At present, the understanding of Li Zicheng is mostly a reckless hero, and it is a fluke to capture the Daming Jingshi. He is only a Ming Dynasty version of the Yellow Turban of Han and the Yellow Nest of Tang, and the final result is bound to be failure. Fortunately, thanks to Mr. Gu Cheng's research, we are basically presented with a real Li Zicheng and the Dashun regime he established.
After defeating Sun Chuanting in one defeat, Zhu Xianzhen in a big victory, and Sun Chuanting completely annihilating him in the second, Li Zicheng took advantage of the situation to capture Xi'an. At this time, Chongzhen was no longer able to fight with Li Zicheng, and the world changed hands only at once. In order to relieve his worries and prepare for the Eastern Expedition to capture the Ming Dynasty's Beijing division, Li Zicheng immediately began to send troops to eliminate the remnants of the Ming Dynasty in Shaanxi and the Ming Dynasty in Ningxia, Gansu, and Xining wei in the west, which were still in the hands of the Ming Dynasty. For Dai Ming's strategy, Li Zicheng and his subordinate Wenwu did not do it arbitrarily, but had a clear and feasible overall plan. The first was to use Li Zicheng's pro-unification army to attack the Ming Jing Division along the ninth side of the Ming Dynasty; in order to prevent Chongzhen from fleeing south, Li Zicheng also arranged for Liu Fangliang's army to attack along the north bank of the Yellow River as a partial division and eventually returned to the Ming Jing Division. After capturing the MingJing Division, the troops were divided into various parts of Kifu, Shandong, and Henan, and at the same time, the control of the defense of Shanhaiguan was completed as soon as possible to block the threat outside the customs. When all this was done, a large army was sent from Hanzhong, Jingxiang, and Shandong to the south to unify the world. It's just a pity that Li Zicheng's world ended up stuck in Shanhaiguan. Here's how Li Zicheng came to the three provinces to the west:
Ningxia
Li Zicheng's conquest of Ningxia was relatively smooth, and in November of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng sent Liu Zongmin, He Jin, and Yuan Zongdi to lead a large army to the west. Before the march, the text had been transmitted to various places. The army reached Guyuan, and the Ming general Bai Guang'en descended.
Faced with a severe situation, the Ming Dynasty's Ningxia clan and military generals gathered in the Qingwang Mansion, which was sealed here, to discuss countermeasures. With a lot of words and swords, the Ming Ningxia Inspector, the Qing Fan Sect Chamber, and the Wenchen Warlords were helpless. After some intense discussion, the crowd finally decided to surrender. Therefore, Li Zicheng ordered Chen Zhilong, the Ming subordinate minister, to be the envoy of Ningxia Jiedushi, and ordered the general Niu Chenghu to guard this place. Then the army moved on.
Gansu
After pacifying Guyuan and Ningxia, Li Zicheng ordered Liu Zongmin and Yuan Zongdi to return to Xi'an to prepare for the Eastern Crusade. The heavy responsibility of the Western Expedition fell on He Jin. He Jin was once one of the leaders of the rebel army, and He Jin was listed as one of the thirteen families at the Xingyang Congress. Later, he formed the Gezuo Fifth Battalion with He Yilong and Ma Shouying, and in Li Zicheng's conspiracy to annex Luo Rucai and the Gezuo Fifth Battalion, He Jin attached himself to Li Zicheng and became an important general of Li Zicheng.
After He Jin's army entered Gansu, it first conquered Anding, and then Kaicheng in Jin County fell, and He Jin's army pointed directly at Lanzhou. Ming Gansu's general Ma Huoguang and his deputy general Ouyang Gong, deeply aware of the bad situation, hoped to protect King Mingsu and flee to Ganzhou, conscripting troops to hold on, but King Su failed to accept it. So the two men led the troops to flee west without authorization, and in the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, He Jin's army arrived in Lanzhou, and the remaining soldiers and civilians in Lanzhou surrendered. Emperor Mingzong was captured and killed.
After stabilizing Lanzhou, He Jin continued to march, and The Mingbian town of Liangzhou Wei and Zhuang Langwei surrendered successively. He Jin's army then approached Ganzhou, and The Ming Gansu Inspector Lin Rirui and the General Soldier Huoguang organized a firm hold. It should be said that in such a situation, the two can still be determined to guard, and their loyalty can be learned. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, there was no shortage of loyal generals, but it was a pity and only sighed!
Due to the cold weather in Ganzhou at that time, coupled with the loss of morale and morale, although under the efforts of the inspectors and general soldiers, Ganzhou held out for a period of time, and finally was attacked by He Jin's army on December 27 of that year. The two were captured and executed, Ganzhou was lost, and the rest of Gansu fell without a fight.
Xiningwei
After the successful capture of Guyuan, Ningxia, and Gansu, He Jin's army of the Western Expedition was somewhat proud and complacent, as the saying goes, the proud soldiers will be defeated. During the capture of Gansu, He Jin sent a unit led by the Ming general Lu Wenbin to attack Xiningwei. However, Qi Tingzhi and Lu Yinchang, the tusi of Xining, remained loyal to the Ming Dynasty, and together they defeated Lu Wenbin, who was sent by He Jin, and beheaded him. Hearing the defeat of He Jin, he was furious and hurried forward in the hope of pacifying Xining Wei as soon as possible and completing the Western Expedition. This violated the taboo of the art of war, "it will not be able to fight without shame", and He Jin's road to the west is uncertain.
When they learned that He Jin's army was coming, Qi and Lu did not panic at all, but instead carefully analyzed the situation, believing that He Jin was invincible and could only be outsmarted. Therefore, the two men deliberated to order a small number of people to surrender, and then lured He Jin into the ambush circle and annihilated him. He Jin believed that his military strength was strong, and everything he passed was expected to fall, so he did not distinguish between true and false, and then went forward to be surrendered. As a result, although lu Yinchang was beheaded, he was defeated, and He Jin himself was killed. After He Jinzhan's death, the remaining Li Zicheng Western Expeditionary Army, led by Xin Sizhong, finally defeated Qi Tingzhi and subdued Xining Wei.
After basically pacifying ningxia, Gansu, and Xiningwei, Li Zicheng launched a large army in the first month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen and began the battle to capture the Ming Dynasty's beijing division.
Zhan Ge believed that Li Zicheng was still okay in his strategic planning for capturing the Ming Dynasty's jingshi. Their only mistake was to ignore Hong Chengyu and lack of understanding of Qing Xiang's pursuit of the Central Plains. Originally, if there was no Hong Chengyu, Dorgon at that time was afraid of Li Zicheng's great power, so he wanted to avoid his sharp edge first, and then tested the combat effectiveness of Li Zicheng's troops. Ke Hongcheng repeatedly pointed out to Dorgon that Li Zicheng was able to capture the Beijing Division not because of his own strength, but because most of the Ming Dynasty's elite generals lost in the defeat of Songjin, and Li Zicheng really took advantage of the situation and won the victory. Originally, the strategy given by Hong Chengyu was the same as before, directly bypassing Shanhaiguan and bypassing the grassland to break through the border and entering Li Zicheng's troops who were surrounded by the Ming Jing Division, and then attacking Shanhaiguan inside and outside or forcing the shanhaiguan defenders to land. Battle Song does not know what history would have done if it had been done, but only that now that we know history as the best choice for them.
Although Li Zicheng failed in the end, he should also see that there are reasons for winning or losing, and li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong at the end of the Ming Dynasty cannot be viewed solely in terms of the success and defeat of the king. Subsequently, in the face of the strong enemy Li Zicheng knew better than those corpse vegetarians in Nanming who was the real enemy, and Li Zicheng's remnants actually became the longest-lasting defensive force of Nanming. The earth was shrouded in darkness until the great man appeared...