlords in the counties of Northern Zhili also celebrated with joy, and immediately responded in groups, organizing rural warriors to raise flags to rebel against the Qing Dynasty, and scrambled to fight against the Qing Dynasty.
——While the time travelers were killing the Jin gentry in various occupied areas to carry out land reform, the Eight Banners men were also aggressively enclosing land around the capital, and at the same time demoted all the Jin gentry tenant farmers on those lands to slaves. Although Huang Taiji, as a generation of heroes, could not fail to see the harm of this destructive and predatory policy, in any case, he was the king of the Manchus first and must first satisfy the interests of his own people. After all, those who benefited were the Eight Banners nobles who were the foundation of the Qing Dynasty's rule. Even Huang Taiji could only turn a blind eye and express his acquiescence.
As a result, those rural gentry people who suffered deeply during the "Eight Banners Horse Racing Movement" soon became the most determined potential anti-Qing elements.
As a result, the women and children of the Eight Banners who fled in a hurry were attacked and robbed by villagers on the outskirts of Beijing no more than twenty miles away from Beijing, and suffered heavy injuries. Fortunately, due to the same reason for horse racing and land encirclement, there are now many small groups of Eight Banners soldiers and horses scattered in the countryside of Beizhili. At this time, after hearing the news, they rushed to join together. After a fight, the villagers were finally driven back. and the bandits' attack, escorted the Eight Banners women and children to escape into Tianjin City.
What's even more terrible is that with the fall of Beijing and the news that Guan Ning's army rebelled against the Qing Dynasty and became independent, a series of vigorous chain reactions occurred throughout the remaining Qing-occupied areas in Beizhili. Those local officials appointed by the Manchu Qing court were either expelled by force or took the initiative to rebel against the Qing Dynasty. The entire vast North China Plain was full of noisy scenes of fallen trees and scattered hozens.
In particular, the Shanhaiguan defenders who were directly facing an unknown and powerful enemy immediately broke out in mutiny after learning that their backs had become enemy territory. Since the Eight Banners of Manchuria were basically marching southward in the hinterland of the Central Plains, the Shanhaiguan defenders at this time were mainly Composed of Han military flags and Mongolian military flags, after he was shocked to learn that Shengjing and Beijing had changed hands one after another, his loyalty to the Qing court was immediately shaken. In the end, the vast majority of the Mongolians chose to open the camp gates and ride their horses north to flee to the grasslands. However, the Han army flags and the surrendering Ming army collectively cut the braids on the back of their heads, and at the same time sent people to contact the Guan Ning army about surrender.
On September 28, after peacefully taking over Shanhaiguan, Guan Ning's army turned around and approached Tianjin. Although neither Zu Dashou nor Wu Xiang had the intention to fight to the death with the Eight Banners soldiers. But Tianjin is the gateway to Beijing, directly straddling the throat of the capital. You can take a boat along the canal to reach Beijing and Tongzhou in a short time. Guan Ning's army did not dare to leave the capital until they landed in Tianjin, so they had to take this place no matter what. Just pull out the nail.
Fortunately, the previous fall of Beijing had already meant the complete collapse of Qing rule in Zhili. Although the Tianjin Acropolis is very strong and has sufficient food reserves, the people in the city have long been in chaos. Seeing that there was no way back to Liaodong, the frightened Eight Banners family members had no choice but to continue fleeing southward along the canal. The defenders in Tianjin City were also undercurrents, and there were constant exchanges of messengers with the approaching Guan Ning Army.
Next, on a dark and windy night for a month, Zu Dashou personally led a Guan Ning army and launched a surprise attack on Tianjin. However, from a military point of view, this night attack was actually not necessary, because most of the soldiers and horses in Tianjin City at that time had received the news beforehand, and either took the time to escape or were prepared to surrender in advance, so after the city was broken, Tianjin actually seemed very peaceful, and the residential streets were all silent.
In short, with the quiet change of flag at the top of Tianjin City, the entire Beizhili was permanently separated from the territory of the Qing Empire.
At this point, after suddenly losing the entire Liaodong, and being attacked by Dengzhou Town and betrayed by the Guan Ning Army, in just two or three months, the entire Qing Empire had gone from occupying almost the entire territory of northern China to The tone has shrunk so much that only a narrow strip of territory stretching along the Grand Canal from Texas in the north to Yangzhou in the south has been left, turning it into an extremely bizarre "canal empire".
Although the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal was China's golden waterway in the 17th century, there were prosperous cities along the river. If managed carefully, the tax revenue could support an army of hundreds of thousands. However, the Jurchen Eight Banners occupied this territory for only half a year and did not have time to lay down a foundation. With the current situation undergoing drastic changes and people's minds uncertain, no one knows how many days this unprecedented "Canal Empire" can last.
Perhaps, the Qing Empire, which was once at its peak, will soon bloom like an epiphyllum and suddenly wither like an epiphyllum.
Therefore, after His Majesty Huang Taiji, who had been bullied by dogs, unfortunately learned the above-mentioned bad news in the imperial camp of Jinan, no matter how tenacious he was, he immediately vomited three liters of blood, and at the same time cursed Zu Dashou and Wu Xiang for being rebellious in the future. He must not die well. The soldiers of the Eight Banners hugged their families and relatives, weeping and wailing in unison, feeling infinite sadness for their lost hometown and unknown future and destiny.
But after crying, Huang Taiji still had to wipe away his tears, pinched his nose and reached an agreement with Guan Ningjun's envoy, exchanging the Guan Ning general's disciples who were accompanying him and serving as hostages in exchange for his harem concubines. , and the family members of the Eight Banners dignitaries who stayed in Beijing. Next, before Huang Taiji could decide whether to immediately send his troops north to take revenge on the two rebels Zu Dashou and Wu Xiang, new disasters had already followed! ——Dengzhou Town, which initially put down the Jin gentry rebellion in Qingzhou Prefecture and completed the mobilization of militia, once again launched a large-scale attack on Jinan!