At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the peasant revolt was surging and these rebel armies were very scattered, and the Chongzhen eight-year rebel army held the "Xingyang Congress", which was claimed to have the participation of the leaders of the "Thirteen Families and Seventy-two Battalions" uprising, which showed the large number of peasant uprising leaders. However, after more than ten years of great waves and sands, the two names we are most familiar with are finally left - Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong. The two were at first allies and rebelled against the Ming Dynasty together, and Zhang Xianzhong also pulled Li Zicheng when he was most depressed, but in the last few years, the two became antagonists, and in order to expand their territory, some friction was inevitable. In the end, the two failed equally, but their way of dying was strikingly similar.
Map of the situation of the peasant war at the end of the Ming Dynasty
In the first month of 1645, Li Zicheng abandoned the capital of the Dashun Dynasty, Xi'an, and led the Dashun army to retreat south through Henan and Hubei, originally intending to attack Nanjing and use the land of Jiangnan to resist the Qing army in the north. But as the Qing army approached Nanjing, Li Zicheng abandoned the idea and instead marched southwest. In May of that year, the Dashun army marched to the vicinity of Jiugong Mountain in Hubei Province, and Li Zicheng led his cronies Zhang Nai and twenty-eight horse guards to the front of the large army, surveyed the terrain and confirmed the direction of action for the next step, and as a result, they encountered local regimental training.
Lee Zicheng stills
Tuan Lian saw that this "rogue Kou" was small in number, and killed him with a large number of people, completely unaware that he was facing Li Zicheng, the emperor of Dashun, and in a chaotic battle, Li Zicheng and his guards were scattered, and Li Zicheng rode alone on a horse on a muddy mountain road. As a result, when he encountered Cheng Jiubo, the leader of the regimental training, a fight broke out between the two sides, and when Li Zicheng pressed Cheng Jiubo under his body and prepared to slash the other party with his knife, he found that the sheath of the sword entered the water and caused the saber to be pulled out, and the nephew of Cheng Jiubo who rushed to the scene shoveled off half of his head, and Li Zicheng, who had been on the battlefield for more than ten years, was killed by two townspeople. Li Zicheng, who died of his own light enemy, still had hundreds of thousands of Dashun troops behind him, but he only led a small number of followers to break away from the large army, which eventually led to the capsizing of the ship in the gutter.
Zhang Xianzhong's death is also very similar to Li Zicheng's, but it is a little later. Zhang Xianzhong led an army into Sichuan in November of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen (1643) to prepare to divide and establish a state in Sichuan, in fact he did it, and in August 1644 Zhang Xianzhong attacked Chengdu, where he claimed the title of emperor and established the Daxi regime. However, due to the rebellion of the Sichuan gentry, Zhang Xianzhong's situation in Sichuan deteriorated, and the Qing army also increased its attack on the Great Western regime. In the first month of 1646, Dorgon ordered Hauge to lead the Qing army into Sichuan to suppress Zhang Xianzhong, and in August Zhang Xianzhong abandoned Chengdu.
In November of that year, Zhang Xianzhong was stationed at the foot of the Phoenix Mountain in Xichong, and at this time Zhang Xianzhong still had hundreds of thousands of troops, and no one would have thought that Zhang Xianzhong would be killed under the Phoenix Mountain. After Hauge learned of Zhang Xianzhong's whereabouts, he ordered the Qing army to travel day and night, driving three hundred miles a day and night, and finally arrived at Phoenix Mountain. At this time, Zhang Xianzhong did not know it, and even when his detective told the Qing army that the forward of the Qing army had arrived, he still did not believe that the Qing army had arrived at his garrison, so Zhang Xianzhong went out of the camp with a small number of entourage to investigate. According to historical records, at that time, Zhang Xianzhong "did not wear armor, nor did he carry a long gun, and there was nothing but a short spear, and he ran out of the camp with seven or eight pawns and one eunuch to spy on the false reality of the soldiers." ”
Zhang Xianzhong
However, just as Zhang Xianzhong ascended to check, "suddenly an arrow flew in, right under Xianzhong's shoulder, shot in from the left side, straight through his heart, and suddenly fell to the ground, and the blood flowed for a long time." Zhang Xianzhong was thus injured by the flying arrows of the Qing army, and a fatal blow was struck, and a generation of tyrants died under the Phoenix Mountain.
The deaths of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were both carried with great contingency, although they had lost their base areas, and on the way to retreat or transfer, they still had hundreds of thousands of troops around them, far from the time when the mountains and rivers were exhausted, but both of them were very light enemies, as the commanders of the first army, they did not pay attention to their own safety, which eventually led to accidental deaths, which also led to the final defeat of the Dashun regime and the Daxi regime.
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