Tearing down his own Great Wall
Yuan Chonghuan had twice checked Nurhaci and Hong Taiji with the great victory at Ningyuan, the Ming general the Later Jin feared most. In 1629 Hong Taiji went around through the passes to the walls of Beijing, and Yuan Chonghuan raced a thousand li to the rescue — but Chongzhen, believing the rumor and ruse that he "led the enemy to force a peace," jailed him and had him executed by slow slicing the next year, the people of Beijing vying to eat his flesh. From the day of that execution, no name on the Ming’s front against the Qing kept the enemy from sleeping. "Tearing down one’s own Great Wall" — Chongzhen gave the most brutal demonstration of the phrase.
The last night on Coal Hill
On the night of the eighteenth of the third month, 1644, Beijing fell. Chongzhen cut down and wounded his own consorts and princesses with his own hand — sighing to Princess Changping, "Why were you born into my house?" — then climbed Coal Hill with the eunuch Wang Cheng’en and hanged himself from a crooked-necked tree, his hair covering his face, his suicide note reading: "I am of poor virtue and slight person, and have drawn down Heaven’s reproach… all my ministers have failed me." So ended the Ming after two hundred and seventy-six years. The Qing later put chains on that tree, charging it with "regicide" — dynasties vanish, but the tradition of finding a scapegoat does not.