In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, under the double blow of natural disasters and man-made disasters, the Ming Dynasty was already crumbling. The Central Plains Dynasty has been passed down from generation to generation, and every time there is a change of dynasty, most of them are bad from the inside out.
The decline of the Ming Dynasty belongs to such a situation. Emperor Chongzhen also rectified Wei Zhongxian, fantasizing that he could prosper the Ming Dynasty, but encountered plague and drought, and the common people couldn't even eat.
In this group of people who couldn't eat, there was a guy named Li Zicheng, who was still a grassroots clerk at the Ming Dynasty Post Station, and later lost his official documents and was laid off.
Later, Li Zicheng was saddled with a life lawsuit, and was forced to join the peasant rebel army due to the current situation, and performed well in it. Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared, and Li Zicheng became the new king after the death of Gao Yingxiang, the king of Chuang.
What Li Zicheng didn't expect was that this rebellion trip was unusually smooth, and he successfully proclaimed himself emperor in the 17th year of Chongzhen and established the Dashun regime.
The ancient capital of Xi'an once again ushered in a new emperor, and he had to be smooth and smooth in the name of "Dashun". After establishing power, the Dashun army conquered Taiyuan, an important town in Shanxi, in just three days.
The common people all over the country are looking forward to opening the door to welcome the king day and night, and looking forward to the king coming and not paying for food. Under this background, the passes along the way from Shanxi to the capital had long been waiting for Li Zicheng to receive them.
Just when Li Zicheng thought that the door of the Ming capital was about to be opened, and he walked all the way to the capital to become the emperor, Zhou Yuji, the guard of Ningwu Guan, blocked the path of the righteous army.
But helplessly, Ningwu Pass is a small checkpoint, with less than 4,000 defenders, and defeat is only a matter of time. But Zhou Yuji thought that he could resist the Dashun army.
Actually, it doesn't have to be like this, Zhou Yuji can also be like the rest of the defenders, bend his backbone and be obedient. But Zhou Yuji's education since childhood made him unable to do such a thing.
First, the predecessor of Zhou Yuji's Yongwei Battalion was the Imperial Forest Army, and later it was taken care of by Emperor Chongzhen and personally transformed it into the "Black Tiger Head Army".
After being trained by a group of fierce generals, it can be regarded as more or less an "ace lineage". Zhou Yuji led such a force and waged a desperate struggle against Li Zicheng's hundreds of thousands of rebels, killing tens of thousands of rebels.
To put it mildly, the rebel army composed of ordinary people is really vulnerable in front of the regular army, but the number can always make up for the difficulties they encounter.
However, no matter how heroic the army led by Zhou Yuji was, it could not be consumed by the lack of support and supplies, and in the end Ningwuguan was overcome.
Zhou Yuji led the troops to fight to the death against the rebels, which also made Zhou Yuji close the door of "surrender" with his own hands, and if he failed, his death would be quite ugly.
According to the records of the "History of the Ming Dynasty", Ningwuguan blocked the Dashun army for several days, and the city wall was blasted open and repaired many times.
Zhou Yuji was finally shot like a hedgehog by Dashun's archers. Li Zicheng was quite angry, and in order to vent his anger, Li Zicheng hung Zhou Yuji on a high pole, ordered the soldiers to use his corpse as a target, and cooked Zhou Yuji by the way.
After Li Zicheng captured the city, he sprinkled the anger in his heart on the people, even the infants and young children.
There is another version of Zhou Yuji circulating among the people, saying that he was not shot by Li Zicheng, but Zhou Yuji took the initiative to go out along the rope and ran to Li Zicheng's barracks to scold him, and was later directly killed by Li Zicheng.
Archaeological excavations can often corroborate some lost history, and at the time of the migration of Zhou Yuji's tomb, a sufficient investigation of the characteristics of Zhou Yuji had been carried out.
The owner of the tomb is a 40-50-year-old man, and according to the archaeological analysis of archaeologists, it is believed that this man is Zhou Yuji. In the back of Zhou Yuji's head, a 13-centimeter knife incision was found, and after comparison, the occipital bone of the back of the deceased's head was cut off, and he was undoubtedly decapitated.
This also confirms the folk rumors to a certain extent, Zhou Yuji did go out of the city by himself in order to protect the people of the city, and ran to Li Zicheng's Chinese army tent to abuse, Li Zicheng beheaded him in a fit of anger, and the body was taken back by the Ming army for burial.
The reason why Zhou Yuji did such an abnormal behavior is mainly because it involves the life of an ordinary person. In order to break the fighting spirit of the Ming army, the Dashun regime shouted a slogan: as long as Zhou Yuji is sacrificed, the people of a city will be considered stable.
Only then did Zhou Yuji make a decision that would make him irreversible for the sake of the safety of the people in the city: to exchange his death for the safety of the people of the city.
So, he took off the city wall and went to the Chinese army camp in Dashun to find death, and finally died by beheading.
In this case, why is there a record of Zhou Yujili fighting the Dashun Righteous Army, and was finally shot, and then Li Zicheng killed the people of a city?
In my opinion, it's just to highlight Zhou Yuji's bravery and fearlessness, and to set off all kinds of evil consequences committed by Li Zicheng along the way. In this way, it is more reasonable for the Manchu Qing to take charge and replace the Dashun regime as the main lord of the Central Plains. There will also be a little less resistance.
Although history is a fact that has happened in the past, it has adopted different propaganda methods because of its different purposes. and then made the cause of Zhou Yuji's death into two versions.
After the excavation of Zhou Yuji's tomb, the cause of his death was confirmed and a real history was revealed. The mystery of Zhou Yuji's death is no longer a mystery, but a sad past.