"During the period from the late Wanli to the Apocalypse, China's climate became significantly colder, the wind and sand in the north were accumulating day by day, and the drought increased year by year and the agricultural harvest fell sharply..." According to this record, the world at the end of the Ming Dynasty was really turbulent, and the heavens and man-made disasters continued. According to Fei Mi's "Book of Wilds", when Li Zicheng was born, his father dreamed of a yellow-clad man entering the earthen kiln, so Li Zicheng's nickname was "Yellow Baby".
In 1641, Li Zicheng's rebel army had been weak since it reached Henan. Because of the lack of troops, he had to go north along the Funiu Mountain to avoid the officers. The mountains here are stacked, the terrain is dangerous, and the population is sparsely populated, so there are many displaced people living here. Later, on December 21 of that year, the troops arrived in Yiyang.
Yiyang is in the east of Luoyang, although the two are seventy miles apart, but Yiyang is north of the Luo River, and south of Jinping Mountain, so it has formed an arch guard for Luoyang. Although the officers and soldiers guarding Yiyang had inherent advantages, it was easy to defend and difficult to attack, but as long as the peasant army climbed Jinping Mountain south of Yiyang, it could easily gain insight into the situation of the officers and troops in the city, and thus it would be easy to break through Yiyang City.
After Li Zicheng grasped the facts in the city, he launched an attack in one fell swoop, capturing tang Qitai, the defender of the city, and then beheading this officer to show the rebel army's principle of "killing officials and not killing civilians".
After three days, the rebel army continued to advance westward, attacking Yongning. At this time, Yongning was guarded by Wu Dalie of ZhiXian County and Zhang Dingyan, the head of the Ming Nanjing Officials' Inspection and Sealing Department who had retreated to the township, the former was in charge of the northern city, the latter was defending the southern city, the capital Sima Youyi was guarding the eastern city, and the garrison Wang Zheng was already defending the western city. After three days and three nights of bitter fighting, Li Zicheng's army broke through dongcheng, and the originally impregnable Yongning appeared in a gap.
After that, the rebel army quickly used the ladder to climb the city tower, and arrested the officials who guarded the city, Wu Dalie, Ming Wan'an, Wang Zhucai, and more than a hundred squires in Zhixian County, and after passing the public trial, these people were beheaded. After that, Li Zicheng's army attacked the city and pulled out the village, and the momentum was like a bamboo, and the forty-eight cottages were captured in a row, so that the local rebel army also came to belong.
It can be said that at this time, Li Zicheng's rebel army not only had amazing combat effectiveness, but also the number of troops reached hundreds of thousands.
In less than a month, the rebel army took Yanshi, Lingbao, Xin'an, and Baofeng one after another, so that all obstacles to the breakthrough of Luoyang City were removed. Since ancient times, Luoyang has been a place where soldiers and families must fight, not only because of the importance of its military status, but also because of its own economic development and prosperity, which can be used as a military base area, so the seizure of Luoyang is an inevitable move of the rebel army.
Luoyang was originally an important town in western Henan, and was the seat of zhu Changxun, the prince of Fu. This Fu Wang was the third son of Emperor Mingshenzong, and his mother was Princess Zheng Guifei, who was most favored by Emperor Shenzong. Therefore, even if Emperor Shenzong did not let him be crown prince due to tradition, he also gave him the rich city of Luoyang as his compensation, and even the local taxes in Luoyang could be managed by the Fu King himself.
Ever since King Fu had obtained Luoyang, he had become a fierce fish and meat people, enjoying a luxurious life, and the people had long been extremely indignant in their hearts. It was such an opportunity that Li Zicheng saw the hope of breaking through the city. In fact, as early as the beginning of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, Lu Weiqi, the shangshu of Luoyang City, saw the threat of this group of peasant rebels and wrote to King Fu, hoping that he would be able to respond.
Unfortunately, King Fu cherished money too much and refused to pay the guards. After seventeen days of stalemate with the rebels, Wang Shaoyu, the commander-in-chief of Henan, led his army to Luoyang for reinforcements, but King Fu did not allow it and could not enter the city at all.
At this time, the city was destroyed.
After Li Zicheng's army approached the city, the officers and soldiers guarding the city did not have the passion to defend the city because of the lack of money. On the morning of the eighteenth, the defenders at Luoyang Dongguan pretended to go out of the city to meet the battle, but in fact they all defected to the rebel army and counterattacked Luoyang City. According to the information of the surrendered officers: Li Zicheng quickly grasped the weakness of the guards in the city and concentrated his forces to attack the northwest.
Wang Shaoyu, the chief soldier guarding there, was overjoyed to see the rebel army attacking the city because he had been stealing military salaries for a long time, but instead he joined forces inside and outside to help the rebel army win the victory in the northwest. The people of Luoyang also welcomed the arrival of the rebel army. Finally, in the early morning of the twenty-first day, the peasant rebel army captured Luoyang and captured Fu Wang and The Nanjing Soldier Shangshu Lü Weiqi, who were later executed.
There are also records that the Da Shun army ate King Fu and recorded the process in a colorful way: After King Fu was captured, he begged Li Zicheng to spare him from death. Li Zicheng was not moved, and, ordering him to pull him down left and right, first beating him forty large plates, beating him with blood and flesh, and then stabbing his head and showing his head to the public. As for the body of more than three hundred pounds, Li Zicheng also made full use of it.
"Fu Wang Chang Xun was killed. Self-made soldiers burned the blood of the king, mixed deer and tasted it, known as Fulu wine", removed the hair, pulled off the nails, and killed a few deer, put them together to stew several large pots, and set up a wine feast, called "Fulu Wine Party". However, the previous excavation of Zhu Changxun's Yuanzhi broke the traditional saying that the long-believed corpse of King Fu was made into a "Fulu wine" feast.
Moreover, the rebel army also took the opportunity to kill many local squires in Luoyang who had absconded.
After attacking the city of Luoyang, Li Zicheng further expanded his army equipment, making the troops more and more sophisticated. In addition, they also opened warehouses to release grain so that all the people had food to eat, and the hungry people in the vicinity also flocked there after they knew about it. As a result, Li Zicheng won the support of the people of Luoyang, and many people enthusiastically joined the army.
Because the people who joined the army had a rich monthly salary, many hungry people also joined the ranks. In order to control the "treasury" of Luoyang, Li Zicheng also used money to recruit capable people to help him defend the city. After resting for a while, he began to march north again toward the capital.
Although the imperial court had enough manpower and material resources to resist these rebels, the peasant rebel army was the will of the people, and it was like a bamboo to advance all the way. It can be said that taking this rich city is the most important success since Li Zicheng's uprising.
After that, more and more peasants joined in, and the Ming rulers became more and more unable to control the existing situation, and since then, Li Zicheng has also changed the traditional method of fighting for rebel armies, and the attack method is closer to large-scale fighting, they are not rebelling against the imperial court to obtain subsistence materials or food, but really overthrowing the imperial court rule and seeking the welfare of their own class.
In January of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng was proclaimed emperor in Xi'an, the capital was Xi'an, and the founding name was "Dashun", which was changed to "Yongchang".
Resources:
["Desert Book", "Deer Tree Chronicle", "Ming History, Volume 399, Li Zicheng Biography", "Man-made Disasters and Natural Disasters at the End of the Ming Dynasty"]