Li Zicheng, the king of the invasion

In the second year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, in 1620xx AD, there was a great famine in Shaanxi. The people had no food to eat, and even the bark of the grass roots and trees was dug up, so they had to eat the soil on the mountain. However, some local officials still urge rent and taxation, so that the people cannot bear it. Peasant uprisings broke out across Shaanxi.

　　In the winter of that year, the Ming Dynasty transferred an army from Gansu to Beijing. This army marched to Jin County (present-day Yulin, Shaanxi), and the soldiers could not receive their salaries and went to the county yamen. The general who led the soldiers came out to suppress the bullets, and a young soldier stood up angrily and led the soldiers to kill the general and the county officer. This soldier was Li Zicheng.

　　Li Zicheng is a native of Shaanxi Province, born in a peasant family, and when he was a teenager, he liked to ride horses and shoot archery, and practiced a good martial art. Later, when his father died and his family was poor, Li Zicheng went to Yinchuan Station to work as a groom. He was warm to people, and the pawns loved him.

　　Li Zicheng's family has always been responsible for collecting taxes on behalf of the government. The harvest of rice fat has not been good for many years, and the peasants do not take the rent tax. There was a large local landlord surnamed Ai who took the opportunity to lend usury and wanted to exploit the peasants. Li Zicheng saw that everyone could not afford to pay the tax, so he borrowed a debt to pay the tax by himself. After some time, the landlord surnamed Ai forced Li Zicheng to pay off his debts, and Li Zicheng could not afford to pay it, so the official government instigated the government to arrest him and beat him half to death, and also locked him in shackles, put him in the sun to dry, and prevented him from eating. The people and the pawns begged the county magistrate to put Li Zicheng in the shade of a tree and let him eat something, but the county magistrate did not agree. This angered the masses, and everyone rushed up, smashed the shackles on Li Zicheng's body, and took Li Zicheng to escape from rice fat and become soldiers in Gansu.

　　This time, Li Zicheng killed the general in Jin County, and together with dozens of soldiers, defected to the peasant army led by Wang Zuohang and became a leader.

　　Yang He, the governor sent by the Ming Dynasty, saw that the rebel army was increasing and was very frightened. On the one hand, he sent troops to suppress it, and on the other hand, he used the high-ranking official Houlu to recruit the generals of the peasant army. Wang Zuohang could not resist the temptation and wavered and surrendered. Li Zicheng had to find another team. Later, when he heard that Gao Yingxiang had led a team to revolt and called himself the "King of Chuang", he decided to defect to Gao Yingxiang.

　　When Gao Yingxiang heard that Li Zicheng had brought troops to defect, he was very happy and immediately asked him to serve as a general of a team, and everyone called him a general.

　　Gao Yingxiang and other rebel armies united to fight in five provinces, including Shanxi and Hebei, and their momentum grew. Officers and soldiers surrounded and suppressed everywhere, but they were defeated. In the end, the Chongzhen Emperor became angry and mobilized the provincial officials and troops, hoping to surround all the rebel armies and eat them in one bite.

　　In order to deal with the encirclement and suppression of the officers and troops, Gao Yingxiang invited the leaders of thirteen rebel armies to meet in Xingyang to discuss countermeasures.

　　At the Xingyang Conference, everyone was talking about it. Some people think that the enemy's strength is too strong, it is better to fight back to his hometown in Shaanxi to avoid it; Some disagree, but can't come up with a better idea. At this time, Li Zicheng stood up and said, "A soldier who is willing to fight hard can also fight a little; We have an army of 100,000, what can the enemy do with us?"

　　Gao Yingxiang said approvingly, "According to your meaning, what should I do?"

　　Li Zicheng put forward his own proposition. He believed that the rebel army should divide into several routes and attack separately to break the enemy's encirclement and suppression. Everyone listened to it and felt that Li Zicheng was right. After some deliberation, the thirteen rebel armies were divided into six routes. Some hold the enemy behind, and some fight on the move. Gao Yingxiang, Li Zicheng, and another rebel army led by Zhang Xianzhong marched eastward and took Fengyang in the Jianghuai region.

　　Fengyang is the hometown of Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang. After the death of Ming Taizu, it became the capital of the Ming Dynasty. The peasant army attacked Fengyang to strike at the arrogance of the Ming Dynasty.

　　The rebel army led by Gao Yingxiang and Zhang Xianzhong marched all the way, and within ten days, they laid siege to Fengyang and burned the ancestral tomb of the Ming emperor and the Huangjue Temple where Zhu Yuanzhang had been a monk. This really shook the ming court, and when the Chongzhen Emperor heard the news, he was anxious and angry, and ordered the fengyang inspector to be executed.

　　Gao Yingxiang and Li Zicheng returned to Shaanxi with their troops and attacked the officials and troops back and forth, causing the Ming officials to be in a hurry and be embarrassed. Both the Chongzhen Emperor and the local ministers regarded Gao Yingxiang's troops as a thorn in their side and tried everything to eliminate them. Once, Gao Yingxiang led his troops to attack Xi'an. Sun Chuanting, the governor of Shaanxi, laid an ambush in the valley of Xuyi (盩厔, in present-day Zhouzhi, Shaanxi). Gao Yingxiang was defenseless, and after a fierce battle, he was arrested and killed.

　　Li Zicheng led the remaining team to kill out. The soldiers lost their manager, and their hearts were very sad. Everyone thought that the general Li Zicheng was Gao Yingxiang's most trusted general, plus his martial arts were strong and brave in battle, so they supported him to succeed Gao Yingxiang and became the king of Chuang. Since then, the reputation of King Li Chuang has spread far and wide.

　　The higher the prestige of King Li Chuang, the more it aroused the fear and hatred of the Ming Dynasty. The Chongzhen Emperor ordered the governor Hong Chengzu and the governor Sun Chuanting to encircle and suppress Li Zicheng. Li Zicheng's situation is becoming more and more difficult. However, because of the heroic battles of the rebel generals and The resourcefulness of Li Zicheng, he repeatedly broke through the encirclement of the officers and soldiers, and was active in Sichuan, Gansu, and Shaanxi to attack the officers and soldiers.

　　At this difficult moment, the leaders of the other two rebel armies, Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai, both accepted the Surrender of the Ming Dynasty, and Li Zicheng's generals also defected. This makes Li Zicheng's situation more difficult.

　　In 1638, Li Zicheng moved from Gansu to Shaanxi and prepared to attack Tongguan. Hong Chengzu and Sun Chuanting heard the movements of the rebel army in advance, and arranged three ambush lines in the lofty mountains near Tongguan, deliberately letting the road to Tongguan open and luring Li Zicheng into their encirclement.

　　Li Zicheng was caught in the enemy's plan. When he led the rebel army to the valley near Tongguan, a large number of Ming troops were killed in the mountains on both sides. Relying on the large number of people and favorable terrain, they launched one attack after another against the rebel army. After days and nights of fighting, tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in the battle, and the team was scattered.

　　Li Zicheng and his general Liu Zongmin and seventeen others repelled a large number of enemies before they rushed out of the siege. They crossed the mountains and mountains, overcame many difficulties, and went into hiding in the Shangluo Mountains in southeastern Shaanxi.

　　The Ming army occupied Tongguan and sent a large number of reconnaissance horses to search for Li Zicheng, searching for several months without any information. Later, some people heard that Li Zicheng was seriously injured in the battle and had died, and the Ming army relaxed the search.