Li Zicheng
Li Zicheng, born Li Hongji, also known as the Thunder King, was a Chinese peasant rebel leader who helped overthrow the Ming dynasty in April 1644 and ruled over northern China briefly as the Yongchang Emperor of the short-lived Shun dynasty before his death a year later.
Early life
Li Zicheng was born in 1606 as Li Hongji to an impoverished family of farmers in Li Jiqian village, Yan'an prefecture, northeast Shaanxi province. Li Zicheng had a brother who was 20 years older and raised Li Zicheng alongside his ownership son and Zicheng's nephew, Li Guo. While Li Zicheng was literate, the source of his education is disputed. Over the course of his late adolescence and early adulthood, Li worked on a farm, in a wine shop, in a blacksmith's shop, and as a mailman for the state courier system.Li joined the army at the age of 16 but later left and entered the postal service in 1626.
By the late Ming dynasty era, the government had been weakened financially, and struggled to deal with the economic issues, environmental problems, and widespread disease.
In February of 1629, Li Zicheng moved to Ganzhou with his nephew Li Guo to join the army. At that time, Yang Zhaoji was the general of Ganzhou and Wang Guo was the lieutenant general. Li Zicheng was soon promoted to the rank of general in the army by Wang Guo. In the same year, he killed Lieutenant General Wang Guo and the local county magistrate in Yuzhong due to unpaid wages, and launched a mutiny.
In 1630, according to Zheng Lian, an early-Qing government student from Shangqiu, after Li Zicheng defaulted on his debt, Li befriended some unruly young men and clashed with the local magistrate. As complaints about Li's debt default reached the magistrate, Li was beaten and put on public display in an iron collar and shackles without food and water for failing to repay loans to Ai Zhao, a Juren. The magistrate, a man by the name of Ai, struck a guard who tried to give Li shade and water. A group of sympathetic peasants then assembled and saved Li by breaking Li out of town. Another account said that after taking part in the suppression of the rebel Gao Yingxiang, Li became a rebel due to charges of stealing rations.
Becoming a rebel
Earlier in the year 1622, Xu Hongru, the leader of the White Lotus Societies, conspired with Yu Hongzhi, a peasant rebel leader from Jingzhou and a rebel named Zhang Shipei from Caozhou to launch the uprising on the Mid-Autumn Festival. However, their plan would be leaked, so it was launched instead in May. Xu Hongru revolted three months earlier out of fear of a preemptive action by the government. He declared himself Zhongxing Fuliedi. In November of the same year, Xu Hongru was betrayed by his subordinates, arrested in Zou County, and taken to the capital, where he was executed. When Li Zicheng rose up to rebel in Mizhi, the so-called dongling fumang group which joined him, refers to Xu Hongru's followers and their remnants. Gu Yingta testified that a direct line of succession from Xu Hongru to Li Zicheng's uprising is correct. When Li Zicheng marched into Henan. This suggests that the White Lotus Sect members organized by Xu Hongru constituted Li Zicheng's rebels.At the time when Li Zicheng openly rebelled, the White Lotus Society which had long predicted that a figure with the surname "Li" would one day become the emperor. Li Zicheng tried to use faith to solidify his own legitimacy by consulting a soothsayer. However, when the soothsayer denied Li Zicheng as the prophecied "Emperor Li", and foretold his imminent demise, he had the soothsayer executed.
Li Zicheng and his cousin Li Guo then went to join larger group of outlaws. When the said group submitted to the Ming government, they left to join another group. One night on an unspecified date, Li and his supporters attacked the town, won the allegiance of thousands of famished residents, and led them to plunder the region. Within ten days they joined together with other brigands, giving the title of Dashing General to Li and forming a fully functioning outlaw group, and obtained their first real weapons. Furthermore, during his time as fugitive, Li Zicheng also murdered his own wife after she committed adultery.
In 1631, after the rebel main force was defeated by Ming troops, the Li brothers formed their own group, which they dubbed the "Eighth Brigade".
Two years later, Li Zicheng appeared among the forces under the leadership of Gao Yingxiang, nicknamed The Dashing Prince, in northern Henan. Some sources credit him with feats of taking Xiuwu County, in Huaiqing prefecture, and killing its magistrate. Li Zicheng's own group further swelled after he absorbed another rebels group with 20,000 followers which leader just died, raising his own forces to 30,000s. However, as his group grew in number, Li Zicheng became more suspicious of his own men's loyalty, such example was when he accuse one offer them, Gao Jie, for being involved in affair with his wife. This accident drove Gao and his followers to surrender to the Ming. Later, Li joined a rebel army led by Gao Yingxiang, nicknamed "the Dashing King." He inherited Gao's nickname and command of the rebel army after Gao's death. In late 1633 Li Zicheng followed Gao Yingxiang to the south across the Yellow River, but in the next year he went back to Shaanxi until 1635.
In 1635, Li Zicheng arrived on Lin County together with fellow rebels Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Cao Cao, and others, where they defeated Deng Bi's army, which had led Sichuan troops and Shizhu Tusi troops to the northern Henan battlefield. In response to this, Ming general Cao Wenzhao led 3,000 men from Ningzhou and encountered the peasant army at Qiutou Town in Zhenning. His brother, Cao Bianjao, led the assault, scaled the city walls and killed 500 enemies. Cao Wenzhao continued his advance pursuing the enemy for 30 miles, with Cao Wenzhao following behind with his infantry. As he led his famous Guan Ning cavalry pursuing the retreating rebels, suddenly, as they reached Qiutou town in Zhenning, tens of thousands of rebel cavalry led by Li Zicheng ambushed and surrounded them. Cao Wenzhao was killed in this battle.
In 1636, Ming's grand preceptor Hong Chengchou pushed away Li and his forces from Shaanxi to Henan. After the death of Gao Yingxiang, Li went on defensive, moved back and forth across the east and south Shaanxi mountainous borders fighting against Ming general Sun Chuanting soldiers.
In the early 1638, Ming general Hong Chengchou was able to surprise Li Zicheng in the Shaanxi-Sichuan border and dealt him a heavy defeat. Betting on the poor quality of his Sichuanese contingent, Chengchou put them in the center of his line. As expected, they withdrew under the rebel attack, and pulled Li's troops down the center, at which point Chengchou's crack Shaanxi troops in reserve attacked the now-exposed rebels and caused the collapse of Li's army. In the summer of 1638, Hong renewed the pressure on Li, and hotly pursued him. Guessing that he was trying to flee through Tong Pass, Hong contacted Sun Chuanting, who established a three-pronged ambush. Li's army was trapped and destroyed, and he escaped with just 17 followers, remaining mostly inactive and hiding in the mountains of Shaanxi for the rest of 1638.
In 1639, an epidemic that would later become known as the Chongzhen Great Plague hit the Yangzi region and spread across the north. Famine and drought compounded the social discontent caused by the epidemic. Environmental disaster, disease, and the failure of the Chongzhen government to protect its people led to major peasant uprisings across Northern China beginning in 1628, with Shaanxi province as an epicenter of rebellion. In 1639, Li suffered massive setbacks in eastern Shaanxi, followed by the death of his wife and concubines. He fled into the hills between Shang and Luo counties with a handful of his closest supporters. Other rebels such as Zhang Xianzhong and Luo Rucai already surrendered to the Ming government and encouraged Li Zicheng to join them, but he refused. Li Zicheng managed to survive and escaped the authorities as he was reportedly training martial arts and studying the history of Liu Bang while doing so. In the summer of 1639, Li Zicheng took advantage of Zhang Xianzhong's second rebellion as his distraction to escape from the difficult situation. However, as they faced another trouble, his closest subordinate and divination advisor Liu Zongmin suggest surrender. According to legend, Liu instead changed his mind after he witnessed a positive prognosis of Li's fortune. To prove his fortitude, Liu killed his own wife and concubines, and descended from Shaanxi with their remaining followers to the central plain of Henan.
In 1640s, within three years, Li succeeded in rallying more than 30,000 men to his cause. They attacked and killed prominent government officials such as Sun Chuanting in Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi. As Li won more battles and gained more support, his army grew larger. Historians attribute this growth in numbers to Li's reputation as a Robin Hood-style figure who showed compassion to the poor and only attacked Ming officials.
Li advocated the slogans of "dividing land equally" and "abolishing the grain taxes payment system" which won great support from the peasants. The song, "Killing cattle and sheep, preparing tasty wine and opening the city gate to welcome the Dashing King" was widely spread at the time.
In 1641, rebel forces led by Li Zicheng sacked the Shaolin Monastery due to the monks' support of the Ming dynasty and the possible threat they posed to the rebels. This effectively destroyed the temple's fighting force.
The 1642 Kaifeng flood, caused by breaches of the Yellow River dikes by both sides, ended the siege of Kaifeng and killed over 300,000 of its 378,000 residents. After the battles of Luoyang and Kaifeng, the Ming government was unable to stop Li's rebellion, as most of its military force was involved in the battle against the Manchus in the north.
Later, in 1643, Li Zicheng's victory against Sun Chuanting in central Henan reaffirm his decision to march west to Xi'an. According to most accepted theory, Li made his mind during a meeting in Xiangjing as he already ruled out the choice of march towards Nanjing or to Beijing. Modern historian Roger V. Des Forges has suggested that Li Zicheng may have considered Shaanxi because he was a native of the province and the fact that the city had served as the political center of the Han and Tang dynasties, whose political models he aspired to emulate. However, as Gu Cheng suggested, it is likely that the decision to go to Xi'an was made after the surprisingly complete rout of Sun Chanting's forces in: after the battle, Li pursued Sun as he retreated to the west. According to Zheng Lian, Sun had first gone north to Mengjin, on the south bank of the Yellow River, where he was so distraught at the sight of his men being killed that he tried to throw himself in the river; his subordinates were able to intervene and convinced him to continue resisting the rebels. Zheng Lian also reports an unlikely story that Sun went to Shouyang mountain in Yanshi county, east of Luoyang, to pay respects to the Shang loyalists Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who had starved themselves to death rather than live under the Zhou. On November 12, Li Zicheng's forces took Wenxiang, and 4 days later they assaulted beat Sun Chuanting forces at Tongguan, while Sun Chuanting himself was killed during the ensuing battle. Gao Jie and Bai Guang'en then fled further. After assigned his subordinate to command Tongguan, Li Zicheng proceeded again to Xi'an. In the next four days, Li's forces manage to take the towns of Huayang, Huazhou, Weinan, and Lintong without any meaningful resistance.