In 1628 AD, Emperor Chongzhen came to the throne. The Ming Dynasty regime he inherited was a decaying and decaying mess. In the north of the country, there is the Nurhachi Manchu army, which is eyeing the country, and there are constant border troubles; in the interior, natural disasters are frequent, and bandits have emerged in droves, wreaking havoc on most of China. Among them, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong are the two most famous peasant rebel armies. Zhang Xianzhong is famous for his cruelty and bloodthirsty. Today we will give a few examples to get a glimpse of the whole story.
Zhang Xianzhong kills people. In addition to the general killing methods of slashing and slashing with a knife, he also creates many killing methods of his own and applies them to different targets. Every time Zhang Xianzhong's army captured a place, except for a few young women who were kidnapped to serve as camp prostitutes, the rest were killed for fear of damaging the morale of the army. In the later period, the army was defeated and retreated, and food and grass were scarce. Women were killed and pickled to be used as army rations. If you encounter a pregnant woman, perform a cesarean section to test the gender. For babies in their arms, they would throw them into the air and catch them with the tip of a knife. They would listen to their miserable cries and watch their arms and legs dance wildly for fun. This is named "Snow Loach". Slightly older children or teenagers would form a group of several hundred people and form a circle with firewood. Soldiers outside the circle would assassinate them with spears and halberds, and watch them run around shouting to add to the fun. This is named "Guanxi".
For those who showed slight resistance or were dissatisfied with their language, they were captured, the skin on their back was peeled off from the ridges, uncovered to the shoulders, and draped over the shoulders. They were driven to the outskirts and were strictly prohibited from being kept by the people and given food. Many of them were inhabited in ancient tombs. , after more than a month, he died. If the executioner causes the offender to lose his breath at the time and does not suffer this life crime, the executioner will also be skinned. This is named "Little Peel".
Zhang Xianzhong captured Chengdu and established the Daxi Kingdom regime. Two months later, he opened his subjects to obtain scholars. Scholars from various states and counties were severely forced to come to take the exam. Those who did not come were beheaded and had to sit in ten neighboring houses. He set up a long rope four feet (about 1.3 meters) above the ground in front of the Chengdu Gongyuan, and asked those taking the exam to cross the rope one by one. Anyone taller than the rope would be rushed to the Qingyang Palace outside the west gate to kill them. There were more than ten thousand people in front and behind, and the pens and inkstones left by the deceased were piled up like a mountain. Zhang Xianzhong went to watch, holding his hands and laughing heartily.
What is incredible is Zhang Xianzhong’s self-destructive suicide. According to "Shu Po Jing", one night, one of his young sons passed by the hall. Zhang called out to him, but when he didn't answer, he ordered him to be killed. The next morning he regretted it, summoned his wives and concubines to ask them why they didn't save him last night, and ordered all the wives and concubines to be killed as well as the axe-hand who killed the young son.
Zhang Xianzhong liked to build a wooden platform, and ordered men and women to get on the platform together, and then set fire to all sides. The screams shook the earth for a while, and Zhang Xianzhong and his subordinates watched with laughter. In order to feed the war horses, he dug out the entrails after killing people, and then fed the horses with rice and beans soaked in human blood, so that the horses grew very fat. The beautiful ones take turns to stay with you. These beauties are dressed in colorful clothes on their upper bodies and naked on their lower bodies. No matter what time or place, as long as Zhang Xianzhong was in a lustful mood, he would immediately order these beauties to fall to the ground and rape them. When he got tired of playing with them, he would skin them, kill them, steam or boil them and eat them. Sometimes he couldn't wait for these beauties to be cooked, so he chewed them bloody.
Once, Zhang Xianzhong suffered from malaria, and he made a wish to God, saying that if he recovered from his illness, he would offer "two plates of candles to the sky" as tribute to God. It was not until he recovered that people understood what this meant. Zhang Xianzhong ordered his soldiers to cut off women's delicate feet. Each soldier must donate at least ten pairs of feet. Those soldiers who were like wolves and tigers would cut off the feet of women on the spot. In less than half a day, there were already mountains of little feet in the military camp. Zhang Xianzhong ordered people to pile the collected three-inch feet into the shape of a mountain, which was called Lotus Peak. When he looked back, he saw that his concubine's feet were also very small, so he cut them off and piled them on the top of Lotus Peak. Then he burned these small tripods on fire and named them Chaotian Candles.
Zhang Xianzhong has a cunning and bloodthirsty personality. He will be unhappy if he does not kill anyone for a day. He opened a subject in Shu to obtain scholars, and won the first prize of a scholar named Zhang.Zhang Zhuangyuan was both talented and beautiful. Zhang Xianzhong loved him very much and was inseparable when he ate and slept. But one day Zhang Xianzhong suddenly said to his entourage: "I love this champion very much, and I can't bear to let him go for a moment. It's better to kill him to avoid worrying about him all day long." So he cut Zhang champion into several pieces and put them in cloth bags. Beside the bed. Then he posted a list and pretended to open a subject to recruit scholars, and summoned scholars to come and take the examination. He ordered people to dig a big hole three to four feet deep in the ground. When these scholars who had lived in poverty for ten years came to the examination room of Qingyang Palace, they were Zhang Xianzhong ordered them to be buried alive in earthen pits.
Later, the more military defeat he suffered, the more anxious he became, and he killed his own soldiers. According to the "Shu Nan Narrative", when the Qing army advanced to suppress and pursue, Zhang Xianzhong's army was defeated and fled to Xichong.com. There were no more people to kill, so he committed suicide. The number of his soldiers was 12,000 per day. The first one killed the Shu soldiers, and the Shu soldiers were all gone. The second time they killed the Chu soldiers, and all the Chu soldiers were gone. The last one killed the Qin soldiers who were also in the uprising. More than 1.3 million horses and horses were killed in more than two months, and more than half of them were killed to reduce the burden and flee. Zhang Xianzhong blamed his subordinates for their incompetence in killing people and scolded him: I only need three thousand people to conquer the world. What do I need so many people to do?
How many people did Zhang Xianzhong kill? According to "Minghui" Volume 50 of "Yao" records: In the sixth year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1578), Sichuan had "262,694 households and 3,102,73 people". By the 24th year of Kangxi's reign in the Qing Dynasty, In 1685, it dropped sharply to "18,090 people", and more than 3.08 million people were killed, accounting for 99.4% of the population at that time. Some household registration records in Sichuan County Chronicles can also explain this. For example, Volume 1 of "Wenjiang County Chronicles" of the Republic of China records: Thirteen years after Zhang Xianzhong's death, there were only thirty-two households in Wenjiang County. During the Kangxi and Qianlong periods of the later Qing Dynasty, immigrants from , Huguang, settled in Sichuan, and it was precisely for this reason. After this disaster, it can be said that there are not many Sichuan people who were born and raised in Sichuan today.
Peng Zunsi in the Qing Dynasty wrote the four-volume " Shu Bi ", which records what Zhang Xianzhong did when he was in Sichuan. The author said in the preface that the whole book was based on what he heard about Zhang Xianzhong's legacy when he was young and the records of other people. become. Western missionaries at that time also had relevant records.
Zhang Xianzhong’s bloody killing methods were so cruel, so numerous, and so tragic that historical records have already recorded that one person has been killed. His cruelty and inhumanity are beyond human understanding. When we read it today, even though centuries have passed, we still find it thrilling and heartbreaking.
In 1646, Zhang Xianzhong was shot to death by the Qing general Hao Ge with an arrow during a battle with the Qing army, ending his sinful life.


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