Li Zicheng's life can be said to be a typical example of the government forcing the people to rebel. In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, political corruption, social unrest, and natural disasters led to various popular uprisings, and the corruption and inefficiency of the government exacerbated social contradictions. In order to resolve social contradictions, the Chongzhen Emperor of the Ming Dynasty began to streamline the post.
In this way, this poor peasant who was lonely and helpless was laid off, and then he was cruelly squeezed by the landlord and gentry, and he was helpless, Li Zicheng went to the army, and this young man who had been dancing with guns and sticks since he was a child found a way out and began to fight for fame. But things didn't go as expected, and he rebelled.
In this way, he was caught up in the historical storm of the great peasant uprising at the end of the Ming Dynasty. He was also very capable, pondering in defeat, summing up in victory, his ranks grew stronger and stronger, from the beginning of Chongzhen's three-year rebellion to Chongzhen's seventeenth year, it took fifteen years, Li Zicheng entered the city of Beijing on March 19, forced the Chongzhen Emperor to die, and destroyed the Ming Dynasty. It can be said that Li Zicheng has a certain ability. But the situation soon took a sharp turn for the worse.
Just after entering the city of Beijing, Li Zicheng ordered: "Those who dare to hurt people and rob women of people and property will kill those who have just entered the city of Beijing, and Li Zicheng ordered: "Those who dare to hurt people and rob women of people's property will not be spared." "The shops in the city were open as usual, but as the number of rebels entering the city increased, the food was not paid. Li Zicheng once put forward the slogan of "no conscription for three years, and no one people will kill" and cannot go against the grain.
As a result, Li Zicheng set his sights on the Ming bureaucracy, and from the twenty-seventh day onwards, the peasant army began to torture and plunder ming officials, raiding homes everywhere, stipulating that the amount of assistance was "100,000 in the middle hall, 70,000 or 530,000 in the Jingtang Jinyi of the Ministry, 530,000 in the Daoke officials, 321,000 in Hanlin, and each with a thousand subordinates", Liu Zongmin made 5,000 clamping sticks, "the wood is made of edges, connected with nails, and the people are not broken." ”
Ming bureaucrats and even ordinary lower-ranking officials were captured and tortured, and many were killed, and the Zaolin Miscellaneous Tricks said that more than 1,600 people died. For a time, the entire ming bureaucracy hated Li Zicheng and the peasant army he led to the marrow. Li Zicheng lost the support of the bureaucratic elite, whose own abilities were not enough to control the entire country. Failures followed.
In order to attack the Qing army, Li Zicheng repeatedly recruited Wu Sangui and took Wu's family as hostages. Wu Sangui had prepared to surrender to the Dashun regime. However, Wu Sangui's concubine Chen Yuanyuan was forcibly taken by Li Zicheng's subordinate Liu Zongmin, Wu Sangui's father was also captured and tortured by Li Zicheng's peasant army, and the Ming Emperor Chongzhen was hanged.
Wu Sangui was furious and surrendered to the Qing army. So in a stone, Li Zicheng suffered a crushing defeat. I had to withdraw from Beijing and spent a total of 42 days in Beijing. In just 42 days, Li Zicheng did his best to support the bureaucracy in the world.
In the process of escaping, Li Zicheng suffered successive defeats, due to Li Zicheng's defeat and the entry of the Qing army and the establishment of the small court of the Southern Ming, many Ming officers and soldiers who had surrendered were directed to the Qing army or the Southern Ming, which was Li Zicheng's military strength greatly reduced, and he was defeated again and against the Ming army and the Qing army. Finally, Li Zicheng was ambushed and killed in Jiugong Mountain, Hubei Province.
Throughout Li Zicheng's life, he is a lower-class peasant name who is wrapped up in the storm of history, he is not afraid of death, he has the righteousness of the rivers and lakes, which can attract the attachment of some desperate peasants for him, but he does not have the ability and quality of the leader of the group, in the world chaos, the Ming Dynasty is in a passive situation of two-front combat, he can rely on his own bravery and lead him to attack the city with peasants.
However, when he entered Beijing and began to face the whole country, he was completely unable to control the complex situation, and the roots could not solve the real problems, so he encountered inevitable failure in the face of reality.
He did not emancipate society, liberate the minds of the masses, talk of national heroes, nor did he have the ambition and malice to put the country and the nation in a situation of no return. He is just a desperate underclass in a chaotic world who is desperate to fight for the right to live.