The forty-sixth year of Wanli, 1618 AD. This year, Congzhe, the first assistant of the cabinet, knocked on the door of Zhu Yijun's bedroom of Mingshenzong, bringing important state affairs. However, the emperor had not been in court for many years and refused to deal with any state affairs.
He is like a stone on the street, an idle player in the game, who completely quit **. Although Fang Congzhe shouted at the top of his voice for a long time, the emperor pretended not to wake up. He had long since grown tired of the pleas and complaints of his ministers, and had lost faith in these trivialities.
Emperor Wanli) Although Fang Congzhe, the first assistant of the cabinet, lacked the talents of Zhang Juzheng, his perseverance was admirable. He pleaded bitterly at the door of the emperor's chamber for the emperor to take a look at the letters he had brought from the Liaodong front.
In the end, under Fang Congzhe's pleading, the little eunuch opened half of the door, took the letter and handed it to Emperor Wanli. The emperor's expression was very lazy, and his eyes were a little cloudy, but he still opened the letter casually, and after just a glance, his face immediately became solemn.
His pupils began to contract, his face turned from yellow to red, then from red to blue, his thin lips began to tremble, his fists clenched, and his muscles flare, showing extreme anger.
Fang Congzhe sighed again and again outside the dormitory, and Emperor Wanli, who realized the seriousness of the matter, also put away his lazy posture, the expressions of the two became very solemn, and they looked at each other but couldn't speak.
Outside the dormitory, the mountains and rivers are magnificent, the sea of clouds is churning, and the sunset is molten gold, but both the Wanli Emperor and the first assistant Fang Congzhe are aware that under this peaceful appearance, an impending disaster is brewing.
Readers may wonder what exactly is written in this letter that can trigger such a change.
Let's start with Aixin Jueluo Nurhachi, a descendant of the Liaodong Jurchens, who once served in the position of commander of the Ming Dynasty's Jianzhou Guard, and was a grassroots civil servant in the border areas of the Ming Dynasty.
Nurhachi's grandfather Jue Chang'an and father Takshi both worked for the Ming Dynasty, and the history of Nurhachi's work for the Ming Dynasty can be traced back to his sixth ancestor, Timur.
Therefore, judging from historical data, Nurhachi's family can be said to be the world's food and wealth, and the world has received the grace of the king, and has received the salary of the Ming Dynasty for generations. In the Liaodong region at that time, the Jurchen people were mainly divided into three tribes: the Haixi Jurchen, the East China Sea Jurchen and the Jianzhou Jurchen, and Nurhachi belonged to the Jianzhou Jurchen.
If the three tribes can unite, they will form a formidable military force and even have the ability to challenge the northeastern frontier of the Ming Dynasty. However, in order to prevent the Jurchen tribes from uniting and posing a threat to the Ming Dynasty, Li Chengliang, the general of Liaodong at the time, often resorted to sowing discord and dividing and co-opting, destroying their relations and turning them into enemies.
He kills tribes who are unwilling to surrender, and gives benefits to tribes that are willing to surrender, so that they can become the ** of the Ming Dynasty. Nurhachi's grandfather and father were originally loyal to the Ming Dynasty**, but in a military campaign in the 11th year of Wanli, they were killed by the Ming army stationed in Liaodong.
This tragedy left a deep impression on the young Nurhachi, who understood that if the Jurchens could not wake up to themselves and continue to rely on the small favors of the Ming Dynasty, they would suffer the same fate in the future.
Without hesitation, Nurhachi left the rule of the Ming Dynasty and became the de facto leader of the Jurchens in Jianzhou, punching Haixi and kicking the East China Sea, unifying the entire Jurchen tribe. His power expanded rapidly, his forces grew, and his ambitions grew.
Finally, in the forty-fourth year of Wanli (1616), he established the Houjin and proclaimed himself the Great Khan. Two years later, he swore a sacrifice to heaven and vowed a decisive battle against the Ming Dynasty, which had killed his father.
In order to boost the morale of the soldiers and beautify the legitimacy of his confrontation with the Ming Dynasty, he wrote a letter to the Wanli Emperor (Seven Hatreds), criticizing the dark and corrupt rule of the Ming Dynasty, reprimanding the Wanli Emperor for not doing so, and predicting that the Jin army would attack the Forbidden City.
After Emperor Wanli saw the letter, he decided to preemptively mobilize 200,000 troops to attack Liaodong. However, the result did not go as he had hoped, and the 200,000-strong army was defeated by Nurhachi in the Battle of Sarhu with only 60,000 troops.
The ignorance of the Wanli Emperor finally learned a lesson in the Battle of Salhu, and he understood that the Ming Dynasty was no longer invincible. And Nurhachi proved his strength to the world through this classic battle.
Seven years passed, and the Later Jin regime developed rapidly, while the Ming Dynasty collapsed. Mingguangzong Zhu Changluo reigned for only one month, and his son Mingxizong Zhu Youxiao inherited the throne, but his ability to govern the country was far inferior to that of his father and grandfather.
However, despite the incompetence of the Ming monarch, there was a valiant general, Yuan Chonghuan, who defended the honor of the country on the battlefield.
Nurhachi once swept through Liaodong, as if he were walking in his own garden, and no one could beat him. But when he met Yuan Chonghuan under Ningyuan City, everything changed.
Ningyuan, today's Xingcheng City in Liaoning, was the last strategic place of the Ming Dynasty outside the Shanhai Pass. If you can occupy this city, then you can cross the Shanhai Pass and directly enter the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty.
Nurhachi was very excited about this campaign against Ningyuan, because it would bring him one step closer to his goal of destroying the Ming Dynasty, and the day of unifying the world would not be far off.
However, he suffered an unprecedented defeat in front of the Hongyi cannon set up by Yuan Chonghuan in advance. This hero, who has not been defeated since the beginning, finally ushered in his first defeat under Ningyuan City.
However, the defeat in the Battle of Ningyuan was not the end of Nurhachi's life, but the last battle of his life. The year after the defeat, Nurhachi fell ill with severe poison and died soon after.
He died at Longenmen, which is today's Yuhong District, Shenyang City. Hundreds of years ago, it was a patchwork of undulating mountains. At the last moment of his life, Nurhachi looked into the distance, only to see the lush trees, covering the sky and the sun, the mountains undulating in a magnificent manner, and the sunlight being refracted by the clouds, sprinkled on a river, lake and sea.
How can this magnificent country not make people nostalgic? It is a pity that Nurhachi has spent his whole life in battles and has never savored this picturesque country. But he had spent his life exploring a path forward for the Jurchens, along which his children and grandchildren would create their own deeds.
Now, this hero is about to come to an end in this vast wilderness. He was young and old, raised troops to conquer Jianzhou, unified the Jurchens, founded the country and called Khan, hit the Ming Dynasty hard, and swept Liaodong. Countless glories, only you know.
In the eleventh year of the Mandate of Heaven, in 1626 AD, on August 11, Nurhachi died at the age of sixty-eight.