Chapter 142: Conquering the outside world and keeping the inside at bay
Although Chongzhen had money now, it was not something that came from the wind. He allocated one million taels of silver, but in the end only a few hundred thousand or a few hundred thousand taels would fall into the hands of the people.

But now the Ming Dynasty is hit by disasters everywhere, and there are more than a million victims!

What can you do with tens or hundreds of thousands of taels?

If we want to eradicate this situation, we must ensure peace and prosperity and thoroughly rectify the administration of officials!
However, the Ming Dynasty had already gone through 260 years, and the interest groups of all parties had long been solidified. To use an old saying, officials protected each other.
It's easier said than done.

Without the determination to burn your boats, you cannot do it!
However, if Chongzhen really dared to do so, it would not only be the bandits and Tartars who would rebel against him, but also the civil and military officials.

The Ming Dynasty was already struggling at the moment, and its subordinates were disobedient. Even if Zhu Yuanzhang were alive, he might not be able to clean up this mess.

At this point, Wang An sighed and said, "Ah... the Ming Dynasty is in trouble!"

Chongzhen deeply agreed with this statement. He picked up the wine glass and drank it all, saying: "Is there nothing even my brother can do?"

Wang An sighed and frowned, "It's not that there is no solution at all, but you must have great perseverance and patience!"

Chongzhen's eyes lit up. After knowing Wang An for a few months, he got to know Wang An quite well. He was definitely not the kind of person who talked big. As long as he said he had a way, there must be a way.

So Chongzhen hurriedly asked: "I don't know what the method is, please teach me!"

Wang An frowned and thought for a moment, then said, "To sum it up, it can be summed up in eight words: defend the country from foreign aggression, maintain internal stability, and unite and make alliances!"

"As the saying goes, before resisting foreign aggression, one must first stabilize the internal affairs. If the Ming Dynasty is not even stable internally, how can it unite to resist foreign aggression?"

"In my opinion, the biggest enemy of the Ming Dynasty now is not Huang Taiji, but the bandits!"

Chongzhen frowned slightly when he heard this. Although there were many bandits in the Ming Dynasty, most of them only had a few thousand or a few hundred people, and even those with tens of thousands were rare.

The most violent and famous among them were the Two Kings of Shaanxi, but even the two of them combined had only a few thousand people. How could they be compared with the Tatars outside the Great Wall?
However, when Chongzhen asked about his doubts, Wang An said, "Little brother, you must have never heard that a single spark can start a prairie fire, right?"

"During the Tianqi period, the White Lotus Sect in Shandong Province was in chaos. The leader Xu Hongru proclaimed himself emperor and called himself the Emperor of Zhongxing Fulie. There were nearly two million followers in the world!"

"Countless people responded to the bandits wherever they went. In Teng County, Shandong alone, nine out of ten people joined the White Lotus Sect. In a short period of time, the number of people reached tens of thousands. If the soldiers had not put down the rebellion in time, I dare not imagine how serious the White Lotus Rebellion would have become!"

"Not all of the two million believers in the world are used by the bandits, even if only one tenth of them are used, that's still two hundred thousand people!"

At this point, Wang An looked at Chongzhen with a smile on his face and said, "The Eight Banners of the Jiannu and the Jurchens have less than 200,000 troops. Do you still think that the bandits are nothing compared to the Tartars?"

Upon hearing this, Chongzhen fell into deep thought.

In fact, although the Jiannu replaced the Ming Dynasty and ruled the Central Plains, the Ming Dynasty actually perished at the hands of bandits, not the Qing Dynasty.

In March of the 17th year of Chongzhen's reign, Li Zicheng invaded Beijing and Chongzhen hanged himself to death, thus marking the end of the 276-year reign of the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, it was from the first year of Chongzhen that the later famous bandit leaders such as Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng began their rebellion.

When Chongzhen heard the date of his death again, he was no longer as excited as when he first met Wang An. Instead, he felt an extremely strange feeling in his heart. However, this feeling did not last long and was immediately replaced by a sense of horror.

For a long time, both Chongzhen and the Ming Dynasty government and the people have always regarded the Tartars outside the Great Wall as a serious threat, and those hungry peasant armies were treated as bandits, no different from mountain bandits.

However, it was precisely these bandits who were despised by the imperial court who accomplished what neither Nurhaci nor Huang Taiji could do.

Huang Taiji obviously realized that the so-called bandit army would kill the aging Ming Dynasty with their own hands. Even during the fourth looting operation of the Jiannu led by Dorgon, Huang Taiji ordered Dorgon to kill all Ming people, animals, and officers and soldiers they met, but not to fight against Li Zicheng's rebel troops.

Even if Li Zicheng's soldiers were captured, they had to be released.

It can be seen that even if Huang Taiji did not expect that the Ming Dynasty would perish at the hands of Li Zicheng, he had fully realized the role that Li Zicheng could play in destroying the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, in the history of the Ming Dynasty, at several critical moments when the bandits needed to be wiped out, the Jiannu would launch an invasion at the right time, forcing the Ming Dynasty to withdraw troops to deal with the Jiannu's entry.

This gave the bandits a chance to catch their breath. To some extent, the bandits and the Jiannu almost formed a tacit understanding.

Famous generals of the late Ming Dynasty, such as Cao Wenzhao and Sun Chuanting, all died at the hands of bandits.

Among them, there is a verse left behind about the death of Sun Chuanting: Chuanting dies, the Ming Dynasty perishes!

"Who is Sun Chuanting?" Chongzhen asked in surprise, "Why do you say that the Ming Dynasty will end if he dies?"

Chongzhen had heard words like the Ming Dynasty's demise from Wang An too many times, so he had long been immune to them.

However, he was somewhat shocked and indifferent about the death of Chuanting and the demise of the Ming Dynasty, because in Chongzhen's view, although the Ming Dynasty was full of talented people, it would not perish without Sun Chuanting.

Wang An chuckled and shook his head, saying, "Sun Chuanting was a Jinshi in the 47th year of the Wanli reign. He served as the magistrate of Yongcheng and Shangqiu, and was promoted to Langzhong of the Ministry of Revenue’s Inspection Office."

"In the fourth year of the Tianqi reign, he resigned from his post and returned home because he was dissatisfied with Wei Zhongxian's chaotic politics. He has been unemployed for three or four years now. It's no wonder that you haven't heard of him, little brother."

"But Sun Chuanting is a very talented person who worked his way up from the bottom. But it is indeed as you said, no matter how talented Sun Chuanting is, it is not the case that the Ming Dynasty will perish without him."

"It was only because less than five months after Sun Chuanting's death, the rebels broke through the capital, and the Ming Dynasty came to an end. Therefore, there is a saying that the Ming Dynasty fell when Chuanting died."

And the most important thing is that from the first year of Chongzhen to the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, the Ming Dynasty, which was full of talented people at the beginning, has become a place with few talented people.

Looking around the entire Ming Dynasty, there is no one else who can take on such an important task except Sun Chuanting.

Therefore, on the eve of the Ming Dynasty's demise in the 16th year of Chongzhen, if there was anyone who had the greatest hope of saving the country, it would be Sun Chuanting.

Unfortunately, however, Sun Chuanting died in battle at Tongguan after devoting his life to the service, and the last great man of the Ming Dynasty came to an end.

After hearing the whole story, Chongzhen's eyes were already red. At the same time, he secretly made up his mind: how could he let such a great man who devoted his life to the Ming Dynasty stay idle at home in vain?
After returning, he must immediately issue an edict to summon Sun Chuanting back to Beijing to take up his post.

(End of this chapter)