When it comes to killing people like hemp, we will think of the Qin army general Wu Anjun Baiqi, who killed 400,000 Zhao troops in the Battle of Changping. Through this war, Bai Qi was also known as "human slaughter". In The history of China, there are many people who kill people like hemp, not only one person in white, the leader of the peasant rebel army at the end of the Ming Dynasty introduced today, the famous "Eight Kings" Zhang Xianzhong, known for "cruel and good killing", and killing people in his life is no less than white.
Wu Anjun was white
Emperor Zhang Xianzhong, who established the "Great Western Kingdom" in Sichuan, has no way of counting how many people he killed. Zhang Xianzhong's "Tu Shu" is also not clearly recorded, but from the comparison of the population of Sichuan before the founding of the Great Western Kingdom and after its demise, it can be seen how the people of Sichuan fell under Zhang Xianzhong's butcher's knife like wheat straw.
In the sixth year of the Ming Dynasty (1578), Sichuan had a population of as much as 310,000, while in the eighteenth year of Shunzhi in the early Qing Dynasty, only 80,000 people were left in Sichuan. In the early years of the Kangxi Dynasty, the governor of Huguang, Sichuan, reported that "Sichuan has land without people", "the people of Shu are rare", and "the people of Shu are thousands of miles away, and they are not as good as the people of a county in other provinces". Of course, these can not all be counted on Zhang Xianzhong's head, and the sharp decline in population is also due to the "tiger plague", famine, and bandits, but Zhang Xianzhong's slaughter is the main reason for The decline in Sichuan's population.
Zhang Xianzhong's origins
Zhang Xianzhong was a native of Yan'an and was born in the 34th year of the Wanli Calendar. Ancestral military status, that is, professional soldiers. In an era when "good iron does not hit nails, good men are not soldiers" has become a general recognition, military personnel are not a profession that can be looked up to. In his father's generation, the Zhang family finally got rid of the military and became a small trader who walked the streets and alleys. It is said that Zhang Xianzhong also attended private school for two years, but did not insist until "graduating from primary school", and all day long he danced with the rogue hooligans around him with knives and sticks, fighting bravely and fiercely, but also broke into a little reputation in the neighboring eight townships.
Zhang Xianzhong
Later, he also worked for a few days to catch fast and border troops, but none of them were long. Later, in the face of chaos, he rose up in his hometown and organized a group of displaced people to defect to Wang Ziyu, Gao Yingxiang, etc., and became the leader of the single army, known as the "Eight Kings of the West Garden".
Entered Sichuan
Due to the needs of the times, Zhang Xianzhong was sometimes said to be the leader of the peasant rebel army and a model for the peasants to consciously organize themselves against the oppression of the landlord class. It's just different angles of narrating the same thing. Since the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Zhang Xianzhong entered Sichuan and began a bloody massacre against the people of Sichuan.
After the attack on Chongqing, the history books recorded, "The city of Chongqing fell, the king was executed, the wife, the son of the world, committed suicide by closing the door." "Great slaughter", "Since king Rui below, 10,000 dead", "Thief broke the arm of a sergeant 37,000". The "king" above refers to the "Rui King" of the Ming Dynasty, who committed suicide at the door, and King Rui's subordinates were killed by tens of thousands of people. The "thief" refers to Zhang Xianzhong's army, which cut off the arms of 30,000 officers and soldiers.
Why look at the arm? It turned out that this was the first big victory that Zhang Xianzhong fought after entering Sichuan, and the whole army was elated, and the "Eight Kings" specially instructed that although the officers and soldiers stubbornly resisted, this time they were lenient, and the captives did not kill one, but only cut off their left arm as a warning. As a result, the left arm of 30,000 people was gone, and there were 30,000 more disabled people.
Judging from the later events, this was indeed Zhang Xianzhong's leniency, and he did not kill these thirty thousand people, and they should be glad to face the empty left arm.
Zhang Xianzhong later attacked Chengdu, and in the winter of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, he founded the country "Great West", with the era name "Dashun" and proclaimed himself "King of Great West".
A reign of "terror" that kills countless people
After the establishment of the Great Western State regime, Zhang Xianzhong lacked the ability to govern the country and did not cultivate and recuperate. Zhang Xianzhong's superstition that "as long as there are swords and guns, there is nothing that cannot be done", and he still governs according to the rogue combat method of the rebel army and the reign of terror of "killing".
In order to ensure public order in Chengdu, Zhang Xianzhong stipulated a strict decree: the four gates of Chengdu are not allowed to enter and leave without authorization, and if people want to leave the city, they must find their neighbors and neighbors to guarantee it. Outsiders enter the city, their faces are stamped, and those who do not have a seal are killed. At the same time, secret agents were arranged to "eavesdrop on the corners of the wall, and those who "discussed the government and politics" were arrested and killed, so that everyone "had an eye on the road." Simple and rough, the same as the way of thinking of the Murderous Demon King.
In order to solve the grain problem, Zhang Xianzhong adhered to the "grain fighting" method when he was wandering in combat. The name "fighting grain" is actually to grab grain, indulging soldiers to grab grain in their own Great West country, they rob grain when they see it, they kill people when they see it, and when they see someone on the road carrying a bowl of rice, they must also "kill and take it."
As the regime of the Great Western State became more and more unstable, Zhang Xianzhong's mood became more and more unstable. He often drank heavily, killed palace women, eunuchs and other people around him, and even sometimes slaughtered his subordinates because of a small mistake, sometimes two hundred people, sometimes three hundred people.
Zhang Xianzhong often prides himself on being a "murderous demon king". He often said, "If I kill my generations, I will save my generations from all the sufferings of the world, and although I kill them, I will love them." This sentence agrees with his "Seven Killing Tablets".
Faced with the decline of the Great Western State, Zhang Xianzhong began to slaughter the population in a planned way to alleviate his anxiety. First he killed the literati Xiucai who had come to take the imperial examination, and then he killed all the "monks, doctors, yin and yang streams, and hundred craftsmen". Then in the following year of Da shun, blood washed the entire city of Chengdu. In the end, the splendid rong city suddenly became a wilderness, uninhabited, full of corpses, a desolate and miserable scene.
After the bloodbath of Chengdu, other cities in the Great Western Kingdom also suffered the fate of massacre. After the residents of the city were killed, they began to massacre the villagers in the suburbs, and even arranged for the army to enter the mountains, and not a single one was spared. As many as 140,000 people in the counties of Chuanzhong died under Zhang Xianzhong's butcher's knife.
Eventually, he extended his butcher knife to his own army. In the army, three main types of people were slaughtered: one was Sichuanese, who had enfeoffed in Sichuan, or Sichuanese who had enlisted in other places; second, people from other provinces in Sichuan; and third, Ming officials and troops who had surrendered. Kill them all. At the same time, in order to solve the army's food problem, he also asked soldiers to slaughter women. As a result, the camp was covered in rivers of blood and corpses.
Under Zhang Xianzhong's psychopathic killing, the people eventually rebelled and died under the stray arrows.
Bibliography: Zhang Hongjie,"Seven Faces of the Ming Dynasty"