The last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Chongzhen, hanged on the coal mountain, the history of the Ming Dynasty may be gone, but there is a very short dynasty in history, that is, the Southern Ming Dynasty, they are the old department of Chongzhen who did not want to surrender to the Manchu Qing, and wrote a song and tears of the anti-Qing chapter, the protagonist of this article is a cornerstone of the Southern Ming regime, Shi Kefa, following the footsteps of the editor into history and uncovering the dust of history.
Shi Kefa, a native of Xiangfu County, Kaifeng Province, Henan Province, was hereditary to the Jinyi Hundred Households because of his ancestors' meritorious service to the imperial court, and was called the Beijing Jinyi Wei. Legend has it that Shi Kefa's mother dreamed that Wen Tianxiang came to her house and was conceived and conceived.
On the fourth day of the first month of November in the thirtieth year of the Wanli Calendar (1602), Shi Kefa was born in Xiangfu County, Kaifeng Province, Henan Province. In his early years, Shi Kefa was famous for his filial piety in the township and studied under Zuo Guangdou. In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), Shi Kefa dengjinshidi served as the governor of Xi'an Province, and later moved to the head of the household department, Yuanwailang, and Langzhong.
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen (1644), Shi Kefa heard that Li Zicheng attacked Beijing and led an army into Jingqinwang. When the army arrived at Dapukou, the news came that Beijing had fallen and the Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youjian had hanged himself, and Shi Kefa cried bitterly to the north, hitting his head into a pillar, and blood flowed to his feet. Shi Kefa sent a funeral for Zhu You, and received documents from Zhang Shenyan, Lü Daqi, Jiang Yueguang, and others: "Zhu Yousong, the Prince of Fu, is a grandson of Emperor Shenzong, and should be made a king according to his rank and rank, but he has seven major shortcomings: greed, adultery, alcoholism, filial piety, abuse of subordinates, failure to read, and interference with officials. Zhu Changshu, the King of Lu, was a nephew of Emperor Shenzong, virtuous and intelligent, and should have made him emperor. Skofa agreed. However, the governor of Fengyang, Ma Shiying, secretly consulted with Ruan Dacheng, advocating that Zhu Yousong, the king of Lifu, and wrote to Shi Kefa that both ethics and order should support King Lifu. Shi Kefa told them of Zhu Yousong's seven shortcomings, but Ma Shiying joined forces with Caojiang's admiral Chengyi Bo Liu Kongzhao, the town general Liu Zeqing, Liu Liangzuo, Gao Jie, Huang Degong, and others, and sent troops to escort Zhu Yousong to Yizhen, and Shi Kefa had to greet him.
In the first year of Hongguang (1645), Shi Kefa personally arranged for Gao Jie to lead an army north to Henan, intending to assist the Qing army in its crusade against Li Zicheng. On the night of the twelfth day of the first month, after Gao Jie arrived in Suizhou, he was killed by Xu Dingguo, the general of Henan, in the former Yuan Keli Mansion, which is known in history as the "Change of Suizhou". The Qing army took the opportunity to go south. Shi Kefa sighed when he heard the news and could not recover the Central Plains. He was so sad that he personally rushed to gao jun camp to do the aftermath work, making Gao Jiezi the son of Xingping Shizi, his nephew Li Benshen the admiral, Hu Maozhen the Gebiao Hall (that is, the Chinese army), and Li Chengdong the commander-in-chief of Xuzhou. Gao Jie's wife Xing Shi was worried that her son was young and could not suppress the public, she knew that Shi Kefa had no son, and proposed to let her son worship Shi Kefa as a righteous father. However, Shi Kefa resolutely refused because Gao Bu was born of a rogue thief, and ordered Gao Jiezi to serve as his righteous father by the eunuch Gao Qiqian, who was the eunuch of Jiangbei's soldiers and horses.
In February, Shi Kefa returned to Baiyangkou from Xuzhou. Yan Ermei was in the Shi Kefa curtain at the time, advising him to cross the river and restore Shandong, but did not listen; Persuade the west to march back to Henan, but do not listen; Advising him to stay in Xuzhou for Hebei and not to listen", one takes the surrender of Yangzhou as the best policy.
In April of the same year, Zuo Liangyu led hundreds of thousands of troops from Wuhan to the east, asking qingjun to "get rid of Ma Ruan". At that time, Shi Kefa moved his army to Sizhou to protect the ancestral tombs of the Ming Dynasty. Ma Shiying actually ordered Shi Kefa to withdraw all the troops defending the river to prevent Zuo Liangyu. Shi Kefa had to join in at the same time, reaching Yanziji, so that Huai's defense was weak. Zuo Liangyu was defeated by Huang Degong and vomited blood and died, and Zi Zuo Menggeng led the whole army to surrender to the Qing Dynasty; Shi Kefa was ordered to return north, at this time Xuyi fell to Qing, and the city of Sizhou fell. Shi Kefa then went to Yangzhou and continued to resist the Qing army's attack.
In April of the first year of Hongguang (the second year of Qing Shunzhi, 1645), Duoduo soldiers besieged Yangzhou. At that time, there were rumors that Xu Dingguo's army was going to annihilate the Gao family army, and all the soldiers and civilians in Yangzhou City smashed the city gate and went out to escape, and the large and small ships were empty. Shi Kefa sent troops to the rescue of the towns, Liu Zeqing was sent to Huai'an in the north, and only a few soldiers such as Liu Zhaoji arrived, and the defense was flawed. At this time, Dorgon persuaded him to surrender, and Shi Kefa wrote to the Book of Fudorgun that he refused to surrender. On April 17, the Qing army advanced to the camp twenty miles from Yangzhou, and the next day the soldiers came to the city. Shi Kefa "reinforcements from various towns, none of them arrived". On April 19, Li Benshen, the admiral of Gao jie's army, led the general Yang Chengzu and others to surrender to Duoduo, the Prince of Qingyu, and Liu Liangzuo, the son of Guangchang, also led his troops to surrender; Shi Kefa wrote four suicide notes to his family at the West Gate Tower in Yangzhou, and after his death, he hoped that his wife would be martyred with him, and would be buried on the side of the tomb of Zhongshan Ming Taizu. On the 421st, the generals Zhang Tianlu and Zhang Tianfu led their subordinates to surrender, and then on the orders of Duoduo, they participated in the capture of Yangzhou on the 24th. In Yangzhou, there were only the general Liu Zhaoji and the loyal battalion led by He Gang, and the strength of the troops was quite weak.
Due to the high city walls and the arrival of the Qing army's siege cannons, Duoduo sent people to surrender Shi Kefa and Wei Yinwen, the governor of Huaiyang, but was strictly refused. On April 21, Li Qifeng, the commander-in-chief of Gansu Town, and Gao Qifeng, the overseer of the army, led his men and horses into the city with 4,000 soldiers and horses, but the meaning of the two was to kidnap Shi Kefa and surrender yangzhou to the Qing Dynasty. Shi Kefa resolutely said, "This is the place where I was martyred, what are you going to do, how you want to be rich, please do it yourself." Li Qifeng and Gao Qifeng saw that there was no opportunity to take advantage of it, and on April 22, they led their troops and colluded with the Sichuan generals Hu Shangyou and Han Shangliang in the city to go out and surrender. Shi Kefa used the excuse that if he prevented them from going out of the city and surrendering, he resigned himself to it and did not prohibit it.
On April 24, the Qing army attacked the city with red-clad cannons. At night, the city of Yangzhou was destroyed, and Shi Kefa killed himself and was stopped by the generals. The crowd rushed down the tower and shouted, "I am Shi Doushi too!" and after being captured, Shi Kefa refused to surrender and was killed.
After the Qing army occupied Yangzhou, Duo Duo ordered the massacre of the people of Yangzhou on the grounds that he did not listen to the surrender. The massacre lasted ten days, killing more than 800,000 people, known in history as the "Ten Days of Yangzhou". The bones were piled up, Shi Kefa's body was difficult to identify, the whereabouts were unknown, and a year later, his righteous son Shi Dewei summoned the soul with a robe and buried his crown in Meihualing outside the Tianning Gate of Yangzhou City. Later, Quan Zuwang wrote the "Plum Blossom Ridge Chronicle" to describe this matter. [1]
After Shi Kefa was martyred, Nanming gave him the title of "Zhongjing". In the thirty-seventh year of the Qianlong Dynasty (1772), the Qing court gave Shi Kefa the title of "Zhongzheng".