[wlee15]

June 1642 was approximately 1 year before the fall of Beijing to the rebels. Was there anything that could have been done to save the country? i.e Was the war winnable?

[Moping4U]

wlee15, on Jan 3 2005, 06:57 AM, said:

June 1642 was approximately 1 year before the fall of Beijing to the rebels. Was there anything that could have been done to save the country? i.e Was the war winnable?

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If Chongzhen abandon Beijing to Li Zicheng, lettin Li and the Manchus fight each other and moved south, there might be hope for a southern Ming. Li's rebellion only consumed the northern parts of the empire, while the south is fairly stable, more prosperous, and more populous. Zhang Xianzhong might be a problem but his psycho genocidal behaivor probably won't bring him much support from the people. I think Chongzhen emperor should've escaped south with his court and held out like Gaozong emperor of Southern Song did.

[MING-LOYALIST]

Moping4U, on Jan 3 2005, 12:39 PM, said:

If Chongzhen abandon Beijing to Li Zicheng, lettin Li and the Manchus fight each other and moved south, there might be hope for a southern Ming. Li's rebellion only consumed the northern parts of the empire, while the south is fairly stable, more prosperous, and more populous. Zhang Xianzhong might be a problem but his psycho genocidal behaivor probably won't bring him much support from the people.  I think Chongzhen emperor should've escaped south with his court and held out like Gaozong emperor of Southern Song did.

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He didn't abandon Beijing because he thought rebels couldn't take it.
However the Ming armies around Beijing joined the rebels, therefore Beijing was lost.

[Cao Cao]

MING-LOYALIST, on Jan 4 2005, 12:42 AM, said:

He didn't abandon Beijing because he thought rebels couldn't take it.
However the Ming armies around Beijing joined the rebels, therefore Beijing was lost.

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That wasn't true, the Ming armies around Beijing did not give up without a fight, in fact there weren't that many Ming armies that garrisoned the approach between Beijing and Xian by the time Sun Chuanting's milita was decisively defeated by Li Zicheng in Henan. While Tang Tong, commander at Miyun, surrendered to and served Li Zicheng, he did so after his unit was overwhelmed by Li Zicheng; the men at Juyong Pass fought to the last man. However, the eunuch Cao Huachun did open the gates of Beijing to Li, but by that time Beijing was virtually without soldiers anyway.

One of the reasons for why Chongzhen did not evaucate the capital was that the Ming court didn't think Li Zicheng could have approached Beijing from Xian so rapidly. Instead of evacuating the capital, Chongzhen ordered Wu Sangui (at Ningyuan), Liu Zeqing (near Shandong), and Zuo Liangyu (farther away in Hubei) to defend the capital, but Li got to the capital too early. Few thought that it was possible for Li's army to march all the way from Xian to Beijing via the mountains of Shanxi in less than two months; in fact, many at the time thought he'd approach from a more southerly route, where the terrain is flatter.

The Ming really exhausted most of its military manpower by the time Hong Chengchou's army was vanquished in the Battle of Songshan (1642ish) and Sun Chuanting's Shaanxi militia was defeated by Li Zicheng (1643ish) in Henan. While Sun's force was a peasant militia, the 130,000-men Ming army that lost the Battle of Songshan was the flower of the Ming military; over 50,000 Ming soldiers were lost in that battle, and afterwards Wu Sangui's army (about 40,000 to 50,000 men, probably the ones that weren't killed in the Songshan campaign) was really the only army left capable of defending the empire against the Qing or Li, and it was still too small to defeat either the Qing or Li, or both.