More than 300,000 people drowned in World War I? Li Zicheng attacked the Battle of Kaifeng

Li Zicheng attacked Kaifeng

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the imperial court was corrupt, natural disasters were continuous, and peasant uprisings occurred one after another, among which many fierce battles occurred, and the most tragic was Li Zicheng's attack on Kaifeng.

Among the various peasant uprisings at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the peasant uprising led by Li Zicheng was the most powerful and had the most extensive influence. Emperor Chongzhen of Ming sent the main force of the Ming army, with Hong Chengzu and Sun Chuanting as the main generals, to clear Li Zicheng's peasant army, and eventually Sun Chuanting set up an ambush at Nanyuan, almost completely annihilating Li Zicheng's main force. Li Zicheng could only lead the remaining eighteen people into Shangluo Mountain to hide, waiting for the opportunity to make a comeback.

Soon the opportunity came, Chongzhen thirteen years, the Qing army suddenly launched an attack, over the Great Wall, attacked the Beijing division area, the Ming army from all over the country entered the Jingqin King, there was a gap in Huguang, Zhang Xianzhong, who surrendered to the Ming government, took the opportunity to play the banner of rebellion again, and then entered Sichuan, and led the Ming defenders of Henan to Sichuan, Henan appeared empty, Li Zicheng took this opportunity to kill Shangluoshan and enter the Henan region. At that time, Henan was first hit by a severe drought, and then it was plagued by locusts, and there were hungry people and refugees everywhere, which provided conditions for Li Zicheng's development in Henan.

As soon as Li Zicheng entered Henan, he immediately captured Yongning (永宁, in present-day Luoning County, Henan), opened the granary, helped the victims of the disaster, and then played the banner of the king of Chuang, and the king was mighty. So the surrounding hungry people defected to Li Zicheng, and Li Zicheng developed hundreds of thousands of people within a few days. With people in place, Li Zicheng set his sights on Luoyang, the feudal state of Zhu Changxun, the fu king of the fu dynasty.

Luoyang City was strongly defended and heavily guarded, and although Li Zicheng had more than 100,000 troops, most of them were peasants who had just surrendered, and it was too difficult to attack the stronghold. But Li Zicheng made up his mind that he must take Luoyang City.

In the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641), Li Zicheng attacked Luoyang, but he did not expect that Zhu Changxun, the Fu King, did not think of resisting, and because of the lack of pay, the guards defected, and Li Zicheng occupied Luoyang effortlessly. Luoyang's success so easily increased Li Zicheng's confidence, and he set his sights on another central plains town, Kaifeng.

Kaifeng - the capital of Henan, the ancient capital of the Eight Dynasties, convenient transportation, economic development, strategic position is very important, belongs to the core of the Central Plains. Once Kaifeng was captured, the entire Central Plains would fall into its own sphere of influence. Li Zicheng's intention was obvious, he wanted to take Kaifeng as his capital and establish the imperial industry. But Kaifeng City was not Luoyang City, and Li Zicheng misestimated the situation at that time, and Kaifeng City was not taken down at one time, but three siege battles were launched before and after.

In February of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, after Li Zicheng led his troops to conquer Luoyang, Henan, he learned that the garrison of Kaifeng in Henan was weak, so he personally led 30,000 elite troops, and in early February, he took advantage of the false east attack and rushed to the city of Kaifeng for three days and nights to launch a fierce attack. The Ming Patrol insisted on holding on to Gao Mingheng, the King of Zhou offered a heavy reward, the soldiers and civilians of Kaifeng City were united in their hearts and morale were strong, the attack of the rebel army was blocked, and the surprise attack became a strong attack. The deputy general Chen Yongfu of Kaifeng fought with his back to the city, killing 2,000 rebels, and Li Xianfeng, the governor of The Guerrilla Gao Qian, rescued him and killed 700 rebels. Li Zicheng's army then retreated to MiXian County. The rebel army failed in the first siege of Kaifeng and took the initiative to withdraw. After meeting with Luo Rucai's department, he designed an ambush at Mengjiazhuang to ambush the trilateral governor Fu Zonglongbu, and the local troops fled without a fight, and Fu Zonglong's dumu nanzhi was completely annihilated by Li Zicheng. Fu Zonglong was captured, and Li Zicheng's forces vainly attempted to use Fu Zonglong to open the gate of Xiangcheng, but Fu Zonglong recognized it, and the rebel army killed Fu Zonglong.

On December 20, the rebel army once again entered the city of Kaifeng. After Li Zicheng's peasant army conquered Dengfeng and Song County, he joined luo Rucai's forces and led 30,000 elite troops and 400,000 followers (starving people) to force the city of Kaifeng. In this battle, the two sides strengthened their troop firepower, "attacking and defending with artillery." Li Zicheng camped outside the moat embankment, and Luo Rucai entered the Fanta Pagoda in the south of the city. Ming Inspector Ding Qirui fled into the city, and the rebel army built wooden platforms, dug tunnels, and attacked and shelled, but they were not successful, and the news of Zuo Liangyu's assistance arrived. In this siege, both sides killed the red eye. Li Zichengfang demanded that each person who attacked the city every day must deduct three bricks of Kaifeng City to facilitate the burial of gunpowder to blow up the city wall, and those who failed to complete the battle were engaged in military law; The defenders of Kaifeng received donations from the Zhou Dynasty, wealthy merchants, and bureaucrats, and temporarily recruited soldiers, and the people flocked to resist bravely.

In the end, the peasant army blew up the city wall without success, but instead put in many lives, on the contrary, the number of casualties of the Kaifeng defenders was very small, for a time Kaifeng City was called "Providence Protection", Li Zicheng's peasant army was demoralized, and Li Zicheng was wounded by an arrow when inspecting outside the city, and finally took the initiative to withdraw. The rebel army then withdrew on the fifteenth day of the first month of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642) and attacked Zuo Liangyubu. On the eighteenth day, he besieged Zuo Liangyubu at Yucheng and captured and killed the governor of the three sides, Wang Qiaonian, at Xiangcheng.

On the second day of May, the rebel army attacked Kaifeng for the third time. Li Zicheng first successively attacked the surrounding cities and pools of Kaifeng, leaving only an isolated city in Kaifeng, and then adopted the tactic of "encircling points to fight for help" to cut off the wheat and other grains near Kaifeng City first, in an attempt to make the defenders of Kaifeng City run out of food and collapse without a fight. The Ming court used Hou Ke, who had recommended Zuo Liangyu, as the overseer, and supervised Zuo Liangyu, Ding Qirui, Yang Wenyue and other troops of 180,000, claiming that 400,000 chi aided Kaifeng. In June, Hou Ke ordered liu Zeqing to camp on the south bank of the Yellow River to pass the grain road, but was repelled by the rebel army.

The siege lasted for 5 months, resulting in Kaifeng City "rising ten thousand dollars, rice as expensive as pearls", the people first dug wild vegetables, and then even horse dung, glue mud were rushed to eat, soldiers starved to death three or four hundred people every day, but the fighting spirit of the defenders of Kaifeng City was still there. There is no grain and grass in Kaifeng City, no rescue troops outside, and Kaifeng City is in danger. Inspector Gao Mingheng decided to make a dangerous move, holding the high wall of Kaifeng City deep, in an attempt to dig the yellow river embankment and flood the rebels. Therefore, together with Inspector Yushi Yan Yunjing and others, they ordered the officers and soldiers stationed north of the Yellow River to dig up the embankment on the south bank of the Yellow River on the night of September 15 and flood the rebels. When Li Zicheng found out, he was furious, so he also sent a team of men and horses to dig another opening, and as a result, the south gate of Kaifeng City was washed away by water, and the river water flooded into the city, except for the King of Zhou and the relatives of some bureaucratic squires who boarded boats and fled, more than 300,000 people in the city were drowned, and the rebel army was also drowned tens of thousands and forced to evacuate.

Although Li Zicheng's rebel army did not take Kaifeng, it had already gained the initiative strategically, and soon took Xiangyang (襄陽, in modern Xiangfan, Hubei) in the south, Shaanxi in the west, and Jingshi in the north, overthrowing the Ming Dynasty.