When it comes to the "Battle of Sarhu", some people may blame the generals at that time, but the defeat in this war cannot be entirely blamed on them, after all, the naivety of the generals is also partly to blame.
However, Emperor Wanli also had to bear some responsibility for the defeat of the war.
In the forty-sixth year of Wanli, the Ming Dynasty made up its mind and dispatched an army of 120,000 to launch a fierce attack on Nurhachi. What is the reason behind this large-scale military operation?
It turned out that Nurhachi had deviated from the will of the Ming Dynasty and was no longer under its control. In the past, the Jianzhou Jurchens, where Nurhachi was located, had been a vassal of the Ming Dynasty, accepting official positions from the Ming Dynasty and following its instructions.
However, in the forty-sixth year of Wanli, he used the news of the mutual market to deceive the Ming Dynasty, broke through Fushun, and brutally killed 299 people, leaving only one person to go back to report to the Ming Dynasty.
His remarks were even more blatant provocation, he dared to call out to the Ming Dynasty, who gave him such courage?
The reason why Nurhachi dared to challenge the Ming Dynasty was because he was close to unifying the Jurchen tribes, and other tribes such as the Haixi Jurchen had been brought under his command. And in the twenty-first year of Wanli, he fought a big victory, which was the confidence of his troops.
However, even if he had the courage to challenge the Ming Dynasty, this dispatch was doomed from the start, as he did not realize it.
Some people blame the reason for the defeat on the division of troops, and if it was not for the division of troops at that time, Nurhachi would not have been defeated one by one by Nurhachi, who only had 60,000 soldiers and horses. However, judging by the route of the march, the division of troops was justified.
Why? Because the four directions of the offensive - Korea, Fushun, Kaiyuan and Qinghe, are narrow lanes. If the 120,000-strong army is concentrated in one direction, it will be difficult for Nurhachi to even turn around once he suddenly attacks.
In order to avoid this, it is necessary to disperse the army, but if the army is dispersed, it is easy to be divided by the enemy. This was the case in the Battle of Changping in history, when the 450,000 army led by Zhao Kuo was cut into pieces by the 5,000 cavalry of Bai Qi.
Therefore, the mistake does not lie in the division of troops, but in the fact that it is not the right time to divide troops, and that troops should be divided into two ways.
One cavalry is eight foot soldiers, ten cavalry is chaotic and hundred, and one hundred cavalry defeats a thousand people" - Wujing General Essentials". To make matters worse, the Ming army's generals were generally poor, making wars that were almost impossible to win even more difficult.
Among the four armies, only Juniper and Liu Wei can be called generals who can fight well.
The general on the Shaanxi border, Du Song, had a nickname called "Du Taishi", which was given to him by Mongolia. He fought hundreds of battles and never tasted defeat, so the Mongols gave him the title of Taishi.
Unlike Juniper, Liu Wei lived in a military camp since he was a child, and his father, Liu Xian, was also a general. He was able to wield a good knife weighing sixty pounds, and participated in the "Korean War" and the "Banju Rebellion" in the "Three Great Expeditions of Wanli".
In contrast, Ma Lin and Li Rubai were promoted by virtue of their family background. Ma Lin was originally just an unknown scholar, because his father Ma Fang was a general soldier, and he also became a general soldier.
Li Rubai's father was the famous Li Chengliang, and he played soy sauce in Liaodong and never commanded a large army.
In the Four Roads Ming Army, the two generals are related households, and although the remaining two generals are not related households, they should not be underestimated. Juniper, in particular, was unmatched in his arrogance, preparing his cage even before he fought Nurhachi, completely ignoring Nurhachi's presence.
If Nurhachi is regarded as an opponent, he will not blindly pursue. As a general, Juniper can ride a horse, but a soldier cannot. The Ming army was already inferior to Nurhachi, and Juniper's behavior made this gap even wider, how could he win the victory?
It is worth mentioning that Nurhachi deliberately let Juniper pursue in order to deplete the strength of the Ming army. Although Liu Wei was not as arrogant as Juniper, his army of 20,000 was still unable to resist Nurhachi's army of 60,000, because Juniper was the main force and commanded an army of 60,000.
You may wonder, four generals lead the troops to fight, so who is the commander of the four of them? It was Yang Ho, the economic strategy of Liaodong, who proposed the strategy of dividing the troops into four routes.
He also wrote a letter to Nurhachi, in which he detailed the offensive route and number of the Ming army. Could he be a spy? He actually revealed such important information to Nurhachi.
But in fact, he is not a spy, and his behavior is understandable. In the Korean War, Magui besieged Ulsan, but was never able to break through the Japanese reinforcements. In order not to become the encircled party, he ordered a retreat.
And the person who led the retreat of the Ming army in the north of the city was Yang Hao. How did he do it? Just leave the army behind and run away on your own. Why did he run away on his own? It was only because the wounded soldiers were afraid that the Ming army would abandon themselves and cause chaos.
And he wrote to Nurhachi because he thought that Nurhachi was just an indigenous, ** beating natives, how could he not be polite? With such a "glorious resume", why did he become the commander of the Battle of Sarhu?
You may also notice that in a large-scale war like the Battle of Sarhu, half of the generals can't fight? All this is to blame for Wanli not going to court.
People often compare Wanli's failure to go to court with Jiajing's failure to go to court, but there is no comparison between the two. Although Jiajing did not go to court, he still dealt with government affairs, while Wanli chose to lie flat and only deal with major events in person.
It is for this reason that during the 30th year of Wanli, the six Shangshu and Shilang in Nanjing and Beijing were missing three and ten respectively, which accounted for one-third of the normal establishment.
You must know that the six departments are important institutions of the imperial court, and the lack of personnel in any one department may affect the normal operation of the entire **. Local political envoys, envoys, and prefects are also facing this problem, and individual local prefects also need to supervise other counties at the same time.
With the retirement of the old batch, the new batch cannot fill the vacancy in time, resulting in a serious brain drain. That's why Yang Ho was appointed commander in chief of the Battle of Sarhu, even though he wasn't a natural military talent.
This comes down to the fact that the imperial court has always adhered to the tradition of using literature and martial arts.
Emperor Wanli was greedy for money, and in order to satisfy his own selfish desires, he installed mine tax eunuchs all over the country. He did this to make a fortune, because he knew that although the Ming Dynasty was his world, the taxes paid would not go directly to his private coffers, but to the national treasury.
Although the mining tax eunuchs were sent to the local mining area, they grew up in the imperial palace and did not know the technology of mining, so they often came around, including the Liaodong region.
In Liaodong, the brutality of the mining tax eunuch Gao Huai caused suffering to both the rich and the common people. He forcibly contracted the abandoned land to the rich, and if the predetermined amount could not be offered, the rich had to fill it themselves.
As for the people, he used the fact that there were mines under the house, and either they paid for it themselves or demolished the house. This plundering led to economic depression in eastern Liao, and the people lived in hardship, and many had to flee their hometowns to join Nurhachi's Jurchen tribe.
What Emperor Wanli didn't know was that he had inadvertently started the prelude to the chaos of the country's accumulation of wealth, and the eunuchs became the biggest beneficiaries. Due to the lack of supervision, the eunuchs became popular, and the amount was staggering, reaching 65% or even more than 70%.
For example, Sun Chao, the mining tax eunuch in Shanxi, levied 45,220 taels a year, but only 15,820 taels were handed over, and the remaining 29,400 taels were all swallowed by him.
Therefore, the mining tax eunuch only paid about 5 million taels in ten years, while the agricultural tax and salt tax were 2 million taels and 1 million taels respectively, which obviously exceeded the mining tax.
Some people lament the demise of the Ming Dynasty, but understand that the demise of the Ming Dynasty was not the responsibility of others, but the extravagance of the imperial family. If they hadn't done anything wrong again and again, how could the Ming Dynasty have embarked on the road to destruction?
Even Zhu Yuanzhang, who started from a poor prince, hoped that the Ming Dynasty would last forever, but he did not expect that he would be ruthlessly run over by the wheels of history in less than three hundred years.
This is why the world often says: "rich but three generations", the first generation is self-made, will not lose, the second generation has experienced the process of making a fortune, will not lose, but the third generation, only know how the family accumulates, but has never experienced the ups and downs of the family, so it is difficult to predict whether it is a loser.