In 1644, the Ming Dynasty was mired in internal and external difficulties, and a peasant rebel army led by Li Zicheng swept through most of China. The Qing soldiers outside Shanhaiguan were eyeing each other, and Shanhaiguan became an important barrier to guard the capital, and it was Wu Sangui who guarded Shanhaiguan.
Wu Sangui, a famous political and military figure in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, a native of Suizhong County, Liaoning, his ancestral hometown is Gaoyou, Jiangsu, the son of Wu Xiang, the chief soldier of Jinzhou, and the nephew of Zu Dashou, the chief soldier of Liaodong. When Wu Sangui was young, he practiced the extraordinary ability of riding and shooting on horseback, and later in the martial arts, and when he was Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, he was the general soldier of Liaodong.
After Li Zicheng's peasant army captured Beijing, he established the Dashun Dynasty. Because the Dashun army underestimated Wu Sangui, who was guarding the Shanhaiguan, Liu Zongmin, the general of the peasant army, went to Wu Xiangfu to plunder Wu Sangui's favorite concubine Chen Yuanyuan and forcibly occupied itHe immediately ordered the defenders to open the gate of Shanhaiguan to lead the Qing army into Beijing, in order to avenge the hatred of the concubine, and staged a peerless scene of "rushing to the crown and being angry for the red face", which made great contributions to the Manchu Qing Dynasty to win the Central Plains.
Under the combined attack of the Ming army led by Wu Sangui and the Qing army, Li Zicheng's peasant army suffered heavy losses and fled Beijing in a hurry. Wu Sangui found Chen Yuanyuan in the war, and Chen Yuanyuan has been following Wu Sangui ever since.
In 1657, Wu Sangui and the Qing army attacked the Yunnan-Guizhou region of the Southern Ming Dynasty, and after pacifying Yunnan-Guizhou, the Qing court ordered him to guard Yunnan, and was named the Prince of Pingxi by Jin, and also governed Guizhou Province. During this period, Zhu Youlang, the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty, was strangled to death in Kunming with a bowstring to show his firm loyalty to the Qing court.
Chen Yuanyuan is a famous singer in Wuzhong, a courtesan in the Ming Dynasty, and one of the "Eight Yan of Qinhuai", who knows all kinds of singing and dancing skills, piano, chess, calligraphy and painting. As the saying goes, time is a knife to kill pigs, with the passage of time, Chen Yuanyuan due to old age and decay, coupled with Wu Sangui's wife is not harmonious, and Wu Sangui has several other favorite concubines, so he gradually fell out of favor, Chen Yuanyuan came up with the idea of becoming a nun. She proposed to Wu Sangui to build a nunnery by the lotus pond, so that she could eat fasting and recite Buddha, away from the red dust. Wu Sangui readily agreed.
After gaining a firm foothold in Yunnan, Wu Sangui became king and fought against the Qing court. In 1678, Wu Sangui led his troops to capture Hunan and proclaimed himself emperor in Hengzhou, Hunan. In the autumn of the same year, he died of illness in Changsha. His grandson Wu Shifan succeeded to the throne and retired to Yunnan.
In 1681, Kunming was besieged by the Qing army, Wu Shifan committed suicide, and the generals surrendered. Wu Sangui's descendants were killed, including infants. Chen Yuanyuan threw himself into the lotus pond and drowned, and a generation of famous singers died.