Sun Kewang, as the de facto ruler of the Southern Ming regime, actually launched a large-scale rebellion, more than 100,000 horses attacked Yunnan from Guizhou, and then was defeated by Li Dingguo and Liu Wenxiu, who were far less powerful than himself, and only surrendered to the Qing Dynasty with more than 600 people, which was undoubtedly a great change for the Southern Ming regime, which was only trapped in a corner of the southwest, and also gave the Qing side an opportunity.
Sun Kewang's rebellion was unpopular.
In 1657, the year of Sun Kewang's defeat and surrender, the Qing court issued an edict to attack the southwest, and the Qing army was divided into three routes, the first road was Wu Sangui, the king of Pingxi, and Li Guohan of Gushan, who went south from Shaanxi Hanzhong to Sichuan and encircled Guizhou; the second road was the Southern General Gushan Ezhen Zhao Butai, who went south to hunan to meet the remnants of Kong Youde in Guangxi to attack Guizhou in the north; the third road was for the Ningnan Jingkou general Luo Tuo and Gushan EzhenJi Xiha and other unified troops to hunan to attack Guizhou head-on.
Southern Ming army wearing cloth face armor.
In early 1658, the Qing army officially launched an offensive, followed by a major rout of the Ming army. In March of that year, the Qing army of the Western Road reached Baoning, and then marched to the interior of Sichuan, up to Chongqing, almost no resistance, the Qing army crossed the Wentang Gorge on the 25th, defeated and intercepted the Ming army, on the 26th, crossed the Weituo Gorge, broke through the Ming army Mucheng, defeated the Ming army at Shuxi on the 27th, du Zixiang, the southern Ming general guarding Chongqing, fled without a fight, on the fourth day of April, the Qing army arrived in Chongqing, and then attacked Guizhou south, and by April 30, Zunyi fell, and 5,000 Ming troops surrendered, until early May, Wu Sangui's army reached Guiyang.
The Ming army basically did not organize any effective resistance
In February of that year, Zhao Butai's army set out from Wuchang from Hunan to Guangxi, joining 3,000 Qing troops from Hongcheng's department and 8,000 remnants of Kong Youde, defeating Hou He Jiuyi of Baokang in Nanning and moving north to Guizhou in March of that year. Also in February of that year, the Qing court's Ningnan Jingkou general Luo Tuo's troops conquered Chenzhou, Wugang, Xinning, Chengbu, and Suining, and by late March they were approaching zhijiang, and the Ming army in southwest Hunan was completely defeated, without organizing any decent resistance. By the end of 1658, the Qing army gathered in Guiyang, the former Lord of the Qin State Sun Kewang's old nest Guizhou had fallen into the hands of the Qing side, by September The Manchu Han army under Doni came to support, and the attack on Yunnan was already on the string, although Li Dingguo's general Zhang Xianbi and others launched a counterattack on Guizhou in August 1658, but to no avail.
This skirmish was to no avail.
From March 1658 to October 1658, under the attack of the three-way Qing army, almost the whole province of Guizhou fell into the hands of the enemy, and the Qing army basically did not encounter any decent resistance, and before that, since 1653, the southwest Ming army had been facing the Qing army for three or four years, but at this moment it collapsed in less than a year, and Li Dingguo could not escape the blame.
It was July that Li Dingguo launched another counter-offensive.
Sun Kewang launched a rebellion in August 1657, launched a rebellion that month, fell that month, and by March of the following year, the Qing army began to attack for almost six months, what was Li Dingguo doing? Engage people, engage in what people? The "Chronicle of the Southwest", the person who engaged Sun Kewang, said: "Dingguo was transferred to Yunnan for the crime of nuclear merit in the name of Qian, Shu, Chen, Yuan, and the old town of Kewang. Dingguo is straight, careful of the courtiers, into the extreme abundance, not to the weiling class, but to calculate the painting, not as much as expected. Ji Mu Jin Wei Xin, Dian Ren, Guan Shao Zai, Trust, and Ma Ji Xiang Gong Mi, Fu Ren Ge, the old people dereliction of duty, more resentment. Therefore, Wang Ziqi and others rebelled, and they killed each other inside and outside."
The damage caused by Sun Kewang's rebellion was too great.
It can be seen that Li Dingguo's ability in government affairs is indeed far inferior to Sun Kewang's; after Sun Kewang defected, he did not foresee the Qing court's taking advantage of the fire and robbery, did not timely encircle Sun Kewang's old department, did not care about the previous suspicions, and jointly resisted the great enemy, but instead recruited all of Sun Kewang's old departments to Kunming for "nuclear crimes", so that the Qing court army almost entered no man's land, operated Guizhou for several years, and in just a few months, it fell into the hands of the enemy, and the Yongli Emperor of Kunming and Li Dingguo, the King of Jin, panicked, before Liu Wenxiu died of illness. After stressing in his will that after Sun Kewang defected, the Qing court was bound to take advantage of the chaos to attack, but unfortunately, Liu Wenxiu's warning did not seem to play its due role.
The Qing army attacked the southwest.
Of course, the situation in the southwest collapsed in 1658, and the main responsibility was still Sun Kewang, who after sun Kewang surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, not only wrote to the Qing court to beg for mercy, but also actively advised the Qing court to attack the southwest, and recruited his old troops, and many generals defected to the enemy. In fact, from this point of view, although Li Dingguo made some mistakes in dealing with Sun Kewang's old department, it was also necessary to conduct some screening of these former Qin generals, but he did not grasp the strength and timing. The deadly rebellion launched by Sun Kewang in order to compete for the throne told the Qing court the falsehood of the entire southwestern Ming army. In that year, after the defeat of Zhang Xianzhong, Sun Kewang led his brothers into Yunnan, and for several years ran the southwest into a reliable anti-Qing base, and a few years later, for the sake of the throne and in order to retaliate against Li Dingguo, Sun Kewang personally destroyed everything he had fought for, and then all he got was a nominal "righteous king" title.
After the fall of the Ming army in the southwest, only the Zheng clan and the Eastern Ming army remained
In March 1658, the Qing court launched a war against the Ming army in the southwest, and it was not until July 1658 that Li Dingguo mobilized a large army in Kunming to prepare for a large-scale counterattack on Guizhou, and a new contest was about to begin.