The peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng, after several twists and turns, finally invaded Beijing in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen. It was a peasant revolutionary movement of unprecedented scale that overthrew the Ming Dynasty, which had ruled for 276 years.
The three forces have formed a situation of "three-way game"
We all know that there were three forces in the land of China at that time: one was the Manchu Qing regime that wanted to enter the Central Plains for a long time; the second was Li Zicheng's Dashun regime; and the third was the remaining forces of the Ming Dynasty. After Li Zicheng's rebel army entered Beijing, a "tripartite game" situation was formed.
The remnants of the Ming Dynasty included Wu Sangui at ZhenshoushanHaiguan and the Southern Ming regime in the Jiangnan region. On the surface, they have the advantage, but in fact, inside they are factional and demoralized, and it is not too much to say that they are "scattered". Among them, only Wu Sangui's army of 40,000 or 50,000 people can still be regarded as having the strength of a war.
Lee Zicheng stills
Because of this, the only people who really had the strength to chase after the Central Plains at this time were Li Zicheng's Dashun regime and the Qing army outside Guanwai. During this period, feudalism was still dominant in terms of the structure of society as a whole. Whether it was Li Zicheng or the Manchu Qing nobles, if they wanted to win this struggle, they not only had to rely on military strength, but also on the support of the landlord class.
Based on this, Li Zicheng's Dashun regime, as a peasant regime, if it wants to exist for a long time, it must be transformed into a feudal class, and it cannot be transformed in a short period of time, and can only seek the support of the Han landlord class.
From this point of view, the core under the fog of change is the Manchu Qing and Dashun, who can win the hearts of the Han landlord class, who has the hope of victory. We all know that the slogan of the uprising of Li Zicheng's peasant army was "equal fields and free grain." This is not only a slogan, but also Li Zicheng's political program.
At that time, there was a folk song that sang well: "Wear his mother, eat his mother, open the door to meet the king, and when the king comes, he will not pay grain", although this statement is vulgar, it points out the core of the Dashun regime, that is, "egalitarianism". On the bright side, this objectively satisfies the people's desire for land; on the bad side, it is a policy of attacking and rejecting the Han landlord class.
Because of this, the Manchu nobles had an extra help. They were much more clever than the Dashun regime, and they co-opted and united most of the northern landlord class. Wu Sangui is a typical example.
Wu Sangui, the representative of the landlord class, his preferred choice was to submit to Dashun
Wu Sangui had the elite troops of the Ming Dynasty, which had strong combat effectiveness and was known as the "Iron Horse". We all know that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Wu Sangui had no intention of surrendering to the Manchu Qing regime, and he still actively deployed troops and insisted on defending Ningyuan, the front line of Shanhaiguan.
When Wu Sangui was gone and it was difficult to survive alone, he received surrenders from both the Dashun regime and the Manchu Qing regime. At first, he did not take a position easily, but it can be seen from the records in the literature that when the general trend of the Ming Dynasty had gone, even if Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty wrote several times to surrender, Wu Sangui had no intention of surrendering to the Qing Dynasty. His preferred choice was to submit to the Dashun regime, and he was quite sincere.
Wu Sangui stills
This can be proved by the fact that Wu Sangui easily handed over his only base, Shanhaiguan, to the Dashun army to guard on his behalf, and from his various performances in the literature. Unfortunately, Li Zicheng's general Liu Zongmin did not have Wu Xiang's home, and when Wu Sangui heard the news, he was "overwhelmed" and thought that "this tempted me", so he immediately changed his attitude and surrendered to the Qing army.
As a representative figure of the landlord class, Wu Sangui is not in charge of any national interests! At this point, Wu Sangui changed from surrendering to descending Qing, to enjoy his wealth of "eternal mountains and rivers".
Although Li Zicheng "blamed Liu Zongmin", it was too late. Just as the so-called "king was defeated", after Li Zicheng's defeat, he was evaluated by some people as a "rogue thief", and even more as a "national sinner". In fact, these evaluations are unfair. There is also a more excessive story in the folk, which scandalizes the image of Li Zicheng.
The stolen Ming Dynasty stone stele, the inscription reshaped Li Zicheng's image
According to the wild history, Li Zicheng once "boiled" Zhu Changxun, the King of Fu, mixed his meat with venison, and gave it to the rebel army to share and eat, which was called "Fu Deer Feast".
So, was Zhu Changxun, the King of Fu, really boiled to death? The answer is no. The "Chronicle of Zhu Changxun, the King of Mingfu", which was stolen in 1924, clearly records the birth, death, and canonization of Zhu Changxun, the King of Fu, as well as the specific date of Li Zicheng's conquest of Luoyang, and its content subverts our understanding of Li Zicheng.
"Mingfu King Zhu Changxun's Zhi"
The stone tablet records that "tens of thousands of rogue thieves suddenly attacked the capital city", which is Li Zicheng's capture of Luoyang. King Fu "stood up to the festival and scolded the thieves" and eventually "perished with the city". Subsequently, the stone tablet also recorded the location of Fu Wang's body: "Burial of the Plains of the Mountain".
It can be seen that after King Fu was killed by Li Zicheng's rebels, the body still exists, and he was not boiled and killed as described in the story, which also reshaped Li Zicheng's image. The so-called "Fulu Feast" is also a slander against Li Zicheng, which is pure nonsense.