Ye Shi once recorded that in the thirtieth year of the Wanli Calendar (1602), in the historian of Xiangfu County, Kaifeng Province, Henan Province, Lady Yin dreamed of Wen Tianxiang, and the next day she became pregnant with Shi Kefa, and Shi Kefa was born in early November of the same year. The legend of this dream was probably deliberately invented by later generations in order to publicize the martyrdom of Shi Kefa like Wen Tianxiang after that.
The Shi family is also considered an official eunuch family, the ancestors have been awarded a hundred households for meritorious service, and can be hereditary, and the grandfather Shi Yingyuan was also an official in Huangping Prefecture Zhizhou. Therefore, it can be known that Shi Kefa's family situation is not bad, plus he has known Dali since he was a child, and he is famous for filial piety in the township, and his parents naturally have high hopes.
Shi Kefa once studied in an ancient temple near the capital, because he was too tired to lie on the table and fell asleep, and the door of the compartment was not related. Coincidentally, Zuo Guangdou, who was then a scholar, passed by here, and Zuo Guangdou finished reading the books written by Shi Kefa, and he had some appreciation for this unknown teenager in his heart, and Zuo Guangdou also took off his coat to put on Shi Kefa and closed the door for him intimately. Later, by chance, Zuo Guangdou saw Shi Kefa again and immediately chose to take him as an apprentice. According to Shi Zai, Shi Kefa was one of Zuo Guangdou's favorite disciples and regarded Shi Kefa as his heir.
Zuo Guangdou was an upright person, dared to speak directly, and had excellent ability, and by the third year of the Apocalypse (1623), Zuo Guangdou had been promoted many times and became the Left Temple of Dali Temple. Unfortunately, the good times did not last long, in the fourth year of the Apocalypse (1624), the power of the eunuch Wei Zhongxian had already covered the sky with one hand, and although there were loyal ministers and sages in the court who wrote impeachment, but because of the fainting incompetence of Emperor Mingxi Zhu You, the voice of the dog and horse did not care about political affairs, plus Wei Zhongxian was very favored, and finally it was gone. Zuo Guangdou spoke out impartially and prepared to join forces with other ministers to jointly write a letter to impeach Wei Zhongxian, saying that Wei Zhongxian had thirty-two serious crimes and should be beheaded according to the law. However, the matter was reported by the traitors, and Wei Zhongxian dismissed all their ministers a few days in advance and put them in prison. Since it was a villain, it must be a villain, and Wei Zhongxian ordered people to torture Zuo Guangdou once every five days. Shi Kefa once bribed the guards to go inside to see Zuo Guangdou, and it is recorded in the "Zuo Zhongyi Gong Anecdote": "Zuo Gong ... Sitting on the floor against the wall, his forehead scorched and unrecognizable, his left knee below his knees. Prehistoric kneeling and whimpering on male knees. Zuo Guangdou heard the cry of his beloved disciple Shi Kefa and was deeply moved in his heart, but he was still worried that Shi Kefa was implicated by himself, so he forcibly endured grief and scolded Shi Kefa. By July of the following year, Zuo Guangdou was breathing heavily in prison, and a generation of loyal ministers died at the age of fifty-one.
With such a loyal and courageous, tenacious and indomitable teacher, Shi Kefa, as a student, naturally "got his true legacy." In the seventh year of the Apocalypse (1627), the sixteenth and last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Ming Sizong Zhu Youjian took the throne, Ming Sizong looked at the dim imperial court and the incessant wars, and was distressed, so he began political reform and eradicated the castration of the party. In November of the same year, Wei Zhongxian fell, and the imperial court rehabilitated many unjustly imprisoned officials, and reinstated many officials who had been deposed and exiled during the Apocalypse.
In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), Shi Kefa served as the governor of Xi'an Province. In the eighth year of Chongzhen (1635), Shi Kefa moved to the right to the right of the senator and officially began to be responsible for suppressing peasant uprisings in some places. However, due to the instability of the ming dynasty and the changeable policies, the peasant revolt intensified, coupled with the harassment of the Manchus in the north, the situation in the Ming Dynasty became increasingly severe. Emperor Ming Sizong also sought treatment, was eager for success and quick profit, and the phenomenon of indiscriminate killing of courtiers became increasingly serious, and the situation of the defeat of the Ming Dynasty had reached an irreparable point.
By the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), the leader of the peasant revolt, Li Zicheng, attacked Beijing, and after Shi Kefa received the news, he rushed to bring his troops into Jingqinwang, but only when he reached Pukou, the news came that Li Zicheng had attacked Beijing and Ming Sizong had climbed the coal mountain and hanged himself. The book "Yishi of Southern Xinjiang" reads: "And wen the fall of the north and the collapse of the Zhuang Lie Emperor, but the north of the law wept, touching the pillar with the head, and the blood flowed to the heel." ”
After the fall of Beijing, the Ming Dynasty's rule in northern China nearly collapsed. However, there were still some forces in the south, so many ministers wanted to support Zhu Yousong, the grandson of Emperor Mingshenzong, as emperor, trying to restore morale and reclaim the lost land in the north. However, Shi Kefa believed that Fu Wang had seven particularly great shortcomings: greed, fornication, alcoholism, filial piety, mistreatment of subordinates, failure to read, and interference with officials. Moreover, Shi Kefa and the Donglin Party believed that there was a more suitable candidate for the emperor, Zhu Changshu, the King of Lu, who was virtuous and courteous and intelligent, and was the best candidate for the emperor.
There were always people who wanted to make the country rich, and a group of ambitious warlords saw that there was a meritorious deed to be snatched up, and had already made a deal privately, and Ma Shiying, the governor of Fengyang, united with Ruan Dacheng and others who had been dismissed for the crime of rebellion during the Chongzhen period and directly sent troops to send the Fu King Zhu Yousong to Shi Kefa's Yizheng. Even if Shi Kefa and the Donglin Party behind him had the reason that the life and death of the prince were unknown and that King Fu was "disloyal and filial to the clan, and feared that it would be difficult for the lord of the world", they were powerless to recover the fact that King Fu had ascended the throne. In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Zhu Yousong, the Prince of Fu, ascended the throne of Emperor Anzong of Ming in Nanjing, and the state name was still Ming, and the history was called Southern Ming. In the first year of Hongguang (1645), Shi Kefa resigned from the emperor and was crowned as the Crown Prince Taibao by the Southern Ming court, and became a soldier of The Bingbu Shangshu and Wuyingdian University.
At this time, the Southern Ming Dynasty was facing heavy pressure from both the Qing Dynasty and Li Zicheng, the king of the Qing Dynasty, and Shi Kefa proposed the strategy of "uniting with Pingkou", that is, to first work with the Qing Dynasty to eliminate Li Zicheng, and then unite with some of the remaining forces in the north to confront the Qing Dynasty. Shi Kefa's idea was very beautiful, but the Southern Ming Dynasty had been torn apart, the party struggle had intensified, the officials only cared about plotting and fighting for power and profit, and Ming Anzong was incompetent, but he was just a marionette, so all the strategies could only be thought of and stopped.
In the first year of Hongguang (1645), the Qing army attacked Yangzhou, where Shi Kefa was located, and the people in the city heard about it, smashed the city gate and went out to escape. Shi Kefa decided to hold out, and he also hoped that the generals around him would come to the rescue, but several letters of help were sent in a row, either ignored or surrendered. At this time, the Qing Dynasty also handed over an olive branch of surrender, but Shi Kefa sternly refused, and wrote four suicide notes in April of the same year. On the twenty-fourth day, the city of Yangzhou fell, and the Qing army began to retaliate against the city on the grounds of swearing to resist the death of Yangzhou City, which lasted for ten days, with more than 800,000 deaths, and corpses and rivers of blood flowing all over the ground.
Shi Kefa also died heroically in the battle to defend the city, and at the age of 45, a generation of national heroes and famous generals of the Anti-Qing Dynasty fell. The Southern Ming court gave the title of "Zhongjing", and in the thirty-seventh year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1772), the Qing court also gave Shi Kefa the title of "Zhongzheng".
The Qianlong Emperor commented on Shi Kefa in the Records of the Martyrdom of the Victorious Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty: "To the extent that Shi Kefa's support is in the end, and if shi Kefa is lonely and loyal, he will eventually die a martyrdom; for example, Liu Zongzhou, Zodiac Zhou, and others will establish pilgrimages, resist the Emperor, and encounter difficulties, and be in danger: they are all enough to call a generation perfect, and they deserve praise." ”