In the Battle of Shanhaiguan, the million-strong Dashun army was defeated by the 100,000-strong Eighth Banner Army, and Li ZichengTemple countsFailed
In April 1644, in Shanhaiguan, there was a stone battlefield. The shouts gradually subsided, the flags were scattered, and Li Zicheng looked at the smoke-filled battlefield, where his Dashun army was retreating in a hurry.
Under the joint attack of Wu Sangui's army and the Eight Banners Army, the Dashun army suffered heavy losses, almost completely annihilated, and lost tens of thousands of elite soldiers. After capturing Beijing for 42 days, Li Zicheng was forced to withdraw and retreated from north to south until he was pursued by the Qing army to Hubei.
A year later, Li Zicheng was killed by local landlords while exploring the foothills of Jiugong Mountain in Tongcheng, Hubei. From the million-strong army in his heyday to his final death in the remote countryside, Li Zicheng's quick defeat and quick death vividly illustrated the truth of "defeat is like a mountain".
Regarding Li Zicheng's quick defeat, some people believe that it was the inferior nature of the peasant army, some people believe that it was the influence of the plague in North China at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and some people believe that it was the superiority of the cavalry of the Qing army.
What is more noteworthy, however, is the strategic failure of Li Zicheng's tactical victory: the team's combat literacy is not high, the economy is seriously damaged, the inability to establish a solid base area, and the failure to effectively encircle elite talent.
And the root cause of all failures lies in Li Zicheng's failure to encircle the elite of the Ming Dynasty. The fatal failure of this temple brought Li Zicheng the serious consequences of losing everything.
On the cusp, Li Zicheng's rebel army succeeded in overthrowing the Ming Dynasty, which did not rely entirely on their military prowess. Although their army was not very combative, they seized the opportunity of history.
700 years ago, Huang Chao faced a similar dilemma, his army was low in combat effectiveness and repeatedly defeated in battle. However, Li Zicheng's performance was not much better than that of Huang Chao, and although his peasant army had a strong will to fight, it was inferior to the officers and soldiers in terms of equipment, training, and command.
In the early days, he was almost wiped out by the Ming army, fell into a desperate situation four times, and was almost beaten to the rank of commander of the light pole. However, it was during the Xiaoice River period that the Ming Dynasty was hit by natural disasters and plague, which provided Li Zicheng with a large source of soldiers.
At the same time, the Manchu invasion weakened the resistance of the Ming Dynasty. Therefore, Li Zicheng seized these opportunities and led thousands of men and horses to kill Shangluo Mountain, and finally captured Luoyang, Xiangyang, Xi'an, Beijing, and the Ming Dynasty, and the whole process took only 5 years.
will not entrap the Shi clan and make Li Zicheng suffer. Li Zicheng's army was defeated like a mountain in the later period, and the low combat effectiveness and insufficient troops were undoubtedly the main reasons. But before attacking the city of Beijing, wasn't Li Zicheng's Dashun army known as one million and invincible?
What made the Great Shun Army have such a big reversal? 1. The lack of talent leads to low combat effectiveness Li Zicheng's army, most of which were born poor, and followed him to fight in the south and the north, and they were not too bad in terms of fighting will, and they fought with the Ming army and captured a lot of money, and the equipment was definitely good.
The gap is in command and combat skills. And the command and training could not keep up, because of the lack of talent. Li Zicheng almost offended the scholar class, and no one wanted to get Dashun's offer at all.
Second, after the suppression of the Ming Dynasty royal family and ** led to the decrease in the support of the scholars into Beijing, Li Zicheng took some measures: such as opening a branch to recruit scholars and selecting intellectuals; In addition, the former Ming ** was hired to make it authorized to be controlled by the general.
These two measures are still a plus in the eyes of the scholars. But the next measure is to seriously deduct points: to suppress the Ming Dynasty royal family and **, "arrest scholars and doctors all over the street, detain shackles, and look at each other".
Under the blow of the Dashun army, the former landlords and eunuchs suffered a catastrophe, and they either mixed in the crowd with their heads down, or fled for their lives with thin softness, for fear of being caught.
Those Ming Dynasty officials who surrendered to Dashun wore green clothes and small hats every day, prostrate outside the noon gate to wait for dispatches, and let the soldiers insult and abuse. This made the scholar class have no good impression of Li Zicheng.
The scholars who were on the sidelines found that there was no way out, so they turned to surrender to the Manchus.
Why did the million-strong army disappear? It turned out that Li Zicheng was alienated from the scholars and had no sense of cooperation. According to the research of "Investigation of the Truth of the Battle of Shanhaiguan during the Ming and Qing Dynasties", the Eastern Expeditionary Force of the Dashun Army did not exceed 60,000 people, while the Qing army commanded by Dolgon had 100,000 people.
Moreover, Dashun Army can gain a large number of fans in the early stage, but to really monetize, it is necessary to strive for core fans of the scholars who are rich in resources and connections. And Li Zicheng never thought about cooperating with the scholars, he only thought about using the army to suppress them, not to subdue people with virtue.
Every time he captured a place, he did not think about integrating into the local gentry, but stationed troops in every strategic place. In this way, although the total number of troops of the Dashun army was more than one million, after the pacification of the northwest, a large number of troops were stationed in various places, which further dispersed the troops, and eventually led to the disappearance of the million-strong army.
In the treatment of the Ming Dynasty, the Manchu Qing Dynasty adopted a policy of "salute first and then soldier", and successfully attracted a large number of bureaucrats to themselves through entrapment and preferential policies. In this battle, the Manchu Qing Dynasty won the battle under the banner of avenging the Ming Dynasty and announcing the policy of protecting the former ministers of the Ming Dynasty.
In the end, Li Zicheng's Dashun regime quickly collapsed in less than half a year, and even the Guanzhong base area could not be defended, so he had to abandon the defense and flee south.
Li Zicheng's reign in Beijing lasted only 42 days, and he was forced to withdraw from the historic city shortly thereafter. Under the fierce attack of the Qing army, Li Zicheng's Shanxi defense line began to crumble, and finally Taiyuan was captured by the Qing army.
After that, Li Zicheng led the last elite troops to fight fiercely with the Qing army at Tongguan in Shaanxi, but in the end he could not change the fate of defeat. The equipment and horses of the Dashun army were seriously lacking, the combat effectiveness was greatly reduced, and the infantry looked powerless in front of the cavalry.
Although Li Zicheng personally went into battle, he still felt endless despair in the face of the surging Qing cavalry. After that, the Dashun army suffered successive crushing defeats in Yangxin, Hubei, Jiujiang, Jiangxi, and other places, and even the strategy of attacking Nanjing to the east was forced to cancel, and Li Zicheng could only flee to the lofty mountains and mountains in the southwest.
However, his troops were already like frightened birds, without deterrence and organization, and were eventually killed by the local landlords in Jiugong Mountain, Tongcheng, Hubei. Although Li Zicheng's army was once strong for a short time, after the wind passed, their weaknesses and weaknesses began to show, and finally inevitably led to defeat.