Little people, though most of the time are supporting characters in history. However, their stories are equally brilliant, often playing an indispensable role at turning points in history. Small people, big history - here refers to moving history, telling the historical story of small people.
In the fifth month of the lunar calendar in 1644, Li Zicheng, who had defeated Shanhaiguan, wanted to kill people. Only this time, the person he was going to kill was special.
The fuse is the change in Henan. There are two theories in later generations: one is that the entire territory of Henan was re-sentenced and thrown into the arms of the Southern Ming Hongguang Emperor; the other is that Chen Qi, Jia Shijun, and 7 other officials stationed in Henan were captured by the Southern Ming army Shangshu Ding Qirui and prepared to be taken to Nanjing. In short, something went wrong in Henan. Therefore, Li Yan asked Li Zicheng to give himself a team of men and horses and enter Henan to quell the chaos.
Li Yan left. Niu Jinxing said to Li Zicheng: "Li Yan will not return again, his rebellion has long been revealed, it is better to kill." Li Zicheng "believed" and ordered Niu Jinxing to hold a feast at the Hongmen Gate, where Li Yan was beheaded.
It's a chain reaction similar to a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon rainforest.
The tornado effect triggered by Li Yan's death first affected Liu Zongmin. Although Niu Jinxing was recommended by Li Yan to join the company, Song Xiance had a better relationship with Li Yan, so he asked to see Liu Zongmin, and Liu Zongmin was furious when he knew the details: "Niu Jinxing did not have a single arrow, but he was good at killing the general, and he must be slaughtered." After that, Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin and others centrifuged.
Facts have proved that Li Yan's role in the peasant army is irreplaceable. The slogan he put forward, "When the king comes, he will not pay grain", quickly won the hearts and minds of the peasant army, and let Li Zicheng, who had walked out of the Shangluo Mountains, completely open up, and after entering Beijing, Li Yan reorganized the mountains and rivers, which showed that he was a handsome man with strategic thinking.
After Li Yan was killed, Li Zicheng no longer had an overall strategy. In the Battle of Tongguan, Duoduo patiently waited for the arrival of the red-clad cannon, which destroyed the last bit of confidence of the Dashun army; Ma Shiyao's counter-plan against the Qing army failed, 7,000 generals of the Dashun army were slaughtered, and Li Zicheng's final blow to Duoduo ended tragically. After Xi'an was conquered, Li Zicheng abandoned the northwest base area and retreated to the south.
But the road southbound is unusually bumpy. In 1645, during the third and fourth months of the lunar calendar, Xiangyang, Hubei. Li Zicheng completed the first large-scale military buildup after the defeat of Beijing, with more than 200,000 troops. The reason for this masse was that the DaShun army wanted to capture Nanjing.
This was Li Zicheng's final blow to the remnants of the Ming Dynasty. But he made a fatal mistake! In order to ensure the capture of Nanjing and the realization of the rule of crossing the river with the Qing army, Li Zicheng started the main force of the four provinces of Xiangyang, Jingzhou, Chengtian, and De'an. This means that after losing the Shaanxi base camp and the northwest base area, Li Zicheng took the initiative to abandon the base area of the Four Provinces.
Bet on Nanjing, and it is the only bet on Nanjing! The butterfly in the Amazon rainforest continued to flap its wings.
When the Dashun army relied on a crushing victory to capture Wuchang, there was no time to rest, Duoduo had already pursued, and Li Zicheng had to continue to move away. At this time, Li Zicheng was once again reduced to an out-and-out rogue. Li Zicheng, who was caught up in mobile operations, made another fatal mistake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.
There are two theories in later generations about this mistake: one is that the Dashun army has many family members and a lot of weight, resulting in a slower march and an exceptionally long encampment time, and the Qing army took advantage of the situation to launch a surprise attack; the other said that the main battle of the Dashun army was seriously reduced, and it lost the peripheral guard of the leader of the Chinese army, so that the Qing army could directly attack the camp of the core leadership.
In short, Li Zicheng's old camp was captured.
The loss was catastrophic. A large number of senior generals of the Dashun Army, including Liu Zongmin and Li Zicheng's two uncles, were killed, and Song Xiance and Niu Jinxing surrendered...
Back to the Four Houses? It was already the domain of the Qing army. Continue to capture Nanjing? Tens of thousands of warships crossing the river were burned by the Qing army. Cornered, Li Zicheng had no choice but to take the mountains in the northwest of Jiangxi to march towards Hunan.
For this transfer, the psychological activities that can be interpreted may be like this: through the dense forests of the mountains in Jiangxi and Hunan, the Dashun army can effectively rest. Advancing, you can base yourself in Jiangxi and then complete the threat to Nanjing; if you retreat, you can turn to the two Guangdong regions to find opportunities for a comeback.
But Li Zicheng did not expect that the dense forests of Hunan's mountains and forests were not only a good opportunity, but also a crisis. What happened after that has been a mystery for hundreds of years.
Coordinates: Jiugong Mountain, Tongshan County, Hubei Province; Time: May 1645. Puzzle: Who killed Li Zicheng.
According to the "History of Ming", the Dashun army entered the Jiugong Mountain, Li Zicheng left Li Guo to guard the camp, personally led 20 horsemen to the mountains to grab grain, the mountain people were fierce, the two sides fought, do not know who strangled Li Zicheng to death.
There is also a saying in the "History of Ming" that a group of villagers were building fortifications at the head of the village, and when they saw a group of people with knives and guns, they mistakenly thought that they were robbers, and depending on the large number of people, they rushed up and beat them violently, and Li Zicheng and his horse were trapped in the mud and were hit in the head by the mountain people's hoes and died. Peeling off Li Zicheng's suit, seeing the dragon clothes and gold seals inside, and finding that the deceased was blind in one eye, he knew that it was Li Zicheng who killed him.
It does not matter whether these mountain people are armed with local forces such as township heroes, for hundreds of years people believed that Li Zicheng was killed by a man named Cheng Jiubo, who was the leader of the township braves around jiugong mountain. Without knowing anything about this team, Cheng Jiubo became a figure recorded in history.
Who killed Li Zicheng has been controversial in history. This is not only because later generations naturally disagree with the Ming history revised by the Qing people, but also because some historical materials have been handed down, and there are other opinions about this.
First, Li Zicheng led his troops into Jiugong Mountain, from Xingguo Prefecture in Hubei Province, "Youtun to Jiangxi", and Li Zicheng led 18 cavalry into Jiugong Mountain in Tongshan County. The mountain people heard that a group of robbers had come, "climbing the mountain to hit the stones", the entourage of cavalry dead, wounded, fleeing, Li Zicheng rode alone to the Xiaoyue Mountain Niuling Ridge, just in the face of heavy rain on the "Lama Dengling", the mountain people Cheng Jiubo rushed down the mountain to "hand fight" with Li Zicheng, fought into the mud, Li Zicheng sat Cheng Jiubo under him, drew a knife to kill him, "the knife blood stains and through the muddy water", it was difficult to pull out for a while, Cheng Jiubo shouted for help, and his nephew Jin Mou "killed himself with a shovel". It turned out that Li Zicheng was killed by Cheng Jiubo's nephew.
The second said: Whether it was Cheng Jiubo or his nephew Jin Mou, it was not Li Zicheng who killed him, but a general named Li Yan in the Dashun army. Li Ziren fled into the empty gate and became the later Fengtian Jade Grand Monk.
Cheng Jiubo, with the habit of Chinese title, this name is the same as Uncle Li and Uncle Zhang, and his nephew Jin Mou killed the Emperor of the Great Shun Dynasty and did not leave a name.
But what was suspicious was what happened afterwards.
After Jin killed the "mountain thief", he was still in the dark. At that time, Wuchang had fallen into the hands of the Qing army, and some of the 18 cavalrymen fled to Wuchang and surrendered. When the Qing army heard that Li Zicheng was on the Nine Palace Mountain, he sent troops to look for him, and no one dared to admit it. The county official entered the mountain and explained that if it was Li Zicheng who killed, he would be rewarded. Therefore, as the elder of the family, Cheng Jiubo came forward to admit it and went to Wuchang to be named De'an Province.
The suspicious point of this account is that Li Zicheng was killed, and it is difficult to imagine that the accompanying Da shun army would silently accept the facts without retaliation. According to some sources, Li Zicheng also entered the Nine Palaces Mountain with his wife Gao Shi, the generals Arita Mixiu, Liu Fangliang, Yuan Zongdi, Zhang Nai, Hao Weiqi, and others. Can't defeat the Qing army's Dashun army, can't it defeat the improvised patchwork of township heroes?
Therefore, there is also a saying that Li Zicheng was killed, his righteous son Zhang Nai and a soldier surnamed Liu escaped, and reported to the follow-up troops that "Li Wanzaiye was killed by the township soldiers", and the Da Shun army purged the township yong, "destroying the four realms, the people scattered like birds and beasts, and thousands of people died in the front".
It is hard to imagine that Cheng Jiubo and his nephew Jin Mou would have escaped this retaliatory military strike. So, why was Cheng Jiubo written into the annals of history? How was his nephew Jin written into the history of the wild?
Everything originated from the trip of the Great Shun Army to the Nine Palaces Mountain. Before entering the Nine Palace Mountain, Li Zicheng was the only leader of this team, and the Dashun army that came out again was already fighting for itself, some people defected to Li Guo and Gao Yigong, and some defected to He Tengjiao of The Southern Ming. Obviously, Li Zicheng is no longer in the army.
What the hell is going on? Azig and He Tengjiao learned from the generals of the Dashun Army who were attached to them that Li Zicheng had died on the Nine Palace Mountain, and Azig also sent people into the mountain to investigate, and the final result was that "the corpse was indistinguishable."
For the Qing court and the Southern Ming, Li Zicheng was alive and dead. You can't always expect the rumors to deal with Shunzhi, Zhu Yousong, and the world. Therefore, Cheng Jiubo, a small person, was used to rub a hot spot, and in order to increase the credibility, a nephew Jin Mou ... They are all unknown young people, small people who have come out of nowhere, and no one can find a result if they check it.
It was history that chose Cheng Jiubo and his nephew. Of course, no matter what, Li Zicheng and his Da Shun have completed their historical mission.
I just don't know if Li Zicheng will think of Li Yan before he dies. The sword wind that killed Li Yan was wielded at the Feast of the Bull Venus Hongmen, just like the butterfly that flapped its wings in the Amazon Rainforest... Just 1 year later, the tornado brought Li Zicheng and his Dashun back to dust.
References: "History of the Ming Dynasty", "Ming Dynasty Northern Sketch", "Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty", "Records of Tongshan County", "Xunyang Chronicle", interested parties can read in detail