In the thirty-fourth year of Wanli (1606), Li Zicheng was born in Li Qianji village, 200 miles west of Mizhi River, more than 60 miles away from his old parents [mm m: o y ā n] (both places are now Hengshan). Li Zicheng's ancestral home is Lijia Station in Mizhi County. There is a village called Li Qianji Village in Dianshi Town, Mizhi County, and the locals also call it Lijia Station. The village has been handed down from generation to generation and is a descendant of Li.
Stage photo
During the apocalypse of the Ming Dynasty, the famine in northern Shaanxi continued year after year, and the government's grain shortage did not decrease. Li's life is very difficult. When Li Zicheng was a child, he used to be a young monk named Huang Lai in Yuanming Temple, herding sheep for a landlord named Ji in this city. His mother died when he was a teenager, and his father died soon after. Twenty-one years old, helpless, applied to Yinchuan Post Station as a messenger (strangely, Li Zicheng was once a wage earner. )。 Soon, unable to repay the debts of the gentry, he was shackled and tortured. Later, with the help of poor partners, he killed Wen and fled to Gansu as a border guard with his nephew. At that time, the life of the border guards was also very hard, the pay was insufficient, the officers embezzled and deducted the pay, and the soldiers were often hungry and cold.
There are many disadvantages in the post station system in the late Ming Dynasty. Amin Emperor Zhu Youjian reformed and simplified the post station system in the first year of Chongzhen (1628). Li Zicheng was fired for losing his official documents, went home unemployed and was heavily in debt. In the winter of the same year, Li Zicheng was sued by Ai to the Mizhi county government because of her inability to repay her debts. County magistrate Yan Zibin "travels around the city mechanically, and there is no doubt that he will die." After being rescued by relatives and friends, he killed his creditor Zhao Ai at the end of the year. Then, Li Zicheng killed his wife for adultery with Han Jiner, a villager. Two lives are at stake, and the government can't help but ask, and the lawsuit can't help but kill. So, in February of the second year of Chongzhen (1629), Li Taihou joined the army in Ganzhou, Gansu (now Ganzhou District, Zhangye City).
At that time, Yang was appointed as the company commander of Ganzhou, and Wang Guodong was appointed as a participant. Li Zicheng was quickly promoted by the kingdom to the general manager of the army. In the winter of the second year of Chongzhen (1629), the nomadic people of the late Jin Dynasty went south in a big way, and the capital was tight. In order to defend Beijing, the imperial court urgently dispatched four armies to Beijing for defense. The troops of Li Zicheng, a frontier soldier from Gansu Province, marched into Beijing with the participating countries, passing through Jinxian County (now Yuzhong, Gansu Province). The soldiers demanded their salaries and were detained by the participating countries. As a result, in Yuzhong (now Yuzhong County, Lanzhou, Gansu Province), the participating countries and local county magistrates were killed, and the military and civilians launched a mutiny. As a person at the bottom of the society, Li Zicheng is undoubtedly speechless, but at that time, there were successive droughts in the Ming Dynasty, and the ministers of the DPRK even pocketed their own money. Emperor Chongzhen couldn't even collect taxes. Li Zicheng first joined Gao Yingxiang, the king of explorers at that time. After Gao Yingxiang's defeat, he took over as the king of explorers. In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643), he led the rebel army to be called xinshun King in Xiangyang, annihilated the main force of Shaanxi Governor Sun Chuanting in Ruzhou, Henan, and successfully captured Xi 'an. In the first month of the following year, the Dashun regime, named Yongchang, was established. Soon after Chongzhen conquered Beijing, he hanged himself in Jingshan Park and overthrew the Ming Dynasty.
Why is Li Zicheng a national sinner? There are several reasons for saying that Li Zicheng is a sinner through the ages:
First, as a peasant uprising, he represents the interests of the peasant class. As the production class, the fundamental task of farmers is to engage in agricultural production. If the peasant class wants to carry out armed struggle, it is necessary to establish base areas, and the farmers in the base areas should have the ability of agricultural production. If a peasant army relies on robbing others to supplement all its rations, then it is not an insurgent army, and it is no different from bandits, so Dashun Army is also called "bandits" and "thieves".
Second, Li Zicheng drove troops and hungry people to rob everywhere. The biggest consequence of this is that the production environment of real farmers has been greatly destroyed, and the normal agricultural production conditions have also been destroyed. In addition, after Li Zicheng's army captured a city, it would kill the city at every turn, destroy government facilities, rob granaries and burn down houses, which, to a certain extent, led to the untimely government relief and made people's lives more difficult.
Thirdly, many people compared the peasant uprising in Li Zicheng with the peasant uprising led by Zhu Yuanzhang and found an important problem. The peasant uprising led by Zhu Yuanzhang was to resist foreign rule. It is an act of national liberation, which makes the society transition from backward nomadic society to farming civilization and is a kind of social progress. The Li Zicheng Uprising was a simple act of resistance, and personal grievances were more than the national justice.
Fourth, after Li Zicheng occupied Peking, he failed to restrain his generals in time and let them do whatever they wanted. For example, Liu Min, his general, occupied Chen Yuanyuan, the wife of Wu Sangui, who was guarding the Qing soldiers at that time, and killed Wu Sangui's old father, which indirectly led Wu Sangui to let the Qing soldiers enter the customs.
Generally speaking, Li Zicheng is called a sinner by some people, mainly because he didn't bring people a happy life, but made people's lives more and more difficult. As a result, the Eight Banners Army slaughtered a large number of Han people in the early Qing Dynasty.