The "History of Ming" records that "the scourge of thieves has persisted throughout the ages, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were extremely prosperous." In the annals of history, there is no such thing as the cool one of Jos. For the Ming Dynasty, these two people were sinners who subverted the dynasty, Li Zicheng was the leader of the peasant revolt in the late Ming Dynasty, established the Dashun regime, broke into the city of Beijing, and the fallen emperor Chongzhen hanged himself, symbolizing the demise of the Ming Dynasty, but Li Zicheng was eventually defeated at the hands of the Manchu Qing army and was killed by the villagers. Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng were equally famous, the founding emperors and the only emperors of the Great West, and in the process of fighting the Qing army, he was hit and killed by a stray arrow. Neither of these two was a good person, but if they were more cruel than one, it would be Zhang Xianzhong.
Zhang Xianzhong this person has a huge controversy in history, according to legend, he washed Sichuan in blood, when he stayed in Sichuan, it was a huge disaster for the people, because he carried out a brutal and bloody suppression of the people of Sichuan, slaughtered innocent people many times, and slaughtered only 90,000 people left in the whole of Sichuan, which is simply sensational, and it is easy to think that Zhang Xianzhong is a cruel and unkind person. But is that really the case? History has always been written by the victors, and after the rulers of the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, they naturally did not let go of their former enemies easily, so there was still a great controversy in later generations about Zhang Xianzhong's slaughter of Shu.
When Zhang Xianzhong established the Great West peasant regime in Wuchang, he called himself the "King of the Great West", and then controlled all of Hunan, as well as the vast areas in southern Hubei, Guangdong, and northern Guangxi, he attacked and occupied along the way, and his style was as fierce as that of bandits and thieves, but he was the leader of the peasant uprising, and naturally he was welcomed by the people. He then decided to capture Sichuan, and soon he controlled most of Sichuan, declaring himself emperor in Chengdu, but Zhang Xianzhong did not control the entire Sichuan region, and his peasant army was unable to go further than being held hostage by the Qing army and the remnants of the Ming army, so Zhang Xianzhong decided to abandon Chengdu and go north to fight against the Qing army.
After staying in Chengdu for three years, Zhang Xianzhong left Sichuan, so how did his slaughter of Shu happen? According to legend, Zhang Xianzhong almost slaughtered the entire people of Sichuan, and in the "History of Ming" written by the Qing people, it is also said that Zhang Xianzhong erected a "Seven Killing Tablets", which reads "All things and people are born, people have no one and the sky, kill and kill, kill, kill, kill and kill", after the Qing Dynasty ruled the Central Plains, it issued an edict "Huguang fills Sichuan", so as to make up for the serious shortage of sichuan's population. However, these are almost all one-sided words of the Qing court, and if they are examined according to historical materials, I am afraid that Zhang Xianzhong's slaughter of Shu will be exaggerated.
Historical records have recorded that Zhang Xianzhong summoned all the literati in Sichuan and killed all the literati, but the historical records also record that less than five years after Zhang Xianzhong's death, Sichuan held a large-scale imperial examination, and at that time, all the candidates in the thirty counties of Sichuan took the examination. If Zhang Xianzhong really killed the literati, then how could another batch of literati be produced in less than five years, even if the "Huguang Filling River" promulgated by the Qing court was more than forty years after his death, so there was no small controversy in this matter.
There is a theory that the Qing court and some literati accused Zhang Xianzhong of carrying out massacres in Sichuan, but those literati were difficult to protect in order to curry favor with the Qing rulers, and Zhang Xianzhong was indeed a thief of the Ming Dynasty for the literati, and it was also possible for them to exaggerate Zhang Xianzhong's crimes.
In addition, if Zhang Xianzhong really slaughtered most of the people in Sichuan, then he occupied Chengdu and controlled most of Sichuan, who helped him cultivate land and transport goods, and where did the soldiers in the controlled areas come from? If there were really 90,000 people left in Sichuan, after Zhang Xianzhong's death, the Qing army attacked Chongqing, and it took thirteen years to occupy the whole of Sichuan, how tens of thousands of people could withstand the Manchu Qing army. It is indeed an indisputable fact that the number of sichuan has plummeted, but if it is zhang Xianzhong alone, it will be biased, and it is likely that the people of Sichuan suffered heavy casualties in the process of desperately resisting the attack of the Manchu Qing army.
As for the "Seven Killing Monuments" mentioned above, they can not become physical evidence, even the record of the "Seven Killing Monuments" is from the "Chengdu County Chronicle" of the Xianfeng Period, and later destroyed by students in modern times, so that the "Seven Killing Monuments" can not become strong evidence, even if there is, this "Seven Killings Monument" was also "discovered" by the Manchu Qing rulers, they are likely to be in order to win the hearts and minds of the people, in order to occupy the Sichuan region, under the attack of the Manchu Qing army, Sichuan suffered heavy losses, and the rulers pushed the losses of pacifying Sichuan to Zhang Xianzhong. It was Zhang Xianzhong who slaughtered the Sichuan people, which led to a sharp decline in the population of Sichuan. Over time, the Qing Dynasty ruled the Central Plains for more than two hundred years, and the truth of that year has been covered up, leaving only historical records that are conducive to the rule of the Qing Dynasty.
And the Sichuan people also built a temple statue for Zhang Xianzhong, still retain his statue, when he was called emperor in Chengdu, actively transformed the local area, just like a small country, the local has been stable reform, he also issued a ban monument under Zhang Xianzhong's subordinates, which said that it is not allowed to "harm the good people", it is not allowed to "marry local women as concubines", violators "sit together", "tied up", until the head is killed, so it seems that Zhang Xianzhong was loved by the locals, he was killed and sacrificed in the Phoenix Mountain in Xichong. The local people remembered him very much and risked being punished by the Rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and the locals repeatedly statued Zhang Xianzhong. If Zhang Xianzhong really slaughtered the Sichuan people, then why did the locals later put statues on him?
Although there are many documents about Zhang Xianzhong's tushu in later generations, they all need to be carefully considered, after all, history is written by the victors, and no matter how developed the science and technology of later generations are, it is impossible to reproduce the truth of that year, and it can only wait until more powerful evidence is found to make the truth of this matter come out.