Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng were the leaders of the peasant rebellion at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Li Zicheng was a native of Li Jiqianzhai 200 miles west of the Zhihe River (present-day Mizhi County, Shaanxi), and Zhang Xianzhong was a native of Weidingbian County ,, Qingyang, Yan'an Province, Shaanxi (present-day Dingbian County, Shaanxi). Both families were poor and poor, and both worked as civil servants of the Ming Dynasty for a period of time, such as catching fast, soldiers and pawns. Zhang Xianzhong established the Daxi regime, and Li Zicheng established the Dashun regime, and both of them had the capital to chase after the Central Plains, which was more sufficient than some of the capital of the Later Jin Jurchens outside the Guanwai. However, neither of them reached the step of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and took a wrong step and a wrong step, and finally fell into the abyss and was nailed
"Column of Historical Shame"
above.
Portraits of Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng
Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng at the end of the Ming Dynasty performed better than the peasant rebel leaders Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, Huang Chao, and Zhang Jiao in the last years of the Qin Dynasty, the last years of the Han Dynasty, and the last years of the Tang Dynasty, and they performed better, which can be said to be all-round crushing. Some netizens said that Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng were justified in their rebellion, and they studied the history books to see those
"Evidence"
After that, I'm also a bit inclined to this view. Zhu Youjian, the last Tianzi Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, when he ascended the throne, although the country had internal and external troubles, it did not reach the level of extinction; moreover, he was orthodox in his youth, and no one could attack him from the perspective of great righteousness, and no one could fool him like fooling hu hai, his widow, Liu Wei, and other last little emperors.
What did Chongzhen, who had a good hand of cards, do? To sum up, one:
Kill the Minister
。 Chongzhen has done things that benefit the country; but far less than the stupid things he has done. Some netizens feel that
Chongzhen was a good emperor, at least eradicating the castration party, much wiser and more powerful than his ancestors
。 For such views and remarks, it can only be said that those who approve of this statement do not understand the history of the Ming Dynasty at all. Was it difficult for the Ming emperor to kill the eunuchs, the core of the castration party? Eunuchs can't threaten the emperor at all, well, the emperor wants to kill eunuchs, it is much simpler than killing the ministers in the middle of the country.
Stills of the Chongzhen Emperor
It is precisely because the eunuch party is centered on eunuchs, so they are completely unlike the Donglin Party, Zhejiang Party, Su Party, Jin Party and other Korean and Chinese parties in the same period of the Ming Dynasty, if the emperor wants to eradicate, the matter of the next edict will not be set off at all, and the ministers will not only not endanger themselves, but even celebrate each other, and directly praise this emperor as a Dao Ming Jun that has never been seen in eternity. Don't you believe that Chongzhen killed Wei Zhongxian and destroyed the castration party, from the beginning of making up his mind to the completion of the goal, there are any twists and turns and resistance? The emasculated party represented by Wei Zhongxian was like a death row prisoner who had been killed by the neck and had already confessed his life.
Why is that? Quite simply, two aspects;
First, the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty were the emperor's household slaves from beginning to end; second, the ministers and literati who completely defected to the eunuch party accounted for a very small minority, and other literati and doctors naturally hated this group, including the people below, so the eunuch party had no mass base and party foundation.
Because of this, the Chongzhen Emperor's eradication of the castration party was not something worth showing off, and his father and brother and other elders were not removed, simply because of the need for balances and balances of power.
Let's talk about Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng. Why did Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng rebel? Because they can't live, it's not just that they can't live, basically all the poor people can't live, and if they don't resist, they will die in bed. Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong had a good life, adult men with strength and strength, and a stable job, with food and money to take (occasionally not). The entire great society at the end of the Ming Dynasty, under the leadership of the Chongzhen Emperor, can be said to be the doomsday scene of the people's unhappiness.
The general immediately set the country
Historical records:
In the past of Shu, there was a saying of fertile wilderness, but Chengdu Province belonged to it, and it was named Yan since it arrived in Pengshi Prefecture County. Recently, the royal palace has shi seven, juntun shi two, and the people only tithe one. The children of the field property have entered the public office, and the people's resentment has been extreme. In the house of the mighty, there are hundreds of servants, and the adulterers take advantage of the situation to surrender, and the people receive their fish and flesh. The people of Wuzhong, the tithe of the field, the shijiu of the tenant author.
Counting the use of troops in the sea for ten years, there is nothing to take the people, and the counties and counties are harsh and strict, and nothing is not admitted to the examination. He sold his son and wife and fled all over the wilderness. And what the household owes will never be found, and those who will tire their clans and relatives will not know how many things they have. Today Zhang Yi shows more money and grain than Chongzhen's first year, tomorrow Zhang Yi shows seven years of money and grain than the apocalypse, and the next day Zhang Yi shows more money and grain than the six years of the apocalypse, layer by layer. And the people's eyes and ears are confused, their hands and siblings are busy, and their hearts are also trembling. If the old is finished, it will be feared that the new will be knocked on; if the new will be completed, it will be feared that the old will be knocked on.
Yu has tasted En County, see the B list order to urge money and grain, blood flowing order, sigh!
Chongzhen himself said
: The march of the addition of the pie has been forced, and recently there have been sifu knocking bone sucking marrow to confirm its bridge.
Qing army paintings
Over the years, the disaster police have recommended it. Qin and Jin were first killed, and the people ate the soil; Heluo followed, and the people ate goose dung; Qilu followed, Wu Yue Jingchu followed, and Sanfu followed. The old and the weak fill in the gaps, the strong turn to eat, and the things are not known. The shortage of salary in Lingong border is five or six years, counting to more than 200,000 yuan; the lack of Jingjian Bian Fort varies from two years to three years; and the Guzhen Jingyun owes a total of more than 159,000 silver from the 47th year of the Wanli calendar to the sixth year of the Apocalypse. The armies began to sell arrows in uniform, and now they are bearded out of their wives; at the beginning they are begging for food along the streets, and now they are absconding from the army; the beginning of the judas in the sand is evenly spoken, and now they are openly shouting.
In the thirteen years of Chongzhen, three hundred Wen could save a couple; qian Qianyi, who boasted of the elite class of the empire, ate, drank, and played, and each of them spent thousands of taels of silver on those famous prostitutes, which could save tens of thousands of people. Did they save? No. Was there no silver and grain in the last years of the Ming Dynasty? Yes, but it is not for the poor, it is not used for disaster relief, it is not used to fight foreign enemies, and it is not used to save the country.
To sum up: most of the people are powerful slaves, and being a slave is a happy thing (at least there is food to eat); the taxation and salary of the imperial court has bankrupted almost all the people and forced displacement; natural disasters are continuous, and the relief of the imperial court is exploited layer by layer, and the victims do not get much at all; the military soldiers and soldiers do not have money to take, often do not have enough to eat, and the parents and wives and children in the family need to make another living (selling their bodies or selling their children and daughters, etc.). The most crucial thing is that the grain and money collected at the cost of persecuting millions of people have not made the country better, let alone allowed the Ming army to win victory in foreign wars.
Ming Dynasty people
During Chongzhen's reign, the vast majority of the people and soldiers had only three paths to follow:
Starving, being eaten, rebelling
(So the previous statement that successfully selling oneself into slavery is a happy thing.) Normal people choose to rebel, and Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng are naturally no exception. In such a social environment as the end of the Ming Dynasty, rebellion was a matter of course and righteousness, and could not be more justified.
Why did Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng not accept the recruitment of officials and soldiers of the imperial court? Because the peasant army Zhao An could not survive, why did thieves in Shaanxi and other places swarm at that time? The root cause is this
The peasants had no food and the soldiers had no pay
。 Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng took their brothers to Zhao'an, and then what? Continue to starve and wait to die?
Mainland bandits began during the years of the Wanli and the Apocalypse. The Liao soldiers fled back one after another, and did not dare to return to the army, so they gathered and plundered to gradually spread. Unfortunately, the border areas have been in drought for four years, the grains have not been harvested, the operation of Beijing and miners has not been sustained, and the hungry army and the hungry people are strong and half obedient, so it is difficult to clean up.
There is another important reason:
The Ming Army does not talk about credit
。
"Hong Chengzu ordered the garrison to garrison the Heren Longlao to lower the people's wine, to lower the people into Xie, and to ambush the soldiers and behead three hundred and twenty people."
People truly surrendered, and you slaughtered them in order to save money and grain; when such a terrible thing happened, the imperial court did not have an explanation or explanation, who dared to accept the invitation of nine deaths and fate being manipulated by the officials and masters?
Both Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were capable and likely to become qualified rulers, but their military defeat declared them completely lost their chances. There are many traitors in the peasant army who have betrayed the country and surrendered to the enemy, and there are also many heroes who have sacrificed their lives for the country, and Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng are not traitors, but heroes.
Why do the history books give Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng such a poor evaluation? Most of these evaluations come from the History of the Ming Dynasty, which the rulers of the Qing Dynasty ordered the literati to revise.
However, this is not the case in historical truth, to give two examples.
One
The Sichuan people specially built the Wenchang Temple, and enshrined the statue of Zhang Xianzhong. After Zhang Xianzhong was killed in Phoenix Mountain, the local people missed him very much, and once quietly sculpted a statue of him in a remote place, which was later destroyed by the Qing court. If Zhang Xianzhong had done something in Sichuan that was angry and resentful, wouldn't the people of Sichuan have spontaneously destroyed the temple idols? In Qiqu Mountain, Zitong County, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, a ban monument under Zhang Xianzhong's subordinates was excavated, called
"Monument to the Prohibition of Liu in the Governor's Mansion of the Great Western Horse Riding Camp"
。 The content of the inscription indicates the strict discipline of Zhang Xianzhong's troops.
Second
The Qing court repeatedly accused Zhang Xianzhong of slaughtering Shu in historical materials and articles, but how could Zhang Xianzhong, who was originally a rebel leader from a poor background, do the slaughter of Shu that lost his conscience? What is the purpose? Moreover, Zhang Xianzhong did not have the ability and time to slaughter Shu, and after his death, it took the Qing Dynasty 13 years to occupy the whole of Sichuan, so how did Zhang Xianzhong go to TuShu in such a short period of time. Moreover, the time before and after Zhang Xianzhong's slaughter of Shu in the "History of Ming" is completely incorrect. In addition, much of the physical evidence accusing Zhang Xianzhong of Tushu was fabricated by the Qing court. The largest evidence, the "History of Ming", records that Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered 60,000 (that is, 600 million people) in Sichuan, but after careful examination by historians, the population of the Ming Dynasty during the Wanli Dynasty was only between 120 million and 200 million, and the total population of the whole country was not 600 million. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Chinese mouth was only about 400 million.
Li Zicheng entered Beijing to paint
It can be seen that the accusations against Zhang Xianzhong in the official Revision of the History of Ming are extremely absurd, and the scope of slander also includes Li Zicheng. The Qing court's more than a hundred years of literal prison and the confiscation and destruction of historical materials have led to the fact that the real historical materials about Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng basically do not exist in the world, and we can only infer from the clues of the "History of Ming" that was originally born for smear. Although other official revision history books will also tamper with parts, the "History of Ming" is a cultural tool for the Qing court to rule hundreds of millions of Han people (indicating that he entered the Central Plains and saved the Han people living in the depths of the waters), blackening all the ming dynasty monarchs and writing badly.
Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong are not perfect people, there are certainly shortcomings, and they have done wrong things, but they are definitely not as outrageous as some literature and historical data say; they are still heroes and heroes.