On March 18, 1644, as the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself on coal mountain, the great incident established by Li Zicheng rose up, but the heavens seemed to make a joke of him, and in just 42 days, Li Zicheng was forced to flee from the throne and flee the capital.
Not only did he lose the country he had built so hard, but he also fled like a lost dog in order to escape, and all this disappeared like a beautiful dream.
As the leader of the peasant revolt at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng's position in the long river of history can be described as controversial. Some people say that Li Zicheng promoted the course of Chinese history, prompting the collapse of the Ming Dynasty that ruled China for 276 years and ending the corrupt rule of the late Ming Dynasty.
However, some people feel that in addition to this incident, Li Zicheng can be said to have done all kinds of bad things after he became emperor, not only coveting pleasure, but also causing the people to return to a difficult life of ruin and people's livelihood, and did not fulfill the promises made for the people when they first revolted.
Regardless of whether the evaluation of Li Zicheng by later generations is positive or negative, in fact, as long as we start from an objective point of view, it is not difficult to see that the reason why Li Zicheng, who is called empress dowager, was overthrown by posterity in such a short period of time is that everything is an inevitable result, and these are only the difference between time sooner or later.
Since ascending to the throne, these 4 seemingly inconspicuous little things done by Li Zicheng have laid the "bane" of danger for the overthrow of Dashun, and since then, Li Zicheng has been forced to a dead end.
For the narrow-minded, the pattern is too narrow
Although it is true that in the last period, the people had been living a poor life because of the corruption of the government, but for Chongzhen, the emperor who was quite dignified, most of the people still had great respect for him.
Moreover, before the Chongzhen Emperor hanged himself, he also specially left such a passage for the rebel army: "Do not hurt the people." In this way, in the hearts of the common people, the status of the Chongzhen Emperor was one level higher.
However, one of Li Zicheng's practices made the people of the world feel doubly cold, and it also showed that Li Zicheng's heart was too narrow-minded, and he would certainly not be able to become a good emperor with a heart for the world in the future.
It turned out that after the discovery of the body of the Chongzhen Emperor, Li Zicheng not only did not bury the Chongzhen Emperor, but even cruelly exposed it to the public, which in the eyes of the ancients was a great insult to the deceased.
However, in the face of the dissatisfaction of the people, Li Zicheng did not feel wrong at this time, and he did not know that he was gradually consuming the people's hearts that had been hard to win.
Allowing his subordinates to act recklessly eventually lost the hearts and minds of the people
As Emperor Taizong of Tang once said, "Jun, Zhouye." People, water also. Water can carry a boat, and it can also overturn a boat", just three sentences accurately summarize the relationship between kings and people. Therefore, the first thing the new emperors have to do when they take office is to win the hearts and minds of the people. However, for this great truth, Li Zicheng obviously did not understand it thoroughly.
When he first entered the capital, Li Zicheng's soldiers were less than 20,000 people, and if he was properly managed immediately after entering Beijing, there would be no subsequent situation of military-civilian contradiction.
On March 18, the rebel army officially entered the city of Beijing, and at first the military and civilians got along harmoniously. But since the 27th, Li Zicheng's men have gradually emerged as brothers who can't sit still.
Due to the long period of war, the surplus grain and salaries in the army were in a state of extreme shortage, so in order to obtain supplies for the large troops, the rebel army began to ask the people for money and food without authorization.
After all, the rebel army under Li Zicheng was a poor bottom-level people, so the way of doing things was not at all strategic, everything was seized by brute force, and these acts were blatant robberies in the eyes of the common people.
Therefore, compared with the image of the "savior" who shouted the slogans of "free grain in the fields" and "cut off the rich and help the poor" during the uprising, the common people deeply felt that they had been deceived, and under word of mouth, Li Zicheng's support for the people began to decline sharply, and finally he completely lost the people's hearts because he allowed his subordinates to do something wrong.
Only care for their own pleasure, life is too extravagant
Not only did he lose the hearts of the people, but since he ascended the throne, Li Zicheng had become a hedonist who only had glory and wealth in his eyes. In the face of all kinds of temptations in the capital, it has become common to hold feasts all day and covet pleasures. Not only that, Li Zicheng also specially sent people to the people to search for beautiful women, and the scale of harem concubines has only increased.
However, Li Zicheng really did not know how to "share the blessings", and in the face of all the temptations in the capital, Li Zicheng took everything into his arms alone, and he could not remember his brothers who were born and died with him.
It is conceivable that Li Zicheng, who "only allowed the state officials to set fires and did not allow the people to light lamps", naturally suffered from many brothers' complaints, and eventually lost the hearts of his military brothers because he only cared about his own greed for pleasure.
His men were arrogant and offended Wu Sangui
Li Zicheng, who had lost the hearts of the people and lost the hearts of the army, was already on the verge of danger at this time, but the important reason for the complete collapse of Dashun in the end was actually because Li Zicheng and his men had offended a general they could not compete with, Wu Sangui.
Because Li Zicheng's men did not long after entering the capital, they wantonly demanded materials and money from the common people, and the means were cruel, not light or heavy, so many people were beaten in the process, including Wu Sangui's father Wu Xiang.
Not only that, Wu Sangui's concubine Chen Yuanyuan was later occupied by Li Zicheng's subordinate Liu Zongmin. After beating his father and taking his wife, wu Sangui was completely enraged in the face of repeated insults.
Therefore, Wu Sangui, who was still struggling with whether to continue to save his life or submit to it, decided to abandon his previous idea and immediately let the Qing army enter the customs.
Therefore, on April 21, Wu Sangui, who was furious, joined hands with the Qing army against Li Zicheng, and finally defeated the Dashun army, which collapsed both inside and outside.
Under these circumstances, Li Zicheng, who knew that he would no longer have the power to return to heaven, slipped back to the capital and ascended the throne as emperor on the 29th, and the next day he fled west in a hurry. At this point, Li Zicheng, who had only sat on the throne for 42 days, completely lost his hard-won Dashun and once again returned to a turbulent and displaced life.
On the other hand, most of the reasons why Li Zicheng's various behaviors after he established Da Shun were able to extinguish the Ming Dynasty and not keep the world were due to his own limitations.
After all, he was from a poor peasant background, so whether it was the vision of the problem or the ideal ambition of the individual, it was naturally impossible to compare with the royal family who had been influenced by poetry and books since childhood, and this may be one of the reasons that led to the destruction of Dashun.
Moreover, although the peasant movement at the end of the Ming Dynasty initiated by Li Zicheng did succeed in overthrowing the decadent ming dynasty rule, looking at the overall situation, the war of more than ten years eventually led to the destruction of the country's lives, and how good was the life of the people after the establishment of Dashun? It just goes so far as to get worse.