Story introduction
He ascended the throne at the age of seventeen and died for his country at the age of thirty-four. The Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian inherited a Ming Dynasty that was riddled with problems - the eunuchs were in power, natural disasters were constant, the Jin Dynasty was looking at it, and there were waves of refugees. He eradicated Wei Zhongxian and for a time let the world see the hope of ZTE; he reviewed memorials until midnight every day, wore a patched dragon robe, and even melted the queen's phoenix hairpin to use as military pay. However, there were endless factions in the court, and the ministers had their own evil intentions; there was no money in the treasury, and neither the military pay for Liaodong nor the food relief for Shaanxi could be collected. He spent seventeen years trying to turn the tide, but watched helplessly as everything collapsed - Yuan Chonghuan was killed, Hong Chengchou surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, Sun Chuanting died in battle, and Li Zicheng proclaimed himself emperor. When 500,000 Dashun troops arrived at the gates of Beijing, he tied a white silk ribbon on the old locust tree in Meishan, leaving behind his last words: "Let thieves divide my corpse, but do not hurt any of the people."
This book takes Chongzhen's seventeen-year reign as the timeline. From the palace to the battlefield, from the court to the people, it panoramically shows the last struggle of a dynasty before its collapse. There are no born foolish emperors or treacherous ministers here, only an extremely diligent emperor, a group of officials with their own agendas, countless people who cannot survive, and the torrent of history that carries everyone towards destruction.
