As the saying goes: it is easy to fight the country and the mountains are difficult to defend, and the rulers of the ancient dynasties can be said to be racking their brains in order to pass on their great achievements from generation to generation, but it is a perennial law that will be combined for a long time. Some dynasties last for hundreds of years, while others are fleeting. The Dashun Dynasty, which was established in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, is such a classic example, and the founder Li Zicheng was only emperor for 42 days before hastily withdrawing from the stage of history.
When the Ming Dynasty was about to fall, Li Zicheng led the peasant masses to resist, and the results of the peasant uprising team he led were still good, after all, the team led by this person once entered the city of Beijing and overthrew the regime of the Ming Dynasty.
But everyone also knows that after Li Zicheng entered Beijing to establish the Dashun Dynasty and claim the title of emperor, his subsequent outcome was very bad, and the regime established by Li Zicheng only existed for a short time, and he himself only served as emperor for forty-two days. So why was Li Zicheng's time as emperor so short? In fact, the most important reason is that he did these few immoral things.
When Li Zicheng besieged the capital, Chongzhen knew that the general situation was gone, and wrote a letter to Li Zicheng, only 68 words in length, but he could see that Chongzhen was a good emperor, and at the last moment of his life, he prayed that Li Zicheng would not kill the people of the capital. When Li Zicheng first entered the capital, he did this, and he ordered the soldiers not to rob property and kill innocents indiscriminately, which made the capital complete the change of power, but the order was still good, the shops were operating as usual, and the people were still very grateful to Li Zicheng.
However, after Li Zicheng entered Beijing, the rebel army was unorganized and undisciplined, believing that the general trend had been achieved, and forgetting the previous military regulations. The slightly wealthier officials, gentlemen, and landlords in the capital were wantonly plundered. Li Zicheng himself indulged in the dream of becoming an emperor, thinking that he could enjoy it with his brother who was born and died. The entire army entered the houses at will, had money to grab money, and the scene was even ten times more ferocious than the Japanese devils entering Beijing.
This was very disrespectful to Chongzhen, and it also made these ordinary people very disappointed in him. And after he became emperor, he had forgotten the original slogan of "greeting the king and not paying grain". He thought that his current identity was no longer suitable for the life he had before, so he began to order the search for beautiful women all over the city, even though he had said that he would not harass the people in the city after entering the city. Later, he only had money, beauty, and power in his eyes.
One of the biggest mistakes Li Zicheng did was that when his subordinates robbed Wu Sangui's concubines and severely tortured Wu Sangui's father, Li Zicheng not only did not care, but also wrote a letter to persuade Wu Sangui to surrender to him. At this time, one of the Wu family's family members ran away to tell Wu Sangui about the current situation of the Wu family.
Wu Sangui was very angry and prepared to avenge his father, but instead of comforting him, Li Zicheng took the army to attack Shanhaiguan. After the defeat at Shanhaiguan, Li Zicheng decided to hold the capital and retreated to Xi'an. At this time, he only spent 42 days in the Forbidden City.