Daming kill

Chapter 284 The Horrible Plague
The ninth day of the first lunar month in the 17th year of Chongzhen, that is, February 1644, 2 AD.

At dusk that day, on an empty avenue in Beijing, a Fujian man walked alone and tired with his head down.

Although it’s winter, it’s getting dark early, and there’s still a long time before the night ban starts at 19:[-], but the doors and windows of all the houses on both sides of the avenue lined with signs are strangely closed with.

And not to mention that there are no other figures on the road at all, and there are no living things, including beggars, in the corners of the surrounding area.

Even cats and dogs are extinct.

Only empty!

But if you want to say that there is no popularity, it is wrong.

The chaotic and loud sound of ding ding dong dong knocking on iron objects in the surrounding houses can be heard all the time.

Noisy people are annoying!
It also tells the world that there are people here, and there are people in most houses.

But it also makes everything around it feel weirder, and then scary.

But Fujian people should not be afraid.

He walked unhurriedly, occasionally stopping to look up for a while, and staring blankly for a while.

There was no fear on his face, only sorrow.

The weather is very cold, and the hearts of Fujian people are also very cold.

This new year, he had a bad time.

Although he was not used to the severe cold in Beijing, for several consecutive days, he still went out early every day full of hope.

For a person like him who serves as a backup county assistant, the New Year is the best and probably the most suitable opportunity to get close to the various powerful officials who were once difficult to get close to.

But unfortunately, he has nothing but disappointment so far.

These days, apart from being exhausted and snotted from the cold, the Fujianese have almost nothing to do.

Not to mention paying New Year's greetings to the officials in person, he didn't go in the doors of most of the officials' homes.Even if there are a few people who are lucky enough to meet each other, they are not high-ranking and have the right to speak.

The plague caused officials to turn away almost all strangers.

It is useless for him to repeatedly report or even introduce the names and deeds of those who he thinks are already famous.

It seemed that the dignitaries were not interested or wanted to be interested in what he did.

Of course, it may also be that he is afraid to avoid him.

Because sometimes, when they realize who he is, the servants of those officials will turn pale with fright, and then hide in horror, and without notifying their masters, they will use wooden sticks and brooms to separate each other on their own initiative. Chase him away quickly.

This makes Fujian people very depressed and angry.

Suddenly, a pedestrian turned out at the corner of the avenue, which surprised both parties.

But after being surprised, the Fujianese immediately showed a friendly smile to the other party, and then quickly adjusted his decadent demeanor.

But the pedestrian continued to look at the Fujianese in horror, and stopped and hesitated.

After realizing that the Hokkien people did not stop and avoid each other at all, the man quickly became even more frightened.Then he hurriedly ran to the side of the road, and then climbed up the wall skillfully.

Watching the other party start to walk skillfully on the wall and climb over the roof ridge like a veteran, and jump back to the road and run far away until he is far behind him, the Fujianese sighed deeply, and then smiled wryly.

He knew that the man was trying to avoid the plague, and he had done nothing wrong.

"It's not good to screen people at dusk... Even in the daytime, walk on the wall and the ridge of the roof, teasing the residents..." The notebook "Jiashen Chaoshi Xiaoji" in the early Qing Dynasty recorded a true and true portrayal of Beijing.

The mood of Fujian people is very complicated, very tired and desolate.

In the past few days, he didn't really mind whether he could come into the sight of the superiors.

What he cares about is that he has no chance to recommend his discoveries to the officials, and recommend his experience in diagnosing and treating the plague over the past few months.

The plague is so fierce, but the whole country has always been passive and passive, doing almost nothing.

His heart is bleeding!

The Fujianese came to Beijing only in October last year, and the situation in Beijing at that time really shocked him a lot.

The plague broke out in the whole north, and he, who is quite skilled in medicine, had already heard about it.

This plague actually began in the sixth year of Chongzhen, first in Shanxi, and then began to spread to the surrounding areas, causing a great epidemic in many areas.

As a result, the plague not only exacerbated the chaos in the Northwest, but also further stimulated and expanded the scale of civil unrest, and became a powerful driving force behind the vigorous development of the Peasant Army.

In the 13th year of Chongzhen, the epidemic also spread to Zhili.Shunde Mansion, Hejian Mansion, and Daming Mansion all experienced major epidemics, and many counties recorded more than half of the deaths.

In the 14th year of Chongzhen, the epidemic developed further.In Daming Mansion, "There is no rain in spring, the locusts eat all the wheat, the plague is rampant, five or six out of ten people die, and the age is fierce."

It was also in this year that the epidemic spread to Beijing.

However, at that time, it did not cause a major outbreak in Beijing, but a large-scale outbreak in surrounding Tianjin and other places.

Due to the wide range of records and scope, and the saying that there must be a major plague after a major disaster since ancient times, locust plagues and droughts will occur again and again in the unprecedented scale of the north, and plagues will occur in some areas. Not surprisingly.

It's just that the Fujianese didn't expect that the situation in Beijing would be so serious.

This is the capital!

In fact, the full-scale outbreak of the epidemic in Beijing occurred in February of the 16th year of Chongzhen, that is, in February last year, and then quickly swept the whole city with terrifying intensity.

In April alone, the number of dead in the city began to number in the tens of thousands.The residents of small households along the street also died, let alone the children playing on the street, even the beggars were all dead, and finally the gates of the city were blocked by the coffins brought out.

Because the common people, that is, the folks, named the plague "pimple plague" and "pimple gangrene", so people in later generations were able to know exactly what the plague was.

That's the plague, and it's the bubonic plague.

One of the distinguishing features of a patient with bubonic plague is swollen lymph nodes.At that time, only the plague could have such a powerful contagion of "death pillows, ten rooms and nine empties, and even extinction of households and no one to restrain them".

By December, the recorded data on the number of deaths in Beijing was "with coffins and without coffins, and the nine gates counted more than [-]."

This is still counted, and there must be some that have not been counted.

You must know that the population of Beijing at that time was estimated to be only about 100 to [-] million. That is to say, the most conservative is that the plague had killed one-fifth of the city's population.

If the civilians are like this, the situation of the army is naturally impossible.

The official army in Beijing is said to be in the hundreds of thousands in name, but after the epidemic, it was reduced by half.According to Zhang Yi, a survivor of the Ming Dynasty, when Li Zicheng came to kill him, there were not even 1 soldiers who could defend the walls of the capital.

There are even five battlements on the city wall to have one soldier, and they are all old, weak, sick and disabled.

There's even a statistic that can't be too sure of its authenticity.

It is said that when the plague broke out in Beijing, there were 2.7 war horses.But before Li Zicheng broke the city, there were only 1000 horses left in the Beijing army that could fight.

On the other hand, a larger estimate and very uncertain statistics believe that the persistent plague during the Chongzhen period caused a total loss of 1000 million people in the northern region.

At the same time, this plague has also become one of the only two super plague pandemics in Chinese history.

Another super plague was from the transition of the Han Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty.

At this time, it is estimated that many people can also understand why the huge army assembled by the Ming Dynasty in the Beijing area was unbelievably ineffective in the face of the seventh southern strategy of the Qing army, and why the Qing army did not approach Beijing and Beijing in the face of huge advantages. Definitely avoid some areas.

This super plague that is breaking out in and around Beijing is definitely one aspect.

But the epidemic has reached this level, what did our Emperor Chongzhen do?
He didn't do anything at first.

Until July, Gong Yongge, the son-in-law, went to Shu and asked the emperor to "remember the relics and urgently give rescue."

At this time, Chongzhen issued an edict to allocate 2 taels of silver, ordering the censor of the five cities to collect and bury the dead bodies, and allocate another 1000 taels of silver to the Imperial Hospital to treat the sick.However, there are too many sick and dead people, and this little money is not enough.

Even in the face of the unfortunate victims who appeared in the palace, Chongzhen continued to display his stingy nature.At the beginning, for every death in the palace, a pension of [-] yuan was given.Later, even though the palace people died very little, even the money was gone.

This is all Chongzhen has done in response to the epidemic.

There is also an interesting point that must be mentioned here.

Although the prevention and control of plague was completely unknown in ancient times, everyone understood that it was classified as a general term—plague.

And this is also the official name written in various official records at that time.

Due to the special inheritance of Chinese history and culture, scholars basically know that it is best to stay away from the plague.

The focus of plague prevention and control is precisely isolation.

Since the palace and the ministers are drawing a clear line from the common people to prevent infection, they also have conditions, and they live in separate areas, and the sanitary conditions are much better than that of the common people, so the deaths of the princes and ministers are actually It is relatively rare, and the deaths of ordinary palace people are also very few.

Most of the deaths caused by this super plague in Beijing were Xiaomin.

But you said that Chongzhen was not worried about the epidemic at all?Don't you know the current situation at all?Or are you really planning to lie flat?

Nor is it.

Chongzhen thought about moving south at the time, but ran away. This was the first time he had thought about moving south.

Chongzhen wants to run away?That's right!
This is really not wrong.

Chongzhen was actually not as virtuous as many people imagined.

He's just too nice.

The reason he put forward at that time was that the Qing army's invasion was difficult to resist, but the time he put forward was precisely when the Qing army returned to the north, that is, the Qing army began to withdraw.

At that time, the epidemic situation in Beijing was exactly the time when it was the most serious and killed the most people every day, that is, when it broke out in an all-round way.

Of course, the reason why he wanted to run away at this time must not be just the plague, but a comprehensive factor.

In addition to the huge damage caused by the invasion of the Qing army, there is also a set of data for participation only.

According to an imprecise estimate by a foreign scholar, the country lost as much as 40% of its population after continuous droughts, locusts, plague, floods, and famines at the end of the Ming Dynasty.

And these losses mainly occurred in the north.

Although the authenticity of this data is questionable, it is still very scary.

Although the plague may not necessarily be the main reason why Chongzhen wanted to run away, it should not be a big problem as an important pusher and the last straw that crushed Chongzhen's heart.

However, Chongzhen's opinion that he wanted to run away was immediately rebuked by Empress Yi'an Zhang, who was the queen of the previous emperor and also the wife of Chongzhen's brother, with the words "Here is the mausoleum of the ancestral temple, move to An?"

The face-saving Chongzhen had to give up temporarily.

When they finally returned to their residence, the Fujian people instinctively and habitually took a look from afar.

Sure enough, the streets near his residence were crowded with people again.Not to mention that he couldn't see the entrance of the alley where he lived, it would take a lot of time to get to the entrance of the alley.

The area around his residence turned out to be the only place in Beijing where people dared to gather.

The Fujianese couldn't help but let out another long sigh.

He knew that he was the only hope for those who were generally so pimpled and so weak that they had no strength to stand for long and could only sit or lie on the ground.

But before the night ban, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't treat one percent of these people.

At this time, he couldn't help but think of those superiors whom he still couldn't get close to, and the emperor.

He was curious what the emperor was doing now?Know someone like him?

Although they have only been in Beijing for two months, the Fujianese are currently famous for treating the plague.

How famous is it?
According to exaggerated records in history books, there are as many as [-] people queuing up to see him for treatment every day.

The method used by the Fujian people to cure the plague is actually very simple, that is, blood pricking.

This was discovered by accident when he was researching and testing the cure for the plague in Beijing.

From a modern point of view, the principle is probably that the effective mobilization improves the immune function of the human body and stimulates the defense function in the body.

The effect is indeed there.

But it is still not up to the level of curing and curing most people. It can only be said that it has a certain effect on some people.

However, when Fujian people started to treat diseases and save lives, it was already a severe winter that was not conducive to the spread and development of the virus. At the same time, the old, weak, sick and disabled were almost unable to survive, and most of the rest were people with better physical fitness and resistance.

So the Fujian people's blood pricking method cured many people and made his medical skills deified.

At the same time, due to the sharp drop in population density caused by the large number of deaths in the early stage, the transmission ability of the plague also dropped sharply. The plague in Beijing has gradually begun to calm down.

The Fujianese also further enshrined the gods.

What makes Fujian people depressed is that even though he has such a great reputation, his blood pricking method is still only used by himself.

Not only has no one from the government in Beijing contacted him, he wants to promote it or get some funding to better treat diseases and save lives, but now he can't find it.

But after sighing helplessly, despite being exhausted and disappointed, the Fujianese still rolled up their sleeves to cheer up and strode forward without hesitation when looking at the sluggish and weak patients in the distance.

Fujianese were wondering what Emperor Chongzhen was doing, but Emperor Chongzhen didn't think about him.

In fact, Chongzhen, whose eyes probably grew on the top of his head, still does not know that there is such a person as a Fujianese, and it is even more impossible to know the name of a Fujianese.

What's even more sad is that the Fujian people didn't even leave their names in the history books.

The Fujian people in history will be killed by the peasant army when the city of Beijing is broken.

The Peasant Army didn't bother him.

Of course, the Peasant Army did not yield any good results.

According to cause and effect, although the plague in Beijing was coming to an end when the city was broken, it still infected Li Zicheng's army, and then caused the situation of his army to decline sharply.

Then Li Zicheng, who was in the most prosperous state in history, was more or less controlled by the incredible defeat by the Qing army and quickly withdrew from Beijing.

According to historical records, the situation of Li Zicheng's army after leaving Beijing was that "everywhere the thieves pass by is plagued by severe epidemics, and those who do not pass through will not be infected."

What happened to the Fujian people is undoubtedly a tragedy in Chinese history, and the person who should not make the Fujian people a tragedy, that is, what is Chongzhen doing in this New Year full of visions?
Chongzhen is actually quite busy!He was busy thinking hard about how to move south.

That's right.

Chongzhen wanted to run away again!

A few days ago, in the third year of junior high school, Zuo Zhongyun (sixth rank) Li Mingrui wrote a letter to propose a southward move in response to the series of crises Beijing is currently facing, which suddenly hit Chongzhen's heart.

After Chongzhen saw the memorial, he called Li Mingrui into the palace overnight to inquire impatiently, and asked about military pay, support and stationing in detail.

Currently, he is thinking about how to run, how to propose, and how to facilitate this matter.

He himself said that moving south is definitely not an option, and Li Mingrui's official position is too small, a minister must formally propose it in the court, and then it must be supported by the majority of people.

Today, Chongzhen received a report from Li Zicheng proclaiming himself emperor in Xi'an. After his anger passed, he quickly realized that the process of moving south must be accelerated.

At the same time, he also realized that he had to carefully sort out the available troops, especially the heavy troops.

So he quickly turned his attention to the south without any surprise, and the names of Zuo Liangyu and Li Ping immediately jumped into his mind.

Then Chongzhen could not restrain himself from chanting the name that had always brought him surprises and was the only one that brought him surprises in this new year—Li Ping’s name several times in a row.

Chongzhen received the report of Li Ping's defeat of Zhang Xianzhong in Baishui on the second day of junior high school.

But thinking of Zuo Liangyu, Chongzhen frowned slightly.

Soon, Chongzhen felt that he had to do something now.

So early the next morning, Li Ping's name appeared on the court hall.

(End of this chapter)