1644 in Xi'an, the sky is high and the clouds are clear, the wind is gentle and the sun is beautiful. Li Zicheng, who had just wiped out the Great Northwest and established the Great Western regime and changed the Yuan Dynasty to Yongchang, stood at the top of the city of Xi'an, looking at the thousands of miles of mountains and rivers in the Eastern Central Plains. He was in high spirits and full of pride! He vowed to pacify the Central Plains, capture the city of Beijing, truly change the dynasty, ascend the throne and proclaim himself emperor, and create the Dashun dynasty that belongs to him, Li Zicheng.
Li Zicheng
who established the Dashun regime "sighed that the Ming Dynasty was exhausted"! Following Li Zicheng's angry shout, hundreds of thousands of peasant rebels were unstoppable and marched towards Beijing. Sure enough, three months later, the city of Beijing was destroyed and Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself. The northwest peasant uprising army, which had been raging for 15 years, finally buried the Ming Dynasty with their own hands.
Still: The miserable Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian
So before this, what was the biggest obstacle in front of Li Zicheng? Why was he almost destroyed over and over again? What are the reasons for his success?
In the midst of the storm, Li Zicheng revolted by killing officials:
Li Zicheng was born in Mizhi County, Yulin, Shaanxi Province. Yulin The people of this place have been strong and fierce since ancient times, so many people in various dynasties chose to serve as soldiers. Over time, Yulin became an important recruiting ground for the imperial court. However, in his youth, Li Zicheng still understood the so-called "good man should not be a soldier." What's more, he is also a descendant of Li Jiqian, the founder of the Western Xia Dynasty, an authentic royal bloodline. In the Lijia Station of Mizhi County where he is located, most people with the Li surname are descendants of Dangxiang aristocrats, so the Li surname is definitely a big family in the area.
Dangxiang people founded Xixia
Helan Mountain Xixia Royal Tombs
No matter how prominent the family background is, after all, it happened hundreds of years ago. During the Tianqi period of the Ming Dynasty, the northwest region suffered from severe droughts and famines for consecutive years, but the royal court's taxes increased instead of decreasing. Under this situation, desperate refugees began to gather in large numbers. Some occupied the mountains and became kings, while others robbed their homes. It was in this environment that Li Zicheng spent his childhood.
Because his family was poor, he was first sent to a temple to become a young monk by his family, so that he could save some food for the family. When I was a teenager, my mother and father died one after another. When he was twenty-one years old, the imperial court recruited postmen, so Li Zicheng went to Yinchuan Post Station and became an ordinary postman. Originally, Li Zicheng was very satisfied with this iron rice bowl that provided him with plenty of food, and he planned to work as a postman until he retired.
A post station for transmitting information in ancient times
As the old saying goes: "Troubled times produce talents, and times create heroes"! The Ming Dynasty at this time was the era of Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian. In order to reorganize the court and save the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Youjian abolished a large number of post stations. This indeed saved the country a lot of expenses, but hundreds of thousands of postmen lost their jobs as a result, and Li Zicheng was one of them.
lost his job and returned to his hometown. He killed someone because he couldn't pay off his debts, and he was sued for his life. In order to avoid being pursued by the imperial court, Li Zicheng went through many twists and turns and dragged his nephew Li Guo along with him and ran to Gansu to join the army.
Li Zicheng wax figure
From then on, Li Zicheng officially started his military career. In the winter of the second year of Chongzhen, and of the later Jin Dynasty went south in large numbers. Emperor Chongzhen called on the army to march to Beijing to help the king. When his army reached Yuzhong, Lanzhou, Gansu, the soldiers mutinied because the commander withheld food and wages. Li Zicheng saw the opportunity to kill the commander and launched a mutiny. Soon he led his men to join his uncle's army, which was the famous Chuang Wang Gao Yingxiang 's team. From then on he became a member of Gao Yingxiang's army.
Hong Chengchou came out of the mountain and escaped by accident through the King's Carriage Gorge:
In the late Ming Dynasty, although the officialdom was corrupt and scattered, it had not reached the point where there were no generals available. Facing the increasingly arrogant refugee rebellion in the northwest, in October 1631, Emperor Chongzhen sent Hong Chengchou to serve as the governor of the trilateral region to coordinate the troops in Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia.
Portrait of Hong Chengchou
As one of the few humeral ministers in the late Ming Dynasty, Hong Chengchou did not live up to Chongzhen's high expectations. It took less than three years to eliminate Zhang Cunmeng and other Shaanxi uprising teams. Cao Wenzhao, known as "the most fierce general in the late Ming Dynasty", led more than a thousand Guan Ning cavalry to eliminate the peasant army in Shanxi. Then he met Zuo Liangyu, the general of the same name, and surrounded Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong and other peasant armies. . It was also the king of Chuang who was invincible. At this moment, Hou Jin violated the border, and Cao Wenzhao was urgently transferred back to the defense of Datong . So the peasant army took the opportunity to break out and fled westward.
The post-Jin cavalry who posed a huge threat to the Ming Dynasty
The founder of the post-Jin Dynasty Nurhachi
In June of 1634, the newly appointed governor of the five provincesChen Qiyu was even more powerful. Directly forced Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, Luo Rucai, Zhang Xianzhong and others into the mountain carriage gorge in southern Shaanxi. This place is surrounded by steep mountains on all sides, and there is only one way in and out. Once inside, you can't escape even if you put on your wings.
At this critical moment of life and death, Li Zicheng used a large amount of money to bribe the generals around Chen Qiyu and asked them to persuade Chen Qiyu to accept the peasant army's surrender. However, the eager Chen Qiyu was careless and actually released Li Zicheng who was in despair. The result can be imagined: as soon as this group of peasant soldiers walked out of the mouth of the canyon, they suddenly attacked and successfully broke through.
Real view of Carriage Gorge
Seeing that the cooked ducks were flying away, Emperor Chongzhen angrily cursed Chen Qiyu for his incompetence and harmed the country, and soon sent him into exile as a border guard.
"The King of Hell" took action, and King Gao Chuang died:
After coming out of the Carriage Gorge, after nearly a year of rest and recuperation, the peasant army became stronger again. Various leaders gathered in Xingyang, Henan Province for a meeting to discuss how to fight the Ming Dynasty official army. This was known as the "Xingyang Conference" in history. In addition to the familiar Li Zicheng, Gao Yingxiang, and Zhang Xianzhong, those who participated in this meeting also had 72 battalions of rebels from thirteen families, including Lao Hui Hui, Heng Tian Wang, Chuang Shan, and Guo Jiang Long. At this meeting, a new combat line was formulated. Soon after, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong led their troops to capture the southern Zhili territory and dug up Zhu Yuanzhang's ancestral grave. Emperor Chongzhen even cried loudly for this. Later, the two buddies had a falling out due to uneven division of accounts, and Li Zicheng developed westward alone and entered Gansu.
Zhang Xianzhong
who was as famous as Li Zicheng
In the ninth year of Chongzhen, that is, 1636, another military general of the Ming Dynasty, Lu Xiangsheng, became the governor of the five provinces. This person has a dignified appearance and extraordinary appearance. He is always calm and proud, and is nicknamed: "Lu Yanwang". King Lu Yan was King Lu Yan, and his reputation was not in vain. As soon as he came up, he surrounded Gao Yingxiang at the mouth of Heihe River in Shaanxi Province. After a hard battle, Gao Yingxiang, the king of Chuang who had been in the northwest for more than ten years, was killed by the famous general Sun Chuanting.
Statue of Lu Xiangsheng
It is said that after receiving the news, Emperor Chongzhen was so excited that he burst into tears and went to the Ancestral Temple to complain to his ancestors. In his view, with Gao Yingxiang's defeat, pacifying the refugee rebellion in the northwest was just around the corner, and reviving the Ming Dynasty seemed no longer far away. However, Zhu Youjian was still happy too early. After the death of Chuang King Gao Yingxiang, his remaining troops defected to Li Zicheng, and a new Chuang King was born. Moreover, under the banner of revenge for Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng quickly gathered hundreds of thousands of troops and continued to operate in Sichuan, Shaanxi, and Gansu.
Yang Sichang ’s: “Four Positives, Six Corners and Ten Sides of the Net” plan!
Just when Lu Xiangsheng was preparing to completely eliminate the remnants of the peasant army in one go, Hou Jin launched another offensive against the Ming Dynasty. There was no other way, Chongzhen could only tear down the east wall to repair the west wall, and urgently mobilized Lu Xiangsheng to lead his troops to serve the king. Facing the well-equipped, fierce and fierce Hou Jin army, the King of Hell chose to fight to the end and die to serve his country. With its full loyalty, it repaid the kindness of Emperor Chongzhen.
Fight to the End Lu Xiangsheng died of exhaustion
Lu Xiangsheng left. Just when the peasant army was about to breathe a sigh of relief, his successor Yang Sichang came again.This man was even more fierce. Before he took office, he proposed to the court a plan of " four positives, six corners and ten sides of the net", with the intention of dividing and surrounding the peasant army and defeating them one by one. This was not an arm's length battle. In 1637, Yang Sichang mobilized 100,000 troops, with Sun Chuanting as the main force, and defeated Li Zicheng in Tongguan, Shaanxi. In this battle, Li Zicheng's peasant army was almost wiped out. In the end, Li Zicheng had to take Liu Zongmin and other 17 people to flee to Shangluo in Shaanxi is hiding in the mountains.
Shangluoshan
Yang Sichang died of illness; Sun Chuanting was killed in battle; Hong Chengchou rebelled; God helped the king to achieve great things!
While Li Zicheng was chewing tree bark in Shangluo Mountain, an even greater famine broke out in Henan, with people dying of hunger everywhere and refugees fleeing in disorder. In addition, Yang Sichang was chasing Zhang Xianzhong in Sichuan at this time and had no time to go east. Li Zicheng saw the opportunity and led thousands of troops into Henan. In order to win people's hearts, Li Zicheng took in the hungry people and opened warehouses to release grain. And put forward the slogan of "equalizing land and eliminating taxes". Soon Li Zicheng responded, and thousands of farmers joined him. The famous song also began to spread among the common people: "Eat his mother, drink his mother, open the gate to welcome King Chuang, but King Chuang will not accept food when he comes." The situation at that time can be said to be unstoppable.
The common people welcomed King Chuang
At this time, Yang Sichang, who had come to his senses, rushed from Sichuan to Henan without stopping. Halfway through, I heard that Li Zicheng had conquered Luoyang and also killed King of Fortune Zhu Changxun. Unexpectedly, he was shocked. In addition, he had been suffering from illness for a long time, and he couldn't hold on for a while, and then fell ill. , died soon after.
Yang Sichang was the last real military commander of the Ming Dynasty
Without the threat of Yang Sichang, Li Zicheng can be said to be like a duck in water. In the 16th year of Chongzhen (1643), Li Zicheng captured Xiangyang, and Zhang Xianzhong conquered Wuchang. At this time, the only one who could still fight the rebels was Sun Chuanting, who had just taken over as the superintendent. At this time, Sun Chuanting was guarding Tongguan, the east gate of Shaanxi. If Tongguan was lost, Shaanxi would be lost, and the entire northwest would be controlled by the rebels, and the Ming Dynasty would be in danger of subjugation. Sure enough, Sun Chuanting, who had always been brave and good at fighting, was eventually outnumbered and was defeated by Li Zicheng in Tongguan. Sun Chuanting also died on the battlefield.
Many historians even believe that "the death of Chuan Ting, the Ming Dynasty also died."
What is quite surprising is that Hong Chengchou, who has always served the country loyally, was defeated by Hou Jin in the Songjin Battle a year ago. Huang Taiji was captured and then surrendered to Houjin. In order to survive, he lost his integrity, and his lifelong reputation was wiped out. Thousands of years later, Lu Xiangsheng, Yang Sichang, Sun Chuanting, Cao Wenzhao, etc. have been famous for centuries, but Hong Chengchou has been written into the Erchen Zhuanzhong by history and will be infamy for thousands of years.
As military commanders and generals fell one by one, the Ming Dynasty lost control of the northwest, and Li Zicheng began the highlight of his life!
