In the past dynasties of China, the Ming Dynasty is a very strange dynasty, because in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, the Chongzhen Emperor had many generals who could fight and fight well, such as Hong Chengyu, Zuo Liangyu, Sun Chuanting, etc., and also had a very strong Guanning Iron Horse. And today we are going to talk about a very fierce warrior in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, he once beat the Ming Dynasty", Li Zicheng, the "king of the Ming Dynasty", to lose his armor and abandon his armor, leaving only 17 soldiers, so who is he?
It turned out that he was Cao Changjiao, the nephew of the famous general Cao Wenzhao at the end of the Ming Dynasty. From an early age, he followed Cao Wenzhao in his conquests of the four directions, and at the age of 22, he was promoted to a staff general for his great merits in suppressing the peasant army. Later, when Cao Wenzhao was recruiting the peasant army, he unfortunately encountered an ambush and died on the battlefield, and Cao Wanjiao had no choice but to turn to Hong Chengyu, and from then on he and the peasant army were inseparable.
At that time, the momentum of the peasant army of the Ming Dynasty was very strong, and at that time, Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng and others turned to fight in various places, with hundreds of thousands of people, and even camps for more than fifty miles, which seemed to be very strong, and many Ming generals had suffered defeats, even Hong Chengyu, Zuo Liangyu and others were no exception. However, Cao Wanjiao inherited Cao Wenzhao's indomitable momentum, and in the process of fighting with the peasant army, he almost did not taste defeat.
In 1635, Cao Wanjiao fought with Gao Yingxiang three times, and gao Yingxiang was beaten to the ground, and in the melee, Gao Yingxiang was injured by an arrow, and could only turn around and run to Hubei. Three years later, Cao Wanjiao and Sun Chuanting set up an ambush to attack Li Zicheng's rebel army in the south of Tongguan, and during this battle, Cao Changjiao did not change his armor for a month, and Li Zicheng fought to the end, and finally annihilated all of Li Zicheng's pro-army, so that Li Zicheng could only lead 17 people to escape into the Shangluo Mountains overnight.
Due to Cao's excellent performance, after 4 years, the Chongzhen Emperor asked him to follow Hong Chengyu to the northeast to rescue Jinzhou. However, due to the light enemy advance of Hong Chengyu, 130,000 Ming troops, including Cao Changjiao, were surrounded by Qing legions at Songshan Castle. In order to break the encirclement of the Qing army, Cao Changjiao had already made up his mind to die, so one night, he led a death squad of thousands of people to pounce on the Qing army's Zhenghuangqi camp, and the Emperor Taiji at that time was discussing the battle with other generals in the Zhenghuangqi camp.
Soon, Cao Wanjiao broke into the Qing army camp, killed thousands of Qing troops, and directly attacked the Emperor Taiji's camp. At this time, the guards around Huang Taiji swarmed up and stabbed Cao Changjiao, but Cao Changjiao also broke the last line of defense around Huang Taiji. Seeing that Huang Taiji was about to be captured, at this time, the Qing army general Shu Bilong and others hurriedly occupied the gate of Huang Taiji's camp and desperately released arrows at the Ming army, causing Cao Wanjiao's chest to be seriously injured by the arrow. In desperation, Cao Wanjiao could only order a retreat, and the last glimmer of hope of the Ming army's counterattack was completely shattered.