In 1644, Zhang Xianzhong was proclaimed emperor in Chengdu, Sichuan, and was known as "Daxi" in history. However, only a year later, Zhang Xianzhong lost his little money in Sichuan and fled back to Shaanxi. Zhang Xianzhong's army was already hundreds of thousands, and his generals were like clouds, why was he forced to leave Sichuan in just one year?
into Sichuan
Since ancient times, Sichuan has been very suitable for the development of separatist regimes, as the so-called "the world is not chaotic and Shu is in chaos, and the world has been governed by Shu but not governed." "Zhang Xianzhong took the lead in controlling Sichuan, which is actually a pretty good start. Zhang Xianzhong was originally from Yan'an, with a rough understanding of writing, and his nickname Jingxuan, Zhang Xianzhong's life also had a good start.
And Zhang Xianzhong is different from Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong was not expelled, he took the initiative to join the army and became a soldier, but the irony is that he joined the army because of his audacity, but he also violated military law because of his audacity. So Zhang Xianzhong was sentenced to death, and the chief soldier Wang Wei prepared to behead him in public. However, the main general Chen Hongfan saw that Zhang Xianzhong refused to beg for mercy, so he loved talent and took the initiative to intercede for Zhang Xianzhong in front of Wang Wei.
Therefore, Zhang Xianzhong can actually be spared death, but the problem is that he himself does not know this, so Zhang Xianzhong took advantage of the lax guards to break free and run away. Soon after, in the third year of Chongzhen, the displaced people in Shaanxi launched a big uprising, and Zhang Xianzhong, as a fugitive, naturally had nothing to say, so he simply joined the rebel army.
And Zhang Xianzhong is a kind of person, he will not be willing to live under others, so he also pulled up a team by himself and gathered people in Mizhi County, Shaanxi Province, known as the so-called "Eight Kings". In the second year, Zhang Xianzhong led his troops to join Wang Jiayin's coalition army and became one of the so-called "36 battalions", because Zhang Xianzhong was able to fight well and was particularly bold, so his team soon became the head of the 36th battalion.
At that time, Li Zicheng was also in the 36th battalion, and Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng became comrades-in-arms in this way. After Wang Jiayin's death, Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng took the initiative to take refuge in Gao Yingxiang, Gao Yingxiang called himself the king of Chuang, and Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were generals. In the eighth year of Chongzhen, after the Xingyang rendezvous, Zhang Xianzhong followed Gao Yingxiang to march to the eastern region.
It was also in this process that the contradiction between Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng began to gradually become prominent, and the two finally divided their troops, one in the south and one in the north, one in the Yangtze River and one in the Yellow River. In the ninth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong was attacked by the chief soldier Zuo Liangyu and Chen Hongfan, and was defeated, and even Zhang Xianzhong was hit by an arrow in his forehead and almost died on the spot.
Zhang Xianzhong's general Liu Guoneng saw that Zhang Xianzhong was not pleasing to the eye for a long time, and simply surrendered directly to the Ming army Xiong Wencan, Zhang Xianzhong was very worried after learning the situation, afraid that Liu Guoneng would reveal his details to Xiong Wencan, then he was afraid that it would be over. So Zhang Xianzhong decided to contact Chen Hongfan first, after all, the two had known each other for a long time, and Zhang Xianzhong decided to surrender directly to the Ming army.
Chen Hongfan and Zhang Xianzhong knew each other in their early years, and of course they didn't want to see their acquaintances being forced to a dead end, so they said good things for Zhang Xianzhong in front of Xiong Wencan. Xiong Wencan also accepted Zhang Xianzhong's surrender, and the conditions were also very lenient, he could still command his old troops, and the troops were stationed in Gucheng, with the rank of deputy general.
In order to express his sincerity, Zhang Xianzhong also took the initiative to recruit Luo Rucai, but after Zhang Xianzhong recovered from his injuries, he neither disbanded his rebel army nor participated in the conquest of Li Zicheng, but guarded Gucheng to strengthen training and directly closed the city for self-protection. In the eleventh year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong rebelled against the Ming Dynasty again because of the difficulties made by the Ming court and the influence of Li Zicheng's army.
In the face of the elite of the Ming army, Zhang Xianzhong adopted the tactics of avoiding the real and attacking the false, and the Ming army was exhausted, but Zhang Xianzhong's department did not suffer much loss. Emperor Chongzhen was anxious and directly cut Xiong Wencan, who had recruited Zhang Xianzhong. In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong's troops invaded Wuchang City, which was also the first big city that Zhang Xianzhong defeated, and Zhang Xianzhong also showed his brutal side in Wuchang.
He forcibly recruited young men over the age of fifteen and under the age of twenty in the city into the army, and then slaughtered all the others, men, women, and children, and threw the corpses into the river. In addition, the king of Chu in Wuchang was also drowned alive by Zhang Xianzhong into the Yangtze River.
The reason why Zhang Xianzhong chose to enter Sichuan was actually largely because he was stimulated by Li Zicheng. Zhang Xianzhong and Li Zicheng were originally "rogue thieves", and the so-called "rogue thieves" did not have a fixed base and flowed around like locusts. Zhang Xianzhong started the army in the third year of Chongzhen to enter Sichuan in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, and the whole fourteen years were actually constantly wandering and committing crimes.
In the past ten years, he has traveled through Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Sichuan and Hubei provinces, focusing on a rapid movement, the reason why he did this mainly for two reasons, one is to avoid the pursuit of the official army, and the second is to "fight for food". The "thieves" were made up of outcasts, and if there was no food, they would have dispersed, so their main purpose in attacking the city was to loot food.
Zhang Xianzhong is different from Li Zicheng, his looting objects range from wealthy families to small people in the market, Zhang Xianzhong except for the gold and silver of the king of Chu after the defeat of Wuchang to help the victims, there is no record of relief to the victims, more or burning, killing and looting. However, after Li Zicheng became king, Zhang Xianzhong was also greatly stimulated.
At this time, Li Zicheng had learned from the pain and decided to change his strategy, no longer harassing the people, but opening warehouses to release grain and provide relief to the victims, which made Li Zicheng a new "son of heaven" in the hearts of many people. Zhang Xianzhong actually doesn't think very highly of Li Zicheng, because he is more capable of fighting than Li Zicheng, but after seeing that Li Zicheng has such a high popularity, he is very jealous and envious.
At the same time that Li Zicheng swept through northern China, Zhang Xianzhong, who was unwilling to bow to Li Zicheng, decided to disengage from Li Zicheng as soon as possible, so in 1644, that is, in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan with his army. The city wall of Chengdu was strong, and Zhang Xianzhong ordered people to dig tunnels outside the city and blew down the city wall with gunpowder underground.
Hundreds of thousands of rebel troops invaded Chengdu, the king of Shu and his concubines all committed suicide, and the rest of the officers and soldiers became prisoners. In just one year, Zhang Xianzhong established his own separatist forces in Sichuan, and except for Zunyi and some remote Tusi, the whole province was controlled by Zhang Xianzhong...
perish
After taking control of Sichuan, Zhang Xianzhong first proclaimed himself king of Qin, and soon after became emperor in Chengdu, establishing the Daxi regime. At the same time, Zhang Xianzhong built a lot of construction in Chengdu, and the original Shu Wangfu was rebuilt into the so-called "imperial palace" on a large scale. Then he made his four righteous sons generals, and then selected more than 300 women from the women he snatched as concubines, and castrated a group of children as eunuchs.
Since he became the emperor, he had to be more serious no matter what, so at the beginning of the establishment of the Onishi regime, the military discipline of the Onishi Army was actually very strict, and he would never kill indiscriminately except for those who resisted, which was also the most harmonious period of time for the military and the people of the Onishi Kingdom. But in the face of resistance, the only means Zhang Xianzhong can get his hands on is violent suppression, and public grievances are accumulating little by little.
In addition, Zhang Xianzhong actually has no level in the economy and governance, at the beginning of relying on the confiscation of officials and the assets of the king of Shu to maintain a period of military expenditures, Zhang Xianzhong had no money in hand, in order to let the troops eat, Zhang Xianzhong decided to allow the troops to "fight grain", but the Great Western Army in Sichuan "fight grain" is not only to hit the landlords, but to fight everyone, so Sichuan for a time the people's resentment boiled.
A large number of people fled into the mountains and forests, and large areas of fields were barren, and the Great Western Army could not find food. Followed by the loss of military superiority, the reason why Zhang Xianzhong was able to stand out in the chaotic times at the end of the Ming Dynasty was actually because of the large number of cavalry, so he moved very fast, but after taking Sichuan, Zhang Xianzhong, who never fought defensive battles, could only send his subordinates to various places to defend the control area.
The rogue himself was undisciplined, so after his soldiers were sent out, they basically disappeared very quickly. With Zeng Ying's invasion of Sichuan and the capture of Chongqing, there was a situation in Sichuan where the whole people rebelled against Zhang Xianzhong, and all parts of the country gathered under the leadership of local rich families and former magistrates to defend themselves, and Zhang Xianzhong's department was very passive.
The more tense the battle situation became, the more brutal Zhang Xianzhong became, and he began to kill people unscrupulously, even to the point of killing people when he saw them. Zhang Xianzhong also hates scholars, so he deceived thousands of Sichuan scholars to Qingyang Palace in the name of the imperial examination, and then killed them all, leaving only a scholar surnamed Zhang, this person is talented, Zhang Xianzhong likes it very much, but because he likes it too much, in order to make himself not like it so much, Zhang Xianzhong later beheaded this person...
On November 10, 1644, Zhang Xianzhong drove the people of Chengdu to the Jiuyan Bridge outside the East Gate to massacre, and in the process of killing, thunder suddenly sounded three times in the sky, so Zhang Xianzhong ordered people to fire three cannons into the sky, and God he must do it! In the third year of Shunzhi, Haoge and Wu Sangui attacked Sichuan, and Zhang Xianzhong slaughtered Chengdu before leaving, and set fire to the city.
In 1647, Zhang Xianzhong was surrounded by the Qing army in Xichong, and was shot to death by the Qing army during the battle, thus ending his criminal life. And Zhang Xianzhong's defeat was actually doomed from the beginning, he was too brutal to succeed...
Resources:
"Zhang Xianzhong's Life of a Rogue Kou" Li Jianhua
"Zhang Xianzhong - Farmer, Martial Artist, Butcher" Cao Shirui