In the second year of Shunzhi, in May 1645, at Jiugong Mountain in Tongshan County, Hubei Province, the chaotic sound of horseshoes came from far and near, and a team of more than twenty people broke through the mountains, and the generals led by them looked solemn and thoughtful.
Suddenly, shouts of killing were everywhere, and before the group could react, the crowd of people flashing in all directions greeted each other with knives, guns, and sticks. Not long after, more than twenty people were killed on the spot.
A few days later, news came out and spread rapidly: Li Zicheng, the Emperor of Dashun, was outlawed at Jiugong Mountain.
First encounter with Li Zicheng
Li Zicheng's death in battle was the one who suffered the most damage, of course, his empress Gao Guiying. How good life would be if it were only as it first saw.
In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there was war and financial difficulties. In order to alleviate financial pressure, the emperor ordered the reduction of the staff of official institutions such as post stations.
In order to make a living, a large number of unemployed people took up arms and joined the struggle against the imperial court. This has led to rebellions everywhere burning from sparks to flames.
Li Zicheng, who worked as an errand boy in Yinchuan, was one of them. Receiving the news of the dismissal, he took the lead in going to the county court to protest. No matter how big the county officials are, they can't control the cabinet and the emperor. Unsurprisingly, he was beaten and thrown into prison.
In the cell, there is a cell leader named Gao Yigong, a milip, who has great admiration for Li Zicheng. Instead of scolding Li Zicheng, he often bought some food and drink and opened a small stove for Li Zicheng. The two gradually became friends.
Later, according to Gao Yigong, one day, when he entered the cell where Li Zicheng was being held with something he had eaten. Li Zicheng was bare-chested, turning his back on himself, closing his eyes and recuperating. Gao Yigong clearly saw a golden dragon emitting dazzling light on Li Zicheng's back, and was constantly swimming with its teeth and claws.
Gao Yigong was stunned, and the thing he was carrying in his hand fell to the ground. The noise caught Li Zicheng's attention, and as he turned back to watch, the golden dragon climbed on top of Li Zicheng's head, opened its mouth, and then quickly disappeared without a trace.
Gao Yigong said that he had identified Li Zicheng as the True Dragon Heavenly Son since then. He immediately bowed down and expressed his willingness to follow Li Zicheng and never give up. Subsequently, the two conspired to escape from prison, and a few days later Gao Yigong followed Li Zicheng to successfully escape from prison.
That year, at Gao Yigong's home, Gao Guiying saw Li Zicheng for the first time. Gao Guiying is Gao Yigong's sister, extremely beautiful in appearance, and lost her husband after marriage, so she returned to her mother's house to live. It can be said that the encounter between the two is predestined by heaven.
Gao Guiying does not like female red, she likes to dance guns and sticks, and also worships Jianghu Haojie. Li Zicheng has a bold personality, serves righteousness, and has a good kung fu. In the days when the Gao family lived, Gao Guiying watched Li Zicheng practicing martial arts every day, and Li Zicheng seemed to feel unlimited strength every time he practiced martial arts in front of Gao Guiying. Sometimes he would also instruct Gao Guiying in practicing martial arts.
After all, men and women need to avoid suspicion, and Gao Guiying has not expressed her good feelings for Li Zicheng. Soon after, Gao Yigong heard that his distant relative Gao Yingxiang had rebelled. After the three of them discussed, they decided to run to Gao Yingxiang overnight.
Southern conquest of the Northern War
After joining the army, Li Zicheng and Gao Yigong followed Gao Yingxiang from birth to death, and gradually became famous generals in the rebel army. Gao Yingxiang's team also became the most powerful of all the rebels. People revere Yingxiang as the "King of Chuang", while Li Zicheng is called "Breaking General".
And Gao Guiying, because she was a woman, was assigned to walk with the relatives of the rebel army. Every time the battle was switched, It was Li Zicheng who led the army to fight in the vanguard, while Gao Guiying and his family members walked at the end of the line. Occasionally, there would also be Ming troops who wanted to sneak up on their families and heavy troops, and often at such times, Gao Guiying would take the lead and meet the enemy.
At the Xingyang Assembly, Gao Yingxiang became the leader of the thirteen families and seventy-two battalions of the rebel army. After the meeting, he took Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong to seize Fengyang, the capital of the Ming Dynasty, and killed Chongzhen's uncle to dig up the ancestral tombs of the Ming Dynasty. Subsequently, Gao Yingxiang's troops were attacked by a joint attack by various Ming armies.
Soon after, Gao Yingxiang's soldiers were defeated and captured, and they were immediately killed. Li Zicheng took only eighteen people with him and fled into the mountains. The rebel army's family members were scattered by the Ming army. In the rebellion, Gao Guiying escaped and went into the wilderness, while searching for the whereabouts of Li Zicheng and Gao Yigong, she gathered the scattered team.
When Li Zicheng rose again, Gao Guiying defected to his team. At this time, the Chuang general became the king of Chuang, and she had another wife by her side, Li Zicheng once had a wife, called Han Jin'er, and later because of fornication with people, he was killed by Li Zicheng.
This time, Li Zicheng's wife, surnamed Xing, also knew some martial arts, and was mainly responsible for the distribution and supply of money, food, and materials for the army in peacetime. However, the good times did not last long, and Lady Xing and Gao Jie, one of Li Zicheng's closest generals, had a long-term relationship and also had an affair.
Because of the precedent, in August 1635, Gao Jie, with Lady Xing and his own troops, surrendered to the Ming Dynasty and became an official army. In the face of continuous betrayal, Li Zicheng's mood became extremely poor. Gao Guiying saw it in her eyes, and her heart was not a taste, she told her brother Gao Yigong of her thoughts.
Under the matchmaking of his younger brother, Gao Guiying and Li Zicheng finally came together. Since then, the husband has sung with the woman and fought in the east and the west. Gao Guiying also specially organized a group of women with rice fat as the backbone of the girl army, which was heroic and tenacious in the course of the battle and did not lose to boys.
In 1644, the rebels attacked the capital and the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself. Li Zicheng declared himself emperor, established Dashun, and made Gao Guiying empress. Unfortunately, neither Gao Guiying nor Li Zicheng stopped their generals from liquidating the princes and nobles like a bone sucker.
Li Zicheng's general Liu Zongmin forcibly robbed Chen Yuanyuan, the concubine of Wu Sangui, the chief soldier of the Ming Dynasty's Shanhaiguan General, and killed Wu Sangui's father, Wu Xiangyang. After Wu Sangui received the news, he surrendered to the Qing Dynasty with the most elite troops of the Ming Dynasty, and turned around and fought with Li Zicheng to the death.
Li Zicheng fled Beijing, only 42 days after Gao Guiying became empress.
Fight to the death
After Li Zicheng's troops escaped from the city of Beijing, the main enemy changed from the old ming dynasty to the Manchu Qing. The Qing Dynasty sent DuoDuo and Azig to pursue the Dashun army, and Wu Sangui, as the vanguard, took the lead.
When the footsteps of fate reached the Jiugong Mountain in Hubei Province, Li Zicheng ended the journey of his life. For Gao Guiying, where to go is the biggest problem besides sadness, and it is also the most urgent problem.
Gao Guiying was unwilling to surrender to the Qing army, nor did she want to choose to disband the troops to hide in the civilian world, and she thought of taking the last troops of Dashun out of the predicament. But in the face of a situation of loneliness, running to others may be the only way out.
Zhang Xianzhong could not go there, Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were a little unhappy in the later period; the Nanming Hongguang regime could not go there, gao jie and Xing Shi were there, and went to sorry Li Zicheng. Thinking about it, she decided to lead her men and horses to another regime in the Southern Ming Dynasty, the Longwu Emperor Zhu Yujian.
Emperor Longwu made Gao Guiying "Lady Of Filial Piety and Righteousness", and her army of women and daughters became the "Loyal Battalion". In the past, Li Zicheng's generals also became generals of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and the two sides that were once hostile, under the pressure of the common enemy, finally released their former suspicions and jointly resisted the enemy.
In the ensuing struggle, she contacted the thirteen forces in the eastern part of the country to fight against the Qing army in a surprise guerrilla war. However, the generals and soldiers who used to be around them fought less and less in one battle after another, and they could not be replenished.
Gao Guiying knows that the end of her life is about to arrive, and she has no regrets, but a little expectation. The past of acquaintance with Li Zicheng is vividly remembered, one of their dead husbands and one of them have suffered betrayals continuously, and finally the two hearts still came together, and she looks forward to reuniting with her husband as soon as possible.
For Gao Guiying, the 42 days of being the Empress of Dashun were the peak of her life. She is ready for the end of her life.
Finally, the Qing army gathered heavy troops and surrounded on all sides to trap the Zhongzhen battalion in the last stronghold, Maolu Mountain. High up, she watched the swarming Qing army, led Li Zicheng's last family and cronies into the tent calmly, and lit a raging fire around her.