In the 276-year history of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Emperor Mingsizong Zhu Youjian (1610-1644) inherited the devastated Ming Dynasty from his brother Emperor Mingxi Zong Zhu Youxiao. In August of the seventh year of the Apocalypse (1627), Emperor Mingxi died of illness at the Qianqing Palace at the age of twenty-three, and before his death, he also instructed his ministers that Wei Zhongxian and loyalty could count major events. Because Emperor Xizong was childless, he took the throne of Zhu You, the fifth brother of the emperor, and changed the next year to the first year of Chongzhen. In August of the seventh year of the Apocalypse, Zhu Youjian ascended the throne as emperor (1628-1644).
Ming Xi Zong Zhu by school
From the beginning of the Chongzhen Decade (1637), droughts mainly occurred in North China and Northwest China; in the eleventh year of Chongzhen (1638), it was expanded to Anhui, Suzhou and other provinces. Records of disasters in many counties in the northern region show that in the thirteenth year of Chongzhen (1640), there were special droughts in several provinces, such as the extreme drought of cannibalism in Jin, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Hebei. Shanxi Fenshui water cut off, Linfen summer even wind and haze, that is, continuous sand and dust storms. The rivers in the HaiHe River Basin were cut off, and most of the prefectures and counties in The Jin dynasty and Hebei Luyu were accompanied by locust plagues and epidemics accompanied by droughts. During the Chongzhen period, there were Qing soldiers on the outside and droughts on the inside. A large number of disaster victims in Hebei and Shandong abandoned their farms and fled, and many villages became unmanned villages. Natural disasters led to a total collapse of the economy and caused severe social unrest. As a result, a peasant uprising such as Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong broke out in Guanzhong, Shaanxi! Until the year after the Qing army entered the customs, north China became more and more windy and rainy, and the epidemic of epidemics on a large scale slowly subsided. According to this, some people also believe that it is providence for the Qing to enter the Central Plains.
Ming Si Zong Zhu Youjian
From June of the twelfth year of Chongzhen (1639) to July of the thirteenth year, Henan did not rain for thirteen consecutive months. In many places, in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth years of Chongzhen, there had been a plague of locusts for three consecutive years, and by the thirteenth year (1640), not to mention the poor, even the well-off families were struggling on the brink of death. It's not that there is no food, but it can't afford to buy it, and the valley is worth a million dollars. So the whole of Henan, the grass and trees are exhausted, people cannibalize, and the group of thieves rises like cattle feathers.
Li Zicheng, the king of the invasion
That year, Li Zicheng entered such a Henan. Opening the door to the king and rejecting the official army behind closed doors, the Ming Dynasty army has long lost the hearts of the people, and they are not much better than the bandits. Chongzhen's internal servants had no money, but Zhu Changxun, the Fu king who lived in Luoyang, had money. This man, "sexually contemptuous and possessive." "He owns more than 20,000 hectares of fertile land, and the storage of grain is innumerable. In the years of great disasters in Henan, the people were not happy, thieves were everywhere, and Fan Mengdou, the teacher of Huaichuan, advised him to scatter his wealth and collect people's hearts and minds, in order to save the country's urgent needs! "Wang Shanzhi, can't get from it." Later, Li Zicheng did this for him. The peasant army captured the city of Luoyang, opened the granary of King Fu, and found that a lot of the grain had decayed. Li Zicheng posted a notice to help the hungry, and as a result, "those who respond are like flowing water, day and night, calling out to millions, and their momentum is invincible." From then on, Li Zicheng's troops "have passed through no strong city, encountered no fierce enemies, and all the generals have hoped to go away..." In the winter of the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), Li Zicheng attacked Xiangyang, walked to the city gate, and found, "Xiangmin burning incense cattle wine has been greeted." "March on Jingzhou again," the soldiers greeted them with their food. In the spring of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, the peasant army marched into Yunmeng, De'an, Huangzhou and other places, "the people all felt it... It is all the rage. "In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), four emperors appeared in China: Chongzhen, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, and Shunzhi.
Zhu Changxun, King of Fu
When Li Zicheng's troops conquered Luoyang, Chen Yongfu, the deputy general of Kaifeng City, was on his way to Luoyang for reinforcements. Knowing that Luoyang was lost, Chen Yongfu rushed to the aid of his troops. At this time, the defensive force of Kaifeng was very thin. Li Zicheng received this information and decided to make a surprise attack on Kaifeng. On February 9 of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641), he led 3,000 elite soldiers and 30,000 soldiers from the Luoyang area, marched for three days and nights, and arrived at kaifeng city at noon on the twelfth day, and immediately attacked the city. The Inspector of Henan, in order to repeat the mistakes of Luoyang, hurriedly went to the city to hold on to all the forces that could be mobilized. Zhu Gongyu [xiāo], the King of Zhou who was sealed in Kaifeng, was different from Zhu Changxun, the King of Luoyang, and when the peasant army was approaching the city, he took out some of the silver accumulated by the dynasty in the palace and ordered the people: "Those who can go out of the city to behead thieves of the first rank are rewarded with fifty silver, those who can shoot a thief are rewarded with silver ten, and those who shoot a thief or brick and stone are rewarded with ten." This move was indeed successful, and the people in Kaifeng City who ascended the city with crossbows and swords were enthusiastic for a while, and 800 people from the Zhou Family also ascended to the Western City to defend the palace. Although the peasant army was very brave in attacking the city: "Shooting all day long, the arrows are like hedgehogs." However, Li Zicheng's plan to capture Kaifeng City by surprise attack failed to materialize. At this time, Chen Yongfu, who had gone to Luoyang to help, heard that the rebels took advantage of the false attack on Kaifeng, and rushed back with their troops for two days and nights, and on the sixteenth, they entered the city from Shuimen to participate in the defense. Due to the change in the situation between the two sides, when Li Zicheng personally went to the city to observe the enemy situation on the seventeenth, he was unexpectedly shot in the left eye by the officers and soldiers in the city. Although the wound was healed, he was blind in his left eye. At that time, Li Zicheng was wounded, and there was news that Zuo Liangyu's army and the army commanded by Yang Wenyue, the governor of Baoding, were marching towards Kaifeng. Li Zicheng understood that once the reinforcements of the Ming government arrived, he might fall into a situation of internal and external attack. Therefore, it was decided to stop the attack on Kaifeng and take the initiative to move west to Dengfeng, Mixian and Songxian. Li Zicheng's first attack on Kaifeng by the peasant army ended with the automatic withdrawal of the siege.
King Zhu Gong of Zhou
Since the rebel army broke the siege and went west, the next day the Kaifeng government officials supervised the people to repair the city walls, worked day and night, and completed the ten days. The People of Bian expected the peasant army to come back, but they did not expect so many people!
Map of kaifeng city
On December 23, the fourteenth year of Chongzhen (1641), Li Zicheng and Luo Rucai jointly approached the city of Kaifeng. On the afternoon of the same day, "the seven thieves rode to the Cao Gate (East City Gate), posted two notices on the fence, and the guards could not reach them." That night, Li Zicheng's old camp outside the Tun Tu Causeway was inside the Yingcheng Junwang Garden, about 5 kilometers to the city, and Luo Rucai set up a fanta temple. In the second siege of Kaifeng, the peasant army had 30,000 elite soldiers and more than 400,000 pawns, and the momentum was huge and grand, and the rapidly expanding army began to restrain, "Those who hide women in the nest are beheaded." ”
Map of Henan Branch during the Ming Dynasty
The civil and military officials in the city felt that the army was not good, and Wang Xie of XiangfuZhi County had no choice but to create a social army, which was actually a temporary local armed force that organized citizens to participate in the war. If there are social soldiers, there must be a president. On the night that the peasant army arrived at the city, Wang Xie was anxious to ask for a general, and Zhixian sent people to summon Li Guangzhuang (diàn, gu tong "dian") as the headquarters of Zuo Suo, but the emissary mistakenly summoned his father. The old father was abrupt and sick, so he resigned, causing wang xie to be angry when he learned of the county. The squire Zhang Wenguang knew this, returned to Li Guangcheng's house, and said, "Summoning, not summoning father." Li Guangxun heard that early the next morning he came to see Zhi County and led the soldiers, a small gongsheng commander of the Left Headquarters. The four walls of Kaifeng were garrisoned, mostly by literati, and only the south gate was guarded by the military general Chen Yongfu.
The peasant army, which was waiting for the throne, attacked the line from Caomen to the North Gate on the 24th. Outside the northern city, 3,000 officers and men from Nanyang, Ding Qirui, the Governor of the Ming Dynasty, built a defensive position on the edge of Hao. The officers and soldiers, who had no walls to support, once engaged, were completely defeated into the urn city. At this moment, the two armies were mixed, Wang Xie immediately ordered the addition of Tusaimen, the officers and soldiers cried out for entry, and Ding Qirui also pleaded with the opening door to enter. At that time, Wang Xie of Zhixian shouted reflexively: "What is the situation, do you dare to open the door?!" "The peasant army has reached the urn city, which is only a few inches away from the big city. To say that this urn city has a defensive function, but the two soldiers are mixed, and the city head guards are not easy to help, and there is no way to help for a while. In the midst of the crisis, Wang Xie discussed attacking with fire to relieve his danger, and the overseer Ding Qirui was stingy with his generals for not being able to bear to give a fierce hand. Still hesitating, Wang Xie ordered everyone to throw torches together, and the soldiers under the city could not avoid it, and suddenly set themselves on fire. A few days later, the city garrison was short of personnel. Li Guang "set up money to set up money in the city, temporarily hired Zhuang Ding, each time people gave money and 100 yuan, 4 cakes, and the people flocked to be willing to hire." "The money and the cake came from the donation of the merchants." The battle had already been fought with red eyes, and it had almost become the main force to suppress Li Zicheng and Luo Rucai's fierce offensive.
Situation in November 1644
The battle was fought until the first day of the first lunar month of the following year, and it should be a cold and freezing day in the first month, that day: the thief drove the woman, naked, and looked at the city and cursed. The people in the city also refused to show weakness, and called the monks to stand naked on the female wall to scold, and both sides helped to bombard. On the same day, Li Zicheng was unable to conquer for a long time, and in a rage, he moved the camp to the north of the city and set up a tent three miles north of the city. The people in the city could vaguely see the traffic between the camps, so they set up a red-clad cannon, shot it from a distance, hit the camp, and rolled up smoke and dust, and Li Zicheng was spared, so he moved to the outside of the tucheng. Two nights before the first day of the first lunar month, a tenant in the city, Wang Cai, after getting drunk, caught fire and burned 3 grass huts, which was a city of surprise. The Kaifeng governor Huang Shu was afraid of internal details and did not investigate carefully, and the king of Kaifeng was killed in the city. In the third year of the first year, Li Zicheng feared that the inspector of Ding would return to the subordinates to rebel against Shui Neiying, lure his people from the old camp to name them, take advantage of their lack of preparation, and all of them were slaughtered and buried in the lotus pond pit. On the fourth day of the first year, there was suddenly wind and snow. The city "wet clothes with heavy snow, and the soldiers are unbearable." Inspector Li Guangcheng was summoned by Gao Mingheng to set up 20,000 quilts to keep warm, "If it is late, it will be engaged in military law!" Li Guangcheng had no choice but to gather social soldiers, and everyone raised funds. Therefore, each community soldier sent out 10 pieces, the family had 50 pieces of shops, and the merchants and merchants 30 pieces, and the original tenants also went back to inform the master and donated clothes and quilts. It was late, and quilts were distributed to the guards. Sometimes, Bai Yu recorded the dialogue between the officials and the people in his "Records of the Wet Placket of the Fenwei": "The officers and quartermasters are clothed, and Nair's wife is frozen? Folk saying: 'The wife is tolerable at home, and the officers and soldiers are pitiful'. After the words, the officials and the people hugged each other and wept.
On the thirteenth day of the first month, the peasant army dug holes and blew up the wall, and for several days the soldiers took turns to the northeast corner of the city wall, dug out a long cave, and carried cloth bags back and forth every day to load explosives. On that day, a long line was pulled out, and more than a thousand cavalry infantry prepared for the city to explode and attack. A world collapsed, the bricks and stones took off, the fragments splashed hundreds of meters, the peasant army that was ambushed and waited for death suffered heavy casualties, no one was injured in the city, the outer wall of the city collapsed, and the inner wall was only about a foot thick, still standing prominently. However, it demoralized the peasant army and gave rise to retreat. The next day, "the old camp of five drums pulled up the camp, and the siege thief army did not move." At noon, the horses galloped and called on the siege of the city to speed up. From the northwest to the southeast, the dust is covered. ”
The gates of Kaifeng city were wide opened, and the guards' families visited Fanta Temple, where Luo Rucai was camped, and the camp was full of cattle, donkeys, and horse skins, with human corpses, polluting the inside and outside of the camp. Caomen to the North Gate for more than 10 miles: corpses are everywhere, broken hair is all over the ground, and the dead and injured are not worried about 100,000. Huang Tuiguan ordered the local people to bury them on the spot, but they could not clean up for ten days. There were 30,000 cattle left outside the city, and the officials forbade soldiers and civilians to plunder, and when they sold them to farmers at half a price, more than 3,000 women were left behind, and after their relatives claimed them, there were more than 300 remaining mouths and sent to the nunnery for support.
After the peasant army broke the siege on its own, the city wall was solidified. Subsequently, the other bandit Ming armies still engaged the king of Chuang, "in the end, they could not be extinguished, resulting in the disaster of the third siege of the city." ”
Kaifeng push official Huang Shu
【Three sieges of Kaifeng, peasant army trapped in the city, people eat human flesh】 In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642), on the second day of The first month of May, the peasant army attacked Kaifeng for the third time. Li Zicheng set up a headquarters in Yan Li Zhai, and Luo Rucai tun in Hengdipu. The Ming court urgently ordered the governor Ding Qirui, the governor of Baoding, Yang Wenyue, and the generals Zuo Liangyu, Hu Dawei, Yang Dezheng, and Fang Guoan to lead a large number of troops to help. The total number of officers and troops was as high as 180,000, claiming to be 400,000, and the company camped on the river, posing a decisive battle with the peasant army. On May 13, the vanguard of the officers and soldiers arrived at Zhuxian Town, and the peasant army temporarily withdrew from Kaifeng, concentrating on attacking the officers and soldiers who came to help. In order to prevent the officers and troops in Kaifeng City from going out of the city to pursue and make the peasant army fall into the disadvantageous position of being attacked by the enemy on their backs, Li Zicheng sent people to the city with forged Zuo Liangyubu Ling arrows and shouted: "Thieves will be captured at night, but they are afraid that they will sneak into the city, and there are not many soldiers, so when they are strictly guarded, they must not be lightly discharged." The Ming army in the city really won the plan and closed the door. Because Ding Qirui had no command and there were contradictions between the generals within the official army, the 7,000 people of zuo liangyu, the main force of the official army, 7,000 people fled first to avoid the battle, and the other generals did not fight and collapsed. Under the pretext of recovering Zuo Liangyu, Ding Qirui fled via Xuzhou to Gwangju and Gushi, while Yang Wenyue retreated to Guide. The peasant army won a complete victory, captured and killed the Ming general Jiang Mingwu, and received tens of thousands of soldiers and 7,000 mules and horses. On May 25, the peasant army re-encircled Kaifeng.
The civil and military officials in Kaifeng City saw that the rescue troops had collapsed, and the strength of the officers and soldiers defending the city was weak, not enough to compete with the peasant army. On June 26, Huang Shu, the governor of Kaifeng Province, erected a large white flag at Caomen, which read: "Bieliang Haojie, I would like to establish this banner from my travelers." This chess move did receive considerable results, and in Kaifeng City, "the county kings, squires, soldiers, and merchants were all reluctant to join the society", and in a short period of time, a team of tens of thousands of people was assembled. The leaders were appointed by the Ming Dynasty, the squires, and the wealthy merchants.
The leaders of the peasant army summed up the lessons of the two failed attacks on Kaifeng and decided to switch to the strategy of long siege. In addition to using the main force to encircle Kaifeng City, it also "divided into four parties and broke through the bamboo." Within two months, more than 30 nearby prefectures and counties were conquered, turning Kaifeng, where the officials and troops were guarding, into an isolated island in the middle of the ocean. In order to win the soldiers and civilians defending the city to stop resisting, the peasant army once wrote a proclamation in the name of Li Zicheng and shot an arrow into the city of Kaifeng. The notice reads: "Li Xi, the General of the Civil and Military Forces of the Fengtian Advocates And Righteous Battalion: Yang Zaicheng Wenwu Officials, Soldiers, and Civilians, etc. are aware of it. Zhaode Ding Qirui and Zuo Liangyuju were defeated by the camp and scattered. Reinforcements north of the Yellow River were exhausted. How can you live in a swimming fish kettle? But immediately open the door and surrender, all crimes and discipline are pardoned, and civil and military officials are hired as usual, and no one is killed again to dry Tianhe. If the sin is deep and the sin is deep, but the resistance is still prolonged, although the camp is good and evil, it will be equal to the belly of the river fish. Be careful not to be obsessed and regret yourself. ”
The ruins of the Zhou Bridge and the Bian River after the flooding of Kaifeng in the late Ming Dynasty
The wheat inside the outer embankment will ripen and the two sides will compete for the harvest. When encountered, "when there are many soldiers and thieves, they will leave, and many thieves will also avoid them." "Soon, the wheat field on the edge of the city will be harvested, and only the wheat field on the side of the earth embankment will not be harvested." On May 26, the five gates of Kaifeng were opened, and the soldiers and people were sent out of the city to hunt grass and pick wild vegetables. Soldiers cut grass and feed horses, and people cut a carton of grass, selling for 200 yuan, and then rose to three or four hundred yuan a carton. Wild vegetables can be eaten, and the price per kilogram is 50 yuan at the beginning and 500 yuan in the last. For seven consecutive days, the officials and people of Kaifeng opened the city gate to save themselves. On the fourth day of the first month of June, the government searched for six ingots of gold and silver from a woman named Cui Baobao, and after interrogation, she learned that the woman went out of the city on a fake vegetable harvest, secretly went to the old camp of the king, said that the city was in trouble, and returned with the reward. Presumably, Cui's wife is just a coincidence, what kind of information can a woman betray? Cui was beheaded in the city, and the government banned women from leaving the city. Initially, there was also a grain trade in the city, and the profiteers took the opportunity to hoard juqi. The merchant of nancheng named Yu Chun bid for 2 buckets of grain and 1 two silver. Just when Huang Shu went to Nancheng to visit, he took Yu Chun, and before he was executed, Yu Chun begged: "There are 800 stones of wheat, and I am willing to redeem my life." Huang Tuiguan scolded sharply: "Don't Ru Mai, just Ru Tou." "The decapitation of a profiteer suppressed the price of wheat. However, after June of that year, "the guest grain has been exhausted, the people's grain is not sold, and there has been no grain since then." "Huang Shu issued silver, and the commission soldiers purchased civilian grain." At first, the officials were quite polite, and they went to their homes to persuade them to buy grain from the people's homes at high prices, but later the people basically ran out of grain and refused to sell the remaining savings.
On the first day of the first month of September, Huang Shu walked to Caomen and saw one or two people under the city wall, knocking on people's bones and sucking marrow, and they could not bear to witness it, and spun away. The soldiers from Caomen to the North Gate starved to death three or four hundred times a day: at night, there were few heads in the city, and ghosts were everywhere. Huang Shuwei cried for a long time, so he wrote down 30 desperate words. After the fall of Fencheng, he wrote the book "Oath Muscle Manji", but it was lost. It was this Huang Tui official, who alone raised the banner at Caomen during the three encirclements, recruited tens of thousands of people to form a society under his banner, and drank wine in large bronze at the Guandi Temple, and drank chicken blood with a blade and swore an oath to form a righteous and courageous society. It was huang shu who every time he made up a meal of beef and flatbread, and after a big meal, he repeatedly went out of the city to fight with the peasant army, and actually returned with small victories every time. Once, Cao Men's general Gao Lu led his troops to attack the enemy camp at night, and his hands were cut off by the other side, and the soldiers carried him back to the city, and when Huang Tuiguan saw him, he cried bitterly and gave Mai 1 stone, 5 mi dou, and 50 silver 2.
The peasant army besieged the city for several months, there was not much grain left in the city, ordinary residents starved to death in large numbers, and the officials began to bully: forcibly apportioning the grain to the households, and paying the silver without grain. At the beginning, each stone of food was discounted by 80 taels of silver, which was later increased to 130 taels. Those who cannot hand over grain and silver money: first catch young men and women and stab their skins with hundreds of large needles, and call them unjust. Even some rich rooms paid tens of thousands of taels of silver and were still not exempt from torture and death. The officials and soldiers guarding the city broke into the people's homes with the arrows of the inspectors to search for grain, and searched everywhere except for the mansions above the county king: digging the ground and demolishing houses and breaking pillars in order to seek. The price of grain in the market soared: rice millet was a hundred gold buckets, and green vegetables were a thousand dollars a pound; later, the market was completely cut off, and money could not buy food. After the grain in the city was gone, the residents ate cowhide, fur coats, medicinal herbs, aquatic weeds, tile pines, horse dung, glue mud, etc. in order to prolong the time, and finally there was a tragic situation of cannibalism. The officers and soldiers even more blatantly used people as food: "The general secretly caresses the jaw of the army, and the fat and barrenness can be used as food for the army." ”
By September, there were no rescuers outside Kaifeng, no grain and grass inside, and the fall of Kaifeng City was imminent. On the night of September 14, the Yellow River broke its banks, and for a moment the river was angry, and the water came like a landslide, and the sound of the water was heard from afar. At dawn the next day, the water reached kaifeng city. According to historical records: "The thieves in the southwest are far away, and the thieves in the southeast are drowning without counting." Li Zicheng besieged the peasant army in Kaifeng City and drowned 10,000 people. On September 16, two battalions of soldiers of the Kaifeng garrison hugged the tusai gate, "The water enters through the gap and is unstoppable." ...... On that day, the south gate broke first, and the north gate rushed open. By night, the Cao Gate and the East Gate had fallen one after another, and the sound of water sounded like tens of thousands of bells in unison. At the dawn of September 17, the city was full of rivers and Han, and only the bells and drums were left, as well as the roof of the Purple City of Zhoufu, the top of Xiangguo Temple, YanqingGuan, Tujie and other high places. After more than three years, that is, in the second year of Shunzhi (1645) from the Ming to the Qing, the inspector of Henan, Ning Chengxun: "From the big river to the bottom of the city, the city wall is half soaked in sand and silt." Twenty years later (the first year of the Kangxi Dynasty), Zhang Zide, the governor of Henan, and Xu Huacheng, the envoy of the government, began to rebuild the city of Kaifeng.
Pushing officer Huang Shu and others were trapped in the water city, and at the first time sent two family members to carry a wooden tree to the north, and arrived at the earth embankment for three days and nights. Wang Xie, who was supervising the army in Hebei at the time, got Huang Shu's handwritten letter and cried unceasingly in his face. More than 20 large ships of the Night Governor took a small boat straight into the city from the North Gate, and together with Inspector Gao Mingheng and Huang Shu, they went to the Purple Golden City to save the King of Zhou. Several people saw The Queen of Zhou crying with a headache, and then crossed the King of Zhou and his dependents No. 500 north by boat. Subsequently, Wang Xie urged many small boats to gradually transport the people gathered at the head of the city, on the roof, and on the trees to Hebei.
Shiren Chen Zhiyi wrote a poem "Bieliang Xing" saying:
The keepers wept,
The face is as cold as dust.
The embroidered messenger is surprisingly calculated,
In the middle of the night, the embankment breaks to make the south irrigation.
The city of Su Ying ying as a fish turtle,
The people were scattered.
Nine heavy heard the empty heartache,
The gentleman's tongue is tight.
In the first month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Zhang Jinyan, who was also mad by Qian, went so far as to send someone to Kaifeng to retrieve the sunken silver in the water. The Chongzhen Emperor heard that there was silver to be fished for, and urged the fire to proceed quickly. After a meeting, Jiang Dejing and others replied: "The name of the silver harvesting in the city played by the Cardinal is not very elegant. If you want to be responsible for pressing, I am afraid that there will be no leakage [zhī]. Zhou Kangeng, a worker of Cha de, saw that he was working in the river, that is, with the restoration of the city, he ordered xiangdu to remove its accumulated water, fished out the surplus silver, and received the aid in the name of the city, which seemed to be feasible. Chongzhen instructed: "It is advisable for the special officer to conduct a secret act on the matter of fishing expenses in the city." ”
From the beginning of chongzhen to September of the fifteenth year, Li Zicheng and other peasant armies attacked Kaifeng three times, especially the third time when hundreds of thousands of troops were besieged for more than four months. In the history books, there is a wealth of Kaifeng, but in fact, it lies in the importance of Kaifeng's geographical location. When Li Zicheng besieged Kaifeng for the third time, Zhou Tengjiao of Zhixian County, Fenshui County, said: "Those who weep and mourn for the service are not for Shuishuiye, not for Fenchengye, nor for Zhou Fantianhuang Yiyi [zhěn], and for millions of beings. Du Nian Bian Cheng is the heart of the Hub of Henan, the throat of the north and south. ...... If the city is not defended, there is no Henan, Henan is not guaranteed, and if the Central Plains are not protected, the throat of Hebei is broken, and the general trend of the world is even more dangerous. Zheng Eryang, the Grand Inspector of An Luchi, was a native of Yanling, Henan, and he also pointed out: "The Central Plains are the heart of the world, and kaifeng is also the heart of the Central Plains. Although fortunately it was stubborn and unintentional, it belonged to the Yiqiu Ruins, and Kaifeng was also a lonely city. If it falls, the world will still be able to bear it! ”
This is the third complete destruction of Kaifeng, the ancient capital of the Eight Dynasties, in history. The first time was during the Warring States period (225 BC), when King Yingzheng of Qin sent the general Wang Ben to lead an army to annex the State of Wei in order to unify the world. The Qin army besieged Daliang and could not attack for a long time, so Wang Ben attracted the water of the chasm to irrigate the city, causing the city wall to disappear and be buried in the ground by silt; the second time was in the second year of jingkang in the Northern Song Dynasty (1127), the Jin army attacked Tokyo, leaving the world's most prosperous city in ruins; the third time was during the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642) when Li Zichengsan opened the seal, the Yellow River north of the city suddenly broke through, the whole river entered the river, and the people became fish and turtles, resulting in an unprecedented human tragedy. The two destructions before the opening of the seal are conclusive, the history is clear, and the culprit is not disputed. However, was the third destruction of Kaifeng a natural disaster or a man-made disaster? Who is the creator of this catastrophe? The parties concerned have different opinions, and the historical records contradict each other. For three or four hundred years, experts and scholars have insisted on their own opinions and debated endlessly, and there is still no conclusion, which has finally become another mystery case in Chinese history.