I think it’s worthwhile to note that while Gao Jie was a scumbag,he did genuinely try to fight the Manchus,refusing numerous attempts by the Manchus to have him switch sides and died due to being betrayed by a turncoat.This. Overall, I would humbly however perhaps say, one half of the Southern Ming forces are bandits and mercenaries, the other half are loyal but factionalist; for the former, there are the four regional guardian generals except Huang- for the latter, one need just look at the utter mess of the rival courts. I wouldn’t perhaps say they thought of themselves as invincible considering there were some seesaw defections from side to side, but many certainly thought it was the better choice, and I believe as time went on all those overall defections produced a material as well as psychological domino-effect.
Even then though, Zheng’s attack on Nanjing failed due to a bunch of factors, some related to loyalty, some not. In my humble opinion, people followed the Qing because they felt the new dynasty brought back stability, played by the dynastical-ideological rules- with some major exceptions, obviously- and because it won. Knock out one of the legs of the chair, they can fix it- the pigtail order rebellions were defeated, and people thought the Qing really held the mandate by the time Zheng’s besieging Nanjing. Knock out two, and the Qing are struggling a bit more- if they are defeated in the wake of the pigtail rebellions, people will reconsider who’s really supposed to be emperor. Here, three legs are knocked out- there’s a unified Southern Ming government in Nanjing, the Qing have been defeated, preferably in the wake of the pigtail order’s unrest, which is enough to upend all the effort they’ve made so far to play by the dynastical-ideological rules. The only leg left now is Manchu military ability, and in my humble opinion, that doesn’t really look like enough to take down this Southern Ming.
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