In the first month of the seventeenth year of Ming Chongzhen (1644), Li Zicheng, who had led the peasant rebel army to fight for many years, formally established the Dashun regime in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, and began to lead the Dashun peasant army to Beijing. Who would have thought that just seven years ago, Li Zicheng was defeated and lost in the battle with the Ming army led by Hong Chengzuo, Sun Chuanting and others, and only led a dozen people to escape into the Shangluo Mountains, but now, Li Zicheng has made a comeback and led the peasant rebel army known as "millions" to beijing, the center of Ming rule.
Li Zicheng's road can be described as a broken bamboo, the Ming army encountered was either collapsed at a touch, or the wind returned, and in just three months, Li Zicheng hit the city of Beijing. At this time, the Chongzhen Emperor in Beijing had completely become a lonely man, and it was already impossible to leave, and the reinforcements he was expecting from the Qin King had not arrived, and the city was already in chaos, and even the ministers around him had left him. In the end, the Chongzhen Emperor, who was full of grief, left behind the sentiment that "all the subjects are mistaken", hanged himself in the coal mountain, and the orthodox Ming Dynasty was destroyed.
At this time, history gave Li Zicheng an opportunity to go down in history, and he had the opportunity to become the third peasant rebel leader after Liu Bang and Zhu Yuanzhang to ascend to the throne from scratch and establish a unified regime, but Li Zicheng not only did not receive this honor, but because of his rapid degeneration and defeat, he became the laughing stock of the ages, and was laughed at and generously by future generations.
Li Zicheng's peasant military regime can hardly be called a "state" or a "complete regime", and his performance is more like a rogue.
The reason for this is that Li Zicheng fought from Shaanxi to the Central Plains, from the Central Plains back to Shaanxi, and then from Shaanxi to Beijing with people, but in the end, except for Shaanxi, Li Zicheng did not achieve direct control over the occupied territories.
Wherever his soldiers went, the first to suffer were Zhu Ming's heirs and local feudal kings, then The Ming Officials and local rich and powerful households, and his slogan of "Equalizing The Fields and Free Grain" was more often justified by the rebel army he led and the local poor people to seize land and property. Therefore, the place where Li Zicheng passed was not a paradise where the so-called peasants were masters of their own affairs, but a chaotic place of "three noes" with "no organization," "no law," and "no management." Especially after Li Zicheng occupied Beijing, Hebei, Henan, Shandong and other places in the Central Plains completely became "anarchic", the Ming Dynasty could not manage, Li Zicheng did not manage, so it was extremely chaotic.
Therefore, Li Zicheng never established his own base area, did not have a fixed territory and control area, and did not implement effective management of the areas he "occupied".
Thus, two new problems arose.
All they could rely on was looting. First robbed the royal family, then robbed the officials and landlords, and finally the people also became nothing, and could only follow Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng's troops are getting bigger and bigger, and the greater the attrition, the more serious the degree of plunder, and it is not so much a peasant rebel army as a large army of displaced people, let alone a thorough and utter rogue.
Second, Li Zicheng did not establish his own administrative bureaucracy.
Li Zicheng's management system is not so much fraternal and militarized management as it is a kind of influence management, without a system, without a system, let alone a system, naturally there is no way to form effective control. On the one hand, this situation was formed because Li Zicheng lacked the understanding of the construction of the talent team, and on the other hand, it was the contradictions and interests within the management of the rebel army.
This is most evident in Li Yan. Li Yan can be said to be a rare all-rounder of literature and martial arts under Li Zicheng, but he has been ostracized, has not received absolute support and reuse, and finally has been framed to death.
It is precisely because Li Zicheng did not pay attention to the management and development of the occupied areas and did not establish a base area, so li Zicheng was defeated and retreated from Shanhaiguan, and after leaving Beijing, he was chased and fought by the Qing army along the way, without any strategic buffer zone, and was crushed at a very fast speed until he perished.
Another thing that Li Zicheng was stunned by was the extremely rapid degeneration of the entire regime since he began.
The Dashun regime before entering Beijing and the Dashun regime after entering Beijing can be said to be a world of difference.
This may be the nature of the poor peasant class at that time, or it may be because of years of arduous conquest, and now that the dynasty has won, all the tension has been released, but this release has changed from relaxation to indulgence.
Not to mention that the middle- and lower-level officers and men of the rebel army plundered the rich households in the capital of Beijing, robbed the women of the people, committed many evils, and exposed the nature of "robbers" and "rogues" without a doubt, completely without the style of the rebel army that did not commit any crimes in the autumn of that year, and Li Zicheng and others also turned a blind eye to this, because what they did was even more excessive.
Among them, the most inhumane is the "torture" presided over by Liu Zongmin.
The whole process of torture can be said to be very cruel, Liu Zongmin ordered the people to specially make five thousand pairs of clamping sticks, the sticks have edges on them, there are iron nails connected, and those who do not obey will crush their hands and siblings. At the same time, the orderers erected two pillars at the door as lingchi for the exclusive use of Ling Chi. In nearly a month, Liu Zongmin snatched out 70 million taels of silver, which was immediately cast into silver cakes, about tens of thousands of pieces, and later transported to Xi'an by mule truck.
For Liu Zongmin's behavior, Li Zicheng chose to acquiesce and connive, as did others, and he was also addicted to the life of a drunken gold fan in the harem. Thus, the whole regime degenerated.
At the same time, Li Zicheng's control over his subordinates also began to weaken, which was best reflected in Liu Zongmin.
Wu Sangui, who had originally planned to surrender to Li Zicheng, chose to betray and retake Shanhaiguan, so Li Zicheng asked Liu Zongmin to lead his troops to the conquest, who knew that Liu Zongmin was openly disobedient, and even directly responded to Li Zicheng saying that he let himself run to the front line to sell his life and enjoy his own happiness in the rear. It can be said that Li Zicheng led a group of soldiers who were also reluctant to go out to fight the "Battle of Shanhaiguan" under all helplessness, and the final outcome can be imagined.
More importantly, the officials and generals within the rebel army also began to fight for power at this time, and Li Yan mentioned above was not the only victim, which also made the rebel army begin to become contradictory, and the combat effectiveness declined sharply.
The whole process before and after the "Battle of Shanhaiguan" further demonstrated Li Zicheng's political and military "ignorance."
Li Zicheng, who had entered Beijing, was well aware of the importance of Wu Sangui and the Shanhaiguan he controlled, so he ordered his men to bring 40,000 taels of silver to recruit Wu Sangui in the name of the labor army, and gave Wu Sangui an additional reward of 10,000 taels, and promised the high-ranking official Houlu. Wu Sangui also agreed to Li Zicheng's surrender and led his troops to Beijing.
However, just when Li Zicheng was painstakingly recruiting Wu Sangui, Liu Zongmin became Li Zicheng's "pig teammate".
Liu Zongmin raided wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang's home, and all the old and young were locked up, and even more severely "tortured" Wu Xiang, who was scaly and dying; in addition, Liu Zongmin directly occupied Wu Sangui's concubine Chen Yuanyuan. So this has the classic sentence "Wu Sangui chong guan a red face", directly angrily rebuked "Li Thief sent his head", which turned against Li Zicheng. At this time, Li Zicheng still wrote a letter to Wu Sangui in the situation of seduction and coercion, which made Wu Sangui even more angry.
So Li Zicheng led his troops to personally conquer Shanhaiguan, and the number of troops under his command was about 70,000 or 80,000 people, and at this time, Wu Sangui had surrendered and recruited, and the number of troops had reached 60,000, And Li Zicheng's army was not obvious in terms of numerical superiority, and in terms of equipment and combat effectiveness, it was not at the same level as Wu Sangui's core combat strength, Guanning Iron Horse.
However, even so, Li Zicheng still did not want Wu Sangui to regain his unstable foothold in Shanhaiguan and catch Wu Sangui by surprise, but still had illusions about Wu Sangui.
Li Zicheng, along with Emperor Chongzhen's crown prince and other princes, as well as Wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang and his family, marched at a very slow pace toward Shanhaiguan, during which time they also surrendered to Wu Sangui from time to time.
On the one hand, Wu Sangui sent Six people, including Li Yousong, Tan Yihuan, Liu Tailin, Liu Taishan, Huang Zhen'an, and Gao Xuan, to Li Zicheng's camp to negotiate terms with Li Zicheng, but at the same time delaying time; on the other hand, he sent people to contact the actual ruler of the Qing Dynasty, Dolgun, in order to "borrow troops" from the Qing Dynasty.
Therefore, when Li Zicheng suddenly realized and rushed to the front of Shanhaiguan, he no longer had to face Wu Sangui alone, but also Dolgun, who was stationed fifteen miles behind Shanhaiguan, and the more than 100,000 Eight Banner Iron Horsemen he led.
In the end, Li Zicheng did not take much advantage in the confrontation with Wu Sangui, the soldiers were exhausted after fierce battles, and in the face of the impact of the Eight Banners Iron Horse, it was a complete rout, Liu Zongmin was also seriously injured, and Li Zicheng could be said to have suffered a big defeat at Shanhaiguan.
In this way, Li Zicheng led the remnants of the defeated army to flee back to Beijing, and after a hasty enthronement ceremony, he led his troops to withdraw from Beijing, and from then on they began to be pursued by the Manchu Qing army all the way, until he died at Jiugong Mountain in Hubei Province, and the Dashun regime collapsed.
In the "History of Ming", there is this evaluation of Li Zicheng:
"The scourge of thieves has persisted throughout the ages, and at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were extremely successful."
It can be seen from this that In the eyes of the rulers, Li Zicheng could not be regarded as the leader of the peasant rebel army, nor the ruler of the country, but only the leader of a completely displaced bandit.
In later history, Chairman Mao also used "we cannot learn from Li Zicheng" to carry out self-education and self-reflection, which has become a negative teaching material of history.
The so-called greatest "merit" of Li Zicheng's life, that is, the overthrow of the rule of the Ming Dynasty, just made a wedding dress for the Qing Dynasty, which provided a legal basis for the Qing army to enter the customs, and at the same time helped the Qing Dynasty eliminate one of the most powerful opponents and create a political vacuum, but he himself did not enjoy any results, only ended up with the defeat and death of the soldiers, and at the same time there was an extremely complex historical evaluation.
It is precisely because of this that Li Zicheng has become a "ruler" who is ridiculed, and all this is precisely caused by Li Zicheng.