In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, peasant uprisings were surging, and all forces were in turmoil. A peasant from northern Shaanxi who was born in poverty led the crowd to rise up. In more than ten years, he fought in various places, and finally achieved a counterattack at the bottom and ascended to the coveted imperial throne, he is Li Zicheng, the king who left a strong mark in Chinese history.
However, from the opening of life, to the peak of life, to the sudden reversal, just 46 days later, Li Zicheng was forced to withdraw from the Forbidden City. After that, he was even more possessed by a god of decay, and he was defeated repeatedly. In the end, under the siege and interception of the Qing army's iron hooves, the army was defeated and retreated to Jiugong Mountain in Hubei, and then its whereabouts were unknown. In the face of this problem, people have been discussing this for many years, and various speculations have emerged in endlessly, which can be described as inconsistent, and has become an intractable puzzle for the ages, so where is the whereabouts of Li Zicheng, who once stirred up the world?Through the clues of history, we may be able to find some answers and clues, and I think this is the charm of history.
First, why do people doubt Li Zicheng's whereabouts from the late Ming Dynasty to the present?
There are two main factors in thisThe first is that Li Zicheng failed too quickly. As we all know, from Li Zicheng's call for the hungry people to revolt in Mizhi, Shaanxi, to the final entry into Beijing, he went through 14 years of hard work in order to win the victory, but from Li Zicheng's entry into Beijing to the final defeat of Jiugong Mountain, it was only a little more than a year, which is in line with the saying".Its rise is also vigorous, and its death is also sudden. This rollercoaster experience will inevitably make future generations deeply embarrassed.
Second, the cause of Li Zicheng's death was too child's play. According to historical records, after Li retreated to Jiugong Mountain in Hubei Province after his success or failure, although the troops suffered heavy losses, he still had nearly 200,000 troops to follow, but he was finally armed by a local place, and Cheng Jiubo, the leader of the regimental training, was killed in the mountains.
Two or three factors show that Li Zicheng is very likely to die in Jiugong Mountain.
First, Li Zicheng's idea of underestimating the enemy. This should be regarded as a common problem of the ancient peasant rebel army, such as the Huangchao Uprising at the end of the Tang Dynasty, for more than ten years, it seems that the southern and northern wars are majestic, but they have never established a stable base, and even the only appointed Jiedu envoy Zhu Wen finally betrayed the Huangchao, and finally only ended up with a generation of heroes who were killed and committed suicide.
Li Zicheng was no exception; after he was defeated and withdrew from Beijing, he did not organize an active defense, nor did he have a clear strategic goal, but he wandered all the way, returning to the original state of mobile combat, and after arriving at Jiugong Mountain, knowing that there were many regiments and training around him, he still broke away from the main force and only took a dozen or so retinues out to inquire about the news.
Second, past experience shows that Li Zicheng does not know people who are willing to be lonely. In the course of Li Zicheng's struggle for more than ten years, in fact, he was also defeated, although he led the remnants to hide in the Shangluo Mountains in the southeast of Shaanxi, but Li Zicheng did not waste his time, but accumulated strength, and two years later from the Shangluo Mountain, and finally entered Beijing, ending the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, I think that if Li Zicheng is really hidden in Jiugong Mountain, then with his character, sooner or later he will also think of making a comeback, but there is no such record in history, so there may be only one explanation, that is, Jiugong Mountain is the end of Li Zicheng's life.
Third, judging from the movements of the remnants of the Dashun Army after Li Zicheng's death. According to the Kangxi Dynasty's "Tongshan County Chronicles", after the soldiers of the Dashun Army learned that Li Zicheng had been killed, they were filled with grief and indignation, and carried out a retaliatory loot in the Jiugong Mountain. You must know that at this time, the Dashun army was facing the iron hooves of the Qing army, and if it weren't for the deep hatred, they would never have wasted such a long time in the Jiugong Mountain area.
After that, although the Dashun army moved to various places, it was also shaken between the Ming and Qing dynasties, and finally determined the route of the Ming Dynasty to resist the Qing Dynasty, but they still maintained their independence after uniting with the Southern Ming. For example, Li Guo, the general of the Dashun Army, called Li Zi the "first emperor" in his recital. This certainly shows the deep affection between Li Zicheng and the generals of the Dashun Army, but it also illustrates a problem, that is, if Li Zicheng is still here, in order to hide people's eyes, Li Guoyuan can avoid mentioning it and directly call him "the first emperor", which is unreasonable. In short, from the activities of the remnants of the Dashun Army later, there is still no real evidence that Li Zicheng is still alive.
In any case, Li Zicheng finally disappeared into the long river of history, and this hero, who was feared by the Ming and Qing dynasties, was silent like a flower after setting off a storm that shook the world. His life and death have become a topic of conversation for hundreds of years since then, which actually shows from another side that the merits and demerits of history are not as simple as success or defeat.