In 1644, the Chongzhen Emperor, who had painstakingly supported 17, finally disappeared into the dust of history with his Ming Dynasty. For the first time in 200 years, there has been a huge power vacuum in the Central Plains. The Qing army from Guanwai, Li Zicheng from the Loess Plateau in the northwest, and Zhang Xianzhong, who occupied Sichuan, became the three most powerful competitors at that time. The peasant army, which showed divine courage on the battlefield of the Central Plains, will launch a high-level dragon and tiger battle with the Eight Banners Iron Horse, which is famous for its bravery and good fighting.
Surprisingly, however, the parables did not appear. The riding and shooting superiority of the Eight Banner Soldiers still has the absolute upper hand in the face of the peasant army that is good at fighting hard battles. Under Shanhaiguan, Li Zicheng's Dashun army was defeated by the Qing army, suffered heavy losses, and has since been devastated. Li Zicheng fled all the way and was finally killed by a vigilante group in a small mountain village in Hubei Province. The Dashun army that once swept the world was wiped out, and the remnants of the troops retreated in the deep mountains and old forests in the southwest, gradually weakening, and were completely annihilated during the Kangxi period.
Zhang Xianzhong's Great Western Army was similar to this. Fear of the Eight Banners spread like a plague among the peasant armies, and the Great Western Army, which once swept across the world, was not spared. In the Battle of Phoenix Mountain in 1647, a sharp arrow from the Sharp Archer of the Qing Army penetrated Zhang Xianzhong's chest and completely destroyed the fighting spirit of the Great Western Army. Even worse than Li Zicheng's Dashun army, as soon as Zhang Xianzhong died, the more than 100,000 troops of the Great Western Army, which had a strict lineup, collapsed in an instant, and the two most powerful peasant armies at the end of the Ming Dynasty disappeared in such a shocking way.
However, Zhang Xianzhong's talent reserve seems to be much stronger than Li Zicheng's. Shortly after his death, his 4 adopted sons, led by Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo, collected the remnants of the army and marched all the way into Yunnan, temporarily out of reach of the Qing army. Li Dingguo and others quickly gained a foothold in Yunnan, trained troops in Tuntian, and built Guizhou in Yunnan into an anti-Qing base at that time. Li Dingguo fought for half his life, experienced the battlefield for a long time, and was the first-class military wizard in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties. Under his leadership, the Great Western Army regrouped, repeatedly defeated the Qing army, and was greatly shaken.
However, even at the critical juncture of life and death, the infighting within the Great Western Army and the Southern Ming Court did not stop for a moment. Sun Kewang, the commander of the Great Western Army, defected to the Qing Dynasty, and Zheng Chenggong, a powerful faction in the southeast, supported the army and respected himself, and has always been in harmony with Li Dingguo. Li Dingguo finally fell into a lone army, and Nanming's anti-Qing cause eventually failed under the encirclement and interception of the superior Qing army. After the last emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, the Yongli Emperor, was killed by Wu Sangui, Li Dingguo was disheartened and led his remnants to retreat into the jungles of the neighboring Burmese border.
In July 1663, the anti-Qing hero Li Dingguo died of depression and sorrow. Before dying, he left 7 words: "I'd rather die in the wilderness than surrender!" "The remnants of the Great Western Army, hundreds of people and some soldiers and civilians loyal to the Southern Ming, hereby obey his will and continue to fight on the Qing-Burma border. However, with the gradual stabilization of Manchu rule and the display of heavy troops on the border area of Qing and Burma, the hope of anti-Qing and restoration of the Ming Dynasty became increasingly slim. Eventually they settled in the Kogan region of the border strip, where they established a small divided tribe, the predecessor of today's Kokang in Burma.
In 1897, the Manchu Court ceded the Kokang region to Burma, and the Kokang ethnic group has since become a Burmese dependency. However, the Kokang people have always retained the Han cultural system such as Chinese and Chinese characters, and have always maintained a semi-divided state with high autonomy, and have always refused to completely yield in the face of Myanmar pressure. For a long time, he has always been proud to be a remnant of the Ming Dynasty.